Vegas Circle

Frank Fertitta IV & Landon Gyulay Make History for Veterans at the AMAs with Easy Day Foundation

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What happens when two successful business leaders decide to channel their skills toward helping America's military veterans? Frank Fertitta IV and Landon Gyulay reveal the powerful story behind founding Easy Day Foundation, an organization determined to make every day easier for those who've served our country.

The name "Easy Day" comes from a Navy SEAL expression, but carries a deeper meaning. As Frank explains, "The easy days should be ahead for these guys, not behind them." This sentiment drives their mission to support veterans transitioning back to civilian life—a journey that's anything but easy for many who've served.

Both founders share deeply personal connections to military service through their WWII veteran grandfathers. Frank recounts how his grandfather bombed Berlin on his 21st birthday, while Landon reflects on growing up "as far away from enemy front lines as possible" thanks to others' sacrifice. These stories, combined with alarming statistics—17 veteran suicides daily and over 35,000 homeless veterans—compelled them to act.

Rather than duplicating existing services, Easy Day Foundation focuses on what these business minds do best: creating high-impact events that raise both awareness and substantial funds. Their partnership with the American Music Awards for a Memorial Day broadcast represents this strategy in action. Every dollar donated during the telecast will flow directly to their carefully selected partner organizations, creating a comprehensive support network for veterans.

"There are days when it's a huge pain to run a 501(c)(3)," Frank admits, "but then you meet someone like Lisa Hallett—a Gold Star widow raising three children after losing her husband on a humanitarian mission—and you remember exactly why we're doing this."

Want to make a difference in veterans' lives? Join the movement by watching the American Music Awards on May 26th, visiting easydayorg to donate, or following @EasyDayFoundation to learn how you can help ensure those who served have easier days ahead.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Vegas Circle Podcast with your hosts, paki and Chris. We are people who are passionate about business, success and culture, and this is our platform to showcase to people in our city who make it happen. On today's podcast, we've got two powerhouses that are combining purpose and business through a mission-driven organization that's making a real impact with our military veterans. Let's welcome to the Circle. Co-founders of Easy Day Foundation. We've got Mr Frank Fertitta IV and Mr Landon Goulet Welcome.

Speaker 3:

So good to have you guys in here, man, thank you for having us you guys have been nonstop man.

Speaker 1:

You guys are like on your probably ninth or tenth interview man making rounds in Vegas. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Made more sense to try and get it out of the way. That's good.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. How did you guys connect, how did this all form? Or how did you guys meet to?

Speaker 3:

form. Landon and I met. We both went to USC at the business school. What year did we graduate? 17, 2017. We met in 2014. We've just been buddies ever since. So it's been 11 years now. And about a year and a half ago, landon and I decided to start this foundation for veterans, founded it on Veterans Day of 2023. And ever since then, we've just been plugging away trying to make this happen.

Speaker 2:

What kind of prompted that idea to really, you know, make this the cause right? Obviously, we know it's a very important cause. It's something that a lot of people impacts a lot of people, but you know, obviously, what made you decide that this is where you wanted to put that attention I think you know, frankie and I have like different reasons.

Speaker 4:

Um, I think you know, for me, um, you know, growing up, grew up in southern california, grew up in orange county, you know, as far away from enemy front lines as I possibly could be, right, I think you know we've been super fortunate to grow up, um, you know, with no major conflicts, right, in the same way that you saw, in Vietnam or world war two, um, and for me, I, you know, had family that you know was in the military. My grandpa served in world war two, flew 20 missions, you know, joined when he was 19, you know. So, through his like very formative years, um, you know, served Um, and I think, like you, look back at that generation, the greatest generation, right, it's what they call it Um, it's certainly true in terms of what those people did. And you know, just like my, you know, the thing that resonated for me is I kind of always grew up feeling like I had some degree of a civic duty to do something, and so I think that was, like, you know, the big kind of jumping off point for me.

Speaker 3:

I don't know, frankie, for you, yeah, I think you should talk about your grandpa's 21st birthday.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, grandpa's 21st birthday. Yeah, yeah. So I mean I, I told him this story actually, you know, when my grandpa turned 21, on his 21st birthday.

Speaker 2:

He bombed berlin, oh wow, oh, that's a very different 21 year old that I had.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, exactly like I, huge sacrifice yeah, I learned all this as a kid reading his journals from World War II. He would write every single day.

Speaker 1:

They would send them. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

And like he had gotten married right before he got deployed. So when he was 19 years old, he got married and so he was sending back these journals to his wife. My grandma oh, wow, my grandma, um, and so, you know, 21st birthday got on a B-17 co-pilot, flew over from you know, the UK, across the channel, into Germany, you know, and flew back like a nine hour flight day, um, but these stories were like real as a kid and I, like, I remember vividly reading this and thinking you know, what was I doing at 21? Cause I certainly was not flying in an airplane, you know, doing the things that he was doing, right, like. My biggest concern on my 21st birthday was, like, you know, are we going to go and have fun out tonight, you know?

Speaker 4:

So it's like just a totally different scale, um, but I think for me it like it garnered some degree of civic duty to do something, and so you know, I think we both kind of have that um.

