Count Me In®

Connect with Jennifer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferreneesmith/Learn more about Scribe: https://scribehow.com/Full Episode Transcript:  < Intro > Adam:            Hello and welcome to Count Me In. The podcast that explores the world of business from a management accountant's perspective. This is Adam Larson, and today my co-host Neha, is talking to a woman who describes herself as an accidental CEO. Jennifer Smith is the founder and CEO of Scribe.  A software company that helps businesses capture and scale the expertise of their top performers, to drive new levels of productivity. From fighting collaboration overload to leveraging RPA, to attracting the right talent, Jennifer discusses how her obsession with efficiency has fueled her unique and unplanned leadership journey. Let's start the conversation.  < Music > Neha:              Welcome to Count Me In, Jennifer, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show. Jennifer:         Thanks so much, I'm excited to be here. Neha:              Awesome. So first things first, you call yourself an accidental CEO. Tell me more about that and what brought you to this point in life? Jennifer:         Because if you were to ask me 15, 20 years ago, gosh, maybe even five, seven years ago, "Would you ever be CEO? Would you ever start your own company?" I probably would've laughed at you and said, "No." It's not something I've ever thought about. I don't know anyone who does that, that's not in the cards for me. I started my career as a management consultant.  So I was at McKinsey for seven years. I worked mostly with financial institutions in the Oregon operations practice. Which functionally meant I would spend nine to five sitting next to agents, in operations centers, looking over their shoulder and watching what they did.  And if you ever do that work, you learn the name of the game is you figure out who the best person is. And you sit next to them and you say, "Well, what are you doing differently than everyone else?" And you find that they've found better ways of working. They would say, "Oh, I was trained to do all of these things, but here's how I do this better." And they would show me, they're all tabbing, they're doing really fast things on their computer. They became whizzes at finding these shortcuts and these very complicated pieces of software they were using.  And, as a consultant, I would dutifully write that up and sell that back to my client. But I always thought like, "Gosh, if we had a way to just capture what these people knew how to do. They could have had really big impact on that op center. They could have helped their colleagues all be better." And I said, "Well, it's an obvious problem, someone will solve that someday, surely." And then, you fast-forward 10 years later and then I'm working in venture capital, and investing in enterprise software companies. And I spent a lot of my time talking to buyers of enterprise software, again, folks in financial services. Just trying to understand like, "What are your open problems? What are your challenges? What are you trying to solve?" And this idea kept coming back. People saying like, "Oh, gosh, well, I or my people are spending a lot of time doing similar tasks over and over again. And actually they do it differently, it's definitely different between people, everyone finds their own way." Sometimes it's not even consistent within the same person. They do something once a quarter, they don't quite remember it, they try to do the process, especially, if they've a very complicated software.  I'm like, "Wouldn't it be really nice if there were a way to just know what was the best of what everyone knew how to do?" And I don't really have a way of doing that today. My only option is to tell someone, "Just take time away from doing your actual work and please generate a document that shows what you know how to do." That's not a very popular request.  And, so, I looked at it and said, "Gosh, technology has gotten so much better. It's so many years later and we're still facing the exact same problems." And I shifted from like, "Someone should do something about this." To, "Well, I don't think anyone is doing anything about this and they should, so I guess I'll do something about this." And, so, I very much did not intend to start a company. I cared a lot about solving a particular problem. I'm obsessed with efficiency. And I just saw a massive inefficiency in how millions, hundreds of millions of people around the world are spending their nine to five, trying to navigate these complicated pieces of software and trying to do it quickly, because everyone's got a million things going on and everyone's just doing their best. But most people are doing it sub-optimally and it's taking them more time, and they're spending a lot of time even just trying to figure out what to do, that's not a good feeling. And, so, I said, "Well, gosh, if I could solve that for people, why would I do something else? This feels like what I should be doing." And, so, I started my company, Scribe, three and a half years ago now. Neha:              Wow, that's really insightful and thank you for connecting it to common business problems that we are all facing every day. So this reminds me of a conversation I was having with my daughter, she's 10 years old. And I was telling her about coming on this interview and meeting you, the CEO of the company.  And she was very curious, of course, about the company and your work. I was, of course, able to help her understand what the word Scribe means. But how would you explain to a fifth grader, in simplest terms, what you and your team does? Jennifer:         Yes, we actually design our software, so a fifth grader could use it, it's designed for people across digital literacy. So you could actually tell her to just try it out if she's at all curious, and she should be able to do it.  So, Scribe, very simply, we're a desktop application or a browser extension, your choice. And we will watch you do work and auto-generate step-by-step, written guides with screenshots showing how to do that process.  So let's say, for example, you have a client who is constantly asking you, let's pick something very simple, "How do I log into my QuickBooks Portal?" I don’t know, that's probably a question you've gotten before. So all you would do is you would click the Record button and you would log into the QuickBooks portal, and you would click Start Record. And, boom, Scribe would auto-generate step-by-step written guide on how to log into a QuickBooks Portal. Again, very simple example, but it would say, "Step one, navigate to www.quickbooks.com. Step two, click on the Login icon, instead, it's got a...

