Blockchain and the Kingdom of Bling - Dirty Big Secrets Talk with Lisa Calkins

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Fawn: [00:00:00] Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello. Oh my goodness. Do you want to introduce,

Matt: [00:00:09] Hey, we are joined by my former boss’s boss’s , boss. I think. What do you mean? You think there was a lot of levels. The former CEO of Amadeus consulting and the current CEO of half blast studios, Lisa and yeah,

Fawn: [00:00:28] she is a mover and a shaker.

Hello, Lisa. Welcome to our friendly world. Hello, thank you for coming to talk to us. So I'm going to jump in with a nugget of wisdom. You ready everybody? Well, first of all, welcome everyone. Welcome to our friendly world. We are continuing with blockchain and how it is empowering us and how it's bringing a whole new world of interconnectedness  and a sense of belonging and a sense of [00:01:00] power and a sense of what else, like really, like, you know, if you're just tuning into this particular episode or the last one on blockchain, you're like, what does this have to do with friendship?

It has everything to do with it. The more powerful we are in all aspects of life, especially in business and money, all of that, it does affect our families and our families are the ones that we were born into and the ones that we create along the way, this is a big deal guys. So to continue, we have our beautiful guest here, Lisa Calkins.

 Thank you so much for being here.

And I'm going to jump into a nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica, a little flashback,  kind of like, uh, uh, I'm remembering all the ways, all the lessons that were taught and this one was just a constant throughout, but I want to say the majority of us in that little community, we [00:02:00] were all forging our own paths in our careers, especially. We didn't work for anyone else.

I mean, we did because we were all in the industry in some way, but we were all, I don't like the term independent contractors.  We all owned our own company. If you will. You know, we owned our, our creativity. We we took charge of it. In all aspects, formed our own LLCs and moved on with whatever we were doing, whether it was documentary photography, makeup, wardrobe, writing, we had to be our own bosses.

We had to create our own way. We were not dependent on a job job, which is why when people came to the neighborhood, they were always confused. Like don't, doesn't anybody work around here as what we heard all the time, because you know, it was Santa Monica was on the border of Venice beach, the boardwalk.

And it seemed like [00:03:00] everybody was out frolicking all day, every day. But that's because we didn't have the nine to five gigs. Sometimes we would go three weeks without work. And then when we did work, it was insane, hard work busy, but, um, you know, it taught us a new way. And for me, I remember this one day.

I felt like I couldn't handle the stress  of having my own thing; not knowing where your next gig is coming from, not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from, because you have to hustle to get an assignment. You have to hustle to promote whatever it is you're doing, so it can get funded.

And I remember there was this one guy who was very quiet. He hung out at the coffee bean and he looked hardcore. He had the chains on him and the tattoos and the cigarette and very unapproachable looking. Right. So I went up to him one day. I'm [00:04:00] like, can you please tell me your Juju? Like, can you help me?

Because I am freaking out all day every day. And you seem like your feathers never get ruffled. You're always calm. And I know you own your own business and you're, you know, You're just always calm, like no big deal. And he just, he told me, yeah, because you learn every day. And as soon as you realize that it never stops, you kind of melt into that.

You kind of go with that, that there is no what you consider security and that's your security. Like, you're just, you're always, it, it will work out. You just have to keep going everyday and not think too much about it. Just do your work. So forging your own path. It can be really scary and  it's an awesome way to be.

And we're in a world now when I was little, all my friends were very [00:05:00] intuitive and we could see that all these people that work, you know, like our parents who are so involved in the company, the company ethics, and like work for the company and your life revolves around the company.

Yes. But really your life revolves around your own creativity and your ability to offer great substance, great value to another human being. That that is, that is it. And we all do that. If you're a business owner or if you're an employee, whatever we're offering help to one another.

Matt: [00:05:39] Yes, absolutely. And we're also the other, one of the key things I think in life is obviously your relationships with others too.

Of course. Yeah. Well, let's not, you know, you were very focused on, it seemed like you were very focused on money and

Lisa: [00:05:52] career, I suppose.

Matt: [00:05:55] I know. And it was weird. It was very strange.

Fawn: [00:05:57] Well, all right. All right. So let's, so [00:06:00] that's my nugget of wisdom. Forging your own path. Right. And I'm saying that because I see that in Lisa Cockins Lisa, thank you for being here today and I'll let you, you all go for it. I have no idea how I'm going to contribute to this conversation, but I'll give it a whirl. Okay.

Matt: [00:06:18] Okay.  So Lisa,  it was 2018 and  we got the news, we got acquired by Exadel and you had maintained a nice high level position.

And then all of a sudden you left; boom. And you left to work on blockchain. Why 2018? What did you see? What did you not see at that point?

Lisa: [00:06:39] Wow. So, um, yeah, I well, one, I have to go back and say, Fawn, I loved your truth and your wisdom because it really just ties into what we're talking about today.  You were talking about learning every day. And one of the things that was so [00:07:00] exciting to me and, valuable to me about blockchain was that I didn't understand it at all. I had to learn it and the whole team had to learn it. And those early entire year, every day I would learn something. And then the next day I would realize whatever I learned wasn't really right or true.

And then I would learn again and then I wouldn't understand it. And then some would ask me a question. I have no idea how to answer it, and I would have to learn it again. And what an exciting time that is,  professionally and personally. And so those early days of having left Exodel and started this blockchain company, this technology company that was gonna be focused on these really innovative technologies specifically, blockchain was really exciting. And I, I love and still do learning every day. And I would say of [00:08:00] all of the technologies that are happening today, and there still are a lot of new technologies and movement going forward.

This one in particular, took everything we had known and kind of turned it upside down. And I think that's, what's so exciting about it. And it's also, it's so challenging because the adoption of it, it has been incredibly, um, it hasn't happened as much as I would've hoped and believed and thought. And partly because for most technologists, this is not the way that we do things.

This is not how we've been doing things for two, three decades. Our design principles, the core things that technologists have banked on and believed in this is not that. And  so adoption is always hard because actually most people don't like a lot of change. They really don't, they're comfortable.

