“I didn’t know it was ‘weird’ until middle school.

We built [our motel] in 2005 and we’ve lived there [ever] since. I personally have played a role in helping with filing taxes and paying bills, and I’ve also helped run the front office every now and then whenever my parents need to go out or whenever we don’t have someone working there, and they need someone [to fill in].

I feel like I still grew up normally. It’s just when other people step into my life, they’ll think it’s weird.

I didn’t realize [growing up in a motel] was different because a lot of Indian people, especially my kind of Indian people [Gujarati], all own motels, and they usually [live] in them. I wasn’t introduced to anything else until middle school because I hadn’t really had friends outside of my Gujarati friends before.

Having real life experiences gives me a boost into the idea of business. I know some of the behind-the-scenes required for running a business so that I can hopefully run my own business smoothly someday. My peers going into business may not have the same knowledge as me on the prerequisites for stable business and may not be as experienced as I am [in] customer interaction. I’ve learned to interact with people better and handle situations. If a customer comes in angry, I know how to talk to them in a way that’ll de-escalate the situation. That’s important for businesses in general, for you to be able to calm down customers and keep their business.

I mostly learned [customer interaction] from my parents because their biggest piece of advice was to ‘be nice to everyone, but make sure you stand your ground.’ My parents are nice to all their customers, and they’ll even help them out if they really need it. But if the customer decides to do something stupid or becomes hostile, they’ll stand their ground and kick them out.

I’ve learned from my parents’ hospitality. Every year, there [are] rodeo people that love my family and are very connected to us and always choose to come back when they need somewhere to stay during rodeo season. They stay here a lot and my mom will cook them dinner and invite them [to] our house to eat with us. Because of that, we get free passes to the rodeo for the entire month and we get access to the concerts for free. It’s really taught me how far kindness goes.

In the motel business, there’s no discrimination, because everyone’s a customer. I feel like being raised in that environment has given me a more progressive mindset that has served me well in so many different areas of my life. My parents used to be really traditional Indian parents, but have progressed a lot faster due to their need to accommodate all customers. As a person born in a generation of diversity and open-mindedness, this mindset makes it easier for me to better understand and respect the perspectives of everyone around me.”