Stephen: This episode of Around The Coin is about the Secret Foundation Network. And we have one of the most amazing guests we've ever had. Lisa Loud is the executive director of the Secret Foundation Network, and she's just full of amazing stories. Early days at Apple and PayPal, almost getting kidnapped in other countries.

She talks so much about encryption of data, the importance of what they're working on, privacy, but more importantly of like the level of privacy that you're actually going to need. To put certain protocols, to put out certain applications. Some is going to need certain things, others aren't going to need that much.

And this is a perfect myth. This is one of the best conversations. And they may be coming out with some secret projects really, really soon. If you're a woman in the space, if you're in payments, she talks a lot about payments. And if you're in tech crypto, this is the best podcast you'll probably listen to.

We go deep. And after the conversation, she tells me that this is one of the few podcasts where she's talked about things that she's never talked about throughout her career. So this is going to be one that you want to listen to. Thank you so much for tuning into Around The Coin, and I'm your host, Stephen Sargeant.

Stephen: This is your host Stephen Sargeant, another Around The Coin podcast, but shh, this one's about the Secret Network Foundation. We have the exec director Lisa Loud. Tell us a little bit about yourself and then we're going to jump all in to what the secret is behind the Secret Network Foundation and some of the things that you've been working on in the past.

Lisa: Awesome. Well, I am the executive director of Secret Network Foundation. I actually joined Secret about a year and a half ago and came from kind of big tech and we'll get into that a little bit. But the reason I, Joined is really because blockchain needs adoption and adoption needs some sort of on chain data protection.

And I was aware of Secret Foundation for quite some time before I joined. And when this opportunity opened up, I was really, I was quite thrilled. I was like, this is for me. So that's how I got here today.

Stephen: What's your thought like, you know, usually when people get into the, you know, things like transparency, the privacy aspect, is that what attracted you to Secret Foundations? Like, oh, all this information is great. We love that it's transparent. But there's some people are like, still, we need to kind of like roll back the curtains just a little to make sure that maybe a list of actors or other people aren't viewing like business to business transactions.

What was kind of your thought process? Like what alluded you to? Secret Foundation in the first

Lisa: That's a great question. I'm definitely not a privacy maxi. I'm not one of those who's like, privacy, let's lock everything down. I'm really very pragmatic. I think of blockchain in, in pragmatic terms. I think of business in pragmatic terms. Like whenever we have a business conversation, I want to get to what is the revenue model?

Like, how is this sustainable? So what attracted me? Really, frankly, it's not the privacy aspect, it's the utility aspect. I just don't think blockchain is useful for real business without some element of on chain protection.

Stephen: And that, that was, you probably don't do well as a consultant then. Cause I feel like the blockchain consultants, that's what they try to do is like put in blockchain at any cost. Then you're like, no, let's just figure out if we actually need to use it for your use case.

Lisa: Exactly. Yep.

Stephen: Probably why you're not working at Deloitte or any of those other places.

You probably slow down some of their trajectories. But talk to me early days, you worked at Apple, Claris Homepage. I think for me, I'm an older millennial. The peak millennial before you get into that next, next kind of stage. I remember back in those days in Claris and, you know, Apple's first, like, handheld products.

What were you working on back then?

Lisa: Yeah, I joined Apple as a software developer, so I started out fixing bugs, and it was like figuring out the Apple technology, the OS was, was quite a challenge. But over, after about, I was there for about a year I kind of had it figured out, and I figured out, like, the game. The game was Fix the most bugs possible.

I'd go bug hunting in our bug database and just like, I can fix that one fast. I can do this one. And I'd fix like 20 bugs in a day, which really put me like, it was a game to me. So I became one of the most productive developers there. And that led to my be getting promoted to software development manager.

You know, I was pretty young. I was now a software development manager. I had my team and That went really well and so we, we acquired, started acquiring technology at Apple, acquiring other projects that we're building because Apple wasn't really into software at that time. It was like a tiny little part of the, of the whole big behemoth that's that's Apple.

And, and we were like, okay, we don't really have in house expertise to build. Let's buy, let's acquire other technology. So the problem was we'd acquire technology and then integrating that into the Apple system was, was fairly difficult and integrating the people that we acquired. There was a lot to do there.

So somehow or other, I became responsible for the integration of new technology into the Apple ecosystem. Family, I guess, making it compatible with everything else that we were building. So, you know, it was, it was a great start to my career because I got to, I got to manage people. I had some interesting mistakes along the way.

I was, I was really not prepared to be in that position, but I got there. And and, and then being able to, you know, one of the projects, here's a funny story. One of the projects we acquired was Clara's homepage that was written by a guy named Sam. And another guy named Steve. Sam and Steve, after we acquired Clara's homepage, they went on to build this documentation, multi person documentation software, and Google acquired it, and that became Google Docs.

So, I actually worked with the founders of Google Docs.

Stephen: That is super interesting. Is there any other stories? Do you remember like the vision back then? Like people think like Apple, Visionary, Steve Jobs, like all these things now back then, was it more like, Hey, we're just trying to like, Keep our head above water by as much, you know, technology and expertise as possible.

Or was it like, oh, I could see this growth happening. That's the kind of vision they had. Because I think people see that model and they're like, oh, that's how they always were. They had this vision and they kind of cast up. Or was it like, you've worked with probably startups and seen them. Was it kind of like a scrappy startup and they were kind of figuring out as they went along?

Lisa: the culture at Apple was really like the culture of any big company I've worked for, which is there's something going on at the top, then there's middle management, and then there's all of us like worker bees doing stuff. And there's, The top knows what they're doing. The bottom thinks they know what they're doing.

The middle managers make everything confusing. So, I will say that I had, I was in some meetings with Steve Jobs. I was a little shocked at how rude he was to the little people like me. And, but I mean, I was, I did work with him. He was sort of, I guess he was sort of separated from, we didn't really get a sense of what the vision was.

It wasn't like we were all one big happy, we're going to rule the world family. It was more like, we're trying to track, we're like, what is going on here? Okay. They're telling us to do this now, let's do this. And then the next day we're telling us, so yeah, I think there was a vision. I think it was very much one man's vision.

And then that translation. happened sometimes?

Stephen: As you're building now, and we're going to get in deep with the Secret Network Foundation, we'll That, you know, management style, that kind of visionary style. Do you see that like, Hey, at the time it was a necessary evil to get us to where we need to be now, which is one of the biggest corporations around the world.