They like what they do. They're knowledgeable at what they do. It's one of the misnomers in technology that people who aren't in [00:09:00] technology think technologists are so innovative and creative and constantly like building new things and thinking very innovatively. A subset of all industries, people thinking about it, innovatively, most people  in any industry  in the  industry, you have built a career in, and the one that Matt has built a career in, in marketing, in any industry in teaching, there's only a subset of people who are really doing innovative work. Most of the other people, like the fact that everything stays in their framework, that they're comfortable in. So blockchain is not that. And blockchain is really extremely different from a technology perspective.

And I think that's important because actually we haven't seen that, that often in technology we've seen innovation that other people could look at and adopt and grow with and not have to learn something completely new, especially from their framework and blockchain is that. So, [00:10:00] I think it ties into what Fawn was talking about with learning every day.

And that ties into the attractiveness of this particular space.  So I had seen some leads and I had heard about some things related to blockchain and I truly believe that it really can and is the next generation of a large part of  a technology ecosystem. And when I say technology ecosystem these days, it's because it's also important to remember that there are lots of pieces of a solution for enterprise companies and for government solutions and for any end to end solution.

And it's because not only do you have  an app on a mobile phone, but you connect that to pieces that are in the cloud that are in this technology piece and then those connect to other systems. And [00:11:00] then those systems actually connect to ways for lots of people in an organization. Maybe it's a webpage, maybe it's a report.

Maybe it's data that's being passed to another company for paying bills or invoicing or inventory. Maybe it's placing orders for another piece of inventory that you need to get into your warehouse, maybe it's warehouse. So, so companies use technology now, so broad and wide that I never want anybody to think oh, so blockchain now is, the solution and solves all technology for all things for all companies. It is a part of a solution. You still will use mobile technologies and web technologies  and CRM  or a contact relationship management and inventory warehouse systems and fulfillment systems. All of those systems play together.

And so blockchain is a piece of this big solution. It's not taking over the world. It's taking over a big piece of what was [00:12:00] not being done very well  or solved. That's, what's exciting about it, but here's the thing about it. No one sees it. It's part of this backend thing. So we don't, um, not when, when we adopted the internet.

When we adopted mobile apps, people, regular people saw all of that. Right. I would add, I have my phone. I can see new types of apps when the web was first started. Like I can go to a webpage and more web pages than I could interact and I could do things. So this technology has zero. Yeah, really zero from a, from a blockchain, a pure blockchain impact.

We'll talk about cryptocurrency, but from a blockchain impact, there's zero interaction with consumers and with people. And so that makes it also more challenging to understand and more challenging to learn and harder to get companies to actually adopt and use. They also don't adopt it and use it because probably the [00:13:00] two areas where it gains the most value are ones;

I call them the dirty, big secrets. They're not dirty little secrets. They're dirty, big secrets. In systems today and in business today, there is an amazing amount of fraud. Unbelievable. In fact, I am the optimist quite, probably like Fawn. And when I was exposed to how much fraud there was, it made me so disheartened and sad and crazy.

Like if we could help reduce fraud by a very small percentage, the amount of money that could be in the economy is insane. And everybody's just doing it. Like it's not happening and it's growing. And it's crazy to me and fraud, no one, no, no honest. Most people don't want fraud. Like there's, this is the thing that none of us want businesses don't want it. Companies don't want it. People don't want [00:14:00] it. People don't want to be ripped off,  don't want people to steal things. It bothers people and there's an amazing amount of it.  And we just kind of accept it because it's happening and we're not sure what to do with it or about it. So I think, but here's the thing.

Tell me which marketing is going to be like, Hey, we're going to go adopt blockchain because, well, we have a big fraud problems that that's not on the marketing list of things you want to talk about in your company. You also don't want to talk about how many times your systems are broken into and data is stolen,  your systems being invaded, broken. Uh, security; obviously there's a lot of hype right now over The cyber takeovers and the things that are happening on that level, and people are even talking about it.

But even then no one wants to talk about it. And it's not on a list of things the company wants to talk about. Here's the thing. It's not just a marketing thing that they don't want to talk about it though. [00:15:00] Internally. Nobody wants to talk about it. Let's imagine I'm in charge of IT. I am in charge of the entire corporate IT for ,pick your company.

Do you think, I want to tell the CEO all vulnerable assistants that I run, how much fraud there is going on. I want to how much security holes there really are because here's the problem: the person who gets blamed as the person who would be saying what a big problem.

Fawn: [00:15:26] That's why I got fired from so many jobs, because I

Lisa: [00:15:30] you're

Fawn: [00:15:30] the whistle

Lisa: [00:15:30] blower.

No one really wants to talk about it because, and here's the problem also. It's not like, even if I talk about it, I'd be like, yeah, I got this. I got an easy solution for us. Implementing a blockchain solution in an organization, unfortunately, and I guess it's because it solves such big problems. It's super expensive.

It's very hard and expensive. That's the reality of it. Creating a web page or [00:16:00] interacting, creating your first public website. When those first came out, it was cheap. This is expensive. This is taking systems that have been built upon for 20 years; the glue between all of these systems and building it from scratch and redesigning and redeveloping with the resources that are not to be found and are incredibly expensive with technology that is brand new.

If the risk is high, the cost is high. And so, yeah, let me go tell the CEO of the company, let me go figure out how I'm going to put this solution, which is phenomenal in a company. Right from an it perspective. Adoption is hard. This isn't a, an easy fix, but these are big problems and these are significant problems and they can have such great results and impacts.

And yet they're very expensive. Anyway, that was a very long answer to your first [00:17:00] question. I promise I can try to keep them shorter.

Fawn: [00:17:03] Lisa. I totally see everything you're saying. I thought I was scared of you guys, honestly, coming into this episode today because I thought, oh my God, I'm not going to understand what you're saying, but that was so human and I, everything you said I could relate to on so many levels, not just business blockchain, but there's so much that is wrong because we don't communicate because we don't want to face our emotions because we don't want, to talk about things.

and for me, you know, because I guess I'm, I don't know, they call it naive. I'm like, let's talk about it guys. And that's why I would always get fired because I'm like, whoa, can we talk about this? And people don't want to, and  people like me or like an entity, like me tends to get  thrown out, like get out of here.

