Free Business Doctors - Management Consulting Gone Wild by Sameer Kamat

a circle of lights, with the familiar ‘H’ mark. Schneider was pleased to see the helipad. Their extended roller coaster ride in the air was over. Another one on the ground was about to begin.
    Within minutes, the bug had descended and touched down on the tarmac. Unbuckling, Schneider shook hands with the pilot, thanked him and got on with the list of questions that were building up in his mind on the cost of chopper ownership. Martin looked clearly relieved to be on ground.
    While walking away from the helipad, Joe put his hand over Schneider’s shoulder and in an almost leery manner. “While you are here, it’s perfectly ok - in fact, highly recommended - to mix business with pleasure, if you know what I mean,” Joe explained with a sly smile as all three walked out of the airport and headed towards a car waiting for them. He pulled out his mobile and made a call. “Always good to have important numbers handy. Hey there Susie, you doing ok? Yes. You bet. Yes. So, what have you got for me tonight Susie? Great. Ok. I got a few guests over with me. That’s right, special guests of the boss, you know, and we need to make sure they go back happy. Great. We’ll be at the Pecker. Talk to you later, hon.”
    “Where are we going?” Schneider asked. The short and sweet exchange between Joe and Susie had made him curious.
    “We own Woody’s Pecker - hotel and casino. And it is special for WFB, and for Mr. Woody. Because it was special for his grandfather, who started it,” said Joe.
    He had been around long enough to have built up a repository of stories about the boss and his ancestors.
    “Many of the big casinos here were owned by enterprising folks - like Mr. Woody Senior and his buddies. Gambling is legal business here. Slowly, corporate guys - just like you - all slick talkers, came over and decided to buy this place out. Not WFB, though. Mr. Woody’s old man and his grandfather refused to sell off their prime possession. That’s one of the reasons the Pecker looks dwarfed, when surrounded by the bigger grander buildings that have come up recently,” Joe turned around to see Martin looking amused.
    “I know Martin finds the story funny. It’s the name, right? I did too and then over the years, it just became a part of the vocabulary. The Pecker is not exactly on the Strip, but almost there. The biggies have taken up most of the prime space. You can dump your stuff at the hotel, freshen up and then we explore the area.”
    The ride to the hotel took another thirty minutes. The consultants were eager to drop their overnight bags and get familiar with the sights and sounds that the city had to offer. After all, working on the weekend for a client was out of the ordinary – Martin was already beginning to think if this was one of those crazy one week projects that they occasionally did for the elite private equity firms. Those projects were considered a double-edged sword by consultants – they made your life hell as the client in this case was at least as smart, if not smarter than the consultants. On the other hand, some consultants saw this as a ticket to enter the big bad world of private equity where the stakes and incentives were higher.
    The distance to the hotel wasn’t too much but the number of visitors who had descended into the city for the weekend added to the traffic miseries and slowed down the pace.
    After reaching the hotel, Joe offered to take the consultants around the casino.
    “We have two main guys who run the show here. There’s Dave who manages the gaming operations and there’s Ed who manages the hotel and everything else. You need anything, and I mean anything, in Las Vegas, all you need to do is talk to Ed. Let’s move to the gaming area.”
    As the group walked on, Martin heard the familiar chimes of electronic machines. “Slot machines. Gambling!” he exclaimed.
    “We prefer the term gaming . It’s legal, remember? We pay taxes just like good citizens such as you,”