Speaker 1: 0:13

hey guys, john, back to my host in Vegas. We're talking local sports business, real estate. If If you guys like me, subscribe, follow us on RonanFegasPodcast. Today we got a special guest, round two, damien Baumann, in the house.

Speaker 2: 0:33

Thank you for having me back. Thanks for being on here. I'm glad I didn't break the cameras last time I was here.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Thank, God, me too. So yeah, well, I'm excited to have you on. Last time we wrapped, we got to nerd out, because I love sports. We talked a lot about Nebraska football, so I thought we could talk a little bit. Nebraska's got Michigan.

Speaker 2: 0:50

How are you feeling about it? I was going to go back for the game and there's going to be a lot of people going back for the game because they were reunion. Yeah, and it's going to be a tough one, man it as a Nebraska fan. Every year you start out super optimistic and it seems like the last couple of decades the optimism fades. I hope the optimism doesn't fade after Michigan. I think I'll just leave it at that.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Okay, are you guys at home or are you in Michigan? We're at home. You're at home. Are you going to go back? I decided not to.

Speaker 2: 1:17

Oh, okay, that would have been cool. Yeah, I think if I go catch a game this year, I'm going to try and make it easy. They play out in UCLA.

Speaker 1: 1:27

So I'll go watch and beat up on the team. Yeah, get a guaranteed win In the Big Ten. Yeah, yeah, ucla's been rough this year. I went to the UNLV game and I thought like, oh, big win. And then they got like trounced by New Mexico.

Speaker 2: 1:36

So I'm like, hmm, that wasn't that big of a yeah and what? They just fired their coach too. They fired their coach. The best part about that is and my wife? I like to think that she knows football better than like most male football fans.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Yeah, because she's been stuck watching with me for so long. Yeah, she, we're watching the game. She's like why hasn't this guy been fired yet? Oh, and then he got fired within 24 hours. So she called it, called it. Yeah, um, like on-screen referee, like whenever something, whenever a flag's called, they have to go back and review it. She's the one who's trying to call it every time, like that's her specialty.

Speaker 1: 2:09

So, yeah, it's fun oh, that's fun, I love that. Yeah, I started, uh, fantasy football with my wife, and now she's like in it. You know, the best part, though, is we have like one of the best teams, but then, like, when a player goes off we don't have, it should be like why did you draft that guy?

Speaker 1: 2:25

because we didn't yeah because I don't have a crystal ball, right, yeah, but uh, yeah, okay, well, excited to have me on, let's, let's dive in. I know we talked sports last time, like what's new? I haven't seen you in nine. Well, I've seen you in the office, but we haven't like really wrapped. Like tell me what's new in your world in the last nine months, because you're not only a sports guy, you're you're a super successful man. So I'd like to hear about your projects you're working on and you know, if you want to, dive into it a little bit, yeah, so.

Speaker 2: 2:54

So last time we talked I think we talked a little bit about fortune events, yeah, which is which is exciting. It's our catering company. Um, we've seen business pick up quite a bit. We just had our one-year anniversary here at the beginning of the month. So our first employee her one-year anniversary was a couple of days ago Nina so exciting to watch that company grow.

Speaker 2: 3:16

We're going to be back at it again with F1. So it looks like we finalized everything with Gordon's Garage, like we did last year, which is one of the reasons why we built the company. And then there's a couple of other things with F1 that we haven't finalized. But we might have another couple of projects going on that weekend, which is exciting. Wow, congrats, yeah, thanks.

Speaker 2: 3:36

We're picking up a couple of different festivals. We've done lots of in-home dinners, we've done birthday parties, we've done weddings, we've done all sorts of stuff, and I kind of go back. I think I might've mentioned this before. Really, the brainchild behind what we're doing there is Chef Gary LaMorte. He's worked with some of the best chefs in Las Vegas, has an extensive resume, his passion and creativity for what they do in that kitchen. It kind of carries throughout everybody. Um, and it's just, it's, it's exciting. Um, whenever you talk to him about food, he has a passion for food, probably just like your passion and my passion for football. Oh, there you go and and you know, and and it's one of those things when you have a conversation with somebody who knows something a lot more than you do, yeah, you just sit there in awe and listen to them speak, and that's how I feel when I talk with Gary.

Speaker 1: 4:27

Oh wow, that's great. That's a huge advantage. So he's not even working, he's just loving and enjoying it, right yeah?

