It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

Rajiv Trivedi, Managing Principal, TST Capital, Interviewed by Rachel Humphrey

• David Kong

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Raj shares his path from delivery person to hotel brand president. He discusses the incredible support systems he relies upon and how being his authentic self helps him build relationships, speak in public, and lead his teams. He talks about how important self care is in leadership, his personal brand, and his advice to his younger self.

Rachel Humphrey:

I am Rachel Humphrey with d e I advisors. We are a nonprofit organization out of Arizona dedicated to empowering personal success in the hospitality industry, and I am delighted to welcome to the show today, Raj Trivedi, the managing principal of T S T Capital. If you don't know Raj, not only will you by the end of this interview, but you can check out his bio on our website or certainly look him up on LinkedIn. But Raj, welcome

Rajiv Trivedi:

to the show. Thank you. I'm excited.

Rachel Humphrey:

Raja, as everyone knows. One of the things I love so much about this industry is that everyone's path to leadership is very uniquely their own. Yet we all can find that leadership that some of us strive for through whatever channels those are. Tell us a little bit about you. Tell us a little bit about your journey and your path to where you are today.

Rajiv Trivedi:

My gen journey is not any more unusual than. Almost all first generation immigrants. I am a first generation immigrant that came to this country at a young tender age. The benefit I had that I did not know what I was going through, so the confidence remained in tech throughout the process, however, Challenges were not any less. Obviously the language was the first challenge. Getting into the helm of things making ends meet was a challenge. Pursuing the career and finding a path, not being able to show people your ability because you were not. And I came in the early stages that people did not give you a chance because simply could not speak proper English on top of dyslexia. Having dyslexia and missing article here and there in my writing, emails or letters or anything else, even added more to it. However, one thing remained conf constant. My pursuit, my passion, my drive, and absolutely my confidence. And these are the traits that brought you to leadership in many ways. I started here. Believe it or not, delivering medicine from a pharmacy to medical doctor's office. I was getting paid six bucks an hour. Wow. And I was studying simultaneously, barely making the ends meet. I remember the days that dinners were milk and cereal, many a nights. Then I got an opportunity to work. At a video store. I still remember the name of the store. It was called Video Merchant. Very Small Store. It was the beginning emergence of other companies. I had a friend who actually was working with me or is going to school with me as well, and that family started Blockbuster Video. That was my next step. And I was thrilled when I was given a job that was paying me$18,000 an hour a year, and. I couldn't be happier, and from that I got a chance to work at a hotel at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, even though the education could have taken me further, but not having somebody who can guide you or a mentor at that stage and needs of life. Sometime forces you into doing what is in front of you. And that's how accidentally I came into hospitality. Wow. My luckiest day in the hospitality was when Henry Silverman started a company called H F s and they were traveling around the country, meeting with the owners. At that point in time, they came to Chicago at my hotel. And conducted a meeting, and I had a chance to meet with Eric Pfeffer, Mr. Silverman. And Roseanne Brennan, and they invited me to come to New Jersey to speak with them and talk about pioneering diversity. As you recall, Henry was among the pioneers in starting a hoa. Yep. And I was the first Asian American employee hired by hfs. I grew with hfs rather very well. I went from training to operations onto development onto no title, working directly for the chairman of the lodging division for a long time. And ultimately, LaQuinta came in the fold. LaQuinta was just Had a change of management and Merus was in financial turmoil. The hotel brand was not doing as well. They only had 200 stores and they had no direction about what to do. Ultimately, Alan Tallis and Butch Cash invited me to go join them to Parts Franchising program and we started looking this franchise program with 200 and tell 12 stores. And the rest is the history. I had my first opportunity to put a footprint on something that I believed in, that I wanted to create, and I was given that leeway. And we took that company from 212 stores, 2000 plus stores. Ultimately, I became the president. I had a chance to represent my company and our industry into various forums. So I am one of those lucky first generation immigrants that have been given the opportunity. So I will be eternally thankful to this country and the people that have given me chance.

