hello everybody welcome back to the future my name is bud i am chief of staff at exfusion.io i'm co-host of the few show i am excited to be joined today by my guest rory kataya rory is founder and ceo of verb technology he began his career as an attorney at a major new york city law firm representing world renowned entrepreneurs since then rory changed the telecom industry landscape through a tech company startup called telex he became a partner and entrepreneur in residence in a new york city-based private equity fund and then he and his team created virb and have reinvented what sales software applications should be in today's video-centric business and social environment rory it's great to have you on the show thanks for being on today bud thanks thanks happy to be here with you yeah hey so we have a lot to get into a lot to talk about um when it comes to verb and some other stuff that i'd like to get into today so we're just going to get right into it tell us what verb is to start off and why you started it well uh why i started maybe maybe we go there first um i had um [Music] a series of of successes luck uh in my prior endeavors after leaving the practice of law and um retired twice actually uh and the second time uh i had purchased a horse farm in virginia and thought i would kind of settle into that sort of uh somewhat more quiet lifestyle just didn't suit me uh at all and uh did give it a shot though and uh i had an idea for a new business and uh it was a a video centric uh business model and uh it was initially focused on the entertainment industry and um essentially disrupting how the audition process is done for people that that want to audition for tv shows and and and uh films where uh you you'd either have to really be in new york or you'd have to be in hollywood for that so we we created a a shopping mall based audition platform it was a really cool audition booth looked like something apple would have created and we were installing those and all of the shopping malls across the country and we created our own singing competition sold it to mtv and it was on the strength of that we launched the business and developed the the video technology and like all um entrepreneurs and i mean all every one of them you will pivot so if you're contemplating your your startup and you've got a great plan and you're excited about it uh and you've done your homework go go ahead but you must expect that at some point you're going to learn what you did not know before and you're going to pivot and so we had our pivot and we embraced uh the concept of taking our video technology and marrying that technology with with sales tools sales software and creating something entirely new something just exponentially more effective than any other sales tools that were in the market uh because you know we had going back several years now to the inception of the company recognized that um people really didn't want to read anything anymore they wanted to consume information by watching videos now this is before you had video on even social media before there was video on facebook and linkedin and the rest of the the social media networks so we were really early to it we saw that this is the trend that we thought would would continue to develop and of course today everything is video so just as we said it would be but we took it to the next level and uh our video is interactive so when a salesperson using our platform uh that subscribes to our platform they could take any existing video or they can just create a short video on their mobile device and add clickable interactive buttons right in the video for example hey guys i'm having a sale today on cars we're selling ferraris today five dollars a piece click right here to buy and i could send that out and uh yeah that's probably going to get a ton of attention but if it was just something ordinary uh if your interest level is peaked because that's something you're actually interested in you could just go ahead and click right on that button right in the video to complete the purchase and that is uh our clients are getting 600 to 1200 increases in conversion rates so that is our our business uh more recently we've introduced that same kind of shoppable clickable video but in a live stream live broadcast environment that's relatively new we call that that verb live and that was just released uh just a few months ago but that's really the hottest thing i think in in e-commerce and uh and shopping and sales right now we are at the forefront of it in this country uh it's exploded in china and throughout asia just starting here so we are really really fortunate really excited that we were in this early saw the opportunity early developed the technology had all the problems and all the setbacks that that you would have trying to develop any business but certainly in the software business so as as more and more companies are trying to come into the space now and we welcome that because it creates greater awareness that this kind of technology is even available that's helpful to us but we're we've already you know seen solved conquered the kinds of problems that other companies don't even know they're going to have yet so uh so we've got a terrific advantage and this is probably the most exciting time uh in the evolution of verb and we evolve literally every day but right now as we look uh to the balance of this year into next with uh with this new technology new platform very very exciting time for us and our shareholders yeah it sounds like an exciting time it it sounds like a product that um i mean just about anybody that wants to sell anything would be i mean just stoked to have i mean you're talking about this and i can think of of case you you know use case after use case um from social media influencers to you know say you're watching the super bowl and well i'm in colorado so let's say the broncos win which isn't