As a child fleeing Vietnam, Tran lost much of his family in a pirate attack. He rebuilt his life in the United States and founded a series of businesses, including a chain of laundromats, a liquor store, a real estate business and a law firm. Learn about how he overcame extraordinary adversity and what he thinks about the surge in anti-AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) hate during the pandemic. We also have a full-length video interview here.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I am Denzil Mohammed and this is JobMakers. JobMakers is a weekly podcast produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and The Immigrant Learning Center, a not-for-profit giving immigrants a voice. Every Thursday at noon we explore the world of risk taking immigrants who create new jobs, products, and services in Massachusetts and across the United States.
Immigrants have higher rates of entrepreneurship than the U.S.-born, at 11.5 percent compared to 9 percent. But there’s one group with even higher rates of business generation: refugees. Refugees have a 13 percent rate of entrepreneurship. They are good for our economy. But we also save lives by accepting them. There are at least 79.5 million people worldwide forced to flee their homes. For some perspective, that’s less than 1 percent of the world’s population and yet last year the U.S. settled an astonishingly low 11,800 refugees.
For Hong Tran of Worcester, Massachusetts, his early life in Vietnam and even the journey to seek safety in the U.S. was filled with tragedy. He was orphaned while fleeing and lost his baby sister to the pirates in the ocean. Thankfully, the U.S. gave him and his remaining family refuge. And they have given back. They have excelled at entrepreneurship with his aunt and uncle launching three businesses in Worcester while he grew up. And today Hong has a diner, a laundromat, liquor store, real estate company and a law firm under his belt, creating more than 50 jobs in the process. Hong knows what it’s like to have nothing. And even with the rise in anti-Asian bigotry, he is determined to use his influence to help other immigrants and refugees get a leg up in their new homeland.
So Hong, in 30 seconds tell us a little bit about your current businesses.
Hong Tran: So currently I own and operate two companies, a real estate company and a law firm. And they work hand in hand. The real estate company, obviously, given the market right now, it’s a boom in the industry. And the law firm, we do primarily real estate closings. We close for 46 different lenders, commercial and residential. A real estate closing firm.
Denzil Mohammed: But these aren’t your first businesses, you’ve had several businesses before. Could you just briefly give us a rundown of the businesses that you’ve started and when?
Hong Tran: Oh yeah, there were many trial and errors, many failures and some are OK, I wouldn’t call them super successful. I’ve owned a diner for a few years. I have had a chain of laundromats spanning from Massachusetts to Connecticut. I owned and operated a liquor store out in Springfield, MA. The real estate company, currently still operating. Then in 2010 I became an attorney and I just opened up the law firm, sold all of the other businesses, kept the real estate company. Now just the real estate company and the law firm.
Denzil Mohammed: Help me understand, what was the bug that made you start all these businesses? Why did you want to be a business owner? What prompted that?
Hong Tran: So, I think it was instilled in me by my aunt and uncle and my cousins who I grew up with. They have always done businesses and I remember the family starting one of the first Vietnamese grocery stores here in Worcester. I remember being 9-10 years old stocking the shelves and bringing in cases of goods to stock the shelves and carrying rice bags to do all of these things. They also had a restaurant. I remember peeling … in the kitchen peeling garlic until your fingers are burning. And my cousin also had a hair salon at the time. So back then there weren’t many Vietnamese businesses but my aunt’s family who I grew up with had three of those. So it’s instilled in us to do business.
Denzil Mohammed: And you talk about your aunt which brings me to your own personal story of coming to the U.S. It was not an easy journey. It was in fact extremely traumatic. Can you describe for our listeners who really have no sense of what Vietnamese refugees went through? Guide us through the experience of leaving Vietnam and coming to the U.S. and tell us what that was like.
Hong Tran: OK, with a caveat: everything that I’m telling you is a compilation of stories that have been told to me by people who were on the boat, some people who were not on the boat because they were captured by the Communists and jailed … I’m saying caveat because I don’t remember it. I was only seven years old and I have some kind of amnesia and therefore it’s … there’s no memory of the actual trip. In 1985 my parents wanted a future for us so they risk everything and try to put us on a fishing boat with a lot of others. My father did not make it on the boat, he was caught by the guards and he was put back in jail. And from there we took off into the international waters. And on the boat was my mother, my older brother, me, my younger brother and my sister. So we were all two years apart; my brother was nine, I was seven, my younger brother was five and my baby sister was three. We encountered the communist guards in the water and obviously we had all of our possessions and belongings. So we used everything that we had to bribe them and they let us go. They even gave us water for the rest of the trip and they let us. Well, a few days later, we encountered Thai pirates and they wanted the same thing. And not having those, it must’ve angered them. They had six of their boats, they hopped onto our boat. They searched and killed a lot of people on the boat. They did things that are just … grabbed, raped and killed. I mean stuff that pirates do. And with those killed was my mother and my baby sister. And then they took six of their boats after doing what they needed to do. They started crashing into our boat so that our boat would sink. But then there was an oil driller that saw what was happening, and it started coming towards us and when it came towards us the pirates saw that so they scattered and the oil driller netted whoever it is that was in the water onto their boat and then the rest of us who was on the boat that hasn’t sunk yet went on to the oil drilling ship. And I heard that my older brother was hanging on to a board that broke off from the boat in the water trying to stay afloat. I mean, he’s alive and still kicking, but my mother and my baby sister didn’t make it. So the three of us became orphans and my aunt who was also on the boat, my paternal aunt, she had children of her own, and she also had a niece and a nephew and she took the three of us in. Then we went to a refugee camp in Indonesia, Galang Island, I think since then it has been closed down. But we were at Galang Island for a few months, and I think because my aunt had a lot of children who are under her guardianship, that’s why we were able to get accepted into the United States and leave earlier than the rest. There were many others who stayed for years and some had to be returned back to Vietnam and then just the lucky ones get accepted into different countries. But so we went to Salt Lake City, UT.
