Dennis Conrad has always been a visionary, a disruptor and an innovator.
Thousands of people in the gaming industry have attended his conferences, participated in his trainings, read his books, heard his speeches and absorbed his highly opinionated articles, including his monthly column for CDC Gaming.
There was a time in the 1990s when the gaming industry was rapidly adopting analytics and direct marketing from the retail and airline industries. At the same time, there was a voice growing in the gaming industry that espoused “customer worship” and employee entitlement.
That voice came from a small company in Reno, Nevada called Raving Consulting and belonged to founder Dennis Conrad.
In over 20 years, Raving Consulting grew to become a well-known, highly-regarded influencer in gaming with a dedication to customer service and player development. Driven by a stable of casino professionals, Raving Consulting eventually could meet a variety of needs for any company looking for help.
Dennis Conrad will tell you his secret to success for over 50 years in the gaming industry was driven by his ability “to play off the skills of people who are smarter than me.”
Innovation and vision
From a suburb of Buffalo, NY to dealing in Nevada: Dennis Conrad is an executive casino consultant and the founder and former president of Raving Consulting Company. He is a Stanford University graduate with over 50 years of experience in the gaming industry, having held a number of senior level positions at Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. and Circus Circus Enterprises/Mandalay Resort Group before starting Raving in 1998.
He is the author of “Conrad’s Corners: Observations on Casinos, Marketing and Life” (2004) and “Conrad on Casino Marketing” (2009). He has been a 30-year columnist for various major gaming publications, including CDC Gaming, and is a sought-after speaker at both national and international gaming conferences.
Besides building a major marketing consulting company, he began The Casino Marketing Conference, the Indian Gaming National Marketing Conference and the Host Conference, among others. Dennis conceived and helped execute the Casino Marketing Lifetime Achievement Award, The Romero Awards, the Barona/VCAT Award for Excellence in Indian Gaming Marketing, and of course his favorite annual award, the tongue in cheek Best (and Worst) Casino Promotions of the Year. He received Casino Journal’s Marketing Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.
Dennis is semi-retired, but still does work for select gaming clients who truly care about being customer- and employee-focused. He continues to be a proud supporter of the Notah Begay III Foundation and its critically important work of improving the health of Native American children.
Poker and golf
Conrad’s introduction to gaming came very early in life in West Seneca, NY, a suburb south of Buffalo where epic lake effect snowstorms often make the national media. He began playing poker with his mom and her friends for pennies and nickels. He later took some of those winnings and started betting dollars playing golf at Cazenovia Golf Course, a local municipal course, where he was a well-known junior player.
“I played with a bunch of the good junior players and betting around $1 was a big deal. You weren’t playing just people that gambled. You were playing people that were pretty good. That was good practice for honing my game and then winning some money,” Conrad said.
“Kind of like my agent”
“My dad worked for a company called Trico Products. They made windshield wipers. They’re part of the auto industry and had three factories in Buffalo. He was a mid-level management guy.
“When I started playing, he saw that I was pretty good. He kind of tried to live his life through me. I won the New York State Boys’ Championship, and the Buffalo Area District Boys’ Championship two years in a row. Then I got beat in the third year. I was a hot shot Junior golfer from ages 14 to 18.
“So, as I got good, my dad became my agent. I didn’t ask him to do this, but he thought that there was a golf scholarship out there. Back in 1969 and 1970 it was not like it is now. There were only a few colleges that offered golf scholarships.
“The year I got my scholarship offer to Stanford, they only had a half- scholarship. A half-scholarship to Stanford is like paying full tuition anywhere else because it’s expensive. So that was my offer from Stanford,” Conrad recalled.
Becky
After graduating from Stanford in 1974, Conrad was accepted to Syracuse Law School but never attended.
“I met my wife-to-be, Becky, in Iowa on the way back to Buffalo to go to law school. And after I blew that off, I said, ‘Becky, I’m going back out west. I’m going to stop by. So now I’m falling in love with her. I left Buffalo and went back to be with her in Iowa.”
“I was looking for a job in the summertime in Iowa, but all the college kids had all the summer jobs. So, I said, ‘I’m going to head back out to California.’”
“Becky said, ‘I want to come too.’ She had a little 1965 Mustang, and the body was all rusted out at the trunk. But she had a car and 1,000 bucks. So, we’re falling in love. We went on a journey to visit and stay with some of our friends in various parts of the country and we ended up out west busted and disgusted. We limped into Needles, California. We had to get the car fixed and get jobs. I got a job as a substitute schoolteacher,” Conrad recalled.
We should do this
Dennis was working for the local school system and Motel Six, “when the rooms were six bucks” and Becky was working at the local Sambo’s when Conrad began playing Blackjack at the local casinos.