Or do you think like, Hey, I understand. I want to take certain parts of that, but I think I can do that. Like kind of like Gary Vaynerchuk's model where I can build that same empire. I can build that same tower, but I could probably do it with kindness and get similar results. What are your thoughts? Or at the time, was it like, Hey, Need to get the job done, and that's just the way it is.

Kind of like Elon's, I feel, approach to business now.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, it's, that's an interesting question. I don't think my mom, my answer is going to be very popular, honestly, but the only way that big corporations can be successful is by making so much money that it does not matter how incompetent their workforce is, because once you get past a certain size, you just can't ensure that everybody's doing the right things the right way.

Even like 50 % of the time, you've got so much waste as soon as a corporation gets too big and I worked at PayPal many years as well. And I just noticed the ones that are successful, you just have to find a formula that lets you make so much money that nothing else matters.

Stephen: That's such an interesting point. I think anyone that has agreed, I've worked at banks, and it's like, yeah, like you see the waste, but you're like, hey, honestly, that waste is also part of my job and my payroll myself. But talk about that. You go from one winner to another. It seems like you're just, you know, hitting home runs early on in your career.

Lisa: I was just lucky.

Stephen: What were your thoughts? Talk to me about the luck, because you see a job like PayPal, but like, tell us how you got the job, because I find when people say, oh, I was lucky, it also came with like, hey, I saw something in a company that maybe nobody else saw. Right? Like, I saw something, like, people see the same things, but certain people take actions in different ways.

So, I think luck, you know, obviously with the preparation aspect. Talk us through how you got into PayPal, what drew you in there, and kind of did you see like, Oh, like payments is a huge issue, and this is one of those companies that's going to fix a lot of our, you know, inefficiencies on these rails.

Lisa: Yeah. I wasn't that it didn't have that much insight at the time. I was looking for a job. I had, I had two small children recently divorced and I was, I was like, okay, I got to get back to work. So I was looking for a job. I saw the, I knew PayPal, I used PayPal and I saw the contract opportunity come up.

It started as a contract opportunity. So I went for the interview, got the interview and got hired at the interview. And from there, like that, that just grew and grew. I started as a contractor to do this little project. Then turned out they needed someone to run their website, marketing website department.

I was first hired actually. This is interesting. When I joined PayPal, it was specifically to be the program manager to launch PayPal Canada. Because at that time there was no PayPal Canada, it was just PayPal US. And so they wanted to launch PayPal Canada. I was living in California, but I was Canadian.

And and I was like, okay, I'll, I'll, I'll take this on. So I became program manager at PayPal for PayPal Canada. I had to interface with like 15 different departments within PayPal. And. What I mean by being lucky is that that exposed me to a lot of different parts of PayPal. I was coordinating so many development teams, globalization teams, et cetera, to try to get this, this thing launched all together at the same time at a, on a deadline.

It was really quite tough to get all that to come together, but where I, where I think it does make sense. Yeah. I was lucky to get that role. I was lucky to have all these connections, but then where skill came in is my brain took all of that, that matrixed organization, that incredible Inefficiency and said, you know what, we could fix this.

We could fix this. And then I spent the next probably five years putting together a plan where instead of having all these requests come into the website department, which is like a tiny little apartment and try to prioritize internally with a small team, I was like, this doesn't make sense. We need to have.

A point system across the company. We need to have a pipeline prioritization. We need to have like VPs getting involved to decide is this more important or that more important. There's a legal issue, there's a a business issue. How do we, bro, how do we weigh those two? So I created an entire company-wide system for managing marketing.

Really, we created a new group called the CDL group, which was channel data, CDI, channel data integration group. And because I had been so instrumental in creating that by 2016, so it was a while I was put in charge of the merchant, one quadrant of that, which was merchant acquisition. So that's how I ended up being in charge of like merchant acquisition for North America in PayPal.

It was because It wasn't, that wasn't luck. That was, that was me working inside PayPal to fix things.

Stephen: Talk to me about that. You know, early times you're trying to acquire merchants. PayPal makes a lot of sense now. Just like, you know, Bitcoin ETFs made a lot of sense, but the Winklevoss twins also saw that a decade ago where it made sense. Right? So tell me about, you know, what were the challenges? Was there any issues or companies like, I'm not using this.

I can use a credit. Like where were the challenges with, you know, bringing PayPal basically to Canada?

Lisa: Okay. There's two answers to that question. The first is that the challenges at PayPal in general globally are that their risk model is incredibly good. And that's, that's great for the company. That's why they make money. That's where their core competency is. It also. makes it difficult for users. A lot of merchants run into problems.

A lot of consumers run into problems when PayPal freezes their account or decides they're not going to service this, this industry sector that you're in. So it kind of sucks. The user experience kind of sucks for a lot of people, but that is the, that is the winning formula for PayPal is that they manage their risk model so well, they don't lose money.

You know, like one, One fraudulent transaction costs as many as You hundred or maybe a thousand good transactions. You know, it wipes out the profit from all of those. So if you have a good risk model, you're not going to lose as much. That is why PayPal is successful. But that's also the problem when you're trying to do marketing, because there's all these anecdotes out there of, you know, PayPal froze my funds.

And there's nothing you can do about that. In terms of. Launching into Canada, it was cool. It was challenging because the laws are different between the U S and Canada. So we couldn't do a full launch of the same products. We had to pick and choose the products that we could do. And PayPal pro for example, was one that we could do, but PayPal has, I don't know if people know this, but PayPal has probably 30 to a hundred products internally, depending on how you cut them, huge number of products.

Stephen: a crazy number. I just use it to send funds to people overseas when it gets a little too difficult or to do a reoccurring with my online fitness coach. That is a lot of products.

Lisa: There's credit, there's bill me later, there's they lend money out against, they do factoring loans, they have different business products, they have integrations, like it's, it's incredibly complex number of products inside PayPal. And so, getting all those, deciding what of that could be launched to Canada was a challenging, a challenging task.

And then making sure that everything we did was legal, making sure that everything we did was globalized. I was helpful there because, I was helpful for a little while there because I could tell them, Yeah, Canadians don't spell check with a C K. We don't do that. It's Q U E.

Stephen: That's super interesting. And the reason why I like wanted to double down on that is because we have a huge payment tech audience as well. So I think they'll enjoy these early PayPal stories as much as I do. But then, you know, when did you step into crypto? Because then you go into like BitMEX for a year doing marketing and then like probably one of my favorite companies, ShapeShift.