going to be anytime soon right um but let's say the broncos win and instead of waiting until after you know after the uh the ceremony and the commercial comes on hey they just won the super bowl you can buy the shirt well how about that just pops up right there you can buy the shirt and the hat combo and just touch the screen is that a use case that you could use you better believe it and um and you mentioned sports uh sports teams sports franchises uh stadiums actually a vertical that we are uh we are just entering among many others uh and uh i would tell your your viewing audience stay tuned good news coming in in that vein you asked me about that good deal um yeah but yeah man i can just think of you know like i said social media influencers they they want to do a live feed and they can just be like okay well you're watching me and i want to sell this and i mean people are i mean we're just beings that hey that looks really cool yeah i want to buy that right now but if they if they don't have the chance to buy it right now then they're probably not going to buy it if you wait 10 minutes to try and sell it to them like intuitively uh you are a thousand percent correct and and it's backed up by by real data which shows that 80 percent of the people that are watching your video that are actually interested in your product or service if they have to leave that video to buy it you lose them 80 i mean it's like an extraordinary uh but that's uh but but that's real data so look we all all of us uh as human beings have this innate you know impulse buy propensity that's what drives most retail these days right check out counter at the supermarket we all know what that's like and why they line those those products up there right at the end um we all have that so we figured out how to take that that sensibility if you will and build it into sales software and create an entirely new new platform and a whole new paradigm and we're going to see that take over i believe e-commerce as we know it in this country and and beyond that's brilliant man good good job for ceiling seeing that and and uh pivoting pivoting to that how long how long were you in how long were you in the the business going to the malls before you actually pivoted to to doing this it was uh it was within the first year uh we um you know we we we made i made deals with every major moral owner operator in the country and show them what we were intending to do and and they all loved it because uh this was a way to bring people into the shopping mall uh who otherwise you know didn't have a reason to go there people who wanted to audition for a particular show now you could just you know go to your local shopping malls as opposed to you know like you remember the old days of of american idol you'd watch those first uh season openers and it was all about people leaving their friends their families their jobs uh their children uh driving the thousand miles standing on the rain for two days hoping to get a you know a brief opportunity to audition for an intern i mean uh what people would do what was crazy and the result is that uh the the the the people that uh ended up on the shows it was starting to get a little stale because there's only so many people that are willing to make that kind of sacrifice so the the um the shows and the casting people on the shows weren't really reaching um some extraordinary talent that that wasn't able to leave their job or their families by putting these audition booths and shopping malls where people could run over on their lunch hour um that was a game changer and in fact people that actually auditioned in in our uh in our audition booths was called be booth you know be seen be heard be booth it's very nice actually ended up on some of these shows so it was uh and some of them were incredibly talented people it was amazing so that was the uh that was the premise behind it but it was after the uh after the first year um we i mentioned we had a show we sold the temtv the show didn't air for a variety of reasons uh not having anything to do with our show just mtv's issues and um and that was kind of a setback and you know again if you're an entrepreneur and you're contemplating a new business opportunity trust me you're going to have setbacks you're going to have things happen that you absolutely did not expect and and that's generally you know what's behind the pivot plus there's market market changes uh you know consumer habits trends all kinds of things change and um what they teach you at business school for those those of you who go to business school um it's wrong because they're going to tell you stick to your plan you know stick to don't pay attention to what people are telling you stay focused stick to your plan you stick to your plan you're gonna fail you have to keep your eyes open and pay attention to what's going on pay attention to advice i'm not saying just jump at every every change in the weather uh be thoughtful uh seek out people that can give you you know advice uh and uh and ultimately you'll make your own decision when it's time to to change course but you will you'll have to and and so our our our time came after we no longer had the show realized that without the show um yeah we're going to do some some more auditions for american idol and you know when the next season comes up and some other shows but it's not going to be the big big billion dollar business that i set out to create so um sure to be great a great mom-and-pop business maybe it'll generate a million bucks a year or whatever it was but that's not what what i got back into came out of retirement to do i came out of retirement to build a multi-billion dollar business and that's what we're doing right now with burke yeah that's that's awesome um i want to stick with with verb live uh for just just a couple more minutes but there's there's so much more to verb than just verb life uh that