Trust, Positive Energy and Making Yourself Indispensable, with Randy Eccker

Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molitor.

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molitor group, Ed Molitor. And what a role we are on here at the Athletics of business podcast with one outstanding guest after another. And I think you'll agree with me, some amazing conversations with a ton of value and a ton of takeaways. And there'll be no exception made today as we have an other incredible conversation with our special guest, Randy Ecker, managing director at home field sports. Randy is also a former Creighton Blue Jay. 1974 to 1978, he played baseball and basketball at Creighton. More important, way more important than any athletic accomplishment, was the fact that Rainey graduated from Creighton in 1978, magna cum laude. And of course we are connected through Creighton.

We've talked often about my time at Creighton and my experience with the basketball program here on previous podcast. And in 1988, after Randy had coached college basketball for nine years, he came back to Omaha and he was doing the radio for Creighton basketball my freshman year. Seems like yesterday, but as we know, it isn't. And he was a big part of that experience, a huge part of that experience. And he would travel with us and he saw all the highs and lows and it was an unbelievable year that obviously came to a conclusion in the NCAA tournament after we won the league, in the league tournament, and just many great memories with Randy there. And that's one of the many reasons I'm so fired up to have him with us here today.

Randy, he's one of the leading digital media and technology figures in the sports industry. He's founded, led, managed or advised over 30 properties or groups across the industry and has participated in over $350 million in corporate transactions. His experiences as a founder, CEO, chairman, board member or advisor has been instrumental in the success of many of these companies and has provided him with a powerful view of the industry and extensive relationships. And we talk a lot about relationships in this podcast. Okay. And extensive relationships with many of its leaders. Now, I'm going to give you some of the highlights of Randy's career, just a number of them. And honestly, this is not even going to scratch the surface of the incredible professional career Randy has had. It's not going to do him justice. I'm going to try. So here we go.

As I mentioned, he has participated in over $350 million in corporate transactions, seven startups in sports technology and digital media, board level experience in multiple sports technology and digital media companies CEO experience scaling and managing growth companies in the sports market adjunct professor, University of San Francisco Sports Management Graduate program and advisor to numerous sports properties companies and various stages of growth and I'd love to read some here, some of his senior advisory and consulting roles and his senior management roles and board activity. There's just way too many here, so let's jump into what we're going to talk, and we'll touch on some of those during the podcast episode. But let's talk about what else we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about how Randy is working with Home Field USA to disrupt the youth sports experience.

How, without planing it, Randy became involved in the technology side of sports, as he calls it, as a result of choosing between two career paths after he graduated from Creighton coaching college basketball and law school. We'll also talk about what it means to Randy to make yourself indispensable and where this mindset came from and how the fear of failure drove him to realize that his true ability as an athlete was not necessarily his athletic ability, but rather his smarts, toughness, selflessness and work ethic. And how that has shown up throughout his amazing professional career. In other words, how he made his bones as a player has translated into how he has made his bones as a leader in the sports industry. And then we'll jump into why trust is so important and that it has to be earned.

It cannot be given at face value. And really, another interesting part of this conversation is where I ask Randy about what the process is when he is asked to come into a company, whether it be as a board role, a consulting role, or an advisory role. And we talk about the process when they engage Randy in that conversation about joining them. And it's really interesting. And finally, we're going to talk about what the keys and the benefits are to generating your own happiness. And Randy's going to share how he generated his own happiness. So sit back again. Get your pen, your notebook out if you're not driving right now or working out. There's a ton of great stuff here. So I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording.

Randy, thank you so much for joining us today on the Athletics of business podcast. I am humbled and fired up to have you with us.

Thanks, Ed. It's good to be with you.

It is.

It is.

I know we've been talking about this for a while and we go back a few years, as I mentioned in our, into our, in the introduction, excuse me, but I'd love to jump into what current project you're working on right now.

Right now, my primary focus is home field and home field is a company that we're disrupting the youth sports performance centers and really trying to generate an environment where youth participants, youth sports guys and gals can be treated as pros. So it's not just a place to go train, but it's a place to go train to develop your skills, to develop your teams, but also to have all the amenities and all the services, from sports medicine to physical therapy to workout and training regimens. The entertainment side, you know, typically what happens when most of used to take our kids to practice, right? My kids are older now, so I'm not doing that anymore. But for the younger folks out there.

Mine aren't barely getting started. But that's another story.