When did you like get, cause you said around 2016, you're still with PayPal. You're probably early. You're still, you're, you know, still a technical person. So then, you know, Bitcoin makes sense to you. You're in the payments, you've been in the space with Apple and, you know, some of the things that they're creating, the Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, all that makes sense to you by the time you stepped into BitMEX.

Lisa: I mean, I, I had temporary insanity, so that's how that happened. As I was working at PayPal, I was really happy. Like, I had accomplished this huge internal reorg with PayPal over many years. And frankly, I got a little, a little bored. Like, I was like, okay, what now? I like innovating. I like new stuff.

And so, I said, okay, there, here's crypto. Let's get PayPal to adopt crypto. Right? Sounds like a good idea. I was not the only one. And we tried to get that idea across and it was dead in the water. There was no movement at all on that idea. So I'm like, okay, I can continue. And I actually am writing a book about shatterproof glass.

Because at PayPal, the glass was shatterproof, right? So, you can't break that stuff. There's no way. There was a glass ceiling it's finance, it's tech, there's, you know, I'm not, I'm not your typical white male, and I tried really hard to get past that ceiling and I realized at some point, this is not going to happen.

So, I was frustrated. I was like What am I going to do? I can't just keep on doing the same thing. It's, it's easy. It's cushy. I've catered, catered meals five days a week. It's nice.

Stephen: You're like, "Ruined life or Lifestyle and progression." You're like, the lunch is free, though.

Lisa: Lunch is free. It's pretty nice. So, and we were actually, we were on the sixth floor in New York and Venmo was on the fifth floor. So Venmo had better catered lunch than we did, but we weren't allowed to go down to Venmo catered lunch until 1:30 because..

Stephen: All the good stuff is done by then, right? Like, Edmo knows that, so they're there at like 11:55.

Lisa: Exactly. Yeah,

Stephen: They packed up a plate.

Lisa: But I'll tell you, those guys would come up and eat our Friday, our Thursday happy hour sushi right on time. So what's up with that? Anyway, besides the internal Venmo PayPal wars, there was some, there was some frustration for me realizing I had kind of maxed out at PayPal. And so I was trying to, you know, I was into crypto at that time, just barely.

I have some funny stories about how I got into crypto, but I eventually was like in the BitMEX troll box all the time, just like talking to the guys. And it turned out that a lot of the employees were in there as well, which I didn't know. And at some point That conversation was, you know, they got to know that I was at PayPal and they recruited me.

They're like, Hey, we really need someone who knows how the tech world works, who knows how big business works. You should really come over. And that's when the temporary insanity hit. So I left my cushy, lunch catered job at PayPal to join BitMEX, which was Step On The Wild Side, Trip On The

Stephen: I love it. I want to, you know, Unlayer some of this. Why marketing? Because you went in there in the kind of the marketing function, I do believe. Why was it? Cause like you just have a great sense of how the business works, internal functions, and you know how to present that because, you know, merchant acquisition and promoting a product to consumers is somewhat similar, you know, it's a similar approach, maybe different strategies.

What are your thoughts on, you know, joining the market? Or you were like, hey, I'll take any position. I'm insane right now. I'll take anything to get into a crypto exchange.

Lisa: think you have to ask Arthur why he, why he gave me that job. Because you know, we met and I was like, these are all the things I can do. And he's like, yeah, I just want you to do marketing. I was like, okay. Okay. All right. And I mean, I don't know what his, what his thought process was at that point, but I will say that I was one of two women in the company and there were 55 employees at that point.

So, marketing, I guess, seemed like a natural fit. And I'm definitely a techie.

Stephen: I was going to ask you, how did you do in marketing? But I think you answered that question. It's like, yeah, it's alright. But that's not where my heart goes. What are your thoughts now, looking back at PayPal, and the like, the strict no crypto, to now launching their own stable coin? Where you're like, oh, I don't know.

This makes sense. Should they leave this to the tethers and circles of the world and kind of like focus in on what they do best and maybe integrate with those other stablecoin providers versus, you know, taking the time, resources, the investment of launching their own? What are your thoughts on that now

Lisa: you mean um,

Stephen: Banging down that door 8 years ago.

Lisa: Yeah, that's a great question. No, I think PayPal getting into crypto was a huge positive sign. I was really excited. I mean the first foray they had was into Libra, right? And then the next one was the stablecoin. And Anything PayPal does to step into the, okay, you have to realize what my perspective is.

So now I've been in crypto for the last seven years and I'm fully, I'm fully drinking the Kool Aid, right? I think this is the future. So, so PayPal getting into it is a really positive sign for people who are thinking, well, Isn't crypto, isn't Bitcoin just for criminals, still? Like, isn't it dead? I've had those questions.

Isn't, isn't that still around? You know, I thought it was just for criminals. I thought everyone went to jail. So PayPal doing that, getting into stablecoin is, is a really positive sign for our industry. And same with Visa, Visa announcing that Stablecoin bank thing. Definitely a positive sign for our industry.

I still, to answer your actual question, I still think that PayPal should be doing that. PayPal's DNA is innovation in finance. It was born to disrupt the payment sector and it, it very successfully did that very early on. So now it's time to disrupt more, right? It's time, it's time to, to continue adding to the disruption, adding to the innovation.

And the only way to do that is to break through barriers through the, through decentralized technology.

Stephen: You mean It. We're gonna briefly touch on Shapeshift. So you go into Shapeshift as a COO. Which is interesting because you know, Shapeshift was very firm about collecting KYC. So you leave a company that probably should have been collecting KYC, didn't do a great job of it, now a company that's like adamantly like, we are not collecting KYC.

What was your thought process? Did that, like, did the regulatory, you know, you're dealing with a lot of illegal situations and coming to Canada and bringing PayPal, did some of your like legal antenna come up and say, Hey, like eventually we're going to have to, you know, we're going to hit this wall or were you like, Hey, I think if we stay enough on the outside, we should, you know, bring on the scrutiny of regulators.

Lisa: You mean at BitMEX?

Stephen: At ShapeShift. Cause ShapeShift was always about like, Hey, no KYC. That's not what we do. And I you know, now they're fully decentralized, I believe. I haven't kept up with their story, but they pretty much said like, Hey, we're not doing this anymore. spent the millions of dollars to try and comply with regulators.

And now we're just going to go the DAO route.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, ShapeShift is a sad story for me because unlike BitMEX, which went the other way, like you said, they before I joined ShapeShift, they implemented KYC, it basically killed all of their revenue. They lost all their customers. They lost 95%, 95 % of their customers and most of their volume.