Rachel Humphrey:

Raj, what an incredible story and not lucky alone. Certainly through a lot of hard work and persistence and perseverance, you tell that story alone just of the coming to a country where you don't speak the language to eventually leading. A major brand that is an incredibly inspirational and powerful message to send to future leaders. I wanna talk about leadership for a second in a slightly different way. I was speaking to someone a couple weeks ago and he used the phrase like, I knew from a young age that I was destined to have a role in leadership in some capacity. And that got me thinking of whether as leaders, some of us feel that very early on versus others of us find ourselves into leadership and then one wake up one day and go, wait a minute, am I a leader? Like, how did this happen? Do you pinpoint maybe any specific turning point or something in your career that you could really tell you are pivoting into a role of leadership?

Rajiv Trivedi:

I knew it in a very early stages of my life when I became student body president and I knew it all alone. That I am blessed with that confidence. I'm blessed with the ability to provide guidance. I'm blessed with the ability to bring the best out of people. I will lead. But my per perspective about leadership is slightly different. Every individual is a leader in his or her life. You may not be a leader in a corporate world, but you are leading your own household. You are leading your own future. You're leading your siblings, your significant others, or vice versa. Two of you are leading each other. You are bringing the destiny, so the leadership. Applies to every individual, and I think that comes with a level of belief in yourself that you have to believe that I am going to lead, starting with myself first, and then if God gives me an opportunity to lead others, hopefully I can successfully do that as well.

Rachel Humphrey:

What a great message I wanna share with everybody. One of the reasons that I've asked you to join us as a guest advisor, because people who listen to the show know that most of the guests that I've asked have had a profound impact on me in a personal way from the day that I met you when you were leading, looking to many years ago when we first met. You have been the most supportive cheerleader for me. Publicly, privately to my family, to colleagues, to people who may not support me. You are somebody who, with your energy and your enthusiasm and your smile are always there to tell me what a great job that I am doing, or how appreciative you are for something. And as someone who really struggles with self-doubt, or people call it imposter syndrome or insecurities or other things. I have allowed your voice often to be louder than the one in my own head, and that is an incredible gift that you have given to me. I wanna first of all say thank you, but I wanna talk a little bit about support systems because you are that to me in a way that I have never shared with you before. I'm curious if you rely on a support system, if you have people around you that you've identified are your strongest cheerleaders in the way that you constantly cheer for me.

Rajiv Trivedi:

Rachel, every stage of life, everyone needs a confirmation that they're on the right path. Everyone needs a confirmation that they're doing the best that they could. Everyone needs a guidance prior to making the decision. Ultimately, decision's yours? Yes, of course. I have support system. My support system starts with my mother. My mother has been a person since I was a young child. That she always had that perspective and a perception and understanding the moment I'm about to take a step that she might want me to double check. For some reason she would've intuition to come ahead of time and tell me, son, you might wanna look into it a little more. She was number one. Then I met another woman, happens to be my wife. She's my support system. She keeps me on track. She don't let me go on tangent. She makes me focus on what is in front of us. I have a dear friend who lives in New Jersey, who is also a part of my support system, and among the biggest. Part. Unfortunately, I lost my father to dementia at an early age, and he was not able to support me, but I recall the stories he had given to me in my young age, and somebody became my quasi father figure in America. Lee Dusk. Yes, of course. And Lee and I were so connected. And he was among my support system for anything, not just for professional side, personal side, or any. And everyone, believe it or not, whether we claim or disclaim, have some level of insecurities that needs assurance without support system, that asso assurance is not possible. It is important for you to recognize and important for all leaders to recognize that support system is critical. As I grew in my professional world, I mentioned to you before we started interview, my support system was Lori. Yeah, my assistant who groomed me in many way that I cannot imagine. My team was my support system. The. Idea of open communication, understanding everyone's perspective, listening to everyone, and building leaders. Leaders'. Job is to create leaders, and if you make everyone in your organization regardless of who they are and what their title is, the chances are your company will be highly successful. So my support system was every individual that sat with me in that room. Allowing me a privilege of making final decisions, but openly providing me their feedback to make a better decision was my support system. That's

Rachel Humphrey:

such great advice, and you mentioned so many. Industry powerhouses in there and in the list of people who guided you along the way. But earlier you said that we are all leaders starting with leading ourselves. And that is a perfect segue into what seems to be a much more honest conversation coming out of the pandemic about self-care, wellness and other things. Finding a place to make sure we're taking care of ourselves so that we can be the best leaders at home. At our careers and in other places. How do you think you've done over the course of your career with self-care and wellness, and has that evolved over time?

