Episode 36: The Learning Never Ends: Evolution Is A Constant You Can Depend On With Donny Shimamoto
Nothing in life is ever the same, so you either get stuck as the world evolves or move along with it by continuously learning. Someone who takes this to heart in everything that he does is Donny Shimamoto, the Founder and Managing Director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC. In this episode, Amy Vetter sits down with Donny to ask him about the lessons he learned in his never-ending journey of learning and improving. Donny shares how his roots helped shape his career, especially when he learned how to embrace who he was and where he came from. Along with it, he highlights the importance of diversity and inclusion in an organization and why small businesses should make an impact on communities. Truly, it is the Aloha spirit that guides Donny in his success, putting the community, family, and clients first before the numbers. Don’t miss this great conversation to understand why learning from those around you is the only constant you can depend on in business and life.
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The Learning Never Ends: Evolution Is A Constant You Can Depend On With Donny Shimamoto
Welcome to this episode where I interview Donny Shimamoto, a CPA, CITP, CGMA and Founder and Managing Director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies, a CPA firm focused on helping nonprofits, small businesses and middle-market organizations leverage strategic technologies. He is an internationally recognized expert in emerging technologies, cybersecurity risk management and organizational development. He's been a recipient of numerous awards and has been named the top 25 Thought Leaders and top 100 Influencer List for the accounting profession for many years. He can be seen speaking and giving webinars around the US and internationally. During my interview with Donny, he shares his journey from his Hawaiian roots and how it has helped shaped his career when he learned to embrace who he was and where he came from.
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Welcome to this episode. I'm here with Donny Shimamoto. Donny, do you want to get us started and tell us a little bit about yourself?
I am originally from Hawaii. I think of myself as a small towner. In Hawaii, we call it a local guy. Growing up in a small town, I enjoy going to the beach and water, and that's what I'm missing because now I'm over in Nevada.
What's your business? What do you do for people that don't know you?
I'm a nontraditional CPA. I also think of you as the nontraditional that do a lot of different things. I don't do audit, tax or bookkeeping. I do IT advisory services. I help people make better decisions on their technology.
Your story is going to be so interesting starting out where you have. You can tell us a little bit about growing up in Hawaii and what that was like. It's hard to ever leave when you visit Hawaii.
That was the big thing for me too was figuring out whether I would leave or not. I always still consider Hawaii as home. I split my time between Hawaii and other states. I have lived part-time in California, Texas and then I relocated to Nevada for client work, and also because I do a lot of speaking around the nation. I always have a hub to go back to. Growing up in Hawaii was interesting because I find that our multicultural environment, everyone is talking about diversity and inclusion and I feel like we've always lived it. Everyone talks about diversity and we have diversity. In New York and California, you see diversity but it's diverse but separate. In Hawaii, I feel like we've always been very inclusive. This whole diversity inclusion thing is a strange animal to me.
How many brothers and sisters do you have? What island did you grow up on? Tell us a little bit about that.
I'm the oldest of three boys. I have a middle brother that's only four years younger than me and he's here in Nevada. That was part of the reason why I decided to move to Nevada because I've got a niece and nephew who I have fun with, especially in this lockdown. It's been fun to go and do tackle fights with them on the weekend. We have introduced my niece to hiking, which she has started to love and so it's great to see them. Growing up in Hawaii, that was one thing too. Every weekend we would go hiking or to the beach. That's the norm for us.
Learning Never Ends: If you truly are color blind or gender blind, you just treat everyone as their own, and you wouldn't separate them.
What did your parents do?
My mom worked for the library for a little while and then at the school, the typical office job. My dad was a music teacher and he used to teach acoustic guitar.
Did he work at the elementary school or the high school?
He was at Kamehameha School, which is our Hawaiian founded private school.
Are they originally from Hawaii or where did they come from? How did you end up living in Hawaii?
I'm a fourth-generation Asian-American. It's my great grandparents that came over from Asia and China respectively. I'm half-Japanese and half-Chinese.
How did they end up in Hawaii? Why did they go there? Do you know?
It goes back to the Hawaii history of the sugar plantation. That was the original industry. My grandparents were entrepreneurial from the beginning. My grandfather used to drive his own taxi on one side. On my other side, they were traders. They ran a trading company.
