The GSH casino Parties Story Part 6 (2018)

There was no time to rest as we had 27 events on the books for January 2018.  For the first two Thursdays of the month, we had back-to-back 22 table events!  We were also preparing for our biggest event ever in February with Alight Solutions.  We were working on a 28-table event with Alight.  They had rented out all three ballrooms at the Renaissance Hotel in Downtown Chicago.  They were expecting over 1,000 guests and had quite the setup.  Have you ever tried driving or parking a 24-foot truck in Downtown Chicago?  If you haven’t, I can tell you that it is quite an adventure.  We still needed more daily help in our office with planning and logistics.

Viki Kazhdan

Viki Kazhdan had been on our dealer team for two years.  She showed up early and always offered to help when events ended.  She even once worked an event that was three hours away but didn’t even ask for gas money because she knew we were having a hard time finding staff.  Yes, she was going to be a great addition to The GSH Group team, but did she want the job?  After a brief interview and a description of some of the job duties, Viki became a part of The GSH Group team in April 2018.

When we started our company in 2014, we had a good website. But like everything with technology, things change and they change fast.  Our website was not mobile compatible and over half of our inquiries were and still are mobile.  We searched and interviewed multiple website design companies trying to figure out the best fit.  After multiple phone calls, we connected with Brad Murray at Inspire Marketing to give our website a much-needed update.  The update was wonderful and our website remains one of the best in the entire casino party industry.  It is clean, concise, easy to use, and most importantly, provides the information that people are looking for.  

Mike Oboikovitz presenting at the 2019 NACPO Conference.

We occasionally get phone calls to host events in areas that we can not get our equipment to at a reasonable price for our clients.  We began digging for solutions and stumbled upon The National Association of Casino Party Operators (NACPO).  We knew that casino parties happened all across the country, and around the world for that matter.  We began researching NACPO and were introduced to the size, scope, and reach of the entire casino party industry. We submitted an inquiry on their website and joined shortly thereafter. The main reason to become a NACPO member was its annual conference that is typically held in Las Vegas, Nevada.  We attended our first NACPO conference in July 2018 and were overwhelmed with the amount of information it provided. We found, and continue to find, so much value in the organization’s ideas. We bring back information and ideas that we can immediately implement and share with our clients.  One of the first ideas we shared with our fundraising clients was the use of “scratch-off tickets.”  We provide scratch-off tickets to our fundraising clients who sell them at their events. In this game, the ticket holder tries to scratch off six gold bars on the scratch ticket.  If you find six gold bars, you win $10,000!  We partner with an insurance company to pay the claim to a $10,000 scratch-off card winner.  We also made many valuable connections at NACPO and later won an award from NACPO for a collaboration event we conducted with Mike Sullivan in Arizona.

The year 2018 was pivotal at GSH Casino Parties.  We added Viki to our staff and we successfully completed our largest casino party ever, with 28 tables.  We also updated to a new and much nicer website and became members of NACPO!  In 2018 we hosted 169 casino parties and to date have over 30  five-star Google reviews.  We were now determining how to continue to expand and offer our first-class casino parties to more clients.  And we knew we were going to need more equipment!

Read The GSH Casino Parties Story Part 7 

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