When Casinos Close See Where The Money Goes: Casino CashTrac Interview With Wanor Franca

Wanor Franca is Casino CashTrac’s Chief Revenue Officer, and the first two-time interviewee with URComped’ Craig Shacklett!  

With casinos slowly beginning to reopen as the Great Pandemic of 2020 starts to make its way into the history books, URComped CEO Craig Shacklett had the opportunity to fire up his computer for a Zoom session with Casino CashTrac’s Chief Revenue Officer, Wanor Franca, to learn more about what happened to the cash when casinos shut down, the early effects of reopening the casinos, how Casino CashTrac software forecasts where money needs to go, and what casinos are going to do with fewer employees as they move forward into this “new normal.” Click here to listen to podcast version.

Approximately 60% of casinos in the United States had reopened, and Shacklett wanted to know what Franca, with his financial expertise, was hearing from his clients–specifically, if there had been any surprises (1:52). Franco spoke with clients in Arizona, Michigan, and Oklahoma–their client in Oklahoma was literally the first of the casinos to reopen–and they had “an amazing weekend” (2:20). Franco continued, explaining that “record revenues usually in the casino world they equate the gaming revenue to New Year’s Eve is one of the highest usually during the year. And they said they beat those revenues. Arizona and Oklahoma both said, ‘It was just impressive numbers that they kept getting from being some of the only casinos open.’ As other casinos start reopening, then those numbers should start decreasing” (2:32).  

Cash in closed casinos is a huge liability.

Craig was curious about a simple but complicated question regarding gaming and the shutdown–what happened to all of that cash? As Shacklett explained, “casinos have to have a ton of cash-on-hand for obvious reasons. Just operations of gaming. But then when they shut down, what are they going to do with all that cash? Because it’s a huge liability. Walk us through the process. What do the casinos do when they shut down? What do they do with all that money?” (2:55). 

Franco explained that his company worked with the casinos as they “dropped the entire floor slot machines, kiosks, and ATMs, and that money came back into the vault” (3::29). Franco continued, stating that the clients understood that they had to keep so much cash on hand in order to meet their regulatory obligations, but didn’t want to risk keeping so much cash in their vaults. So, they began working with their banks to deposit those amounts–unsure how long the closures would last (3:47). Franco says that it was an “interesting situation” in that some of the clients were working with the banks, imploring them, saying, ‘Hey, I’m gonna give you this much money. It’s more than you usually receive. But don’t even touch. Don’t try to mix that money. Because when we reopen, we need that money immediately.’ And that’s not normal” (4:04). 

The casinos knew they couldn’t wait the standard 7 days to receive their money. When they got the call to begin operating once more, they were going to need it immediately. He says, “it was neat to see that some banks said, ‘Okay. I’m going to keep this money in a separate little area of my vault for you. And then whenever you get ready to reopen, I’ll just give that money right back to you.’ At least it’s safe in a bank in a really big vault. And that way when you’re ready, bring it in. And then some of the other casinos actually kept more money than they should in a vault just to kind of maybe avoid that situation” (4:44).  

If you were wondering what a “change order” consisted of, you’re not alone. Craig asked what a change order meant and how that might differ as the casinos reopen (5:06).  

Franco explained change orders as thinking about what goes into the deposit on a daily basis–then “You get mute money, mad money that comes in, and they deposit those–and then ‘change orders,’ usually kind of clean bills that come back to the casino–usually

twenties and hundreds because that’s what’s usually most used. And so if you think a ‘change order’ would be like in a realm of five hundred to a million dollars, but even not that much when they’re trying to bring that money back–you’re talking about twenty to forty million. And so when you think about these properties that have over ten casinos or twenty casinos, it’s a lot for them to try to deal with that.” Craig pointed out that this was one of the features of CashTrac’s software–it helps forecast where the money should go (6:18). It’s an important feature because when “a slot machine runs out of money, it’s offline and then the casino’s not making money on that machine” (6:18).  