We don't want to talk about it. So I'm so glad that you phrased it the way you did. I totally understand what you were saying. It's so beautiful and human, human. Thank you.

[00:18:00] Lisa: [00:18:00] Well,

let's talk about real examples Fawn, because you're going to love them because let's think about where there's fraud. Because where there's fraud, there's good opportunities for this type of a solution.

Some are obvious to you. Oh, go right ahead.

Matt: [00:18:13] Literally reading my mind. I was totally going to say. Okay. Okay. So you mentioned fraud and fraud. Is this, you know, fraud is a great word, but what do you mean specifically? So we're brilliant. Thank you.

Lisa: [00:18:25] Yeah. So, so most people are aware of some fraud and we think about it.

Let's think about it. We had an election that everybody was talking about voting fraud, right? So voting fantastic opportunity for blockchain because one of the key things about blockchain is it doesn't really help. It can help in one entity and in one company by itself. But really its great value is when there's connectivity, which you eat, both of you even just talked about from the very beginning, it's not [00:19:00] about me.

It's about the relationships and it's all about relationships in business and personal. And the relationships are because multiple entities, different stakeholders, all have a piece of,  , contribution and use in a blockchain environment. That's where it's best used. So voting; every individual wants to vote and the vote wants to count, but there's all of these rules around it because you want to try to keep all of the fraud that is an opportunity for it out of it. And so actually there's probably even less players in voting than there would be in others. But there's lots of stakeholders that are all wanting both to turn out a certain way.

Right. And really you do have stakeholders, you have media, right?  They want to know what results are going on and what they can talk about. In stories. You have individuals, you have parties, you have those running, you have donors, you have all of this [00:20:00] and if anybody doesn't think that our voting impacts the world, you have the world watching you and countries watching you when figuring those things out. And voting isn't just the president election. It's all of the elections that we have all of the time. And it's something that happens not all over the world.  But  in any democratic country in the world, there's voting, interestingly enough, there's also voting on shareholders vote in a company, right.  And there's voting in lots of other scenarios.

And so voting is a perfect example where if we could reduce fraud and know that there was an easy way to identify the one vote, one person kind of a model, it would really be a fantastic solution. So that's one example where there's a lot of fraud and it could be a really positive solution.

It's also one example where I remember I said, it's very expensive and somebody has to fund it. Well, the government, or some entity would have to, or [00:21:00] multiple entities would have to stand up and fund something like that. And so it's one of the great use cases, but it's one of the challenging implementations because it's going to take a while  to reinvent that solution between states and country and nationally and  a  complete unawareness of fear of something unknown. I know this works, but oh, I mean just electronic voting and mail-in voting and counting  is so suspect. So replacing it, unfortunately, I think it's going to take awhile.

Do I think that it will with a blockchain solution. Absolutely. Absolutely. But is it going to be a couple of decades? Unfortunately, I think that's the case. But when you start to think about where, you know, there's fraud, there's a great example and we're all aware of it. But what we  weren't aware is all of that internal fraud that's happening in companies.

Sure. I've heard about credit card fraud, right? I mean, we've heard about that. People are perfect. We've been, oh my

Matt: [00:21:59] goodness. We've [00:22:00] had, we've had, I think four or five different  credit cards because of fraud. Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa: [00:22:04] Except, you know, we make it really easy in our country. So what happened to you when you had the credit card fraud?

Fawn: [00:22:10] Well, after the freakout. We call the bank and I, when it first happened, I'm like, oh my God, it's going to be years of fighting this charge. And they're like, okay. I'm like, what do you mean? Okay, it's done taken care of. And I think the first time it happened, you wanted to, you were asking the company, the credit card company, who the guy was

Lisa: [00:22:33] wanting to track him

Matt: [00:22:34] down.

Okay. My story, I was working at UCLA as a contractor and I had gone to an ATM machine and I noticed my balance was off. I go back to my little desk, I log into, uh, to my, uh, to my bank. And I noticed that my credit card had charges on it at, for a particular company. And I was like, that's obviously not me.

So I called the company and I'm like, Hey. Yeah, uh, I made a charge and it was for flowers. And I was like, who did I deliver these to. [00:23:00] Because I wanted to find out because I wanted to obviously, you know, figure out who had stolen my credit card data and do something bad to them. Um, this would welcome to your twenties, right.

Uh, and, uh, and I called and they wouldn't tell me. And I was like, but I made the charge. Where did I send my flowers to? And they wouldn't tell me I was so mad

Fawn: [00:23:22] and it happened to me. It was on my, um, my photography account. So it was on a photo shoot and I had to go get something. And I knew when I was buying it, something was amiss.

And then I forgot about it. You know, like whatever I just go on. And a couple of weeks later, Uh, charge shows up on my bill and we still laugh about it to this day, someone charged a whole bunch of money to the kingdom of bling. That's

Matt: [00:23:49] right. I forgot.

I was like, what

Lisa: [00:23:52] is this?

Fawn: [00:23:53] But I love that title.

Lisa: [00:23:55] That, that is a business that is an obfuscated business name [00:24:00] right there.

I don't know what they were doing, but

Fawn: [00:24:03] there you go. You know, like Kingdom of Bling. It was, um, it was a gift, but it was, it was wild to me how the credit card companies treated it. Like it was no big deal and just went on with it.

Lisa: [00:24:18] And then actually they treated it like it was no big deal so that you really stop worrying about it.

So, okay. It happened, but they just run it off your credit card. Right? I mean, that's it, it's fine. So let's trace that a little bit more though. And you're going to see where the problem of fraud and how hard it is to get us to change our ways. So let's go back to the flowers, the flower company. So, so in order to that place with a flower company, and you were mad at that person, I always get mad at the person who stole your credit card.

Right. Except here's where we really should. And yeah, I'm mad at them, but, so, so what happened with the money? Because actually the [00:25:00] flowers got ordered right. From that flower shop. Right. And the flower shop actually delivered them to someone probably. Yeah. Yeah. So do you realize who actually paid for that fraud. It's the flower company, the credit card company takes the money back out of that small business transaction.