With your father going in a different direction, how did he end up in music? Was that in your family or was that an interest of his?
It was completely an interest. I don't want to call him the black sheep, but he was the different one. He’s the oldest. My grandmother had a real love for music. I know she appreciated that. Two of my other uncles are engineers and my other uncle is in business.
Where did you start learning that you wanted to be in business because your parents have a much different background than you?
That came early on. The technology was something that one of my aunts and my dad introduced me to. I have the Commodore 64 or something like that. I used to do programming. My dad had bought the computer and my aunt had bought some other stuff to teach me programming. I did that from seven years old. I discovered accounting in high school and I loved it. I saw accounting from there. I’ve been the blend of the two ever since.
What did you like about accounting? Why did you love it?
Accounting has rules and there's an answer where everything balances in the end. That was my original perception of accounting. Doing what we do in advisory work, we're working with risk, ambiguity, controls, assessment, perception and judgment. That's what I enjoy.
I'm guessing your father and your aunt thought it was important for you to go in a different direction to start teaching you that at seven years old. How does that even happen?
Our family as a whole believed in learning. I would spend a lot of weekends at my grandmother's house and she would always have me doing some type of math, teaching and learning different things. One of the things going back to some of the diversity and inclusion was somebody else told me they were like my brothers and I are all very independent and we're all not afraid to be whoever we are. That was where something instilled through the family even though it's different like I said, my dad is kind of different and I was different from my parents. I only have one uncle that's in business. Whatever you want to be, not just ourselves but all of our cousins and everybody. You're free to be who you want to be.
It seems like a very accepting and encouraging environment. You go to business school. Did you major in Accounting or Accounting and Technology?
I was double in Accounting and MIS. I almost did a minor in Computer Science as well. I did a little more of the geeky stuff.
Were you in Hawaii in college or did you go to the US?
I was in Hawaii. I knew I wanted to be in Hawaii. While I had friends that went away, I stayed in Hawaii so that I could build the network that I wanted to build. Even if I ended up working with PwC, Coopers & Lybrand originally, I still stayed in Hawaii with that because I knew that's where I wanted to be and be able to build that network.
How did you make the leap to the mainland? That's a big risk and shift. You created a network in Hawaii when you graduated. Was it with PwC you started traveling or how did you start expanding beyond where you grew up?
Through PwC, I always had traveled to the mainland or California specifically. I reported to the San Francisco office and they are reported to the Virginia office as well because they had me as part of a large consulting project where we were working for the Navy. We got to go on an aircraft carrier. I never want to be in the military after that but it was interesting to see what they were like.
It’s the things they don’t tell you when you're in accounting school is where you end up.
It started off with that but I've always loved traveling. I know I get that from my grandmother because she did too. I kept pursuing that. I was with PwC for four years. When I started my own firm, that was when I want what I now know is called a lifestyle, where I can do what I want to do but still have to make a good living. I volunteered for the AICPA committees because I thought, “You get free travel out of it.”
When you left PwC, you're young starting your firm.
I was 25 when I started my own firm.
How did you have the confidence to do that and how did you know you were going to get enough business leaving to start your business?
I was lucky. I had a client that I started within PwC. When I left PwC, I went to an IT systems integrator. That’s when I learned that I was an accountant and not an IT person because I could not handle the way they operated. It was disorganized. I liked the structure, the rules and the discipline that accounting has. Through that, I started to see that there's a great blend of the two. I left them and as part of leaving them, I went back to this client that I had worked with at PwC. I said, “I'm thinking about going on my own.” They said, “We were just about to contact you because we wanted to move a bunch of our services over to you.” I was like, “If I go on my own, will you still do it?” They were like, “Sure.” That's where we started.
What services did you start with?
We were doing business analysis. It wasn’t called that at that time. I would do a lot of business analysis and application development because that's my background on the IP side is programming. We're helping different systems work together. I'm proud to say that many years later since when I started working with them in PwC, I'm still working with them now.
What do you think you've learned at PwC that helped you in starting your practice? Was there anyone you look to there for guidance or knowledge that helped you figure it out for yourself?