i'd like to get into um but there's there's a way if i'm looking at this right there's a way for your your viewers on verb live also to be able to monetize this and am i correct in saying that yeah like they okay explain that a little bit today also so um when we when we created verb live uh in fact when you create any product you want to be very cognizant of the total addressable market some people just refer to it as the tam right and you want to know how many people uh would would want something like this how big is that and so you want to make sure that you're developing a product that has a large enough audience of consumers for it so for verb live the the audience uh consumers for that the total addressable market is pretty much everyone that you see making videos on social media youtube everywhere right and these are people that feel comfortable and confident in front of the camera people that feel comfortable uh articulating the value proposition feeling uh good about how they look and how they could present and sell something and obviously that's a gigantic market and that certainly supported our thesis to go ahead and and build this but um then we began thinking about well what about everybody else this is certainly a lot of people out there that could benefit from this kind of technology but they don't really like the way they they look on camera don't like where they sound they're not confident about about explaining what the opportunity is and why someone should buy uh their product or or service what about those people so um what we did is um in our application so if you're take for example corporate users we've got some huge you know billion dollar you know sales businesses global and scale that are using this right now um so a um a sales rep for for example one of those companies can go into the application and take a look at the upcoming verb live events that people and and uh and his or her company are doing and you know for example maybe i uh maybe i went and looked and i and i saw you at budget i mean you were you've got an event coming up next thursday at seven o'clock and uh i know that you're really great at this you're gonna kill it i like the product that you're promoting so what i could do is i can click on that event and i can generate an invitation personalized invitation for me that i can then send to everybody i know my entire contact list i'm going to send this this invitation out with a note from me saying you really want to go check out his his verb live event and uh if any of those people show up at your verb live event and purchase product i get paid uh or if it's something some other thing that you're promoting i'll get credit for it and that's how we've increased the total addressable market for this product exponentially from from just those people who feel good in front of the camera to basically everybody and in this day and age the pandemic and people out of work and people trying to figure out how to make ends meet uh that need that second or third income a great opportunity for people to be able to monetize their their contact list their friends and family so um that just launched and uh we have a much bigger grander version of this coming out as we get towards the end of the year here uh that i think people are gonna love and create a ton of value for ourselves and our shareholders nice nice all right so we've talked about verb life quite a bit but that's that's kind of just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to verb um you have verb crm and verb teams and and those are are can be kind of married to each other they can be on their own but they're they're married to each other a little bit you have verb male and verb learn um go ahead and talk about those a little bit um because i think it's all fascinating i think it's all great stuff like i'd like to say you thought of everything but i don't think you have i think that you are going to keep innovating here oh yeah we've we've got a bunch of surprises coming out that people are going to be pretty amazed about but i i am really really proud of the the suite of products and services that we have right now for anybody trying to sell anything uh small businesses large businesses so um starting with verb crm uh verb crm is a is a sales tool it's a crm that utilizes the interactive video capabilities that i talked about before so i could record that quick video or uh i could when i open the app it's already going to be pre-populated with videos that corporate wants us to use or or our sales department marketing managers whomever uh virb crm is a white labeled product which means that you'll go download it and it will look like your company created it it'll have all of your company's branding on it uh and this is a product for large uh corporate enterprise and most of our clients on verb crm are global and scale uh tens of thousands of cases even hundreds of thousands of sales reps around the world so that that's that's uh that's verb crm um you could add on to to verb crm as an add-on package verb live with attribution which is the name of that feature i described before where people can monetize their own decks uh and um and there's other really great upgrades that we we've added recently something called pulse which is kind of a augmented intelligence business intelligence uh sort of the precursor to our our artificial intelligence uh it's like a coach that is that is actually tracking and monitoring all of your interactions through the app with your prospects and your customers and then recommending to you the next best step to take to close that sale and it even provides you know pre-written uh kinds of messages to send or you know what kind of video maybe you want to send it's an extraordinary tool and uh so you could add these things to verb crm and as i said our customers are getting crazy crazy uh conversion rates for teams is is a very