“We’d go to these casinos and the dealers are dressed nicely; they’ve got nice jewelry. You can tell they’re making tips. I don’t know how much they were making, but I said, “Becky, we should do this, because they’re making a lot more than we’re making,” Conrad said.
That led to the years of Dennis and Becky working at casinos in Nevada, beginning in 1975. Conrad worked as a Keno writer, dealer and bartender. Becky began as a slot change person, keno runner and bingo caller, before becoming a dealer.
I asked Conrad what he took from those days working on the front lines of casinos that he used later in his career as a writer, author and casino consultant.
“You get an appreciation for what the frontline people have to go through, right? I got an appreciation of how hard these people worked, the stuff they had to put up with,” Conrad remarked.
Captain Casino
Conrad’s break came in the form of a character known as Captain Casino, which he used to teach people how to play casino table games at the Holiday Casino just before it became Harrah’s Las Vegas.
“It was this character that dressed up as a ship captain with a room service jacket and a little hat, and that’s how you gave the lessons as this character.
“I took the gig as Captain Casino, and I did that for one year, and it was terrific. It opened some people’s eyes. I had huge crowds around my tables,” Conrad recalled.
The laughing, joking, crazy lesson, crowd-attracting Captain Casino caught the attention of fellow Stanford graduate Phil Satre, then the President of Harrah’s Entertainment, who had Conrad help start a similar program in northern Nevada.
Conrad’s future mentor, John O’Looney, came from Harrah’s Atlantic City at this time to take the job of VP of Casino Operations at Harrah’s Las Vegas. Recognizing the spark in Captain Casino, he promoted Conrad to Special Events Manager and then Casino Marketing Director.
A few years after that, it was suggested that Conrad take the job as Director of the Harrah’s Institute of Casino Entertainment, a program conceived by President Satre to prepare current Harrah’s non-gaming executives for careers in the burgeoning gaming business. Satre said, ‘We need to have a program where we teach smart people in our company about the business.’
“I had to interview with a Corporate Senior VP of HR. I said, ‘I’m interested in this job, but I only want to do it if I can do it the way I want. I want this to be down and dirty, so they see it from the inside. It’s not an academic exercise.’
“’This thing needs to be about the cheater coming in who shows them how to cheat and knows how to do it. We need to show them the inside. We need to take them into the count rooms. We need to have them become customers and see what a customer experiences. We have to tell them about this problem gambling stuff. If I can’t do it the down and dirty way then I’m not interested’,” Conrad said.
The concept for Raving is born
Conrad taught 40-60 executives monthly from all senior levels of the then PROMUS companies, including the Harrah’s casinos.
“This is how I got the idea for Raving. All I did was find the smartest people I knew and turn them loose on stage, and I kind of spearheaded the program.
“When we needed to talk about the math of gambling, I brought in Peter Griffin from Cal State, Sacramento, who wrote the Theory of Blackjack and studied how advantage players got the best of casinos. I got Anthony Curtis of the Las Vegas Advisor to talk about a bunch of different things. I got Steve Forte, the preeminent expert on cheating, to show some ways to take down a casino. I’m taking them into count rooms. I’m making them play live games on the Las Vegas Strip. A lot of these people had never been in a casino back in Memphis. Their eyes are, like, wide open. They all run back home, raving,” Conrad confided.
Twist of fate
In a twist of fate that is all too typical in the casino industry, Conrad was lured away by Circus Circus Enterprises to use his Harrah’s Institute background to help change the culture at Circus Circus Enterprises as the Vice President of Employee Training and Development. Due to changes in ownership at Circus Circus, Conrad’s job as Corporate VP ended, only six months after it had been created. To complete his three-year contract, he was asked to choose a senior-level job at any property in the company, and for a variety of reasons, he chose Circus Circus Reno to be Director of Marketing right after the market-changing opening of the Silver Legacy.
After two and a half years in this role, Conrad found himself with an expired contract, living with his wife and family in Reno and decided to take the $100,000 cash he had saved from his corporate and property roles and start Raving Consulting.
“Becky, who’s from Iowa, loves Reno and she said, ‘We like it here.’ I said there is one thing I’ve thought about. I got this idea from the Harrah’s Institute; I’ve thought about starting a consulting company that has the same principles. You gather up the smartest people you can find that know everything there is to know about their area of the business and you offer it as a package to casinos. It’s going to be whatever you need, the best you can get. That was my first tagline for Raving, ‘Whatever you need, the best you can get.’” Conrad recounted.
After three years, Conrad picked up a few jobs at places like Beau Rivage, but was spending much more than he was making. Around that time, he began working with Steve Browne, and the combination of Browne’s small town casino Cactus Jack’s customer worship and Conrad’s brand of disruptive thinking began to gain traction.
