Long before Garold Hamilton led teams at a global engineering firm, he was a teenager in Jamaica selling drinks out of a bucket and cutting hair under a tree. His new memoir, From Grit to Glory, doesn’t gloss over any of that; in fact, it leans into it.
Hamilton’s story is familiar to some but told too rarely in mainstream business circles: no startup funding, no Ivy League degree, and no shortcuts. Instead, he built his early foundation through street-level entrepreneurship, selling June plums to classmates, betting on poker boxes, learning how to read people fast and move product even faster.
At first glance, it’s a book about personal perseverance. But there’s something else going on too, a broader message about what business looks like when you grow up with little margin for error.
“You learn fast that if you don’t hustle, you don’t eat,” Hamilton writes. “Entrepreneurship was survival, not branding.”
That mindset stayed with him. After working odd jobs in construction, Hamilton made his way into engineering, eventually landing senior leadership roles at firms like SmithGroup and WSP. Today, he’s Senior Vice President at Introba, a major engineering consultancy tied to the TYLin Group. His résumé is impressive. But what makes the book stick is that he never forgets where it started.
The memoir includes sharp, specific moments: his first business partnership with his brother selling box drinks; a lucrative underground plum business that got shut down by his school administration; cutting hair in a cemetery because it was the only place with enough shade.
Those stories aren't nostalgia. They're proof, Hamilton says, that talent and instinct exist everywhere, even in places people overlook.
The book also introduces the DTR Foundation, his nonprofit focused on mentorship, youth training, and financial literacy for underserved communities.
There’s no talk of overnight success. No formulas. But there is a clear point: if we expanded our definition of entrepreneurship to include the grit of survival, maybe we’d find a whole lot more leaders out there already in the making.
From Grit to Glory is available now through major retailers.
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