Transcript of interview with Rochelle Hornsby by Barbara Tabach, November 30, 2016

i AN INTERVIEW WITH ROCHELLE HORNSBY An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Amanda Hammar iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Rochelle (nee Winnick) Hornsby was born in New York in 1937. Her father was a scrapyard and auto parts dealer and her mother was a homemaker. She has one brother, Roy Winnick. After high school, Rochelle attended the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology and then accepted a position with a T-shirt manufacturer. During this experience, she discovered her inspirational talent as a sales person. When she married her former husband, Len Hornsby, she followed him in his successful sales career. When his job moved him westward, they lived briefly in Beverly Hills, California. Soon Len saw a better career fit in Las Vegas in radio ad sales for radio. The next step was to take him into sales and management positions at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Meanwhile, Rochelle enjoyed getting involved with the Jewish community, volunteering with the Temple Beth Sholom Sisterhood, playing tennis, and starting her own business furnishing models for conventions. In this oral history, Rochelle shares stories of her various jobs in Las Vegas and of eventually thriving as a real estate agent with Century 21, a company that she continues to work for at the time of this interview. She and Len had one child, Even Scot Hornsby. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Rochelle Hornsby November 30, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface????????????????????????????????..??..iv Talks about her immigrant parents meeting in New York City; father got in the junk business and collected old car parts; moved to Sunbury, Pennsylvania to build his business; very few Jews there. Moved back to Bronx; lived near an orthodox synagogue. Describes Passover and Hanukkah holidays of her youth; and spiritual connection to Judaism. ?????????????.1 ? 5 Describes what leads up to attending Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in 1950s; first job of cleaning to attend FIT; went to work for a T-shirt manufacturer after graduation; how she self-discovered her gift for selling; brother Roy Winnick opened Midas muffler shops in Pennsylvania. Shares details of moving to Las Vegas in 1962 with her husband Len Hornsby; becoming involved in Temple Beth Sholom; brought to Las Vegas by a job opportunity for Len, who was in radio advertising?????????????????????????????...??...6 ? 9 Defines Len?s career, Community Club Awards coupon booklets, and his sales to Channel 8; first lived in Beverly Hills, CA, for 1 year; not a good fit for Len?s product; then moved to Las Vegas. Talks about first home here, on 16th Street near Bonanza; working with a real estate agent to buy house formerly owned by Sperling family; Len managed Radio KENO; he walked to work down a dirt road called Flamingo. She gets interested in doing real estate herself; worked briefly for Marshall Rousso clothing stores???????????????????.???..10 ? 14 Talks about the 1994 real estate market; worked for Century 21 and sticking it out during market down turns. Divorces Len; remained active in Temple Beth Sholom Sisterhood; Oneg Shabbat Committee; Jewish Federation; involvement with baking for Nellis Air Force base. Story about Rabbinical Convention and lack of kosher restaurants; Jayne Benedict anecdote; Temple Beth Sholom kitchen?????????????????????????????.15 ? 18 Shares how she became involved with local Jewish community at the encouragement of Stan Irwin. Stories about Jewish Reporter; Michael Tell; Abe and Sara Saltzman; Faye Steinberg. Talks about organizing 25th Israel Independence Day festival (1973); people she approached included Dr. and Terry Zivot; Al Benedict; Marie Sharp????????????????????..19 ??? 21 Talks about Len?s position with Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority in convention sales; Kenny and Oran Gragson; how he worked his way up; limits put on his salary earned; strategies he used to entice clients. She opens up Las Vegas Plus, manning booths for Greyhound Expositions; complaints that she got unfair opportunities. Model business called Las Vegas vi Conventioneers; partners were Diane Jamison, Joyce Rogers Worker; traveled to other markets? convention meetings. Mentions Barbary Coast, Jackie Gaughan, 800-number for free long distance callers?????????????????????????????????22 ? 27 Talks about Bowling Congress; selling ads for telephone book covers; selling raffle tickets for fundraisers and playing tennis with Tony Spilotro?s wife. More about Len?s career at LVCVA; Len working for Englestad, owner of Imperial Palace. Explains when and how Len changed his legal last name from Honengsberg to Hornsby. Challenges of marriage and divorce. Mentions Bobbie Gang; working at Marshall Rousso; neighborhoods of Village of Woodbury and The Grove?..???????????????????????????????..28 ? 