We were lucky to catch up with Romain Kapadia recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Romain, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
My work ethic comes from my parents. Similar to so many immigrant stories of coming to America for a better life, my parents came from India in the mid-60s looking for the same. My father, who couldn’t afford an airplane ticket, took a ship around the world and arrived in the US with $5 in his pocket. Given his dire financial situation, he was forced to finish a two-year grad program in one year.
Experiencing this as a kid, hard work and achievement were instilled in me at a young age. As I’ve gotten older, that work ethic continues as I strive to give my parents everything that they sacrificed for themselves to arrive here and raise me.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m the owner/operator, alongside my business partner Joe Pachioli, of a Houston-based events business comprising venues (The Astorian & Le Tesserae), a rooftop bar (Aperitivo), and a catering company (Jackson & Company). Over the past nine years, we’ve grown to one of the largest high-end events companies in the city, hosting over 500 events annually.
The most satisfying part of our work is being able to be an integral part of our clients biggest life moments, including weddings, birthdays, corporate celebrations, and social engagements. Each event is tailored to the exact specifications of the customer, much like a custom-built car, and the resulting exhilaration from a well-executed event and the smile on a satisfied client’s face are like no other.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The single most important quality of an entrepreneur is having grit and resilience. The years-long journey of building a business is an emotional roller coaster full of ups and downs. You have to be strong enough to push through the difficult times and keep going.
The best advice I can give for developing this character trait is exposing yourself to life experiences that force you to develop this skill—ex. starting a business, moving to a new city/country, endurance races, etc. Once you’ve persevered through some difficult challenges, future challenges become much easier to navigate.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
The biggest challenge we’re facing is related to creating the right platform for our organization for scale. In the past three years, we’ve grown 300%. We’re now faced with reorganizing our team and processes to be able to support this growth. There are some days where it feels like the wheels are falling off, but this is a phase that all businesses go through as they transition from a small organization where everyone does everything and can work from a single small room to one that has multiple locations and everyone has specialized roles.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.letesseraeevents.com, www.astorianevents.com, www.jacksonandcompany.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letesserae/, https://www.instagram.com/astorianevents/, https://www.instagram.com/aperitivohouston/, https://www.instagram.com/jacksonandcompanycatering/
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
