Hospitality Role Models & Legends

Foreign. To our Brothers in Conversation podcast, powered by Jesse and Shondell. Shondell, you are from Bed Stuy do or Die Brooklyn. That little town, That's a little town that's nothing like Hawthorne, Nevada, population 5,000 cats and dogs. Okay. Today is Friday March 13th, 2020, 2020 episode 21. This is the Brothers in Conversation. We love this conversation because this is, that's what it is. It's a conversation. Our program has been on for quite a while now and now it's always time to bring some great guest spots in and we're going to be bringing in Larry Lewin. Larry Lewin is a long time industry executive in the hospitality industry. So Larry, welcome to the program.

Thank you.

Jesse, tell us what are you doing right now, Larry, in terms of hospitality and how you're serving it.

Jesse, are you asking what I do for career wise or how I am acting in the hospitality?

That's a good question. Well, our title today is Hospitality Role Models and Legends. So I want to know, I'm sure the people listening will want to know what is Larry Lewing doing for a living occupationally in the hospitality industry now?

Good, Jess. Well, I am currently semi retired. I opened up a consulting company about 12 years ago, Lewin International. And basically I do consulting. So I remain in the casino industry. I currently consult to one casino in Puerto Rico at the Embassy Suites, which is a Blackstone owned entity. Okay. And until recently I also was doing a second casino in Puerto Rico. I gave up that opportunity at the end of January of this year and that was at the El San Juan, which was for, for another hedge fund group called Fundamental. I also work with a group called the Service Companies, which is a cleaning company. And I help represent them and connect them.

Really.

I think I've become more of a connector in my life now than an operator. And I've create accounts for them and so I generated a number of accounts for them across the country. Foxwoods being one.

Oh, huge.

The Boca Raton Resort being a second one. And there's a number of other resorts across the country that I deal with. I've also done some work with Hilton, don't do that currently now, but I've also the casino in Cairo, Egypt. I helped assist them and aligned some of their operational philosophies and I've done that. And probably the biggest thing that I'm doing now is the state of Georgia is thinking about legalizing gaming.

Okay.

And so I've formed a company called Hospitality Partners of the south. And we're working right now to possibly get the state to legalize gaming over a period of time.

Wow. That's big.

That's.

That's a big, big portfolio. The second one that you said that you in San Juan, that you decided that for whatever reason, it was time for you to move on. Can you share why that was or no?

No, I can share what it was at the L. San Juan. I was there as a consultant for 13 years. The property has gone through eight different management groups.

Wow.

And 16 different GMs.

Wow.

And currently they're going through another change where they brought in the Fairmont Group to be the new managers. And so I made a decision, probably Jesse, you. You know this. I made a decision at the end of last year. Sure. My wife passed away on November 3rd. Right. And so I decided at that point in time I need to have no negativity in my life.

Oh, I like that.

And so the El San Juan is a beautiful property. The casino has been closed for a little bit over a year, as it's been with the remodeling and with the Hurricane Maria and the damage that was done to the property. And you know, the people that I work with, I enjoyed very, very much. But the management groups, everybody comes on in and has their own viewpoint.

Right.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

Right.

And so after my wife passed away and they just. On I think January 4th, 5th or 6th, the Fairmont Group came on in. And so they became the new management team.

Right.

And they're wonderful people, I'm sure. But it's a very interesting thing. Everybody says in Puerto Rico that they can make things better, of course. Well, Puerto Rico works in a different way.

Sure.

The people have a wonderful spirit for life. But each American group that comes on in and wants to operate, wants to operate the way they've operated everywhere, the.

Way they've done it everywhere else, regardless of the circumstances.

And the Puerto Ricans are unique, wonderful people.

Right.

But probably the best way of describing it in America, business is first and family is second, so to speak, for the most part. This is especially true for people that want to excel to the highest level.

Right.

I mean, for people that are workers, you know, they can make their family first, of course, and that should be the priority. But if you really want to succeed.

You'Re below the decision making levels.

You have to always keep your family in a priority. But work demands a lot of your attention and time, for sure. And so your family is putting not in a secondary position, but work is primary. Sure. The Puerto Ricans have a Very different viewpoint of life. Right. Family is really the most important.

