The Entrepreneurs for Impact Podcast: Transcripts
#115
Decarbonization-as-a-Service for the World’s Biggest Carbon Emitters – Maria Fujihara, CEO of Sinai Technologies
PODCAST INTRODUCTION
Chris Wedding:
My guest today is Maria Fujihara, the Founder and CEO of Sinai Technologies. Sinai is a venture capital-backed enterprise software company that measures, analyzes, prices, and reduces GHG emissions for large carbon-intensive companies. In addition, Maria is the former Coalition Advisor for Project Drawdown, Technical Coordinator for the Green Building Council in Brazil and participant in the Global Solutions Program at Singularity University.
02:02
In this episode, we talked about her origin story coming to the US from Brazil with nothing, and then raising $40 million and employing now 60 people. How they chose to work with some of the world's biggest polluters. Her work to find cultural and business alignment with her carbon-intensive customers. The challenge of stranded assets for large corporations. How their SaaS solution helps companies understand and importantly take action on decarbonization that is not just accounting.
The role of TCFD and CDP in GHG reporting in corporate governance. Tell you what, reading that out loud sounds like I was trying to make a joke about acronym SUP, not actually. How her company moves sustainability from a cost center to a value adder for her customers. What it's like being a woman CEO of a VC-backed company, unfortunately rare, got to change that. The HeartMath Institute and the connection that she's excited about between the heart and the brain. Her recommended books and lots more. Hope you enjoy it and please give Maria and Sinai Technologies a shout-out on LinkedIn, Slack, or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people. Thanks.
PODCAST INTERVIEW
Chris Wedding:
Maria Fujihara, Founder and CEO of Sinai Technologies, welcome to the podcast.
Maria Fujihara:
Thank you so much.
Chris Wedding:
Before pressing record, I like to tease out things that make sure the listeners know they got to pay attention for the full 40-ish minutes or so. Here's the soundbites folks. Maria came to the US from Brazil seven years ago with nothing, and now has raised 40 million bucks employing over 60 people and oh, by the way, a change in the world. So, how about them apples, I suppose, Maria? That's awesome.
04:04
Maria Fujihara:
Thank you, Chris. Thank you.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, so Sinai Technologies, give us the quick pitch. What is Sinai Technologies?
Maria Fujihara:
Sinai is a decarbonization intelligence platform. We help the biggest polluters in the world to account for their emissions, to know their impact, but to take many steps forward and really find solutions to replace those existing operations so they can actually transition to a low carbon economy.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, let’s unpack there. So, the world's biggest polluters, tell us how you decided on which of the biggest polluters that you wanted to help.
Maria Fujihara:
Normally companies that have a lot of physical assets instead of virtual assets, that there's a big difference in there from an emissions perspective. So, companies that are producing stuff, manufacturing, transporting goods, or selling and buying things that are impacting the natural environment for some reason, like there is land use and land use change. So, all companies in transportation, agriculture, metals and mining, steel production, any sort of manufacturing, some of them are actually considered hard to abate sectors, but majority it is the biggest polluters in the world, but the technical term would be carbon intensive companies.
Instead of companies that only have virtual assets like software companies or some sort of financial institutions, or companies that are really at the end of the supply chain and that don't own anything. So, those are on the flip side, virtual assets companies that have much lower emissions from themselves. Normally, the emissions are associated with their supply chain, which ends up to be the carbon intensive organizations.
Chris Wedding:
Perfectly. So, you're going straight to the source, not the end, but the beginning of the supply chain. You mentioned, four, five, six different carbon intensive industries, how did you all pick which one to focus on first?
Maria Fujihara:
Normally, it's associated with regulated industries, so steel is pretty much regulated, shipping company and airlines also very regulated. Now manufacturing is being regulated. So, normally we start with companies that are in regulated markets or that have some pressure to report under this data, either to their investors or even to their buyers and customers. For example, Apple demands that every single supplier reports their numbers. We have a bunch of Apple suppliers as customers. So, any political government regulation or any supply chain demand or investors demand.
