Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked what was going on, he realized that nobody knew who he was. He’d just started. Nobody else in the office had really noticed him. Finally, he found out that the executive had left for another firm. Before leaving in darkness, the exec had passed on a good word about Tim to the managing director.
    The managing director called Tim in for a meeting and told him to leave his phone number, that the firm would call him as soon as a similar opening developed.
    Tim had to make a decision. Stay in L.A. and wait? Or go back to Vegas? He still had three semesters to go before he graduated. He had virtually no money outside of what was in his pocket. No checking account. No office. And if he started a company, he’d only have three months to get the business up and running before heading back to school.
    He zipped out letters to the sales departments of thirty hotels in Las Vegas, explaining the creation of his business and asking them if he could get blocks of rooms at wholesale rates. Then he stood with this batch of letters outside a mailbox on Jefferson and Figueroa at the entrance to USC without the slightest clue what would happen if he dropped them in.
    When you’ve got nothing, he reminded himself, you’ve got nothing to lose. He tossed the envelopes in the slot.
    He returned to Vegas and finagled an office that was big enough for a desk, a phone, a chair, and a pillow. He set up an 800 number. Then one day he found a contract in the mail from a hotel called the San Remo (now Hooters) that offered him a block of rooms and asked for a $500 deposit. He walked over and paid in cash. His friendship with Lorenzo got him some rooms at the Palace Station owned by the Fertittas with nothing down.
    Once again, his timing couldn’t have been more perfect. He opened his business during the summer of 1990. Only half a year earlier, in November of 1989, a man-made volcano erupted over The Strip in front of a hotel called the Mirage. Steam, water, and flames blasted 40 feet in the air to the amazement of thousands of onlookers. The Mirage was the brainchild of Steve Wynn. Las Vegas had never seen anything like it, and the tourism industry erupted, as well.
    â€œLooking back,” Tim would say, “starting the reservation business at that time was like being the guy who paid $24 to the Indians for Manhattan.”
    All Tim needed to do to catch the overflow of demand was to make his company known—and he knew just how to do it. While at USC, he often read the Calendar section in the Sunday Los Angeles Times . It mostly covered the local arts scene, concerts, movies, and shows, but it also contained a section about Las Vegas. Every hotel in Vegas advertised in it.
    Tim sketched out an ad that read:
    Â 
    LAS VEGAS HOTEL RESERVATIONS
    LOWEST RATES
    ONE CALL DOES IT ALL
    Â 
    Then he amplified his 800 number as large as could be fit in a tiny two-inch by four-inch box.
    He only had rooms at two hotels to offer, but he knew he’d figure out a way to work around his limitations once the phone started ringing. His real problem was that he’d exhausted his bankroll on the office, and the account exec for the Los Angeles Times who’d stopped by to meet him wanted $3,250 for the ad contract up front.
    â€œI don’t have my checks with me,” Tim told the guy. “I’ll have to FedEx you one.”
    The guy told Tim the check had to get to the Times by Thursday in order for the ad to appear in the Sunday paper.
    Tim took dead aim and held onto his balls.
    He figured if he FedExed a check on Wednesday for afternoon delivery, it would arrive in Los Angeles just on time—late Thursday.
    But it would be too late for the newspaper to get the check to the bank before it closed that day. Which meant it would get to the newspaper’s bank on Friday, and arrive at Tim’s bank on Monday at the earliest. Basically, Tim would have to generate $3,250 in revenue on Sunday, his first day of