Speaker 2: 4:33

So for him, it's his happy space in the kitchen. And since then, one of the things we didn't talk about is we launched the 64. So, as of I believe, let's see, two days ago okay, we hit our fifth month anniversary. So what the 64 is? It's an online tournament hosting platform. So it's it's a spin on the best of.

Speaker 2: 4:54

So, if you're in Las Vegas, you've got the best of Vegas, the best of Las Vegas, whether it's the weekly or if it's a review journal, every community has something like, and we thought there was a better way to do it. We thought that maybe voting wasn't so good. Certain people are winning things. It shouldn't In some cases.

Speaker 2: 5:13

Some people say it's a bit of a play on trying to get money out of the contestants to get them to buy into what you're doing. The way that we do it, it's free to vote, free to compete as a contestant oh cool. So I mean, we give away prizes too throughout this thing. So somebody goes and votes, you give your opinion, you win some prizes. You've got an opportunity to win something just for giving your opinion as a contestant. We look at it as a platform where a high tide raises all boats. So let's say, for example, we had a pizza tournament in Las Vegas which went really well. But let's just take two fictitious companies. Let's say you have Bob's Pizza. I mean, obviously Bob loves his customers. He wants to be very protective of them. But you take 64 pizza restaurants, you put them in a March Madness-style bracket and they've got to work their way through six rounds to get to a championship.

Speaker 2: 6:01

So if you have Bob's on one side, Mary's Pizza on the other.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Now I understand the number Exactly.

Speaker 2: 6:06

That's clever. So you have them compete against each other and what might happen is, even if they love Bob's Pizza, they're not eating there seven days a week. They might go try Mary's and maybe one of Mary's customers tries Bob's. They're going to be loyal, they're still going to come back. But it's an opportunity to see some cross-pollinization of businesses in the community. You try to raise up awareness about some of these, in this case restaurants in the community.

Speaker 2: 6:31

We launched a tournament in Quad Cities it was actually Quad Cities Best Pizza, quad Cities and our chief marketing officer is from Quad Cities and he's been telling us for months he's like there's no such thing as Quad Cities Pizza, the taco pizza and all these different unique things about Quad City which I don't necessarily know that I bought in. But hey, we'll run with it. Dramatic success out there. The two restaurants that made it to the final, both very well-known pizza restaurants in town. His family still lives back there After Uncle Bill's was the winner. After Uncle Bill's won, his brother-in-law went in on a Friday just to pick up a pizza, like he does on most Fridays. He said it was standing room only.

Speaker 2: 7:13

So the fact that it brought in extra customers to go experience something that was crowned the best of the Quad Cities.

Speaker 1: 7:21

That's a great concept.

Speaker 2: 7:23

Yeah, and we feel good about helping out small business. My business partner, that's a great concept. Yeah, and we feel good about helping out small business. My business partner, that's great promotion.

Speaker 1: 7:29

yeah, so I have so many questions now. So, like round one, is it like a week? And then what's the breakdown? How does it work?

Speaker 2: 7:39

So the tournament lasts 18 days so you can vote. Voting launches at 9am Pacific time and it ends three days later at midnight, so then we have a little bit of a break there. We go scrub the votes, make sure that nothing goofy happened within the system we're really big on vote integrity and then we launch the next round and the next group passes through and if you go to the site, you click on any of the contestants and when I say tournaments, I'm talking a lot about food, but we had a best high school mascot tournament. We have a best online creator tournament. That's come out A lot of interesting things.

Speaker 2: 8:13

But you go, you click on something about the contestant. We've curated some information about them so you might get a bio that was written about any of these restaurants, get the history. Maybe they're willing to share some of their pictures, so you get some photography. So if you don't know something, you can learn a little bit more about it and maybe you end up. You know, I look at it like this Whenever I travel to a new town, I always try to find those best of lists.

Speaker 1: 8:36

And those are the places I try.

Speaker 2: 8:38

So our goal across the US is we want to be the source of that for when, when people are really trying to find the best of and we don't want it to be influenced by outside money, right, like if the the one of the most fun tournaments we've had to date was a best donut tournament. And is it in Vegas or is it out outside America's best donut? So it was amazing. We had the final two contestants. We had um, a contestant out of Alaska against a contestant who's just outside the suburb of St Louis, and to watch the groundswell of support rally around these two places as they made it all the way through, and even to see social media posts. After the fact, with the restaurant that won, somebody traveled from California and said hey, I heard you were the best donuts in America. Through the 64. Traveled from California just to try their donuts Wow. So again, if it lifts everybody up, we think it's great for all these communities.