Franco explains that one of their most innovative and successful programs they created was “Cash Analytics”, which takes into account all the money, kiosks, ATMs, and slots, and then uses their predictive analysis to identify patterns to try to determine where to target and place each machine. The key is to find the sweet spot between earning interest on your money in the bank’s vault and being efficient with the usage of your employees when you need to go to your vault, take out money, walk it to the kiosk, take down the machine, feed it, and hope that it is not during a time when the casino is particularly crowded (12:13).

Like a lot of businesses, casinos have had to reduce staff in the wake of the pandemic shutdowns. Shacklett wanted to know how this was affecting Franco’s clients (13.54). For Franco, the biggest challenges he is seeing are on the non-gaming side of the casinos–as employees are making more money on unemployment than they did while working for the casinos. He says they are choosing not to return to their previous jobs, which is impacting the opening of bars and restaurants. On the gaming side, Franco says that there are employees in “high risk” categories who cannot return, which is requiring managers and supervisors to step up in order to continue operations (14.23). Of course, that creates a situation where these employees have called Casino CashTrac for a bit of a crash course in front-line training. Franco’s team was able to step up to the plate by offering a series of WebEx training for casinos all over the country to get everyone quickly up to speed. 

Despite the closure, Franco was excited to note that Casino CashTrac welcomed three new clients during the shutdown (17:09). He explained that one positive that came out of the Pandemic was that many Tribal casinos received government loans to assist them during the downtime and to help them upgrade. 

One of the programs Franco is particularly excited about is a module called “Inside Cage Vault”–which he says is “truly focused on the cage side of the business.” He explains, “instead of trying to do the whole thing from cage to revenue audit all the way to the GL, we said, “we got to focus on some of the smaller casinos that maybe don’t have as big of an operation, but how can you help them? And the Inside Cage Vault product was the perfect fit for that. It helps them eliminate paper, Excel spreadsheets. It creates automation. It does all that for them. And then the most surprising thing that happened was because our software is helping people not to have to touch as much on the paper side, Excel spreadsheets, now two clients were able to justify the purchase of our software as helping control COVID. So it was insane. Because basically through all these things, if you’ve seen some of the casinos that are reopening, whoever invented those dividers or things they’re putting on slot machines and table games, a lot of people are making a lot of money with the temperature scanners and things like that. I never thought that my software was going to be one of the essential tools that were required for them to perform their operations. And it ended up happening. Where, now by using our software, they don’t have the paperwork where ten people are touching that paperwork. Everything is electronic. I have all the signatures. I have the audit trail. I have everything in our software. And so now, that’s how I got some of the new clients to implement the software and take advantage of the loans that they have. So it was nice.” It is also a low cost, effective way for customers with smaller operations to have access to a powerful, essential tool.

URComped CEO, Craig Shacklett, interviews Casino CashTrac’s Cheif Revenue Officer, Wanor Franca, to learn more about what happened to cash when the casinos shut down, what were the early effects of reopening the casino, how Casino CashTrac software forecasts where money needs to go, and what casinos are going to handle less employees.

Full transcript below

(00- 00:23) Craig Shacklet: Hi everybody I am back with a very, very special guest. The second time… You’re the first second time guest of Comped Travel Show. Wanor from Casino CashTrac Chief Revenue Officer. Thank you for being here.

(00:23-0:38) Wanor Franca: Thank you Craig.I appreciate the opportunity. And now it’s like… It’s nice to catch up again.I mean lots of changes happening in the gaming world.It’s nice to see some of the interviews that you’ve been posting and continue to connect with you guys. So thanks again for inviting us.

(00:38-1:07) CS: No, thank you for coming back.I love talking to you because one, you are connected to so many different casinos.Because Casino CashTrac has been killing it. You guys are all over the country. And then two, you know I come from a marketing background. And so I knew people that were in the finance side but it wasn’t my expertise. And it’s just fascinating to talk to you again connect to so many different casinos. And you just so deep in that financial cash side. So it’s just I learned a lot every time we talk. So thank you for coming.

(1:07-1:37) WF: I appreciate it. I appreciate that. It’s been an interesting journey for sure for us as we continue to expand around the U.S. But with this COVID
and the quarantine, it’s been something. And I was meeting with the Director of I.T. yesterday and he actually joked that through his interview process he said, “Hey, there has never been something that I haven’t dealt with in a casino world.” And then he gets the job and the casino shuts down. And he said, “Oh man. I jinxed that whole process. That’s for sure.”

(1:37– 1:57) CS: So speaking of shutdowns, and now casinos are starting to open back up. And then I saw something that maybe sixty percent of casinos or there’s some number I think more than half casinos around the country are back opening. So what are you hearing from your customers that have opened back up? Any surprises good or bad?

(1:57-2:51) WF: Yeah. I think the casinos that took that early spots or try to open in the middle of May, they had a really great advantage. We spoke to several of the CFO’s in Arizona, in Oklahoma, and Michigan. And Oklahoma was one of the first casinos to re-open around the country. And one of our clients was literally the first one. And they had an amazing weekend. Record revenues usually in the casino world they equate the gaming revenue to New Year’s Eve is one of the highest usually during the year. And they said they beat those revenues. Arizona and Oklahoma both said ”It was just impressive numbers that they kept getting from being some of the only casinos open.” As other casinos start re-opening, then those numbers should start decreasing. But like you said “About sixty, seventy percent of the casinos are open including Vegas now.”

(2:51-3:20) CS: So with the re-opening… This is something that made me reach out to you. Because I think I saw a comment somewhere about just the cash. It’s something I hadn’t thought about. But the cash… Casinos have to have a ton of cash-on-hand for obvious reasons. Just operations of gaming. But then when they shut down, what are they going to do with all that cash? Because it’s a huge liability. Walk us through the process. What do the casinos do when they shut down? What they do with all that money?

(3:20-5:02) WF: Yeah. Now that’s a great question because we worked hand-in-hand with our clients throughout that process as they were closing. So basically they dropped the entire floor slot machines, kiosks, ATM’s and that money came back into the vault. And like you said, they have the regulatory numbers that they have to maintain cash-on-hand. But because of this they said, “Well, we’re not going to keep this much money in the vault.” So they’re starting to work with the banks to then deposit those amounts and not have that much cash sitting there. And they didn’t know how long they were going to be closed. But it was a really interesting situation. Because some clients worked hand-in-hand with banks to say, ”Hey, I’m gonna give you this much money. It’s more than you usually receive. But don’t even touch. Don’t try to mix that money. Because when we re-open, we need that money immediately.” And that’s not normal. When you think about a casino environment, they usually do what it’s called “Change Orders.” And throughout the week, they get money. And they get coin and things like that.
But it’s in smaller amounts. So to give that much money out of a bank, it’s really tough. And usually banks would request seven days to get you the money and things like that. So then that was something they couldn’t do because if they decided to re-open, let’s say May 15th, one of the first casinos, they needed the money immediately. And that weekend following that opening was probably one of the busiest times for them. So they couldn’t run out of money. So it was really crazy because basically it was neat to see that some banks said, “Okay. I’m going to keep this money on a separate little area of my vault for you. And then whenever you get ready to re-open, I’ll just give that money right back to you.” At least it’s safe in a bank in a really big vault. And that way when you’re ready, bring it in. And then some of the other casinos actually kept more money than they should in a vault just to kind of maybe avoid that situation.

(5:02-5:20) CS: You mentioned “Change Orders.” That sounds really interesting. Something I haven’t heard about. So give us an idea of like the magnitude of difference… Between maybe in a “Change Order.” There’s X dollars that are moved back and forth. Whereas with the re-opening, was it ten times, a hundred times a normal “Change Order?” Or what kind of…

(5:20-6:18) WF: Yeah. Now that’s a great question too. Because you think about a “Change Order.” What goes through it on a deposit on a daily basis. You get mute money. Mad money that comes in. And they deposit those. And then “Change Orders” usually kind of clean bills that come back to the casino. Usually
twenties and hundreds because that’s what’s usually most used. And so if you think a “Change Order” would be like in a realm of five hundred to a million dollars. But even not that much when they’re trying to bring that money back you’re talking about twenty to forty million. And so it’s especially when you think about this properties that have over ten casinos or twenty casinos. It’s a lot for them to try to deal with that. And then on top of it, is trying to figure out, ”Do I then put all the money on those ATM’s? Do I use all the money? Or do I try to keep them in a vault in case I need it?” Because if things… If they run out of money, literally, then they would have to go drop the machines to get more bills into the vault.

(6:18-6:42) CS: Now I know that’s one of the things that your software, CashTrac software helps with. It’s the forecast. Planning forecast where all that money needs to go. So because that’s one of the big issues is if a slot machine runs out of money, it’s offline and then the casinos not making money on that machine. Walk us through like some of the ways. Because in CashTrac software help forecast where the money should go.

(6:42– 8:57) WF: Yeah. That was one of the most interesting things. Because last year we announced that our conference this module called “Cash Analytics.”
And a lot of people have tried to kind of come up with ways to do this. And it takes a lot of manpower. Excel sometimes can’t even handle the amount of transactions that come through on kind of trying to analyze the cash. And so what we did is we now take into account all the kiosks money, ATM’s. And then we deal with also the slot machines. And then we created this predictive analysis formulas that we go in and look at all the patterns and everything and try to determine, “Hey, out of forty kiosks and ATMs you have on your floor, you use the majority of the times this ten.” So keep those at this type of amount. Don’t try to put two hundred thousand on every machine on the floor because the next day when you drop them you’re basically recycling your money. Putting more usage on your cash count equipment that you have. So we’ve worked really closely with clients and deploy that module to help them and assist them with that process. And so with the re-opening, one of the coolest things is that we worked closely with clients like Little River in Michigan and Dawn and her team on figuring out what we call “Recovery Portals.” So looking at that analysis on slots, players, cash. Four or five critical reports that General Managers could look at and say, ”How do I plan to open my casino? Which players are coming back? Which one should I target? How much money should I have on a floor?” Because you think about some of the casinos that were the only ones open. Then you’re getting more players than usual. And you’re running through more cash than usual. But you shouldn’t then just because of that weekend now request a “Change Order” for twenty million when you usually request a million. Because now you’re going to have all that extra money in the vault. So that’s what we try to kind of take the history and help them with some of those analysis. Take the New Year’s Eve information and say, “Hey, this is how much money ended up needing in hundreds and twenties. And this is what you should be ordering.” And continue to process that that analysis to make sure that they have money in the vault that’s needed. But also in the bank to earn interest. Because that’s the biggest thing. You don’t want to keep that money. They’re not earning any interest. When you could put in the bank and earn some interest on it.

(8:57-9:21) CS: That’s interesting. So I was about to ask you that. So I’m glad you brought it up. So there’s a perfect number. It’s a moving target where it’s like we need to have enough money in the vault so that we don’t run out and cease casino operations or fall into regulatory issues. But we want that to be as small
as possible. So everything else we can put in the bank and earn interests on that cash.

(9:21-10:59) WF: That’s right. And I’m in… I have a very interesting story. Because it was Friday night, the casino had just opened. And Tulsa was the only casino in Tulsa that had opened. And we are sitting there and I’m talking to the CFO. And record number of people coming through that day. And he’s on the phone with his main controller. And they’re trying to figure out the “Change Order” for Saturday. The people in the vault they want more money. They’re like, “Man, we’re going to run out of money. We’re going to run out of money.” The Controller is looking at everything and trying to analyze this in an Excel Spreadsheet World. This gave me a great opportunity to talk to that CFO and say, “Hey, you’re not a user of our “Cash Analytics Module.” But I think you could really benefit from that.” And I was actually at their facility this week starting that process of them starting using the “Cash Analytics” because they went one step further. And were asking me some questions about because they have seven properties and they open one but some of the other ones weren’t open yet. Well, then he goes into that whole situation of, “I have money sitting in the vault in Tulsa. I have another casino an hour from here and I need money there.” So then you can do a vault transfer from Tulsa to this other casino an hour away instead of him trying to do a “Change Order.” He can just use his own money. Because every “Change Order” they do there’s a service fee associated with that and everything else. So I kept talking to the CFO about, “Let’s be smart about this. That money is just sitting there in Tulsa. If you’re really not going to use it yet then go ahead and send it to this other facility that’s an hour away for tomorrow, which it was a Saturday, and help each other. As far as facilities helping each other to make sure that you are efficient with that usage.”

(10:59-11:09) CS: And so a vault transfer. So then you’re saving the service fee from the bank have a new giant withdrawal. I assume you still need a brinks or something, right? There not just throwing it in a backpack.

(11:09-11:30) WF: That’s exactly right. Brinks or Loomis. Those are the two that are most commonly used as far as the armored trucks that come in and help and kind of make that situation as far as moving money from one place to another. But in this specific scenario. They also have the tribal police. And so they had an escort to kind of help them take the money from one facility to another.

(11:30-12:13) CS: And so… And I swear by the way, anybody watching this. I swear this isn’t an infomercial. I just… I’m asking all these questions. They are teeing it up because your software like is perfect for this scenario. So it’s not an infomercial. But I’m just fascinated by how your software fits in all this world.
All these unique issues and challenges that consumers are facing now. And so we talked about risks of re-opening and having cash in the wrong places.
So one, is not have enough money in the bank to earn interest or not having enough in the casino to cease operations. Kiosks or slot machines shutting down.
Are there any other risks that if a casino doesn’t forecast correctly that could come up and bite them.

(12:13– 13:30) WF: Yes.So that’s the thing that’s throughout this whole process. When they… The other side of the “Cash Analytics Module” that was a really neat thing that we’re doing for casinos is that by being able to truly forecast the correct timing that you need to work with those kiosks. What really helped them was… Think about this process. When you go into a kiosk and you’re trying to put money in. You need a security guard. You need somebody to escort you. You need another employee. And they have to actually go to the machine, open it up. Pull the cassettes that I empty and put new ones in there. When they don’t have a tool to really forecast. If they start running out of money. They’re going to send those people to do that work at nine o’clock at night when the casinos completely full. And now you’re bringing down your ATM machine, your kiosk. So what we help them with is now I’m able to forecast. So today I can see that I’m going to run out of money tomorrow. And so instead of trying to wait until the afternoon or the evening when the casinos full, I can send my team in the morning when it’s low. Be efficient with a usage of my employees. Be ready for the night. And in the night all my kiosks are open. They’re all fully working. And I’m not taking that down and not letting my patrons, my players take advantage of being able to use that.

(13:30-13:54) CS: So speaking of employees, casinos are re-opening right now. And there’s been huge layoffs. Huge furloughs. So a lot of these casinos are opening back up with less than a hundred percent of staff. And what are casinos doing to handle that? Like, if they’re opening up but they only have seventy percent of their team, what are they doing?

(13:54-14:58) WF: Yeah. It’s been a tough transition for them. So if you divide kind of gaming and non gaming the biggest challenge I’m seeing, when you think about some of the casinos re-opening, is the non-gaming side. So people are actually making more money being unemployed than coming back. So they’re choosing not to come back which it’s impacting opening bars and restaurants and things like that. So that’s the first challenge. So they’re really on the non-gaming side. It’s a big impact to them. On the gaming side, same thing. You have some at-risk employees that can’t come back. So a lot of the Supervisors
or Managers are actually going back into the frontline and having to work. Which then created an interesting situation for us where they were calling us when they wer’e planning to re-open and say, “It’s been a couple years since I’ve actually worked the front line. Can you guys teach us again? How to use it? And how to do some of these things because we haven’t been a Cashier in ten years?” Or five years. And so we’ve been doing a series of WebEx training with a lot of casinos all over the country and helping them get re-acquainted on how to work the process of being a Cashier work in the frontline and understand that entire process.

(14:58-15:15) CS: How funny. I get it because I know in our business with URComped I haven’t actually made a customer reservation in a long time. So you get behind. You get kind of lazy. Almost embarrassed to say like, “I forgot how to do this.”

(15:15-16:07) WF: But… That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. And that’s always the joke when we go into an install. And we’re getting ready to go to Vegas and just next week. Because Vegas is re-opening now and there’s a lot of anxiety around Vegas to see how business are going to come back. And we’re really excited to go back to the Venetian Sands and start that process up and implementation such a marquee client for us. But they always joke that I run all the revenue for a Casino CashTrac but then I actually go into the vault and I’m on the schedule to implement and be part of the go live and work a grave shift. Because that really teaches me to be a better salesperson. When I’m trying to sell our software I tell people the benefits of our software by me being exposed to the users and how they take advantage of our software and how it helps them. It makes that entire message a lot better. So I always joke that I’m more on the consulting side. That’s what I always like to be versus truly being a salesperson.

