The father of new Las Vegas, billionaire Steve Wynn.
Last month I participated at the Business Mastery Anthony Robbins Program in Vegas, I had the priviledge to meet two thousand dynamic entrepreneurs and to see the most incredible Marketers and Top notch Speakers in the world. I will create another post about the Business Mastery and at the moment I would like to talk about Steve Wynn. I had the privilege to see him speaking at the event and to listening carefully what he had to say. Let me introduce him then…
“Want to know who’s responsible for the more resort feel of Vegas nowadays? Take a look at Steve.
Steve Wynn, who’s real name is Stephen Alan Weinberg, is a Las Vegas casino mogul and developer that has been one of the driving forces in the development of Vegas in the past 20 years. And he has his hand in some of the top casino projects in Nevada.
Wynn was born in 1942 to a middle-class family in New Haven, Connecticut and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963, with a degree in English Literature. English Literature, yup. It’s always crazy to me to see people who have a certain career path and then their college major is completely different from what they do for the rest of their lives. How could English Literature possibly help in his casino business? Perhaps to be more articulate? Since we’re so cultured here at CasinoSmack, here’s a quote:
For most men (till by losing rendered sager)
Will back their own opinions by a wager.
~George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Beppo”
Back to Steve. Time Magazine called him “not only a great salesman of insane ideas and a clever real estate player but also the gaming industry’s most brilliant designer”. Bellagio Hotel? That’s Steve’s work. Golden Nugget? Steve Wynn. The Mirage? Uh-huh, Steve again. The pirates doing their thing at Treasure Island? Steve Wynn.
He has casino in his blood.
His dad ran bingo parlors as Steve was growing up, so he got intimate knowledge of the gambling market. Unfortunately, his dad passed away when Steve was in college. Steve then took over his father’s business and used the profit to invest in the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, his first foray into the Vegas casino market. That was the start, and it makes you wonder if he knew how far he was going to go. From what I’ve learned, most entrepreneurs have a vision of what they want. Maybe not to the extent of where he is now, but he had to have seen success coming.
The 1970′s were good for Steve Wynn.
Through real estate investments, he used the return on his investments to get control of the Golden Nugget, and subsequently expanding and renovating the casino into a four diamond resort. Steve later sold the Golden Nugget for $440 million and began his work on the Mirage, opening in 1989.
You can pretty much trace the opening of all these huge casinos on the Strip in Vegas to the Mirage. Back in the day all you saw were straight up casinos. Now you get these entertainment locations like New York, New York with rollercoasters. This is the moment when Vegas got more of that amusement park feel.
Into the 1990′s.
1993 brought the opening of Treasure Island by Steve. Every time you check out the “Battle of Buccaneer Bay” with the pirates and all that, give a little shout out to Steve.
1998 brought the badass hotel, the Bellagio. It’s got an eight acre artificial lake with the Fountains of Bellagio, at an original construction cost of $1.6 billion. Inside the Bellagio you can check out Dale Chihuly’s Fiori di Como, which is composed of over 2,000 hand-blown glass flowers and covering 2,000 square feet of the lobby ceiling. One of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen is “O” by Cirque du Soleil at the Bellagio. You have got to check that out if you haven’t already.
The new millenium.
2000 and Steve sells his company Mirage Resorts to MGM Grand Inc for $6.6 billion in June 2000. The new company is now known as MGM Mirage.
2004 comes and Steve Wynn officially becomes a billionaire, with a net worth at $1.3 billion. Billion dollars, daaaammmmnnn.
2005 and the arrival of Wynn Las Vegas Resort and Country Club, a five diamond resort on the Las Vegas Strip by Steve Wynn in Paradise, Nevada. 215 acres, this resort is HUGE. It’s the tallest building right now in the Las Vegas area, 48 stories in the air. I like the fact he named it after himself. I mean, he’s had so much success, why not gloat a little bit and see your name out on the Strip in big letters?
2011 the arrival of the new Casino in China. He did show us the picture of the Casino at the event and it is awesome. (for infringing rights I cannot publish it)
Steve, now in his 60′s, figures to have tons more success in the casino market in the coming years. I’m personally excited to see what’s next with him.
Is Your New Year’s Resolution Listed Here? Tips for How to Achieve It.
The New Year is here and it’s time to start making your annual resolutions. If you’ll spend the next 365 days working on your resolution—at least in theory, shouldn’t you put some thought into it within the next 10 days? Here are the top five categories for New Year’s resolutions (coincidentally, the five areas covered in SUCCESS) and some tips for achieving them.
1. Business: Start my own business, get a better job, get promoted, be on time—every time. TIP: To make your business goals stick, you have to have the right resources. Find a mentor, take business classes, read more books about your industry or find a partner to help. Business goals are often the most audacious, so think big to achieve them.
2. Wealth: Save money for an emergency fund, start saving for retirement, pay down credit card debt. TIP: Make your wealth goals attainable by making it automatic. Just as you get paid on a regular schedule, put your savings on a schedule, too. Eliminate the temptation of spending your intended savings by having money deducted from your paycheck or running up your credit card debt by destroying your credit cards.
