Get to Know Very[Si]

 

Sammy Hager: [00:00:00] Our first, I, I call it a convo cast, cause we were just talking, we're just talking, but why are we talking? What, what is this whole like, what is this little conglomerate here? What is it?

April Cardenas: Cause every, I don't know, like

Sammy Hager: what is it called?

April Cardenas: A convo.

Sammy Hager: Verysi.

April Cardenas: Oh, Verysi you mean? Oh, I thought you were talking about the convo. what's the question?

Sammy Hager: What, why, why, why are we, why are we organizing this? Why are we organizing here tonight?

April Cardenas: Well, we kind of wanna start a dialogue and introduce ourselves, to, um, and just, you know, well,

Sammy Hager: who are you?

April Cardenas: I hope you know me. I come on. I'm April. And, I'm a buyer.

So we started. You know, I, well, I've always wanted to, you know, be part of something bigger than just, you know, like to work for someone else's company or to just [00:01:00] buy stuff, you know, I wanted to,

Sammy Hager: okay. What is a buyer actually?

April Cardenas: What is a buyer? That's a good question

Sammy Hager: you're a professional shopper

April Cardenas: yeah, basically, basically.

Sammy Hager: Now you do a lot more than that basically,

April Cardenas: but yeah, it sounds super fun, but it's neat. Really hard. It's just, it's mostly about making connections with vendors. If it's for, with vendors, you've gotta make human connect. Because if you don't have that trust, mm-hmm, they, I mean, your suppliers are kind of, you know, part of your company.

If they fail you, the whole product fails, you know, the chain has to be

settled.

So when you're working for a company, they're trying to make a product like a watch or something, and maybe they need the band for the watch. So you go out and find you source the band you source, depends. You know, if they want the band already made or already produced a certain color or certain whatever, or if they want something custom made

Sammy Hager: or maybe just the raw materials.

April Cardenas: Exactly. That's when you, that's, when you get the raw materials, etcetera, in terms of [00:02:00] like specifically what they want. So that's how you got it too. You gotta just dig in and, you know, reach out to people. Connect.

Sammy Hager: We'll come back to that later. There's a thread there about your ability to go find really hard things.

April Cardenas: Yeah.

Sammy Hager: But also you get really, you get really, really good deals.

April Cardenas: Well, I think you just need to know how to like, Hey, create a win-win, you know what I mean?

Sammy Hager: Chicilpeta

April Cardenas: Chicileta. Yeah. That too, that too, you guys throw it out there for the deal, you know, like, you know, go see if it works to your point. The relationship was actually really important to the negotiation to the prices, to how far they're willing to go for you, the trust as well. You know, the trust because there's always, I mean, they would, they are giving me their time, their attention and their labor. And I, um, I gotta pay them. Yeah. You know, with, and I gotta be attentive that they're actually giving us or sending us. Like the, the materials that we actually need in terms of quality, quantity, [00:03:00] whatever. Right. And also if they do not trust me, it would be so difficult to like maintain something that would work.

Sammy Hager: How do you develop trust with them?

April Cardenas: You gotta meet them. It's same as hiring someone. I mean, that's the way I see it you know?

Sammy Hager: How do you mean somebody in China though that you're working with?

April Cardenas: Zoom. You gotta, you know, you gotta like ask, you gotta like. introduce yourself, who you are, who you work for, what kind of negotiator are you? Are you gonna be all hands on or are you just gonna be like, you know, more like, you know, I'll give you the, the order or not like you gotta be on top and they gotta be as if they were your colleagues.

They are your colleagues actually. So you work with them every day. You check out one day, you gotta follow up, you gotta follow up, you gotta follow up. So, you know, sometimes this is there, your colleagues, I mean, you work with them every day. They. it just naturally happens if you're open to it, our relationship starts , you know, and [00:04:00] even maybe a friendship, you know, after a while I've got a bunch of friends who are vendors, because I don't know, like when I started in LA, I was there every day.