Connect with Douglas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-douglas-clayton-414a785/Learn more about FilmDoc: https://thefilmdoc.com/Heart of Camden Trailer: https://vimeo.com/439742490Dovere of Camden Trailer: https://vimeo.com/327729693 Full Episode Transcript:[00:00:00]       < Intro > Adam:            Welcome to Count Me In, the podcast for accounting and finance pros working in business. I'm Adam Larson, and today we examine leadership from a different angle, with Douglas Clayton, affectionately known as the FilmDoc.  Neha Ratnakar caught up with him to discuss his journey from making crowd-pleasing HR videos for a satellite company, to researching leadership at Wharton for his PhD. To advising C-suite executives through the lens of filmmaking. There's links to the trailers for the award-winning documentaries in the show notes. So be sure to check them out if you're interested. Now sit back and enjoy this great conversation with Douglas Clayton. [00:00:43]       < Music > Neha:              I was going through your profile and it fascinated me, among many other things, by the way, that you had a very long and interesting career in SES satellites. Tell us how was it working with actual rocket scientists and what lessons did your time in SES teach you? Douglas:         That's a great question. There are a couple of really fun elements of working with rocket scientists. One of them is when I go to family dinners, or parties, or functions, and people say, "What do you do?" I get to say that I work with rocket scientists, and that's an instant attention grabber.  But certainly much more substantial than that is just working with folks who are so smart. And most of the engineers and scientists who I've had the pleasure of working with are modest folks. They don't have big egos, they work really hard, they love to figure out problems. They actually love to have problems so they can have something to figure out. So I've always enjoyed it. Always considered it a great privilege to work with people who are so smart and, in many ways, so very kind as well. In terms of, "What was it like to work at SES?" It was a lovely experience, life-changing experience, I'll say, actually. The way I ended up working at SES is I worked for GE Capital for many years. Then I ended up transferring to their satellite business, which was headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey. And three months later, we were sold to a tiny company called SES, in the tiny country of Luxembourg.  Now, you can maybe imagine going from working for this giant company being acquired by a small company. We all had choices to stay, or to maybe move on with our careers, or to stay with SES. And the best decision that I made, career decision, was to stay with SES, and the reason is because, at that point, I was an HR manager, or also known as a generalist. And what we discovered is that as an HR person, and then eventually as a leader, our decisions really mattered when you worked for a small company. Where when we worked for GE we were often in execution mode.  So then to move from a big company where the big decisions were being made in Connecticut. To a small company where they were relying on us in Princeton to help guide the corporate office in Luxembourg, which, again, it was a very small company. It really mattered and it helped to develop our confidence. And then as I evolved in terms of leadership and the company moving up in the organization, that happened more rapidly because of the size of the company than it would have happened with GE.  Working for a company that's headquartered in Europe was a real game changer, as well. Because I needed to put on a different hat and look at work and look at the world through a different lens, not just an American lens, which was fine. But, now, I really needed to understand, "Hey, how do we do leadership?  How do our accountants and finance people, how do they need to work together from Europe, between Europe and the U.S.?  How do our rocket scientists work together?  How do we merge these two cultures? Very different country cultures and company cultures?" So it was quite a learning experience, for me, something that I could have never gained at GE, in the position that I was in, and it's something that I would've never gained just through university. Neha:              That's so fascinating, and I'm glad you made the switch and stayed on. All right, I loved what you said about having problems to solve, actually loving the fact that you have problems to solve. Now, tell me when Covid-19 hit, it must have been very difficult for SES. Because satellite making or maintaining them is not something that you can take back home with your laptop and do it from your dining table. So how did the leaders, and the people teams, in SES make this new reality work? Douglas:         It was extraordinary, what happened. I had a front-row seat because I was part of a task force, the Covid task force, and we would meet weekly, and I was on that team for several months and until I retired. But watching the team, which was led by our human resources leader, Evie Roos, at the time.  It was extraordinary, the decisions that they were making and the stakes were so high. Part of our satellite business is, certainly, working with space engineers, and satellite engineers, and rocket scientists. But we also have, just as important, dynamite teams of people who actually operate. And I'll say quote-unquote, "Fly our satellites." They work 24/7. And, so, what were we going to do with them? So certainly we allowed, I'll say 95% of the organization to work from home, or the vast majority, and that was a whole another challenge and project. But then we have this other group of people where we can't allow them to work from home. We really needed them to come into the office. To sit at the monitors and to take care of that part of our very important, essential, part of our business. And, so, it was really around listening, and listening to what people recommended. Listening to the experts in the field. Listening to the supervisors and the employees, and just making decisions based on what was best for them. So, for instance, the folks who were our satellite operators, who had to come into the office every day, we had meals delivered to them. It was an extremely sterile environment. If there was anyone who was near someone who had Covid, then, that person needed to quarantine. It was very strict because you can imagine potential disaster of having a team of people, who can no longer come into the office to fly satellites because Covid has spread through there. It was executed exceptionally, so that was just one area of our business.  And, then, of co...

Connect with Ane: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aneohm/ LeaseCrunch Website: www.leasecrunch.comWhat is ASC 824? The ultimate guide: https://www.leasecrunch.com/blog/asc-8425 FAQs about embedded leases: https://www.leasecrunch.com/blog/embedded-leasesRequest a demo: www.leasecrunch.com/request-a-demoFull Episode Transcript:[00:00:00] < Intro > Adam:            Welcome back to Count Me In. The podcast for accounting and finance professionals working in business. I'm Adam Larson. Today we'll be discussing a perennial hot topic lease accounting, specifically, FASB's new standards for private companies and nonprofits under ASC 842. And just in case you're unaware, the deadline to transition to the new standards is December 31st, 2022. Thankfully, I'm joined, today, by a true expert in this, infamously, thorny topic. Ane Ohm, is a CPA as well as co-founder and CEO of LeaseCrunch, a software company that helps companies simplify their lease accounting. If you're looking for practical tips and best practices to make lease accounting a little less stressful, this is the conversation for you. Let's get started.  [00:00:51]       < Music > Well, Ane, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast, today. We are going to be talking about lease accounting. And as all of us know that the standard, the new Lease Accounting Standard deadline is approaching very quickly, and people should get started. We've been talking about this since what? 2018. And if you haven't gotten started the time now is to get started. What do you think? What is your advice to people as we start talking about this? Ane:                I think the big thing with any accounting standard is that, and when I was running a different company. A new accounting standard would come up and I would ask my accountant, "What is the last moment I have to do anything about this?" And that's when I would do it. And the challenge with the lease accounting standard, if you wait there's a couple of things, first of all, leases can be complicated.  And, so, that analysis of your lease, spending the time understanding it in the context of the new lease standard can take some time. And, secondly, if you need help and you wait the experts are going to be busy. So you're going to have a really difficult time getting a hold of someone who can really guide you through the right steps.  So we're actually hearing CPA firms state that if their clients wait, they're going to have to charge them more in order to be able to offer that assistance. Because they're going to be so busy with other things. If you wait until January, February, this is going to be rough. So start now, get on top of it, it's just going to make things, life, better for you. Adam:            Yes, for sure, because you don't want to wait till the last possible second because it's going to fall back in your face. Do you think that maybe we could start, in this podcast, to maybe go over some practical expectations and how to make your adoption easier? Especially if you are just getting started now, or even if you've been aware, you've been preparing. But to the actual practical application, it's still going to be a difficult process. Ane:                Yes, so there's something to it when you think about the new Lease Standard, you have basically two types of leases. Leases that existed before the standards needed to be implemented, and then leases that start after the standard need to be implemented. So talking about those leases that started before your initial application date of the new standard. The FASB, Financial Accounting Standard Board really wanted to make sure that this was as easy as possible. It sounds like that might not be true, but it is, they have said that repeatedly.  And, so, what they've done is they've actually provided some practical expedience and those practical expedience, the whole purpose of them is to simplify the new standard. So for those transition leases, those leases that existed before, if you have a nice software available to you, there's really only six pieces of information that you need to do.  If you apply those practical expedience, make sure you're doing the things that make this as easy as possible. And then collect those six basic pieces of information. And those are; start date, well, guess what, that start date is going to be the initial application date of the standard.  So if you know that already, huh! If your end is December 31st, that's going to be January 1st, of 2022. All right, so we got one. Second one is, "When does the lease end?" It can be a little more complicated because you have to not just say, "When do I stop paying? When is the initial end of the lease?" I have to, also, look at it and see, "What might I be reasonably certain to renew a term or might I be reasonably certain to terminate early?" So you really have to look at what is the total lease term, including renewals, if you're reasonably certain. It's a high bar but you do have to look at it. The third thing is discount rate. So, and I don't think we know this but those first two seem, they are pretty easy. And the discount rate is the FASB offers the ability to just use the risk-free rate. So that's great because that's publicly available.  You don't have to really think about it too hard. Or the challenge with the risk-free rate is that it will tend to be lower, which means your lease liability will be higher. If you don't want that for larger leases, the FASB, also, more recently, allows us to decide your discount rate based on asset class.  So you can say, "All right, for my office lease, which is a big lease, it's going to be big dollars, I'll spend the time to figure out the higher discount rate. And if I have vehicles or photocopiers, I'm just going to use the risk-free rate." So that's a nice thing, so that's the third piece of information. Fourth one, is, hey, is this an operating lease or a finance lease? Well, once again, FASB says, "You know what, if you had an operating lease before it's an operating lease now. If you had a capital lease...