So they were Eric pretty much charmed me into, I met him at LaBitConf in Uruguay and you know, he pretty much charmed me into taking that role on and it was pretty hard. That was a very difficult role because I came in when things were already like the, the team was very, Alive and active and engaged, but the, there was no customer engagement.

There was no revenue. There was no product that really people were using. And I was trying to, I was brought in to turn that around and we started making really good progress on it. And then the pandemic hit and that it just wasn't good timing for, for a company that's trying to turn itself around. We had some investors that we were talking to and kind of just all dried up because of, because of the pandemic and not knowing.

What's going on and what the future holds. So instead they decided to go to DeFi and that didn't really help. And then they decided to become fully decentralized. So, I think it's a sad story because they tried to do what was right. And the company died a slow death because of that, whereas BitMEX did not try to do, Arthur was not interested in doing, in following the letter of the law at that time he was interested in like breaking things.

Which is great, except you broke them too much and paid the price, but BitMEX lasted a lot longer. BitMEX made a lot more money than Shapeshift. And that, if you look at those two cautionary tales, which one would you say is the, is the better path, right? A slow death or make billions of dollars and then have to spend a year on house arrest?

Stephen: \Right. And I think the struggle with ShapeShift is that they, they didn't want to, and they still, it's almost like they sold out and then like the whole reason why they were choosing not to sold out. You know, like it played out like we didn't want to do this. We did it anyway, and then we lost all of our, it was like, well, that's why you didn't want to do it.

And you were kind of that last voice of not doing it the way that, you know, US regulators and now we see more regulators around the world. That's a tough one when you're kind of like going against your will.

Well,

I've realized,

Lisa: I'm very

Stephen: in crypto is A, nobody wants to go first, right? Like Binance is not going to be the first one to implement the most rigorous compliance for nobody wants to go first because they'd rather get the market share.

And then they're like, Hey, like Binance is probably doing about 4 billion. I don't know their numbers, but they're probably doing billions a week. That 4 billion doesn't really hit them as hard and you can always buy compliance afterwards. I think that's the problem with the industry is nobody wants to go first.

But then you have companies like Coinbase is like, Hey, we will go first. We'll make sure that we're following the letter of the law. And then when something like the Bitcoin ETFs and they're dealing with 90 % of the custodians, it's like, Oh, like, you know, when the institutional adoption came in, they're the first place that people go to because compliance is the number one thing coming out a lot of those institutions.

I want to get, first of all, I want to congratulate you on being named top 100 people in crypto, and I love it because it's not top 100 or top 30 women in crypto. It's just like, you're the top 100 in crypto for 2023. Talk to me about that. You know, at this point you've, you know, you've had a lot of accolades in your career.

Is this like a cherry on top? Are you like, ah, another award? Because there's some legit names. This is not something that you kind of like, you know, submit or spend a lot of money on to get your name on the list. Like when Bitcoin is number one, Vitalik's up there. You have some great people like Caitlin Long there.

This is a legit list of, you know, not influencers, just people that are influential in this space. Tell me about that. What was the feeling like.

Lisa: Yeah, I had no idea. That was a big surprise. And I'll tell you when that happened, I was like, I'm done. Like, I have reached it. Where do I go from here? I was just so thrilled. And I really appreciate. CoinTelegraph for like picking me out and, and and selecting me for, for that honor, because you know, I'm just doing my thing, right?

I'm just, I'm just working in the background, trying to make things better working at all these different companies, but really I, I'm always trying to bring together the, the world of compliance and the world of crypto into a nice, happy medium where we can all. Be successful, add value to the world.

And it's hard, it's hard work. And there are definitely ups and downs and good days and bad days. And then that was like a really good day. When I, when that happened, I was, I was just like, I, I don't know where I go from here. This is, this is just, I've reached my, my ambition here. It really was a wonderful surprise.

Stephen: Was this list anywhere on your mind as you're like going through your career? Like, there's obviously lists that you're like, Hey, I would love to be on this list. Is this like, was this on your mind of like, Hey, maybe one day I could be on this list? Or is this completely like, Oh, like, I know there's a list.

Never thought I would be on this. Never really paid

Lisa: Exactly the latter. I, I never, I knew there was a list. I just never thought, well, I did think I would be on it. I, I was like, in three or four years, I'm going to be on that, you know, I'll be there. But yeah, last year I was, I was not expecting it last year. So it was

Stephen: Is it extra special? Because you're being support, I'm reading it now, supporting DeFi out loud in 2023 when, you know, within the last 18 months of that award, you know, everyone's kind of doing the mood walk when it comes to NFTs and Metaverse and Bitcoin and now they're on to Airbnb flipping, like, they've kind of moved away from crypto and now they're on to the next, maybe, AI.

Does it feel extra good that you kind of stayed in the trenches? You, you know, you put your flag in the ground like, Hey, DeFi is here and I'm going to preach it from the rooftops. Does that make you feel better when they're recognizing you for doing something that a lot of people ran away from?

Lisa: I'm frankly, I'm always in the trenches, so no, I don't think about it that way. I think DeFi has, and when you say it that way, I think of that, I'm like, Oh yeah, that's true. But that would never occur to me because what I love about DeFi is that it, it's it's very disruptive to the financial industry in a way that's effective.

I got into DeFi very early on, as soon as Uniswap v2 came out actually, and was incredibly successful trading on my own in liquidity pools. Like in the early days, there was a lot, a lot of money to be made because people didn't understand it. It was really hard to track and I figured it out and I'm like, okay, I can do this.

But I started a company. The problem was there were no good tools for DeFi. And so I started a company, Fluidify, that built tools to do to do DeFi trading. It was basically designed as a portfolio manager and a trading algorithm for DeFi, for liquidity pools. It's morphed since then. Now we're, we're doing a contract for the RCMP so I don't know how private that is, so I won't talk about it too much. But we're, we're more morphed into the compliance enforcement and accounting, auditing, that kind of, that area, because no one else has, Fluidify has the most accurate and verifiable data, on chain data in the whole industry. And this industry is full of people who are using other people's data.

Everyone takes someone else's. If there's a mistake somewhere in there, that mistake is propagated through the whole industry. It's a lot of reusing, reusing. So we have the only unique, verifiable source of data that we don't take from anybody. And that, Like Google, Google is pretty excited about it. RCMP is excited.

Ernst Young is excited about it. So, you know, that's my other, it's my alter ego. I started this company and I'm not running it anymore, but I'm still helping to move the wheel forward. And so that's why DeFi Outloud is, is, is me, right? Because I built this thing that cuts under all of the noise and inaccuracies in the industry and provides this unique.