And that's part of the culture.

That's part of the culture. And so if you don't understand that, it's very difficult to work in that environment. Sure. And so you're asking me the question. New people were coming on in. I've been through eight different management teams, been through different ownership groups, and I've been through 16 different GMs at that property.

Wow.

And I just didn't really want to do another one. And it's not that anybody is bad. It's not that anything is wrong. So I exercised my 60 day. No notice. Yeah. And I said. And so I ended my time there on January 31st.

Well, the process is exhausting when you're doing that, when you're going through the different changes and different management styles and different leadership levels and acumen and all that, it's really, really. It's really, really challenging. And you're talking 16 different GMs, that's a big deal. I do want to say also back up and say, you know, we feel bad and we're so sorry that you did lose your wife. And it sounds like in that loss you start to take some real look at your inner circle stuff and what's really important and what is the. How should you be using your time and the value of your time and who's using that? It sounds like you're being very discriminating. You've always been discriminating anyway. It sounds like you've raised the level of discrimination of determining who is going to get your time and what that's going to look like. Probably personally and professionally. Not just professionally, I would imagine.

I would not say it that way. I would say it this way. I don't want to be angry anymore. And sometimes when you're in the heat of the battle. Yeah. It's like playing a sport. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose for sure. March 16th. This coming Monday, I'll be 68 years old. Okay.

Happy birthday.

Thank you. I'm in great shape.

Right.

I'm very healthy. I still have my brain. Sure. I can function. I love life. And so I'm only going to have good things around me right now. The L San Juan. I cannot tell you what's going to be negative.

Right.

I don't know if it was going to be negative or not. I just didn't want to start over again with the group and go through the whole process again.

Right.

And they deserve to have somebody that is going to Be the conspiracy consultant working with them that is completely committed. Because the new people don't know anything about the old people. Right. And I don't want them not to succeed.

Right.

I just don't want to do it again.

Right.

And so after Cher passed away, I've decided that. What do I have? 15 years, 20 years, 30 years of life? Who knows? We're going through what we're just experiencing right now in life. You don't know what happens. Two months ago, no one even knew what coronavirus was. Today we have businesses closing, sports teams are not playing.

Right.

Life has changed for everyone. Yes. And so for me, I decided that really, I want to have only quality people around me and me being around those quality people.

I think that's a smart choice. I think a lot of people. A lot of people don't realize they.

Have the opportunity, make the same choices.

To determine who they want to be around them and what kind of work they want to do that brings them, you know, beyond the resources, but joy and appreciation. And a lot of people don't realize they have that. I think it's good that you do realize that. And when you think about that, can you. Do you have any legends or do you have a role model? Or did you have a role model as you were coming up through the years?

Yes. You know, I had a number of them. You know this very well. The greatest one in my life was my father, of course. And I follow. I followed in his footsteps. So having one of the greatest hotel men in the world, Debbie Henry Loman, as your father.

Yeah.

Some people would view that as being a challenge, but I view it from a standpoint that I'm the luckiest man alive. And then in my career, I've been able to work for unbelievable people. Okay. Baron Hilton, I worked directly for. As I started my career in gaming and started to grow, there was an iconic individual on the gaming side by the name of Jimmy Newman. I remember Jimmy Newman who was at the Las Vegas Hilton and was very instrumental in my growth. There was a man by the name of Jimmy Garrett who ran the Flamingo Hilton. And Jimmy Garrett gave me really my first great opportunities. I was an assistant casino manager for him from 1982 to 1984. And he really taught me a lot of the essence of what you want to do to run and slot floor.

Yeah, he's pure gaming. He was a pure gaming.

Pure gaming. But he was. And he was not for any of the frills. He didn't really need any fanfare.

Right.

But he Understood before really, I wouldn't say before anybody else, but he really, he was very focused on a slot floor. So that was very, very important.

That was before people were focusing on the sloth farm. In fact, you're Talking about late 70s, 80s, 90s, they were more table game focused right.

At that time. Correct?

Sure, correct.

