Businessman offers life lessons to employee’s son

ALBANY — Lesson No. 1.

As Justin Soriano, who’s about to turn 14, finished his meal at a local restaurant, he discovered while bussing the table where he and his mentor, businessman Milan Patel, had eaten that there were a couple of packs of ketchup on the table. He grabbed them up and headed for the trash can.

“What are you going to do with that ketchup?” Patel asked his young charge.

“Throw it away,” came the reply.

So Patel sat Soriano down and gave him a quick lesson in economics.

“We talked about how much ketchup costs, and what percentage of a bottle of ketchup each of those packages was,” Patel said. “When we did the math, Justin understood a little more about waste.”

“Now,” the Deerfield-Windsor eighth-grader said with a smile, “when there’s leftover ketchup, I save it for later.”

Lesson No. 2.

Under Patel’s tutelage, Soriano proudly notes that he’s started a savings account. But he acknowledges that, with the school year set to start, he’s going to use some of his savings to buy new boots.

That draws an immediate response from Patel.

“What do you think ‘savings’ means?” he asks. “You can do enough work in the next couple of weeks to pay for a new pair of boots. Your savings, though, is just that. You leave that money alone. You work enough over the next few years and save $3,000 a year, and look what a head start you have when you get ready to start college … if that’s what you’re going to do.”

“I’m not going to go to college, I’m going to start my own business,” Soriano says.

“And just what are you going to use to open it?” Patel asks. “That’s what a savings account is for, not to go out and spend it the first time you want something.”

Welcome to the education of Justin Soriano.

Not that Soriano isn’t bright and capable in his own right. Spend a few minutes with him, and it’s clear that he’s not the typical spoiled and entitled teenager. He learned the concept of work ethic under his grandparents’ tutelage, doing chores for them. But Soriano’s mom, Anne, who is a manager at Patel’s Newk’s restaurant, asked her boss if he’d take the youngster under his wing and provide some guidance at a crucial time in Justin’s life. Patel was all too glad to comply.

And Soriano has spent much of the summer shadowing the local developer/businessman.

“What I have encouraged Justin to do is to stand out, not to follow others,” Patel said. “One of the greatest things I think a young person his age can learn is to overcome peer pressure. Justin said something he shouldn’t have on social media a little while ago, and it became a big thing for him. I told him, ‘You can’t undo what’s been done. What you have to focus on is fixing it.’

“My goal in life is to leave things better than I found them. I was glad to have Justin shadow me so that we can talk about the things he does and why he does them. I think the biggest thing I’m teaching him is to live his life as if no one’s watching. Don’t do things for others, do things that are authentic, that are real. Do things because they make you happy.”

The lessons are taking with Soriano.

“I’ve spent this summer working and learning a lot from Mr. Milan,” he says. “A lot of my friends have called me, bragging about their trips to Europe and other places, and some of them have ragged me about having to stay in Albany. But I just laugh and tell them I’ve learned lessons this summer that I couldn’t have learned anywhere else. To me, that’s a lot better than some of the things they’ve done.”

Staff Photo: Carlton Fletcher