It's very much a relationship based economy

It's the ones is the people that I would see every day. I would have lunch with them. I mean, how's your family, you know, I wanna know about you. So when you develop or know a little bit more about the actual person, the actual human. behind the name of their position, you know, uh, vendor supplier, whatever it is, you kind of get to understand a little bit more of why they do the, the things they do, why they are or why they are, where they are right now.

What brought them there and what they want. So, and they know about you, so you kind. it's the same that as in a normal relationship, I guess.

Sammy Hager: So you're talking about, this is actually interesting. You're talking about what you do, but how does that relate to who you are? Because those are, they're actually highly [00:05:00] correlated. I think,

April Cardenas: well, I think so. I mean, that's a good question.

Sammy Hager: Like if somebody asks, who are you, what are you about? What do you, how do you answer that?

April Cardenas: Who am I? Ooh, that's a very difficult. question, I don't,

Sammy Hager: we could probably actually do it better for each other than we would be able to, to tell me little, all I think.

So do you want me to do it for you?

April Cardenas: Okay. Wait, I think I'll say it and then you gotta correct me. Okay. Cause it might be, it might be fun to see it that way.

Sammy Hager: All let's see.

April Cardenas: Okay. So I think I am, I don't know. I consider myself a pretty simple human, you know, um,

Sammy Hager: False

Trevor Christiansen: Wrong off the bat

Sammy Hager: I consider myself a very complicated human apparently.

Trevor Christiansen: you're an onion.

April Cardenas: I'm an onion. Yes.

Sammy Hager: I think you have layers,

April Cardenas: but also I think we are, all humans are complicated. We are all very complex, you know, in our own ways. It's not that we are complicated. It. There's complications when we try and understand each other, cause we're [00:06:00] all so different.

Sammy Hager: I think maybe better said is that you are made happily with simple things.

April Cardenas: Yeah. I think I don't really happy with simple things. Yeah, exactly. I don't think I need much to be like happy. What mostly fills me up. It's actually human interaction always.

Sammy Hager: Oh you mean like all those relationships you have with vendors and the ones you have lunch with and everything I

April Cardenas: I love, it's just, I love. listening to people. I love listening about their life. I mean, I think it has like a little bit to do with me, like before I became, I, you know, like studied business and everything. I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Yeah. You know, I love to know and go deep into why people are the way they are specifically and how to help them be better in terms when they're sad and when they're not feeling, you know, ,

Sammy Hager: which is a huge, huge, huge benefit for me as your fiance. it's awesome.

April Cardenas: Well, thank you some,

Sammy Hager: most of the time, I hope so. Most of the time. Yeah. Or maybe sometimes I feel little too seen,

April Cardenas: they say you do not. I [00:07:00] mean, they, people have actually said that having a mother or a father or whatever, like so close that it's like a psychologist or a psychiatrist might be like, stop, you know, stop. Like,

Sammy Hager: that would be tough

April Cardenas: seeing me like that way, you know? Yeah. And now I say me,

Sammy Hager: I mean, but I'm guilty,

April Cardenas: of course, I guess we all do it

Sammy Hager: Certainly guilty of being a little too, like observer,

Trevor Christiansen: what's going on.

Sammy Hager: Where's that come from? Yeah. And without giving you the space to kind of like figure it out. Yeah. Okay. So Trevy,

Trevor Christiansen: what was the question again?

Sammy Hager: Who are you?

Trevor Christiansen: Who am I?

Sammy Hager: Who are you? How it's funny because, okay. April initially started describing , what she does professionally in that context, which is gonna be really interesting cause this whole VERYSI project is actually about a melding. Of everything that we are, that we are, and the community that we want to build. So interesting that you, so if, if someone were to ask you is like, who are you? How do you answer that? Which is a really bad question by the way. And that was intentional. I know it's a bad question, [00:08:00] but I want to ask it because it is, it's telling of like how you want to, you know,

April Cardenas: How do you see yourself.