And a lot of times you'll take them to practice, you'll drop them off at five, you got to find something to do for an hour to an hour and a half. Then you come back, you pick them up and they. And you go home and maybe you stop at McDonald's or Burger King or something like that. And you get home, you get them to do their homework and you're putting them to bed. And we really want to create an environment where all of the things that you would want to have for your children and the kids want to have to develop as people, as athletes, as prospects, all of those things that we're being very supportive of with our new facilities.

So what are some of the things included in that?

So we'll have 100,000ft of field indoor fields, 100,000 sqft indoor fields where teams can practice, kids can work out, other kids can be out there recreating and practicing and playing on their own. We'll have sports medicine clinics under our roof. We'll have physical therapy clinics under our roof. We have a workout and training area for the kids and their families. So it's not just for the kids, but also now for the parents. Instead of dropping them off and going someplace else, they could come in and work out, they could do their own workout, they could sit and work on their Wi Fi. We'll have a full service restaurant grab and go food, as well as a place to sit down and eat leisurely, have a glass of wine or a beer or something like that.

If it's after work, if you bring the other kids as well, everybody can. After practice and after the workout, the kids and everybody can sit down and enjoy a nice meal before they go home. We're also going to integrate an esports competition center, and I don't know if you're familiar with this, Ed, or not. Esports is the fastest growing sport in the world. Ages 14 to 1880, 2% of all kids play esports and play video games. 50 plus percent of them compete in esports.

And I've been involved in the esports genre now for the last couple years, really spent a lot of time on it, and that's probably the fastest growing aspect of what we're doing, and we're going to integrate that in with our overall facilities so that the kids also have the opportunity to compete in esports, both casually and in a competitive environment. And then kids that maybe aren't as active in traditional sports will still have a place to come and develop their skills and enjoy their craft with their friends.

When did you realize, Randy, that esports was going to be as big as it is and really, truly as competitive as it is?

Yeah, it's phenomenal. I think the last two or three years, you know, just being a sports team technologist, right, both on the analytics side as well as the digital media side of things, kind of keep your ear to the ground on these things, and you start seeing things bubble up in the media and in the sports rags and things like that about esports. And so about three years ago, I really started focusing in on that. I was helping advise out front media sports on a variety of things, and they've done a very nice job of taking the multimedia rights model down into the high school market. And right now, they have eight states where they have partnered with the high school activities association, where they are the multimedia rights partner for those states.

And six of those states run the West Coast, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and then Louisiana and Michigan as well. And one of the things that we did with out front is really drive their interest into and the state's interest in esports, because it's clear it's dominating the recreational competitive environment, right. Kids play, you know, online, they get on their consoles or on their computers, and they literally, they network with kids all over the world, and they can compete and they can play. So it's much more of a social environment than it is a solitary environment that you see on tv and what typically is promoted in some of the commercials and things like that.

But it's been lacking for the youth, it's been lacking in having a place to go, and so a lot of the high schools now have created clubs, and some of these clubs have more kids participating in their esports clubs than they have out for football, for example. And so it was just a natural evolution of esports as it's continued to evolve and grow in popularity and get more exposure for us to take that and formalize it for the high school market. And so that's what we did with out front. And five of their states are holding championships this year as part of the activities association sponsorship and endorsement, and they'll have all eight of their states next year, and then they'll be growing to twelve and 14 states beyond that. So it's a very exciting time.

It was just a natural thing to transfer into our facilities as well.

Absolutely. You know, it's funny, I think back to everything I've heard about your playing career. Creighton and Kevin McKenna, our great friend Kevin said Randy was just a tough person who always seemed to step up in the most difficult situations when the game was on the line. So knowing that, knowing where you came from and knowing the cloth that you are cut from, did you ever think that you would be talking about esports and video games and the market that it was creating?

You know, it's funny. Funny you say that. And it's very nice of Kevin to say he was really the guy who did that, and he wasn't.

Too bad, was he?

He was a great player and just a great person, which kind of permeates all of our, you know, relationships and people in sports. You know, if you last in sports for a long period of time, you know, you've, you're a pretty quality person because it's just such a competitive environment. You know, when I graduated from college, I had two career paths. I could go into coaching or I could go to law school, and I went and talked to the dean of the law school and he said, randy, you can always come back to law school. You can't always get involved in coaching at that level. And it was funny that I got involved in coaching and, you know, nine years in, I was farther away from my goal than when I started. Right.

