Vol. 4, No. 5, May 2008
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Best of Both Worlds
Jeff Voyles Partner, Globalysis Las Vegas, Nevada
Jeff Voyles unfurls his own twist on an educator’s cliché: he is the teacher who can do, too.
The St. Louis native and MGM veteran enjoys the best of several worlds. For 12 years, he juggled an MGM executive position with a UNLV faculty role. Despite leaving MGM a couple years ago, he continues dispensing the fine points of business and helping students receive jobs.
Voyles thus enjoys an unusual perch in the gaming world: He can view it both from the inside and out simultaneously.
“It’s always been a passion for me to bring academics and industry together,” says Voyles, whose teaching role has gone increasingly online as his consulting company, Globalysis, takes off. “It’s very rare to see professors who are actually in the casino business. In some cases, you have chefs teaching gaming courses. Yet the importance of the industry grows. Now you are seeing many universities come up with a gaming and hospitality program.”
Voyles helped UNLV add courses covering gaming regulations and control, marketing, hotel assets and security, advanced management and games protection. He says UNLV now offers the only bachelor of science degree in gaming management in the world.
In gaming, Voyles found practical use for his knowledge. His MGM roles included dealer, corporate trainer, scheduling coordinator, gaming instructor, pit manager, detection specialist and training manager. For five years, he was also a floor supervisor, which highlighted a specific hobby.
“I would count cards at night and catch the same people in the casino I’d seen the night before,” he says. “That helped build the foundation of my research. I went to MGM and implemented it.”
Throughout his tenure, he has stressed the marriage between academics and reality. He urged students to accept any casino job simply to establish an operations base. Then he landed entry-level positions for them. Voyles believes the rapid expansion of gaming opened the workplace like never before.
Like a gambler surrounding roulette numbers with mounds of chips, he was bound to hit something big. Voyles once taught a student whose father helped create Korean gaming. That led to a consultant’s deal and a position with Globalysis, which lists Asian gaming as a specialty.
In February, he became a partner.
The Long Road Traveled
The gaming picture looked unlikely several years ago. Voyles appeared groomed for a food and beverage career. His grandfather had been head chef for the Washington Redskins. An uncle had been a vice president at U.S. Foods. At 19, Voyles owned his own catering business but was too young to buy the alcohol for it. His mother handled the duty.
Yet enticed by UNLV’s gaming and hospitality niche, Voyles spread his wings. He drove cross-country and made it to Las Vegas just in time. Moments after he closed the car door, the vehicle caught on fire.
“Not a good first day,” he recalls, ruefully.
At times, it got more stressful. Twice, he has survived cancer. He has lost and re-grown hair, survived chemotherapy and in the process learned to seize every moment.
One of them provided a chance to skip ahead in the proverbial dealing line—if he passed a high-pressure audition.
“I’d never even played Bingo before,” Voyles says, “but I had been told dealing would be more exciting and lucrative than anything I’d ever done. MGM was going to train their own dealers and if you qualified, you’re dealing right into the Strip. That was unheard of then. People would deal for 10 years before getting a shot at the Strip and now here was this chance.
“The shoe was stacked, the cards were pre-determined. Six executives sat at your game. You dealt the hands, had all the multi-bets. The auditions were 10 nerve-wracking minutes.
“Those of us who got through knew it would be sink or swim after that. It was 15-hour shifts and we took heat. People who had worked their way up did not really appreciate a new person. Every hand we dealt was scrutinized. But you kept your head down and get through it.”
New properties were emerging. Competition demanded skilled labor, but produced hefty rewards.
“It became clear that this business makes so much money, but if you are only living within your walls, you will never be forced to become better,” Voyles says. “It looked like you would either see a lot of education and no experience or a lot of experience and no education. It seemed that if you were educated and experienced, there was a big window to jump through. That’s why I kept trying to leverage the two.”
Now it’s three—consulting has rounded out the picture. It might even become four—Voyles is working on a card game with a Major League Baseball theme.
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