It Runs in My Blood: Growing Up Entrepreneurial

I come from four generations of business owners. My great-grandfather and grandfather owned self-serve car wash bays, grocery stores, and laundromats, the kind of practical, everyday businesses that keep a community running. My family also built Jerry’s Car Wash. My parents took a different path but kept the same spirit: they’re both attorneys, and they ran their own real estate law office together.

Growing up in that environment taught me early that a business is never just a business. It’s years of reinvesting time, money, energy, and care into something you believe in, often long before it pays you back. I watched my parents, my grandfather, and the people around our family do that, and it shaped how I see work, ownership, and responsibility.

I didn’t have the vocabulary for entrepreneurship as a kid, but I was already practicing it.

The tiny home in the garage. 

One day I found a massive cardboard box in our garage. Most people would have broken it down for recycling. I saw a space I could design. I cut the roof off so light could get in, hung fairy lights along the inside, and slowly made it into my own tiny home. There’s a photo of me sitting in it in the collage on this site. I still see it as my first real project, because it taught me to look at something ordinary and see what it could become with a little vision and effort.

The grocery store in the pantry. 

Later, our pantry became a grocery store. In hindsight, it was a small nod to the stores my family had actually run. I convinced my mom to buy an old cash register from an antique store, set it up inside, and kept handwritten inventory lists of everything on the shelves. My parents and my sister became my customers, and when no one was available to shop, I ran the store by myself anyway, restocking, reorganizing, and ringing up imaginary sales. It was play, but it was also my first lesson in operations: keeping track of stock, building a system that works, and thinking about the experience of the person on the other side of the counter.

The school on the staircase landing. 

My most ambitious project was a full classroom on our upstairs landing. I carried fold-out desks up from the basement and set up a whiteboard easel I had specifically asked for for Christmas. Then I went to Staples with my babysitter to pick out real back-to-school teacher supplies to decorate the space. I even built a reading nook with the reading basket from my bedroom, stocked with Pinkalicious and Black Beauty. I planned the layout, sourced everything I needed, and created an experience from the ground up. Looking back, that’s the same process behind launching any concept: have a vision, gather your resources, and design every detail around the people who will walk in.

An eye for what feels good

Looking back, every one of those projects had something in common. I wasn’t just building things. I was designing how they looked and how they felt. I’ve always had an eye for design, for the details that make a space feel warm, intentional, and worth coming back to. Even as a kid, I paid attention to the lighting, the layout, and the small touches that turned a cardboard box or a staircase landing into somewhere you’d want to be.

I’ve always known that one day I’d put that eye into creating something of my own, whether it’s a restaurant, a hotel, or another space in hospitality. Under all of it is the thing I care about most, which is people. A space, a store, or a brand only matters if it makes someone feel something when they walk in.

The fire hasn’t gone anywhere

As school got more demanding, I had less time to build things just for the fun of it. But the drive never left. It’s why I’m minoring in Entrepreneurship at the University of Miami, and why the classes that ask me to brainstorm, test ideas, fail, and try again have felt more like home than homework.

I’m proud of where I come from. Generations of my family built businesses with their own hands, and I want to keep that legacy going in my own way, in hospitality, with the same work ethic and the same willingness to pour myself into what I build. I don’t know exactly what I’ll create next, but I know the instinct behind it has been there all along.