Chris Wedding:
Right. So, sticking on reporting for a second, do you find that your core customers are responding to things like CDP or TCFD? Are these common acronyms that drive part of the reason for getting to know you, Maria?
Maria Fujihara:
Yeah, absolutely. Those are definitely industry standards and industry benchmarks and default, but there is a big difference in just calculating these emissions for reporting reasons rather than calculating these emissions for decarbonization purposes. And this is where our key differentiator really lies, and I can explain a little better what that means, but just reporting for some of these companies is not enough. They need to take a step further into actually finding solutions for reducing and decarbonizing, and reporting is just really the first step.
08:07
Chris Wedding:
Okay, I like that and I'm going to put a pin in the how you all do your work. I want to go back to this notion of working with the biggest polluters. On one hand, it's obvious, I mean, it's a great idea rather. On the other, I can imagine there could be some cultural misalignment perhaps, where a climate tech company versus a big polluter might just see the world differently. Can you just comment on the existence or lack thereof of this perceived, let's say difference in worldview, perhaps?
Maria Fujihara:
Yeah, that's a great point. You're right, there is some difference in the way that we view the world, and we like to think that we are not in fact disruptors. We just tend to ask smart questions so people can rethink the status quo, and really search for innovative solutions so they can keep their businesses for much longer than they have already been.
So, I think the world is changing rapidly and these huge organizations are aware that if they don't bring in innovative solutions and they don't change and adjust their business they will stay behind and they will probably bankrupt. The biggest risks that they face, it's not only losing their assets to climate change, it's actually to become stranded and to become not useful anymore because there were so many other companies that disrupted their own businesses and their own line of products.
So, the positioning that Sinai has is not to disrupt these organizations because we are not really bringing in innovative solutions to all of these different businesses and different industries, but rather allow them to rethink the way that they position themselves. Give them an opportunity to look for disruptive solutions so they can then invest in those solutions directly for themselves and at least have a chance in this fast-paced evolving society. This is like how I see.
Then just recently we did a personality assessment internally, inside the organization and one of the traits of my own personality is that I'm a very high-risk taker. So, I normally tend to go to the hardest things to do and this is clearly the way that we approach this and the way that we position ourselves. But I also have some prudence in terms of connecting myself to organizations that have been doing this for a long time and wanting to change themselves and their perspectives of the future.
Not really looking so much into the past and to a lot of things that happened so far, but rather looking to what they can do from here and how we can help them. So, there is a lot of connection into what we do and the way we position ourselves and also into my own personality and the way that this reflects in the company culture, and the way that we are going to continue to position ourselves and help customers if that makes sense.
Chris Wedding:
It does. I'm just vigorously taking notes over here as you're talking. I don't recall the particular statistics, but I just want to flag these for listeners that this notion of stranded assets, it is a term in quotation marks. And when we see banks or other finance minded individuals or groups rather, talking about the hundreds of billions of dollars in current or potential stranded assets, it's shocking. And so, your customers are likely aware of this massive amount of capital that could be stranded, so that's point one.
12:00
Then point two, the stat on the percentage turnover in rankings of large companies, whether it's Fortune 500 or otherwise, the percent turnover over X number of decades is shocking. I think part of what you're saying is, look, many of the companies that you're working with have been around decades, if not longer overseas. They want to be around for decades to come. And so, as they think about what the future looks like, it is different than the past. I think there's two good nuggets there.
I also love that you all are taking personality assessments at the company. I think this is done too seldomly, that we are people running businesses and we're all different. We all have our own quirks and flaws and strengths. If you don't have these tests or people to help us learn more about ourselves, the business suffers, right?
Maria Fujihara:
Yeah. Exactly. So, I actually found the test here and so the traits of my personality that are very high, that are very different than my co-founder, for example, are actually tradition and affiliation and security. So, I have these traits very high, tradition means I still connect to certain traditional values. This can mean so many things. I don't want to be labeled as such a specific thing, but my biggest score is on science, for example. I have a huge scientific perspective and I do a lot of decisions based on data.