33 Recalls what the city was like in 1962 when she moved here; randomly calling a Jewish pit boss for where to get a good bagel; where the search for an authentic bagel led her; mentions Coachmen, Samueli?s, Weiss?s. Talks about her passion for playing in tournament tennis league; raising money for Meadows School and Carolyn Goodman???????????????34 ? 37 About remaining active and successful in real estate business. About being Jewish, anti-Semitic situation was during trip to Egypt and people using derogatory terms in negotiations?...?38 ? 40 vii 1 Today is Wednesday, November 30th, 2016. Wow, we're headed into the last month of the year. Can you believe that? I'm sitting with Rochelle Hornsby in her home. This is Barbara Tabach. Rochelle, would you spell your name for me? Yes. R-O-C-H-E-L-L-E. Hornsby, H-O-R-N-S-B-Y. Great. And as I said for the Jewish Heritage project, it's always nice to start with the Jewish context of the ancestral roots. What do you know about where your relatives were from? I know my mother was from Romania. I don't remember what year she came over. And I know my father was from Russia, and I don't know what year he came over. If you needed that my brother might know. About what ages were they when they came over? I don't remember that either. Young? Very young. Very young, okay. Very young. And then somehow or another, in some place they met in New York City and got married. So both of their families settled in New York City? Correct. The same borough? Yes, I think so. I think they also settled in the Bronx, yes. Otherwise, I don't know how they could have met. In New York if you live in a different borough, you have a hard time meeting 2 somebody in another borough, and when you do they think you're geographically undesirable. Wow. That's from my days of going dancing in Manhattan in my teenage years and meeting a guy from Brooklyn, let's say. The first question is not, what's your name? It's, where do you live? That was really significant, huh? Because Brooklyn and the Bronx were far apart. So they met. So they met and, of course, I know nothing. You don't know the story about how they met? I don't know the story of that. But at some point my father got into the junk business, collecting old cars and parts, and he moved himself to a place called Sunbury, Pennsylvania, which the closest city you might know of is Harrisburg. Sure. He built a business there. It was, to my knowledge, one of the first places...like what we have here is called Pick-A-Part, where if you have an older vehicle, you can go there and find a part from an old wrecked car. He'd have rows and rows. He knew exactly which row the Fords were in, which rows the Chevrolets were in and whatever other brand. You had the option of going there and taking it off the car yourself and then coming back and pay him for it, or he had a guy that worked there that could go do that for you. I remember that. He had at that time a house, a two-bedroom house on the property of the junkyard, honest to God. Was he married at that time? Yes. Well, when he was married to my mother, we had a house on what was called Front Street, right on the Susquehanna River, and that was very nice as I remember. It was upstairs, 3 downstairs, basement. We had a childhood, kids and friends with the neighbors. Very few Jewish people there. Very few Jewish people there. As a matter of fact, one of the funny things I remember is there was a restaurant a couple of miles out of town in the woods. A Chinese family came and opened a Chinese restaurant and it didn't make it. When we went there we asked him why he had to close, and he said, "There's not enough Jews in this town." [Laughing] That's great. Yes, Jewish people and Chinese food go together. Yes, they do. It's those good vegetables. So that's interesting. So we lived there forever. Then my mother and father got divorced in the fifties, unheard of. Wow. Unheard of. So my mother took the kids and moved back to the Bronx because her family was still there. She had a brother that lived the street beyond ours. She had a mother and father that lived the street the other side. And so we were back with family and we had a very nice house. It was what we would call a town house. It was an attached house. There might have been ten of them. In the front, they all looked attached. When you went down the alley to the back, each one of them had a garage. On the top of the garage was like a deck or a patio in the back of your place. And so we had a basement that also led to the garage. We had the main floor, which had a kitchen, a dining room, a living room and a front porch area that was enclosed. And upstairs was one bathroom and four bedrooms. That's where I lived, like, forever. Did you have siblings? I had my brother, my brother Roy, and he lived there, too. So it was my mother and my brother and myself. Although I have a lot of memories there, one of the funny memories?two funny 4 memories. One was in the lot behind our home, they built a synagogue, an orthodox synagogue. We weren't very religious. When Passover came, my mother cleaned out a few shelves in the pantry, lined it with paper, and put the new stuff in there. If she did anything with dishes or anything, I don't remember that. But that was her attempt to have a little following of the tradition. So at least we knew that. And we lit Hanukkah candles. When Christmas came she used to go out the very last night and get a big branch from whoever was selling Christmas trees and put it on the coffee table and put little blue and white stars and different Jewish-looking things and called it the Hanukkah bush. I am sure that you heard that term from other people. Oh, sure, yes. They sometimes had a little Christmas tree; they called it the Hanukkah bush. So that was nice. It's sometimes hard when you're growing up when you're surrounded by all the symbols of Christmas. Absolutely. In those days the school didn't recognize our holidays and our parents would keep us out of school, as a respect, and we had to bring a note why we were absent; things like that. But I do remember then the High Holidays, which we didn't go to necessarily?I only went to temple with my grandparents on my father's side. My mother's side, they didn't go. But the father's side did go and they would take me and my brother. It was one of those places where the women sat one place and the men sat on another place. So I just got a little bit of that. But the temple behind the house, I would hear all the chanting and hear them blow the shofar. That's a very warm memory for me to this day. The sound of the shofar, yes, yes. Yes, yes, and to this day. I don't go a lot. 5 [Pause in recording] You were talking about what I would call a Jewish feeling that came over you as you were listening to the orthodox... Absolutely. That was my big connection. Had you gone to synagogue prior to...? No. So you didn't have a? No, nothing. ?not a spiritual temple experience before that. No. Only that and going with my grandmother and being told about the Jewish holidays and lighting Hanukkah candles and reading the story. Like I said, my mother for Passover, she kind of observed, but not like real observant to it. But there was a little bit and that was good enough. Obviously, I made it and I still feel good about that. Yes, yes. That's great. So that's a good thing. Because you were growing up in the 1950s in the Bronx. Right. That's when you said you came back. So describe what that was like. I kind of have this image, kind of a movie image of what the Bronx of the 1950s might have been like. Where we lived was quite nice. It was very nice. On my street, which was Manor Avenue, was a cross street to Westchester Avenue. Westchester Avenue had the elevated train. So we had to walk down that street. There was a candy store on the corner. Everybody had a candy store where you bought candy and cigarettes?I didn't smoke, but my mother did?and just stuff. You 6 could have an egg cream, little things like that. But that was the hangout for people that hung around over there. Men came and played cards. Then we had to go on Westchester Avenue to?our stop was Soundview Avenue. So if we wanted to take the elevated downtown to Manhattan, we would have to go up there and get the train and go down. As a young girl I went to PS 77, which was just up the street on Manor Avenue. Then I went to James Monroe High School, which was up the street a little further on, I think, 172nd Street, James Monroe High School. I got involved in clubs and I sewed a lot because we didn't have enough money for me to go to the store. My grandmother knew how to sew. So she taught me how to sew. As I got to graduation in James Monroe High School and had been in a few fashion shows and made something for the fashion show, the art teacher said, "You should apply for a scholarship to Fashion Institute of Technology." He said, "I'll help you." So I made a book of different designs. I'll never forget I went for my interview and there was this dress on this picture that was form-fitted. The interviewer asked me how did I get it to be form-fitted. I didn't know that you make darts. I mean, I could come up with a concept of what it looked like, but at that point I didn't know how to construct it. So that's what FIT was all about. They call it FIT. I'm familiar with FIT. So you attended FIT? So I attended FIT. I attended FIT when it was two floors on top of an industrial high school downtown, like on 28th Street; something like that. Of course, now they have a whole block of their own and it's quite extensive I'm told. But I graduated. It was a struggle, I guess, because I remember I took the job of keeping the room where we hung out in between classes?I don't even remember what you call that room?where people 7 could come and smoke. We also danced in there. We played music all day long, all day long. I took the job of cleaning the ashtrays and sweeping the floor for five dollars a week. Really? So I could have that money. My first job. That's great. Yes. Then I graduated from FIT. I got a job with a manufacturer that made T-shirts. He sent me to all the fashion shows?I went to Saks Fifth Avenue and all those high end fashion shows?to pick up ideas that I could put into the T-shirts so we would be up with what's coming. I did that for a while. But the rest of my job, after I designed a line that he chose which ones he thought he wanted to produce, then I had to go and sell. I had to take the samples and go to the places where they