As a matter of fact, at that point in time, the Las Vegas Hilton, which was the Westgate, was more of a table game place where the Flamingo Hilton became more of a grind joint and it was more slot blade based. And then the Rainbow Pots of Golds, which were the first set of progressives that were brought in and just really hit frequencies on slot machines. Jimmy Garrett was very, very focused on time of device. You know, he really taught me this. There's two types of customers on the casino floor. Customer that has more money than time and the customer that has more time than money. Okay. And what you have to do is understand, is what your business is really catering to.

Sure.

So if we just take today and you go to a casino, for example, the stations casinos.

Right.

The station casinos focus a lot more on customers who have more time than money.

Right.

So you have to give them a greater experience.

Yes.

They have to have more time value for their money. Right. Then you go to a place like the Cosmopolitan Difference. There is a customer that has more money than time.

Right.

So you still have to give them a wonderful experience. Right. But they are more thrill of victory, agony of defeat. They're much more excited about playing a short period of time, winning a major jackpot. So you'll have more machines that have a high hit frequency at the high end, which means that the customer is going to be ground out of their money a little bit faster. Faster, but they have less time. So you really have to really understand what market you're in, who your customer is and what experience you want to give that customer. Then another individual that really was very instrumental in my life that really changed how I operate and that is Jay Pritzker. Jay Pritzker is, was the, the. The leader of Hyatt. Yeah. And he brought me on and I went to work in Greece and then they brought me on and made me the president CEO of Hyatt Gaming. Sure. And then my job changed completely. And what he taught me was something completely different.

Because of the universal nature. Is that why? Because now you can look at a big global thing, not just property.

Correct. Because now I was no longer running property. Right. I was no longer running the day to day.

You had to run the master Thing that helped run the properties.

Well, not even that, that was a part of it, but what my role was even more in terms of how we were going to expand the company, what markets were we going to go into and how are we going to do that? So now all of a sudden, and how much debt are you going to carry on that operation? And, and so that was something that I had never done before, that I had to learn. So my expertise is, as he said to me, Larry, I hired you because you are very detailed.

Sure.

Now for you to be successful, I need you to be much more global. I need you to see a bigger picture, not the final picture. And I know that you're always going to go back to your comfort zone of wanting to fix that problem.

Sure.

You now have to hire people to fix that problem. Right. And you now have to keep the entity flowing.

Right.

And that entity, at the time, we had 15 different casinos around the world. We had a casino in Mendoza, Argentina and Baku, Azerbaijan. In Manila of the Philippines, we, we were on multiple brands. We had a casino, the largest casino in Europe at the time in Saloniki, Greece. We were in La Manga, Spain. Then we had the Grand Victoria casinos in the US which were riverboats. Then we had the Hyatt hotel casinos that people really know, but one in Aruba and one in Lake Tahoe and then the one here in Lake Las Vegas. They. Vegas were really very small. And then we were part of a consortium with the Casino Niagara and the Niagara Falls View Casino Resort. So we were, we had all of this product and all of it was not the same.

It wasn't very different.

It wasn't like a McDonald's or a Starbucks that they're all the same. Matter of fact, many of them were completely different.

Yeah. It was not a friend. Even though it was probably part of what you might call it, franchise. Didn't have franchise mentality at all. They're all, they were connected through Haya, but they were independently run by the nature of where they were.

And culturally. Wow. And culturally, you needed to understand where you are in the different markets. So in Puerto Rico, we also had the Dorado Casino and the Saramar that were under Hyatt. So that was where I got my first experience, experience to Puerto Rico before I went on my own and then, you know, started being involved with these other casinos that I currently am.

How was the transition moving from being super detail oriented to having to have that global perspective? How was that transition time wise for you and effort wise for you?

It was very scary.

I'LL bet. It's like starting over almost.

Well, you. You don't know what you're doing, and there's no one there to tell you how to do it. You know, I'm used to. As I grew up, you know, I was used to, okay, well, this is. You go into the job and somebody says to you, this is how we do it.

Right.