similar product but it's specifically geared to a solopreneur or small business but whereas verb crm uh you know you go through you know kind of a lengthy onboarding process where it's being customized with to make it look like you know your company's application with all the branding and everything else white labeled um and it has a uh you know a primary system administrator which will be will be responsible for you know uploading the videos to that will show up in everybody's platform and a lot of corporate messaging capabilities really an amazing tool for corporate communications with their with their teams whereas verb teams is really uh self onboarding you can go to the website and and download it upload your stuff you're in business you know immediately with with verb teams so that's that's the difference between those we have verb learn which is our learning management system and uh it's another sort of add-on so whether you're using teens or or crm this is a a video based gamified learning management system to train your employees uh we have customers that use it to educate their their their customers their consumers so it's a super powerful gamified platform for teaching anything in fact we are actually actively pitching the armed services of the united states and even some other countries who want to use this as a recruitment tool and as a training tool um really uh incredible opportunities that we're seeing for verb learn on a standalone basis um and uh and then of course you know we've got something that we've got called marketplace and verb tv that will be out at the end of the year these things are based upon our verb live technology so that think about any kind of entertainment any kind of uh content can be shoppable why not have pure entertainment become shoppable your favorite shows why shouldn't you be able to watch them and and click in them and and purchase the products that you see uh in that in that piece of content in that entertainment so um yeah you might have seen a press release a couple of days ago we've engaged dave meltzer uh as among others that are uh executive producing content specifically for verb tv that's entertainment content that is shoppable and then marketplace is where everyone from an influencer to big box stores consumer brands uh retailers uh can live stream their uh uh themselves and or or the influencers that they hired to do it promoting their products and services because you know people are doing most of their shopping now uh online people are not going to the malls like they used to not going to the stores like they used to this is an amazing way to create that sort of social fun shopping experience because when you when you attend a verb live session you're actually communicating in real time through the on-screen chat with other shoppers with other viewers uh talking about yeah i'm back again i was here last week i bought this i'm back to get another one from my mom communicate with the host can we see the back of that what other size is this coming what are the colors uh and then you're able to click right on the screen and and make your purchase and you see what everybody else is buying it's really a fun social experience this is the future of e-commerce and online shopping that we're introducing and that's happening now but really exciting times and that that sort of takes you through um everything that we've announced so far we've got some other things oh i should talk about verb now is uh is pursuant to a partnership with microsoft and we've taken that same ability to create uh an interactive video add those interactive elements click here to open my calendar to make an appointment with me click here to buy my product click here to download that contract we just spoke about and we we built that right into microsoft outlook so if you're an outlook user um you'll see a verb mail button in your toolbar you can click on that something slides out create your video or import an existing video or add your interactions to it click send it'll take that video and place it right in the email for you and you just fill out who you wanted to send it to and and go ahead and send it and then you'll get notified immediately as and when those uh those people you sent it to start watching it uh and that's the free version that's out right now people that uh have outlook should go to the microsoft store and go ahead and download it it's free it's fantastic it's fun people would much rather see you in a video um even use it with your friends and family it's it's it's a ton of fun uh we have the pro version of roadmap coming out in the next couple of weeks which is really for large enterprise that are subscribers to uh office 365 and this will be an add-on to that that will give everybody in the company the ability to do some amazing things with with video inside of outlook and um and we're expecting a pretty big win with that that same capability that we've done inside outlook we will be delivering that inside of gmail at the end of the year so we'll have both the google side of mail platforms as well as the microsoft side uh because we we believe at least what we've seen is that um that's pretty much you know where most business people live it's in one of those platforms they're they've got their outlook or their gmail open all day in there that's how they're communicating with with their teams or the rest of the world now they'll have the ability to create these kinds of videos uh whether they're sharing internally with their teams or they're sharing it externally and using it as a sales and marketing tool it's right there for them so microsoft tells us there's one billion outlook users so even a small percentage of that market it's a home run for us yeah absolutely well i i love what you have going on and and i i didn't get a chance to i mean look you know too deep into into what you had so i mean the more