Native American GamingNative American GamingEvery casino goes through three phases:
- Start up
- Growth and expansion
- Maturing
Some fail. Others have a difficult time in one or more of the phases. The winners smoothly and profitably progress through each phase. Casino and tribal leadership separates the failures from the successes.
Growth Associates, with over 30 years experience in casino and organizational management, provides practical, measurable, and guaranteed organizational services to insure that you move through each of these phases efficiently and profitably.
What We Offer
What We've Done
Who We Are
Growth Associates' Vision
Making your business profitable!
Mission
Providing ethical and professional services that enable clients attain financial stability and growth by:
- Enabling casinos to avoid costly ‘reinvention of the wheel’ during startup by pointing out the pitfalls involved and offering solutions for overcoming each.
- Preparing casinos for expansion by identifying the critical issues and providing tools for resolving each.
- Enabling mature casinos to increase their return to tribal members by fine tuning every part of the organization to maximize their bottom line.
- Providing clear hindsight gained from over 30 years of organizational and casino development
Your casino will eventually go through all of these phases as it progresses:
- Starting up your casino in a new jurisdiction or starting up your casino in an existing market.
- Preparing to expand, trying to decide and plan your casino’s first expansion, or subsequent expansions.
- Managing your mature casino in a mature market. Dealing with such issues as how you:
- Motivate individuals to produce outstanding customer driven performance
- Increase productivity through teamwork and departmental cooperation
- Install enthusiasm and excitement in your employees
- Develop a higher quality physical plant
- Target a higher quality of valued guests
Growth Associates provides practical, measurable, and guaranteed organizational success to insure that you move through each of these growth phases efficiently and profitably.
Growth Associates has both the questions and the answers to the issues your casino is and will be facing.
Start-up casinos:
What is the customer base for your proposed location? What can you do to get this information?
What gaming will you offer when you open? How much of each? What is your potential return on each? How many people will you need for each? What is the skill set for these people?
If you are planning to open with slot machines:
How many?
What mix of denominations?
Which slots machine programs will you start with?
What is the basis of your answer to the above three questions?
If you are planning to open with table games:
How many?
What mix of denominations?
Which games will you start with? [Single deck blackjack? Double deck? Auto shoes? Etc? etc? etc?]
What is the basis of your answer to the above three questions?How many restaurants would you offer? What types? What themes?
Are you going to theme your casino? If so what and why?
How much land and infrastructure will you need? How much parking, off-property storage, and area for future expandability?
Have you developed a 5 year or 10-year master plan? Does it include such issues as:
Do you have access to enough potential employees in your community?
If not, where will you get them?
Does your community have adequate housing for additional potential employees?
Is the project going to be profitable? What is your ROI (return on investment)? How long will it take to pay off the project?Do you know the answers to all of the above questions? Do you know the other questions to ask and resolve before you lead your tribe into opening a casino? WE DO!
Reinventing the wheel always is very expensive. Hindsight is always 20/20. We provide the hindsight that keeps your vision 20/20.
Growth Associates has over 30 years experience in casino and organizational management.
We have a better crew this year and we work well together. [21 Dealer] Expansions:
- Why does your casino want to expand?
- What financial facts and information support your decision to expand?
- Do you have managers and employees whom have experience in casino expansion in their careers?
- Have you successfully worked with casino contractors in the past?
- Have you done an accurate construction budget for the expansion?
- Does it cover all the construction issues you will be facing?
- Will this extra expansion revenue pay for the expansion in a reasonable amount of time?
- How many, what types, and what denomination slot machines will the expansion accommodate?
- Will you also expand the table games, hotel, restaurants, gift shop, health club, etc?
If so, what new procedures, policies, equipment, and materials will be needed?
If so, how many additional people are you going to need to staff the expansion?
What new skill sets will these people need?
Who will train them? When?- What additional direct and indirect revenues or money stream will be generated by the expansion?
- Has an accurate two-year budget been completed reflecting the addition revenues from the expansion?
- What is the cost of money? What is the ROI on this project?
- Have the secondary services been added in: Human Resources, surveillance, security, etc.?
- How many additional people are you going to need to staff the expansion?
Expansion and growth stresses your organization, exposing and magnifying any current weaknesses. Poorly planned expansion can fracture your organization. These stresses can cause a reduction in profits and Tribal Counsel upheaval.
We assist growing organizations by:
Insuring that a practical expansion plan is in place.
Identifying, assessing, and fixing any current or potential weaknesses.
Providing training and organizational assistance during the initial expansion phase.Mature organizations – Mature markets
Do your Vision and Mission statements reflect your organization’s current direction?
Are your departments’ goals and objectives congruent with your Vision and Mission?
Is your management team held accountable for measurable results? Do they operate as a team?
Does your staff know why their work is important?
Do they know what they are to be doing? In measurable terms?
Do they have the knowledge, skills, and mechanical tools they need to succeed?
Do they receive appropriate recognition and rewards to reinforce successful performance?
Is your turnover over 25%?
Do you know what your turnover costs? In replacing employees? In replacing customers?
Do you know why your employees leave?
Is your work environment customer focused?
What are you doing to retain customers? Is it working? How do you measure this?
Do you know who your most valuable customers are? What actions are you taking to keep them?
Do you receive timely and accurate customer data on the quality of your customer service and products?
What are you doing to continuously renew and improve your level of customer service?
Is your casino and hotel attractive enough to meet the expectations of higher level customers?
Are your people trained and prepared enough to meet the expectations of higher level customers?
Research finds a direct relationship between employee and customer satisfaction, employee and customer loyalty, and customer loyalty and profits. Therefore, we offer the mature casino both employee and customer satisfaction support by:
- Measuring employee retention
- Improving employee communication, team work, and motivation.
- Ensuring consistent policies and procedures throughout your casino
- Ensuring that staff development is effective
- Training managers to effectively establish employee empowerment and a motivating work environment.
- Designing, implementing, and auditing operational action plans
- Researching customers’ needs and expectations.
- Benchmarking your service level against competition
- Designing and implementing customer satisfaction measuring systems
Go to The Feather Falls Casino Story for a current example of what we do for clients. The Feather Falls Casino Story: How A Successful Casino Becomes More Successful is four articles written by Feather Falls Casino’s General Manager, Randy Carter, and Growth Associates’ Senior Partner, Bill Werst. The articles were published in Native American Casino magazine.
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© 2004 Growth Associates
P.O. Box 2039
White Salmon, Washington 98672
509/493-1985
e-mail bill@growthassociates.org
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