I was about 9 or 10 years old, in primary school (St Andrew Anglican Primary School). I remember on a daily basis, my peers will be selling different things at school at break time. Whether it was candies, cakes, tamarind balls, anything that kids in primary school will buy. The school sold snow ice, so every break time I purchased a snow ice and a cake or something else. One day I asked myself, why do I have to be the one always buying stuff. I wanted to get in on the hustle. There was a big tamarind tree close to my house, so I decided to pick tamarind and make tamarind balls. I asked my mom for one dollar to buy a pound of sugar, and it was game on.
I made my tamarind balls went to school with them the next day, waited for break time and pulled them out. Within a few minutes I was sold out, I made about 6 dollars I couldn’t believe it. That evening I was under the tamarind tree again, and that started my tamarind balls hustle eventually, tamarind went out of season. I learned something valuable from that experience, and it can be summed up like this, hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle.
I was roughly nine years old, so there was no way I was great at making tamarind balls, I didn’t get help from anyone. I can guarantee that if any parent made tamarind balls for their kids to sell it would have been way better than mine. But that didn’t deter me, I didn’t think, what if no one bought, neither did I think, I cant make the best tamarind ball. I had an idea, and all I could think was to execute.
The critical lesson here is in life it’s all about execution, you can have the best ideas, but if you do not execute, then it’s worthless. You can have the best talent, but if you do not use it, you may just lose it. Hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle.