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That's Symbiotica.com. And we continue with Our American Stories and up next you've heard from him before and by the way go to OurAmericanStories.com and you can hear Mike Levin tell all kinds of stories not just about his life but stories you can apply to yours and that's why we have him tell them. Mike was the president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Google is Singapore casino. Look at what he built and look at what he did in Las Vegas, the number of jobs he created, the options for Americans or people around the world to go to a great resort and enjoy some gambling and some entertainment and have it be safe and clean. Up next Mike tells the story about he, a Jewish man, helped start the Asian American Hotel Owners Association. It's a heck of a story.
Take it away Mike. Let's fast forward to 1985. I get the days in job and the interesting thing about getting the days in job was that I was referred to Henry Silverman by a guy that I had fired. There was a guy named Vic Appleby who was the sales director of the Americana Hotel in New York.
He was not doing a very good job and I had to let him go. And a few years later I'm sitting in my office in Chicago and I'm on my way to the airport. I had a trip and I have these message things with all the telephone calls.
You know you didn't have no cell phones then. And I go to a pay phone, I call the guy back. I said, Vic how are you? I haven't spoken to you for three or four years.
Why are you calling? He said, well I'm the sales director for the Tolman Hundley Company and they're looking to recommend somebody to be the president and chief operating officer of days in and I recommended you. I said, would you be interested? I said, sure.
I said, sure. Because we're selling the assets of Americana Hotels now and I'm not going to have a job in a few months. So anyway, I get the job. And in order to get the job, I'd never been in the economy lodging business and I never really, I had some franchises at Dunphy, we had some Sheridan franchises at Dunphy, and we had one franchise at Americana, but I was never really in the franchise business.
And it was a very life-changing experience too. So I decided I would go and sit with a consultant who was at a consulting company in New York, a guy named Dan Danielli, who was supposed to be the guru of economy lodging, which is like budget hotels, but you know the euphemism is economy lodging, you know. So I go see him and he said, oh yeah, you have all these curry palaces there. I said, what's that? He said, well, they're owned by Indians. I said, what do you mean Indians? Sioux? You know, Cherokee?
No. Indians from India. Oh, those Indians. I said, so what? He says, well, apparently Henry Silverman and Saul Steinberg bought these in September and it's now February or March of the following year, and they sold off half of these hotels, many of them to these Indian hotel owners, guys named Patel and Shar and a few people like that, as franchises. I said, so what are you telling me? He says, well, they're very difficult.
Why? Well, there's, you know, they call them curry palaces because they live in them and they cook. So the place smells of curry and this stuff and that and whatever. You know, once again, the same, the establishment is, you know, whatever. He's the guru of the consulting industry.
He's a nice guy too, actually. But once again, you know, this is the way people would label things. So I get to days in and I start meeting with these people. And about six or eight months later, I hear the same thing inside the company.
Well, the quality scores are down. They don't pay their bills. They're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I have a guy calls, comes into my office. A guy calls me up named Lee Duschoff.
So who are you? He says, I do projects for people. I said, come and see me just out of the blue. Really nice guy comes to see me and he says, look, he said, Mike, I just want to tell you something.
If you've got a project that you can't do, call me, I'll do it. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, lots of times I find that people like to do new things in companies, but when they try to do it with the same people, they can't get them done.
Well, that makes sense. So he goes away. A couple of months later, the guy shows up in my office named H.P. Rama. He's a very, very serious Hindu.
He comes to see me. He said, Mike, we have problems. We have billboards up that say American owned, which is really derogatory to us because people are saying don't stay in a Patel owned hotel or an Indian owned hotel, stuff like that. We have problems getting loans from traditional companies and we can't get franchises from anybody else other than the lowest end of the pole. And I think he had a days in franchise to this guy. I said, I'll look into it.
So I talked to Duchov and he said, come see me. But before he did that, I had my people study a hundred or so Asian American owned hotels that we had. Give me the total amount of quality scores. Give me the receivables.
Give me all the information. Give me the receivables. Give me all the information on these hotels. It turns out they're exactly the same as anybody else in the chain.
There was absolutely, if anything, they paid better. I called bring in Lee and H.P., we have a meeting and I said, let's form an association. Let's call it the Asian American Hotel Association. H.P., you get me another strong Asian guy like yourself, Indian guy like yourself.
I'll set up a board of people with some quote white people, Asian people mixed. And we'll start a trade association with the mission being to take your rightful place in the American hotel lodging industry. So I went to Silverman, I said I need a hundred thousand bucks for a budget to run a little conference convention, bring in some speakers, do some things like that.
And then Lee Duchov's job was to not only organize it and also help position the company and me in the industry with the Asians. So I marched in the India Independence Day parade in New York City. I did various things. He got me education.
I started reading Bhagavad Gita and other stuff and I learned more about Hinduism than the average person would ever know. We set the membership fee at $25 to join the association. We had a convention and the other industry people didn't show up to exhibit. I was accused of doing it for business persons anyway. And you fast forward now, 20,000 members, the biggest trade show in the hospitality industry. H.P. Rowling became the president of A.H. and L.A., the American Hotel and Lodging Association is the first one. They own over 50 percent of the select service business in the country, plus they're all all the sons and the next generation are all massively successful entrepreneurs. I sit on the board of an Asian-American company that's worth over a billion dollar company that they built from one.
When I went to Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn, no one gave them franchises. I had to give them. Once I started to do it, they all started to do it. They jumped on the bandwagon.
And I gave a lot of speeches to Indian groups and whatever. And the best thing about it is they never forget. They never forget. What's your nickname? Bapu.
What does that mean? Father. It was a name for Gandhi. They never forgot. They never forgot Bapu.
That's Mike's nickname. Any Indian hotelier, that's what they call them. And we can all be Bapu and we can all help the other. And here's the irony. Mike understood the sting of discrimination and remembering the sign at the Breakers Hotel that said no Jews allowed. And by the way, the Jews were the richest per capita income group in this country, despite discrimination, only to be overcome 10 years ago by Indian Americans who were now number one.
50 percent of all hotel franchises owned by this small group of Americans, the wealth they've amassed, understanding capitalism, understanding free enterprise, working hard, risking and sacrificing the American dream wide open for every religion and skin color and minority religions like Jews and Hindus. A beautiful American story. Mike Levin's story. Bapu's story.
Here on Our American Stories. Roku has what you need to make your college home away from home feel more like your own. Make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV or bring a Roku streaming stick to easily access all your favorite free and premium content like iHeartRadio. Stream your favorite playlist with the Roku vibe setting smart light strips to sync your music to millions of colors and make your dorm feel more like you make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV, streaming players and smart lights.
Head to Roku dot com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm. Take your business further with the smart and flexible American Express business gold card. It's packed with benefits to help unlock more value from your business purchases. That's the powerful backing of American Express.
Learn more at American Express dot com slash business gold card. Hey, gorgeous. It's Paris Hilton. Get the party started with my new album, Infinite Icon, dropping September 6th and stream the new single Bad Bitch Academy. I wanted this album to be an escape, to take people to a happy place where they can heal and party in equal measure and most of all, be your own unapologetic icon. Listen on iHeartRadio and visit Infinite Icon dot com to pre save my album.
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