would buy for the department stores. I was really good at that. I could talk. To this day that's served me well. That's good. Yes, it is. Yes, yes. I've been in real estate for twenty-four years now and I know that that was where I got my knowledge on how to talk with people and hear them and not over talk them, because I did that a lot. In New York you tend to do that. The louder, the better. And I remember the transition of me realizing that don't talk; let them talk and maybe agree with them, and then turn the subject around to what I wanted to talk about. At one point, when I was already here selling something, the sales manager had the boss come in because I was presenting my product, and we got off the subject. Then I oozed my way back and he noticed. That sales manager said, "You see how she did that? That's what I'm trying to tell the salespeople to do." [Laughing] I mean, these things stick in your mind. It was such a 8 small part of life. But this guy recognized that I was able to transition out of what they were talking about into what I wanted to talk about. So you felt more self-taught as opposed to somebody mentoring you or telling you how to be a better salesperson? Exactly. Then many years later when I got into real estate, they had those classes on how to be a good salesperson. I would say, "I've been doing that all along. I didn't know it had a name. I just do it instinctively." I think still to this day if a situation comes up, I just instinctively do what they've been saying, but I didn't know there was a name. You just do it. I don't really remember way back when getting any kind of instruction like that. My two best courses in FIT were not design courses; it was sociology and psychology. I got A's in those. Had I had a family that knew better, I should have been put in college for that from there. But you were the first generation going to college, I'm assuming. In your family, yes? Other uncle?s children from my father's side of the family went to college. My mother's side of the family, I don't remember any of them going to college, and I was with them. I was with the mother's side. So the father's side, I think a lot of the children did go to college. But I was the first generation and I was very proud of myself. But you went to a trade school. Now, did your brother go to college? No. He went to the service. Then he got my father, who was still in the auto parts industry, to help him and he opened Midas muffler shops in Pennsylvania and he ended up having five of those. He had some partners. Then somebody bought them out and they...I don't know what happened to all of those guys that were his partners, but he, I don't think, had a job after that. He just managed his money and invested it. 9 Well, to get in on the lead of a good franchise like that would be great. Yes. What's your brother's name? His name is Roy, R-O-Y, Winnick, W-I-N-N-I-C-K. His name is really LeRoy, but we've never called him. LeRoy. My mother gave us both French names, Rochelle and LeRoy. LeRoy is the king and Rochelle is a port in France. We have no idea why, but we both have French names. That's interesting. I have a picture of the port in France I found amongst things in a thrift shop or somewhere and I go, "Oh, I have to have this." Anyhow, so he to this day says how proud he is of me that I came here with my husband?and I basically was a housewife. He didn't want me to work. So I got involved at Temple Beth Sholom in the sixties. So let's set up this. So you came to Las Vegas in 1962. 1962. You were already married? Yes. To? Len, L-E-N, Hornsby. Len Hornsby, okay. What brought you here? When we lived in New York?we were married?he worked for the Radio Advertising Bureau. He was from Boston and he ran a big radio station in Boston. He wanted to actually leave Boston and come to New York. I don't know if I had anything to do with it, but he had other friends in New York. He got an opportunity through Radio Advertising Bureau to work for a program 10 whose name I can't think of right now; it's something like an awards program. Temple Beth Sholom at that time participated in it wherein different stores and businesses would give a donation if you shopped there if you had this booklet that said their name in it. The booklet had a coupon, a coupon. It was Community Club Awards. Anyhow, so he came through because that awards program company was sending him to California to start up that awards program and they worked it through radio stations because he was familiar with radio stations. When he came to Las Vegas, the radio station didn't pick it up, but a TV station did. At that time?its Channel 8 now, but I don't remember if it was Channel 8 then. But it was Channel 8 and they bought that program, Community Club Awards. Aha, give it to me. Community Club Awards. So what they would do is advertise it that if your club wants to make money, sign up to be part of Community Club Awards. They had salespeople that went around telling the dry cleaner or the restaurant or whatever business, "If you're part of this, part of what they spend, you have to donate to Community Club Awards." And then Community Club Awards would give it to the Sisterhood or whoever. I don't know the breakdown, but everybody made money. The vendors didn't make money from it, but they got people in there that maybe they wouldn't have gotten in there before, just because they wanted the points for their club. So the Sisterhood of Temple Beth Sholom, I know did participate in that where I was active. But in the beginning, when we went through town, Channel 8 bought it, but we didn't live here. We were on our way to California to start that up. But we drove and all along where he could stop in a radio station and try and sell that program to the community, he did. He was a very good salesman, a low-key kind, but tenacious. So we got to California and we rented a little place in Beverly Hills; it was a duplex. 