I'm also under 40 years old, so almost there, but I also see the future and current planet on where we are heading differently than people older than me, but I find it easier to connect with them. I like to think that they connect with me as well in certain ways, but I think that this is the hook of why we decided to go to such traditional industries and try to give them an opportunity to change themselves. Instead of just breaking the bank, that's not what we are looking to do, but rather giving them an opportunity to change.
Chris Wedding:
Perfect. Okay. Now, I'm going to go back to that pin on the board, which is how exactly Sinai does what it does. So, walk us through the steps, if you will, Maria.
Maria Fujihara:
Yes, let me try to not be super scientific here and not use too many jargons. If I am using too many jargons, let me know, Chris. So, the first step is really calculating emissions and this is what a lot of other organizations do as well. There's so many companies that are doing this right now, but there is a big difference between doing carbon accounting for reporting reasons versus doing for decarbonization purposes. The main difference is, the level of granularity and the data types that you are collecting.
So, a simple example. If you just want to report your total emissions, you could just collect your total diesel consumption of your entire organization, multiply that by an emission sector and just report your annual number. But if you really want to understand how that diesel is impacting all your emissions and really move away from diesel consumption, you need to know exactly where disease is being consumed. If it's from a car, if it's from a truck, if it's from a blast furnace, because the different types of diesel consumption, even though it's the exact same activity data, is going to impact on the solutions that you have available to actually change that source of emission.
15:39
So, going on a deeper level of granularity, understanding what are those consumptions on a monthly basis, if not on a daily basis, it's super important because those variations are going to interfere on the solutions that you're going to find. This is one of our biggest value propositions is to get deep into that understanding of how things actually operate in those organizations and to get at that level of granularity, so then we can propose solutions for reduction.
We have five different modules in this system. The first module is just looking at historical data. So, doing their inventories and understanding what they have been doing so far, what has been the past and the present, and all the other four modules are future looking. So, we have many different ways of projecting, forecasting, and predicting the future of where they're going to be so they can actually build and model scenario analysis.
It has a very similar thinking as financial data in organizations. So, we always do the monthly reporting, quarterly reports, and then we do two, five, 10 years forecast with the emissions is no different. We just allow them to model different types of scenarios and understand the costs of each one of the scenarios, which this is really where the rubber hits the road. The biggest question that all our customers want to know is, how much is it going to cost me to achieve certain emissions reductions targets? How much is it going to cost me to keep status quo? This is ultimately what we do. We help them to put a price on those emissions and really understand their internal costs.
Then there is a big difference between external prices through cap-and-trade systems and carbon credits versus internal costs, which means how much CapEx, how much NPV, what's my NPV? What's my net present value? What's my CapEx? What's my OpEx for changing those machines or changing those operations so I can actually reduce my emissions? This is really, at the end, the ultimate value that we deliver.
Chris Wedding:
Awesome. So, historically, let's say, when the corporate decision makers hear sustainability, it was thought of as nice to have, but more of a cost center versus a value creation, value capture opportunity. I think when folks think about reducing carbon, they may think about just the former. It's the right thing to do, or we're being told or expected to do it, but maybe tell us a story or two about how you're helping customers not just do what Apple, their buyers want them to do, but actually to capture new value.
Maria Fujihara:
Yeah, that's a great point because it's part of a company's journey, maybe at the beginning, they're just interested in reporting, that's fine because sometimes you just have to do it because you have to do it. But once this becomes a company culture, once sustainability and climate are actually part of a corporate strategy, then everything changes. Then they are really trying to capture value and really looking at the data in a different way than they were before.
This is an evolution process. I really hope that companies go through this faster than they have been, but we have seen it many times, even with Apple vendors and Apple contractors, because some of them started this just because Apple was mandating, but now they understand that if they change certain things, they're actually creating value for themselves. They're actually reducing costs. They can actually invest in positive NPV solutions and make money while at the same time reducing emissions and allowing their company to transition. And allowing their company to continue to be meaningful because this is what is going to happen.
