My father and mother separated but my father always had businesses. He started out with a mechanic shop. Little did I know, but when I was about 15, I was cutting hair. I didn’t know anything about entrepreneurship. I was cutting hair for $2. If I got $5, that was a good day. But I was cutting hair at 17, and I continued to do that. I started working at a job. Then I started to do my catering.
Those values were instilled at home when my mother would make us, make me most of all, cook. Stir up the cake. You couldn’t go watch TV and come back, you had to stay there or it would stick. Even if it was lasagna or spaghetti. So those values, if you teach them at home, they’re most likely going to be implemented if you go out into the public. That’s how I started cooking—from the house. So, if kids aren’t getting them at home, they’re most likely not going to get it from the street.
My mom raised six boys in the 1970s. We had to stay inside it was so bad out. So, I had to learn to play in the house. I had a 27-inch bike, we had three bedroom apartment and I would ride my bike because we couldn’t go outside. I broke my mother’s glass table and she beat me down. But she was just a home-maker and she raised six boys in the worst part of the ghetto. None of them have been to jail. All of them are doing well.
CONTACT: michael@oakpark.com
