The barrio that made me rich with nothing

I grew up in a barrio in Caracas. I'll say it plainly, because I know that for many people the word "barrio" carries a lot of prejudice. But I'm not here to apologize for where I come from. I'm here to tell you that if I had to be born again, I'd choose that exact same place.

I know that sounds strange. Let me explain why.

Barefoot, knee deep in mud, and happy

Across from my house there was a dirt soccer field. When it rained, and it rains hard in Caracas, that field turned into a swamp. And there we were, a whole crew of kids from the barrio, playing anyway, slipping around, covered in mud up to our knees and laughing our heads off. If we didn't have a ball, we played with two flattened cans. If we wanted something sweet, we went to pick mangoes from the trees around the neighborhood.

We had almost nothing. And yet, I don't remember feeling poor a single day of my life.

When you're a kid and everyone around you lives the same way, you don't know you're missing anything. You just live.

What I learned without anyone putting it into words

Over the years I understood that the barrio gave me two things that still hold me up every single day as an adult and an entrepreneur:

• Humility. Not the kind where you lower your head, but the kind where you know exactly where you came from and never forget it, no matter how far you go.
• Appreciating the little you have. When you live with scarcity, every single thing carries more weight. A toy, a full meal, a new pair of shoes: nothing is ever taken for granted.

But what stayed with me most was watching people who had even less than we did share the little they had. A neighbor with almost nothing would still invite you to eat whatever was in his house. Someone who barely had enough for himself would find a way to give you something anyway. You don't learn that from a book. You live it, and it stays with you.

Not everything was hard: it was also beautiful

I want to be clear: I'm not romanticizing hardship. There were tough things too, and I'll get into those another time. But there was also a genuinely beautiful childhood, natural and unfiltered, with no screens, full of the street, friends, mangoes and soccer games in the rain.

Life eventually took me from Caracas to Peru, and from Peru to the United States. In every place I've carried those same two lessons: humility, and gratitude for what I have, no matter how much or how little.

Why I'm telling you this

Today, when I help someone build their online presence, or put together a personalized product in my shop MaikStore, I think a lot about that idea of sharing the little you have with someone else. A gift made with intention carries the same spirit I learned in my barrio: it's not about how much you give, it's about how much what you give means.

Is it hard to grow up in a barrio in Venezuela?

Yes, there are real hardships, but there's also community, humility and lessons you can't get any other way. For me, those lessons are the foundation of how I live and work today.

I'll keep sharing more of this chapter of my life in the next post.