My life’s ultimate goal is to become a very successful storytelling entrepreneur, which I am currently preparing myself for. In my small digital marketing hustle, I assist small businesses, start-ups, and entrepreneurs with innovative digital strategies that lure and satisfy potential and returning clients. In addition, I am currently working on honing my storytelling skills, and by December 2017, at the end of my Master of Digital Media Programme, I will create a storytelling journal. The journal will include the different structures for telling stories in a digital world and demonstrate how to engineer those stories for spreadability.

From my interaction with many successful entrepreneurs, many of them share common stories about hustling and starting businesses as children such running lemonade stands and servicing paper routes. Consequently, I decided to look at my past to see if I was entrepreneurial back in the day. I started thinking about my days in Grenada when I attended St. Andrew’s Anglican Primary School. Did I do anything that was entrepreneurial there? I certainly didn’t have a lemonade stand; however, I remember my tamarind ball hustle. When I was young, I remember seeing vendors in the town of Grenville selling tamarind balls to passersby and thought to myself, what if I took the same concept but sold tamarind balls in my school? I already had access to the main ingredient because there was a huge tamarind tree next to my house, but the startup capital came in the form of a dollar I borrowed from my mom to buy the sugar for my business venture. Once everything was in place, I started making and selling tamarind balls to my schoolmates. I remember the first day I sold out. I couldn’t believe it; the feeling was indescribable. Admittedly, while writing this piece, the nostalgia reignited that said feeling, and I started smiling ridiculously.

Soon, tamarind went out of season; however, because of my initial experience, I somehow caught the entrepreneurial bug and moved on to another venture, an envelope hustle. Put simply; I sold white envelopes to my classmates. Up to this day, I can’t remember where I got the envelopes from, nor do I know why my classmates were buying them in the first place since they had no need for them. As a matter of fact, upon reflection, I now feel bad about this, but the envelope hustle didn’t last long. Firstly, before going further, however, I must admit that my next venture was the epitome of plagiarism. However, in my defense, I had no idea about that concept back then. Secondly, I must apologize to my friend Amwell for using his brother’s art for financial gains since my next business involved selling copied work. Sometimes when Amwell brought his brother’s art at school, which was generally drawings of popular cartoon characters and superheroes, I traced over his drawings then sold the duplicates to my schoolmates for 25 cents. Therefore, Amwell if you ever read this, forgive me for my ignorance. Since my conscience is now clear, I can now elaborate on the other legal businesses I later ran.

As time went on, the symptoms of the entrepreneurial bug were still evident. When I attended secondary school, I joined the Junior Achievers programme. I was the president of my company which was called “Noix de Coco Ltd”. The company was made up of students from St Andrew’s Anglican Secondary School, Grenville Secondary School, and St Joseph Convent Grenville. Our company made and sold local coconut products to the general public. The little company gave me a true sense of what entrepreneurship was all about since I experienced all of the facets of running a business such as marketing, production, book keeping, management, etc. firsthand.

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Admittedly, there was a period when I believe the drive to enter business went away for a while, but fortunately, I got it back in my last year of university while living in Mexico. Consequently, to further assist me in my entrepreneurial journey, I am currently pursuing a Master of Digital Media degree at Ryerson University. My Major Research Project is all about storytelling and getting stories to spread from a business perspective. I want to help businesses tell their stories because I think it’s one of the most underrated skills in entrepreneurship. I am currently storytelling for small clients and the #IamGrenadian project, and so far, the result has been great. I aim to document and blog my progress as I become a master storytelling entrepreneur, and I am glad to have you along for the journey.