Speaker 1: 9:36

That's great, that's cool. So is it all nationally, or do you like a 60-40 tournament in Vegas at all?

Speaker 2: 9:43

So if we look forward to our calendar for 2026, we're going to have something going in Las Vegas the whole year long. Okay, cool. We've done a good handful of tournaments in Las Vegas. We've tested other markets, too as well. We've done some things regionally. Another exciting one that we did we wanted to try and find the best barbecue in the US, so we built four tournaments Memphis, kansas City. We built Texas and the Carolinas and we just finished up those four tournaments. Then what we're going to do is we're going to take all the people who performed the best. We're going to put them in one national tournament. It's likely going to be launching next April.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Okay, You're going to do a Final Four or just the best of those markets?

Speaker 2: 10:23

We're going to take the top six team, put them in another 64 team bracket. We're going to seed everybody based on how they finished and we're going to let them fight it out. And again, I say fight it out. I get it. We don't necessarily want them competing, we do look at it. And if you want to use pizza as an example, there's not a finite size of the pizza. We're trying to make the pizza bigger so everybody gets a little bit bigger slice.

Speaker 1: 10:45

I get you. That's cool. So what is like for vegas space? Because I'm just curious now is there any like surprises of places you didn't know about, like that have won or have kind of you know, come up with these tournaments and and also what uh tournaments in vegas that are coming up that we should be aware of?

Speaker 2: 10:58

that we can, you know, vote on so an interesting one, and I'm not a sushi eater, but we have a best sushi sushi Las Vegas coming up here shortly. Um, currently we have our best tacos a Las Vegas, which is is exploding right now. Um, and again, I I'm a super picky eater, so this is kind of funny to even talk about this stuff, Cause I don't eat sushi. I didn't eat tacos until a few years ago. Um, with pizza, I'm a big pizza eater. If you can just tell I'm shaped like a pizza. But the funny thing is Dom DeMarco's, which is right across the street from our offices. They won. And when people ask me, they're like who's going to win? Who's your favorite? Well, my favorite is one vote, and everybody who works in our company it's one vote. We don't have any sway over who wins these things. Right, and it really is the people who are fans of these local restaurants and these individuals that are going in and showing their support to say that we think that they deserve to be crowned the best.

Speaker 1: 11:49

Yeah, that's so cool, all right, well, I got to check it out For sure. That's a really cool concept, especially like I love March Madness. So, yeah, especially like I love march madness, so it, yeah, it gets you excited and I'm I'm super curious is it posted like all the winners on the site too? I can go back and like, check out the mascot, all that stuff yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:07

So if you go in there and the mascot ones were interesting because we we had an east and a west tournament. We're going to launch our national tournament at the end of october, okay, but they all provide a video. So you get to see a video of all these mascots if you click down into each individual school. One of the reasons why we thought that was such a good one is it just helped build school spirit. I remember that kind of coming up through high school.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2: 12:30

It's just one more way to get engaged in your community, be proud of where you come from, be proud of your school and have everybody get involved. But you can go back in. There's an archive tournament section. So if you look at previously completed tournaments, you see everything that we've done to date.

Speaker 1: 12:43

Oh, I like that.

Speaker 2: 12:44

Go check it out.

Speaker 1: 12:45

That's cool. I'm going to check it out. So congrats to your company. It's been a little over a year now, so that's exciting. So what has been like? Because you're on here about nine months ago?

Speaker 2: 13:01

so it was been like the big challenges and the growth moments that you've had in this past year with it. Funny, you bring up challenges. Um, man, it things have changed so much. Okay, um, you know one of our graphic designers. He was. He came on with us really early. Phil, I love phil to death. He's like one of my favorite human beings on the planet. But we were just having a conversation last week.

Speaker 2: 13:19

Um, I think when we first started, we're my business partner was like one of his bonus rooms in his house, like a game room, sitting around a table and shortly, like we've grown and as you grow, I mean, if you look at where we started, back in April, I think we brought on our first employee.

Speaker 2: 13:35

If you count some of the people who work part-time with fortune events, we're probably somewhere over 50 employees right now. Yeah, um, every time, every month, creates a brand new challenge and it's one of the things that again, it's a challenge, but it's exciting because we talk about some of the things that we have to solve for right now. Yeah, and we go back nine months ago, 12 months ago, and think the things that we're solving for back then are simple compared to what we're solving for now, and as everything builds, there's about eight different companies, a couple of nonprofits in there. As everything builds, everything has, every day has its own unique set of challenges and it seems like every challenge the next month down the road just feels like it's that more impactful and that more important. Um so, like I hear challenge, I I hear excitement. It's how I'm wired, yeah same, but it's honestly, it's growth that's great.