Contact Michael Teape: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teapetraining/Teape Training International (TTI): https://www.teapetraininginternational.comGet my FREE eGuide 7 Best Facilitation Tips to Ensure Engagement & Learning to ensure your Online Training Success: https://tti-signup.ck.page/eguideFull Episode Transcript:[00:00:00]       < Intro > Adam:            Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm Adam Larson from IMA, or the Institute of Management Accountants. For those of us joining us for the first time. I'm excited to welcome back Michael Teape to the podcast. Michael is a seasoned management coach and the co-founder and president of Teape Training International. Today, we discuss the tips for leaders in the face of constant disruption to business as usual. With Covid, inflation, supply chain issues, technology changes, leaders need to stop bracing for the next curve ball, and instead look for ways they can adapt to find new paths to success.  It was great to get Michael's insight and optimism on this important topic. Let's get the conversation started.  [00:00:45]       < Music > Michael, thank you so much for coming back to Count Me In. We've talked about being more productive at work and maximizing our human capital management, in the past with you. But today we're going to focus in on the disrupted leader. And I figured we can start off by what do we mean by the disrupted leader, and how are leaders being disrupted? Michael:         I think it's easier to say, "How are they not being disrupted? " Adam:            Yes.  Michael:         Because, I think, when you're a leader in your organization and everyone thinks about what's going on? What are the challenges right now? There's some common themes that are only getting quicker, faster, more challenging. So you can think of climate change. Climate change has a huge impact on how we work? Where we work? All of those, and safety elements of that as well.  Social change; the diversity of the people we work with now, that's been being disrupted. We're not all in the office in one place, that's another part of social change as well. Covid-19, I mean, hello? Last three years, it's been a real challenge. And that's one of the biggest ones because it was an unknown challenge.  The others climate, social, and the last one, technology. The technology revolution, what they call the fourth industrial revolution, are the four key areas I see right now, and there'll be more. There'll be more things that come along, let alone the small challenges of running a business. Issues with clients, lack of clients, too many clients, things not going well with clients, disruption on so many levels.  So now we've cheered your audience up. And, so, it is not an easy place. It's more about how we react to it, and technology is one of the biggest ones. That fourth industrial revolution talking about the technology revolution. It's that people are coming up with intuitive ways of breaking our systems and doing things differently. If you have an organization that's run on mainframe systems, spreadsheets, there are so much things available to skip all of that.Fintech, the financial technologies that really don't have any of those and are just very simply making connections, using the technology in front of them quicker, faster, cheaper, that's a huge part that's going on as well. So, yes, where are they not being disrupted, Adam? Adam:            Exactly, I think, you hit it on the nose, there's so much disruption happening all over. But when you're thinking about, as a leader yourself, if I'm thinking about my team and how I act with my team. Yes, there's so many outside disruptions. What does it look like, for me, if I want to look upon myself and how am I being disrupted? And what does a disrupted one look like? Because you don't want to stay there, obviously. Michael:         No, it's a stressful place to be, being disrupted, you're playing defense. You're frustrated that things aren't working, which causes stress. Which also limits our vision and our focus. A lot of being creative and getting ourselves out of these issues, by thinking of new things that we could do to face a challenge and move forward.  So, yes, that looks like, and I'll say this, Adam, a lot of the time we don't realize we're in this space. Call it the disruptive leader, we don't know that we're acting in a certain way because we're under stress. We've got our blinkers on, like, "My business is not making money. How are we going to make some money?" And being stressful, following up on one particular client who's never going to give you the money is a blinkered approach. You need to be looking at, "Well, what could I do to create another million dollars?" Depending on the size of your organization; 50, 100, million. "What could I be doing?" So they're disrupted, they're blind to the problem, really. And what I mean by that is that they're focused on the minute, the tactical, trying to get the number of accounts, trying to charge more per client. When really the problem is maybe what I'm offering the client is not what they're looking for. Have you ever thought about that? And that would be a curious mindset.  So being blind to the problem is all about losing your focus overall and focusing on the minutiae and doing… Have you ever heard that adage, "If you're ever doing the same thing and expecting a different result, that's a definition of insanity." I love that term, that phrase. So that's where someone would be stuck, that would be one of them.  And that links into the other one is having no direction, no purpose, and what I mean is that; where are we going? Where do I want to go? And I think I shared on our last podcast, a little bit, I'll have to go back and have a little look at it, maybe your listeners would do as well. Is that I was working with a client who was totally disrupted by Covid.  They were a Fintech. They were 30% growth they were aiming at and it just disappeared overnight. Because people didn't need to manage cash flow because they weren't out spending cash. And, so, the flow was very different and it wasn't where their market was. But instead of panicking this person found the purpose. Well, her purpose was to take over the world and help the cash management globally, however, that's not possible right now.  So I believe it's coming back but let's focus on rebuilding what we have. The mergers, the acquisitions, being more efficient. Let's focus on fixing what we have, and we have a dream time right now. Let's not think of it as, "Oh, my goodn...