Conrad received a call from the CFO at Majestic Star in Gary, Indiana who had been through the Harrah’s Institute and had read some of Conrad’s columns and said, ‘Do you guys do customer service?’
“I said to Steve Browne, by now a Raving Consultant, ‘Do we do customer service?’ Browne’s answer was, ’Oh yeah, we swing at everything.’
“The employee base at Majestic Star had many people from the unemployment rolls in Gary, Indiana. A lot of these people didn’t have jobs before the casino. This was their first job. It was like, now we’re in a totally different environment, and we have people that don’t know the business.
“In the end it was one of the coolest things we’ve ever done,” Conrad said.
The Majestic Star customer service program set the tone for what made Raving Consulting famous. “Most consultants want to deal with making the senior people happy, and we weren’t insensitive to that. We know where our bread is buttered, but we wanted to get buy-in through a strong customer focus and a strong employee focus. And that’s where we hung our hat, and that came out of the Majestic Star project,” Conrad stated.
Raving conferences
Raving and Conrad developed some of the most important conferences in the gaming business, starting with the Indian Gaming National Marketing Conference, followed by the Casino Marketing Conference. Conrad estimates 10,000 people attended Raving conferences over 20 years.
“When we did our first one on our own, we said these things make a little money, not a lot, but this is the best advertising we could do. I thought to myself, we’re meeting all these people. They’re decision makers. We’re making some money from the conference. If one conference is good, two are better. We went down this road. It was a rabbit hole.
“Now we start Raving’s Table Games Conference, we start the Slot Conference, we start the Player Development Conference, we start a Casino Promotions Conference.
“Pretty soon, we were consumed in conferences, and it was also helping generate some income, but it was keeping us from growing.
“That’s when we took a step back. We actually ended up selling some of the conferences to BNP Media. We also had developed a small army of executive consultants and that was really a nice package,” Conrad said.
The inside scoop on the insider parties
Raving is still famous for its Insider Parties at major industry conferences like the Indian Gaming Tradeshow and Convention and G2E. Conrad said the way the Raving Insider Parties started was as counter programming to the gigantic conference parties everyone was used to.
“Once we started attending the conferences and having our own conferences, we started to say we need to have some networking affairs of our own. I never wanted to have the “big company” type of parties, the expensive, noisy affairs where you can’t even hear yourself talk, and you’re bumping elbows, and it’s like a spectacle.
“We created this Raving Insider Party as kind of our calling card for parties. It was a great business development tool, which we also moved at some point into a fundraiser for the Notah Begay III Foundation. They became known for being the coolest parties and so we kept them pretty small,” Conrad stated.
Native American
Raving Consulting benefited from the rise of Native American gaming and Native American casinos, which became an integral part of Raving’s success.
“In the final two decades of my career, I founded and ran Raving Consulting Company, which served casinos and gaming companies all over the world, but mainly in the United States and Canada. The majority of our work was for tribal governments, and I owe them everything for their trust, loyalty and friendship. Native America is the reason Raving Consulting Company was so successful,” Conrad wrote.
Exit strategy
“I’m pushing 65 and, along the way, I was looking for what’s the exit strategy here? I approached some bigger consulting companies. I approached some tribes to buy Raving. I said, ‘You guys are trying to do a lot for other Indian tribes. Why don’t you buy a consulting company and have the package together to help the different tribes out?’” Conrad related.
Conrad went into negotiations with Deana and Brady Scott and eventually closed a deal to sell Raving Consulting to them. “Deana ran Raving for a period of time and said, ‘Brady and I are interested.’ We talked, we got a deal and, that kind of was it. I sold the company a couple of years before COVID hit and I’m proud that Raving is now a Native-owned company,” Conrad wrote.
Today Deana Scott and Brady Scott own Raving Consulting and continue to recognize opportunity in changes in the gaming industry. Raving Consulting offers the most experienced, most diverse consultants in the industry and has added new products and services to keep up with industry trends, finding ongoing success through innovation.
Three clients
After selling Raving, Conrad continued consulting following a plan he developed to work with three clients: Barona Resort and Casino, Lakeside, CA; Foxwoods Resort Casino, Mashantucket, CT; and Valley Forge Casino Resort, King of Prussia, PA.
“I did it for one year and then my good friend Felix Rappaport at Foxwoods passed away and Valley Forge Casino was sold to Boyd. I continued to work for Barona and then COVID hit and that was it,” Conrad said.
Swan song
“I was thinking after COVID maybe I pack it in, but I wanted to find something that would be my swan song. I had some thoughts about what that could be, what that would be, what it should be,” Conrad mused.
Recently Conrad wrote in his column about his thoughts on his next steps.