Like most coaches, I kind of bounced around and I had a young family and so I had an opportunity to get into broadcasting. So I moved back to Omaha with a young family and we got into broadcasting and literally I got sucked into the technology side of sports.

Right.

You know, when they, when I went to school at Creighton, initially, one of the first things they said is the average person changes careers three times in their lifetime. So that always resonated with me. And then the other thing I heard, and it really is true that 20 years from now, 40% of the jobs will be jobs that aren't even available today. And especially now, I think that's even more true, because the way technology evolves, Moore's law, with everything, decreases in cost by half and size by half, but in capacity, it doubles every 18 months. And I think that's faster now. It's probably down to ten or twelve months.

Sure.

Everything's evolving so quickly, and the things we're doing now, nobody even could conceptualize when I was in college. And when you look at a career path, I think the important thing is probably the best advice I ever heard was Jim Rosborough, who I worked for at Northern Illinois for. For a year and a half.

That's another great man right there.

Yeah. He said when he went to work for Lute Olson as a volunteer assistant, his dad told him, the only advice I'm going to give you is just make yourself indispensable, and you'll always have a job. And so I think that's what you try and do. You try and learn as much as you can. You try and be as engaged as you can. You try and be indispensable, and you try and create as much positive energy as you can around what you're doing. And the job, the career, the money, it all takes care of itself if you stay principled to those things.

So how did that show up in your career? Cause I wanna walk through it a little bit, because from coaching the broadcasting to everything else you did, you obviously made yourself indispensable. To this day, you're still indispensable. Why so many folks reach out to you, to, you know, be their advisor? Can you talk a little bit about how that showed up and where that came from? I mean, you mentioned something about relationships, and that's something I've always noticed about you, Randy, is how well you connect with people, and not just on a surface level. Right. Like, there's something very genuine and very sincere about you, and I've always admired that. Can you talk about where that came from and how that showed up in your career?

You know, it's interesting. That's a good question. I think I've kind of always had that quality, but certainly playing sports and not being maybe the most talented player, but being a guy that I had such passion for sports, I had such passion for competition and such passion for being a part of. Right. For me, I'd fear drove a lot of it, right?

Absolutely.

Afraid of not playing or afraid of being passed over, the Lou Gehrig syndrome, all this. And I always wanted to. To take responsibility, to be accountable, to do my best, to take advantage of my abilities. And my abilities wasn't, you know, my athletic ability necessarily. I wasn't a bad athlete, but I wasn't a dynamic athlete like a lot of guys, you see. So you had to be smarter, you had to be tougher. You had to be more team oriented. You had to try harder, play harder. You had to win the sprints. You had to do everything kind of to the optimum level just to have the opportunity to play and to compete and have the privilege of competing on a team at the levels that were playing at. And that's kind of how I made my bones as a player.

That's how I've made my bones as a professional in the sports management, digital technology, et cetera. And to your point, and I think that's one of the really keys that a lot of people don't understand who aren't inside the sports industry. A lot of people don't appreciate or don't understand the fraternal relationships that we enjoy in sports. And that trust is such a huge part of it because it's such a competitive environment. And if you can't trust the guy next to you, if you can't trust your teammate or your coworker or your coaches or things like that, then it's hard to succeed because it is so competitive. And a lot of it, a lot of decisions that are made in sports, whether it's technology, it's hiring, it's all of those things. A lot of those decisions are made on trust.

Guys that you trust are gonna have your back or that have the capacity or the ability to do what you need to do to be successful. People who have helped you to be successful, you know, because of that, you wanna help them to be successful as well. And I think a lot of times, people who come in from outside, whether it's investors or it's people who think, hey, I've got a good idea. It really applies to sports, and they try and insert themselves into the industry. If you don't have those trusting relationships based on integrity and friendship and all of those types of things, it's really hard to be successful.

So great point and great segue when you have people come from the outside, I mean, some of the things you have done have been very fast paced. They've moved with technology as technology, and the rate and pace have changed, as you have, people try to inject themselves into your world. Right. Whether it be an investor, whatever it may be, how do you figure out whether or not you can trust them? What are some of the tells, some of the things that you look for?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think sometimes the times I've gotten in trouble or the times I've gotten burnt is when I've trusted people at face value or because I was fearful or desperate or whatever. And so I made bets on things that I hoped would work out and I thought might work out rather than people who were proven to me. And you've seen my career path. I've worked with over 50 companies.