(16:07-16:10) CS: Well, that’s good. You’re working the grave shift. It will keep you out of trouble.

(16:10-16:14) WF: That’s right. That’s very true. I think my wife is happy about that too.

(16:14-16:18) CS: Yeah. Nothing good happens from 11 p.m. till 7 a.m. in Vegas. That’s for sure.

(16:18– 16:28) WF: Yeah. The funny part is though I did this, a couple years ago when we went live with Tropicana. And the things you see. I actually asked to be put on that grave shift because you see some crazy things in Vegas.

(16:28– 16:45) CS: So I… We talked about a few different things going on. Actually how your software is touched. Is there any other interesting things going on where that you’re seeing or that Casino CashTrac is helping with the re-opening.

(16:45– 18:47) WF: Yeah. So we… My CEO joked with me the other day and said how is this possible that through this closure, We still continue to get new clients. And it’s… We’ve been very fortunate and very thankful that our clients continue to stay engaged with us. But we’ve been able to get three new clients over this period. Even though everybody was shut down still were able to get three new clients.” And one of the unique things that happen is a lot of the tribal casinos they got a lot of loans and things from the government. And one of the things that we did is over the last six months we’ve invested a lot of time into building a module called “Inside Cage Vault.” And is truly focused on the cage operation side of the business. So instead of trying to do the whole thing from cage to revenue audit all the way to the GL. We said, “We got to focus on some of the smaller casinos that maybe don’t have as big of an operations. But how can you help them? And the Inside Cage Vault product was the perfect fit for that. It helps them eliminate paper, Excel spreadsheets. It creates automation. It does all that for them. And then the most surprising thing that happened was because our software is helping people not have to touch as much on the paper side, Excel spreadsheets. Now two clients were able to justify the purchase of our software as helping control COVID. So it was insane. Because basically through all these things if you’ve seen some of the casinos that are re-opening whoever invented those dividers or things they’re putting on slot machines and table games. A lot of people are making a lot of money with the temperature scanners and things like that. I never thought that my software was going to be one of the essential tools that were required for them to perform their operations. And it ended up happening. Where now by using our software. They don’t have the paperwork where ten people are touching that paperwork. Everything is electronic. I have all the signatures. I have the audit trail. I have everything in our software. And so now that’s how I got some of the new clients to implement the software and take advantage of the loans that they have. So it was nice.

(18:47-18:49) CS: Oh man. Congratulations.

(18:49-19:15) WF: Yeah. Thanks. I didn’t expect that either but it’s a really neat thing because this Inside Cage Vault. it’s also a low cost, effective way for them to kind of get into an automated software and go away from paper and Excel spreadsheet. So we’re really excited. We’re planning to do a lot of work with this that G2E and continue to try to reach out to a lot of customers that have smaller operations but still need a tool to help them.

(19:15-19:24) CS: You make a good point about the whoever is selling all that plexiglass. I need to do an interview with them to. They’re probably on their yacht right now.

(19:24-20:02) WF: I know. I know. I lived in Singapore and China during the SARS outbreak and I’ll never forget that every single business in Asia Pacific needed to have a temperature reader in basically in their entrance. And everybody bought one of those in Asia Pacific and then what happened? Where did they all go? And if you go into a casino over the next few weeks you’re going to see this as a really neat, little iPad that takes your temperature as soon as you’re walking through the door. Stands on almost like a tripod thing. And then it reads your temperature before you come in. And they’re doing that at usually all the casino interests right now.

(20:02-20:105) CS: Were you in the casino business when you were in Singapore?

(20:05-20:11) WF: No, I was with a software company that did Risk Management software for oil and gas.

(20:11-20:26) CS: Wow. Yeah. So SARS, cause I remember hearing about that, it didn’t quite or wasn’t as, I don’t know, I guess it didn’t hit this bad. But it definitely wasn’t as big of a deal than shut the country down. But you’re saying back there it did.