In this special podcast celebrating 50 years of the CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) program, Margaret Michaels, IMA’s Brand Content and Storytelling Manager will be talking with two CMAs, one who earned his CMA in 1975 soon after the CMA program had just begun, and another who earned her CMA quite recently in April 2022.  Connect with our Speakers:John Macaulay: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncmacaulay/ Colleen Lucero: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleen-lucero/Full Episode Transcript:[00:00:00]       < Intro > Margaret:       So in this special podcast, Celebrating 50 Years of the CMA, or the Certified Management Accountant program. Margaret Michaels, myself, IMA's Brand Content and Storytelling Manager, will be talking with two CMAs. One who earned his CMA in 1975, soon after the CMA program had just begun. And another who earned her CMA quite recently, in April of 2022.  John Macaulay is a former IMA chair, who was among the first CMA program completers. He held a number of distinguished roles in the industry. Including serving as CFO of the telecom company, Royal Street Communications.  Colleen Lucero is a Manager of Client Analytics at Graebel, a relocation services company. Colleen earned her CMA in April of 2022. I am so pleased we could chat, today, with both John and Colleen about their CMA experiences and career journeys.  [00:01:15]       < Music > Margaret:       So, John, I'll start with you. I noticed in your bio that you did not study accounting as undergraduate major. Rather you pursued a biology and chemistry degree. What made you decide to shift into accounting, and how did you hear about the CMA program? John:              Thank you, Margaret. It's good to be here today and chat with everyone. That's a rather complicated story, but I will try to shorten it up as best I can. I graduated from college in 1965, with a degree in biology and chemistry. I was studying pre-med.  I had pretty much decided, by the end of my junior year, that I probably didn't want to spend another six years in school. And, so, I decided I wasn't going to medical school.  1965 was the middle of Vietnam. And, so, I signed up for Navy Officer Candidate School and I went and became a Navy officer. A guided-missile officer on a couple of different destroyers. And it was a great experience and exposure, for me, to not only international travel and different cultures, but also to leadership and the military.  When I got out of the military, I knew I wanted to go to graduate school and get an MBA. I hadn't settled on accounting at that point, clearly, but I knew I was headed in the direction of business. I had worked at a bank, in Cambridge, and I actually became the head of personnel. I was there for only a year and a half, actually, and after about six months, I became the head of personnel, we had 650 employees and 12 branches.  So it was a rather challenging decision to go back to graduate school. But I was accepted by Northwestern, the Kellogg School, and we moved from Boston, by that time I was married, from Boston to Chicago, and spent two years at Kellogg getting an MBA. And there I specialized in accounting and finance, Accounting, and Information Systems.  The second year, I became the assistant to the chair of the Accounting and Information Systems Department. And did some tutoring and wrote a couple of cases for him. From there, I went to work for General Mills in Minneapolis, and this was 1972, I started working in May. And in about September, my boss, two levels up, whose name was Jerry Ford, came around and said, "John, would you be interested in taking the CMA?" Well, I had actually refused, at Kellogg, to take the CPA exam, and I'd interviewed with some of the big, I guess it was the Big Six at that point, it may have been Big Eight still. And I told them I was willing to go into consulting, but I didn't want to be an auditor.  I had no interest in the CPA. And, so, they didn't accept me, but I had plenty of opportunities. And, so, I said to Jerry, "Sure I would. I'd absolutely love it." But I said I wanted a certification and I didn't want to be a CPA. I wanted to be a management accountant in business. So Jerry said, "Well, this organization, called NAA, is going to have this exam." And Susan's grandfather was actually a member of NAA and had been the president of the Boston Chapter many years ago. And I said, "Well, that's perfect."  And, so, we began to try to get ready for this exam, which we knew nothing about. And we held one or two, "Study sessions" in our headquarters, in Minneapolis. But we didn't have any real success because it was just a reading list. Some of the books I'd had in graduate school.  So, anyway, we went, it was a two-and-a-half-day exam at the University of Minnesota. And I listened to part of the previous podcast and Denny Beresford talked about the ice storm in Pittsburgh. Well, the second day we had a blizzard in Minneapolis, we actually lost the power. It was in the library at the University of Minnesota.  We actually lost the power, but there were plenty of windows. So we had a lot of light, and we just continued writing the exam, so it wasn't really an issue. I was fortunate, I did pass all five parts of the first exam.  So I say I got it in 1972, but IMA decided I didn't have, "Enough management experience" at that point, and, so, they wouldn't give me the certificate. So I actually got my certificate later in the second batch of certificates.  But that's fine, I didn't have a problem because I actually wrote them a letter and said, "Well, I think I have the experience and this and that." And next thing I knew they wanted me to be on an exam review committee. And, so, that's actually how I got involved with leadership in IMA, which I'll talk about a little bit later. Margaret:       That's a great story. It seems everyone, in the first class of CMA takers, had unfavorable weather conditions. To add to the challenge in taking the test for the first time.  And Colleen, like John, your undergraduate degree is not in accounting, but in Spanish Language and Literature. So what prompted you to embark on an accounting career, and how did you hear about the CMA program? Colleen:          Yes, so I got my undergrad in Spanish and I thought I was going to do interpreting and translating. So after I graduated from my undergrad, I started down that road and then realized that it ended up not being quite the fit that I was hoping it was going to be. But I was getting other certifications for interpreting and translating for large conferences, and even in the courts, and some medical stuff.  And while I'm doing all this, on the side I got this, what I thought was a transitory side job with a small business. And I ende...

