We recently connected with Mike Castaneda and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Mike thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

That’s a great question. For a long time I had so many people tell me how lucky I was for some of the things that was happening to me and at first I’d shrug it off and say, “yeah, it is pretty wild!” Until I started to kind of take offense to it, ha! I worked so hard and failed so much, constantly took risks and put my name in so many hats that it didn’t belong in just to get my name out there that it finally started paying off. It’s definitely been a lot of trial and error, a lot of hard work, and definitely a lot of never say die attitude. If you’re going to make it anywhere, you’re not going to take no for an answer.

Mike, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started off just buying a Traeger grill while I was in the Army. After a little while of me tagging them on my social media they wrote me one day and said, “hey if we paid you, would you write recipes for us?” Well of course. I’m just a poor soldier. Why wouldn’t I?! So I did and things went well. Before long they were sending me to SEC football games where I would help make bbq for all kinds of people, then I get in with Food Network, then I’m catering for Celebrities and have an award winning food truck and each time I keep telling myself, “it can’t get any better than this!”

I’ve always loved food and have great cooks on both sides of my family. I just knew if I wanted to eat the way I wanted growing up, I’d have to learn to cook. So that was my inspiration.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I remember coming home from food network and getting one of my first catering jobs and I was really excited because I was showing people what I’m about. This was after pop ups, interviews, all of that fun stuff. I go do the catering, it goes over well, then I hear a story. In the story this man doesn’t like my food. He’s scoffing about what I made, takes a bite and throws his whole plate away. Of course hearing this I was devastated. I’ve accomplished so much then to go home and share my love with everyone else and immediately have it thrown back in my face, that hurt. I carried that with me for a while and then it hit me one day. I didn’t know this guy. Didn’t know his name, his face, his story, so why did I let it get to me for so long. Bobby Flay himself looked me in the eye and told me how good my food is but this one person was able to shut me down. I had to realize with any kind of platform there would be hate from every direction and I just had to navigate through it and just remember the positive.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Unbecoming a yes man! When you start out and you’re a young entrepreneur you’re all about getting out, getting exposure, and ultimately making money, right? Well there comes a point where that will absolutely break you. You agree to everything under the sun and it will wear and tear on you or cause problems in the family and it isn’t until you realize the power of “No” that you find out just how much you’re worth! When you start telling people you can’t, you’re booked up, or the job just flat out isn’t big enough for what you’re doing either they come back with money money to make it worth your time or you get that time that you need to yourself or with your family. I can recall a time where I had just a hang out with some friends coming up and a small party approached me about doing their dinner. Really didn’t want to do it so I responded and politely said, “Hey! I appreciate it but I already have plans that I’d rather not break so I’m going to have to say no but thank you for thinking of me!” To which they responded, “Well, we want you, so just name your price!” I thought this was more of a joke so I just responded with, “ok there are 10 of you, I want x anount” and surprisingly they said, “great dinner starts at 6 Friday!”

Don’t be afraid to make time for yourself, your family, or push your comfort zone or you’ll never realize what you’re worth!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.foodiemikec.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/foodiemikec
• Facebook: Facebook.com/foodiemikec