Yeah. Amazing.

Over the past, you know, 30 years, in various capacities. Some I founded companies, some I sat on their board, some I chaired, some I advised and. And things like that. And they haven't all been successful. Right. I've learned a lot of lessons along the way, and one of the lessons I've learned is that trust is only developed by time. And trust is developed and forged through the fires, not through the great times. But what are people like when things don't go well? What are people like? Are they principled? Do they have integrity? Are they tough enough to live through and be a part of a team? Right. Because nobody does this by themselves in our end. You need a team. You need people around you. You need complementary vision, skill sets and things like that.

So it's really important, I think, to have those people that you've been through the fires with, if possible. And if I'm going to put people into my life that are going to have an impact on my success or on our success, is probably a better way to term it. What those guys I've been through the fire with, or I've. I've seen go through the fire and maintain their principles and their integrity and their team orientation because it's just so easy for people to bail and rationalize or justify it. Well, this is business, and that was personal. It isn't. You know, the longer you go and the higher you go in your career, the less separation there is between business and personal.

Well, especially when you truly focus intentionally on authenticity. Right. When you focus on being an authentic leader and you break that down into honesty, integrity and vulnerability, it is personal. I mean, you have so much emotional attachment to everything you do. It is personal. So let's flip that around. I know the answer to this but I want to hear from. I shouldn't say I know the answer to this, but I know why I trust you, Randy. Well, flip it around. And how do folks know when you inject yourself into their life, or they ask you to come on board or start talking to you about being an advisor or being on their board, you know, or possibly partner up on a venture? How do they know? What is it about you that's so consistent over the years, working with over 50 companies?

What are the consistencies that they know that why they know they can trust you?

Well, I think a lot of the people that I ultimately work with, I come to either because we've had a relationship before, or there's one or two degrees of separation, right? Where. Where their friend, who they trust, will say, oh, you can trust Randy. Right? Or Randy's really smart in this way. You know, in the last, you know, several companies that I've helped in a number of different ways, the ones that have been the most successful have been the ones that somebody who I had worked with in another life and was now doing something else, they said, hey, come join us and help us. You can help us in these ways. Or I got introduced to them through somebody who was a mutual friend and was mutually trustworthy. For example, I was. I don't know if you know Rich Routman.

He's the president and CRO of minute Media, and it's one of the fastest growing digital media companies in the sports world. They just acquired Players Tribune. I think that's public. Matter of fact, I'm sure it is. So I'm not talking out of school. Rich was part of a company that we acquired back when I had exoskeleton, and he was working for collegiate images. And so Rich worked for us for two or three years and was a wonderful guy and employee and very smart and very driven. And he moved on to go work for somebody else who ultimately became a competitor. But Rich and I always maintained our relationship. Then at one point, he said, hey, Randy, I want to introduce you to somebody who I think you could really help.

And he introduced me to a couple of phds that had a virtual reality camera company. And so Jay and Uma Jayaram up in Spokane, Washington, I went and I helped them. And Jay and Uma and Rich had been working on a project together. And so rich introduced me, and I got to know them, and I advised them for a while, and then they asked me to be on their board. And then we ultimately sold to intel. And part of that success was bringing in two people that I had worked with previously, Jeff Shonas and David Ophauser. Jeff was at sport vision and David was at the pac twelve. So we brought those guys in and they helped drive the success of the company. And I sat on the board and advised.

And so it was then later acquired by intel, and then six months later, Jeff asked me to come on board and advise intel on their new volumetric video technology. So it's just a very, it's a very relationship network of people that you develop over 32 years, or actually 40 years if you include the coaching in this industry.

So, Rainey, could you kind of let the listener know, like, what is it when you advise at a high level like that? What is it that you do, exactly? What do you advise them on, so to speak?

Well, it's really interesting. Like I said, I've worked with over 30 companies and my role has been different in everyone. There isn't a cookie cutter mold. The first thing is you go in and just do an audit. It doesn't have to be a formal audit. It can be an informal audit, but you do an audit and what are people's strengths? What are their weaknesses? What's the vision? What's the mission? What's the team look like? What are their skills, what are their capabilities? What are their talents, that 360 degree perspective, does it all come together? And is it what's necessary to be successful in this market and for what their vision is? And do they have capital? Do they have access to capital? That's a big part of it. And that's the hardest part for a lot of startups, is getting capitalized.