And you go, oh, okay, this is how we do it. And then as you kind of do it, you modify it to your culture. Right. So my issue has always been I want to treat people the way I want to be treated. Treated. So I want to treat people with a lot of respect and elegance, but I also hold people accountable and responsible.

Right.

And you know me pretty well, and I'm pretty direct.

Oh, yes.

So people don't say that Larry Lewin is a nice guy. They will say, I like Larry Lewin or I dislike Larry Lewin. Hopefully not many people say that I'm an idiot, but not everybody likes my Stop.

Right.

I you going on through. Especially when you're working in different cultures, you have to really understand.

Yep.

What that culture does and how they feel.

It matters.

It just is completely different.

Yeah. Because if you don't pay respect to that last part, which is perfect. That's what you just said about how that. How they feel, that is so huge. In fact, the book that I wrote, how you leave them feeling, is based on exactly what you're saying. Because if you go into a different culture and you want to take your way or your style and just roll with it, you know, whether they like it or not, that could be very devastating on that organization. We have to take full account of how they perceive things, how they receive things, how they like to be spoken to. You know, it's a whole new learning. It's almost like learning a new language, actually, to be quite honest with you. You need to learn that. Then you still bring your style along with it, but you need to pay respect to how you leave them feeling. Otherwise, you're not going to get any. You're not going to get them to cooperate with you. They're going to be turned off by you.

You're absolutely right, Jesse. And one of the problems that Americans have in traveling is that we're spoiled in this country.

Oh, yes.

And we kind of believe that the rest of the world should live like we do now. Yeah. But they're very happy the way they live. So when you're going into their culture to work, the most important thing is to understand their culture 100% being clear about what your objective is because you've been sent in there to do an objective, whatever that is, and you need to get to make sure that that is completed and done in a proper manner.

Right.

But you will never be successful unless you really understand how they feel. And more importantly is even, as your book said, how you leave them feeling. So you have to understand how they feel. And even if you agree or disagree with how you feel, if you're working in their environment, you have to make sure that you make them. Them feel good. So as an example, today you're in my home, right? And you came on in my home and you said, gee, this is a very nice home. But what you really said, which my wife and I had tried to do, right. This is a very comfortable home.

Yes. It leaves me feeling comfortable and it's my first time in. And that feeling means that now I'm open for whatever reason you want to do, but if I'm not feeling in a particular way or awkward or angst or whatever that is, that's going to predict how I'm going to show up. Yes. So what you've created here is an atmosphere of comfort, of just the right touch, just the right fireplace, just the right setting on the pool, just the right direction where you can see the strip. I mean, a number of just the right things. You can feel them.

Well. And even as you're asking me how I've changed during the period of time, I've mentioned a couple of times that my wife passed away and we were together for 44 years. And a couple of years ago, she fell down the stairs and broke her legs. And that really started the process of, you know, of bringing her to her demise. But I tried to bring comfort to her. So. So I used to buy flowers, right. But now I make my own arrangements. So as you go through the house now and you're sitting here and all these arrangements that you see, right. I do them. Wow. I buy the flowers and I do these arrangements.

Okay, wait a minute. How many former president, CEOs, senior level executive executives are going to the store, buying their flowers and making their own arrangements? And there are a number of them around us. I can see one.

There's four of them.

They're major, they're not little, they're big.

Right.

So how many of people that have your background, you think are doing that?

I don't know how many are doing that. It doesn't really matter because it kind of makes me happy. Now my. Some of my friends say to me you must have been an alternate lifestyle in your life before, right? I go, well, I don't know what it was my life before. I just know that this kind of. It brought happiness to my wife that I did this. And it really is a very soothing kind of thing for me. And so I do this now. And so you see. So when you see these and you come on in, you probably thought when you came in, oh, he's doing it here. He probably went out and bought these.

Arrangements or figure your assistant maybe figured it out and purchased them and placed them because. Because she knows you like them, right?

No, no.

I would have never thought that you did that. I did not even know all these years I've known you. That's an artistic touch. That's an artistic flare. That's also attention to detail, too, though, right? No, no, I know.

