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Veteran's Affairs Plus discusses the issues that veterans in Las Vegas deal with on a daily basis. Your host, David L. Washington connects listeners with relevant community resources and information that they need to help veterans or themselves.
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You're listening to locally produced programming created in
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KU NBC Studios on public radio K, u and v 91.5. You're listening to special programming sponsored by making moves life coaching services, the content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
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You can see
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what's going on?
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What's going on?
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What's going on?
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Good morning, Las Vegas. This is Veterans Affairs plus on 91.5, jazz and more. I'm Dave Washington, your host. I hope everyone is having a good
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week.
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The weather is changing on us. And you know what? Prayers for all that's going on over there in the Middle East because I know that's a terrible thing to be in a war zone. So we hope that God will bring some ease of the all the tragedy that's occurring over there.
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Also, this time, I like to just remind folks of our condolences to Chef Albert Washington and his family on the loss of their sister cookie. Her services will be as follows a viewing on
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the 19th October 19 4pm. And then it's I think it's four to 7pm at Palms and then also her funeral will be on that Friday. I feel right those times down. But again, condolences to the sheriff and his family. Birthdays. Clarence Jenkins, old friend of mine. He's now living in Detroit but his birthday is this month. Dr.
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Bernard Hamilton we did a lot of work with the
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was a decon, it was a baccalaureate program for students graduating from high school. Also another dear friend of the family. Dear friends, I should say that's Bonnie and Charlotte. Janelle, they will be celebrating birthdays in the month of October.
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Please remember,
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there will be at least the things that three weeks almost nearly and I might need west to give me up or down. But I know that they haven't. They're their membership drive. How long was that going for West? Is it for two weeks, three weeks? I think the whole month. Okay, so please recognize and 91.5 Jazz and more is having their their membership drive. And let's help me to that goal of 65,000 and I certainly want to thank my wife Marcia, Mr. Frank Hawkins, Jean Campbell, Burt Washington Angel Washington for their donation to occlude Edie burns and Danny Smith, both Danny and Edie burns and Jean their fire chiefs former fire chiefs and back Edie is now a police chief in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, if you will. So again, pardon me for it. I just wanted to to encourage people because that goal can be reached and it can be reached in a short period of time if people would just come on in and give us a give us a couple of dollars to assist in reaching that goal once again of $65,000 Once again this is Veterans Affairs plus on 91.5 Jazz and more. We will have Mr. Nathan ArmorGuard on the other side of the break here with good works and he will also have his operations person with him on the call so once again good morning everyone
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once again good morning everyone. This is Veterans Affairs plus on 91.5 Jazz and more. We have always like literally like to let people know when I have a relative This is my son in law Mr Nathan armor gun and he also has joining with us today his operations or your the title Nathan and introduce our please. Yes, Terry char fella Mackey, who was CFO but also hands all of our clients success and operations for the company as well. So wears many hats in the company, many hats in the company. So tell us a little bit about yourself, young lady.
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Where are you? Where are you from? And you know how long have you been living here and
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I'm only involved with the organization.
Unknown Speaker 5:03
Absolutely. One, I'm definitely delighted to be on the call today. And thank you for having us. I'm originally from Chicago, and I've been living in Las Vegas for almost 10 years now. And I absolutely love being a part of our hospitality focused city. So it's been a great move. And I have three amazing young boys that are growing up in this town as well. So it's been a really nice journey. Oh, absolutely. Great. So you got three boys, you say what stages if you don't mind share? Yes, we have a busy household. And we have three boys that are 12, nine and six. So they're all three years apart. And from the windy city of Chicago.
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Yes, Go Cubs go.
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So what brought you to Las Vegas?
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You know, it was an interesting transition and journey, we had our family interested in being out in the Midwest, to be a part of the the golf industry as well as the hospitality industry. And so I had worked with a gaming company here that is pretty prominent on the strip and worked with them for about seven years. And then just really fell in love with, you know, the operations and the city and what it has to offer. And that's where I had the opportunity to meet Nathan. And we had worked together for quite some time and decided to roll into this adventure with good works. And it's been,
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you know, an incredible story for the last year and a half. And yeah, we're really excited to share, share more about it with the group today. Sure. And, you know, Nathan knows that you caught my ear when you mentioned that you have been involved with the golf industry.