Trevor Christiansen: Yeah. Who am I? Um, I I'm a person that

Sammy Hager: resident fungi,

Trevor Christiansen: just like, I think, I think, and this is where all three of us even resonate with each other on like, we want to make people feel comfortable. Like we really strive to, you know, in the interactions that we have to on having that kind of, that comfortability with, with anybody that we're, that we're interacting with. Um, I think I'm a nice guy. Uh, sometimes to a fault.

Sammy Hager: It has backfired.

Trevor Christiansen: It has backfired

Sammy Hager: We may actually talk about that at some point.

April Cardenas: Goodness,

Trevor Christiansen: ,I like to make people laugh. Um, I, I could consider myself kind of a, a goofball to some extent.

April Cardenas: Um, just a little bit,

Trevor Christiansen: just a little bit.

April Cardenas: I mean, just elf on the shelf, you know, costume made it for me. ,

Trevor Christiansen: as of lately. Uh, I, well, not as, as of lately, but I feel like I am a, a creative, it's just, I think I haven't [00:09:00] necessarily, uh, scratched that muscle a lot within the last, you know, 10 years, at least like maybe in a professional way. Mm-hmm um, I think it's always been there in some way, shape or form, whether it's like, you know, creating something, um, whether it's a costume or whether it's a video or whether it's, you know, some piece of art or something like that. I think I've always. Been drawn to that, but I've never, I don't think had the discipline to sit down there and pursue that as like a long term thing.

Sammy Hager: Interesting.

Trevor Christiansen: Um, but yeah, I think that's,

Sammy Hager: do you think, why do you think you haven't pursued like a created like creativity as a career?

Trevor Christiansen: Honestly, I think a part of it's just because when you're, when you're doing a career that you, you, you most are like, no, how, I wanna phrase this when you're doing a career that maybe doesn't fulfill you. I think sometimes drains you at the same time. Mm-hmm and then you don't maybe end up doing those things outside of your, your work.

Sammy Hager: So you don't want to turn your hobby or passion into a career [00:10:00] because it might actually drain you of

Trevor Christiansen: not necessarily. No, I'm talking about more. So like when, when you're just doing like a job that maybe isn't creative, it kind of starts to stifle that.

And then you don't,

Sammy Hager: it's actually in, it's actually working against you.

Trevor Christiansen: Yeah.

So you don't, I think if you're, if you think if your career was a creative job, I think you'd probably do more creative things outside of it. Um, or at least I would, I feel like,

Sammy Hager: well, um, this whole kind of experiment is about giving us a venue to do things we love with people we love. Right. So, in, in, so the project is VERYSI and I wanna talk a little bit about, like, what does VERYSI actually mean so if you break down the word, originally, this word came from verisi and we spelled it as in veri-si- as in very yes. Which is how April heard it, not how I intended it at all, but actually worked out really, really well because, uh, I would say probably seven, eight years ago, I was in New York city and I was raising funds for a small startup there. And I recognize even [00:11:00] then how. just how every piece of news and fact that we, that, or every piece of news that came in front of us had some kind of angle mm-hmm it was coming from that filter we talked about a little bit earlier. Like there was always some kind of ulterior motive or some kind of slant, because how can you separate it, right from your own personal intention

Trevor Christiansen: Tough to find objective, right?

