IAM1039- Entrepreneur Specializes in Sustainable Talent Buying

Troy Wyatt is a native American entrepreneur born in Washington State.

He specializes in sustainable talent buying and building profitable Indian casino entertainment programs. His contributions to the tribal gaming industry have been acknowledged in publications from companies like 500 Nations, Indianz.com, and Indian Country Today. He has worked with legendary entertainers such as Ringo Starr, Darius Rucker, Kathy Griffin, and many more celebrities throughout his career. As a child, he was infatuated with musicals such as Little Shop Of Horrors, Grease, Singing In The Rain, and Under The Cherry Moon.

• CEO Hack: Learning how to use both direct and indirect marketing
• CEO Nugget: Do the hard stuff first
• CEO Defined: Adapting and not being confined to one description

Website: https://seattletalentbuying.com/

Facebook: @SEGTALENT
Instagram: @casinotalentbuyer
Twitter: @seattle_group

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:25 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long long long interview if so you've come to the right place Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the IMCEO Podcast.

00:52 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the IMCEO Podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Troy Wyatt of Seattle Entertainment Group. Troy, it's great to have you on the show.

01:04 – Troy Wyatt

It's great to be here.

01:05 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Troy so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Troy is a Native American entrepreneur born in Washington state. He specializes in sustainable talent buying and building profitable Indian casino entertainment programs.

His contributions to the tribal gaming industry have been acknowledged in publications from companies like 500 Nations, indians.com, and Indian Country Today. He has worked with legendary entertainers such as Ringo Starr, Darius Rucker, Kathy Griffin, and many more celebrities throughout his career. As a child he was infatuated with musicals such as Little Shop of Horrors, Grease, singing in the Rain, and Under the Cherry Moon. Troy, it's great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the IAMCEO community?

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01:52 – Troy Wyatt

Oh, I'm excited. Hello, my name is Troy. I'm Snoqualmie Indian and from Seattle, Washington, and I'm a proud father.

02:08 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Troy, thank you so much for that. I truly appreciate hearing the native tongue and hearing all the awesome things that you're doing. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:23 – Troy Wyatt

For sure. So you know, honestly, it was a year after I started working for MyTrags Casino, and I kind of, you know, was ready to move on. And I was in a different department at the time and an opportunity opened up within, and I've always been in entertainment, but I hadn't worked a lot in casino entertainment. So I took an opportunity and it was 1 of those times where you have 2 options, you can kind of leave a company or try something different. I decided to take this internship and it was making like $3 less an hour, it was hourly at the time.

And around that time, I was kind of thinking either I'm going to stay here and drive myself crazy doing this forever. I got to break the cycle. So I took the internship not knowing what would come of it. And like 2 days after I accepted the internship, the gal that was supposed to be training me put in her notice. So the tribal development manager at the time, and she's still a tribal development manager, her name is Takako Wright. She said, hey, you know, do you want to get trained up for a full-time position?

And I, you know, I got kind of excited because I guess this is a cool opportunity. Had I not taken a chance on her risk, I wouldn't have been exposed to the casino marketing department the way I have been. So you know you fast forward almost 10 years now and after building up a bit of a kind of portfolio of experience and exposure to casino entertainment. I noticed there were some things that weren't right with our program and that's how I kind of got the passion to try to correct them, not just at our casino or our tribe, but at other properties as well. So I started quietly collecting content and pictures and stuff from the events that I produced and helped produce. And, you know, started to launch my company from there.

04:12 – Gresham Harkless

I know you've been able to lean into your company, your organization, and all the awesome things you're doing with the Seattle Entertainment Group. Can you take us through a little bit more on how that works, and how you support your clients and work with them?

04:23 – Troy Wyatt

Yeah, so we provide talent buying and casino entertainment consulting. This covers everything from production, hospitality, travel logistics, booking and selling contracts, or facilitating contracts with the agencies. On average, we've saved a little over a million dollars, 1.3 million each year on talent buying with our consulting services. And this is done through being mindful of production, talent buying, and hospitality as I mentioned, and also through, you know, I guess, thoughtful actions with our entertainment planning overall.

I think a lot of people who there's so casino entertainment is 1 of the newer venues in the industry right like tribal casinos aren't that old, you know, arguably, 20 years or less where Coliseums theaters, you know big convention centers have been around a lot longer. So there are a lot of pitfalls that still exist in the industry. And coming into it, the program that I started off in, which I still have a hand in currently, you notice how things are just, they're not done the same, right?