“What I am looking for is to write the last chapter of my career, with a progressive company made up of nice people. Or with someone looking to add value to the gambling industry or the gambling experience. Or an innovative entity looking to crack the industry or do more business in it.
“I am not sure what this ‘final act’ would be. Maybe a board membership. Or a strategic consulting partnership. Or maybe just as a guy who holds someone’s feet to the fire and helps them focus on the customer,” Conrad wrote.
The squeeze and the phenomenal formula
I asked Conrad to reflect on what the miles, the years, the different countries, and different people taught him about where the industry is headed. Typical of Conrad, he did not hold back.
‘Well, I’ve written a lot about this in the last two years because I’ve been so pissed off about the player squeeze that’s occurred since COVID. COVID gave everyone an excuse to cut back on services, to cut back on staff, to cut back on generosity of promotions, to squeeze on hold percentages and slot machines, and game rules. That is a huge, huge mistake which is going to eventually end up biting them in the butt long term.
“Gaming needs more recognition of where your best customers’ bread is buttered and allow them to have more value for their patronage and not less. You need to listen to your customers because they’ll tell you what you need to do. If you’re not listening to those people, you’re going to eventually lose them; because you’re taking their money faster, and they’re feeling more brutalized for their patronage.
“It doesn’t need to be the old days, but you need to embrace being generous with your best customers; it’s a phenomenal formula. I wish there would be more in the business that do that now,” Conrad declared.
Telling it straight
Dennis Conrad remains one of the key influencers in the gaming industry, going strong after 50 years. As a casino executive, consulting company owner, conference creator, columnist and author, Conrad continues to keep stirring the pot and telling it straight to an industry where change is expected, and he remains the loudest voice in the room.
Entries in the Faces of Gaming series:
- Dennis Conrad – Executive, founder, creator, speaker, author, columnist, and innovator (now reading)
- Adam Wiesberg – A journey from sign salesman to dealer to El Cortez GM
- Gary Ellis – Las Vegas entrepreneur
- Alan Feldman – From Mirage and MGM to responsible gaming expert
- John Acres – the Thomas Edison of gaming
- Alex Alvarado — Vice President, Casino Operations at MGM National Harbor and Casino Aficionado
- Lauren Bates — A successful VP at Konami and Chair of Global Gaming Women, all before her 40th birthday
- TJ Tejeda and EZ Baccarat – Reimagining a centuries-old game
- Chris Andrews — Don’t cry for the bookmaker
- Wes Ehrecke — From gasohol and pork chops to president of the Iowa Gaming Association
- Steve Browne – Casino philosopher, master gaming instructor and father of a rocket scientist
- Noah Acres – Shaking up the industry one player record at a time
- Kate Chambers – ICE queen, casino exhibition maven and keeper of fairy dust
- Joe Asher — From the newsstand and racetrack to sports-betting icon
- Paul Speirs-Hernandez — Randomness, chance, reward, and luck
- Ainsworth’s Deron Hunsberger — From finance and sales to president
- Roger Gros — Chronicler of the gaming industry for four decades and counting
- Debi Nutton — Everi board member, gaming trailblazer
- Cache Creek’s Kari Stout-Smith — Dancing backwards in high heels
- Andrew Economon — Making downtown Las Vegas cool again
- Richard Marcus — From the wrong side of the casino tables to the right
- Willy Allison — From New Zealand bloke to world game-protection leader
- Tom Jingoli — From gaming enforcement agent to COO of Konami Gaming
- Tino Magnatta — Interviewing the interviewer, 3,000 and counting since COVID
- Deana and Brady Scott — Still talking shop with the owners of Raving Consulting
- Kevin Parker — “Putting everything into everything I do”
- Laura Penney — Putting in the Work as CEO of Coeur d’Alene Casino
- Andre Carrier — Paying it forward
- Jean Scott — The original casino influencer, still frugal gambling after all these years
- Anika Howard — From Harrah’s First Interactive Employee to CEO of Wondr Nation
- Anthony Curtis — Gambling Guru, Las Vegas Expert, Customer Advocate with Street Cred
- Mark Wayman — An executive recruiter with a brand and something to say
- Melonie Johnson — From rural Louisiana to resort-casino leadership
- Brian Christopher — From actor, Uber driver, and cater waiter to slot celebrity
- Allan Solomon — From accountant and tax lawyer to pioneering casino owner
- Kenny Epstein — A Niche from Nostalgia
Tom Osiecki is a casino consultant who writes an occasional column for CDC Gaming called Faces of Gaming, about interesting and engaging people in the gaming industry.
Tom Osiecki is a marketing and management consultant for Raving Consulting and can be reached for consulting engagements at 775-329-7864.
If you know of a fascinating personality in the gaming industry you would like to see profiled, please send Tom Osiecki an email at tosiecki@cdcgaming.com
