Las Vegas Sun NewsGareth Long collects businesses — and fast toys
Las Vegas business owner Gareth Long has the life you want.
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“Everyone needs a release,” Gareth Long says. “Some people golf. I fly Russian fighter jets.”
Monday
1 August 2011
3 a.m.
Gareth Long is a business owner, but in a lot of ways, he’s sort of like a superhero. The guy has created 320 jobs in Las Vegas since 2007—no small feat during the Great Recession. That aside, how he got to Las Vegas is even more, well, super.
In 2006, he was living in the Napa Valley, when he got bit by a spider (Spider-Man, anyone?) and “got knocked out for almost six months,” he says. After that experience, Long started a check-cashing business called Altcharge with $246 of his own money, decided to move to Las Vegas and made his fortune—unlike so many who gambled before him—in the Mojave desert.
Oh, and he flies jets and drives fast, flashy cars for fun. Boys do love their toys.
“I’m a solutions provider,” Long says of his 24/7, 365-days-a-year gig. “I hate the term ‘entrepreneur’ because that implies that someone is asking for money to start a business. Everything we do has been funded by us.”
All profits from his businesses go back into creating more and more, Long says. “I have a lot of fun creating new businesses,” he says.
Since making Las Vegas his base of operations, Long has created 11 businesses, with Altcharge being his largest. Others include Nu Sanctuary Lounge, in which he’s the primary investor, a Grand Canyon tours company, Laziza Hookah Lounge and Sky Combat Ace, a company that lets customers fly a real fighter jet—after some training, of course.
Long has a ton of cool, expensive possessions, including a slew of cars that would make Jay Leno drool—a Porsche Panamera, an ultra-sexy Lamborghini Superleggera and a Bentley Continental for carting around the kids, among others. Long and his business partner for aviation enterprises, Richard Coe, own 27 planes, total. Why? He says, bluntly, “Because it’s fun. Because we can. Because it’s business,” he says.
Long says his favorite luxury is his L-39 Albatros, a real fighter jet with its bombing ability removed.
“Everyone needs a release,” he says. “Some people golf. I fly Russian fighter jets.”
Don’t worry. It’s OK to be a little jealous.
Long is a high-school dropout whose father worked building railroad tracks in England while he was growing up. “People think I was born with a silver spoon,” he says. “I wasn’t.”
Long was born in the same location in Horley, Surrey, England, where Virgin Atlantic mogul Richard Branson, another bon vivant CEO with an affinity for over-the-top possessions, started his businesses. But although Long admires Branson—as well as Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson—he doesn’t invite the comparison.
“Branson builds up businesses and sells them. I don’t do that,” he says. “I keep them and build them.”
And Las Vegas is the perfect city for all of this excitement and innovation, he says.
“I love hot weather, I love great food and I love being able to do something different every night,” he says, adding that there’s literally nowhere on earth he’d rather be. “I knew there would be business for me here because there’s so much diversity. There’s a little bit of the whole world in Las Vegas.”
There aren’t any excuses for how bad Las Vegas’ economy has gotten, he says. We got ourselves into this mess, and we have to get ourselves out. “My advice: Stick with what you’re good at,” he says. “I’m good at this.”
Long says he thinks the key to solving Las Vegas’ grave economic problems is simply working hard and being innovative, much like himself. Besides, Las Vegas is a great place to bring clients because wowing them is so easy here. “When clients come to see us,” he says, “we usually close the deal.”
“I could be on the beach in Dubai with a laptop. I could be in the Black Forest in Germany,” he says. “I want to be here.”
And given Gareth Long’s penchant for creating jobs, that’s pretty cool news for Las Vegas, too.
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Hmmmm. He starts his first business with $246 just four years ago and now owns 11 businesses, 27 planes, a Porsche Panamera, a Lamborghini Superleggera and a Bentley Continental? Something doesn't add up here -- unless he is laundering drug money. That's just way too fast. Did the reporter really check all this out? What was he doing before the spider bite?
This is the kind of guy you find out five years later is actually a con man who got one over on the reporter and everyone around him -- as he heads to federal prison.
Good for him. He has done well for himself and for over 300 others here in the Valley that needed jobs. He did not sit around complaining or bashing others for their lack of doing things. Just got out and did it.
Vegas has many people that do a lot for and in Vegas. Most just keep quiet to stay away from the posting trolls.
Your story is not credible. So, we are supposed to believe in 2007, he came to town with $246 and started a check cashing business? On what street corner.
Come on, you need to rent space, you need a phone, you need a business license and fire inspection (which costs more than $246).
Your story belongs on late night infomercial hell.
$246 is exactly 82 pulls on a Megabucks machine. I suppose it could happen. Barring that improbable source of instant cash input, his story does seem more than a little incredulous.
Altcharge isn't a "check-cashing" business as you are thinking of the term. They aren't MoneyTree. They are an online check- and credit card-processor. Essentially, when a merchant signs up with them, they take over the cashiering services (they verify the credit card on the checkout webpage), and pay the merchants after deducting a percentage of the sale. I suppose it could be done with $246 start-up money.
THANK YOU Gareth. You are the man. I plan on doing your ACE flight tour shortly :)
Keep up the good work.
It is nice to read success stories like this. The site should have more stories like this. You can make it here in Las Vegas if you are willing to put the time and effort into a business. I work 60 hours a week sometimes and my business is successful. I would rather be in Vegas than anywhere else since the tax situation is so good here. Also because entrepreneurs are well respected here.
Comment removed by moderator. Personal Attack