Speaker 3:

You obviously have your own reason too, but my grandpa was a fighter pilot also, but, um, when I was growing up, I was, I was very fortunate to be, uh, surrounded by a lot of guys that served in the seal teams and some other special forces units, and they told me a lot of different stories that you just wouldn't believe and, uh, so, you know, started doing some research on just you know, the like what happens to our veterans when they come home, and a lot of them struggle. I'm like you know guys who go through the things that they've told me about, and girls. They just don't deserve to have to come home and struggle and have discomfort, not find a home, not find a new job or a new sense of purpose. They're doing the most important job in the entire world, defending America's freedom and, um, you know, anyone who does that deserves a lifetime of comfort when they come home.

Speaker 3:

In my opinion, and like Landon said, to just like have this like burning desire, like sense of obligation to try to repay a debt that you know you never can repay. But you know I'm willing to, we're willing to spend our whole lives at least trying our best to do that. So, you know when, when you have a big group of men and women who put their lives on the line so we can live in the best country to ever, you know grace planet earth. Uh, I think we just owe it to them to to at least give a little bit of our time and energy to them when they come home.

Speaker 2:

So that's powerful, to have that personal connection to those stories like the. You know, meeting that fellow too. It's like you know, I feel like you know we America's built on a lot of those people doing those things and we got the experiences, like you said, to be 21 years old and go out and party because your grandfather did things like that.

Speaker 3:

That's extremely fortunate that we have that experience. We kind of bonded over that and then start doing research and we find out these crazy facts Like there are four times more veteran suicides than there are deaths and war operations amongst our military service members and like things like that are just insane. 17 veterans commit suicide every day. That comes out to over 6,000 a year. That's just like stats like that you just can't ignore 6,000 a year, that's just like stats, like that, you just can't ignore.

Speaker 3:

We started talking about this stuff and we were having drinks in Newport Beach and we came to the end of the conversation like why don't we just do something about it? And Monday morning we went home and figured out how to start a 501c3, and we just hit the ground running. We had no idea what we were doing, but uh, yeah, figured it out.

Speaker 4:

So yeah, 18 months later, here we are, so it's amazing, man, you I'm like getting emotional.

Speaker 1:

I think too, because my dad was military and my uncle actually passed away recently, called phillips, was a vietnam veteran and he gave his life to in dallas, texas, with going to speak with a lot of these veterans in the whole nine. So you're 1,000% right, man, they come back. My uncle he slept in a chair ever since he came back. Wow, he didn't even sleep in a bed because of that whole.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So it's wild what you deal with. So I'm so happy you guys are doing this. Yeah, they really need it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, they really need it, yeah, yeah there's a huge number of veterans who come home and they don't want to ask for help and they'll wait years and years to either get help or, unfortunately, Well, they're prideful. Yeah, and it's just it's internal torture, I think, for a lot of them to go from, you know, doing the most important job in the world to not really being so sure.

Speaker 2:

So you know, that's where we try to come in not really being so sure.

Speaker 2:

So, uh, you know that's where we try to come in, but it's kind of interesting. You think, like you know us, most of my experiences with war have all been on when I've seen the movies right, which gives you paints a very different picture in a lot of it, like, how important is it to your point You're saying, these stats and education of some of these experiences and the impact that it has, I mean, people aren's very big um, and I think a lot of you know what we're doing, especially with the event that we're doing.

Speaker 4:

You know, I think we're coming up on it may 26, yeah less than two weeks out now.

Speaker 4:

Um, you know, the idea when we started the foundation was you know there's obviously a lot of amazing veteran service organizations that do amazing work. We, you know, we don't want to take away from what they're doing, but what we thought we could do extremely well was, you know, put on amazing live events and partner with amazing live events to bring awareness to these statistics that Frankie spoke about, and also to raise money for these amazing organizations. And so we actually like today, we don't do you know the specific services frequently we have great partners that do most of that work.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Well, when we were setting this up, you kind of have to. When you're a very young organization, you don't want to do everything at once. Right, you got to decide what are we going to be good?

Speaker 3:

at, and maybe one day we'll try to do multiple different things. But what do we think we can be really good at? And we've figured raising money was something we could be good at. And live events, I think, are just an underutilized platform for things like this, for charitable endeavors, and I think awareness is just as important as as raising money, and I think there's no better way to get people to bond over something and have, like, stoke a sense of patriotism and inspire people to do something and then get them all in the same room or same venue and, and you know, bond over music and whatever else we might, we might plan in the future to. You know, people feed off of other people's energy, so we figured it was the perfect platform to.

Speaker 1:

And talk about that, right? So this is going to be the American Music Awards that's coming up. I think J-Lo is going to be hosting the event.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, she is. It's in Fountain Blue, right? Yeah, Fountain Blue May 26th, and we're going to be live on CBS and Paramount Plus.

Speaker 1:

How did you guys get plugged with them? Because they're big players. Man, you guys came with the same team. You said you didn't want to get involved.

Speaker 3:

We had a handful of people out of the gates who were like are you sure you want to try?

Speaker 2:

and go this big your first year.

Speaker 3:

And we never really wavered, we were just like yeah, we do absolutely. Let's just go for it and swing out the fences and see if we can pull it off.

Speaker 3:

And now we're two weeks away, so um but yeah, I mean, yeah, our our initial idea was just to try to have a huge event that we can inspire people and raise money.