It was more foundational skills. At that time, we were pegged as one of the large Navy projects we were on, which took us to one of the first knowledge management projects. It was this combination of business process redesign, technology enablement and then the actual knowledge piece, which was capturing procedures, making improvements therein but deeper cultural change as well. When I look back at it, we were at that point doing digital transformation which is the area that I focus on now.
When you talk about diversity in Hawaii versus here, did you immediately start noticing that when you came to the mainland to start working?
I'm going to say no. That's why the diversity inclusion baffled me often is because I don't feel like I'm different even though everyone around me may look different. I don't feel like I myself is different. It wasn't until all this diversity inclusion things started coming up when I then started to look around the room and I'd go, “I'm the only Asian in the room.” That made me feel it but it's not unless it comes up that I'm like, “I feel like I'm different.”
Has that changed anything in the way that you work with people or mentor other people?
It has and it's an example of the way we need to be. It's interesting to look at some of these diversity and inclusion things. Part of it is they form these associations and I see it where there's the Asian Pacific Organization or there's even the African-American, the Black Association or Latino Association. Why are we creating all this division? I feel like that builds it more. Even I see the women create things versus the men things. These are all creating more division than they are unifying us because they forced us into our separate areas. It's interesting to me as I look at that because if you truly are color blind or gender blind, you treat everyone as their own and you wouldn't separate them.
How do you guide people on that? Is it to not join that? What is it that you're telling people from your standpoint?
I don't join or recommend that they join those. If they feel that they need it, I've talked to some women, they said they don't feel safe doing whatever it is with men. Part of me is also like, “If you don't feel safe then, when are you ever going to feel safe? How does this help you feel safe? When is that point where you're going to be able to come and do it with everybody else?” To me, it's always about doing it together because that's the inclusion and then work and create that space for yourself and others as part of what you're doing. For example, I try to make sure that I'm seen as an example so that if there are other Asian-Americans, I also make sure that I am part of everything else that's going on. Not that I'm here as this Asian-American guy sitting out here doing this thing.
At least my experience with the women's stuff where it helps people is that there's a safe place to talk about experiences that are similar that they're encountering in the workplace and education to help them know how to better handle it. I have found it helpful if that ends up being the only place that you'll go to. If you're there to be empowered to work and make a mark in the general environment, then it's helpful. I think when utilized correctly, it gives people a voice or confidence that they wouldn't otherwise have, at least in my experience.
One of my cousins who worked in Silicon Valley said to read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. He said, “Instead of female, insert Asian-American in there.” It applies a lot to the whole non-masculinity part of it, the bro culture and all that type of stuff that we deal with a lot of the same thing. We're also expected as Asians to be that quieter, “Don't say anything,” which is a lot of the same thing they say the expectation of women is. It was interesting to see that parallel being drawn. As I read the book or re-read the book with that different lens on it, I went, “This is interesting.”
It's true in so many things. Unfortunately, for a lot of men, they don't get the same topics that happen at a women's conference. I know I can be asked to talk about work-life balance in a general conference, and then the men were overwhelmed by it and what they need to do and so forth because it's not an acceptable topic. People think it's too soft and men need it just as much. To your point, these books, whether they're for talks or so forth, can be interpreted from your standpoint and how you use it for an inclusion purpose, not for one segment. It makes sense. What do you think is something that was a belief system that you brought in besides diversity and inclusion, which is very interesting? From growing up in Hawaii, it’s definitely being a smaller world and then expanding into the mainland. What was something that you had to let go of in that process?
At first, I thought I had to let go of Hawaii because I always felt it was going to be the stigma of like, “You're from the small town. You're from Hawaii.” In the end, I ended up embracing it a lot more, which is why I always introduce myself as coming from Hawaii. My firm is based out of Hawaii. I don't think I would ever give that up because the brand Hawaii and the Aloha spirit, those are what bring people so much joy, a part of it is that. As I traveled around speaking in different states, I also learned that beyond Hawaii is the small city, smaller town mentality where there's a lot more of community spirit that we're in this together. In this world, we're seeing more people are banding together and caring for each other compared to what I see in the larger cities where you’re fending for yourself. The smaller community is what's important. It's why it brought me back to the small businesses, the need to impact the community and make that difference. That's what is so important to drive us forward.