So unless you have that outsider perspective, you know, I came, I was a DJ for a lot of my, you know, earlier years in entertainment and I came at it from a performer side of perspective, you know? So I was working with a manager and a booker and all these things. So I kind of had a different perspective than someone who was working in the casino world. So I sized up, you know, why are we paying this much for the production gear? Why are we paying this much for the talent? Why, why, why?

You know, once I started asking these questions, I was really able to refine the kind of products that I wanted to provide in my entertainment company. And I'm a liaison, I'm a consultant, but I'm also like, you know, a member of the Indian nation, you know, First Nations is got a vested interest in what's happening with these, these revenue dollars, you know, because for me, it's really personal. The money that my tribe makes helps fund programs that support me my child and other members of the community. So it's very personal and I find that kind of translates in when I'm servicing my clients or helping clients achieve their goals financially.

06:36 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique? It could be for yourself personally or the business or a combination of both, but do you think that a strong foundational pool is what you feel sets you apart?

06:50 – Troy Wyatt

Yeah, so I think personally, you know, 1 of the things and there's quite a few I think personally, you know, I've got like a burning passion to help Indian country, but that's just 1 of the key, I guess, kind of indicate or 1 of the personal traits I have. But 1 of the other things is I've never met a casino talent buyer who has actually worked within the casino marketing department. Being able to intelligently speak to core gaming objectives and what drives the actual revenue is important.

And if you don't know what ADT is, which is the average daily Theo or the GGR gross gaming revenue or net gaming revenue, the NGR or CPA cost per acquisition, These gaming acronyms, which everything's an acronym nowadays, I can't stand it, but customer lifetime value, these are things that marketing professionals within the gaming industry understand. Now it's 1 thing to know casino or just entertainment to go, I can book an act and put them in a venue and get the lighting people, call them, all that stuff. But it's another to speak intelligently about what you're doing and why you're doing it, right?

You're trying to drive business with it. But if you can't speak or understand, this is what helps wealthy people and successful people be successful, which is really it's just vocabulary, understanding words and how they use them, right? It's 1 of the most powerful tools is knowing how to use your words. But uneducated talent buyers will always reference 1 key phrase, which is the drop. How much money is put into the bank at the end of the night or counted, whatever you want to call it?

Any casino executive or a CEO that may see this video or venue in a casino, if you hear that from a talent buyer, run the other direction. This is a red flag because that means you're only looking at the bottom half of the funnel. That's the very last part of it. But as you know, business is like it's 90% up here and then 10% of what comes out of the bottom half, which is your little nugget of revenue, or you're a super profitable company, a big nugget, but all the work's done in the upper half, right?

So there's a lot of moving parts to casino entertainment, and if you haven't worked inside a casino environment for any considerable amount of time, you're just not going to know what it's like to operate when successfully or understand or care how the money is being spent after the fact, right? So I think, again, it kind of brings it back to being very personal, but having kind of another level of experience within the industry is very useful for me.

I find it's helped me communicate with, you know, tribal council more effectively, casino executives more effectively. I wasn't always a numbers guy, but after studying, you know, these metrics and just understanding player values and slot handles and all these things that really helped me separate myself from some of the other talent buyers that are out there. And to be fair, a lot of this stuff is pretty new, you know, like most of the talent buyers in the industry are much older than me, you know, not saying that I'm any better or they're any worse.

I just gathered a different set of skills in a shorter amount of time. And that's the important part of the mentorship, you know, kind of going up the topic here, but you accelerate that learning curve when you can learn from the best and the worst in a short amount of time. And so I just encourage people that are watching this podcast to just learn as much as you can, rely on, make war with a multitude of counselors, and always look for more resources and never stop learning, you know?

10:22 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely appreciate that. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:34 – Troy Wyatt

Well, I guess I've kind of understood. I really developed a way of thinking about marketing that helps me really target the way I spend my marketing money, my energy, my efforts, and, you know, Casino entertainment, essentially in my company, I focus on casino entertainment, which is just a form of marketing, right? And I realized that all marketing is about controlling, manipulating, or altering the outcome.