Speaker 3:

And and it happened, just so happened that Jay Penske uh, who I know, who, um, who owns the AMAs, he owns Penske Media, so a bunch of different you know, the New Year's Eve, new Year's Rockin' Eve and different events like that Billboard Magazine he came by my office. He said you know, I really want to have this vision for Memorial Day. We want to move the AMAs to Vegas. And we just happened to have a very similar vision. It was very serendipitous and we said you know, let's just run at this together and you guys do what you do best and we'll do what we're going to do. And, um, and it's been a great partnership so far and we're hoping that this first year is a massive success so that we can keep doing it. And then, uh, landon and I will try and partner with other great events around the country and hopefully mainly in Vegas. Entertainment capital of the world is a great place to start.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was going to touch on that, like how important is a place like Vegas? Right, we all know there's a lot of money in Vegas, but a lot of it comes from external sources or, you know, not necessarily all. There's a lot of homegrown money, but are you really targeting the people that are in Vegas to kind of, you know, attend these events and be sponsorships, or are you trying to attract people from outside in different cities? We're attracting whoever wants to come.

Speaker 3:

I mean whoever's down for the cause. You want them there. Whoever's not very familiar with the cause, we'd love for them to come and get educated and learn too.

Speaker 4:

It's obviously a great city to do it, because it's built on shows in many cases, and so we think if we can add one another really amazing show, it's going to be awesome and you make an impact.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's the biggest thing I suppose having this many tourists in vegas is great because you get eyeballs from other, uh, other cities and they go back and tell their friends and hopefully we'll have a bit of a ripple effect. And yeah, and that's my spread the word vegas like it's more of um.

Speaker 2:

You're, like you said, you're attracting those the the tourist dynamic as well, whereas most of the time, I would assume, when you're trying to get raise money from like a place like los angeles or new york, it's a lot more intimate and homegrown, where you don't get as much visibility in some of those causes it's a bunch of friends and family and co-workers and business people that are all connecting with each other yeah, and I think also too, like the American music awards is, you know, a long standing tradition.

Speaker 4:

I think this is the 51st, 51. Yeah. And so yeah like aligning with that and also, you know, kind of rebooting it with a purpose, like you said, where it's, like you know, no offense to the celebrities instead of just them getting awards. There's something else that we're all doing there, I think is, you know, an amazing thing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, I mean, we'll have a couple veterans tell their stories that night and I think that they'll you know they'll really shine during the broadcast too. I think their stories are obviously super inspiring and we're looking forward to having people hear them. That's going to be awesome.

Speaker 1:

Talk a little bit about, like the Navy SEAL motto, right.

Speaker 4:

Isn't that how you?

Speaker 1:

guys came up with your name and things like that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So it kind of came from from a few of my friends. You know, anytime they like any tasks that they take on, whether it's super difficult or super easy, they just say, yeah, easy day, I'll get it done. So that name kind of resonated and I was like thinking to myself well, the easy days should be ahead for these guys, not behind them. So that's why we went with easy day, because our mission is to make every day ahead from now on easy for the veterans and they should not have their easy, easy days, uh, all behind them. That's powerful, yeah, yeah that's a good brand.

Speaker 1:

It's a good brand, that's very good it's all from him, it's from the seals, yeah, but it's good because you're tying everything together.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, and yeah, I mean, as we know, I mean things happen so fast man, so many crazy things happen, so so how can people help, other than the fundraising and things like that? So for our listeners and things like that you know that are listening right now is how how can they help? Like what, what can they do that's helpful? Is there places that they can go to? There's? You know what I mean? Like how?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so we have. They can go to easydayorg and donate. They can follow us on social. It's just at Easy Day Foundation. And then you know, since we're focusing on raising money, our partner organizations focus on those operational services and you know you can get in touch with any of them and you know they'd be happy to have some boots on the ground help If you don't have money. They always are happy to have volunteers and we can run through. You know who our partners are and we have a couple local ones. We have Folded Flag, which is Bill Foley's foundation. We have the UNLV Military and Veterans Services, the Bob Woodruff Foundation, fisher House, who builds homes for families visiting vets in the hospital. There's a bunch of them. So forgive me if I miss you.

Speaker 1:

You've got a lot of good people here, yeah boot campaign.

Speaker 3:

Who have I forgotten so far? Team Rubicon, we have Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran Association and the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

Speaker 1:

That's some heavy hitters, man, y'all guys are playing no games. Yeah, that's awesome, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

We have a great group of like partners and it's, I think, for us the idea is that it's kind of you know, if you give to a single VSO, they're kind of taking on one issue Right of you know, if you give to a single vso, they're kind of taking on one issue right. If you give to fisher house, they do amazing work rebuilding homes, right. Our view is if you give to us, by the way, the night of the telecast, a hundred percent of the donations go through.

Speaker 1:

you know I was going which is we're not keeping any of the donations that come during the broadcast yeah, a hundred percent of that is getting getting distributed out straight to the services.

Speaker 4:

So you basically, with every dollar donated, you're covering all the bases and you know that it's going to them. That's not often the case. You hear about some of these organizations where it's super inefficient, like 50 cents of the dollar makes it, or it goes out the back door.