11 There was somebody next door and us in the building. He found out that program didn't work in California. Oh, really? Because it had to be a radio station. Well, the radio station in L.A. covered a lot of territory. He had to go miles and miles away to find another station and miles and miles, all the way up to Walnut Creek, far. And so they couldn't make it work there. Everything was too spread out. In the New York area, you could go in an hour and be in a new radio station area, but not in L.A. L.A. covered too much. They transmitted further out. Yes, further out. In the meantime, when we cut through here, a radio station here named Radio KENO, he stopped in there. Before [Channel] 8 picked it up, he stopped in there and the owner said, "We just bought this station and we would love to have that." He said, "Well, Channel 8 is interested in it." He said, "What about do you need a manager? I've been a manager of a big radio station in Boston." And they said, "We don't need a manager right now because we promised it to our guy in China Lake" Somewhere up in Northern California. They said, "But he's a small-town guy and we don't think he's going to be able to do it. Would you mind coming in as the sales manager, not the manager, but the sales manager? Then when he falls on his face, which we think is going to happen, you'll be in here to take over." And that took three months. Oh, my goodness. It took three months. I remember we couldn't even find a place to live. At first we were in a motel and we needed to buy a house. We used a Realtor? here. I knew nothing about that and I still didn't until 1994 when I start. So we found a place past downtown, which at that time was okay. 12 So when you say "past downtown," it was...? Well, downtown, let's say, Fremont Street, north of that. We had one person we knew in town at the time and we got a hold of him and took him over to see this house, a two-bedroom house on the corner of 621 16th Street near Bonanza, which is?you probably don't even know where that is. Yes, I do know. I know the area for sure, yes. Okay, yes. So we bought that house. I'm thinking we paid maybe sixteen thousand five hundred for that house. That was a nice little house. It was kind of up on a little hill on that street and I could see Sunrise Mountain from there and it was so beautiful. For a New York person that was like, oh, my God. And I'm assuming you don't have children at this point. Oh, yes, we had Evan with us. You had Evan, okay. And how old was he? One. He was born in '61. We moved here in '62. We went to Beverly Hills for a year and then we moved here in like April or May of '62, and we got that house and we lived in that house until '67 when he became the manager of that radio station. The owner, who didn't live in this town, came and said, "You can't live in this area. You've got to get a better house." So he helped us find a house. It was 1574 Aztec Way off Desert Inn Road and it was previously owned by the Sperling family, who you have run into in your histories I'm sure and if you haven't, you will. I'm trying to think. It was a well-known family and they had other names that's not coming to me right now, maybe Edith Katz brother. But if it comes to me, I will tell you. Anyhow, it had four bedrooms and a pool and a carport in a better neighborhood. My husband was managing Radio KENO, which was on Flamingo and Palos Verdes and he could 13 walk across the desert to work. Flamingo was still a dirt road. A dirt road. How long a walk was that for him? Not very far, but he used it for exercise. The Boulevard Mall wasn't there; that was a vacant lot. So that was so funny because... Oh, yes. I mean, UNLV was two or three little buildings. But he'd walk there and he thought that was good, his exercise. I stayed in that house for thirty-five years. Oh, wow. I can't even believe it. But why would I move? It's right in the middle of everything and then it wasn't. It's still there. I sold it eventually when I was a real estate agent. We paid for that house thirty-four thousand five hundred, and thirty-five years later or thirty-four years later, I sold it for a hundred and thirty-four. I thought I was cat's meow. [Laughing] And I bought a town house. I paid off the town house and I lived in that; that was at 3959 Pembride Ct near Flamingo and Sandhill in a gated community. I lived in the Village of Woodbury for ten years. By that time I