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Definitely caught my ear. So from from your perspective. And Nathan, you can add, but I certainly want to hear from you, young lady. Good Works. Why do you feel it's good for the hospitality industry here? And possibly around the world?
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Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think what we've seen unfold over the last year and a half is really, really exciting. And to be a Vegas boring company, and dedicate all of our attention to an effort to like our workers, makes it really easy for us to like, become this leading job platform for hospitality workers here and it works really, really well. The model has just shown over and over again, that one is good for workers, it's good for businesses, and it's just overall good for the economy.
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You know, we offer a very user friendly platform that allows our folks to essentially just pick their shifts pick their schedule, and you know, where do they want to work? When do they want to work? So it's all about flexibility and convenience. And, you know, so we have so many people in this city who are part time or maybe they're on an extra board, and they're simply looking for extra hours, right? So why not pick up an extra shift at Bellagio one day Caesars, the next day Mandalay Bay or MGM? So you know, all these properties need help around the clock. And so what we're doing is just simply connecting our workers with like this amazing range of opportunities to choose from whether they're cooks, kitchen workers, dishwashers, housekeepers, bartenders, you name it. So excellent. That's really exciting. Excellent. So Nathan, tell us about some of the latest activities that you guys are embarking upon.
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Okay, well, I guess before I do that, and knows your son in law, you probably get tired of hearing me talk. I try to keep my my comments. Brief. But, you know, Terry,
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omitted to mention that her three sons are all
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world champions in martial arts, national champions as well.
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I think she's well protected there in the household. In case anyone tries to mess with it, but yeah, sorry, look, we're just looking to, as Terry mentioned, we're looking to take this platform to as many places as possible. We are currently operational in New Orleans, in addition to Las Vegas, signing up new customers and acquiring new employee uses constantly and we're looking to take our model to all the major markets in the US and in a few key international markets as well over time, but I focus in the near term of the domestic deployment of our model. So how many folks have you got, I guess as staff members dealing with the overall operation and for the company?
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We
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go ahead territory or have you been taken
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on
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You know, we're growing very, very fast, I want to say we're over 16,000. And, you know, growing over 1000 a month. And so, again, the popularity of this, whether it's word of mouth, or colleagues talking about it, or family members talking about it. It's very, very neat. So we're excited to see how this all unfolds over the next few years, and hopefully bring it to many other cities that they can benefit from just like Las Vegas. Sure. Now, that's, that's the people who actually sign on to actually go to work at one of the different properties. Correct. So
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as far as your operations and those who are in leadership roles, how 30 people 30 people and we growing, adding a new staff, especially to help support our back office operation. And so, right now, we had we had 30, we weren't always at this number, we started with a skeleton crew. But as we've grown the business we've been able to bring on new folks.
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And Mysteria pologize, maybe the question wasn't clear enough, because, you know, I'm not a journalist so much on my talk show.
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So, to me, and I guess, particularly you, Jerry, what do you see as some of the pitfalls in terms of overseeing the, the overall operation?
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Sure, you know, I, I think about this question, and maybe an area where we might have, like a silver lining is, when we become, you know, really close with our employees on a daily basis, I think that's, that's a big component of like, our culture of our company, you know, we certainly have a big spot in our hearts for a lot of our team members who have some of the most like, incredible, you know, life changing stories, or backgrounds and things that they're working through, you know, and then these are folks that are very hard workers, right, and they, they want the opportunity to be able to, like, have access to income, and, you know, they may not have been as comfortable doing interviews in the past, but, you know, now we're giving them opportunities to easily pick up shifts, you know, at some of the most world renowned resorts here in town, and they just get to show the department's how hard they worked, and, you know, hearing their their gratitude and appreciation for the opportunities, so that they can, you know, pay that monthly bill or overcome any financial burdens and stuff like that, like, it pulls at the heartstrings, for sure. So, you know, I mean, the even though it's like more emotional type situations have have been, you know, very interesting, right, and then, you know, we're certainly, you know, continuing to ensure that we can meet and exceed the demands, you know, of the city, and wanting to ensure that we can give as many people access to these jobs as much as possible. So it is this like, fine balance of balancing the number of workers we have in the company, as well as the number of jobs that we're providing to them through all of the companies on the platform.
