How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels

LOL

I think the true killer app is family cooperation as a unit in conjunction with a deep network of relatives. My father built his business with the help of his parents, his aunt, and two other cousins who lent him money. Without their help, he couldn't have built the business as fast and as big as he did. His brother also worked for him a bit as well as some of the cousins when he was building his first shop. My mother helped him and once she had me and my brother stayed at home and took care fo the home front even though she had a masters degree. And it appears his generation along with my mothers was the last hurrah of big family ties and help as everyone in my generation up and left. I have no cousins, uncles or aunts who are close. They all did their own thing, went to school and moved away. I see them from time to time, maybe once or twice a year and that's it. Hell, even my mother has all sorts of stories about how here massive Irish family (grandma was one of 12 kids) pulled together to help each other with everything.

Contrast that with my Guyanese friend who has a seemingly never ending supply of helpful family members all in the same neighborhood. His father built himself a small real estate empire of about a dozen rental properties and most of his generation are college educated. His father started out doing handyman and light construction work with his brothers. They all chipped in and worked. Some even had a day job and came to the properties at night to work on them. One by one they fixed and flipped homes using money and labor they pooled together. Then they started buying, fixing and renting. They acted as a small family army, cooperatively building each others future.

The American family has been here long enough to thin and die whereas these foreign families are still "fresh" to America and working hard to make a good life. But they too will one day suffer the same fate. Subsequent generations won't have to work as hard as they are already comfortable. Little by little they will spread out, move away, and their once mighty army is no more. From my perspective as a true 3rd gen American (all G-Grandparents came from Europe around the same time) is that by the third generation, there are no more cultural roots. And family is culture so family dissolves as well. My mother and father were the last to really care and my father was very meh about his Polish heritage. My mother was adamant, keeping traditions alive for as long as possible but the local family thinned out as the rest moved away. She is probably the last to really care about family and cultural roots which bound the early immigrants, and their children.

Their network went well beyond any particular industry though. The first family friend to come to this country ended up in Houston in the early 70s, quickly accumulated wealth by innovating accounting techniques for big oil. He sponsored the next wave, which included her father who started as a nuclear plant engineer and travelled around the country for a couple decades before moving into finance then hospitality.

Each successive wave would sponsor others - they all were relatively successful in India but came here to be executives at tech companies, surgeons, professors, real estate investors, etc. They really took care of each other.

While the family did much of what was mentioned in the article, including living at the Days Inn for a couple years at one point, it didn't mention anything about partnership stakes in these properties. That seemed to be a big thing, or at least I had the impression that diversifying property portfolios was common. Her father owned his properties outright but that was because he bought his partners out during the financial collapse in 2009. When we last talked 2 years back, he was looking to acquire new partners and invest in other properties.

As you say, there was a tension to bring the children in but they had little interest in moving to a place in a so-so part of Florida - the children were well educated, travelled, cultured etc and preferred to live in big cities. My ex and I did grudgingly discuss it as being an option if we started a family.

Hotels aren’t a Business that requires immigrant labor because it’s undesirable —- it’s a business that needs capital and SMB are starved of capital.

Many Americans come from a cultural background where there is shame involved in talking about money and doing business with family, and prefer dealing with institutions.