19:56
A lot of these organizations are just going to become meaningless. They are not going to exist because they are irrelevant or because they don't have a key differentiator. So, if they really focus on differentiating themselves and their products on the climate perspective, it's a no-brainer. They're going to find solutions that are positive NPV that are going to allow them to do that.
So, this is the kind of thing that we've done to a few customers, Pan Engineering, Siemens, ArcelorMittal. ArcelorMittal now is just looking into how they can create green steel for auto manufacturers because they know that the consumer will be willing to pay more for a car that has a lower impact on the manufacturing process. This information coming from a bunch of different data sources. If that's true, imagine the value that certain car manufacturers would have in buying green steel from ArcelorMittal and really be able to sell a carbon free automobile and make the customer pay for it.
So, this is how these companies are innovating and creating new products and a new line of businesses and continue to stay relevant to these new consumers that are coming to market that have this know-how, that have this expertise and are pressuring more and more companies.
So, I would say that this is not only happening at the B2B side, but also at the B2C, happening across the board. This new generation is already requesting all of these companies to be much more transparent about their data and they know they have harder questions than we used to have. So, just greenwashing won't work anymore. They will have actually to find things that matter.
Chris Wedding:
And for listeners, B2B, business to business or B2C, business to consumer, let's say, both types are finding benefit from what you're doing. Going back a conversation or two to one of these reporting frameworks that we talked about, I think it's relevant to talk about here again, which is TCFD, so the Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. Very hard to say quickly for a fast talker, TCFD.
One of the beautiful things about TCFD is they say, “Hey, look, you've got physical risks and you have transition risks.” I think what your customers hear in thinking about risk is, look, risk often means we lose money, so clearly that is a value capture or preservation, let's say. And within TCFD, they talk about the need, the benefit, almost the requirement for scenario analysis.
When I've always talked to students at Duke or UNC about TCFD, the scenario analysis is one of the hardest things to do. When I see survey results of corporations complying with TCFD, it's got the lowest uptake because it's really, really hard. I think what I'm hearing is you make it less hard for corporations to do scenario modeling. Is that true?
Maria Fujihara:
Yeah, exactly. TCFD, it's a crazy acronym, it stands for Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, which means that these are all the known financial metrics, but this is actually being guided by financial institutions. So, a lot of these financial institutions are requiring that their investees and their portfolios report under TCFD guidelines. The reason why I like them so much is because they go beyond the metrics and targets and this is what is most important. Making sure that risk management, strategy and governance are also aligned with the data that they have is key for any organization to understand the value that investing in climate and non-financial data there is.
23:59
This is what I like the most about them that is different than CDP or GRI that are very much focused on metrics and just reporting and just allowing for a framework to report. The CFG actually emphasizes the importance of bringing this information into strategic points of the organization, into risk assessment and also into governance, meaning how they're going to actually implement all of that. Yes, there is scenario analysis because part of building a company's strategy is doing scenario analysis and this is one of the biggest challenges where we can help easily.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, the governance piece is really important. I mean, it’s essentially saying, hey, look, these topics shouldn't just live with the, say, chief sustainability officer, although that's great. They should be at the board, the C-suite level as well. I'm curious, for your customers, are these topics, decarbonization, let's say both value and risk, are they coming from the board down or from the CSL up?
Maria Fujihara:
Absolutely. It's top-down and it's bottom-up. So, it doesn't matter also, a company having huge corporate targets and not knowing how to get them. People in the ground having no clue how to achieve those targets or having no resources or no tools, no knowledge. So, they are lacking all of that. I think organizations that are defining top-down targets, corporate targets that of course are coming from the board, this is incredible.
But then the next step is, okay, so I have this amazing 10-year goal, how do I do this this year? How do I do this next year? What are the resources I'm going to allocate? How do I allocate budget? What are the teams and et cetera? Then really involves getting everybody on the same page. It's really about company culture. It's like what do you care about? What do you think your team and your employees should care about and how they're going to actually implement all of that?