I'm. I'm. Yeah. And so I've done this, and I've really started this about two years ago. And it's the thing that one's happening as I do this, and people start learning that I do it right. Everybody comes on, and when I say it, they do exactly the same thing, Jesse, that you're doing now. There's just this big smile because they're going, really? I've known this man a long time.

It's true.

And now you want to tell me you do flowers on top of everything else.

But you know what's really my smile is from what you just said. But it's bigger than that. It goes deeper than that. Because I know that we grew up in different places, and I knew we grew up in different styles, but our friendship, we have a friendship and we have a professional relationship. We have both, and we interchange it in the mix, whatever. But there's so many things that we do that are very, very similar. Just the fact that you've never shared that before. I literally do that all the time. There are people that have known me for 15, 20 years. Years, and they don't know I have a fine arts degree because I don't talk about it. I mean, if it's relevant, okay. But if it's not relevant, I'm not going to put that out there. So I'm doing it because you're doing to me what I do to people, which is when they find out that I'm gifted when it comes to art and being creative, they're blown away because they didn't. They just don't know that. They think I'm this super organized guy, super professional, business organized guy. They don't know, like you people would never know you had that talent, but you do. And you don't think it's no big deal to you. It's just what you do. You don't, you don't. You're not making a big deal out of it. You never would. It's just what you do. As a matter of fact, yeah, it.

Makes me happy and it makes the people that come over here happy. And I just want to tell the listeners I've done. I've known you since you were 16 years old and you worked for me a number of times in your life. And, and ever since we first met, not only have we had a very good connection from a friendship, we have been a great bond in regards to seeing things professionally and personally in the same way. And I remember when we were at the Sands and you know, we were dealing with high level customers and I could depend on you more than anybody else on my team. And we did critical things and you were the best. And not only do we do critical things from making sure that the customers were having a great experience, but really you took my vision of trying to understand theoretical.

That's right.

And wrote a complete paper for me on the vision of theoretical, which is still relevant today. Right? It is completely relevant.

Well, you know, that's so true. And the reason why that happened like that, Larry, is because you were my, you have been my number one role model when it comes to hospitality. From watching you work, watching your family, watching the connections that you serve, watching how you ran organizations. And when I got an opportunity to work with you, I was not going to fail at all. Where you had to come in and clean up behind me, that was never going to happen. You would hand me things with no instructions. You even gave me things that were way outside of my authority range, like I didn't really have. But I couldn't say, well, that's outside of my authority. You didn't want to hear that. You didn't have time for that. You needed to get things done. So whenever you would give me a project or an assignment or a directive that was outside of my authority, I. I found a way to get it done.

You were the best.

I had to. Because I didn't feel that I had an opportunity to play for second place. I had to be the I chose. And I wanted to be the best person that you've ever said, you know, I'm going to give you an opportunity. I wanted to be that person, whatever the circumstances were. And there were some tricky circumstances along the Way being in hospitality is not as easy as we make it look.

Well, everything is easy when it's working right.

Fair enough, fair enough.

It's just when it isn't working right. But to make it work is very, very complicated. And my wife used to say all the time to me is that you make one critical mistake, you make everything you do seem easy. So people think it is easy, you should screw up a little bit more and then get very frustrated and then fix it. That sounds like share, because then people will think that you're working much harder.

You do make it look easy, and I like that, though. I really think that's something else I like to bottle. I like to make things look easy as well, because it's nobody's business and what detail I have to go through to do this. Unless they make it their business. Otherwise, most people just concern about the results. What are you going to do? For me, that's really it. So can you share one of the most difficult things that you manage or had to manage throughout your career path? Can you think of something where it fell into your space? You had to figure it out, and there were very few to almost no answers to this situation. And you got to figure it out.

