From Motels to Music: How Owning and Operating Hospitality Businesses Helped Rupesh "Rup" Patel Achieve His Dream of Becoming a DJ

Rupesh: I'm so excited to share my story and hopefully inspire some others. But man, my journey goes back to 1989 when my parents bought their first motel in South Florida. And we knew nothing about the motel business. We knew nothing about hospitality in general. But I feel like Indian people in general are hospitable. When you come into an Indian person's house, they ask you if you want a drink, you want something to eat. hospitable things that we do in hotels, right? And I think it was maybe natural for my family to kind of join this business, but we knew nothing about it in 1989. And We took over, it was a 50-room motel, and we did everything. We did the laundry, we did housekeeping, front desk, we didn't have any staff at all, so we kind of did it all ourselves. Actually, no, I take it back. We had one semi-housekeeper/helper/maintenance guy, but he was always drunk, so, you know, you couldn't always rely on him to get everything done. It was a journey and it was a fun experience to kind of understand hotels and see different people from around the world. And it was a motel, so you had a lot of locals too. And from there, we had an opportunity where my wife and I joined the family business after we got married. I didn't go into hospitality. I went into music production and marketing and multimedia in college. And so I hated the hotel business, actually. It was fun. Why was that? What were you thinking back then? Because all my friends, when I was 13 or 14, while all my friends were playing and having a good time and hanging out on the weekends and after school, I would be cleaning rooms and doing laundry every single day. So it wasn't fun, right? And when I was younger, I was like, I'll never do hotels in my entire life just because, you know, you got to make it fun. And it really wasn't, but we did learn a lot. But yeah, after I got married, joined the family business and moved into a motel and ran that for a couple of years until we had an opportunity to move out. And which kind of gave us that stepping stone of thinking outside of the box instead of just living on property, doing the day to day and living in a bubble. We actually had the opportunity to move out and hire people, which, you know, for a motel, independent motel owner, you don't think about those things outside the box. You're living in your bubble every single day. And we did it and moved out and ran a few other properties and grew our little portfolio. And let me take it back. When I was seven years old, because this is gonna take us to where we are today. When I was seven, I fell in love with music and I fell in love with the drums. So actually, look over here. There's my drum kit. This is my son's drum kit.

Josiah: I think in some of your videos people see this shot all the time.

Rupesh: I don't know if people knew about the drums the drum kit Okay, well seven I took drum lessons for a few years and just loved music You know Michael Jackson went back in the 80s when he was odd and all the all these, you know Madonna not so I'd play to their music and I just fell in love with music and one day at high school I was at a I had a little house party and I saw somebody DJ records. And I'm like, what is that? You only, if you didn't go to the radio station, you didn't know what a, you know, at that age, you didn't know what turntables were and how they produced and mix music. And I was like, I want to do that. But next, like the next six months, I was like obsessed about DJing. I would listen to the music or the radio every single day and record like DJs mixes on in South Florida. And I was like, I got to get into this. So I sold my drum kit. I sold my drum kit and bought, just really, really just basic basic turntables that you found in your grand grandmother's stereo system, right. And from there, you know, just led me to learning in the art of mixing. And so I did that all through college, we did huge parties, my name was DJ room back in the day to ATL. And we did, you know, we had 1000s of people at our parties. And then I got married. And you know, I was like, Alright, let me focus on life now and build a business. And so I spent the last 20 years working on this hotel business that we that I enjoy. And we do it every single day owners, operators of a property and also investors into more than a dozen properties now and so I like doing a little bit of everything and I like to keep myself busy

Josiah: I want to hear more about DJ Rup, but maybe it's a way to bridge these worlds. I don't come up from a background of real estate investment. I'm trying to learn more. I'm trying to help people in hospitality learn more about investment. You own properties, as you mentioned, you kind of have seen it all from cleaning rooms to now owning a portfolio, investing. Does that enable you to do kind of some fun, creative things like focusing more time on being a DJ now?

Rupesh: I spent, like I said, I spent the last 20 years building it up where I had some freedom of time. I think that's what most people want in their life is a freedom of time and doing what they really want. And I mean, I hustled the last 20 years. I'm like, one day I'm going to get back to this music thing. And one day I'm going to get to fulfill my passions and my dreams that I've had. And, you know, operating hotels is amazing. It's fun. We built a great team. And at a certain point, you know, there's so much you could do at a hotel where you're like, all right, I'm going to give it to the GM now and these different teams to handle it themselves. And that's what we've done now. freedom of time now to really have some fun and so a couple years ago my all my turntables and everything was in the garage for the last 20 years and my wife's like hey you should uh break out your turntables because your son loves music he was playing the drums too and we both transitioned into breaking these turntables out and we're like wait a minute nobody uses turntables anymore so we bought all this brand new equipment and really got deep into it. And I feel like networking is a huge in any industry, but especially in the music industry, if you know people, that's what gets you into clubs, that's what gets you into the door of different lounges, hotels, and all that stuff. So the last couple years, I've been really, really fortunate to use my LinkedIn connections to really go around the world and DJ at these amazing rooftops, amazing clubs, amazing bars, it's just been so much fun. And this gives me a lot of passion and fulfills a lot of these dreams that I had, because When I was in college and high school, I DJ'd all three days of the week, every single week, but it was like weddings and sweet 16s, and I never got a chance to do that big, big club or that big, nice, popular lounge. And I'm like, I'm going to one day check that off my list. Here I am today with my network and with the stuff I've kind of learned in school as far as marketing and sales and not being afraid of things, right? Because you get one no and people turn around like I'm done, right? But I've gotten a thousand no's until I get one yes. I really pushed myself to get myself out there and fight that fear of maybe being judged and maybe the fear inside myself. And I actually posted about this a couple of weeks ago where I said, listen, I'm officially announcing that I'm a DJ producer because I am looking at producing music here soon. I play house music. So I was kind of fearful for the last couple of months to say, hey, should I actually post it on LinkedIn? Because all my LinkedIn's have been about hospitality in general, you know?