So, it's top-down and bottom-up because we do provide value to C level so they can see all of that at the most top-down level possible, but we do collect data at the most granular level possible because a little car delivering goods for Amazon matters. They need to know how many of those little cars are going to impact the company's bottom line and how that impacts the company's strategy, but it all starts with that little car, the little truck.
Chris Wedding:
Yes, the one that shows up at our house too frequently, I believe.
Maria Fujihara:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Wedding:
I think that listeners maybe see you all as a SaaS platform and maybe they hear you as like an implementation team member of sorts, which sounds a little bit more like consulting or engineering. Which of those two are you? Or maybe you're both. How do you describe your business model versus what you do for customers?
Maria Fujihara:
We are a SaaS. We mostly sell SaaS licenses, but we do have additional services that we can provide if the customer needs more handholding or more specific guidance. So, we have implementation and data governance services. We also have climate services. So, there's so much we can do in this regard.
27:25
We also have additional partners that we bring in if there is like huge implementations to be done across multiple countries, or if there are very specific types of solutions for a very specific industry that they need to understand. What would be the different types of projects that they can implement that would impact the production of their product? That would be of course associated with emissions. So, if there are very tailored things, we also have very specific partners that could help them if we cannot.
Chris Wedding:
Perfect. I'm going to ask you one more question about the business side and then we're going to switch to the podcast talking about Maria, the person.
Maria Fujihara:
Okay.
Chris Wedding:
So, on the business side, this is really both, you are a female CEO of a well-funded climate tech company. There are not enough of you. So, maybe tell us about, I don't know what the right question is even, maybe why is it hard or how have you found your way through what should not be so hard that is to be a female CEO raising the capital to grow a company like Sinai?
Maria Fujihara:
Yeah, this is a question I get all the time. I guess, it's hard because all of these differences are structural. Our society has been structured this way for many, many, many years. It's not something I can change. I cannot change the past, but I can change the future and this is always my way of thinking for everything that I do. I guess I've never been afraid of being the only woman in the room or the youngest or the only non-American. And not being afraid means creating a lot of confidence and this is many years of trying to understand my strengths and being very mindful about, what are the things that I can do best and the things that not so much? That I will need help in that regard, but other things like being really confident.
I think, of course, my parents played an important role in my education and always pushing me really hard. Not because they wanted me to succeed, but simply because they knew I was capable of and I think this has always been clear since the beginning. So, when I came here, the first year that I was in the US, I just came to take a break. I wasn't thinking of opening an organization and I went through a program in Singularity University that was about how to use exponential technologies to solve climate change. Right after the program, I started another company before Sinai that failed and after that failure, I was done. I called my parents and I was like, “Please get me a ticket. I'm done with the US, this didn't work. I want to go back.” And they said, “No, I won't.”
Chris Wedding:
Nice.
Maria Fujihara:
Yeah, and they said, “We believe you, you've done it so far, you've done it here, just keep doing it, just figure it out.” They really pushed me and this is the thing, when there is those moments that you want to give up and you have people that can support you, or you have to really believe in yourself and you have to support yourself because that's your only way out, that's when I decided to walk through those tunnels.
30:55
I think this is valid for any person, not only women, but being a woman, I guess, sometimes it's harder because you have to pretend you didn't listen, you have to continue to move no matter what, but it also plays in good ways and in your favor in many other situations. So, knowing how to balance that and keep going and keep believing in yourself, I think it's really what matters the most.
Keep believing that you can change the future. Again, that you're opening all these doors for other women to do this. Over 70% of our leadership in Sinai is female led. We have more women than men in the organization. This really impacts the way that we build businesses and the way that we are going to build the organizations of the future. So, having more women, having more diversities, it really matters.
Chris Wedding:
Again, so many points to jump off there. That was perfect. I did not know, and we've been working together for close to a year, I did not hear about the first business after singularity that didn't work. Great to be sharing that because I think folks are like, “Oh, well, Maria, she's got this great company. It's doing well.” But that's really important for folks to hear. It is the, not tenure overnight success, but it is much longer than folks think.
And as a parent, I think that occurrence that you just told is amazing. I'm going to log that away and maybe that'll be the subject of my dinner conversation with the three kiddos of, “Hey, when things are hard, we may not just let you get out of it, suffer through it. It builds character.”