That's the thing with advisory is that you care beyond the numbers. It's a community, your family and your clients and not just the balance sheet, the profit and loss statement spitting out. There are struggles and fear behind each of those people that you're helping. Is there anything that you have had to change along the way once you started your own business of what you thought it was going to be and then anything you've had to pivot along the way?
I feel like we've been pivoting all the time. If I look at it on a personal level, it was letting go of stuff especially traveling. You go and pick up all these little souvenirs. I also enjoy retail therapy, so I would go and spend some money and grab clothes or whatever. For a while, I was traveling 60% of the time and it was, “What do I need?” I realized I could get part of what I needed into a suitcase because I had to do that for 4 or 5 weeks at a time. It started to become, “What was important? What did I need?” I stopped buying all the additional things. I stopped buying a lot of the little souvenirs because it was sitting on some shelf or still in the package back home and I wasn't even there.
You've shifted from a lot of cities as well of where you live. What's driven that change? Is it curiosity or was it having to do with the business opportunity? Why have you pivoted that way?
Usually it’s a business opportunity, but it's also because I believe in that need for that human connection and change. Being both in accounting and technology, a lot of times, people think you do whatever it is you do and you follow the rules or you write the procedures. To truly be effective especially at these business transformations, you have to address the human element and a lot of that is the face-to-face and the ability to talk, interact, to coach someone through the change and to be able to sit there and listen to them, which as much as I love these virtual ones, it's not the same as being in that room with that person and having those conversations.
That's what is so interesting, especially even before this and people might be getting the point, but we've been out there saying, “Technology does get in the way of human connection.” Now, everyone has been forced into technology. You can see that humans still need that connection, face-to-face, being together and a video screen is better than nothing, but it never takes away from that in-person connection that you have with people. What kind of things do you think that you, as a leader, with your team or your clients, are things that you try to help them with or mentor them based on the things that you've learned in your career?
The biggest one is to not react. That's for myself with something I had to learn too because when I started, I was your typical type-A personality and super achievement-driven. I was on top of everything. I was organized and structured. When something would happen, I was on it. I'm jumping on, I'm going to take care of it as well as a ‘let me go and run’ interference. I remember that on that big project. I had my manager come and he goes, “You can't quite approach it like that. Stop and take a breath before you send an email.” Learning to meditate and these types of presence techniques also help in that. I always stop and I'm like, “Am I reacting? Why am I feeling that way?” That’s for me to reassess and figure out what is going on, what am I reacting to? Is that a good reaction? Is that going to help me achieve what I want to achieve? That's one of the biggest things. With Zoom background, I always feel like for my clients, I need to be that common piece. That's what I bring into the room, whether it's a meeting or whether we're doing a one-on-one because I'm there to help address the feeling, not necessarily their feelings. I'm not a therapist but I do think of myself as a coach of like, “I see what you're saying. Let's break that apart and understand what's going on in this business context.”
When did you start meditating?
I'm going to say that was probably in 2014.
Why did you start?
Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday
A friend of mine introduced me to it. She gave me a book. I always thought of meditation as a thing and those people go and do it. They fall asleep half the time, I'm sure. She gave me one. The book was Peace Is Every Step. It was about walking meditation and how you need to make sure that you're incorporating even the thoughtful moment as you're going through your day or even as you're eating. Anyone that has seen my Facebook knows that I love eating, enjoy every bite and savor every bite and every flavor. It was about appreciating a lot of everything a lot more.
In our teacher training, we have them do a homework assignment where they have to eat an orange but it has to take an hour.
I don't know if I could do that.
That's always interesting getting the results back and also how fast we typically eat and we're not that hungry. You fill up faster, you don't smell it and all the types of things. You will find then once you had the practice, that it helped you in dealing with your daily work stress and with your staff as well.
In this coaching role, you can take on a lot from others because they're coming and unloading on you emotionally and there's a certain amount of problem-solving that you're doing. I needed a way to be able to offload that at the end of every day is going in and listening to people complain or cry on your shoulder. That can be emotionally draining too. Having that meditation to let go, and the shower meditation is one that I often recommend to others. At the end of the day, when you're taking that shower to feel the water falling on you and say, “Wow.” Focus on the water and let the water take everything that you've accumulated through the day, wash it down the drain, take all that negativity and let it go. I found that helpful.