Speaker 1: 14:30

It's funny how that works too. Right because you're right. Because if you look back a quarter, a year, whatever it is you think at that time like, oh man, how are we going to do this, whatever it is the industry, our team and everything. And then you look back like that wasn't really that bad. Now the next. So it's funny how the mind works right, yeah, and now you're doing f1, I mean you're, you're like yeah, it's, it's gone to another level, so that that's exciting, yeah, it's just.

Speaker 2: 14:52

You know you're always chasing the next milestone. Yeah, and and it's. It's interesting because we talk sports. I think, as an an athlete, you get wired that way. Yeah, yeah, you get wired to get to the end of the week where you play the game, the game ends, you enjoy it for about four hours, you take it in, you take a deep breath, you analyze where you're at and you start preparing for the next game. And even from season to season you do the same thing. You live in six-month cycles where now we're preparing to win a championship. You either win it or you don't win it. Then the off season starts and you're preparing to get ready for the next year. And it's these cycles that show up. They show up in athletics, but they show up in business too oh for sure.

Speaker 1: 15:30

Yeah, I like the parallels with it and that is the one thing I've gotten out of this pod. It's typically former athletes or military that are running their own business, or sales people that are running on a high level because they like that challenge. They're, they're used, they're okay with failing every day and keep moving forward. So, yeah, right on the nose. Yeah, so excellent. So what are your goals look like for the next year, five years with this company? Cause it's it's growing rapidly, you know. So tell me more about that.

Speaker 2: 15:59

So um is somebody who is remarkably fixated on goals. I'm going to be embarrassed to tell you that we have some pretty big aspirations but nothing's penciled out and and to explain that like, if you think about business planning, just just in general, most people get so fixated on the business plan. Business planning, just in general. Most people get so fixated on the business plan. Normally when you're in business for a month, the market's gonna tell you what direction you need to go. Your business plan was a great concept before you actually started operating. But once you operate, things change.

Speaker 2: 16:33

And I think with us, where we look at where we're a few years down the road with Fortune Events, obviously we're looking to be the premier catering experiential company for anybody who's looking for a high-end culinary experience in Las Vegas. For the 64, we want to be the premier voting platform. If somebody says the best of, we want to make sure that they think of the 64. We have other concepts to build out. So I think I've talked about the dynamic just in my business partner, justin Wu. He is the creative mind behind what we do. Every idea that we've come up with for the most part has come out of him, and I'm the one who has to find a way to make it work. I know for a fact we have five other concepts that we want to try and build out within the next two to three years. It's just a matter of having the capacity of doing it, because right now, we're a function of the people that we have in the office.

Speaker 2: 17:28

I'd like to think we built a great culture. I think we have a great group of people working with Fortune Cooking, the 64 and Fortune Events and all the spinoffs that we're doing. Uh, I wish we had twice as many people, because it feels like we could run twice as fast. But that's, that's the challenge of growth. You need to make sure it's measured growth. You don't want to go ahead and and grow too fast. Yeah, um, you know, the biggest thing that can harm a startup business is cash flow if you try to grow too fast. So it's a matter of weighing growth, um, you know, versus making a decision that kind of puts you over your skis.

Speaker 1: 18:04

Yeah, I, I liked you what you talked about too, like business planning as well, cause as much as we want to plan the next year, five years right, I think hit on knows it's it's it does depend on the market, cause I know, like at real estate, if you're not paying attention to that business plan, you kind of have to look at that monthly, quarterly and it does depend on the market and what you're going to do.

Speaker 1: 18:22

So spot on there, because most people they only do it once a year and got to keep looking at it. So but I love how you hit on culture, because it does seem like you guys have an awesome culture. I'd love to learn more about that. You know what makes it a great culture, you, as you know what makes it a great culture. You, as a leader, you know what do you guys do to build a great culture, because most businesses what I've seen that have the best culture tend to have the most success as well and, um, you know, at the end of the day, I think you want everybody bought in, but you you can't.

Speaker 2: 18:52

You can't force people to be bought in, right? Um, I think, as a leader, you you have to live the culture that you want to create. But it's not just your leader that creates the culture. Every single person that we bring on the team. They're going to shift the culture a little bit. So it's really our job to bring the right people on.

