The Story of GSH Casino Parties Part 4 (2016)
GSH Casino Parties original storage space
With Mike on board and one year of The GSH Group experience under his belt, we were ready to grow. And grow we did. In 2016 we were located in an apartment in Des Plaines, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. For a small casino company, this space was adequate but we were quickly outgrowing it. There are definitely some challenges working out of an apartment. For starters, it isn’t the best to have your clients come and see. Secondly, we had to deal with crying babies, barking dogs, and blaring music when we were trying to book events. All of those things were manageable but we had one major issue: we didn’t have enough room to store our tables and to train new staff members.
Our storage space consisted of a two-car garage located on Lee Street in Downtown Des Plaines. To further clarify the picture there was an apartment unit located right above the garage. The man who lived in that apartment must have been a saint. In 2016 we hosted 77 casino parties. Can you imagine living in an apartment unit and every weekend you have trucks arriving below you between 11:00 pm and 3:00 am to unload equipment? For the most part, everyone in the building was very friendly. They seemed to enjoy seeing two young entrepreneurs succeed. They asked us about events and how things were going. Another challenge in this space was that we had only half of the driveway for our use. I am so thankful we never crashed into the car parked on the other side of the driveway. This garage was stuffed with our casino party equipment. It housed 2 craps tables, 4 roulette tables, 7 poker tables, 12 blackjack tables, and all the accessories to go along with those tables.
Additionally, we needed a separate and more professional training space for our new dealers. Initially, training the dealers in our office apartment worked when our current dealers referred their friends. Once we exhausted all of our dealer referrals, however, we took to Craigslist and Facebook to recruit dealers. Would you want to show up at an apartment to learn how to deal cards? From day one, which is still true today, we were transparent and explained our “apartment office situation” to all the dealer trainees. Somehow, someway we were able to train enough staff to conduct 77 casino parties and grow over 137% from 2014 to 2015. As our garage was bursting at the seams, it was time to finally “get out of the garage” and get a real office space. Where were we going to move? How much space did we need? Would we ever be able to afford office rent? A lot of sleepless nights were to follow….
