My American Dream: Shark Tank’s Daymond John Shares the Struggles and Drive That Built His Success

(Original source People) 

Daymond John recalls his earliest days, growing up in Hollis, Queens, fondly. 

“It was the type of place where all of the kids played stickball and hopscotch in the streets,” he tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “If you got in trouble by another kid’s parent, then you really got in trouble when you got home.”

But by the time he had turned 12, his father, a computer programmer, and mother, who sold handmade goods at the local flea market, had split up, and his entire community was in crisis. “When crack hit,” John says of the drug epidemic that swept through many inner-city neighborhoods in the mid-eighties, “it changed the dynamic of the neighborhood.”

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