Verifiable, accurate source of data to anybody who wants it. And it turns out there's a lot of people who want it. They just didn't know they wanted it. So, that's why I say I'm always in the trenches. I, I didn't leave

Stephen: compliance is my love language. So my ears perked up as soon as you mentioned compliance and, you know, blockchain investigations. We're very friendly with our clients here at Chainalysis and they have very accurate data. So it'd be interesting to see, and you know, you see a lot of new companies obviously pop up and it's like, Hey, like Chainalysis 9 billion dollars.

All we have to do is follow a couple of transactions on the blockchain. But to your point, a lot of these smaller companies are. You know, purchasing data from places that aren't that accurate. It's funny, we just had someone that we recorded podcast yesterday and they were talking about data that Dubai was using to judge, like water consumption.

And he was like, Hey, this, I live in that area, that's not accurate information. And by the time they traced it back through the consultancies and agencies they were using, it was like some Upwork person in Bangladesh that was, you know, probably just giving them whatever information. And to your point, nobody's really checking the data, they're just passing it along to the next person that's going to pay them for it, and it creates really big problems, and that person's obviously working on, you know, Deepin and, you know, decentralized data infrastructure, but to your point, that's probably similar to what you saw at Fluidify.

Lisa: We love Chainalysis. I mean, I love Chainalysis. It's amazing. It's an amazing tool. And we, we are talking, it's still early talks about providing them with another verifier, because some of the metrics that we calculate are totally different from what else you can get in the industry. So we've been talking about providing them with some of that.

So that I would love to move that conversation forward.

Stephen: Yeah, Hobies at Chainalysis. You guys love me too. Let's go. Let's make this happen. We need You guys already Two places that have the most accurate data should like have babies. They should be coming together and making the little accurate data babies for the industry.

Lisa: Yeah, exactly.

Stephen: All right, finally, we get to Secret Network Foundation.

And I think anyone listening in the episodes, they know I love the first half of the conversation. I just love talking about the background. I think you've shared some such interesting stories. And I think that's needed when people are like struggling to find their way into the crypto and deep. They don't know their place.

And when you start listening to other people's stories, they're like, Oh, like I had a similar, you know, upbringing. It was just like one different step she took that I didn't take. And hey, now I know the blueprint. One way to get in the industry. Cause I think. You know, a lot of people get wrapped up with crypto and DeFi, but there's so many different ways to get into this industry.

And to your point, it morphs, right? You start out with like, Hey, can I provide information to investors that are investing in DeFi? And it morphs into something completely different. But tell us, you know, I'm a five year old, explain what the Secret Network Foundation, you know, to me and why it's important to anyone listening.

Like a lot of people, we have bring a lot of builders on the podcast. And a lot of their stuff sounds interesting, but why isn't it important to the listener of like, or what should they be listening out for?

Lisa: Yeah, great question. So explaining SecretNetwork to a five year old is like saying what I would say is that in the regular Web2 world, so in your regular internet world, you have, you know, you've got certain protections. You, you don't tell everyone your bank account number. You don't tell everyone your your bank balance.

You don't show them where you're going to get your coffee. All of these things are like, you have a certain amount of privacy as you walk around the world. You go in your house, you close the door, you know, you, you, at night you probably have blinds on the windows because you're not broadcasting every single thing you're doing, but you get into.

Blockchain and Web3. And suddenly, if you do everything on chain, if you do a lot of stuff on chain, like let's say you take an Uber, but you use the blockchain to order your Uber, or you go, you order food online and have it delivered to your house, well, okay, your address is in there. Now, imagine if you moved your entire life, Everything that you do to a blockchain infrastructure, now you've got, it's very easy for someone to spy on you and figure out your movements how much money you have, like when you're going to do this, they can map out your daily schedule, they can map out your net worth, they can map out your interests, like this gets a little scary, right?

Stephen: And you can't change it, you can't go, like you can go back and delete the images that you posted on Instagram of you being in a certain place at a certain time. You can't go back and delete all that information. So if somebody wants it, they have the benefit of time too, where they can just sit there and go back through all your transactions and put the pieces together and there's nothing you can do about it.

Lisa: It's true. It's immutable. It's on the blockchain forever. So, most people would kind of look at that and say, that's not ideal. So, when we talk about Secret Network, what, What Secret Network provides is the ability for builders to now hide portions of data. Not necessarily the transactions, but the data.

So let's say I ordered an Uber using blockchain. If everything goes on chain, then where I'm starting from is on chain, where I'm leaving is on chain, the rest of my wallet contents are on chain, right? So all of that information is there. Someone could be like, oh, this person has 10, 000 in their crypto wallet.

They just paid for an Uber on and they just got dropped off at this concert hall. And you know, and here's their picture online. I'm just going to go look for them and casually, you know, kidnap them or whatever. That's, and by the way, I have been, I have had an attempted kidnapping happen. So it happens.

It really does.

Stephen: Can you go into that or do you not want, it's okay if you don't

Lisa: No, I'm happy to give a cautionary tale there. Don't want want anyone

Stephen: else getting caught.

Yeah, I would love to, like, whenever, you know, you hear it happen, especially at conferences, and some people think it's just sim swapping, but there's real attempts on people's life. I'd love to hear the story if you don't mind lightly

Lisa: so yeah, but just to finish on that, if you have that, the address encrypted, it's on chain, but it's encrypted. If you have the, the rest of your wallet or your wallet address, it's encrypted. If you have your identity encrypted, all of that now is not a On chain, no one can tell how much you paid, how much you have in your wallet, where you are, all that stuff is hidden.

So that's basic principle is we keep data protected. It's, it's basic GDPR if you want, it's even more basic than that. It's just we don't have to put anything publicly on chain in Web3. So it's a huge step forward. And then if you think about that, That's a personal level, right?

But let's talk about businesses. Businesses don't want their, their IP on chain. They don't want their trading strategies on chain. They don't want their treasury balances. There's so many things. Businesses are not willing to have public data on chain. And with Secret Network, now it's protected. You can put it on chain.

Some people take it off chain, but then you have all the weaknesses of centralized data repositories. So it's just better to have things encrypted.