They go take the money out of, even up to six months later, some credit cards a year later, the money actually doesn't get lost in the middle. It's actually taken out of a small business. And as we know, most consumer business, these days actually all flows down to really a lot of small businesses that are providing those services.

The small business is the one that loses out. The small business is the one who is actually the end result of fraud. Well, let's talk about it. How are they going to change the world and force us to change our model? [00:26:00] Usually it's because consumers help drive that, right? The mass people drive that change, but you don't even know or realize it's happening, right?

 If everybody realized my local flower shop my local restaurant, the coffee shop, the doughnut shop, whatever it is, a person selling, whatever, even startups, creating new companies, even selling online, whatever it might be. They're the ones who it comes out of their account.

And so it's part of doing business. They have to do a write off account. They have to manage the fact that there's going to be loss. And they're the ones who are paying for it. Here's the thing, the credit card companies who is, we want to change the system. Right. And not just pass it down the chain because let's be clear.

Sometimes it passes down the chain a little bit longer than it does, right. To them in person. They're the ones who are making sure you feel fine. Right. Hey, other people's money. It's a lot easier for [00:27:00] me to be like, oh, no problem, Matt. I'll just put that money back on your credit card. No problem Fawn, we've got it for you. Yeah. It's easy to say we've got it for you when you're going to go take that money from that percentage and pay you. So here's the thing about fraud is that it's not one easy solution that one company cares about often. It's embedded in these chains. Beautiful word, right? It's a chain of people involved because the interesting thing is even when you place a credit card transaction and purchase something, if you look at the life cycle of what that chain is, it's very long and there's lots of players involved in the chain most often.

And so the fraud doesn't always just, happen the way that you think it happens in getting companies to change it. But you'd be like, well, I want the credit card company to implement blockchain and change this whole system. Well, why they're not the ones who are paying the big bills. It's actually that small [00:28:00] business, and that small business, they can't even if they wanted to invest in blockchain technology, they have to get the credit current companies to do that. Right. And they're not changing. So you can see that even though we have fraud and our system changing it, when there's multiple players is really hard.

Now let's talk about something positive and things that are changing, because thank God I want blockchain to be about positive examples that it's happening. And I think that the example that I love to talk is not one that I've done, but it's the one that I love to talk about because we can understand it is the one that actually got implemented for Walmart .

And, listen, my husband's a Boulder native, uh, Walmart is not always a friendly term that's been used in my household for many times, but I love the solution. And I want everybody to think about it and let go of the company that's implementing it. But they did it for was for traceability of food and food products.

[00:29:00] Right. And they did with lettuce. And actually, I want to even say, it's almost been 10 years now in the making of salmonella and lettuce  and lettuce contamination and us all being, and then it was melons, right? And we were all talking about food, contaminate blockchain. They implemented a blockchain solution to be able to track the lettuce faster.

 These are the examples where blockchain gets implemented and it took a big company that has big money and actually kind of pushed around a bit of their weight for the better. And here's what happened.

The lettuce actually could have come from another country. So let's just say it was coming from a farm in Mexico. It actually goes from the farm onto a truck that's owned by somebody else take into a warehouse that's owned by now another company that warehouse has to transport it let's say it was on another shipping container that [00:30:00] went to a port that went up the coast, and now it's on a boat, different company. And then the company that takes it off of the boat and puts it on a train and then that train goes to, or a truck and it goes to deliver it to a, another warehouse that goes now to let's just say my grocery store down the street.

And I even excluded a bunch of people in there. Knowing that that lettuce, that came on this now, big shipping container that got into my grocery store. The thing about it is that lettuce, my gosh,  by the time it came to me, knowing which farm it came from, the way I drew the picture seems easy.

But when that lettuce got in that first warehouse, And seven farmers all put their lettuce in that warehouse and all of that got one-on-one great tracking. My lettuce  could take forever. Right.  And then of course, as I can continue, right. [00:31:00] That crate got combined with other ones, because we've all seen those shipping, especially after what happened in the canal.

Those shipping crates are huge. So can you imagine how much lettuce is all put into one crate tracking where that lettuce came from is challenging? I don't literally Walmart was having these issues and wanted to do a recall. They literally just have to recall all the lettuce. They do know the lettuce's age range.

They know about when it came from and they could track that down. They literally have to just get rid of all of the lettuce for the most part in, in all of the stores, in an entire region and dump it all and dump it all out of them. And it's because even when they tried and they do, they try to track down the scenario, it would take three to four weeks of going through their systems.

And a lot of them were electronic, but you're piecing together all of these systems to try to track down which, which farm that came from. So then you'd stop [00:32:00] delivering from that farm until they solve the problem. Right. So you've got weeks of throwing things out. So Fawn already, is like, oh my God, all the stuff that gets thrown out.

Yeah. Not only is it all getting thrown out, but people got sick and then they're liable for the people who got sick. Especially in our country, we have a big liability, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? So they implemented a solution of blockchain solution that all of the people along the path have to contribute to this blockchain.

They have to scan products with little scanners, barcodes, barcodes on the lettuce. Right. We know there's a barcode on the list because our grocery store, that's how we pay for it. The bar code on the shipping container. That's not to say that specific lettuce in this particular case, but the container that the farmer used and then that container that I got added to, and then the next container, everybody had to scan along the way and say where that lettuce was and they, and what incentivize them to scan.

Hey, I'm [00:33:00] not paying you unless you scan that material and you put it. In fact, I can't use you as a vendor, unless you do this. There you go. So the small businesses were like, damn, I do have a little bit more of an expense because I've got to scan things. Here's the thing that they learned in the system  and this wasn't all blockchain.

See the scanning device, isn't blockchain. The technology of how to scan isn't blockchain, but the ability to use some of these new cool ways to do things and put it on the blockchain is why blockchain was enabled. So blockchain is kind of that thing in the backend. That's going to keep track of all of these things. But, all of these things along the way, mobile devices, it could have been a phone that scans something, right? All of these different pieces put something on the blockchain and they literally took a process of traceability, of tracking where that lettuce came from from three to four weeks to three minutes to two minutes.