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And it's worked out really well. So, you know, we, at the end of the day, we don't want people, you know, looking at an app, and there's no work available, and then we also don't want to give it to a property and then all of a sudden not have enough workers for them. So, you know, that's the challenge, I think, but it's kept our team, you know, very, on top of everything, and we work so well together to stay on top of it. That's great. Well, something that you said that really sparked my thought in terms of
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how do you there must be some some type of screening that occurs because you said, a lot of times people get nervous, and I've been there as well, in terms of sitting before a panel being interviewed.
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But there is something that you guys do to ensure that you have, you know, people that's going to come to work and you know, be efficient at that work, etc. Yes, yes. Yeah. So we we have a fairly robust onboarding process, where we gather in and see where is their prior work history. We meet them in person, just that one, introduce ourselves so that they always know that there's a representative from the good works team, if they were to have any questions, right. And then we certainly just ensure that we keep an eye on everyone's performance and we want to make sure that we're providing professional and
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professional and skilled workers to the properties and then you know, if, if people have a bad day or if they something goes wrong, you know, we certainly work on that directly with the employees right out
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For the for the most part, we we the experience component tells a lot. So generally speaking, you want people that have some level of experience in any of these particular positions that they may be seeking to get some additional working.
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Some entry level, sort of, you know, transition, a transitionary type work where, you know, the learning curve isn't very steep. And so we offer folks who have no prior experience, options like that, so that they want, they can increase their experience, scale a little bit, and get their foot in the door. And so while we prefer folks who have existing experience, we certainly have opportunities for those who are trying to break into the industry for sure. So, Nathan, what year did good work star?
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Good was started in the throes of the pandemic in 2020.
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Wow. So I'm sure that really threw a wrench into things getting it going. But also it probably has some positive to it, as well.
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Right, right. They are, it was tough to launch your startup in, in a pandemic, where the entire industry was shut down. And everyone thought, or some people thought the industry was facing an existential threat when we tried to get to raise capital, and no one would give us a dime, because they thought that the industry was dead. And we kept telling people, the industry is going to come back, there's a lot of latent demand for people wanting to get out of their homes.
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People like entertainment, they like what Hospitality and Tourism have to offer. But when it comes back, even have a fractured labor market, right? people retire early, people who move to other industries moved to other cities, people who don't want to work in certain environments for fear of maybe some picking, you know, for health reasons. And that's exactly what happened. And so that then became the catalyst for people adopting our technology.
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We offer people a different way of sourcing, labor, but also a different way of finding opportunities for work, right. I mentioned doing it in a festival way. So yeah, both a blessing and a curse. But definitely, I'd say more of a blessing because it really fast forwarded the adoption of our technology.
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Okay, Las Vegas, this is Veterans Affairs, plus on 91.5, jazz and more, I got Nathan interion, there with good works in there, just kind of give me some indication of some of the things that they're doing. And to you veterans out there who may be looking for some additional work.
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They I trust that we will get some information on their platform of entry for you, to each of you, would you please share? What do you think the company will be safe? Five, seven years from now?
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I'd like to hear from both.
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Sure.
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You know, we're we're excited, I think we're onto something really, really big. We hope that in five to seven years, you know, we are in every major hospitality city and state and being able to offer this, this platform to folks out there, whether it's hospitality, focus, and or maybe other industries as well, whether it's education, or health care or construction. Anywhere that, you know, folks are looking for assistance with Shift type work, I think it's a really, really good fit. And, you know, I would just close and say that, you know, I would love for everybody listening to if you guys want to join our team, or tell your friends or colleagues about good works. We're on a really big journey together. And it's, it's again, it's amazing to see what the local team has accomplished here in one city over a year and a half or so. And so we're excited to you know, change the industry and then grow and expand from here on out great Neysa
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know exactly what Terry said,
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I'll just add out our mission. And our mission from beginning was to reshape what is to reshape the gig economy into something that delivers more quality outcomes for workers. gig economy today, we believe sometimes gives workers a shorter end of the stick. And so we're looking to provide a viable alternative for people where they can take the same technology the same is of access to income, same schedule flexibility, but enjoy workers rights with benefits, worker protections, much better pay. And so that's our overall goal is just as changed the trajectory of where the gig economy is taking our society which is becoming extremely unequal and we think there's a better way and that's what we're trying to do. And you know, as we all know, a lot of the folks that are in the gig economy today are black, black and brown and young. And like their parents, you
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and grandparents who worked in Detroit or, you know, even in our industry who found a path to the middle class, many of them are treading water. Right? Right. And so we're looking to provide
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just better outcomes for workers and give them a better chance of accessing, you know, the middle class, but also, again, finding opportunities to get the foot in the door.