started real estate in 1994. My girlfriend wanted to become a real estate agent and I didn't. But I liked taking classes. So she said, "Well, why don't you come with me to school because you like to take classes?" I said, "Okay, I'll go to real estate school." Key Realty, which is still in existence. It is, yes. And I said, "That way if I ever want to buy houses or anything, I'll know a little bit about it." Well, that's not correct. When you go to real estate school, you learn the laws; you don't learn how to sell real estate. But then it came time for everybody to take their test and I said, "I'm not taking the test; I don't want to be a real estate agent. First of all, I'm not good at math and I think 14 that's important." And they said, "No, you have a good personality for real estate. The mortgage companies will help you with the math and the title companies will help you with the math. So take the test. See how you do." It costs, I think, fifty dollars to take the test. That was big time for me. I was just working in a department store, the Marshall Rousso Company. Oh, sure, yes. They're still around. I knew that whole family, of course. They were from Temple Beth Sholom. I was doing okay there, too, because I could talk. You're a good salesperson. Yes. I remember one of the managers telling one of the other salesgirls, "Follow her around and listen how she does." Well, I could look at somebody's body and see dresses that they were picking out weren't going to work for them. So I'd go pick out ones that were going to work for them because of my fashion background. Sure enough, they'd buy all these things that I picked and nothing that they picked. So that was a good time. I only wanted to work part-time, but I ended up working full-time because I would fill in for anybody. I don't know why I was only working part-time. That doesn't make any sense now that I'm saying it. But then I got into real estate. I took the test and my girlfriend failed it and I passed it, first time, unheard of. Nobody passes the first time. Then I had to help her so she could pass it the next time and that was 1994. So the real estate market in '94, what was it like? The median house price was a hundred and twenty thousand and the most expensive house might be $350,000, which I wouldn't go near because I didn't think I could handle it. I helped the little 15 people because I could help them. I was a little people, so I could help them. That was a funny thing. But I had a mentor in real estate that sent me to a program where they told you how to evolve into real estate sales from the personality that you had. Because you can't make somebody buy a house. You have to ease through and answer their questions and hopefully find what they think they want, which they sometimes don't buy what they think they want; they buy something else, and you have to know how to work with that. Yes, you have to be a good listener and look for the clues, as you talked about earlier, yes. Right. So I did okay. They told you to set goals and write them down. I'll never forget that first time I wrote down my goals on a yellow pad. Everybody had a big thing going. I wrote down, "I'm going to sell one house a month this year." That was my goal. That was it. In '94, okay. Yes. Yes. It couldn't have been '94 that I finished that; that had to have been '95 because I started in November of '94. But they had us write our goals for the next year and that's what I wrote. They give you this big complicated system; if you want to have this many sales, you have to make that many calls, and if you want this many listings, you have to make that many calls. Give me a break. You can't tell that in advance. But I guess if you write it down, you work towards it. So I was happy with my one sale a month. One of the funny things that just came up in the office now is the broker is telling everybody, "Don't give up in these months. Everybody else is giving up. So you keep going and make phone calls and make phone calls. That is the best way is to make phone calls." Eventually you get to where you get referrals. But in the beginning and still to this day, you get on the phone, call strangers, call people that houses didn't sell and they're still wanting to sell, but it 16 didn't, usually because they priced it too high. So I remember one year specifically saying to myself, "Everybody else is taking off for Christmas; I don't need to do that. So I'm going to come in the office." At that time we had floor time. "And I'm going to do floor time, as much as they will give it to me." Everybody was happy because they didn't want to do floor time. They wanted to go Christmas shopping. I was so busy in January and February, I couldn't keep track of myself. What broker were you working for? I've worked for Century 21 from day one. They're all individually owned and operated. At that point?that was the second year. The first year I worked for a company named MoneyWorld, Century 21. All of these are Century 21. Century 21 MoneyWorld. Then I didn't like the broker there, but I said, "I better stick it out for a year or it will look funny. They won't know it was him; they'll think it was me.