Stephen: And it makes a lot of sense right? We see the crypto Twitter, you know, the investigators on crypto Twitter, you know, this exchange sent funds to this exchange, and now they're drawing their own conclusions. And hey, Twitter pretty much took down FTX. And we saw around that time, hey, this Exchange also send funds and there was a lot of rumors going around about crypto.

com and paying off. So there's a lot of collateral damage, even if the person doing the investigation gets it wrong. So it's like, if you're trying to do a business deal and obviously you have to send the funds before you can publish the deal that was made. And you know, you have people that are literally watching the blockchain and they get the information wrong.

It's like either you have to come out with a story that is accurate, which you might not want to do because, you know, you haven't completed the specific transaction you're trying to do, or you have to say nothing at all and let CryptoTwitter get a hold of it and draw their own conclusions, which could impact your reputation.

If they're saying you're about to go out of business just like FTX, I think Crypto. com got into some hot water during that time, whether or not what they were doing was legitimate or not. They got into hot water because now people are coming up with their own, as you said, they're coming up with their own narrative, which is equally as scary as just seeing the transaction.

Lisa: That's a good point. Yeah. So, what happened to me was I had someone reach out on LinkedIn and about like wanting to do investment and wanted to meet in Milan. I was happened to be going to Milan anyway for something. So I was like, yeah, sure. It was very elaborate. Like there was this shell company that they, that they resurrected.

It was a real Swiss company, real investment company. And they had about 15 people involved on LinkedIn and off LinkedIn. And I was always talking to someone different and they were like, Oh yeah, Mr. So and so wants to meet you for dinner. So I get to Milan and I, you know, I text the, Executive assistant.

And they're like, Oh, he's running late. Okay. And then, Oh, he wants to change the meeting place. Okay. So he's running late. We changed the time. We changed the meeting place. And then I go to the meeting place and these two guys show up and neither of them is the guy. And I'm like, what is going on? So like, Oh, we have to go.

Let's go. Let's, it was supposed to be a fancy dinner, right? So it's gotten down to let's go get a drink in a restaurant. I know a nice place nearby and I'm hungry, but okay. I

Stephen: The food is going to be your demise, Lisa. First PayPal, now Milan

Lisa: I know, right?

Stephen: attempts. You need to fight this food,

Lisa: Decisions based on food. And free food. It's all about free food. I have a problem. so, we go to this, they, they, and these guys are kind of sketchy. They're wearing very nice suits and they're definitely kind of sketchy, but they pick this place at random and they're like, Oh, let's go to the basement.

There's, it's quieter down there. So there's some tables, there's no one else in the basement. They pick the seat that I'm supposed to sit in. And they're like, you sit here. And then. I'm starting to get worried. And then they're like, Oh, we need proof of funds. They're going to give, they're gonna invest in my company, right?

We need proof of funds. We need you to make a new wallet. I'm like, Oh boy. So I, I'm like, this wallet is never going to be used for anything. But I go to my phone and I, cause I'm trying to get out of it now. I create a new wallet. And they're like, okay, now move money to that wallet. So we can prove that you have that money.

I'm like, Oh, I'm sorry. I don't have access to that much right now. Like I would have to go home. And like, I think they start getting upset, but I'm like, well, I can probably do it tomorrow. You know, I've already created the wallet and everything in this specific seat. We can do it tomorrow. Okay. So I managed to get away from them by promising to do it tomorrow and no, not being suspicious.

And then I called the Canadian embassy immediately and the Canadian embassy escorted me around after that because these guys didn't know where I was staying. But the second part of the story is, I heard From a friend that the same exact scenario happened to them. And it's a friend of a friend, but my friend told me the same thing happened.

And he got the seat and it turned out they had a camera behind him and they were watching his see phrase. And they he put him, he lost a million dollars in crypto. So this, this kind of thing can happen.

Stephen: Not so much like kidnapping they were gonna take you but it was just like well

Lisa: I don't know.

Stephen: Oh that's a lot better because I was like oh they got you in the basement. But that's probably even easier for them right they don't have to physically do anything. But yeah, if they have

Lisa: I mean, there

Stephen: camera, oh,

Lisa: There was a vibe there. There was a vibe that, you know, you better do what I say. They started getting pushy. And what do you do when someone gets pushy? You try to run away. So I was like, I don't think I can run away from these guys. I really felt like I was actually physically in danger, but who knows?

I don't know if it has ever happened.

Stephen: What are some of the, like, first of all, thank God that you escaped that situation. And such for the person that did get, you know, caught. And the fact that they're using a platform of choice like LinkedIn, my baby LinkedIn, to do this heinous type of things. It's so hard on LinkedIn because you just trust, I think there's a natural trust there, default trust, because like, who's going on there?

Like, what if their employer saw them doing these scams, but and LinkedIn does a fairly good job, I want to say, and, you know, like, you know, getting rid of the, you know, the spammers and stuff like that. But what is the biggest use case then for the Secret Network Foundation? Like, who's coming to you and saying, Hey, we need this.

Is it more institutions? Is it more people just like, Hey, like, I don't mind certain things being on. Like, is it like people like me? Like, Hey, I'm in Canada. I don't mind donating, let's say to the Freedom Convoy. Cause I feel like my rights are violated as a Canadian. I can't leave my house. But I also don't want the, you know, regulators and authorities knocking at my door and every crypto exchanges door that I may use to try and intervene and to try and seize my account as well, which is what happened here in Canada.

Who's it like your target? Who's the target of coming to your organization.

Lisa: Well, we're, we're, we're tools, basically. So we get builders. We have very excited builders. Our, my mission is to get the message out that builders can build using secret and then have applications that are much more useful for their audience, like, private voting. There's some decentralized science projects that are really excited about using us because peer reviews are.

Notoriously corrupt and being able to do peer reviews in an anonymous way on chain is, is a really, so there's, there's a company called Unbound Science that is building on secret. There's SilentSwap. SilentSwap is building basically like an app that allows you to do PayPal essentially without everyone in the world being able to see what you're doing.

There's, there's, I mean, there's some NFT projects. I don't know where NFTs will go. There's some real world assets projects that are really interesting.

Stephen: That makes sense a lot.

Lisa: Yeah, being able to hide ownership.

Stephen: What's the current situation right now? Like what void are you feeling? Because, you know, I think of like Alio, I think of Ironfish, Filecoin, a lot of those cover a certain sector of what you're doing, I feel like, is there, is that the problem that there's no dashboard to just go in and build one thing, you have to kind of piecemeal together all these different applications and blockchains, and you run into interoperability issues.

What is the like big challenge you're solving for.

Lisa: But I'd say it's more that there are lots of different technologies for, that do confidential computing. There's, and the way I like to like make it easy to understand is there's, there's ZK, which is zero knowledge, and that, that does certain things very well. Very simple interactions, yes or no questions.