the more time i i spend looking at it i'm sure the more i i'd fall in love with it but i i think it's it's absolutely awesome platform and uh i'd say just just keep it up like i yeah no i think it's i think it's great so let let's talk about like you've been doing this since 2012. so you've seen some some pretty good times and then uh the pandemic hits right you have 200 employees now right that's correct how how did that affect you because you're in california and you're in utah so i'm guessing not everybody is remote i'm guessing you have a lot of people in house how did you how did you go about navigating that look first um i i want to make sure that i'm acknowledging the the people uh around the world certainly in in this country that suffered i mean truly suffered it lost lives lost relationships lost businesses uh lost livelihoods uh it was truly devastating and i don't want to in any way minimize that by anything that i might say and i say that intentionally because um our product is for remote selling it was designed for the ability to to sell without having to be face to face uh so when the pandemic hit was actually good for our business and i i you know that's why i feel almost guilty saying that but we grew rather rather dramatically through the pandemic um we did have everyone working remotely okay using our own tools to communicate with one another and with the outside world uh we actually called that eating our own chili which which sure we're not going to use it ourselves and why would we expect anybody else to use it and we and by using it ourselves by the way that's how we continue to refine it make it better and better but yeah we actually did pretty well uh during the pandemic and we implemented a lot of things that made uh that remote work environment that we all found ourselves in um palatable uh survivable uh for example um early on we we adopted um uh an interesting thing that we would do once a week in the middle of the day i think we started him on wednesdays where we would all get on a a live stream together the whole company and we would um hire a magician and we take an hour from our day at least we're all on together and we'd do something that was fun and entertaining entertaining and we did so many different things magician i think we may have done that once but you know every week there was something different so we all stayed connected and um in you know in a in a social way that you lose when you're all not in the same office together so we continue that you know even even through now you know we used to have um a summer outing and you know because of the pandemic and you know the the resurgence of the delta variant that we had because we were really looking forward to having our summer outing again uh we couldn't so we we held a virtual event just last week and we had a company-wide talent show this is my fantastic i mean first of all i was shocked at how many really truly talented people there are but uh you know beyond you know musical talent and those kinds of things um funny stuff i mean it was you know it was about an hour long and it was really amazing we recorded it and hopefully at some point we'll actually put that out and uh give people a sense of who we are here as a as a team as a culture here at uh adverb um but that's how we you know we we've gone through it and continue to get through it and morale is extraordinarily high for a whole bunch of reasons not just those things you know we've done other things we've moved to um unlimited time off you know it used to be where you know people would get a certain number of of days or weeks for a vacation uh and a lot of times people don't take it because they're committed to doing the job and then you know as you get towards the end of the year then there's there's people are concerned about losing it and they got to try and take a bunch of time off and and that's not always what's most convenient for everyone um so we said hey you know what don't worry about that anymore it's unlimited time off from now on just get it pre-approved with with your manager unless there's some reason that you you can't you know absolutely be out and then you go ahead and um people love that i mean people couldn't believe that we that we would even offer that and uh you know as we as we were thinking about it and doing it we um we were concerned of course maybe people might take advantage of it and it could be a bust for us but interestingly as it turned out um trust your people you know yeah they just don't do that and actually productivity went up um people have not abused it at all uh and uh so you know i can go on and on about some of the things that that we do uh for for our people because you know you don't have a company if you don't have anything if you don't have your people you have to really take care of them and uh because they are the company and um and that's um that's that's done really well for us and those are some of the ways that we've we've navigated through the pandemic very successfully yeah that's awesome so i i think your culture and our culture here at x fusion align very similarly so i mean unfortunately we can't offer um unlimited time off to everybody because our agents work for you know other companies and and just can't do that but anybody that's not client facing we offer the same thing and and we have found the same thing like we were you know a little bit afraid that people were gonna abuse that and they just don't they just don't but it's very nice to know that if you need the time off like you can go ahead and and go to the doctor when you need to go to the doctor exactly and you don't have to schedule it you know for a certain time off and you know like for me i'm going to my my best friend's son's wedding um next week and then going to san antonio with my wife the week after that and it's just have a great time yeah it's just not a thing yeah and