Maria Fujihara:
Yeah. I guess if my parents were just like, “Yeah, we're here. We're here to support you, come back,” Sinai wouldn't exist if I did go back.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. Well, you already covered most of the next question about Maria, which is, what advice might you give your younger self? Is there anything you want to add there as you talk to younger Maria?
Maria Fujihara:
My advice to my younger self, and this is my advice that I give myself every day is to trust your gut more, trust your instincts. This is a person who has a very scientific background and really believes in data, but since I started navigating the entrepreneurial roads, more than half of my decisions I have to do without data. It was very hard for me at the beginning, but as you start navigating this and you have to do this because you don't have data and this is what it is, you get more used to it. But if I had trusted my gut more, earlier, I would probably be on a different place or I'll probably sooner in places than I had because I was waiting to have the information before making that decision.
So, I do this more often today. I try to concentrate on nature. I try to go outside and just to be more connected to this quantum physics realm that would allow me to make more better sound decisions based on my gut.
Chris Wedding:
That's beautiful. This morning, during my reflection period, for better or worse, I was reading part of a Deepak Chopra book. I go back and forth with Deepak, but anyway, there were some nuggets that sounded similar to what you're saying. I mean, part of it was just creating space to be silent for longer than like five minutes, and in that silence, maybe your intuition can speak up versus being bombarded with the next to do. How about, tell us some habits or routines, Maria, that keep you healthy, sane and focused as a leader.
34:59
Maria Fujihara:
My 2023 goals, my personal goals are to work on my physical health, my mental health, and my spiritual health. I know this is very generic, but I do specific things for all of that. I try to exercise every other day. I've been trying to read more. I don't have TV. I don't watch TV much, but it's really hard [inaudible – 00:35:24] over in a position to find time to do much besides work, but my mental health, I’ve been trying to meditate much more. I've also been doing this thing that is called the HeartMath. I don't know if you ever heard of this and this is actually my tip for my tool if anyone is looking to learn more.
Just recently, scientists discovered that there are more connectors from the heart to the brain than otherwise. So, we always do meditation through our brain, but we actually should be doing meditation through our hearts, and everything really starts in the heart. So, there's this institute here in California, it's called HeartMath. So, math, mathematics, so HeartMath. It's pretty cool. You basically can track your heartbeats and you can find ways of bringing your heart to cohesiveness.
And of course, everything that you feel and the way that you behave and the way that you go through your day is interfering your heart rate and your heartbeats. So, if you can actually understand, what is the optimal heartbeat so you can be in a cohesive state of mind, you will always be on some sort of a meditational state of heart, even if you're having a hard conversation with somebody. But that's actually trying to control your heart, not your brain.
I was blown away when I discovered that institute. So, sometimes I'm just like tracking my heartbeats next to my other Zoom meetings and it really helps me to bring back to my center whenever I'm having hard conversations with anyone, or having to go through hard moments or even easy ones. I can really see that cohesiveness going up and down.
This interferes in our electromagnetic fields and everything around us because if you are in cohesiveness, you are going to pass this through people are surrounding you because the heart electromagnetic fields is 20 times bigger than the brain as well. So, you are actually promoting this cohesiveness to people around you. I've been really interested in this topic recently and I highly recommend for anybody to search for it.
Chris Wedding:
As a reminder to listeners, this is coming from a very data science driven person. I just want to underscore that. So, wait, what device do you use to show your real time heartbeat?
Maria Fujihara:
You can buy a device from the HeartMath Institute, or they also have an app and so that device connects to your ear and then you can just plug in and it collects your heartbeats every moment. Or, they have an app and you can put your finger in your camera and it also collects your heartbeat, but that's kind of annoying because you have to keep holding it.
38:20
Chris Wedding:
Right. Well, I want to ask you what your heartbeat's doing right now in this podcast.
Maria Fujihara:
Oh, I don't have mine right now. I should have it, but I think it's cohesive, I can feel it. Chris Wedding:
You're like, “This is easy.” It’s definitely going to be [crosstalk – 00:38:38].