Speaker 3:

It right, and so we handpicked all of these to try, and you know, pick organizations that together create a holistic approach to the reintegration process after after service. So you know, it wasn't just like let's go pick these ones here and there and, and you know, throw darts at the dartboard.

Speaker 1:

It was very well thought out you mentioned, so you were talking about some of the statistics, right, like I was looking up. Is it true that it's 33,000 homeless right now.

Speaker 3:

I think it's a little more as of 2023, when we started this it was over 35,000.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it is decreasing. It's too, much it's a massive issue, um, and you know one of the things you know public to private, I think you know there's there's increasingly more support for the VA, um, but there's just not enough that can be done, and so that's also the big part of why we did this is because we think there needs to be more private work that's done to support what's happening on the public side.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's kind of the same thing. You talk about building a private, you know, obviously I think both understand business and a lot of different capacities, but moving to nonprofit is a very different experience. No-transcript that you've seen in the difference.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it's a. It's a good question. I think you know, for us kind of, at least you know. I think actually for both of us, starting a 501c3 was something like you said that we haven't done. We have great private businesses. Things obviously work differently right On the private side.

Speaker 3:

You're oftentimes trying to build a pretty strong balance sheet where you have really you can't have that same J curve where you spend a bunch of money at first to get customers and acquire customers and stuff you have to be a lot more careful.

Speaker 1:

You have to be a lot more careful. It's a way different process.

Speaker 4:

It's also the dollars that we bring in we want to put back out the door, and so every single year, we're thinking about that upcoming budget and thinking about okay, how much do we need to get in the door to fund everything we want to do? We don't want to actually hold on to money left over.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you're actually not allowed to.

Speaker 4:

I can't remember what the time period is, but as a 501c3, you're required to distribute any money like whatever money you have you have to either spend it on programs or as you guys know, as a private business owner, you're not running your bank to zero every year. Yeah, never.

Speaker 2:

It's like a counterintuitive. Yeah, it's a counterintuitive.

Speaker 1:

It's completely opposite. Yeah, it's completely opposite.

Speaker 4:

So it's a bit of an adjustment, I think strategically, but I think the positive piece of it is, you know, because you're a 501c3, people like just want to help out, right, and like the amount of people that have volunteered their time and have helped us on our team too.

Speaker 3:

Oh that's great Alex over here does this out of the kindness of his heart. That's great, yeah, but we had a lot, of, a lot of great people that we've encountered along the way and people are super willing to help. It's been yeah, it's been pretty, pretty awesome to see.

Speaker 1:

I mean it's crazy Like you guys talk about how you guys know each other 11 years, yeah, 11 years. We don't know each other. 12, 13.

Speaker 4:

How did you guys become friends? We worked together.

Speaker 1:

We worked together outside of this and then set up. My wife was talking crap to us and saying, like we were supposed to start, that we've been. We've been going seven years now. That's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, big, consistent. And then, uh, we were supposed to start. It was two years before that. Yeah, we kept 2016 wasting time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, unlike you guys, yeah, you guys actually made decisions we kept I had to get into a fight with my wife, but they're telling me like let's just do this, let's do it but going back to's a reason why.

Speaker 1:

So you know, Vegas Circle was all about, you know, building business, building culture and really showcasing everybody. But we felt like the strip got all the shine and there's so many cool people that are really making an impact off the strip. Right, and that was our whole focus is show the business owners, show the people that are impacting the culture that really make an impact. Yeah, show the business owners, show the people that are impacting the culture that really make an impact.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's a lot more culture in this city than people think. It's 1000%. We love being able to highlight.

Speaker 1:

You know people like yourself right. We know you guys are in separate businesses, which we'll transition to, but it's really cool that you guys are doing something that's meaningful too.

Speaker 4:

You know what I mean. That veteran situation is no joke man. It's funny you say that because when we first met and he said he was from Las Vegas, like my idea of Las Vegas is like oh, so you like are on the strip every day, Like is that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, when you like go into college and you try to explain to everyone what it's like and you try to say you had a normal childhood, and then you tell them about it, they're like yeah, that's not, it's actually a small town.

Speaker 1:

I've been here 17 years. I'm originally from Chicago and when I came here, I'm like this is like a small town. Then you go to the strip and that's why I think we everybody loves it is. Then you go to the city when you want to, yeah. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's, it's, it's it. That's what you really start to learn is behind the scenes is everybody that's their time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, 1000% so, but what? What's like the most meaningful thing? I know it's been a short time, but what's the most meaningful thing? That's. That's really touched your heart on doing this.

Speaker 4:

For I mean, I think for me the you know, we we hosted kind of our first event just about a year ago. Okay, um, when we launched um was an amazing event, relatively small, I think we had about a hundred people, maybe that's a good time 150 people, which they raised over almost a million and a half dollars.

Speaker 4:

That's great, um, but that's not. What was the most touching moment was not the money raised? There was, we had a lady named Lisa Hallett who came to the event. She's supported by one of our partners, folded Flag, and what Folded Flag does is it supports Gold Star families. And so you know, for folks that are listening that don't know Gold Star family is you know someone that may have lost someone within their family, in action or through service, and so you know Lisa's story. She actually got up and gave a speech to everyone in that building and you know her story is. You know a very sad one, right? You know her husband. You know they had three very, very young kids. You know very sad one, right? You know her husband. You know they had three very, very young kids.