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You know, a lot of times when you have certain names, right, your your resume doesn't make it to the top of the pile. And so, as Terry mentioned, like, we become an entry point for a lot of people. So that's, our business is going to do great things, for sure. And we also want to be juried. Our Northstar is to reshape the gig economy. And it's an audacious goal. But we're very confident that we can do it. How about hospitality? And AI? Do you see any interface there?
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We should answer that.
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Dear,
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oh, sorry. Sorry about that. What was that again? I just, I know you miss with them young them young sons yours. Look, AI and hospitality? Do you see an interface there? Or good, bad or indifferent? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's pretty. It's pretty phenomenal what what AI is bringing to the industry.
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And I think just over whether the horizon is six months or 12 months, I think what we're gonna see is, is the ability to leverage this technology. And we, you know, we have, we have some back end support that we built into our platform to ensure that we are answering any and all questions to all of our 1000s of employees around the clock, right. So if they have questions about where do I need to go? Are there any, you know, a road closures on the way to the strip or
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stuff like that? Yeah, just general questions about payroll or, you know, questions about their shifts, you know, I think what we're going to be able to find is, you know, AI might be able to help us, you know, on the customer support side to and just kind of streamlining it to make it a very seamless and quick process for everybody. So we'll see how it, how that all unfolds. Great. A few weeks ago, I had the president, Dr. Whitfield on the show. And he said when he arrived here, some of his staff was concerned about people cheating as they go through, you know, their classwork, etc. And he said, cheating did start with AI.
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did not start with AI. So don't don't drop that on AI. He said, There's ways and means of dealing with folks to include, in this an example that he gave that I thought was very interesting. He said, Look, you give you give the students an assignment. And then you can bring them together as a group, and having to explain what they wrote.
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He said, I guarantee you people will do more research, they won't just count on AI to write something for them. So as we start to wind and wind down time wise, is there any thing you'd like to share? Each of you just said, some closing remarks. And again, I appreciate you guys coming on. Because I think it's important for we continue to spread the word about good works, and the good work, the great work that is being accomplished in terms of giving people an opportunity to make additional pay, because we get we're in a tough economy, but you
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know, thank you, thank you so much for having us. You know, for those listening if, if you're eager to, to explore it and jump right in or kind of see what good works is about. It's so easy. Our app is accessible through the App Store,
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the app on Apple devices through the Google Play Store on Android devices, and it's good works. It's spelled g o d WRX. And
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we're really excited and they simple process, it might take you maybe 1520 minutes to go through that initial onboarding, right, and putting in your work history, your profile information, how you want to get paid, right, all those pertinent pieces, to becoming a part of our company. And then, you know, just like that after after we review and verify folks and make sure that you have all the necessary credentials and health cards and stuff like that we have we can send you shifts right away, like we need so much help and we're excited to again to give people the opportunity to work up and down the strip, downtown area in the surrounding areas of Las Vegas. Excellent. Excellent, Nathan.
Unknown Speaker 24:46
Thank you for your support. David.
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We appreciate you giving us this forum to to showcase a little bit more about what we're doing. We just asked for everyone's support and prayers as we
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You know, building a startup is not easy as Terry will tell you it's it's a daily grind by the minute by the hour but
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so we just need everyone's support and for those who pray certainly wouldn't mind sending a couple of prayers away just as we as we continue our journey but again we appreciate your giving us this platform. Absolutely announced see early, happy birthday to you Nathan, you, Angel Cassatt.
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Coming up, actually, tomorrow is
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Miss Amira on the 11th So once again guys I appreciate you guys coming on the show and we'll get you back on sometime down the road because I know and I can tell that you guys are excited you have the energy to continue to grow this company into one of the world famous tape company so greatly appreciate it I wish you Godspeed and continued success. This is Veterans Affairs plus on 91.5 Jazz.
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The smoke in the tilde hey when they step all the way
Transcribed by https://otter.ai