If I know in two minutes where that came from, I can go to that one [00:34:00] particular farm and any places those got distributed, pull that product and all the rest is fine. Right? Well, we're all going to cheer

Matt: [00:34:08] and morning, almost, not necessarily more importantly, but you know, the, the issue may not be with that lettuce.

It may have been in the shipping container, or it may be in a warehouse or it may be, and you can track all of that all the way down so you can maybe investigate the lettuce. No, the lettuce is fine. Okay. Where else might it be? And  you can go through that whole process, but you have the whole, transmission history, if you will, of this piece of data or this lettuce.

So you can actually then take a look everywhere it's been  and take a look at all of those other places as well.

Lisa: [00:34:40] Well, here's the thing we all can attach to the, uh, somebody got sick from the lettuce and we all can relate to that story. And the marketing team has done a great job of making that really easy for us to consume.

Here's the other big value that Walmart is gaining that no one is actually talking about, because [00:35:00] we don't want to talk about the dirty big secrets. You'll see fraud happens in any supply chain delivery system, especially when there's unfortunately lots of money, right? A little bit more money for a lot of people.

There's enough people who feel like they want to cheat the system. And actually when they don't get caught, they kind of feel like it's not that bad. Here's what was happening. There was enough players. And we just talked about lettuce. Think about how many products that are even just consumable products, that, and non-consumable products that Walmart has.

And all of these supply chains. See out of the hundred people; we'll just make up a number and please know this is not in the Walmart story. I just know that I  read enough bad things. And I don't know that it's a hundred in this chain, but let's say there's 100. 10% of them were willing to cheat these a hundred players.

That means 10% of them used to say, I got, [00:36:00] I got 50 crates here and I type in 50. I put, and how many did I really get? I really got 40, but I get paid. I get paid based on how many I transport all along the way people are paid based on quantity. And so when it's a manual system, it's much easier when there's a person who's looking at something who says, okay, this is how many I have.

That is a much easier thing to cheat than I have to scan this label on this crate. And this label said that there was this many in there. I can't fake that number. I, I don't even know how to go back into the system and change that number. I scanned  it .When it's a crate that had a weight and the weight is on a shipping container and it automatically got entered when it got on the scale, I can't cheat it. And so by implementing new technology, which actually that [00:37:00] technology had nothing to do again with blockchain, it had to do with technologies that we have today that are enabling technology solutions for the successful automatic ability.

We often grouped those into the IOT, the internet of things, sensors, labeled the sensor  in a crate that's communicating all of the different ways that we're taking data and being able to put them on the blockchain. We really don't need a lot of humans anymore to be taking data. When you don't need humans, that means the truth is told most of the time. Now let's be clear out of those 10% that we're cheating. 1% are finding a way to still cheat. They're finding a way to put some Astro await into something that doesn't get caught or whatever it is. There's always going to be people who are trying to cheat you, but if you can reduce the number of people trying to cheat you, you gained a lot of money in not being ripped off because this company ripped you off.

And this one, and when there's a hundred companies in this path and 10% of them ripped you off by a little bit, all the time, let's be clear. They never rip you off by, [00:38:00] you know, uh, enough that they'd be noticeable. It's those little bits that add up. So it reduced fraud significantly. And that's fantastic.

We all love that story too. We really do. It's just that, that one's not the one being talked about. And why is it that one the one that I love? It's because that's what's funding these changes because unfortunately just the lettuce wouldn't probably have funded it. This is big. These are big, expensive, multiple years systems. And you're going to require all of these vendors to do it and et cetera, et cetera. And so these types of things, if they can reduce fraud, then that money can come back into these systems and then we can build systems and then we can use systems. So I loved the story because now you can wrap your head around, wow, if that works for lettuce, I bet it would work for all of these other types of things, too. Tracking pharmaceutical drugs that are perishable, right?  Tracking.  Our list is endless of tracking in these chains and it's why you're seeing the [00:39:00] most implementation of blockchain applications are with chains and multiple companies with multiple paths of driving and handling and things.

But you know what, as a consumer, we don't need; I don't ever think about these things. And I don't, I just know when I bought, when I got my drug at the pharmacy at Walgreens, that I hope it's the right product. I hope that it's made with the right materials. I hope nobody put anything shitty in it. I trust that this product I got is good.

Right. And just think about all the players all along the way for one product that could have tampered with it or not known what the real products were that got put into it, that you didn't know who touched it. And what's it in the refrigeration long enough. And, oh my God, we don't think about anything.

You don't think about anything except what the media tells us, what the company tells us and what we want to believe [00:40:00] in. And so I love the fact that blockchain can change and help us drive these types of solutions. But boy, that was the completely Matt wanted to talk techie. That was probably the non-techie version of all of this blockchain that I shared.

Well, here we

Matt: [00:40:19] go. So I was actually thinking about voting for a second and voting is in many ways, kind of a supply chain issue, right? Because I vote.  And let's say I do it old school. I actually, um, no, well, yeah, let's do it old school. So I actually go to a voting machine. I placed my vote at a local precinct.

Then the votes need to go. I'm guessing they need to go to a county to, to be counted. And then, the results of those votes need to be transmitted maybe to the state and then obviously up the chain, depending on what kind of an election it is. And that sounds an awful lot like I'm moving lettuce around.

Lisa: [00:40:56] Yeah. The interesting thing that we, that I didn't talk [00:41:00] about in this blockchain solution is this piece that has to do with cryptocurrency really. And where cryptocurrency, everybody now has, I think most people now know Bitcoin. It's funny, three years ago when I was in a cab, wherever I was, uh, Saudi Arabia to, um, to Poland to the  U S there was always somebody, oh, Yeah, my brother or my uncle told me, or blah, blah, blah.

It's funny right after. Yeah, I started the company. I was talking to my aunt who is 82 and she said, oh, I know all about Bitcoin. In fact, Lisa, could you invest some money into Bitcoin for me? I thought, oh my God, my 82 year old aunt knows about Bitcoin. How does she know anything about Bitcoin?  This is so exciting to me because if my 80 plus year old aunt knows about Bitcoin, I think the world's going to know about Bitcoin very quickly.