Few industries have a more interesting or infamous background than cannabis. And from a management accountant’s perspective, it’s a story straight out of the wild west of business. Simone Cimiluca-Radzins, joins us to discuss her journey from Big 4 CPA to bringing accounting and finance order to untamed business territory through the CBM Network.Connect with Simone: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bizwithsimone/Simone's Podcast: https://cannabisradio.com/podcasts/cannabis-business-minds/ CBM Network: https://www.cbmnetwork.com/courses/startupFull Episode Transcript:Adam:Welcome back to Count Me In the podcast that brings you inside the fascinating world of management accounting. Few industries have more interesting or infamous background than cannabis. From a management accountant's perspective, it's the story straight out of the wild west of business. Joining me today is Simone Cimiluca-Radzins, a leading consultant in the cannabis industry. We discuss our unique journey from a big four CPA to bringing accounting and finance order to attain businesses in cannabis country. Let's start the conversation.Adam:Simone, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm really excited to be talking about cannabis and cannabis and accounting and accounting in the cannabis industry. But to start off, I wanna find out how did you get into this industry and what's your story?Simone:I'm so excited to also be on. Thank you so much for the opportunity. You know, I am an accountant by nature. I grew up in a family where my dad is an accountant, a controller, you know, did the whole kind of accounting route and it just was the thing that just made sense going up in college. I was like, oh, accounting's easy. Let me go do this. And then got recruited pretty young in university to be part of PWC. And then it almost felt like my career path was kind of just set, maybe luck, maybe opportunity, you know, the combination of all of that. And I did, I did a few different corporate accounting type of jobs. Got to travel the entire world, which was amazing. Doing internal audit for one of the large studios down in Los Angeles and then moving to Paris for a few years and being able to do international consulting.Simone:I've always focused on accounting, right? So internal control development, processes, you know, process improvement. But it was nice because at that point, at the very end of my corporate tenure, I guess we could say it was an opportunity to really see how I could truly be an advisor and truly implement things instead of just telling people, Hey, you know what, you've got all of these control problems and see you later. Here's your audit report. And so that was a really nice kind of end towards my corporate tenure. And yeah, I think you probably hear it often that some people just get burned out and doing international consulting. That's how I felt like it was, you know, and it's funny saying it cuz it was such a dream when it was there, but then at the very end, it was like two weeks in Paris, two weeks somewhere else in the world.Simone:And you're battling jet lag. You're, you know, I'm in my mid twenties at this point, almost like late twenties I guess. And you're kinda like, well, hold on, I wanna hang out with people. I wanna have friends. Like, this is so fun. But at the same time, I feel like there's something more. And, you know, I decided to quit my job and I lost my visa living in Europe. I lost my visa and I went back to the US and started freelancing from one of my, you know, previous jobs. So it was a really great freelance gig and that started to get me into freelance and understanding, well, okay, this is really cool. Like, I have to do my deliverables and I can kind of just maybe build something on my own.Simone:And that's when I think the entrepreneurial bug started where I was like, Hmm, you know, I think that there's something more, but I didn't know what that more is. And in the end, I think I'm just getting there, right? And so that's like, oh, this is a while. So I guess to any listener who's feeling that it's okay to feel like you might not really know exactly what you want, but that there is something more. And freelancing, it was just a great opportunity. I can make great better money than I was making in my corporate gig. And I had just moved to LA and so I got a subscription to magazines. I don't know if if if people still get that, but when you move into a new place, you can get all these, these magazines. And I got this one.Simone:There was on the front cover, women in the marijuana industry. And I was like, what? Now I'd been in Europe, I'd been in finance I hadn't thought about, and it was marijuana then I call it cannabis now. It's, you know, the real term that you wanna use. I hadn't thought about weed, cannabis, marijuana since I was in high school. And I was like, Hmm, this is interesting. And I started really diving in into what is this industry? And at that time it's 2015. And so if we just roll back, there's not even two states that have legalized adult use and some obviously have, have legalized medical use. But, so it's all brand new. I'm in California, which is the Wild West, which is the biggest market in the entire world. And I just started doing this research about like, what is, I'm an auditor.Simone:I was like, okay, let me understand the ecosystem just like I would a business. I was like, okay, let me understand the players, what is happening? Like what is the supply chain and all of that. And I just thought to myself, okay, I think this is the industry that I wanna be in. And before I even got on my own, I thought, okay, but how do you really learn it? You learn it through the numbers. Just like I learned every other business, right? Like, you can understand numbers, you can understand how everything works. So I approached a CPA firm that was very cannabis, like, it was very clear they were working in the cannabis industry, which is not, you know, was not at that time something that you would promote. And I said, Hey, I can help you. I can help you with your sales, I can help you, you know, build, you know, a better process. And I had a year, a little bit less than a year working with them until I felt really confident that I could just go out on my own and start kind of building my own business and start kind of working on different projects in the cannabis space. So that's how I got in.Adam:Wow, that's amazing. So when you got in, it was still largely a cash industry, right? So I can only imagine how crazy that was because everything is digital currencies and all that stuff and the world of business today, even in 2015, it still was. And now, and in that time, how did you manage that?Simone:Well, so the interesting thing is, so there's twofold. There's, I got 80% of businesses still lack banking today in 2022. So you really have to have a good set of internal controls. And working with those businesses even in 2015, you know, you could just spoil it back to the basics. But what's fascinating is that they're, you know, there's almost something that you could call legacy industry, meaning operators that had been in the business before it was quote, unquote "legal" in that state. Right. So had probably got involved in, you know, if you think about California, there was an ability to truly build a business, even though it was a cooperative model starting in 1996 when there was the fi...

Connect with David: https://www.davidredwards.com/contact-usCheck out David's book: https://www.davidredwards.com/about-newyouwhoknewFull Episode Transcript:Adam:Welcome back to Count Me In the podcast that explores business and leadership topics from the management accountants perspective. I'm Adam Larson. I'm joined today by David Edwards to discuss how organizations and leaders can overlook the human when dealing with human capital. In other words, businesses can often see their people as assets before they see them as, well, people. David explains how this mindset often backfires on organizations and why focusing on values that motivate human beings provides a more balanced and effective approach to collaboration and productivity. And just a reminder, David,has a new book out entitled "New You! Who Knew: Surprising foundations to get more done, feel more connected, and stay balanced in a rapidly changing world." There's a link in the show notes, so make sure to check it out. Let's start the conversation.Adam:So David, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We're really excited to have you on. And today we're gonna be talking about people and the value they bring to organizations. And traditionally, as we all know people have always been looked on as assets. And through your book and through conversations that you and I have been having, you don't agree with that. So let's start there. Why don't you comment on that?David:Yeah. So if we go back into history, right, we haven't actually literally had people on our balance sheet for since 1860 roughly. But we treat people still very much like their assets. And you might recall, I mean, we go back into, just in my career for example, Jack Welch he made famous this kind of policy where they took the bottom 5% of their performers and then summarily fired them. And you know, and you don't wanna be in the 5% obvious, the bottom 5%, you don't want to be anyway. But you know, if we look at math, there's always gonna be a bottom 5%. You know, by default there's gonna be the top 5% and the bottom. And so, you know, this is a way of looking at human beings that says you're an asset. We look at how corporations over the years have, you know, you just move people around or we used the word drive.David:To me, this is non-human. So for example, I was looking at a job description the other day, and it, and it said, you know, drive, I think three times, we are gonna drive innovation. You're gonna drive change, you're