Denzil Mohammed: And what was life like for you as a seven year old in Utah.
Hong Tran: So we were helped by many churches and in Utah predominantly, I guess the Mormon church, and they helped us. And I remember that I was baptized as a Mormon and we didn’t know what it was, it was just people telling us … these are the people who are helping us right? So obviously anything and everything that they’re doing to us and for us must be good, so we were all baptized Mormons. So that was in 1985. And then in 1986 when we heard (we meaning my aunt and uncle) heard that there were mill work that did not require education, that did not require a degree, where they would just come over here and be able to start work right away in Worcester, Massachusetts. That’s when the family rented a big van and I remember coming from Utah to here, we drove. And the family had $20.00 left with everyone in the van and then the next day because of the work that’s here, the people who were old enough were able to go to work right away.
Denzil Mohammed: And I imagine obviously as refugees when you first settled you received some sort of government assistance. Did you ever have government assistance after that, or was your family able to survive without any assistance?
Hong Tran: So when we first came here obviously the government helped out in the start of everything because we didn’t have anything, so we resorted to government assistance. But then later on, when the family started doing businesses and start performing, we weaned off of that little by little. But I think with me and my brothers, because we are orphans under the guardianship of our aunt and uncle we had some more assistance and when I went to college I had further assistance just because of my status, maybe.
Denzil Mohammed: Got it. We interviewed a woman called Christina Qi who founded a company called Domeyard and then another company called Databento who recalled living in northern Utah actually as well, when her parents first came. And you know, having some government assistance throughout her childhood which actually did help her to stay in school and helped to be healthy, and then she went on to found businesses, hire people, give back. Describe the experience you’ve had of being a minority business owner in Worcester and why did you decide to be a part of Asian business coalitions?
Hong Tran: So any kind of business owner has their own difficulty starting up and doing everything that a regular entrepreneur would would have, but with immigrants I think we have a larger hurdle. At first when I started the law firm, 99 percent of our clients were mainly Vietnamese because of my natural market, right? So the hardest thing for us is trying to expand and go into the the general market. But not only the law firm, with all the other businesses that I’ve started up … I’ve had as well, I think the biggest hurdle is the knowledge of how to operate the business in an organizational manner. How … where are to get financing? What are the different types of financing that are for minority business owners, if any? Yeah, the government says that it’s out there, but if there’s no connection between what the government puts out there to the people in need, we need some kind of liaison to say, “Hey, local minority market, this is what the government has.” I just didn’t have that knowledge. I didn’t have the know how. The organizational skill. I guess it’s … I just operated the business based on what I learned from what my aunt and uncle did, and that’s all that I knew. Obviously. operating in terms of the day-to-day operation that’s how you do, but I can’t communicate how I’m doing it until I got my MBA.
When I was taking my MBA I kept on looking back at the stuff that I did and I say, “Oh, that’s what I did. This is what it’s called! That’s how I organize it, this is what it’s called!” So later on in life I got to connect these things when I got the formal education.
And I think to answer your second question how I got involved in the Southeast Asian coalition, my goal is honestly to give back. And the Southeast Asian Coalition was established and founded by a few philanthropical mentors of mine here in the area. I remember Dohta Passi and Koh Minh and her husband. Minh is one of those who came from Vietnam before 1975 and her uncle … I call uncle Bob, but her husband.
They started this in wanting to give back to the community and wanting to help immigrants. So during that time it was called the Southeast Asian Coalition because during that time that’s … the Southeast Asian people are the people that are in need and they were coming into here. So the Southeast Asian coalition was established to help … would it be bad to say help assimilate? And get people … to give them a headstart, right? To find assistance for them, to find homes for them, to teach them the basics of the English language while they’re struggling for the older people who can’t go to school, the parents, the grandparents.
So that’s what we did. Well, that’s what they did during that time. About seven or eight years ago when I joined, me and a group of others, we expanded the Southeast Asian Coalition to servicing people outside of the Southeast Asia because the needs from different parts of the world entering the United States are different now. It’s not the Southeast Asians anymore, we actually housed the Irans, Iraqis and Afghanistani groups. There are many different ethnicities in our main centers. When I left, we were servicing 10 to 11,000 applicants or immigrants a year.
Denzil Mohammed: Wow, that’s kind of incredible. So you served as president of the Southeast Asian Coalition and now you are part of the Vietnamese Business Coalition, is that correct?