and the doctor example that you just gave is for me is one of the big drivers for us adopting this i mean suppose you you don't have any more personal days left you've used them up and you really should get to a doctor and you don't because you don't want to lose the day's pay or you can't afford to lose the day's pay so you don't go or maybe it's something else family related that you don't do and that's just not healthy for anybody right and and that's not that's not who we are and that's not how we want to treat people so um so you're right this is i think i hope other companies adopt it too it's it's what we should be doing taking care of each other yeah i hope people listen to this and and kind of start having a paradigm shift because i i think people are afraid to put too much trust in their people because because they're afraid they're going to get taken advantage of but when you start trusting your people they will trust you back you're right and that's again do it it's really amazing when you treat your people well how well they treat you back just take it for what it's worth if you're listening to this give it a shot it's absolutely true yeah okay i i kind of want to take a pivot here um because we're already 36 minutes into this thing and the time has just flown by um for me but you said earlier that you came out of retirement because you want to build a multi-billion dollar business and you're on your way but i i don't think that you and you can correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think that you want to build a multi-billion dollar business because you want to be greedy and be a billionaire i think you have some philanthropic twists to that i i think that you want to build a multi-billion dollar business because you want to to be good and and give i can see that in some of your profile stuff i can just see that in in some of the um studying that i've done about you um am i am i wrong in saying that no you you're really not i'm very curious as to what you may have found in my background but uh no you're you're not wrong at all well let's i number one is is the the innocence um in danger okay um innocence and danger is is a a cause with children um in in sex trafficking and or or sex crimes and and child trafficking and that's really uh close to my heart and and the heart of um exfusion here uh i i am a foster parent i've been the foster parent of 35 children um jim one of our co-founders he used to be a detective and he was a detective for child sex crimes and we we want to put our money into stopping child sex crimes and child trafficking so we can start there um and i have a feeling that will probably take us the rest of the time um so tell me about that and tell me how you got involved in that and let's let's just talk about what that is so um it's going back uh many years now um i haven't been involved in the organization for some time but um i met uh an extraordinary person uh a woman uh her name is homema celie uh she's in europe based in europe she um was with the um united nations unesco project where uh she created this program uh to identify uh opportunities and ways to help and assist and rehabilitate and create programs for and rescue children who were victims of trafficking which is a problem that is so far beyond what i think the the average american even appreciates how vast that this problem is um and um so she left the united nations project and created her own foundation called innocence and dangers based in europe and i had i think this is probably around the time i had sold telex uh it was a company that uh telecom technology company that i i founded and sold it for uh time to do i had great great exit um and one of the things that i recognized early on is that you've got to give back you know you you've got to everyone has to do something because this world is not going to improve on its own and uh we can't we can't leave it up to uh politicians and world leaders and you know big corporations although some of them do some some really great things you can't do that we as individuals human beings you know members of the human race need to um take responsibility for uh not only the future that that we're leaving to our children but the present so um and you know as you're exposed to more things around the world this kind of philosophy begins to uh you know to resonate more with you and so he did with me i met her and um she talked to me about what she was doing and she talked to me about how the problem of child trafficking was so um grotesque and i guess is probably the best way to describe it that it wasn't popular it wasn't sexy it wasn't interesting and as a result she couldn't get um corporate sponsorship to help fund the programs that she was putting together people just kind of like oh i don't you know i don't know if i want to if i want to know about that or be involved with that or have our brands associated with it she had a difficult time with it um and um and she was funding a lot of the uh initiatives that that they had they were doing which was a lot incredible uh herself so i um i went to uh switzerland to start in switzerland uh to visit one of her uh rehabilitation camps one of the programs that she was running for these children and it was one of the most moving experiences i've ever had in my life watching what one person uh was able to put together and how many lives she was able to affect in such an incredibly positive way so i um offered to start the uh the us chapter of innocent innocence in danger and and i did uh but i had my own uh interesting little little twist on it um i did my own research and was looking for new and innovative ways because that's just how i think about everything and what i determined it was that uh equestrian therapy um where you have children who have been emotionally damaged in some way they somehow and i i can't explain it and i don't know if