It's important because like you said, one of the things when people are dumping things, our first reaction is to solve when sometimes people don't want us to solve. They want to get it out and then you've got to find a way to get it out but you're helping just by being silent. It's a big skill to do that because you have to work on it. You have to practice it because it's not our natural human way to not respond and solve especially when you're a consultant or advisor, but you're serving them to allow them to get everything out so that you have all the information as well and how you want to help them going forward.
I found for a lot of those sessions that using one of my first questions, once they start to unload, it is like, “Are we problem solving here or are you just helping me understand?” It's not telling them like, “I’m letting you vent. What are we trying to do?”
I like to ask you a couple of quick-fire questions and you pick a category. Family and friends, money, spiritual or health?
Let’s do family and friends.
Things or actions that I don't have that I want?
For me with my travel, I miss that family time. Growing up in Hawaii, it is a very family-focused environment. Every Sunday, we would go to my grandparents’ house. It wasn't just us, at least 1 or 2 other aunts and uncles. That was always that family time. I do miss that. I'm here with my brother and his family. My sister-in-law, my niece and nephew, we do that once in a while. That's nice but I do miss having that consistency of family interaction.
Things or actions that I do have that I want? You might have answered part of that since you've got your brother near you.
It's also friends. I was anti-social media when it first came out. I realized that it was a way to stay in contact with friends, not just my close friends but all of my accounting CPA friends and people that I meet. Using Facebook to bridge that gap and stay abreast of what everyone's doing. I use it like that now.
Things or actions that I don't have that I don't want with my family and friends?
When my grandmother passed away, I realized how lucky we were as a family because we all got along. I had seen how other families started fighting about what's going to happen and who got what. That was one of those that I was so thankful because my uncle and my dad all got along. They all agreed on stuff. It was easy for us to move forward as a family.
The last one, things or actions that I do have that I don't want?
One of the things I'm learning is the whole vulnerability piece. Even with family, being the oldest in my family and also the oldest grandchild, I always feel like I have to be in that position of strength, leading and not just in family life but in work life as well. Learning to show more of the emotion and the vulnerability around what's happening and sharing more. I'm also an introvert but you can't tell from this interview because we're talking a lot. Overcoming that and being able to be more open. Culturally as well, especially the male Japanese, they talk about this samurai male, which is strong and quiet. Growing up with that as the role model, that's the thing I'm trying to learn to let go of more. Be a little more vulnerable and show a little more emotion.
Social media helps with that too, where you can put stuff out there that you don't have to say to someone's face. I have seen your posts about the downturn in the businesses and that's hard. You become more human.
That was part of the value that I saw because I would never want to do that with a bunch of people. I would never want to have that conversation. That would be completely overwhelming even if it was 3 or 4 of my closest friends. To be able to put that out there and vent it and the show of support that came back was overwhelming and it made me feel like, “We can get through that.” That was a great lesson learned of like, “I want more of this.” Showing that vulnerability especially as a male, it's powerful and you can get that support that you need from others.
Learning Never Ends: Never stop learning more about yourself and your beliefs, including those that you have to break.
You realize you're not alone and everyone's got something. They might not show it but people are going through stuff. When you know there are other people going through similar stuff, you can help each other. Through a lot of the changes now even being transparent with my staff, having them come up with ideas and figure out how to help because everybody, in the end, wants you to succeed. You can't do it alone.
One of the most powerful things I thought from that was when we first introduced it internally, the staff that we were even furloughing came back and they were like, “Thank you for being so transparent, helping us understand and explaining not just the decision but what you're thinking behind the decision.” We shared a lot of that with them, then sharing that post out. It was interesting to see some of my clients are on Facebook. I saw inquiries from email come back on them and they said, “We saw the post. We want this project to move forward, how do we help move forward?”
This other client reached out and said, “I know we haven't been in touch, but what are our next steps?” We were waiting for them to get some stuff done so they followed up. I had others reach out on private messages that said, “We saw your posts. We're going through the same thing. We want to help you. How can we help you get your name out there more? We know that there are other clients that would love to work with you.” These are people that had groups. They were like, “Let's bring you on and introduce you to our group and see if we can help you get some stuff going.” The outpouring was helping.
Is there anything before we end our conversation that you want to make sure that people leave with or take away from what your belief systems are and how you've evolved over time?