3. Well-Being: Get more sleep, quit smoking, lose weight, start exercising, find time for yourself. TIP: Be specific in your health goals. If you want to lose weight, decide your goal weight. If you want to quit smoking, set a precise date you aim to be smoke-free. Keeping yourself accountable with deadlines is the key to achieving your well-being resolutions.
4. Giving Back: Contribute more to charities, volunteer more often, tithe regularly. TIP: It’s easy to push charitable contributions down to the bottom of your weekly to-do list. With your family, job and other obligations to serve, giving back can take a backseat. So, make it easy on yourself. What hobby or skill do you have that you could volunteer? How can you make your church contributions automatic? Schedule specific times throughout the year to purge clothing and other goods for donation drives.
5. Relationships: Spend more time with my family, rekindle my lost friendships TIP: In any relationship, there are two sides—the side you control and the side you don’t. If you and your significant other communicate poorly, take careful note of whatyou do and improve it. If you’ve drifted from your best friend lately, take the first step and find out how they are without shifting focus back to you. You can only improve your relationships as much as you improve.
MANY people seem to think that money must be evil, although I have never as yet seen any who did not want a lot of this evil in their lives.
If all is an expression of life, then money is an expression of life, and as such, must be good. Without a certain amount of it in this life, we would have a hard time. But how to get it; that is the race problem. How shall we acquire wealth? Money didn’t make itself, and not being self-creative it must be an effect. Behind it must be the Cause that projects it. That cause is never seen; no cause is ever seen. Consciousness is cause and people who have a money consciousness have the outward expression of it. People who have it as a sure reality in their mind, have it as an expression in their pocket. People who don’t have this mental likeness don’t have money in their pockets.
What we need to do is to acquire a Money Consciousness. This may seem very material, but the true idea of money is not material–it is spiritual. We need to make our unity with it. We can never do this while we hold it away from us by thinking that we haven’t it. Let us change the method and begin to make our unity with supply by daily declaring that all the Power in the Universe is daily bringing to us all that we can use. Feel the presence of supply. Know that it is yours now.
Make yourself feel that you now have, and to you shall be given. Work with yourself until there is nothing in you that doubts. Money can not be kept away from the man who understands that all is Mind, and that Divine Law governs his life.
Daily give thanks for perfect supply. Feel it to be yours, that you have entered into the full possession of it now.
Refuse to talk poverty or limitation. Stick to it that you are rich. Get the Million Dollar Consciousness. There is no other way, and this will react into everything that you do.
See money coming to you from every source and from every direction. Know that everything is working for your good.
Realize in your life the presence of an Omnipotent Power. Speak forth into It, and feel that It responds to your approach.
Whenever you see anything or anybody whom you think has more than you, at once affirm that you have the same thing. This doesn’t mean that you have what is his, but that you have as much. It means that all you need is yours.
Whenever you think about anything big, at once say, “That means me.” In this way you learn to unify yourself, in the Law, with large concepts, and according to the way that Law works, it will tend to produce that thing for you.
Never let yourself doubt for even a minute. Always be positive about yourself. Keep watch over the inner workings of your thought, and the Law will do the rest.
I would like to introduce a bit of hystory here - we have passed from a world based on material limitations into a world that is determined by mental concepts. We have moved from the age of things into the “Psychozoic Age,” the age of the mind.
Wealth and opportunities are contained more in the person you are and the way you think than in the assets you have acquired in life so far.
Your future lies more in your ability to apply your mind and intelligence to your work and your life than it does in your current job situation.
Change Creates Opportunity
The forces of change impact everything you do. The rate of change is accelerating week by week and month by month. The speed and variety of change is something over which you have no control, and about which you have no choice.
The only decision you have to make is whether you are going to be a “master of change” or a “victim of change.” Are you going to be a creator of circumstance or a creature of circumstances? It will be one of the other, but the impact of change will be forced upon you, whatever you do.
Learn from the Experts
If you want to learn how to cook, you study cooking. If you want to be a lawyer, you study law. If you want to be an engineer, you study engineering. And if you want to be financially successful, you study others who have become financially successful before you. Find out what they did, and you do the same things, over and over, until you get the same results.
Get Rid of the Myths
There are a great many myths about self-made millionaires. If you want to become a self-made millionaire yourself, you must dispel these myths from your own mind. Many people have fixed ideas or beliefs about themselves and money that are holding them back.
One myth is that you have to go have a great education to become rich. Another myth is that you have to start off with a lot of money. Some people are convinced that financial success depends on a lucky break of some kind.
None of these myths are true. In fact, a survey of members of the Forbes 400, the 400 richest men and women in the United States, found that high school dropouts in the group who made it to the list were worth, on average, $300 million more than university graduates on the list.
Becoming a Millionaire
There is a probability that you will become a millionaire in the course of your working lifetime. Today in America, one family in 20 has a net worth of more than one million dollars. This means that your likelihood of acquiring a million dollars is one in 20, or five percent.
The more different things you do that are likely to help you to achieve your goal, the more likely it is you will do the right thing at the right time. If you set clear, written goals, make detailed plans, and continually upgrade your skills to increase your income, you increase the probabilities that you will earn a good living.
Action Exercise
Resolve today to become financially independent. Become a student of money, wealth, accumulation, and wealth creation. Becoming rich is a skill that you can learn.