Speaker 4:

you know two, I think she was still pregnant with her yeah, under the age of two and one on the way and you know she got. You know the, the knock on the door that nobody ever wants to get um.

Speaker 3:

Her husband was on a humanitarian mission too.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yeah and like I think, when you hear those stories it puts everything into perspective in a way that you know it doesn't matter how much money we raise or like anything else, like it just makes you want to support these people, these people's lives yeah, these people's lives, people's lives and so what? Full the flag does an amazing thing where they help support these families right, and so she was speaking about her daughters that are now in school. Folded Flag has helped, paid for their education. Has done some really amazing things.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, she has two sons and a daughter and they've given them scholarships to help put them through school because, I mean, as you can imagine, you know, being a single mom after that with three kids is extremely difficult yeah I was going to say the same thing.

Speaker 3:

I just remember very clearly that night, sitting in the front row. Landon and I both spoke that night, but when she was speaking I turned around. You know half the people in the room are crying and um, and it's not even about feeling bad as much as it is being proud of someone like her for just pushing on like what a tough lady. Um, and it's just so inspiring to see that. It just makes people. It sucks to tell sad stories but, um, you know, it inspires people to to be just as tough and try to help out.

Speaker 2:

And that was a pretty touching moment you feel like it's different, like now that you've got to experience some of these things from your first start, cause I feel like to me at the beginning, when you're talking about, it's very different because you read the statistics, but when you start hearing the stories and talking to the people, you think it shifts your motivation and makes you more passionate about it and really trying to get back, there's a lot of days where it's a huge pain in the ass to run a 501c3 and then you have days like that and you remember why you're here, you know, and you're like this is why we do what we do, and and it you know that is gives you a lifetime of fuel to keep doing it.

Speaker 3:

You just remember moments like that and it's all worth it, yeah the sacrifice we make is not even close. Think about my oh, there's a pain in the ass. My God, I'm just being such a wuss, right now let's keep going.

Speaker 1:

That's so funny. I was literally just talking about boys, about that yesterday.

Speaker 4:

It's crazy.

Speaker 1:

I'm like what?

Speaker 4:

are we complaining about again?

Speaker 1:

And you just talk about the lady that's dealing with that or dealing with the mental issues or whatever it is.

Speaker 4:

And it touches us all because you have a story. I have a story, like all of us have these stories.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, um, and so it's. It's like. You know it's. It's not unique to single people, no, so it's. It's a country issue. That's right. It's a we all have been impacted one way or another.

Speaker 4:

That's right, yeah and the other one of the other big tenantsets. I think to us, doing this is like we're trying to demystify and eliminate. You know, being a veteran supporter from veterans and supporting our troops or, like you know, doing anything like that has become partisan and it really should not be. It should just be a matter of supporting an.

Speaker 3:

American who's next to you or a human that's next to you. We started this around a time when we were coming off of all time lows of military recruitment and just felt like we want to make I think live events is a great way to make get younger generation in a room and get them to, you know, have like a greater sense of patriotism that I think you know I probably get from my parents when they grew up. You know they were our age in the you know, eighties, nineties, and we just kind of want to see that again and make sure that everybody is proud to be American and proud to be here and knows that they're lucky to be here. Yeah, those are great points.

Speaker 1:

Cool, fantastic. Yeah, I love what you guys are doing, man. I'm trying to just listen and take it in and not cut you guys off, man. It's really impactful man. Thank you, powerful. Yeah, I just want to talk a little bit just personally, just what you guys are doing also in the city with your personal jobs and things like that. But I'll start with you, frank. So currently you're a senior VP of Red Rock.

Speaker 3:

Resorts right. Yes, SVP of operations, but I have my hands in a little bit of everything over there.

Speaker 1:

What is your day-to-day?

Speaker 4:

Because when you take on another task man, it gets crazy. I can't believe he does it all.

Speaker 3:

I work in the corporate office but I help run ops at all the different properties, work with all the GMs at each property and I do a lot of development stuff too, working on our future projects. I worked on Durango a good amount. I was just coming home from graduate school when we were in the ground with Durango. Shout out to Durango.

Speaker 1:

I know, I'm just saying as you're sitting with'all did a hell of a job. Thank you very much. I'm going to be honest Durango is excellent. Yeah, it's been great so far.

Speaker 3:

People have responded really well to it.

Speaker 1:

Everyone likes that we put windows in over there. Tall, tall Cooperman with the tattoos yeah, amazing guy. Yeah, he's great. So I'll make it laugh real quick for a second. But we did y'all's commercial our family with our kids. The Durango commercial yeah, the Durango commercial.

Speaker 3:

Oh wow, yeah, I picked that song. I love that song. I was like this is the perfect one. We were part of that.

Speaker 1:

We got to give a shout out to our kids because they'll be like what they see.

Speaker 3:

All my friends were stop man.

Speaker 1:

But no, you guys did a hell of a job, agreed. What is the expansion like with this? So you guys are expanding Durango now, right, and then you got Henderson that's coming up soon.