Speaker 2: 19:11

And the way that I look at my position within everything that we're doing, my job is to find great people that can do great things and find ways to get their problems out of their way. So people ask me when I made the transition from banking into entrepreneurship, they're like it must be so different. At the end of the day, it isn't really different. Every day you have problems that show up and they walk in your office. You have to find ways to solve them. So you know, I think I had a conversation with one of our team members earlier this week and we're talking about I made a comment that to treat everyone fairly, or treat everyone equally, you don't treat them the same right.

Speaker 2: 19:53

So, as a leader, you have to kind of realize. If somebody is let's say somebody is an analytical person, they might be a little bit introverted. If you try to coach them the same way you try to coach somebody who's extroverted and maybe creative, you're going to fail with one of the two. You have to make sure that you're working with people in the way that's going to make them the best version of what they can be while they're at the office and also at the end of the day, we just care about our people. They can be while they're at the office and also at the end of the day, we just care about our people. That's huge.

Speaker 2: 20:21

People feel that that's big. I mean, it's not just oh hey, how was your weekend? And as you answer, I'm just going to go ahead and start thinking about something else. We, honestly, we care, and the people who are leaders in the office, everybody kind of has that same perspective. I look at things in a way where I get it. We have titles and there's a hierarchy, yeah, but together we're all working towards the same goal.

Speaker 2: 20:47

And to tie this in to athletics right and football, just because we seem to be going back to it yeah, yes, a quarterback's important right. He's going to be the guy who's probably going to get interviewed after the game. But if you don't have the right-left tackle, you're not going to have a good quarterback. Yeah, at the going to have a good quarterback, yeah, at the end of the day, everybody's playing on the same team and you can have a great team, but if you don't have a great coach, if you don't have a great front office, the likelihood that you're going to be a championship team once, much less over and over again, is really low. Everybody has to pull their weight and move in the same direction.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Oh, for sure. Yeah, that office line gonna have it right, exactly cool. And I love how you talk about personality styles too, because that's such, especially being a leader in sales, it's such an important part, and I tell my agents all the time because the listing, presentation or however you're speaking to somebody, it doesn't matter what it is. It is different how you communicate, because people are different of how they're wired. So to have that emotional intelligence that you have, that's a huge thing and I kind of want your take too, because you were in baking. Now interest rates are coming down a little bit here. Any thoughts on the market and what you're seeing? I know you're kind of out of that now. You're in a different world, but you're a smart dude. I'm just curious what are you seeing in the market right now?

Speaker 2: 22:00

So I think and I'm not going to go ahead and say right now is the best time to buy, because I think you can spin data at any given point in time in history and say right now is the best time to buy I mean, if you need something, obviously it is the best time to buy. But what I think for the people who are waiting for the 2008 crash in prices to come back because they feel like prices are too high, I don't see it happening. I don't either. I mean, it really goes back to the economic law of supply and demand. Right Right now, there's an issue with inventory. There's still low inventory. If rates pull back down, what'll happen is you'll have some of those people who are sitting on homes that they thought they were gonna never sell. You shrink the rate between their current payment and their new payment and, all of a sudden, that delta between the two is like okay, maybe I could go move up. Well, when they go move up, that adds new inventory of the market. The problem is it's not just an increase in supply and demand. I think your demand comes up a little bit quicker, which ends up pulling up your prices, because now is some of that more entry-level inventory hits. Now you have somebody on the sidelines who isn't a homeowner, who's in the market, the person who's selling them that that house is in the market, buying another home. So you see a bit of a I actually think you probably see a little bit of an increase in prices.

Speaker 2: 23:12

So down back to is is now the right time to buy. I look at like this if you go buy a home, if you know prices are gonna go up, you can always refinance. People seem to forget that. I don't know that we'll ever get back to the 2-3% rate world. I think if you're waiting for that, you'll be waiting until you hit the grave. But if you look at historically where rates are at right now in the low sixes, high fives if you do a buy down, maybe you hit the fours. It's not a bad time.

Speaker 2: 23:41

And again, so long as you're doing it, you're doing it within your means. You're finding a new opportunity for yourself to either move up in housing or get into your first house. I think right now is a great time to do it. The people who, like myself, I'm sitting on an exceptional interest rate Rates are going to have to come down far enough before I'm incented to make that next move For sure. But it'll get there. It's going to happen because the things that naturally happen the course of somebody's life either they get married, they get divorced, the kids move out of the house, you get new kids and out of the house because you have new babies. Those types of things are going to happen no matter what. Yeah, and when those types of things happen, it creates opportunities for for somebody to move up, move out, or somebody else to move in yeah, I think you hit on the nose because we've been in Vegas here.

