Tampa entrepreneur, immigrant, builds $3.5M, 24-employee real estate business

Thao Le was 6 years old when his family came to United States from Vietnam, settling in Boston.

Now 35, Le was raised by a single father and spent most of his life in Massachusetts, studying to be a pharmacist and eventually serving in the U.S. Army, getting an MBA and a master’s in finance at Boston College and joining the corporate world in the medical device regulatory industry.

Photo by Mark Wemple

It was an all-American story. An immigrant making good is what the American Dream is all about, after all. Not only that, it was what his family expected from him.

“The culture I grew up in is: You do well in school, get a great job, push toward healthcare, engineering, all those things,” he says. “I grew up with that kind of cultural norm.”

But Le was ambitious, as he is by nature, and after having moved to Florida with his wife, Tam, in 2021, decided to give entrepreneurship a shot, leaving his corporate job to buy a property management company in Clearwater in 2024.

You may wonder: How did his family reacted to the news? Did they embrace his entrepreneurial spirit? Did they feel let down that he didn’t follow the traditional path? Or maybe there were mixed feelings, hope clouded by trepidation?

Le doesn’t know what the response is because nearly two years after made the decision, he still hasn’t told his family.

When you “start talking to people you get a lot of opinions that might not match what you're thinking,” he says. “It kind of derails you a little bit. So, the best way for me to handle things is to just go forward.”

The company Le bought after settling in Apollo Beach was the commercial property management firm Gain Management, now Gain Property Group.

Getting into commercial real estate was not a huge leap. He had taken a few courses at Boston College and had some knowledge of the industry, though it was more on the analytical side.

The business, today, employs 24 people and has $3.5 million in annual sales.

Gain, under his ownership, has added a maintenance business and bought two landscaping companies. Those additions have allowed him to keep work in-house, improving the quality of service clients are offered while also keeping costs down.

Le has also shifted the focus of Gain by adding brokerage services and is expanding the company to include investing.

Le remains ambitious and has plenty of ideas about growing the company. “I’m still moving,” he says.

Just don’t tell his family.