Rajiv Trivedi:

Yes, it has. I became more and more aware of self-care and wellness as I grew in my career as they say First, you have to take care of yourself before you take care of the others. And I believe in the airline philosophy that before you put a mask on yourself, put a mask before you put a mask on, others, put a mask on yourself. Same way, if I cannot take care of myself, how can I anticipate? My dream to have trust in me, my team, to have the confidence in me self-care. Wellness brings confidence in you. Self-care wellness brings conviction in you that I can do the job. Self-care awareness, create culture of becoming leaders that allow you to see and start wellbeing from you onto the others, and ultimately that well. Ness and self-care propels into your employees and your customers and the end users, clients also. So in my opinion, it is an absolutely important component of anyone's life from regular workout to meeting different people to engaging in conversation. To confronting and becoming a part of uncomfortable situation, all of it is a part of self-care, wealth, awareness, wellness and growth, in my opinion.

Rachel Humphrey:

It's such an interesting perspective to think or to change the narrative, to say that your team will have more confidence in you or more trust in you if they see you taking care of yourself. I've not heard it explained in that way, but I really like that and would be certainly be a good narrative for us to pick up on moving forward. One of the things that I love about your story about not speaking English when you came here, challenges with dyslexia and other things is. You are a world class public speaker and sought after hospitality wide globally. Can you talk a little bit about your comfort level there? Was it self-taught? What is your preparation like for those who identify public speaking maybe as one of the biggest hurdles that they see to their own path to leadership? What would you tell those listeners?

Rajiv Trivedi:

I think be yourself. Speak from your heart. Teleprompter is not my friend. I like teleprompter to keep the message in line. However, with my disability, it is sometime difficult to follow the words and read everything that is on there, but I always spoke from my heart as I'm doing right now. People connect to you if they see you are genuine about what you're saying. People connect to you that your words are. Immediately connected or resonate to the actions that you have taken in the past, and people can relate to it. So be yourself. Don't pretend to be something that you are not. Make sure you are conveying and communicating directly, whether it's a small group of people or a larger group of people, there is something called eye contact. You have to have eye contact. I was nervous. I was scared. I was nervous before this interview. That's natural because you wanna do your best, however, you have to believe in yourself. I come back to the same thing. Believing in yourself and confidence and attitude are the most critical component of one's success. I have to have an attitude that I'm going to speak to Rachel and provide some feedback. That may not have made difference in my life because I learned over the time. But if I give to someone else at early stages of their life, hopefully that will provide them insight, feedback, and aspiration to create their own success. And believe in yourself in creating your own success. You don't have to worry about someone giving you a path of success. Public speaking. I'll tell you the funniest story. My first boss, Roseanne Brennan. I asked her, I said, Roseanne, I'm afraid of speaking. And I was in training, afraid of speaking in front of people. She looked me straight in the eyes and she's Raj, fake it till you make it. And I went back and I said, if I'm going to go on the stage and say the things that I firmly believe on, believe in and believe about, Let me just be genuine. I don't need to fake it. I will be me if they like it, so be it. If they don't like it, so be it. But I'm going to give my opinion that is going to provide them good perspective and protect the best interest of people that are participating in that conversation. And that's how I led my public speak.

Rachel Humphrey:

I like the idea too, that you were nervous even before today because I actually find the nerves motivating. I only pick things that I'm gonna speak from the heart. I feel prepared because I don't want to not provide value either to whoever's asked me or to whoever I'm speaking with. And so I don't think you over, I don't overcome the nerves, but I find it actually very motivating and. Instead of debilitating. So I like that you were nervous to speak with me

Rajiv Trivedi:

today. Two things that have motivated me the most in my life. One, if I get nervous, I want to overcome and show that I'm worth something and two failures, or someone's lack of recognition of my leadership. I always allowed that to motivate to some extent with a thought that, what world I'm going to prove you wrong. I'm capable, I'm able, and I can make difference. And the third component of it is this. You cannot have me. It has to be all of us. You have to provide the leadership that protects company, organization, family's best interest, friends, best interest, other significant others, best interest before protecting your interest. If you do your interest gets taken care of by itself.