Speaker 3:

Well, right now the expansion is an extra garage parking garage and a new high-limit slot room and a little additional casino space, and we had to put a garage in first to have more parking for when we expand more. Okay, but we can't expand if we don't have room for people to park on the site. So that was the first move. Yeah, it's a lot of moving pieces, but that was just to get us to the next stage and then hopefully we'll be announcing what our next property is in the next 12 months or so. We'll try to get you to slip up, not going to happen.

Speaker 1:

We'll try to get you to slip up. Not going to happen, say what it is. You smooth man, you smooth, so I'll skip to you too. Landon, so your day-to-day, so you're in the capital raising business, right?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so I work in venture capital and so our focus is investing in late stage technology companies, so they're all venture backed. We manage a credit fund and also an equity fund, Okay, and so you know our business is really, you know, on the equity side is, you know, identifying generational founders right that we meet, that you know we think are building really incredible businesses and you know we want to invest in those businesses and partner with them for, hopefully, decades to come. Our outlook is longer duration. I think it's also why we get along quite so well is because our thinking is long-duration thinking.

Speaker 3:

Find good people that you want to partner with for a very long time.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, also, we're building edf to be, you know, here for decades to come um you know we're it's edf is actually not about frank or I um, we're not speaking at the event, like we don't. We don't want to be the face of it. It's about the veterans and the work and building something that will stand the test of time, and so it's similar to what we do with our businesses. We often you know, troy, our firm we don't really do press every investment that we make. We don't really publicly announce. If you go to our website, it's literally just a landing page. Oh, that's what I was looking at yeah, you can't do this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was trying to do as much as I can. Landon made it up.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yeah. So that's purposely to redistribute, that's right.

Speaker 4:

It's actually because you know, like our view is. You know, it's not about our firm, it's about the founders that we back and the businesses that they build and the products that they offer. And I think think that's what should really matter. And for our LPs, that give us the capital we have fiduciary to them to generate returns, and what we found is when we can support our founders most effectively and have them own the spotlight, the actual alpha that we can generate and the returns we can drive are are the best. Yeah, um, and so you know, that's been an amazing time.

Speaker 4:

We've built this firm now over a decade, um, and have backed really amazing businesses yeah something goes, yeah, and you got the right mindset too, man, because it's different having that mindset to be able to make you go crazy yeah, some people in the space are like trying to do quick flips or like trying to, you know, ride momentum, and I think, like our view is more so, you know, partnering for long duration. So do you pick?

Speaker 1:

the founder. That's what you're looking at and say can I buy into this founder?

Speaker 4:

I think it's a mix of the founder, the business, the opportunity. I think if you look back at our body of work, a lot of times we're making bets on you know people and businesses that you know. If you had asked us when we backed them years ago, would it look like this today? We wouldn't necessarily have said in our underwriting case that it would, but because we believe so much in that founder and kind of the core product vision, it played out that way. That's awesome. So yeah, it's. It's been really amazing and fun to build.

Speaker 2:

So you're the skills that really balance each other out.

Speaker 3:

It's almost like we guys are talking about how much you're good at.

Speaker 2:

We haven't gotten into any arguments since we started this. By the way, you haven't no, no, we get along pretty well, but it's it's totally different.

Speaker 4:

Like hospitality to investing is a very different thing, but it's also is it very much a person's business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Right, so it plays well, you know what's so funny? I always say when you get into business with folks, we're like the completely opposite, really. Yeah, but they say it's good because they can see your blind spots. You don't want to get in business with the same person right, yeah, 100%.

Speaker 3:

I think that that's true. You got to kind of compliment each other, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And not argue Same. Thing. We know, I think we were in an argument like not once I just argued with my wife.

Speaker 4:

She can handle it. Yeah, she tells, I think that's what they do.

Speaker 1:

They pick up on because they think exactly alike.

Speaker 4:

How did?

Speaker 1:

you guys meet. What's the story? We were working together and what that was, but we probably had too many drinks or something, man, but we were.

Speaker 1:

We were up late, I think, probably like 4 35 o'clock in the morning, just debating, just debating yeah and um, and then we came me originally from I think it's a vibe, because we're both from the midwest, like I'm from chicago, he's from Detroit, and then we've lived a lot of different places. So we just vibed man and so, long story short, kind of fast forward to 2025, when we originally started. It kind of went left. We brought in two other partners that went left and had the same vision of what we were all about.

Speaker 1:

And the biggest thing for us was and I think it started with that night was we wanted to just represent something we want our kids to listen to. This interview and the interviews we were doing in the beginning was not that I mean we were doing pimps and doing all types of stuff like trying to get the wow factor, which a lot of people do, but the longevity the marathon right.

Speaker 1:

So we really wanted to look at this as a business, as a media company, and how do we do that? And it started with a lot of these nights. But it was funny because he was like he was saying he thought I was like a pastor, like a super religious guy, and we got into like a whole bunch of different debates just about life and business and family and all of that, and we were like, hey, let's start forming a company together.

Speaker 3:

Why Vegas? How'd you guys end up here? So I ended up here because of this young lady. Like seven years ago when you met, were you both living here.

Speaker 2:

You were still. We were both here, her and me. I've been here 17.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we've been together. I moved to LA first 2001 from Boston and then I moved here in 07. I remember when did you?

