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The jour­ney was nev­er fast, nev­er script­ed and nev­er guar­an­teed. For An­ge­lo Daniel Austin, who has spent just over 11 months as CEO of Xtra Foods, the climb from su­per­mar­ket floor staff to the ex­ec­u­tive suite was de­lib­er­ate­ly an­chored in ser­vice, dis­ci­pline, men­tor­ship and an un­wa­ver­ing be­lief that de­tails mat­ter.Austin grew up in Brazil Vil­lage, one of six sib­lings in a house­hold where mon­ey was tight but val­ues were firm­ly root­ed. Those ear­ly lessons, he told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian last Fri­day, shaped not on­ly his char­ac­ter but his ca­reer.“I came from a very hum­ble home,” Austin re­called. “My par­ents taught us sim­ple things: if some­body gives you some­thing, al­ways say thank you. Al­ways say, “Have a nice day.”

Those man­ners would lat­er set him apart in an un­like­ly place: the su­per­mar­ket floor. At just 15-and-a-half years old, Austin en­tered the work­force out of ne­ces­si­ty. His first job in­volved pack­ing bags, push­ing trol­leys, and as­sist­ing cus­tomers, which he nev­er imag­ined would be­come the foun­da­tion of a cor­po­rate ca­reer.“It was nev­er fast or script­ed,” he said. “I start­ed from the very bot­tom, pack­ing bags and push­ing trol­leys and just be­ing kind to peo­ple.”That kind­ness, he ex­plains, be­came his dif­fer­en­tia­tor. Cus­tomers no­ticed. Some trav­elled from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try, specif­i­cal­ly ask­ing for “the boy called Austin,” the young em­ploy­ee known for his friend­li­ness and at­ten­tion.“That’s how my ca­reer re­al­ly start­ed,” he said. “Peo­ple would ask, ‘How come this guy is so nice?’ Those sim­ple lessons made me an out­lier.”Com­ing from a large fam­i­ly with lim­it­ed re­sources al­so in­stilled re­silience.

“Hum­ble be­gin­nings teach you how to stretch, how to cre­ate and how to keep try­ing,” Austin said, adding “Noth­ing hap­pens by chance. If you do noth­ing, noth­ing will hap­pen.”That mind­set, he be­lieves, is what sep­a­rates am­bi­tion from achieve­ment. “You have to get up every sin­gle day, re­gard­less of how you feel, and go out there and win,” he said. “Win­ning is what you do best, once you do the work.”