The Exchanges

Q Wait, he, he cheated on you with your secretary?

A Yes. She was kind of innocent. They fell in love. I was angry with him, but of course directed my anger at her, as women tend to do. And so, um, when I wanted to fire her, Because I said, I, I can't come in the office every day and see your fiancé. They were getting married in three months. It was very fast. I'm mortified. I was mortified. And, uh, and then he moved Tina into our combined office. I had to look at them through the glassware, which was really, it's such a stupid thing. I must have been so young at heart to be so injured over some stupid thing. But here's the thing. I said, I have to fire her. He said, no, I'm the controlling partner. You can't fire her.

AI assessment note: “Yes. She was kind of innocent. They fell in love.”

Q So, okay, so Ramon gives you a thousand bucks, and then how did you, how did you start your own real estate firm?

A Um, the only person I knew was, uh, Mr. Gifuni, and I asked him if he would just let me rent one of his apartments, the same building where I answer the phone every day, and he gave me a listing to try to rent, apartment three L, and so when I saw three L, and what he was asking, I think it was three 30 a month or something, roughly there, I looked at him thinking, ah, how do I, It was a dungeon. He gave me the worst one. Maybe it was a challenge. Maybe nobody could rent it. Who knows? It was in the back. It was like a super's apartment. But when I saw the listing and looked in the New York Times and saw reams and reams of ads that read identically, one bedroom, three 41 bedroom, three 35, one bedroom. It was all the same. I'm thinking, how do I spend my three line ad wisely? Because remember, I had a thousand dollars. I divided it by my overhead, and I knew I had seven weeks to stay in business, according to my math. Ok. And so I asked him if he'd build a half wall to divide the, you know, straight part of the living room from the L next door, uh, with a double entrance, and I told him I thought I could get him three 60 a month, which is another 20, 25 dollars more than he wanted.

AI assessment note: “I asked him if he would just let me rent one of his apartments”

Q So how did you make the transition from renting, from looking for renters, to selling apartments?

A Really quite by accident. I had gotten a referral of a young engineer from Union Carbide, I don't recall his name, and I lined up a whole bunch of stuff to show him, like I usually did, because I had learned by then in sales, if you could control someone's time, they can't go to anyone else. I would say, I'll pick you up at the Drake Hotel, it's now a new name, at nine o'clock, and be aware we won't be finished till at least five 30. This way you can't even entertain going with another broker in town. And then I would tell him midway to, I've got everything set up for tomorrow. You just control, park them in your garage and don't let the character out, right? So I had this young guy, and I showed him the first two apartments. He said, well, when am I going to see the ones for sale? I said, oh, no, these are for rent. He said, no, I want to buy something. I was like, oh, crap. So I said, well, that's excellent. So I said I was going to take him on a tour of all New York, because it was very important for him to learn all the neighborhoods to see what he could choose from, to see what He reacted to best, and that the next day we would show him the sale apartments. Of course I had no sale apartments. So I got him in a taxi, walked him around every street, showed him every, every place in town, and then that night I went home and I hit the floor running. I dropped him off at like f…

AI assessment note: “Really quite by accident. I had gotten a referral of a young engineer”

Q So, so when you, you moved in with him, was that, I mean, was that what, what your life was gonna be? I mean, did you have bigger ambitions?

A Um, do you know, honestly, I have never had that thought. And I, I can even say, uh, along the way, uh, of building, uh, a successful life, it's not like I really had any big thoughts about wanting to be successful. I just had more of a curiosity as to see how far I could go. That was it. Curiosity. No one in my family had ever gone to college. When I got into a college, I just couldn't believe it, but it was an old girls, uh, college that had previously, the year before, been a nunnery that made nuns. I forget what you call that. And there were only 30 spots. They were just opening. They took me. I basically now realize they took anyone. But, um, that was just a lucky break, and it didn't interfere with my work. I was holding three jobs all the way through college. I could always work around the clock. So, it just kind of happened, you know, that I, one thing led to another.

AI assessment note: “honestly, I have never had that thought. And I, I can even say”

Q Wow. This is like the, the violent, 19 seventies in New York, when New York was bankrupt, like the son of Sammy. Yes. What was it like to, I mean, was, was it hard to, to get tenants to rent apart? I mean, it's crazy to imagine today, of course, but back then, was it, was it hard to get people to rent?

A No, what saved my ass in those days was you had corporate America, uh, very well implanted in Midtown. Granted, it was dangerous. You wouldn't dare park your car on the street. You know, it gets broken into sirens. We're always going off everywhere. So it was not easy. But fortunately, you had employees, young employees coming into New York City who had to live there working for these corporations. If not for that, I don't think I would have stayed in business because I went door to door and knocked on all these corporate Personnel departments to try to get business. I saw where the traffic was coming from, and I had great accounts that fed their people to me, one after another after another, and so I had a huge edge over my other small competitors because I had a steady stream of people coming at me.

AI assessment note: “No, what saved my ass in those days was you had corporate America”

Q How did you know how to, you know, how to deal with the management issues, how to deal, how to pay people, how to price things? How did you know that stuff?

A It's, uh, I think you make it sound more sophisticated than it is. All you needed to know is how to work with people, and that's all the business ever is. All the work I do today, it rests entirely, any success or failure, rests entirely on my ability to work with the people at hand. So learning how to recruit people, I learned how to recruit, because I made friends with every store clerk, every waitress, every stewardess, everyone I ever met, I made friends with, because I'm very friendly, and if I saw a spark in them, Which was, said to me, sales personality. I would say, have you ever considered doing real estate sales? I recruited everywhere. Everywhere I went, I recruited people.

AI assessment note: “All you needed to know is how to work with people”