It's an evolution. Even how I’ve shared that, I still feel like I'm developing and learning. Even though I started at 25 on my route, here I am and I still feel like I'm learning and evolving. It’s to never stop learning more about yourself and your beliefs, and what beliefs it is that you have to break.
Thank you so much, Donny, for being on and sharing your story. I'm sure people have a lot of good takeaways to take back into their world.
Thanks for having me. This was fun.
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For our Mindful Moments with this interview with Donny, to begin, it's important to reflect on where we came from. That is one thing Donny strung through this entire interview of how his Hawaiian roots were something that originally he thought he was going to have to let go of when he came into the Mainland and started to work with companies outside of Hawaii. He soon found that the community spirit and the small-town feeling is what created an experience and relationship with his clients and staff that was unique. Many times, we look at our past and think we need to shut it or might be thinking that there's a better background than what we have. It's important to look at what's great about us, how we were brought up and what things make us unique so that we can stand out from the people around us. If we all are offering the exact same thing and trying to go about business in the exact same way, our experiences are not differentiated.
That came through with the amount of support that he had from his parents, his grandparents and all the generations that he grew up with. Watching them thrive in other careers and how he was able to take that knowledge of education, bring it into that business side as well, and coming into technology and stringing it all together in his career. Many times, when I speak to college students in accounting or starting in their careers, they're looking at exactly what the next role is and how they begin. We all have to start somewhere. What's interesting when you watch people's journeys, whether it's the people I interview, my own and so forth, there are so many pivots along the way. As long as you're open to the opportunity and when you start realizing where your strengths are and your personality, which he did.
He saw that because of that community feeling, he knew how to build that into his business and his clients, but also he saw that he could go beyond his original job and take his skillsets in technology, accounting and turn them into something that made him excited. Whatever you do or wherever you graduate from, that's an important lesson. Go back and look at, “What is my expertise and how can I string that into what I want to do, but utilize these years and years of experience that I have and be able to differentiate myself because of it?” When we talked about his journey, he started talking about his pivot and understanding that he was very competitive, not that he's not a competitive person. To make the shift that he needed in his career, he had to start letting go of the small stuff and understanding in his personal life how to do that as well as his business life.
A lot of times, we look at those things separately, but if we aren't living our lives personally, the way that we want to live our life professionally, it's very hard to do either way that you'll feel satisfied. Getting to that point of being able to get to that element of understanding yourself, understanding how not to jump too quick, how to understand that if you're a driven person to stop and take a breath as he talked about. Part of what helped him get there was through meditation. When we talk about meditation, a lot of times, meditation can be a scary topic for many because we're alone with ourselves but it's a way to observe what's going on inside of us and understanding why we're feeling the way that we're feeling and be able to let it go.
That's what it's about. It's not about shutting down your brain and not thinking, it's observing how your brain works and what shifts that you can make so that you can feel calmer and peaceful no matter if you are at work or home. He had some great tips. One of them being a walking meditation and a shower meditation. Another important piece of that when we talk about building relationships and community was a couple of questions that he brought up. When he is talking to a client or coaching a client, a lot of times those clients don't want a solve, they just want to talk. They need to get it out of their system.
To make sure that you're delivering the value that somebody wants, he had two questions. The questions were, “Are we problem solving or are you helping me to understand?” That's a clear delineation so that we provide the value back that somebody wants, not what we think that person needs, but what they want out of the relationship with us. That is helpful when we go about trying to develop these advisory and consultative relationships. Being more proactive with our clients and customers that we think about what they want and how I can help them solve, so that they feel like they’ve got the value that they wanted from the relationship that they're in with me and that when they walk away, they feel that they are better for it.
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About Donny Shimamoto
Donny C. Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, is the founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC, a CPA firm focused on helping nonprofits, small businesses, and middle market organizations leverage strategic technologies, proactively manage their business and technical risks, and enable balanced organizational growth & development. Donny is an internationally recognized expert in emerging technologies, cybersecurity risk management, and organizational development. The recipient of numerous awards, he has also been named to the Top 25 Thought Leaders and Top 100 Influencers lists for the accounting profession for many years, and can be seen speaking and giving webinars around the US and internationally.
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