gonna drive performance. So since a corporation is little more than a collection of human beings who have come together to accomplish some common purpose, right? So as a group of human beings moving towards some goal, trying to accomplish some purpose, if we think about working with human beings or as human beings working together, let's think about you, Adam. Are you married?Adam:Yes.David:If you go to your wife and say, Sweetheart I hurt my knee and I need you to drive me to Home Depot so I can get a new ladder. And if you drive me there and get me there, hmm, let me see in the next 15 minutes, you're a good wife, I want you to drive me there. So how is she gonna respond to that?Adam:Not very well.David:Not very well because you're treating her as if she was the car, right? You can treat your car that way and if your car doesn't get you there in 15 minutes, you can say bad car, you suck. And might have some other more colorful language, but you would never do that to a human being, at least I hope not, right? Because we're not machines, we're not assets. We are in fact human beings. And if we want to be successful in business or in life or in any relationship, right? We would want to say, Well, what are the principles not of a machine, or not really even business principles, right? You can't ignore business principles, but how do we want to engage with fellow human beings? And that should by definition make us more successful.Adam:So if we wanna be more successful, you mentioned something about principles, maybe we can dig into that. What are some of these principles that we should be implementing till we can be better human beings.David:So I think one of them that works very nicely as a human being as well as in business, and I'll kind of go on the business side at first. How many businesses do you know, have a statement that says, these are our values.Adam:A lot of them do.David:Right! Maybe even a majority of businesses have gone to that effort, right? So let me ask you, in your experience or talking to people or just in your life and career, how many of those businesses, I'm getting a little distracted here, but how many of them have a statement? But you know, that company well enough to know that they're not really living those values?Adam:You know, I can't say that I've taken the time to look at value statements to to, to pay attention well enough to know whether they are or not.David:Yeah. Or maybe another way to look at it is, is you've ever gone into a business and been a customer of a business. And if you ever have anybody, you know, listening or watching has had this experience where they go, you know, I don't know what their values are, but they're not, at least not today. Yeah. I mean we've all done that, right? We've all had that experience.Adam:We've all seen that, of course.David:So values as a company, I believe are extremely important because they set boundaries, right? Businesses by definition have some goal that they're trying to accomplish. And inevitably they wanna make a profit, right? This is kind of, it's part and parcel of every business. And so what values do is they set some boundary within which that company has said, we're gonna set some boundaries or limits around how we pursue these goals, right? Our business goals. And that's good, right? Because you really don't want to be operating and like anarchy basically, right? Anything goes, you know, whatever it takes. I mean, we've seen that it's happened in business probably not infrequently. People like Enron and you know, some of these kinds of, you know, famous examples, but where they go, hey, there's no boundaries. We don't have any values. We're just gonna go make a dollar.David:And you know, that's all that matters. However we do it, you know, that's, we don't care, right? The means justify the ends, that kind of a thing. So values are important in that regard. And it also is one way that we start to engender trust, right? If we have values and we're actually living those values, there's greater trust in between individuals and trust, right? As I think Steven Covey's son wrote the book, "The Speed of Trust", right? And if we don't have trust, you know, we pay a tax. None of us likes taxes, right? So I mean, we pay a tax for that. The same with human beings. And that's why I think values in a business as a collection of human beings makes perfect sense because values as human beings make perfect sense. And so we think of them as a constraint sometimes or as barriers, but it's much like the freeway.David:We've decided a long time ago that if I'm gonna be going 70 this way and you're gonna be going 70 in the opposite way, that having a big concrete barrier in between those lanes is a really good idea, right? Because it makes us safer, because it makes us more confident,...

Connect with Aparna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aparna-iyer-7a6a135/Full Episode Transcript:Neha:Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast for management accountants making an impact in the business world. I'm Neha Lagoo Ratnakar from IMA. Today I'm speaking with Aparna Iyer, the treasurer and head of investor relations at vPro. Aparna's career. Got off to quite a promising start when she earned a gold medal for the highest score on the exams by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. She's gone on to hold many roles across the accounting and finance function at vPro, and along the way, she has constantly pushed herself out of a comfort zone to keep learning new skills and developing her empowering approach to leadership. We cover a lot of ground in this fascinating conversation from robotic process automation to the benefits of ambition to how we might be working in the Metaverse sooner than you think. Let's get started.Neha:Welcome to Count Me in, Aparna. It's such a pleasure to finally meet you for this conversation.Aparna:Thank you, Neha. It's an absolute pleasure, and I'm looking forward to this conversation, actually.Neha:Awesome. So let's start with an obvious question that's been on my mind ever since I'm knew about you. You joined vPro more than 19 years ago, and our generation is infamous for job hopping, right? Tell us more about your long and successful journey at vPro.Aparna:You know Neha, I'll just tell you briefly about myself. You know my father worked in a nationalized banking in India, and I in, you know, all the way up to 23 years when I joined vPro. I have not stayed in a city more than two years because we've been always hopping schools, colleges, you know, so for me, also, I'm quite taken by surprise that I actually managed to spend 20 years you know, in one place. And I think the credit actually needs to go to the organization. Because, you know, when I joined vPro, I was very impressionable, you know, rearing to go. I think what vPro really does well is, you know, it paces your career for you, right? I don't spend more than about three years in a role give or take. And every three years there is always something that's in the works for, you know, what next, how can things get better, bigger?Aparna:So in some sense, I've been truly you know, privileged and lucky that you know, I got an opportunity to work through multiple roles, multiple leaders, and the sector itself has evolved so much through these last you know, 20 years. So much more complexity. So much more M & A. You know, we've had you know in the last 10 years, you know, we've had so many new leaders join in. So the organization itself keeps changing. There's so much to learn and there's, it's such a growing sector that I, you know, I didn't even realize that I had spent 20 years. The other thing that we project does well, and, and is perhaps one of the bigger reasons for me staying back is in vPro finance, we really build you know, we hire people from campuses and then we build careers for them.Aparna:So all my peers are pretty much tenured in vPro, and we have like a shared history. So the camaraderie, the collaboration is just you know, off a very different level, which all of us thoroughly enjoy. So I would say that you know, other than what the organization puts in, it's what my peers put in both in terms of the kind of benchmark they set, how you know, enriching it is to work with them, how it is to learn from them and, you know, really contribute in the process, right? Like, work becomes fun when, you know, it's just extended family. So I would say these are, you know, two reasons why you know, it just work. And like they say, why fix something that's not broken?Neha:Wow. And that's been quite a journey. Thanks for sharing it with us, and I hope other companies are taking note of these excellent practices.Aparna:Yeah. Yeah.Neha:So what has been your biggest challenge in your career so far?Aparna:Neha? You know, I think every time you take up a new role, you feel that, oh my God, this is just so much more challenging than you know, what I've ever done. But, you know, truly I was most apprehensive about was coming back to work after I had my daughter. And that I think would have been perhaps the most challenging phase of my career, because I was just coming back from a six month long break at where I was doing something completely different, right? And somehow when I joined back, and I never thought I would feel like that. I felt very low on confidence, and I wasn't sure whether this is what I wanted to do. Is this the purpose? You know, I felt so overwhelmed you know, taking care of a young baby and coming back to something very intensive at you know, in the vPro finance, it was perhaps one of the, you know, phases where I really needed help, right?Aparna:From all my mentors, from the organization, from my peers, from my reports. And thankfully, you know, that that phase, you know, lasted for about nine months to a year where you know, I was just wanted to find my confidence again. And, you know, once that happened, right? And