science is yet able to explain it but forces some sense that in a child and respond to the child and react to a child in a way that is so extraordinary to watch i i'm not sure i could really even explain it but it creates a bond between a child and a horse and over the course of even a week it allows a child to trust again because a child who has been abused trafficked what what is destroyed is their ability to trust right anything or anybody uh and that that drives them into a very dark place that there's all kinds of implications and we're applications some never recover from it but this kind of therapy helps re-establish that trust again in a way that i i don't know how or why but it's real i've seen it so i established equestrian caps uh we were running them out of uh vermont and we were identifying children that had this kind of horrible trauma in their lives and [Music] we would take these children and their therapist uh whoever was treating them and many times it was social workers uh to these camps and and we um uh i i funded it we did it for many years uh until someone else eventually took it over and um but i watched when i saw and um time after time you know the therapists and the people working with these children told us that they had seen breakthroughs in the treatment for these children that um happened as a result of that relationship with the horse that would never have happened or may never have happened or if it could it would have taken years and um so that was um yeah that was something that i i'm super proud of and and uh i um i look for other other things to do um hey adverb uh we we do things uh every week we you know for public companies now um you have uh uh nasdaq companies like us uh they have something called an esg score which is environment social and governance scores and a lot of investors now are only investing in companies that have a certain kind of uh level of esg score and and these are things that you undertake as an organization to further uh improve uh the environment and and and social issues and governance and um so we've done a ton of things we we are we've probably done far more uh because we embraced this so early as a company as a micro cap small cap company at nasdaq in fact nasdaq and we worked very closely with nasdaq when they first announced these kinds of initiatives we were all over it and uh so we worked closely with them and i'm told um just recently actually that uh nasdaq is going to use us as a as sort of a case study to show that doesn't make a difference if you're a trillion-dollar business uh any any companies could could uh really employ these kinds of initiatives to improve the world at large so i'm a big believer in that and i think we all need to uh look uh not just outside of what's going on but look inside of and think about what can we do to make it better and there are absolutely it's unlimited things that we can do especially when we come together to do these things and now then you can overcome everything yeah yeah i think that's the key come together right take take politics out take your thoughts on things out just come together and let's fix some stuff yeah let's let's all be accountable let's all take responsibility let's stop complaining that you know the government is not doing enough for us let's do it ourselves because you know we can look what's happening with with with the you know with space and and these um we're going to make extraordinary leaps and bounds by having moved the entire space initiative and interplanetary initiatives to the private sector watch watch what happens now that that hasn't happened in 30 years um it's um what we can do uh as as people it's americans it's we come together we can do anything so um yeah we just need to embrace that yep you're my kind of dude i like you all right we are running out of time you've got to stop here in just a couple minutes so i'm gonna i'm gonna ask my last couple questions the same questions i asked everybody that's on this um you answered this one kind of uh earlier early on in the show but i'm going to ask it because i think you probably add on to it what advice would you give to founders or soon to be founders that are going to watch this program yeah i guess i did kind of cover that um yeah you should expect to pivot and uh and plan for it as best you can uh always have your plan b ready to go um i think i haven't said yet that i i think it would be a good idea to to mention now think big think big it's so important people get it's so focused on on small and they look at everything small and and you know the world is has so many opportunities go for it i mean it's amazing people don't realize the opportunities that are out there and it doesn't make a difference what your background is doesn't make a difference what your education is none of that matters uh because there are so many people that would be willing to join you if you just shared your vision with them people that have the skills to do the things that you can't do um but think big because look you may not you know you may not you make it all the way up here but if you're shooting for this maybe you you end up here okay that's still pretty pretty damn good if you're shooting down here then man that's that's all you're gonna get to uh and you're gonna miss out on a lot that the world has to offer and uh so i would tell you think big if you've got a great idea for something think how big it can be where does it go next and um and shoot for that think think what where it goes next think forward yeah i think that's the best advice i can give be a visionary right on last question what is the best way for our viewers to get in touch with you if they so choose email me check me out on social my emails rory verb.tech
uh and you know i'm all over social so it's easy to find me right on rory kataya thank you for being on the show buddy it was a pleasure
2021-10-26