Of course I knew about Bitcoin, but maybe not blockchain. With said, it's because she heard an NPR [00:42:00] special and she listens to NPR on the radio and NPR ran a special on Bitcoin three years ago. It was a whole hour long. And she learned all of this stuff about Bitcoin. And I don't know that it was that year.

I think it was probably 18 months later that I did put like a hundred dollars on. I don't invest for anyone, but my aunt was so sweet. And so he gave me a hundred dollars and put it into Bitcoin. And even though Bitcoin has gone up and down, let's be clear. Her a hundred dollars is worth more than a hundred dollars these days.

Bitcoin. How does cryptocurrency relate? Well, cryptocurrency the model of money and transferring money and paying for things; just like I talked about a credit card, there's lots of opportunities for fraud. Anytime it has to do with money, there is an opportunity for fraud. And so blockchain is the technology that these inputs are going on to ensure that there isn't fraud.

Right? So money is used fraudulently to buy and sell. And so money was [00:43:00] not wasn't the case with that said owner of something is, and I'm going back to voting the thing about voting is we often, yes. I want you to know, I voted. But I don't need the public to know how I voted and the public can tell some things about that, but you want to have some things private, just like, I don't need the public to know how much money is in my bank account.

 I need to know how much money is in my bank account. And even today it's a little tricky, right? I, if I want you to pay me, I don't really want to tell you my bank account because that feels unsafe and it kind of is, but I need to give you ways to tell, we need to communicate to these, um, in that chain, I need to communicate a way, but I don't want to always tell you my social security number.

Right? I don't want to always tell you something that identifies me. And so in this cryptocurrency blockchain world, we are using technology that's been around a while. [00:44:00] The inventor of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency implemented it on blockchain. And that was the beginning of blockchain. And then that model of blockchain is used in the Walmart example.

They don't have to use Bitcoin, doesn't have to do anything to do with it. It just has to do with the backend and that that's stuck in the tech in the back, but in the voting example and in Bitcoin and in cryptocurrencies, we have these things called keys. And the best way to think about it is we do have not everybody has a wallet anymore today.

Our wallet sometimes is our phone. Right. But if you think about a wallet, when you put some money in your wallet right now, when you went to, or a credit card in your wallet, that has a number on it. When you go somewhere you're transacting  by giving somebody some money. And quite honestly, today, you don't have to say what your name is.

If you want to pay for something in cash, you don't have to say your name. You can just give them cash.  Bitcoin created these things like a wallet and for you to communicate and to [00:45:00] give money to somebody else, you just need to know what their wallet address is to give them money. And it's going to go from my wallet to their wallet, and I'm going to use these numbers to do that.

And there's this super cool hacky way of generating a unique number. So Fawn can create a unique number that she can tell Matt, but then that number goes away and there's a new number she can generate, but that number was created in a very cool way that it, the technology can know that Fawn, is the only one who can give that key and generate that key.

And no one can figure out what it was Fawn that did it. So it's a one way encryption. It talks about encryption and by being able to have these keys, we can exchange things with these keys in a very safe, secure way. So all of these players have keys that are in their wallet. There's been a lot of conversation and I'm sure everybody's heard about, oh, all these people who lost their Bitcoin and they can't recover [00:46:00] it anymore.

It's because they lost their key. And when you lose your key in our country, the number one use in any mobile app is "forgot password". Like we are just ignorant with keeping passwords, like, oh my God, we just say, oh, can you keep track of that for me? But every time we make a company keep track of our passwords, that means the company knows our passport.

And even though they're trying to keep it protected, they're the ones who know it. And the way that things are being stolen all the time, it's all fricking passwords these days. And it's because we are perfectly fine to say I keep my password. And then when somebody breaks into their systems, which let's be clear, it's really hard to protect the systems these days, these companies aren't doing anything wrong. It's just almost impossible to have secure backend systems and they're trying to steal passwords and then they still password so that they can, they can steal lots of things. And so we're just so flippant with our passwords in our country. I mean, we're just so therefore we're like, Hey, what do you mean?

I [00:47:00] lost my Bitcoin password. And it's like, no, remember that? Well that you got in your pocket. If you lose that on the street, maybe not in Santa Monica, but if you lose out on the street in any other city,  99% of the time, you're never getting your money back. Maybe you, maybe your wallet showed up, but not your money ever.

And so it's kind of funny. We just think, what do you mean if I lose something, I can't get it back electronically. Well, when you lose physical things, when you lose a diamond ring, when you lose money, when you lose anything of value, do you think it just gets returned? Not always. Sometimes. Sometimes, but no.

So there's the thing about keys, which we don't get used to. We're like, well, what do you mean if it's techie and I lose it, I should just. Aren't you responsible for giving it back to me the minute we make somebody else responsible for giving it back to you, it means they have to keep it. And when they have to keep it in store it, that means they're vulnerable.

And even though they're trying really hard to not let anybody steal your key, they really don't want anybody to steal your key. People are stealing your keys. And so, you [00:48:00] know, what's safer than that. You keep your key. You keep your key to your safe deposit box. You keep your key or your code or whatever it is and make you responsible for it. Problem is we are horribly irresponsible and we don't want the responsibility.

We want it to be somebody else's. So there's a huge problem with implementing really safe, secure models, using blockchain technology. And it's not actually blockchain it's actually to do with these cryptocurrency keys or where they're not even cryptocurrency keys, but this idea of keys. The systems break down because even today, when I build a new system, the safest way would be to make you responsible for your key.

And the first thing you do is lose your key and say, Hey company, Lisa company, Hey, can I have my key back? And you're like, no, I told you if you lost it, I gave you four screens of warnings. I said, do not lose this key. Do not lose this key right here. Care. If you write this key and put it in a safe deposit box, do not lose this key.

And let's [00:49:00] be clear. The key is very long. It's like a very long, set of numbers and you're like, yeah, yeah, but I lost that key and that's my money. That's my asset. That's my music. That's my art. That's my jewelry. That's my asset. And what do you mean? What do you mean? I can't, I can't prove that that's my asset anymore because I lost my key.