And then once you've done that audit, and once you understand what that is, then you help them devise the plan for whatever my specific role is, what can I do to help them to be successful? And sometimes at a board level or chairman's level, sometimes it's just an advisory role, sometimes it's an introductory role. I'm going to introduce them to people who can help them to be successful, whether it's new clients or business partners or things like that. So I think that's the biggest thing is developing the trust and allowing them to see that I have the experience and the expertise and the knowledge that I can really help.

And then once you invest enough time to understand what the specific opportunities are and what the needs are, then you try and employ, you know, try and take advantage of the years of experience and relationships to try and bring to bear the necessarily necessary things that can help them to be successful.

That must be incredibly rewarding.

Oh, it is. It is.

Yeah. Now, you said no cookie cutter approach, which I love. I'm sure that must keep it interesting. But how much of a challenge does that pose because you have to reset, so to speak, each time.

Well, I'm a pretty active thinker. I got a lot of energy. So it's really what makes it fun. Right. It's what makes it really interesting from my perspective, the opportunity to do new things, to leverage old relationships and experiences and expertise and understanding of the market, the industry, and inject those things into new opportunities and probably most importantly, just to help good people to be successful. That's the most important thing. And so, like I said earlier, there's been a few frustrations in dealing with people who maybe don't have the same level of integrity or principles, or at least don't act on them the way I would like. Right. Or the way I would expect them to. So there's been a few frustrations in that regard, but the positives have so far outweighed any of those negatives.

And the opportunities to, you know, have so many people in this industry that, you know, I consider my mentees or my younger brothers or similar types of relationships that, you know, that I've been able to help along the way, both personally and professionally, has really been rewarding.

When you deal with, when you come from a place of integrity and you deal with folks that might have a hidden agenda or might not be operating above the table, so to speak. Right? In other words, they're going to challenge the way things are going. How do you have those conversations? In other words, like, how do you recognize them and then separate yourself from that, similar to what you were just talking about, when those things, those challenges pop up, you know.

The interesting thing, when people are coming at it from a place of integrity and principle, it's easy to have those conversations when people aren't. They don't want to have those conversations, right? That they want to dictate or yell or do things through email or do things through letters or things like that. And you get to know people pretty quick the way they want to handle conflict. Conflict. It's the old, the book road less traveled by Scott Peck. The very first line is, life is difficult. That is one of the great universal truths. That might be a paraphrase, but it's really true. And if you're doing anything worthwhile, whether it's with other people or businesses or opportunities, there's going to be challenges.

And how do people handle challenges and do you pull together and do you work through them together, or do people run and hide and want to create their own agenda or whatever? And usually when people are doing that, they want to yell, they want to dictate, or they go into a shell, and they don't want to even communicate. Any one of those different people have different ways of handling things, but any one of those are bad. And I quickly realized that those aren't the people and those aren't the opportunities for me to be successful or to be helpful.

Over time, has it become easier for you to walk away from those situations?

Yeah, it is. The hardest part is you invest so much. You go into each situation thinking, expecting the best, right, of everybody. And so when you invest a lot of yourself, a lot of your own personal energy, your expertise, your relationships, all of those types of things, when you do that and people don't respond necessarily in a, you know, in the way you'd like, there's a impulse, right, to take it personally, like, well, what did I do? And you quickly have to process that and understand it's not about me, that one's about them, right.

And it's time to move on and find something else to be successful and try and learn as much as I can, learn as much as I could from the experience and glean as much information, but also, you know, learn about myself and what was it about my decision making and participating in a company or in a business or in a relationship with those guys? Why did I do that and where did it go wrong? What's my responsibility and what isn't, and then move on and apply it to the next one.

You just touched on something that I work a lot with my clients on, whether it be executive coaching clients or corporate clients, is the significance of an increased level of self awareness and your commitment to that. Right. And I like to talk about self awareness as actually a competitive advantage. How significant is self awareness to you, like you just mentioned?

Well, I think it's everything. I think it is the foundational aspect of being happy and ultimately successful and being in a position to help people. And it's not just in business. It's even more important at home. Right. And the most important thing to me is my family. Right. And I can't share with them what I don't have. I learned a long time ago, Ed, that, you know, I've got four daughters, wonderful people. Now I've got four grandchildren and a great wife and great family, you know, around it. And I learned a long time ago, my kids, the least important thing I did was what I said. The next most important thing was when they would draw me into a conversation, right. And I could.