There's MPC, which does other things very well, where you have multi party compute, so if a whole bunch of people need to weigh in on a decision, you can do that with MPC. Then you have TEEs, which is what we do at Secret. Secret, the challenge, the advantage of that, and Oasis does this, Phala does this as well, The advantage of TEEs are that it's very fast.

It's not computationally too expensive and it's it's available and working right now. Then you have, but it's not like the highest security. Like government, FBI would not use TEE, right? Because, That's not secure enough for them. So then you have FHE, fully homomorphic encryption, very slow, very early in the technology and very expensive, but very, very secure.

So it depends what your application is. And actually Secret is working with, Right now we're working with ZK and with MPC and with FHE. So we have elements of it that, what we're trying to do is create this, exactly what you said, a constellation, a dashboard where you can go in, you can build your technology, and you can select which level of security you want.

If you want ZKMBC, FHETE, whatever you want, you can select it, but you can write your code in one way, smart contract in one simple way, and then just select which technology is best for you. We're a little bit out from that. User experience in crypto is pretty bad, but that's the ultimate goal, is being able

That

Stephen: makes a lot of sense too, because a lot of these builders in Web3 are seeing there's different opportunities, but if they stick with one thing, you know, they remove a lot of the market share or the total, you know, the total market share that they could go after. And they're like, Hey, there's all these institutional adoptions.

We skewed a little too much out of their, you know, range of comfortability, can we just flip a switch? And to your point, Probably a couple of years away from that, but that really is the ultimate goal. That is really what I think is going to unify DeFi and TradFi where, Hey, when you need to flip the switch, there needs to be a switch there.

Lisa: Yeah,

Stephen: What about when you, the people that don't want to, you know, what about when you get into like the shape shifts where they're like, Hey, we're building on top of what you're doing, but we don't want, you know, regulators, governments kind of intervening, but we've seen what happened with Telegram and Tornado Cash, where.

Regulators don't technically or the authorities don't technically care if the regulatory oversight covers your specific application. If it's decentralized, they're going after you by enforcing kind of like the anti money laundering rules. How do you kind of balance that? Like, hey, we're trying to do something over here.

Governments are giving very little guidance, but they're definitely enforcing on the lack of guidance and the kind of regulatory ambiguity.

Lisa: Well, that's a huge topic, but I will tell you that I'm working with, so there's a separation if you're talking about the US, North America, Canada and US are kind of similar in some ways, or you're talking about rest of world, right? So let's just limit it to the US for now. And yes, that is a problem. We don't know what to build.

I've been working with Commissioner Hester Peirce to come up with I created a group, we're calling ourselves the Hester's Army, Hester's Army because she asked me, I had a couple of face to face meetings with her, and she asked me to come up with a draft set of regulations that we, that she could use when the moment was right and there was an opportunity to introduce some new regulations, because right now, And she's really interesting.

She's told me some, I understand how the regulators think now. She is not necessarily in the, that same mold, but she has a really good view of how they're thinking and how hostile they are towards the crypto world right now. But on the other hand, she also says that she hopes that this is, she said this directly to me.

She hopes that we in the blockchain space, don't bend over too far. to accommodate regulators and build in back doors to everything because that can be, that can be miss, misused and abused by corrupted officials. And so she's like, stay true to your original ideals, which is not to be a criminal tools.

The original ideals are to have, to empower people, empower people to do good things without empowering, you know, there's a line there, but she is very much in favor of people's right to choose. And so I think we're seeing a lot of the, of the suspicion and, and all of the, the antipathy towards the, the, the crypto industry from regulators in the U.

S. is born out of fear. And there are those who are fighting for. Elimination of fear and more of an embracing of the technology. I think that's necessary for us to build together because right now we're building, like hoping that nothing goes, we don't break any rules and get in trouble, right? It's not a way to build.

It's not a way to grow an industry. And I think Commissioner Peirce knows that, and she's fighting to try to change that. We're not in the place where it's changed yet, so we're a few years away from anything being able to say, here's the way it's going to get solved. I don't know how it's going to get solved.

I just know that there are those who are champions and working to fix it.

Stephen: That's awesome. Where do you think the pushback comes from? And not even from the commissioner herself. Where do you think the pushback is? Is it more like, hey, banking lobbies, lots of money, this could kind of disrupt, you know, a financial incentive for a lot of the people involved? Or it's like, hey, you guys want to kind of You know, build fast and break things.

You're not going to come do that with the whole financial ecosystem, especially with your, let's disrupt the whole, you know, the banking infrastructure and, you know, that kind of Mark Zuckerberg approach. Where do you think the pushback comes from? Is it more like, Hey, we have incentives to keep it the same or B, you guys can't just come trying to run through walls here.

And then, you know, wonder why we're pushing back on you.

Lisa: I'd say it's more the first. It's more that there's, there's fear of getting things disrupted. And I'll just say, frankly, I think a lot of the banking industry is run by people who are approaching retirement. and not really interested in rocking the boat. And self interest plays a big part here.

My, all this disruption is not going to help them to get to where they're going. On the other hand, there's an element of just ignorance. There's an element of, we don't understand how this is going to, how this is going to change the world, but we are a bit worried that that's going, or very worried that that's going to affect us negatively.

And there's reason to think that. Right? There's, there's reason to think that this is a threat. So I'm not discounting that. I'm just saying, eventually this is coming, this is going to happen. So embrace it early and you'll be in a better situation when things get inevitable. That's what I would say.

Stephen: I love it. As you're leading the Secret Network Foundation and still kind of influential with Fluidify. What have you been able to take from your time at Apple, from, you know, BitMEX and you've, you've had such a wide range of, you know, Web 2. 0 tech and Web 3. 0 tech. What do you, is there anything that you've leveraged where you're like, Oh, this is going to help me, you know, or I'm a lot more clear on the approach now, now that I'm working with the Secret Foundation.

Lisa: Every, every job is its own unique challenge. I would say the thing that I've taken away from my years in all of these different companies is that it always comes down to people. And if you can realize that It always comes down to people and people always come down to either fear or greed. You've got to address, you've got to address both.

You have to address the fear. If people are worried that something is going to take something away from them, you have to like approach the problem with a solution that Reduces that fear. And if people are approaching something with the idea that I'm going to take something out away from this, you have to be very clear on protecting the value that needs to be protected.