Well, you know, there were a number of them. I will say probably the thing that scared the most or was the hardest to do was having to do something that I was totally unprepared for. I became prepared afterwards. But there really are two stories. One is going to be somewhat humorous, and then the other one became very critical in terms of my success. So when I was 20 years old, I was going to Cornell and Elvis Presley performed at the Las Vegas Hilton. And my father was running that hotel and along with a number of others. And I got my summer job to go to work for Colonel Parker. It's kind of interesting because you hear Tom Hanks is just announced that he has the coronavirus and he's in Australia, but he's doing a movie with about Elvis Presley and he's playing the role of Colonel Parker. Okay. So it's going to be very interesting to me how he plays that role, because I worked for Colonel Parker. I was his gopher. And when I went to work for him, the first job that he gave me was to say that we were performing, performing in Chicago. And there was the Chicago Stadium, which was an oval kind of stadium. And he said, Larry, there's 3, 400 people that are going to be sitting behind Elvis. And if you watch all of the candidates today, when you watch them on tv, they no longer have a background. The background is people, right? And the people are. There's a young person, that. There's an old person, there's a Spanish person, there's a black person, there's a Jewish. So when you're looking and he's speaking, you see everybody behind and you can relate to somebody in that crowd.

Sure.

Well, the Colonel understood that before anybody else. Wow.

I'm surprised because he's a unique character.

Very unique. So he says to me, he calls me into his suite. We were at the Conrad Hilton, which is today the Chicago Hilton and Towers. And he says to me, these. We got open seats. Why don't you go do something nice and fill up the seats? I'm 20 years old. I'm saying to myself, I'll just go on the street and give people tickets. Everybody wants to see Elvis Presley, right? So he had a secretary by the name of Mrs. Miller, who he eventually married. So I went to see her and I said, what do you think I should do? She says, he told you, do something nice. Be creative and do something nice. So I found a school for blind and deaf children. And I called them up and I said, we have seats. Do you how many students are in the school? And there were X number of students. And then there's family and teachers. And I sent buses up and I brought all of them in and I. I sat them all behind, right? The story takes 32 years for me to cure the whole part. Because evidently during the show, Elvis saw the people behind him, right? And he used to pass out scarves, throw a scarf into the audience, okay? So he. Now, in 2004, I bought Cher a new car and an Acara. And we were looking at living at that point in time in Chicago. And we had just taken our little dog to get groomed. And so they had a guy on Sirius on Channel 5. It was in Jan. January, and it was just about the time of Elvis's birthday. And Charlie Hodge was a member of the Memphis Mafia. And so he's telling. They're asking him, what's the funniest story that ever happened? Or one of the funniest, funniest story. And he tells the story about me. So evidently, Elvis is singing, he sees the students behind. He takes the scarf, throws it up, and the scarf comes down, right? He picks up the scarf, he throws it back up, it comes down. Evidently, he went off stage. And Charlie Hodge says, elvis, it was Lewin who put the blind people behind him. And supposedly Elvis said, thank God. I thought. Thought I Was losing my touch. You asked the question of how do I deal with things? You know, I was asked, I don't know how I came up with that. I just said, what am I going to do? The other thing, from a business perspective, I ended up going to work for Jay Pritzker. And they had just opened up this casino in Greece, and it wasn't doing very well. And they sent me over there, and I realized in the first six months a number of procedural issues that weren't working. One had to do with dress code. You couldn't go into the casino without a collar shirt, you couldn't go in without jeans, all of these silly things. But turned that casino around, and we were bidding on, at that point in time, part of the consortium. We were bidding on Casino Niagara, which was owned by the Ontario government in Canada at Niagara Falls. And we were going against the Tropicana at the time, which was Dennis Gomes and his group, interestingly enough, our president, President Trump, Trump Casinos, and our group. And they. They brought me over to Toronto, and Jay Pritzker said, I want you to go to this meeting, and you're going to be there with a number of members of our consortium and help them with anything they want. So as a young child, I stuttered my whole life. And so I go to this meeting, there must be 50, 60 people in it. People are talking or going around the table. They come to me and they say, okay, Larry, how are we going to run this casino?

That's big.

I don't even know what the casino looks like. I don't even know what they're planning on doing. So for the next half an hour, I stuttered like I went back into my teens and I perspired. And at the end of it all over, they said to me, that was perfect, Larry. If you could just stutter a little bit less and not sweat as much, that'll be perfect. Because this afternoon, we're going in front of the committee that is going to choose. And so I said, I don't know what I said to myself, I don't know what I said, but just give me an hour. And I went back to the hotel room. I had to take a shower because I got to tell you, it was like I was in a swimming pool. I mean, I didn't have rings under my shirt. The entire shirt was like I had just been there. And I went and I. And I took a shower, kind of tried to remember all the things I said, right? And that afternoon, went and made a presentation, and we Won the bid.