(20:26-21:07) WF: It was similarly shut down. So we worked with the National Oil Company of China. So I lived in Beijing first and then I lived in Singapore. And it changed everything. Basically it went into shutdown mode in China and all the neighboring countries. And they had to go through a lot of changes. And this is prior to. So I had just won the Olympics. And this in 2002. And they were getting ready to start preparing everything. So they had to do a lot of things to put in place and to try to really eliminate the virus from spreading. Luckily for us in the U.S. and in South America didn’t spread here the way COVID did. But in Asia Pacific was a really major issue.

(21:07-21:19) CS: Oh, yeah. I do remember that. So that’s interesting. So probably they learned a lot there. Do you think businesses here are kind of looking at what they did then?

(21:19-22:15) WF: Yeah. It’s been one of those really hard things. We are super excited to get in front of clients over the last two weeks. We had to go live on Wednesday this week with a client in Oklahoma City. And we’re excited to be in front of our clients and start seeing the business side of things come back. But at the same time there’s a lot of worries about new spikes. I live in Oklahoma and there are new spikes happening. We have a client in Arizona that unfortunately had to shut down their casinos again because of spikes there. So we’re just praying that we can get some control on this to continue working from a business perspective. Even our own office trying to protect our employees. We have a lot of rules in place to kind of make sure that they work from home or if they go on a client site when they come back they can self quarantine or get tested just to make sure we’re keeping everyone safe but then also keeping the client safe.

(22:15-22:29) CS: Amen, Yep. I think we’re all in together because most of our business as you know is cruises. We do a lot with casinos as well and it’s all about people coming together and having a good time. So sooner we can start doing that the better.

(22:29-23:13) WF: Yeah. For sure. And then that’s one of the things that’s really unique about your tool and the platform that you guys have as you guys continue to expand into the casinos. I always when I started learning more about your tool felt like, it was an easy transition there. Your relationship with some of the casinos and being able to show them how you guys can bring more players to their facilities. Right now is the time. They’re busy. Lots of people are going to the casinos because not as many are open. But as everybody opens, we believe that the gaming industry is going to suffer quite a bit for the next eighteen months, twenty four months. And so tools like yours, I think could be really helpful for them to have other ways to attract customers to their facilities.

(23:13-23:27) CS: Well, I hope so. We’ll see. Well Wanor, this has been a pleasure as always. I always feel like I had I learned so much in thirty minutes. Alright. No, I really appreciate it. Yeah.

(23:27-24:31) WF: No, it’s a lot of fun. I always enjoy talking to people about some of the things that we’ve been seeing. And now it’s been 2020 has been one of those years that I think, I tell my kids, they will forever remember. They’re going to be studying this with their kids like we had our experiences in our early days. But it’s definitely interesting because casinos they never shut down. This is something that literally never happened. I was talking to my client in New York and they didn’t have a lock on their door. They had to buy something because that door has never been shut. And now they’re still shut down and it’s going to take a little while for them to re-open in New York. But those types of situations and the things that casinos and other business that had to deal with it’s been unprecedented. So we’re just praying that things start getting better and we can kind of start getting back to normal. Whatever that normal is going to be. It’s going to be different for everybody. But it’s exciting to share that and continue to kind of work with you guys. And looking forward to seeing you guys at one of the casino sites. Hopefully soon.

(24:31-24:40) CS: Yeah. Absolutely. With the pace of change. I’m sure in a couple weeks or a month or whatever, we’ll try to have another full interview of things to talk about.

(24:40-24:41) WF: For sure.

(24:41-24:43) CS: Well, thank you as always.

(24:43-24:48) And thank you very much Craig. Thanks to the entire team there and now we look forward to talking to you next time.

(24:48-24:49) Perfect.

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When Stace is not in the casino trying to finally get her first hand pay, you will find her at work as a Housing Counselor or in class, pursing her doctorate in strategic leadership. She is a music trivia ringer, having spent 30 years as a morning radio personality, and mom to 17 and glam-ma to 28 and counting (yes, really!). Her favorite ports (so far) are St Maarten and Ketchikan.

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