Like for secret foundation I need to make sure that no one is, is taking, trying to take undue advantage of the foundation in their suggestions. And unfortunately that's just, it. That's just human nature. It all comes down to human nature. So never Never discount the psychology of what you're trying to accomplish.

Always consider it in terms of how will people perceive it? How can I make this an easier message for them to hear?

Stephen: So, you know, SaaS has gotten like these, you know, new acronyms that have, you have vast banking as a service. Yesterday I was speaking to somebody from Open Mesh Connect, where they were talking about Node as a service. You've even heard of AML, Anti Money Laundering, as a service. Can you talk to me about this concept of privacy as a service?

And, or is this more of the flipping of the switch that you were talking about? Like, hey, we can build the whole thing, and then you just kind of like tell us what level of privacy, and we can flip that switch on for you.

Lisa: I'm going to go back to the idea of modularity. So blockchain modularity I think is essential for this consolidation that we've talked about, being able to flip the switch. Everyone's good at a certain part. Well, encryption is really, really difficult. If every blockchain needs to build its own encryption algorithms, we're going to have some leaks.

So instead Privacy as a Service or Confidential Computing as a Service, as we call it now, is Allowing us, allowing Secret Network to be the expert in the room on encryption. We're the longest running TEE project. We have MIT graduates who have done the encryption. We're kind of leading edge on cryptography.

So, Let us figure out how to encrypt your data and then let's make that modular so that it can be used on any blockchain. You can build on Solana, you can build on Near, you can build on EVM chains, any EVM chains. And then when you need to encrypt something, just call our library and that will, that will be like an easier way than learning a whole new system.

Stephen: And is there an infrastructure that you could kind of API into, like for lack of a better word, exactly that, where they can kind of bring in or call, would it be strictly smart contract on any blockchain or would you use something like maybe Chainlink that, you know,

Lisa: we have.

Stephen: this CCIP, this interoperability layer?

How do you like plug in this encryption to wherever project people are? Is there an easier way to do it than them just kind of doing the smart contract call?

Lisa: Yeah, so we, we've built SecretPath and we're building Secret, so SolanaPath is coming out soon. It's just, it's just a way of, it's a standardized interface so that you can call, your contract can call a secret contract, a smart contract. And, and you don't even have to build your own secret smart contract.

We have our own, we have templates that we were putting out so that you can call this secret smart contract and it will do this. It will do X, Y, Z to your, to your data. So just to make it as simple as possible, we're still a tool, right? So we're not, we're not a one click. You still have to make a call from your code and call.

Secrets code, but reducing the complexity of that is, is my, my goal in life is reduce complexity, make things easy. Solana does a great job of that. Easy, easy onboarding. Here's a template that does 95 % of what you want to do in your app. Now you just customize it. So yeah, making it easy, secret path, not anything complicated.

We just don't want people to have to learn new technologies to be able to use it.

Stephen: I love it. What's on, as we end the conversation, what's kind of on the horizon for both, you know, Secret Foundation and you personally, now that you know you're top 100, you're trying to like get them under the top 50, top 3, like where are you at personally and professionally?

Lisa: Oh, you mean for him personally? Yeah. Well, it's, it's interesting this whole being, being an influencer being well known in crypto, it's kind of a double edged sword. You just, it's like steady. It's like day by day, you just do interviews, you publish thought leader pieces and eventually your voice starts getting heard.

And I really want my voice to be heard for several reasons because one, I can have an impact on the, on the decentralized technology industry, the Web3 industry. And I have, I know that I have some good ideas and some different takes on it than some of the, that has been shared before. So I want to share my takes.

I really want to influence the direction so that we are, we have something that everyone can use. We have adoption. I also really am very motivated by being a role model for other women because I didn't have any role models when I was You know, doing my career. I have very few. And it's hard to imagine yourself like really getting into these types of positions unless you see someone like you who's in that role.

And you're like, Oh, I could do that. I could do that too. Like, I like the way she thinks I could think that way, you know? So I'd say anything you can imagine, you can be. Anytime you see someone doing something that you're like, That would be fun. Take note because that's what you should be doing. And I've seen that happen countless times in my own career.

So I'm very motivated to continue raising my profile so I can be a role model. So I can be a thought, a thought leader in the crypto space. And then for secret I believe that this technology is the best technology in the encryption space. And, We just came out too early. Secret came out in 2020, and it was before anybody cared about privacy, before anyone cared about encryption, and now we're like an old project.

But turning that narrative around to say, look, yes, we are the oldest project in this space, and we've had the most experience, and we have the best founders and the best researchers. So. Let us guide you guys into this space in a way that's even more secure and efficient. Like, let us be the thought leaders in this space.

And, and everybody help us to build secret into that platform that can solve more problems than anything else.

Stephen: I love it. Before you go, I've been watching some of your LinkedIn videos. I kind of, especially the advice you're giving to women. What would be an overarching strategy or tip, one tip that you can leave, you know, our women listeners with? I took from it that, hey, maybe you can take a little bit more risk.

That's some of the, you know, calculated risks. You know, as you say, a lot of this stuff was luck, but going back on your career, it seems like you're also quite the risk taker in a number of situations. What would be your overarching tip for women that are just like, This sounds interesting, you've got me fired up, but you know what the next question is going to be like, What's my next step?

What should I do? Where should I go? Kind of like, what's an overarching tip you can give them?

Lisa: I'm going to come back to my analogy of glass. So you can be in a big company, you can get to a certain point and you're going to hit your head against that shatterproof glass. The great thing about shatterproof glass is if you do break it, which you won't, but if you did not, no one would get hurt.

This shatters into little pieces. If you go into a risky area and you hit your head against that glass, you will be able to break it. And I've talked to countless women friends in the crypto space. You can break that glass in, in a new industry. Problem is it's going to cut you. It's going to hurt. So be ready to break that glass.

Be ready to take the, to take your slashes and take your scars and count it as a success. Count it as a badge of honor because now you don't have a ceiling above you.

Stephen: I love that, and I love the pragmatic and practical approach, like, it's going to hurt, like, you know, the glass is thinner, but you are going to get cut, and you kind of have to embrace, like, you should look forward to the cut, because that actually means that you've broken the glass, and I think that's a great advice.

Lisa, honestly, we're going to have you back when you're releasing your book. You just reach out to us. I want to talk about the book. We have like maybe half a dozen subjects that we didn't even cover. So we're going to be well, I love Fluidify. I didn't know that you were getting into the compliance space.

So now I'm even more excited. It was a great conversation. Thank you so much.

Lisa: Yeah, it was awesome to talk to you.