Josiah: What helped you push beyond that fear? Because in a way, it's very vulnerable. You're so well known for this as a hotel owner and operator. You know, hundreds of thousands of millions of people know you for that. I imagine that was a little tough to think about. I'm going to announce this other side of myself.

Rupesh: I talked to a few friends and they're like, I don't know, they might laugh at you. And so I actually posted, I said, you know what? They said not to post it because they might laugh at me. But then I got this huge amount of support on LinkedIn, which has been amazing because we've built a great community. And I feel like if you're trying to build a brand, you build your community. This has actually been in the works where I've thought about this like five or six years ago. I said, you know what, one day I'm going to bring that music passion back. And so maybe like three years ago I changed my name from Rupesh Patel to Rupesh "Rup" Patel to kind of stand out because there's other Rupesh's right but there's no other Rupesh "Rup" Patel right that I know of and so. I started this branding a few years ago and I'm like, one day I'm going to put myself out there and fight that fear because we all have fear. We always have these evil things in our mind that are stopping us from doing these things that we're really passionate about or really want to like that you dreamt about. And I said, you know what? I don't care what anybody thinks. I'm going to put it out there. And if you don't want to support me, you aren't really my friend, right?

Josiah: How does that feel now? You know, you're in these lounges, you're in these clubs. What does it feel? You're living the dream.

Rupesh: It feels like I've I'm checking stuff off my bucket list. I mean, I've been last year I was in Mexico City, South America. I DJed in India at the number one rooftop lounge in Mumbai and DJed in Ibiza last year, which is a dream of mine because I love house music. If you're going to Ibiza, it's all house music, right? And so just checking these things off my bucket list has been really fulfilling.

Josiah: It's so cool. You also have an event coming up next week. I wonder if you can tell our listeners a little bit more about this.

Rupesh: Yeah, I'm excited. So as soon as I announced on LinkedIn that I was DJing, I had some brands come up to me like, hey, can you DJ our party? Can you do this for us? And I'm like, let me think about it. Because, you know, I don't want to be that guy that has a job like this. DJ side of my life cannot feel like a job because once it feels like a job, then you get kind of jaded by it. You might get sick of it or whatever. So I was like, you know what, I'm really going to be picky and choosy about things that I, that I want to do. And so this brand came up to me and Red Roof came up to me and said, Hey, we want you to DJ our party. It's going to be 6,000 people at this, at the AAHOA conference, which you don't know. It's the American Asian Hotel Owners Association. Asians own 60% of the hotels in the United States, maybe more now, but all the owners are coming to Orlando, Florida here where I live. and gonna be partying it up and meeting each other, networking. And I was like, you know what? I would love to DJ your party. So doing the block party next Wednesday, which is exciting. And I got a few friends with me too. So, you know, in life, you can't do things alone. And I was thinking about this in the car on the way here. I was like, most people, actually, I would say 100% of the people always have support behind them to where they've gotten, right? And so I didn't wanna do this myself. I wanted to bring some friends that I've known in the industry as far as the music side of things. And I wanted to bring them in too. So it's going to be three of us. DJ Chino is famous. He was one time DJ Khaled's official DJ. We have DJ Jithin that travels the world doing amazing weddings. Every week he's traveling, every weekend. And myself. So we're going to have a great time and I'm excited just to collaborate.

Josiah: Do you feel your background in hospitality allows you to DJ and produce these events any differently? Or how does that background inform how you perform as a DJ now?

Rupesh: You know, I think about what the audience wants and it's the same thing as a hotel. You're looking at what your guests want right in the room and you kind of think of that, you have that same mindset as far as welcoming people and how are you going to create an experience for them? Because music is an experience, right? If you go to a club or you go to a festival, I would want it to change my life or I wanted to like impact my life and so I think of the same way as a hotel or if you're eating at a restaurant. How's that impacted or how's it put into your mind as an experience and so I kind of think about that when I'm putting my set list together or I'm thinking about what I should be playing that evening.

Josiah: I love that. One thing that stands out to me from your work is the community element. You've already touched on it a few times in our conversation. And I think as someone who has been creating media for a long time, teaching a lot of people, showing people what's possible in hospitality, sometimes it very much feels like a broadcast. It's kind of like, oh, we have the best show or I'm the best personality. I think in your shows, and you've done this multiple different ways, whether it's LinkedIn or YouTube or all the different services, it feels community-focused. Even some of the broadcasts that you do where you're calling out people, is that by design? Or have you always thought about it as sort of a community-focused work in your work in media so far?

Rupesh: Yeah. Like I said, it's a team effort. No hotel is successful just by one person, the owner, the general manager, or a person working there. It's a team effort. And I think that's what brings people together as far as anything you do in life. It's you and other people who are on this mission and journey together. And so, yeah, it's always been a team effort when it comes to anything. Whatever we do has to be a team effort.