Wow.

And that contract remained with the Falls Management Company for 25 years. They just gave that up. The Mohican sun now run those. Those properties because now they privatized it. And so they just turned that over in June. So I. That was probably the most difficult professional thing that I had to do, and I had no time. So I always try to tell people this business works in a very simple way. Everybody wants to be successful, but success is when preparation meets opportunity for sure. So you never know when that opportunity is going to come.

Right. An opportunity sometimes is extremely challenging.

Right. But you don't know when it comes. But when it comes, you've got to take that risk.

Correct.

But you can't be successful if you're not prepared.

Right.

So preparation is the key. So I wasn't prepared to make that early discussion.

Right.

But knowledge of how to run a business and how to run a casino.

Right.

Doesn't matter if it's a big casino, a small casino, a blue casino, green casino, casino. Right. I know how to run a casino.

Right.

I know how to run the back of the house. I know how to run the front of the house. I know the type of people that I need.

Right.

I know the structure I have to create.

And you learn that along the way.

You learn that along the way.

And your preparation is huge. And you're right. So that's a great sharing. I appreciate you. That's challenging, stressful, and humorous today. Not humorous then, but I like that. And it takes me back to when I'm thinking about your style and when we did work together at the sans, when you were the senior vice president of hotel and you were on the hotel side and the gaming side and your father was the president. Most of the time when you worked in your office, you would take your shoes off. So at the time, you had me in a role. I was a coordinator at that time and I had all the junket reps, independent agents, and that's what you have.

Me in charge of.

I didn't even know what a comp was until I got there. And I was waiting for my senior vice president to give me the comp sheet for my players so that I could. So I could comp the people properly and I can let my reps know. These are comp guidelines, blah, blah, blah. It's reinvestment value. What we do is what we give back to the players based on whether, you know, how they play the games, how long, what average bag and all that. And I was brand new to all of that I'd been in operations before that as a dealer and as a floor person, but I didn't know the marketing side or any of that well. My boss played like he was going to show me and he sat me down in front of his desk and he wrote out a sheet of paper and said, let me show you how I got these numbers. And they were like. There were several numbers. There was a group of numbers that set up our theoretical win. 0115, 0.0184, 0.0552. I still remember these numbers. I haven't had this conversation in like many years. Those were the numbers. And we had no freaking idea what these numbers mean. So we couldn't do anything with it because we didn't know whether to go backwards or forwards. So when I realized he wasn't sure and he closed the meeting after about four minutes and he just threw the paper back at me, I thought, I really need this. So I'm not going to go to Larry and try to figure this out. I got to go outside because the intelligence on the property wasn't there for that. So I teamed up with Nancy Rayfield, my college, my former college math teacher, and Jim Kilby. He was the world renowned on casino analysis at the time. I teamed up, I took those numbers to them. And the three of us, I worked 17 straight hours with and without their help doing the algorithms and the math on this. What should we call the factor project. So showed it to my boss and because I couldn't come to you because you were above him and he was my boss and I shared with him what I kind of figured out. I think this is right. And he said, let me hold on to it. He held onto it. And then about 45 minutes later, he comes over and he just drops it on my desk from the air. And he says, you need to explain this to Larry. Larry, Larry needs to know this. I said, okay. So he set up a meeting. He was in. And we were all in. You were so quick. I can see you today in my mind just as if we were there yesterday. And that was in 1988. 89. 89. You were sitting there with your hands underneath both of your legs and your feet were going with no shoes on. And I was seeking to lead the meeting. I was the most junior person in the room. But you could see what I was up to. And you were skipping ahead and going, larry, wait, wait, back up, Larry, let's go back. Because I knew my boss wasn't getting it. You were getting it really really, really fast. And that was such a very cool moment because you allowed me to take on a responsibility that.