Hong Tran: Yeah, the Vietnamese Business Association was established over 20 years ago. And it was established by a group of businessmen out in the Boston area, Dorchester is where all the Vietnamese businesses are and that’s where everything started. And they got together and formed not an organized coalition, but just them all together getting to see how they can help out with each other. And that’s how everything started. And I joined them as a member, I want to say while I was with the Southeast Asian Coalition about seven to eight years ago. And I liked their vision and I liked what they were doing but times were changing things were changing quite a bit, so the structure that was from back then didn’t work anymore because the needs are different. And we are in the process of getting a lot of the younger minds and the younger visions to see how we can help with the Vietnamese businesses and how we can get more resources into our community to help our community strive. The business community as well.
Denzil Mohammed: So as president of this association, what are some of the concrete things that you all have been doing? Particularly during the pandemic.
Hong Tran: Just last week alone, we had a joint venture with the SBA doing … in Vietnamese … I think it’s going to be on YouTube by next week … of the PPP programs of the disaster relief and all of the stuff that President Biden has been starting. And from there we did it in Vietnamese just so that if there’s anybody with questions out there, just like from when I was younger, not knowing where to get the information. Well, we have all this information here and if there’s any information that is further needed, they can call one of us in order to further help with the process.
Denzil Mohammed: That is excellent. And speaking of the pandemic, you, as all of us would have noticed, but there was a rise in anti-Asian sentiment perpetuated by a lot of misinformation and political rhetoric. What is your response to America when it comes to this kind of sentiment?
Hong Tran: I didn’t understand racism the way that I understand it today. I know that some existed, but I just didn’t know that you can see it in the actions of your next door neighbors. I think the pandemic and the rhetoric that has been going about has fueled or has made racism OK for certain people to express, and that’s why it’s getting to the way that it is right now. And it needs to stop because America is built on immigrants and any one group against another group is detrimental to our fundamental existence. Not only America but humans, right? So any racism is not good. But with things being pinpointed towards the Asians right now from associating the Asians with the virus or any Asians as saying, “Hey, you’re Asian, you must be Chinese, and because you’re Chinese you started this virus.” It’s very wrong and it needs to stop.
Denzil Mohammed: America gave you refuge. We saw in the past few years a dramatic decrease in the number of refugees that the U.S. has accepted. That is in the process of changing but refugee resettlement as a sector was really decimated. Personally, for you and for your family, looking back, I know you were only seven at the time, but looking back and having this perspective, seeing where you came from and where you are now, what do you think it means for America to be that beacon for refugees that home that will accept people who are in the most dire of situations?
Hong Tran: Look at all the stuff that … look at the economy, look at the businesses that’s been here. It’s the immigrants who start a lot of these businesses as well. And from my personal perspective, of course I don’t have a lot of things to compare to, but I thank America for giving me the platform, the education, the opportunity that it has. And from that opportunity, I seized the opportunity and this is what I’m doing now because of that opportunity. So thank you to America and like any adoptive parent, America is my adoptive parent and has given me everything that my biological country or parent could not or did not give. So I think, America, in order to continue to be innovative, in order to continue to be the economic strength that it has, it needs to continue to build these paths for people that are in these dire need, not only from the humanitarian perspective, but from the economics within this country.
Denzil Mohammed: I could not have said it better myself. Is there anything else you wanted to add as pertains to your story or your journey? I really want to find out what your ambitions for the future are. You’re inherently entrepreneurial, you’ve proven that time and time again with successes, with some failures. Where do you see yourself going forward?
Hong Tran: So of course, yes, I have hopes and visions, but I also have fears. I came here not knowing anything and I just did what I needed to do in order to survive. And seeing my three children growing up in America today, I’m very nervous for them. I’m very nervous for them for being Asian, for looking Asian, for looking different from what some people will consider Americans. They were born here. They are Americans. But they’re not going to be looked upon that way. So that’s my fear for them growing up.
But my visions and hopes for the stuff that I can do or I need to do for the people around me, I’m going to continue in this business. I’m going to continue to help and give opportunities that I have been given. I think it’s time to give back not only in finance, but in time, in education, in the volunteers and the stuff that we can do. If all together, if everyone can join hands to do these things, I think we would have such a better America than what we have today.
Denzil Mohammed: I think that’s the absolute perfect way to end the podcast.
Hong Tran: Denzil, as always thank you so much for the opportunity.
Denzil Mohammed: Thank you so much, Hong, for all that you do and continue to do and for your vision for Worcester and the people in your community. The fact that you’ve stayed in Worcester in and of itself says quite a lot and we want to wish you the absolute best of luck going forward.
Hong Tran: Thank you so much.
Denzil Mohammed: If you like what you’re hearing and want more of it, become a JobMakers sponsor. And if you know an outstanding immigrant entrepreneur, let us know by emailing Denzil, that’s D-E-N-Z-I-L at jobmakerspodcast.org. So happy that you joined us for this week’s inspiring story of another immigrant entrepreneur. Join us again next Thursday at noon. I am Denzil Mohammed and thank you for listening to JobMakers.