Sammy Hager: Like there's very little objectivity. And so my idea was that we would create a new site kind of like quora, where the best answers come to the top or Reddit, you know, where you actually vote the best answers to the top. And instead of voting to the top, maybe you have that, but you also vote side to side to show which side of the issue, this particular piece of information falls on in support or in, you know, contrast to. And so the word that I stumbled across was verisimilitude. And if you break that word down into its parts, Vera, or [00:12:00] verisi was truth, vera. It it's a root in Latin. That is you see every

April Cardenas: Verdad

Sammy Hager: Si, Spanish. verdad right. That is truth. And similitude is actually similar to, or too mimic. And so you are literally verisimilitude is actually too mimic truth or to try to approach truth. And you hear this in literary terms a lot. Mm-hmm around. How somebody might raise a literary convention in, in how close are you to approaching truth. And the reality is in what you realize very quickly is that you're never actually seeing objective truth in the world. Everything we do in art in news and information is an approach to truth. Only the universe and God in nature, art truth. True. Right? Or however you want to package that mm-hmm right. We are truth. Your cells are truth, but like everything humans create is one step away from truth. And so you try to be as close as you possibly. so we adapted that word. As we were talking [00:13:00] about this, what we really wanted to, to help people do was see things clearly, see things clearly. And that requires a whole like yeah. Whole adventure into how we see the world. You know, what's in front of us. What is, what are actually the true north parameters to you? How do you navigate the world and know what is true? Mm-hmm like, what are you seeking? What you know is happiness. The ultimate outcome mm-hmm is security, safety, you know, and this gets,

Trevor Christiansen: and it's different for everybody, right?

Sammy Hager: Yeah. It's different for everybody. But ultimately what it came back to was we wanted to be true to ourselves. Mm-hmm and VERYSI

Trevor Christiansen: authentic

Sammy Hager: is actually kind of the, it, it, it, what is what developed naturally naturally organically with us realizing that first of. we wanted to play long term games with long term people. So I mean, we're in it for the long haul. Travis and I [00:14:00] have been friends for years and years, and we actually bought this house together, which we'll talk a little bit about. So, um, so we're in it for the long haul as well. Um, but

Trevor Christiansen: we we're stuck with each other.

Sammy Hager: Like we wanted to work on things with people we loved over a very long time and playing games that have no end because ultimately as you get to a certain age, you recognize, like you can either play by everybody else's rules,

April Cardenas: right.

Sammy Hager: Or you can start to create

April Cardenas: Your own

Sammy Hager: and try and try to actually be true to yourself, to your authentic self, about what rules are you following mm-hmm stated or unstated, right. Literal or figurative present, or very, very like subconsciously there.

And a lot of those are cultural rules. Mm-hmm and all these other things that we'll talk. So this VERYSI, this project was a way for us to do that. Mm-hmm,

April Cardenas: exactly,

Sammy Hager: there's quite a bit of things that are gonna be related to this. So I want to get, and we're gonna talk a [00:15:00] little bit about, like, what is VERYSI where are we starting? But that's the, that's actually kind of the backstory behind the name. So when I first wrote VEREE I wrote it V E R I S I as just a straight derivative of very milit. And then when April wrote it, she wrote it V E R Y S I mm-hmm . And it was. Huh, that makes a ton of sense because we're gonna do a bunch of things with very, you know, VERY[REAL], VERY[POD] very

April Cardenas: honestly. It's when I, even, when, when I heard the word, um, verisimilitude to from you, I even just, it's just, I can't help, but translate a lot of things in my head.

Sammy Hager: Right.

April Cardenas: So for me, very is "muy" and then similitude, very, yes, similar, like. Like mucho similitude, muy similar, verisimilitude, yeah. muy similar that's it. So I was like very si.

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Trevor Christiansen: It was very serendipitous there,

Sammy Hager: there were a whole bunch of double meanings that we didn't even [00:16:00] recognize right away. And I thought it was kind of cool because it actually developed into the exact thing that we hoped it would be. And you're actually seeing, this is the very first time we've really talked how that came together and why?

April Cardenas: Well, I actually didn't know until a while after.

Sammy Hager: Right.

April Cardenas: But oh, it isn't with a "y". I didn't know that.

Trevor Christiansen: Yeah.

Sammy Hager: So there is some intention behind it, about the root of the word, where it comes from, what it meant to us and helping people see things clearly. Um, and I think that's, uh, that very much summarizes VERYSI and what we're trying to do.