Rachel Humphrey:

No, that makes perfect sense. And you just mentioned failures in a different context, but nobody. Arrives at a level of leading a brand like you did without facing some sort of challenges along the way. And most people in leadership talk about those challenges as opportunities for growth. How do you tackle obstacles? What do you learn from them? Do you have an example maybe of something that really ended up in, in the moment feeling like an insurmountable failure, but at the end of the day turned out to be a great lesson for you?

Rajiv Trivedi:

Yes. Many a times many a times that has happened to me from a task to tactic to strategy you always have to evolve. You never start at a place with a vision and you end up with that vision. Your vision keeps evolving based on obstacles, challenges, and differences that you face. At a time when we were running our franchise system, a philosophical difference took place between us and then board that we should shut down franchising. And I firmly believe that company was progressing in the right direction, and it is in the best interest of the company and the brand to continue franchising. I took a chance. Went to the board in the meeting, told my wife night before, honey, I'm going to come back either as a hero or we'll be looking for a new job. But I did so because I believed in it. I did so because I had that confidence in me and I had support of my team and they believed in it. I had support of my franchise partners because they believed in it. And I went into the board, and the board and us unanimously agreed after that meeting to continue the quest of franchising. Now that happened during the critical time where franchise companies were growing, and when we reached this conclusion, it was just in the, on the verge of a severe downturn our industry and the world was going to face. What did it do? It slowed down our franchise growth. It could have been even greater than what we produced, but we can't dwell on that. We put our team together and we came to a conclusion together and worked hard and put a strategy in place that with everything we have got, we are going to invest in this and make this successful. May have been slower, but we achieve among the greatest success for a single brand that I will cherish for rest of my life.

Rachel Humphrey:

I love the idea too of if you go with what you believe in, that will help you in facing head on those obstacles. That's such a great value, a lesson as well, of how you can really rely on your values to help you lead through some of the challenging times. One of the other things, I wanna pivot for a minute to talk about relationship building and networking. You and I are very different personalities and we network and we build relationships in different ways, and yet we end up with very similar networks at the end of the day. How do you describe maybe your relationship? Building or networking skills, how do you really tailor that to your personality, to your character in a way that lets you develop those genuine relationships but maybe different from how others do?

Rajiv Trivedi:

I think you bring up a good point. I think relationship is among the most critical component of our lives. Business comes after relationship in my opinion. And business doesn't happen with everyone that you build a relationship with. My father used to say that, son, no one would. Remember when you are gone from this earth, what position you had, how much money you made, and what did you accomplish Professionally, what will people remember is what kind of a person you are, what kind of a husband you are, what kind of a son you are, what kind of a father you are, what kind of a neighbor you are, and most importantly, What difference have you made in the society as a citizen, whether it's community or your company, and that's what people remember, and I always worked with that philosophy in mind, in building relationship without any expectations. And as you build relationship without expectations, you naturally become successful, in my opinion, personally, whether it results into. Position success, whether it results into financial success maybe not, but you are living to the core value of life, of building a relationship genuinely without any expectations, and that leads to a life that is going to bring you a greater satisfaction at the end of the day than anything you can imagine. Networking. As it is defined that you meet people with the intent of enhancing your career or meet people with the intent of enhancing your business agenda, unfortunately, I'm not good at it. I believe I could have done a better job and put myself in front of the bigger leaders of the industry and I strongly recommend to the young leaders to do that very effectively. In today's social media is today's electronic era. Networking is absolutely critical and most important for people to know who you are, and that is all that is going to bring you to the next level, bring awareness about you to the other people who will take you into consideration, whether it's offering business, whether it's becoming colleague, whether it's hiring, or whether in re whether it is recognizing you among the leaders.