time, with time every quarter, it kept getting better. You know, all us finance professionals live quarter, quarter, say quarter, like they say, right? Three or four quarters under the belt, I was feeling a lot more confident, again. So that I think was one of the most challenging phases because, you know, I needed to find that balance and make sure, you know, I was getting it right. So that was one point where I felt you know, I really needed the support of the ecosystem. The other part was when I, you know, took on something like treasury and IR, you know, invest relations, the current role that I did, that I'm doing I took this on three years back and you know, I'd not done treasury at all in the first, you know 18 years or first 17 years of my career, knew nothing about markets, hedging investments, and, you know, we all are exposed to it as finance professionals, but I've not done it, you know, with a KRI to exceed a certain benchmark.Aparna:Coming in and knowing when you know that you are the person who's perhaps knows the least about that subject in the team, and yet you are the leader, I think it poses very different challenges. So, pushing myself out of the comfort zone, being okay with the fact that, you know, for another six months, I'm going to be the person who's gonna be least informed in a room, and yet I had to lead it, yet I had to bring my perspective to it, yet I had to understand and learn and, and work with people. So I think that was also another challenging phase, right? But it's only a matter of time, you know? You just need to apply yourself. So that's the other myth I busted, right? So a lot of them say they don't wanna try different things because they're just so concerned that, you know, how will they add value?Aparna:What I really understood about adding value is you, your, your vantage point can be so different, and the value that you bring to the team or you bring to a function can be so different. It may not always come from the tried and tested path, You know the vantage point that you'll have is very different, and you bring way different perspectives, and you can always add value no matter what you do. Cause everything else is just adjacent. So, you know, those are very good learnings for me. And it was challenging and I was very unsure and anxious many times, but I think you had to give it some time and, you know, you lace it.

Connect with Ryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-goral/ https://www.gspiregroup.com/ Full Episode Transcript:Adam:Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast focused on management accountants driving business forward. I'm Adam Larson. Coming up I speak with Ryan Goral about unlocking the full potential of small businesses through mergers and acquisitions. Ryan is the founder of G-Spire Group, a consultancy focused on companies often overlooked and underserved when it comes to corporate development services. When it comes to M & A, big companies all get the headlines. The reason is pretty simple. A deal worth billions of dollars will always draw more attention than a deal that's only worth millions. This focus has contributed to the perception among many business owners that they're simply too small or inexperienced to participate in M & A. Ryan explains why M & A is a strategic option relevant to virtually every business and highlights the critical role management accountants play in corporate development success. Let's start the conversation.Adam:So Ryan, I just wanna thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We are gonna be talking about mergers and acquisitions today, and I was looking at the recent Bain and Company Global Report from 2021, and they were saying that the total transaction value for M & A was an unmatched $5.9 trillion in 2021. So it seems that M & A is on its way back. The last conversation I had about this was back in 2019 and it was much under that number. So maybe to start off you talk a lot about, in your business about the benefits of growing your business through mergers and acquisitions. So maybe you can start by covering what are the benefits?Ryan:Sure. Thanks for having me. Yeah, the, you know, companies can grow through acquisitions for a number of reasons and it's strategic, you know, really what is their strategic reason for growing through acquisitions? Yeah, trillions of dollars. I think the M & A market's been real, really red hot. You know, the market that I serve, I serve privately held companies that are on the, you know, 10 to 50 million in revenue range. So my transactions I'm typically working on is way, does not have a B or a T in the title. But I think that, you know, the last couple years we've seen a couple things that are driving M & A activity. One has been the historically low interest rates. So the cost of capital has been, you know, really, really attractive for a buyer to go out and secure debt and even equity for that matter to engage in transactions.Ryan:That would involve buying a company as part of their growth strategy. You know, and the various strategic reasons or I guess categories if you wanna call it that, that a company would really wanna look at as part of a growth plan that would involve M & A. You know, you see companies you know that I think talent is one, you know, that I've seen companies wanting additional talent and maybe the labor force right now, which it is, it's constrained. So a lot of these companies have all the work that they ever would want, but they'll have people in the labor to satisfy it. So, you know, growing through an acquisition to pick up key talent is kind of one strategic motivation. There's other kinda strategic reasons. One being size and scale from a cash flow perspective allows the company to, you know, invest more into other certain strategic initiatives.Ryan:So size also equates to sometimes more value. So if your company is trying to improve shareholder value, you know, size does impact that value. So you'll see kind of acquisitions as part of, I just want to get bigger and grow. I try in my practice, try to hone in the strategy a little bit more than just let's grow because you wanna make sure the acquisitions are aligned with that strategic importance. But the types of acquisitions typically see are you're buying a competitor. So that's kind of market share strategy. You see acquisitions that are maybe of a supplier, so you call that vertical. You're trying to, you know, own the supplier so you can enhance your own margins. You know, sometimes you'll see a geographic strategy where a company wants to grow into other geographic areas that are strategic for them. And making an acquisition in those kind of geographies is sometimes the right strategy.Ryan:And then, you know, really the last one that there's a number of reasons, but the other one that comes to mind is, you know, expanding your product and services to your customer base. So if you're, you know you've got one product, one service that you're offering, maybe your customer's constantly asking you for, Hey, do you do X, Y, Z? And you're like, no, we don't do that. Go talk to ABC company. Maybe it's a good strategy. Go buy ABC company so you can have another product service to offer your current customer base. So those are some of the strategic reasons that drive M & A. But I think the trend that you mentioned to start off here was you've got cheap capital and you know, as you get into bigger transactions, you see, you know, if a public company has, you know, a stock price that is historically, you know, very high, sometimes they're using that stock as currency, which is another driver of the activity.Ryan:So there's, there's a number of reasons, the amount of M & A activity that we've seen. And the last one that I've seen and more that's more in my market is you've got, you know, kind of an unprecedented amount of baby boomers retiring and their business is typically their biggest asset. So you're seeing kind of a transfer of wealth from one generation to the next that's occurring cuz there's a good amount of baby boomers that actually own privately held companies. So you're starting to see that activity happen and I think that's driving the market too.Adam:Yeah, so there's a lot of great benefits out there as you've just described. And so with somebody looking into, get into that, one term that I've heard is corporate development. So why would that, why would that matter? Maybe you can start by defining corporate development in terms of M & A and then why is that beneficial to develop to, to why does it matter as a small to medium size business in your getting into mergers and acquisitions?Ryan:Yeah, so corporate development is really more of a term that you'll see in larger companies. These are companies that have entire departments, corporate development departments, and they're these departments, sole responsibility is getting the company ready and then sourcing, closing and integrating acquisitions on behalf of the entire organization. So they are the M & A team of these larger companies. They're just called corporate development department. In my work I've seen, you know, that that service doesn't really exist for those smaller privately held businesses for a couple reasons. One, it's, you know, you can't, typically there's not enough resources to hire a full time corporate development executive, you know so, and then the other, the other reason why you don't see it much in the the smaller privately held company spaces, they're usually run by owner/operators. And these are folks that are really good at running their business.Ryan:They're really good at managing their employees and customers, and they tend not to have time or capacity to think about M & A and how other, you know, partnerships and alliances could be beneficial to them growing. So that's just a capacity challenge. And then there's a lot of these privately held businesse...