Maria Fujihara:
It's definitely not one of the hardest things of my day.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. That's true. I hope not.
Maria Fujihara:
Definitely not.
Chris Wedding:
I have a feeling you might not. So, that's a great tool. Are there any other books, podcasts, quotes that you think listeners may find empowering, inspiring, whether they're climate or not?
Maria Fujihara:
One podcast that I've been really enjoying recently, it's called All-In from these four venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. I don't agree with them with a lot of the things that they say, but I think it's interesting that they have very different perspectives themselves, and they are still able to have a conversation and bringing facts that are trying to support their own arguments.
We have been having so much polarization recently in the US, in Brazil and probably many other places that it's just very hard to have conversations with people that think differently than you. At least this is what I get most out of that podcast is that they have such different perspectives, but they are still able to have a conversation about it and I really like it. Besides, it's a deep look into what a lot of VCs think, not all of them, because I know many people that think very differently than them, but I think it's a good perspective to have, to learn, especially from somebody on my position.
Then a book that I would recommend is from Joe Dispenza. Do you know him?
Chris Wedding:
When you mentioned the heart-brain connection, I was going to say, folks like Tony Robbins or Joe Dispenza are talking about this, he's got Becoming Supernatural maybe.
Maria Fujihara:
Becoming supernatural, yes. It's one of my favorite books, but he's very focused on the brain, rewiring your brain. That's kind of where I started before I found the HeartMath Institute, but he talks a lot about the connection with the heart. He just brings a lot of connections to the brain and how to run meditation processes. He has interesting point of views around spirituality versus science.
I think that the scientific knowledge is going to evolve much faster now and we're probably going to be able to prove so many things that spirituality has been putting faith or making people believe in it through faith, and I'm very excited about this. I think he has some interesting point of views.
41:16
Chris Wedding:
Well, just to double down on that, there's a book called Breath that came out maybe two years ago, also talking about the scientific basis for all these breathing techniques that cultures around the world have been using for centuries. I think Esther is the author there.
Maria Fujihara:
That’s amazing. I really hope that science is able to prove all of the stuff. I mean, with quantum entanglement, I think we're going to discover so many things and prove so many things that we've learned through religion or other spiritual practices that have not yet been able to be explained. So, I'm excited about that.
Chris Wedding:
Well, on that very big and important note, we're going to end it right here, Maria. Hey, great to connect. We're all rooting for the success of Sinai. Talk soon.
Maria Fujihara:
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure, Chris.
Chris Wedding:
Hey there, it's Chris again. If you want more intel on climate tech, startups and investors, please join the thousands of other founders, investors, and world changers who have subscribed to our Substack newsletter at entrepreneursforimpact.com. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you took 90 seconds to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or give us a five-star rating on Spotify. This feedback is the number one way to draw more attention to the inspiring climate CEOs and investors I get to interview here. All right, until next time, keep on fighting the good fights.
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And we’ve become one of the top 3% most popular podcasts in the world.
Why do climate innovators love us?
Because of our inspiring guests — dozens of climate tech CEOs, founders, and investors that are raising or investing tens of millions of dollars and removing millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.
Why should you listen?
To start, grow, and invest in businesses with impact, meaning, and profit.
Learn about our guests’ career paths, founder stories, business strategies, investment criteria, growth challenges, hard-earned wisdom, productivity habits, life hacks, favorite books, and lots more.
Who is the host?
Dr. Chris Wedding is a 4x founder, 4x Board member, climate CEO peer group leader and coach, Duke & UNC professor, ex-private equity investor, ex-investment banker, podcast host, newsletter author, occasional monk, Japanophile, ax throwing champ, father of three, and super humble guy (as evidenced by this long bio). 😃
Learn more here:
Climate CEO peer group community: www.entrepreneursforimpact.com
2-minute newsletter: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com
DIY course about startup capital raising (170 slides, 70-item library, 250-investor list): https://t.ly/QCcl5