Rachel Humphrey:

That's incredible advice and I really appreciate your sharing that with everyone. And I would not have guessed that you would've said that you could have been a better networker. But it is a perfect segue when you talk about how important those relationships and networking is because that also relates. To our personal brand. We hear so much nowadays about developing your personal brand or having a mantra by which you live, and I'm curious, you and I have never spoken about this, whether you have either a mantra like that or you have been working to develop your personal brand and what you would say it is.

Rajiv Trivedi:

For good or bad, I have always thought my personal brand is be true to yourself. Represent. Yourself with tremendous level of integrity, honesty, and in the most ethical fashion, and say what you believe. Do not be afraid of controversy if you believe what you're about to say is in the best interest of people involved and not personal interest. If you believe that is in the best interest of the company and you need to raise an issue that can make company colleagues and overall results better, don't be afraid. Choose right environment and choose right group of people, and have that conversation. So my personal mantra, my personal belief is very simple. Be yourself.

Rachel Humphrey:

I love it. I also love the personal brand of integrity and character, cuz as I mentioned when I was talking about my interactions with you I have never seen you anything other than how you would describe yourself. And so I love that. Raj, I, you and I could talk all day, that I would pick your brain on anything I could from leadership to business strategy to whatever it may be. But we are gonna run short on time and I wanna talk a little bit. About one of my personal favorite questions, which is advice to our younger selves, because I really think that our life is a work in progress. We are all continuing to grow personally and professionally. And I'm curious, what would you tell. 21 year old Raj today. Either about something you wish you knew then, or about how things turned out for that young man who came to the US without the ability to speak English, who had a disability, has a disability, who might have been wondering education versus career and how things would turn out. Be

Rajiv Trivedi:

patient Life is its own course. Don't be too hard on yourself. Challenges are part of life. In fact, challenges build character and celebrate in the quest of taking next step. I, myself, and many leaders forget to celebrate their personal life, their family life, their professional life, and share. If you share, you get more. That's what I would say to

Rachel Humphrey:

myself. I love the celebrate. That is such an incredible message that I do think gets lost. We can spend a lot of time focused on maybe things that did not turn out how we would have liked or on obstacles, but we spend so little time celebrating ourselves and our accomplishments. So I'm gonna add more celebration for sure to my own. Personal strategies. And as we wrap up today, keeping in mind the motto of d e i advisors to empower personal success, can you have one piece of final advice you would share with our listeners?

Rajiv Trivedi:

Everything you need you do in your life, do a tremendous amount of confidence. If you do not believe in yourself, don't expect anyone else to believe in yourself. Recognize your cause and if you believe in that cause, get involved passionately and challenges. Make them opportunities, build your character through that, and always have a desire to become successful individual, not executive successful individual. That comprise of your personal life, that comprise you of your professional life, that comprise of your social life, and make contribution, and share the wealth of knowledge. And if you're blessed with financial wealth to share it because that will make world a better place tomorrow. Good people are needed in this world and good people will make great difference going forward into the future.

Rachel Humphrey:

Wow. That is the perfect way to wrap things up cuz Raj Trave, you are good people. I am so grateful on behalf of myself, on behalf of a hospitality industry to which you have given. And left so much. Thank you. And thank you for supporting the mission of d e I advisors.

Rajiv Trivedi:

Thank you for including me. I'm honored to have this opportunity. D e i advisors are doing among the greatest thing one can do. So kudos to David, kudos to you. And I personally am very appreciative because listening to many of these interviews have given me depth of knowledge, depth of gratitude, and depth of understanding. And motivation to go forward. Thank you.

Rachel Humphrey:

Raj, thank you so much and to our audience, thank you so much for tuning in today. If you like what you heard today, we hope you will head on over to d e i advisors.org and hear from the over hundred hospitality industry leaders who like Raj have shared their incredible journeys and the lessons they've learned along the way. You can also stream cast our podcasts on any of your favorite streaming services. Thank you so much. And Raj, thank you again.

Rajiv Trivedi:

Thank you again.