Steve Wynn keynote at G2E 2014 - part 3 "Q&A"

I'm afraid of only not that you will ask me a question for which I do not have the answer, but I'm afraid you'll ask me for one that I do have the answer. I want to mention once again, I didn't get paid to die for them.

I got two white ones like this, so yeah, okay. I'm a computer illiterate, but I can answer this phone.

What a good question. Wow. That's one of those questions I do have the answer to, and I'm not sure I want to share it. Okay, okay, all right. It's tough out there, right? And everybody wants your best people. I know the feeling. You want to keep them. It's the only chance you got. What keeps them? Money, sort of. Once people feel like they're being paid well, it's something else. It's the job satisfied. The most powerful thing in human nature is self-esteem. If you can figure out a way in any business to equate experience in that job with an enhanced self-esteem, no one will ever believe that's the biggest deal. Now that's a simple truth, and most things that really matter in this world are simple truths. The question is, how do you equate an experience on the job with enhanced self-esteem? Because if you can, it will be repeated endlessly. You will have an agile, warm, and happy workforce that deals with change in a positive way. Two organizations: a memo comes down, 'We're not going to do it the way we did yesterday anymore. We're going to do it this way.' Organization with poor leadership, here's what happens: the line employees say, 'Dammit, every week is something new. Can't they ever make up their mind what they're going to do with this? It's this way this week, it's that way next week. What the hell will it be the next one?' Next week, same memo comes down to a well-led organization. People look at it and say, 'Hmm, we're doing things differently. We're getting smarter. We're more sophisticated.' Glass half empty, glass half full. It's all about leadership. You could see it in the White House where it's missing. You can see what happens. I didn't mean that quite the way... Experience matters. Knowing how to do things matters. Understanding the relationships, the parts to the whole, and how important those parts are and how they have to be satisfied is the principal job of the boss man. I call it the Dada gene. You don't get befuddled. You have the kind of relationship with your colleagues and respect for your colleagues that allow you to deal with change as professionals that are trained and prepared to do it. The tougher the time, the more exciting the job. Because up or down, all of us who are in this business, we're being paid to deal with change. Whether it's an Indian casino or anything else or the White House, nothing stays still for five seconds. You have to surround yourself with good people, and you got to trust each other, and you got to be able to listen, and you've got to be able to say 'I don't know' once in a while. I want to be the dumbest guy in the room when I'm dealing with problems in my shop. I know actually this guy ever, especially when it comes to technology. So look, keeping your employees happy, keeping them in the company, it's right smack dab. Whoever asked that question on your notes, man, gal, whoever asks that question, that's what you're paid for. And it's a family thing. You get that straight, you'll have the answer to your question. The techniques that you do to do that are creative exercises. You'll have to develop your own. We've got ours. Next question.

Asia's exciting. Oh, it's exciting. I hope that if gaming expands to Japan, for example, that the legislation and the regulatory structure that is conceived by their people is intelligent and well done and offers prospective developers a chance to invest great capital intelligently. Very often the politicians get so carried away with the money part of it. Let's take Pennsylvania, for example: 70% tax rate, boxes of slots. How simple does that? What the hell they expect was going to happen? You say you're going to take 70% of the money, the guy's going to build a box of slots and hope that it can squeeze out a margin. Take Mississippi, different story. Nevada, different story. Tax rate that said we want you to invest big capital, build well-rounded integrated resorts, and we will have longevity. When I was making my presentation in Boston, which is exactly on point to this, here's a competitive situation. And the legislation, as it will in Japan or wherever the hell else they do it, will say we want to increase tourism, we want to create jobs, we want to have tax revenue, A, B, C. Taxes, jobs, tourism. Trouble is, those aren't three equal things except to a politician. Two of those are in effect. One of them is a cause. Tourism is a cause. Tourism is where you bring people from over there to over here. That's the phrase I used in Boston. You know, I was talking to the commission. It's a very serious moment, very smart people in Boston. The regulators, the investigators, I must say some of the brightest people that I've bumped into. They got it. They got it even though it's new to them. Bringing people from over there over here means it's simple. That means that what's over here is better than what's over there. So what's over here, if it's better, has to be bigger, has to have more stuff. Therefore it will employ more people. Effect: if you want tourism, it will pay more taxes because unless you bring people from outside the region into the region, you will have what's known as the regional typical profile. Gaming opens up in Illinois, and all of a sudden a whole new industry is born overnight, and there's a big tax puff. Extra revenue comes in, and then after a year or two it flattens right out because it's dealing with the ceremony of customers. And it's as good as the casino in Elgin, but when there's one over there in Gary, they cut it up. Unless you bring people from over there to over here, unless you bring people from outside the region and have a positive influx of capital from abroad, from outside, you can have permanent growth in a healthy industry. And so I'm hoping that if Japan or South Korea and those other peoples expand the opportunity, they will do so in a way, for their own sake, that is intelligent and inspired and has learned from the experience of all the rest of the world to do it properly.

It's my thoughts on liberty. Not much. I've been sitting at my office for 10 years listening to my pals, guys I really respect, tell me, 'Oh, the internet, the internet, the internet. It's like Mount Everest. Can't see over it. We gotta be part of it. We can't be left behind.' The old digital razzmatazz. 'Left behind? What, it's illegal in America?' 'No, no, no, it's going to be legal. They're gonna have poker.' 'Yeah.' 'Well, look at all the money that the guys are making that are gypsy and in against the law.' 'Yeah.' 'We can't do that. It's illegal.' 'Yeah, but we got to get into it, Steve. We got to be ready.' 'Oh yeah, so we're gonna throw 30 or 40 million of this to get ready, or we'll be left behind.' That's the thing that scares most baloney executives: 'We'll be left behind.' Yeah, right. Where's the business opportunity? Huh? Where's the business opportunity? You've got all these states miserably hungry for revenue. They all have lotteries. They have attorney generals and congressmen and governors that are connected to Washington, and they hit. You think they're going to let the private enterprise get this money? Baloney number two. Uncle Sam allows some form of internet gaming, and they could see every transaction in Technicolor every minute of every dime you're making. How long before that is recognized as the single most unsympathetic tax target on the planet? They'll tax your brains out. Now, I don't like internet gambling, and in other words, I share Sheldon Adelson's conviction that some kid gets a hold of his parents' credit card, or some guy will pull some baloney and cause havoc in his community. In every single jurisdiction in America, there are some people who think gambling is immoral and wrong. They're religiously convinced or ethically convinced that it's not a good thing, that you don't have the right to decide for yourself. Now, there are people like that, and their existence is undeniable. I may not agree with them. It's an anti-libertarian idea, but there are people like that. The legislator that votes for legalized internet gaming has nothing really to gain from it, but if he votes for it and anything goes wrong in that community, he's going to get blamed for it. That's why there's no support for it in the House of Representatives. Number two: when something goes wrong, sure as hell some regulator will jump in and decide to throw a whole bunch of new stuff on the backs of all of us, including those of us that have these kinds of buildings and are not in the internet business. And all of those factors together, and I take a pass on the internet, just like Adelson.

I was doing it before I came over here, right up to the last second. I got in the car with Andrea. I was working on the nuance of the moment of arrival in Boston. And I was thinking about coming in. We're going to have this atrium that's 60 feet wide, that's around, that's a floral thing that happens with ferrous wheels and things that open that are all flowers. And it's a big tall room, and behind it I took the idea of two curved escalators that diverge with a glass elevator in the middle, because I want all the people in Boston, when they walk through the door, to know they're not in Kansas City. Thank you.