Speaker 1: 24:25

We've been in real estate recession now for three years. Sales were the lowest since 93. Looks like it's going to be 12 lower this year and prices went up. Yeah, so it only went up a point, so they've basically been flat. Right, they've gone up in the last three years median sales price of 425 to 485. But, um, the biggest thing for me that I've noticed is the market is stable here. Yeah, so it's a little silver lining to it, because when we were, you know, here 15, 20 years ago and the market was crashing because there was no real, you know, it was very surface level, you know, we didn't have the economy. There's so many more things here that are more established, so I think that's a little bit of the silver lining. Like that crash isn't happening in Vegas, you know. So I think that's a little bit of the win that has occurred through the last few years in real estate.

Speaker 2: 25:19

So I'll ask you a question about real estate Right now. What's the average time on market? I mean, how many months are we sitting with, with available three or four months, and what's balanced like if you were to?

Speaker 1: 25:32

say a balanced market, you would say it would have x amount of months of inventory. That that is traditional. I think you hit a ride in the nose right, where we were used to. The pandemic where everything sold in seconds and hours maybe days was a lot right. So now we're yeah, we're just back in a traditional. People have forgotten of those markets, right, and it is still a little bit slow. I think it's not necessarily a total traditional market we do but maybe with the rates coming down, I think there's a lot of uncertainty in all the markets where consumer confidence is down, but the rates are kind of in the area now where it makes sense for things to start moving again. So we'll see what happens. It's only been a week.

Speaker 2: 26:06

I think you hit the nail on the head with with balance, and that was the question of okay, if we have three months of inventory in the market, I think what a stable market is three to six months worth of inventory in the market. So right now we have a relatively stable market and yet people are looking at it like it's a negative thing, because you know not to bag on millennials or their perception on I want things now, because I want things now too. But I think even in the real estate market there's a lot of people who are spoiled by low interest rates and things flying off the market and there being a ton of inventory in the market. And if you look at it, it's actually relatively normal. And you've been in the industry for a while and I was tied to that industry a little more. We probably prayed every night can we just get normal again? Right, and now that we have normal, we don't know what to do.

Speaker 1: 26:51

yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think a lot of the new agents they're just, they don't know what to do. But if in the business for over seven years or 10 years, 15 years, you've seen it before, it's just you got to be a little bit more patient, you got to grind a little bit more. But it's good because the the people that are grinding, they take more market share. The people that are not, they leave the market. So that's all good. Before I get you to go here, can we talk a little bit of vegas justice league?

Speaker 2: 27:17

yeah, sure, okay, cool. So, uh, vegas justice league, where this started again, uh, justin wu and his wife l Lydia they're very philanthropic want to give back and they actually started with a nonprofit called Vegas Helps and it was meant to do small acts of kindness and Justin just happened to be looking into. He's a tech guy at heart, right? Not only is he creative, he's a tech guy. He was looking into DNA research and cold cases and he saw that somebody was trying to raise money to do DNA testing to test for I can't remember exactly what it was for, but somebody who either went missing or had passed away and they were trying to get to the bottom of it. So he pointed up the money himself and what that turned into with Vegas Justice League is kind of our local arm of Project Justice.

Speaker 2: 28:03

Fast forward. Project Justice has solved 50 cold cases. Vegas Justice League, being the local arm, has solved nine. So, whether it's missing persons or whether it's people who passed away, I mean personally, I showed up to one of the press conferences at Metro and had a family travel in from out of state and talk about being a little bit more at ease finally getting some of the answers to what happened to their sister 30 years prior, unbelievably touching, like really powerful. But it's just one of those things where we're trying to impact the local markets, that we're in the local community and this is just one way to get back. We try not to talk in terms of closure because at the end of the day, when you lose a loved one, I don't know that anybody ever finds true closure, but there might be a little bit of solace found in the fact that at least they know what happened and they can try and live the next day a little bit better than the day before.

Speaker 1: 29:06

Wow, that's a great uh cause, so cool. Well, I appreciate you being on man. Time always goes quick with you. So, uh, round twos in the books. Thank you very much. They're bound in the house. Guys are running Vegas. Take care of yourselves today you.