Every judge but one didn’t even mention our case study in their evaluation scoring. Well, of course, we didn’t win the case-study competition at the Executive Development Program. And I’m not sure if I’m proud or embarrassed by it, but we closed our 30-minute presentation to the judges (all of whom were some of the smartest gaming-industry executives of that time) by having me spray a “scent of Cleveland” in front of the judges, so they could get a “whiff of what this great Cleveland casino project was all about.” It may have been the best use ever of my men’s cologne. We had a “sexy” marketing plan that included every fancy marketing activity we could think of, with very little economic justification for them. We proposed NFL great, Jim Brown, as a Cleveland-area project partner and had a significant commitment to minority hiring in the local area. Knowing our deficiencies, our group (of which the Atlantic City executive was called back to New Jersey in midstream and the Kenyan regulators spoke little English) decided on a “smoke-and-mirrors” strategy to make our Cleveland casino project sound so exciting that the judges would be forced to select ours as the winning presentation. Suffice it to say that none of us in our group had ever done such extensive and intensive senior-level gaming-industry work. A site had to be selected, the games and amenities determined, community-impact reviews conducted, etc. I remember our case-study group (myself and executives from Atlantic City, Reno, and Kenya) was assigned to put together a business and marketing plan for a proposed (hypothetical) casino in Cleveland, Ohio. Richard was a presenter at EDP, as well as a judge for the groups’ individual major case-study presentations, for which points were given and executive bragging rights determined. We fledgling executives had a strenuous week of senior-level classes and presentations, including one “master” presentation that individual groups of four or five international executives were required to work on for long hours during the entire week. I first met Richard some 30 years ago while attending the excellent UNR (now UNLV) Executive Development Program at Lake Tahoe.

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