That's all it is. It's not about making money or getting people to buy things. You're trying to control the outcome. And it's partially influenced by 1 of my mentors talking to me about this. And I just find that the sooner you understand how to do this in your industry, the sooner you can figure out how to control the outcome, and the less time you'll waste trying to reach your goals and your client's goals, right?

And to break that down even further, the 2 types of marketing, there's 2, you know, basically, 2 that I believe in, you know, which are direct marketing and brand marketing. And everything will fall into, as a marketer, as you know, 1 of those 2 buckets. Obviously, direct marketing is something you can quantify where you get results and you can attribute the spend. They add spend.

That'd be like a mailer where someone redeems a coupon or whatever or email that has a bounce back offer, whatever it is, direct marketing directly sent to you, attributable to your expense. And then brand marketing, which is like throwing money out the window and just hoping that, you know, someone uses your name to remember your name when they need to buy some. And a good example of that would be an insurance commercial, right?

You hear Geico on the radio, but you'll never be able to say unless you attach a promo code to it, then it's direct marketing, right? But like I heard on the radio station, now I'm going to go buy Geico insurance. That's not likely. Its brand marketing keeps everything top of mind. So I would just recommend that entrepreneurs, learn how to use both methods to their advantage. And the sooner you harness the power of each of those, the faster and I think more effectively you can leverage your position in the marketing place.

12:30 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's absolutely huge. I appreciate you for breaking that down because again, I think as we talked about before, in your secret sauces, knowledge is definitely power, and understanding that just because you're doing marketing, knowing what type of marketing is probably just as important as what you're doing. And I appreciate you for sharing that because you get a lot more awareness.

And I think empowerment, for lack of a better term and understanding, okay, I'm putting my marketing dollars towards this, and this is the type of marketing. So this is how I could measure it or not even measure it, maybe even understand the pros and cons of each is absolutely huge.

13:05 – Troy Wyatt

Yeah and then you're not wondering like did this work? Did it not work? Right? You know it's about being intentional and I think the more intentional you are and I'm not saying you want to make mistakes but the fewer mistakes you'll make that are ones that you can't learn from.

13:20 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell you're going to miss yourself.

13:32 – Troy Wyatt

For me, I would just say, just do the hard stuff first. You know, every time you wake up in the morning, you have a finite amount of energy every day. In fact, your body will only give you a few like 7, like 2 or 3 or 4 bursts of glycogen, which is how you switch your sugar levels to energy, right? Your body sends out these little signals of energy. You get the biggest shot in the morning and you have the most energy in the morning.

And that's when people, strangely enough, are the laziest, you know, like they don't want to do things that are difficult right away. So they'll, you know, start from the easy part of their inbox or whatever's left over from yesterday. You know, you got to tackle the most difficult tasks first, because as the day progresses, you're going to have less energy and you're going to be more inclined to want to end the day or move on to other things, right? So I think that's 1 of my biggest things is just to start with the hard stuff first. And then it's like, like I said earlier, lean into your discomforts, right? Because the best stuff is right on the other side of that discomfort.

14:34 -Gresham Harkless

And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show for Detroit. What does being a CEO mean to you?

14:44 – Troy Wyatt

You know, I had to think about this question when I saw it, but I would say this is 1 of those answers that are diplomatic, but I would say it depends. You know what I mean? That's my answer. It depends. I firmly, you know, in general, believe that to be an effective leader in any, you know, in any team or any capacity, it means you have to adapt and remain agile. To me, that means you can't be confined to a simple description so it depends.

15:11 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah absolutely which sure I truly appreciate that And I wanted to see for people that are listening to this, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you?

15:18 – Troy Wyatt

Yeah, so I think the best way to get ahold of me is honestly through my email, which is Troy at SeattleTalentBuying.com. You can also reach me directly on my cell phone, which is 425-530-9913. And those are probably the 2 best ways.

15:36 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. We will have the links and information as well in the show notes so that everybody can get ahold of you. But I love that last point that you brought up because I think so many times When we don't have a giver's mentality, we're just giving in order to give, not giving in order to receive. I think it creates a, we're talking about momentum so much, creates a tremendous momentum towards a better place, a better business environment, a better world, and so on and so forth, when people just give and want to kind of step into that.

Because I think that's something that sometimes is missing. So many times people are looking to try to get something back. But when you do that, really phenomenal things happen. So I appreciate you so much for giving so much to this episode and all the awesome work that you're doing. And I appreciate your time, of course.

16:19 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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