And you're like I told you not to lose it! So what, from anybody building blockchain solutions, what do we have to do? We have to keep your damn key for you and then we're vulnerable, right? As soon as I keep your key. Somebody's going to try to steal it. And then I got to protect it and I really wish you would have kept your keys.

Right? I really do. But a voting, Matt goes back to, if everybody wants to be accountable for their own key, then we're going to have to find ways to solve this key problem. Because when you vote, you get to use your key to vote. And when you lose your key, you wouldn't be able to vote. And this would fit that would break the whole, whole system down right away.

And I'm not saying there aren't some ways a key there's little hardware [00:50:00] keys, like, like on your fricking key chain, which we all got rid of. We all wanted to get rid of our key chains because when you lose your keys, you lose your keys. The thing about it is there's locksmiths. People can rebuild keys, companies, take responsibility for it and people don't.

So, all right, sorry. That was a tangent or maybe not a tangent, but. Um, I'm panicking. Actually. It was

Matt: [00:50:20] funny. My wife just kept staring at me going,

Fawn: [00:50:24] I want to leave right now and go change all my password because she

Matt: [00:50:28] thinks that, uh, the way I store my passwords, we get she's thought that the way I store my passwords, like I'd never let the browser save my password.

Every password is different. I use, I'm not going to divulge the name of it, but I use a standalone application to manage my passwords. I don't use last pass. I don't use anything else that

Lisa: [00:50:52] exists. You're unique. And I love that you're doing that, but even move the bar. That's hard for most [00:51:00] people and it's hard for me, but actually even using some of the tools like last pass or some of those password generators is significantly better than what people are doing today, which is using the same password across all of their systems.

And using a very simple password, they can remember. Yes,  it's not even just about you. It's about all of the fraud you're creating for those small businesses that get screwed. Like we talked about. Taking a small step toward responsibility of your password management is good for you and good for other people.

And it doesn't have to go as far as what Matt's talking about, which is fantastic. And actually many companies are now doing it to even log into their systems. Google and others have been doing it for years, where you get something where it generates a new password every hour and you have to be typing it in and you have to be entering it.

Password management is incredibly important in this whole fraud scheme, not even blockchain, but just fraud scheme. And so doing a little bit to help protect your passwords really will save you paid and [00:52:00] time effort. And if you care about the community at large, right? If you care about that flower shop, then be a little, take a little bit more time about password management and protection, because you just called your credit card company and said, Hey, can you take care of it? And they did. And my husband's scuba shop,  that fraudulent credit card,  it's their bank account that, that came out of ,not anybody else's. And so, password management is super important.

Not that that was blockchain, but it all intertwined in there.

Did you want any more techie kind of conversations? I, I guess we're building systems and I wish I could tell you more about them. What I would tell you is there's more startups thinking about them.  COVID did impact the industry in the sense that most innovative projects, all companies have been greatly impacted during what's happened in our economy for a year and a half around the world.

And when that happens, companies contract funding [00:53:00] on things that are in their future and they focus on how to stay in business right now. So a lot of projects got put on hold. A lot of inventions didn't happen, but on the flip side, lots of startups happened. Lots of people have ideas that they're willing to do as a startup because they've been home for awhile and have ideas and are helping to implement things.

So we've seen both sides of it. We've seen everything from a traceability and tracking. We didn't even talk about being able to, but we talked a little bit about that idea. We're working with a startup right now that, oh my God, I love it Fawn would love it. It, you know, what I love about my job is that there's so many things you're learning.

There's so many industries and change you've never known about. And that when you learn about them, you're like, oh my God, this makes a difference. And even if it's like the messy stuff that you didn't think about, it does make a difference. We're working with oh two women who are amazing and they're, and it's women.

It was in very male dominated industry. It's actually meat processing again, Santa Monica. So excited about this, but what you are excited about is there are [00:54:00] certain products like collagen and other products that are coming on the shelf in, in Pharmaca that are helping us that are good for our wellness produced out of a chain that you want to know is organic and hormone-free and whatever it would be.

We even talked about those drugs. Well, think about all of the different natural products that we know can help people and aren't even drugs these days, but you know, those are, oh my God. They are, unfortunately, I'm so sad. Always to know full of  fraud, all these companies making claims about products that aren't true.

And we really, everybody does want truth. Let's go back. We do want truth. Maybe not media, because that doesn't sell, but truly we love truth. And we want truth in the product we're buying and we're helping these women with this really cool blockchain product. For the small farms for the small ranchers who produce cows  when they have a cow and they [00:55:00] sell the cow multiple chain here, it goes to a meat processor.

There's a really cool way to say meat processor or packaging, plant coolers, an         . I'm like, well, that's a way better term. Cause we think this is all yucky, which is okay. We do. When they, when they process that meat, they actually have waste and they have to pay people, small farms. They, they can't get rid of that waste because they are not big enough to sell.

There's no platform for them to sell their, their byproducts. Right. There's always byproducts. They have byproducts. The beef that they sell is their main producer of money. But all of these byproducts  that could have come from organic farmers that add their cow and organic meat, they have byproducts sometimes that bone or cartilage or whatever it would be,

but those byproducts go into products that end up on our wellness supplements and things like that, uh, based face cream hairstyle, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? If you knew how to help the small farms, the small ranchers get rid of  their [00:56:00] byproducts are, are perishable.

If we could help them get rid of their byproducts right now, they pay people to take them away. If I gave them a market for their byproducts along the way, they could make a little bit more money on getting rid of it instead of it being thrown away and waste is always, if you, you know, uh, recycle, reuse is better than, or reuse is better than recycle.

We know that, and the change same is true in all of these little things. And so helping them help the small farms and ranchers and in the end,  the producers of these products that are on your shelf at the end, want to be able to tell you that it's organic and that all of their things were organic.

The only way they can do that is to know the people told the truth along the chain and things got tracked along the chain. Again, there you go. Blockchain would be fantastic to know how this is going to be along the chain. It doesn't solve all the problems. Blockchain's a big piece of it. Well, you know, marketplace, you still need [00:57:00] all of these other mobile IOT and web based solutions to support the full solution of knowing that this end product has, was done sustainably, organically, and you can go through any product fish, any, any of these things that we're using a tree fish, any of these, uh, raw materials and then the chain along the way.

