I once received an inquiry about lessons from a young adult. One of the many questions he asked was, "How long are the lessons?" When I told him that we would be meeting for 30 minutes each week he was indignant. "How much can you show me in only a half an hour?" "Quite a bit", I said, "but knowing how something is done is not the same as being able to do it. A moment in class may take days or weeks of practice to master. And you will need to master it before you can be taught the next step." That wasn't the answer he wanted and he declined my services and went in search of a better teacher.
I've seen far too many students who seem to show a natural talent for the guitar, but don't have the discipline to develop their skills. They seem to think that it's supposed to be easy. It's not. It's not easy for anyone and it's not supposed to be. All worthwhile endeavors require effort.
A proper attitude is also important. A young 6 year old asked recently if he could play a different song than what I had assigned him. It looked harder and therefore much more fun. I smiled and said yes. Then I explained that many of my students didn't really like the challenges and would prefer the easy song. In complete innocence he said, "But why??!!"
A high school senior came in for his lesson one week and confessed that he hadn't practiced the song that I had given him at the last lesson. That was very unusual so I asked why. It seems that his history class was studying the baroque era and he was told that he could earn some extra credit by playing a couple of baroque songs for his class. So he learned and memorized three movements from a lute suite by J.S. Bach. This is an assignment normally given a college guitar major to complete in a semester and he had done it in one week.
My wife is very talented seamstress and we've talked about people who have ideas about things they would like created or altered but have no idea how to do it. Do they have talent? We will never know because they don't have any skill.
We all have people in our life with skills we admire. I can cook well enough to not starve but my brother has mad skills in the kitchen. If I have to do mechanical things around the house it is a real chore. I have friends who love to do that stuff and are (in my mind) very talented. I'm very thankful that they are willing to help me out.
Sometimes I think about the skill it took Michelangelo to carve a statue. Or Rembrandt to first mix the paint and then to apply it to the canvas. It's not enough to have a vision. Just being born with a natural talent is meaningless. You need the skill to realize it.
To borrow a musical term - the Major Triad required to develop skill is: 1. A great attitude 2. Hard work 3. Opportunity and access to materials and knowledge. No amount of talent will replace skill but a lot of skill can compensate for a lack of talent.