Speaker 2:

move here 2011. 2011, yeah, and we met 2012, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so yeah, and then I moved here from my wife, so we've been together. 21 years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I moved here because they said Vegas was the land of second chances. I was in Detroit a very bad economic recession and I was like, oh, I can't make nothing of myself here.

Speaker 3:

It's just as bad here, I think.

Speaker 1:

Especially because 07 and then 08 hit and it was kind of scary.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it was rough here for a while.

Speaker 1:

And when I moved to Boston that was 9-11. So I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to move states.

Speaker 4:

It was the worst time, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But to answer your question, I think what it was is we met and you know, you just vibe with people, yeah, right, and that's really what it is, and I think we each other, we've never had arguments or money issues or anything like that, so it's been great yeah, yeah, that's awesome, yeah, but uh, I want to talk a little bit about just because I know you know your sister a little bit, about your family a little bit.

Speaker 1:

How do you deal with and I'm just curious I think it's helpful for the listeners everybody's plugging in, want something, right? How do you differentiate the real from the fake, especially in a city like las vegas, because I know people always want patitas and want you guys to do different things. I'm just curious how do you say no?

Speaker 3:

I'm not very good at saying no, to be honest. Okay, you learn it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, after a long time you just kind of know what's what and why people are asking for things they're asking for. But look, I mean I keep in touch with a lot of really great people and you know I don't really have a lot of people who try and use and abuse my family and my life. So I'm very fortunate for that. We surround ourselves with great people and you know we're very pleased with that. So I don't have to think of ways to say no very often. That's solid.

Speaker 1:

I just want to step back a little bit about funding. Yeah, so is it. Is it? Quid Is it? Q? U I?

Speaker 4:

D, yeah, so.

Speaker 4:

So quid is like within our credit platform that we have Um, and this was kind of a business that we started, I think, about nine years ago, and conceptually the idea was, you know, there's a lot of shareholders in private technology companies that hold positions that are highly illiquid, right, if you're you know an investor or a shareholder, or you know any particular person that owns stock in one of these private companies, you can't it's not traded publicly, so you can't sell the shares, right and so the vision there was could we create a platform that could provide financing secured against those shares, almost like how margin works in the public markets but in the private markets?

Speaker 4:

So we yeah, we built that out with. Our first investor was Oak Tree Capital, which is an amazing firm headquartered in LA. We've now scaled the platform pretty significantly and brought in some really amazing partners too, and so that's like one of you know, one of the amazing kind of sub platforms that we have within our firm. But that's all about just creating liquidity for people that have, you know, worked extremely hard, have within our firm. But that's all about just creating liquidity for people that have, you know, worked extremely hard, have built amazing positions, but they haven't been able to monetize it yet.

Speaker 3:

Okay, they pay you back once they IPO. Right, that's right yeah.

Speaker 4:

So, like you know, we had many clients at Airbnb, many clients at you know, flexport, stripe. These companies when they stay private and then when they reach public markets, then you pay a hell of a business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I gotta give you very smart like that. Yeah, it's a hell of a business. Yeah, how long have you guys been in business here?

Speaker 4:

we've been in business with that product for about nine years oh, okay, yeah, so it's been around for a while um, and now it's. You know it stretches all the way, you know from not only working with shareholders in the company but you know LPs and funds, you know investors in kind of the preferred equity stack. So we kind of service, kind of the whole stack. That's exciting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, I talked to you guys. We have a whole podcast.

Speaker 3:

We're having a good time. We can stick around.

Speaker 1:

No, because I don't want to just make it so much, just a veteran, but I wanted to shine a light on what you guys do on a day-to-day because you guys are making huge impacts. Yeah, the right people to make a big impact in this foundation. Yeah, 100%. So how much time?

Speaker 3:

do. Yeah, you know I mean I still handle my day-to-day at Station at Red Rock the same way I did before. So it's an everyday thing and this we just squeeze it in where we can. And you know it's gotten more time-consuming the closer we get to May 26. But you know there's always a little extra time in the day. If we got to schedule a late call or whatever, we'll do it and make it happen.

Speaker 4:

I mean, if there ever was anything to work nights and weekends on, it's probably something that has a purpose, right? So like.

Speaker 3:

I think it is fun honestly just working together with your best friend. It's not like we, we don't dread it at all. It has its moments where it's difficult, but it's not boring ever, you know. Yeah, that's awesome, man.

Speaker 1:

I applaud you guys, man. Transition a little bit is just about nuggets and business. What's one real piece of business advice that you could give a new founder or just friends in general or people that want to collab like you guys? Right, Because that's a problem a lot of times is people collab and they partner and then things go left. What would you tell the people that are listening that before they're starting off, how they should establish that relationship?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I think the most important piece of advice is just doing the work every day.