So pretty excited about helping these women help the ranchers and the farmers, That's a very Santa Monica thing is helping your community and staying local. Wouldn't it be great if they sold it locally and we use less gas than shipping things all across the country.

I mean, there's so many ripple effects and impacts. And again, I never thought about this industry or this thing or this product. I do buy things at Pharmaca that are on the shelf. And now I can't even pick up a product without thinking, oh my God, how do we help everybody help along the way we want truth. We really do. I want truth in my labeling. And I want truth in my product. [00:58:00] The thing is, is the company selling it to me, wants truth. And the company along the way wants truth. It's only, it's less than 10% of people who want a fraud. Each other, I should have never said 10% of them are trying to fraud. It's probably 1% right.

And, but reducing that 1% to a half a percent can help us all along the way. So

Fawn: [00:58:18] So beautifully explained.

Lisa: [00:58:23] And you said it beautiful when I was talking about like meat processing, so, well, yeah. Do you know where it gets

Matt: [00:58:29] worse because we're vegan?

Lisa: [00:58:31] Well, I, I get it, but the thing about it is you want there to be less, you know, I was helping the oil and gas industry and it was really hard for me cause I'm like, oh, but then I'm like, if we would use waste and make it much more efficient, it is better for everyone in any industry.

If we let go of this preconceived notion of, I can't work in an industry because I'm against it,  shopping at Walmart or the [00:59:00] oil and gas industry or meat, and we realized that reducing things makes it so much better for all of us, regardless of what those products are. It really does it in the end. It's helping our society, the world at large.

Uh, it really is. And just being conscientious of all of the different ways that is, and not being hung up in the label and in the airy little bit of what we know about it at from a distance and realizing it really, it really can make a difference,

Fawn: [00:59:30] it goes back to what we were originally saying at the beginning was to not ignore your feelings, not to ignore your emotions, to talk about things.

Yeah. You know, you would think we don't want to talk about meat, but it's our world and we're in it together. And everybody lives different ways. And to just ignore something or not want to talk about something creates problems.

Lisa: [00:59:56] Yeah. Some of those supplements that are really helping people that are doing [01:00:00] amazing work are produced out of things that aren't always what we realized, but are creating great value. So

Fawn: [01:00:07] totally. Matt. Why

Lisa: [01:00:10] are you quiet?

Matt: [01:00:11] It's just you, God, it, it feels, it feels like I've been drinking from the fire hose. I'll be honest right now. And it really feels like, I can almost sum up this whole episode I was going to cause I always try and sum things up is, you know, really the implementations of blockchain you have is kind of a, a world of truth versus theft.

But I don't want to, I don't want to leave it there. I just wanted to bring it to a world of just straight up truth and blockchain helps us really get to the truth of things.

Lisa: [01:00:42] Yeah, yeah, it sure does. Isn't that exciting? It really is. And most people want truth. There's lots of bad players out there that don't want true, but most of us all want truth. Truth really can help us be so much better in the world and the community [01:01:00] individually, the community, the society, the world. So.

So, yeah, I'm, I'm, uh, obviously passionate and a believer and excited about helping companies implement solutions that can help them. I mean, let's just go back to it. Truth. You need funding, you need funding for big technology solutions. And so there, there are companies investing in this and they're doing it because it helps them, but that helps us.

And I love that. I'm all on board with that. So,

Fawn: [01:01:32] yeah. Wow. So  is that the pretty little bow? I think that's the pretty little bow. Wow. Lisa, you are phenomenal. See, now I'm mad. Cause you had Lisa to yourself. I had no idea all those. It feels like

Matt: [01:01:48] she was in the scary

office at the end of the hall that we couldn't go go to.

I had three

people in my way.

[01:02:00] Lisa: [01:01:59] You know, that's not true.

Hey, truth. I am going to go back to some truth. Fawn's calling you out. I, you know what argue with him Fawn because you know, he could have walked into my office any minute, any day, and that would have been fine. I I'm going to pull on some truth

Fawn: [01:02:22] here. Lisa, who called you? Who called you? He's like, no, no.

Lisa is very busy and then I'm like, well, I mean, it took weeks for him to get a hold of you. I'm like, please, can I have you, have you, have you? He's like, not yet. Not yet. Not yet. And then all of a sudden I Googled you myself and found your phone

Lisa: [01:02:39] number on, you know, why he was not spotting in some truth.

There.

I love chatting

Fawn: [01:02:53] with you. Cute. Thank you so much. And you know, that's the thing. And I thought there was this big [01:03:00] wall up, so I was afraid to, I had all on your shoulders, man. I'm like get ahold of Lisa. Yeah. Yeah. And all of a sudden I'm like, okay, I'll just call him somehow. I'll reach some other person.

And maybe in a few weeks, I'll be able to reach her. When you picked up the phone, lisa, I was, I mean, if you remember, like, I was like, hello, like, is this really you Lisa? I could not believe it. And there you go.

Lisa: [01:03:25] Pretty

Fawn: [01:03:26] reachable. We always have, we believe walls that are up, but they're really not there. You know, it's so easy to reach out to one another.

So that's the truth right there.

Matt: [01:03:35] That is certainly a truth.

Fawn: [01:03:36] You're absolutely right. Don't be afraid. Just reach out and you have a beautiful Lisa in your life that you're talking to.

 Lisa, thank you so much.  Phenomenal, you're so phenomenal in all ways;  in the way you explain things, what you're doing in the world.

I really appreciate you. I see you. [01:04:00] You're so amazing. Thank you, Lisa. Yeah.

Lisa: [01:04:02] Thank you. I, I appreciate the, uh, nice words I sincerely do.

Fawn: [01:04:08] And if you want to reach out to Lisa, we'll have everything in our show notes and our, and on our website, our friendly world.com or our friendly world podcast.com. So we'll talk to you guys in a few days.

Thank you again, everyone. We'll talk to you. Take care. Bye bye.