In this special edition of Count Me In, Kelly Richmond Pope returns to help commemorate Global Ethics Day 2022. We discuss her latest IMA report, Ethics in the 21st Century: Management Accounting Practices for Robust Compliance Programs as well as her forthcoming new book, Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry.  In addition to her role as IMA Research Fellow for Corporate Governance and Ethics, Kelly is professor of forensic accounting at DePaul University as well as the award-winning documentary film maker behind All the Queen’s Horses, an in-depth look at the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history.   Ethics in the 21st Century: Management Accounting Practices for Robust Compliance Programs Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry Connect with KellyFull Episode Transcript:Adam:Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast that takes you inside the impactful world of management accounting. This is Adam Larson, and today is a special edition of Count Me In to Celebrate Global Ethics Day 2022. And there's no better guess for such an occasion than Kelly Richmond Pope, IMA's Research Fellow for Corporate Governance and Ethics, professor of forensic accounting at DePaul University, award-winning filmmaker and the author of the forthcoming book, Fool Me Once: Scams Stories and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry. Kelly and Neha discuss her latest IMA report focus on how management accountants are modernized in compliance in the 21st century. Plus we get a preview of her new book and lots of other updates. It's always interesting when Kelly stops by. So let's start the conversation.Neha:Welcome back to Count Me in. Kelly, it's such a pleasure to have you again on the show.Kelly:Thanks for having me back.Neha:First of all, congratulations on your new report, Ethics in the 21st century that came out recently.Kelly:Thank you.Neha:Our listeners would love to know what the report is all about.Kelly:The report is an overview of how to not only update the compliance function within your organization, but utilizing managerial accountants in those updates. So that's really what the gist of the report is, and we focus on three recommendations on how to update that.Neha:Wow, that sounds like a very helpful report for management accountants and finance and accounting professionals around the world. So I've went through the report and saw that you call designing an Effective Compliance program, both an art and a science. Can you help our listeners understand what you mean by that?Kelly:Well, you know, it's one of those jargon terms you use a lot and it sounds good when you use it, but now you've asked me a question about it. So let me tell you what I mean by that. I think that the science part is the fact that a lot of programs or organizations are siloed into departments, and so that's the scientific understanding of how we believe organizations should work. So you have your legal department, you have your accounting department, You may have your internal audit department, you may have operations, and all of these departments are siloed. And so I think that that's the science of how we organize companies. But the art is how to utilize all of those different departments together and finding the strengths of each of those groups and bringing them together. So they're one cohesive machine that works together, is the art part of it. And that takes some skill because we don't think about an approach of everyone working together. We think about a very siloed approach of how we work, and I think that when we are trying to update our, our compliance programs, we really need to look at these various silo departments and pull from those so that we can have this one cohesive teamNeha:That is very insightful and it might be a jargon, but thanks for helping us understand it better. Now of course, most companies try to have some sort of compliance program in place, right? What do you think is the biggest inhibitor when it comes to the effectiveness of these compliance programs?Kelly:Well, I think there's two inhibitors. One is compliance. The word compliance triggers people to think, all I need to do is check the box and just get this done. And the second is, most people believe that they don't need it. They believe that they're ethical. They believe that they don't need this type of reinforcement. So you have these two forces that you're battling. And quite honestly, most organizations do have very boring compliance training. And some of it is routine, but there is room for it to be more engaging and more dynamic. So I think the fact that we have conditioned people to think about this as, Oh goodness, here comes compliance again. Just let me get this done. And so we have a level set, a level shift that we need to make within our employee base to even get them excited about what we have around compliance. So you're fighting an uphill battle from the beginning. And so how, what, what can we infuse into compliance to really change that to get more people on board, is the big question.Neha:That's so true. Every time I've had conversations in companies, people think compliance training is going to be a snooze fest. So thanks for bringing that up. And can you help us understand how can companies avoid that kind of mentality or perception about compliance training?Kelly:Well, I think when compliance, there are some routine things about compliance, and that is true, but I think where you have the opportunity to be creative, you should be. And so my passion area, my research area is around fraud and forensic accounting. And I think that there are areas within the compliance training realm that can lend itself to more creative and more engaging types of approaches. And we tend to not do those. If we do that more, I think that we can change the attitude around compliance and make people more excited about it.Neha:Absolutely. Love that, Kelly. Let me pivot from that and ask you another question about whistle blowing. Now, how can companies incentivize internal reporting? So employees feel empowered to speak up when they see any misconduct?Kelly:You know, whistle blowing is an interesting topic because again, you have this same uphill battle that you're fighting. And a couple years back, I did a TED Talk entitled how whistleblowers shape history. And one of my motivations around doing the talk, because the whole idea around TED is do you have an idea worth sharing? And so my motivation around doing the talk was because whistleblowers are so valuable to organizations and to society, but how can we encourage more people to come forward when it has such a negative stigma? So I think one of the things that we need to do within our organizations is first remove the stigma and almost celebrate it. And it's, it's hard because despite the benefits that whistle blowers offer us, we tend to not trust them when they ...