Speaker 3:

There's no reason to get mad at your partner if they're pulling their way equally. Yeah, there's no reason to get mad at your partner if they're pulling their way equally. And I know that doesn't happen all the time, obviously, but I guess you know, pick someone with the same work ethic that you have and knowing that they're going to show up, and if there's a day when you can't show up, I know Landon's going to be able to make the decisions for me and vice versa, you know. So I don't worry too much. If there's a day that I can't make a meeting, cause I know he can, he can handle it. So makes a makes for a pretty good team.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I think oftentimes you're not going to be the smartest person, but if you do wake up and you put in the work every single day I mean probably you guys have been doing this podcast seven years and we're here, we haven't taken a break in seven years yeah, yeah, put our content, yeah, since seven years straight, just like head down. And of course, there's days you wake up and you're like, oh man, I am frustrated that this has gone this way. But like if you just, yeah, put your you know hat back on, put your head down and keep doing the work, like eventually you wake up 18 months later and you're you've built something or started to build something I'm loving you say say that I was talking to Big Boy about this at Confidence Con.

Speaker 1:

I got a chance to spend some time with him and that's exactly what he was saying. He was saying you guys have been doing this for this long, but you've got to continue to keep doing your reps, yeah, and then it goes down different rabbit holes and you've got to readjust and bring it back. Look, we can't do all these 50 things we got to like do well yeah. And so it's good. It's good to have people have your back.

Speaker 3:

It's funny you mentioned not being the smartest person. Another piece of advice my dad always told me he said if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in trouble. You want to surround yourself with smarter people? Yeah, yeah, you want to surround yourself with smarter people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, 100%, yeah, good stuff, man. We always ask guests about this and I'm very curious about you guys what's your favorite restaurant in Vegas? And you can't say at your. I'm going to put that in because I like all your restaurants. I got a good one. I got a good one.

Speaker 3:

I was going to say it's a three-way tie between Nico's, hank's and T-Bone's.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I love T-Bone and I like all of those.

Speaker 3:

My favorite restaurant in town is this sushi place called Kame K-A-M-E. It's kind of over by the wind. It's underneath, it's an omakase sushi place. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 2:

He keeps talking about the omakase. That's the one Phil did. That's so good.

Speaker 3:

I love Phil. I'm big on omakase sushi. That place is unbelievable Awesome. I lived in New York too. I put it up against any place in New York, that's a strong statement.

Speaker 1:

You're talking about New York. I love New York. Okay, awesome, that is a big statement. How?

Speaker 4:

about yourself. For me, I guess I can go within their ecosystem. Okay, I would say mine is the noodle bar in Red Rock.

Speaker 1:

Noodle bar? Okay, in Red Rock. Okay, which is a noodle bar?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it's a very small little kind of. I would consider it almost like a hole in the wall. It's not very big, okay. But it's it's a classic. I love it. It's a very simple menu, but very good, awesome, good stuff.

Speaker 3:

What's your guys' favorite?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what do you guys like? I'm a big foodie man. I freaking love it, but I like, I love Kali Bash. It's a great restaurant, it's like. It's like I haven't been there yet. Check it out. Man Ole's the owner there. It's African food, but it's way different than what you would think.

Speaker 3:

Where is it at?

Speaker 1:

Rainbow and like Charleston in that area. Okay too. Yeah, they have the great drink menu.

Speaker 2:

Locals love those places.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it's great I was telling them yesterday. The places I really want to go and try and this shows that I need to spend more time here is Golden Steer we had Amanda on.

Speaker 1:

No way they're about to open up in New York, oh really.

Speaker 4:

It's like the only restaurant ever to go the opposite.

Speaker 3:

That's a testament.

Speaker 2:

That means it must be really really good. It's very hard to get into a staple.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

Excellent. And then the other classic I want to go to is Pietras.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I've never heard of that.

Speaker 3:

Pieros, pieros, pieros, I'm sorry, I don't know how many people have mentioned Pieros here Do people call that.

Speaker 4:

they call it out all the time yeah really just did recently.

Speaker 3:

We love this great, great restaurant, italian food excellent. Yeah, yeah, I haven't gone there since I, since I was born, pretty much, yeah, yeah, used to go there after all the UFC fights another life, man, because I love.

Speaker 4:

I need some best food.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you need it for sure anytime, but another place I'll tell you guys real quick before we transition is is it the sixes?

Speaker 3:

four sixes. Yeah, that was really good too. That might be the best steakhouse really yeah, it's very good, very, very good. I know I got everyone's entitled to their opinion.

Speaker 1:

We were just like two weeks ago. So I love nico's too, but but honestly um that, that one caught me off guard. This is a pop-up and it's only here for a period.

Speaker 3:

So oh, yeah, yeah, I really enjoyed that too.

Speaker 2:

It was really great, I was impressed trying to get reservations in a month for the group, so we'll be going.

Speaker 1:

Let's go. It happened, man, in June, so anything else we forgot to leave you out on, man. I could talk with you guys for hours, man.

Speaker 3:

I would just say if anyone listening wants to go, the AMA is buy tickets or tune in on CBS. Memorial Day, may 26th, awesome yeah.

Speaker 1:

We'll support you guys, man. We have to bring you guys back, man, and just keep us updated on what you guys are doing.

Speaker 4:

We support you. Thank you very much. This is what people need to hear about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Appreciate that. Appreciate y'all's time, man. Thank you very much. What's your handles?

Speaker 1:

that people can check out.

Speaker 3:

At Easy Day Foundation on Instagram.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, awesome, I think it's the same across the board.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Easy Day Foundation. Support them and check us out at TheVegasCirclecom.

Speaker 3:

So appreciate you guys, thank you very much. Thank you, that was really cool.