You can kind of converse and guide the conversation in a way that is maybe helpful, but the most important thing is the example you set and how you role model, and you can't do that. I don't think you can do that without self awareness. And I think the long term is you just want to be happy. Right. And the things that make me happy are generating my own happiness, but also helping other people to be successful, whether it's on a personal level or a professional level, et cetera. That's the same thing I want for my kids or the people that I mentor or help. Right. And my grandkids and everybody I touch is that they have the ability to generate their own happiness. I don't think you can do that unless you're self aware.

And the more self aware you are, the more capacity for that. I will say one more thing. You know, I grew up, my dad was a minor teacher, coach, etcetera. And a lot of that was around. You had to be the toughest. You had to be the smartest. You had to make the most money. And the thing I learned over time was most of those things were not correct. And I love my dad, and he was a wonderful person. And I'm the person I am for a lot of those reasons. But the thing that I learned is the most power that I have is in surrender and faith and acceptance and those types of things, because once I own who I really am, it loses its power over me, and then I can make changes in who I am if I want to.

So if something's making me uncomfortable, whether it's something I'm doing or something somebody else is doing, if I own it, I surrender to it, I accept it. It loses its power. And then I can go ahead and make the appropriate changes if that's what I want to do.

With that being said, let's just imagine that you're talking to a group of young leaders or people who are moving up the leadership chain. Can you talk into the self awareness piece? But how important it is with today's workforce? Okay. And you and I talked a little bit about this before we started recording the podcast. With today's workforce, you know, they want three things. They want to know that what they do is important, right? They want to know that the work has meaning. They want to know that they're valued, and they want to be coached. They don't want to be told what to do. They want someone to take the journey with them. Can you talk into that a little bit, like what advice you would give leaders today in terms of leading today's workforce?

Yeah, I think it's what we just talked about. Right. It's. Those are not just things that kids today want. I think that's what everybody. That's what I wanted. Right. I wanted to be led. I wanted to be coached. And. And you do that a lot through example. And in order to have the confidence, it goes back to what you had just talked about. In order to have the confidence to lead by example, you have to be self aware and you have to be ready to give and you. And you have to be ready to want to help people to be successful. I think the old school ways, a lot of that was management by fear, coaching by fear. Do as I say, not what I do. The fear of being found out that I'm not all the things I say I am.

And if you're authentic, and you use that word a lot, which I like, authenticity and integrity and all those things, and I certainly fall short every day in each one of those areas. It's something that. It's progress, not perfection. And I think if you're living that and you're trying to do your best and you're trying to progress and your heart's in the right place and you want to help people and you have enough knowledge, experience and expertise to impart that, both on a personal and a professional level, then I think people are going to respond to that.

That's awesome. Well, Randy, I know we've got to run. I want to thank you for your time. This has been. This has been a blast. As a matter of fact, I already know. I'll probably ask you on again here soon, if that's okay with you. We never have enough time, but lots.

To talk about here.

So much to talk about. But before we go, I want to definitely mention home field sports again. And how can folks find out more about that as this project evolves and things are.

Yeah, we'll be taking that more public, probably starting first quarter. Home Field, LLC. We're. We're just in the initial stages. We have two facilities up and running. They aren't the expanded facilities that we'll be generating and we'll be developing over the next couple of years. So these take a long time to develop. You break the ground and you build these 160,000 square foot facilities. That's twelve to 18 months to get those fully operational. But we're hitting the ground running. We've got great investors. We've got great management. Rob Heineman, who was the founder and one of the owners of Sporting Kansas City and also fan 360. And Rob Heinemann would be a great guy to Google for those people out there. Rob's a wonderful person. He's probably one of the smartest people I know, and he's a really good person.

And he and I have been working together on various projects for the last three years. And so when I had the opportunity to join Rob and focus on this, you know, certainly wanted to jump in because it's a very exciting project. And really, if you think of it, the way that Topgolf disrupted the driving range, we're looking to disrupt the youth sports performance center.

Well, I look forward to that. And for the listeners, if you want updates, go ahead and email me at Ed at the Molitor group. Get your email on my list. That way we'll provide updates as it evolves. Home field sports evolves. I will also update the show notes. We'll keep putting the information on there as it comes out. And then when we have you on again for the encore interview, we'll talk more about it, how well it's going, how exciting it is. But Rainey, I can't thank you enough. I appreciate it, my friend. It has been a lot of fun.

Absolutely. Ed, always good to talk to you. Thank you.

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