HATTIE: Do you think your failures, -- the one at 21 and then the one in Palm Beach, and then the one in New York -- did that teach you? Did that give you courage?

THOMAS: It gave me a lot of confidence, because I had been through it before. But I'd been through it with other people's money, so that was a little easier. Fortunately, my attorney had a base group of people; he had done this for other restaurateurs. I started sending people to him. And, I sent him out to people that I had known -- Bob, Michael, my two initial contacts...

HATTIE: So the attorney went on your behalf.

THOMAS: The attorney went on my behalf. This was a few of his core group of people that he thought might invest in a restaurant: And I just started making cold calls to people. And I'd ask you...`Do you want to invest?' `No, I don't want to invest.' `Well, do you know somebody who would?' `Well, maybe this person,' and before you know it, you're talking to people that you don't even know. And you wake up in the morning, and you have a list of 10 people that you want to call, and sometimes I'd get through three of them. Sometimes I would get through all 10 of them because it was a good day, and I had two people that wanted me to send them the prospectus. I'm not even--they're not even saying they want to invest, they're just saying, `OK, send me the document and let me take a look at it, and then call me back in...two or three weeks.''

HATTIE: Thomas, you're selling.

HATTIE: You're selling.

THOMAS: I'm selling. Yeah.

HATTIE: You're not being a chef. You're not cooking, you're selling.

THOMAS: Rigth. The bank gave us a real estate loan. The SBA gave us a business loan. And then the investors came up with the rest.

HATTIE: With the rest.. So you have three separate--but how many investors?