A Story About Persistence That Paid Off Big Time
I want to share with you a story about persistence that I heard on my favorite show The Big Idea with Donnie Deutsch last week. This story has moved me so much that I’ve thought about this every single day, several times a day since I heard it and am still in awe of this woman’s resistance to give up!
Michele Hoskins decided to create a product out of her great grandmother’s syrup recipe. After she had it formulated and packaged, she took the products to local grocery stores, asking them to stock the product and if they sold, she would invoice them. This worked well, but she had bigger ideas. Her goal was to get the syrup into Denny’s restaurants.
She got in touch with the right people at Denny’s and they told her no. But that did not stop her. She made it a habit to call them every single Monday at 10:30am for TWO YEARS!
When Denny’s hired a new CEO, they told him about this woman who called every Monday at 10:30.” What does she want?” the CEO asked. “She wants us to use her product,” they replied.
This was during the time that Denny’s was suffering from a blow to their reputation after being sued for treating African American’s poorly in their restaurant in past years. Michelle Hoskins happened to be African American. The CEO was baffled that these people had turned her down for so long, this is exactly the kind of business partnership they needed!
Not long after, Michelle had the contract with Denny’s and now she is a multi-millionaire.
This is not about Michelle getting a lucky break because she is an African American. This is a story about how situations change, executives change, and organizations change – A story not about being in the right place at the right time, but being in a place ALL the time and being persistent enough to WAIT for the right time. to come – Proof that one ‘small’ voice repeated enough times can add up to a big impact – perhaps more than a ‘big’ voice only spoken only once.
Would you have had the persistence to be told NO by the same company every week for two years? I wouldn’t have. But which one of us has a multi-million dollar product placement with a gigantic national corporation? After hearing that story I am seriously restructuring my own tolerance for rejection and my idea of what it means to be persistent.
October 16 2007 06:00 am | Marketing
Lodewijkvdb on 16 Oct 2007 at 9:53 am #
Good story Christine!
Interesting to see that you’re building even more tolerance for rejection and the word NO. I read an interesting quote not too long ago on this blog (not unfamiliar to you), it said:
So if even you are building more tolerance for this little word, there’s a lot to learn for a lot of us
Christine on 16 Oct 2007 at 11:42 am #
Yes Lodewijkvdb! I am quite familiar with that blog
Michele definitely takes this perspective to a new level! It’s one thing to have the stamina to talk to a lot of people and hear a lot of no’s before you hear a yes – but to ask the SAME person 104 times over the course of 2 years is astounding! It takes loving to hear the word no to an entirely new level. 
Shama Hyder on 17 Oct 2007 at 9:51 am #
Fantastic Story! Thank you so much for the reminder that persistence ALWAYS pays off.
Mark on 17 Oct 2007 at 12:44 pm #
Great story! Thanks!
DJ on 29 Oct 2007 at 11:14 am #
That is an inspiring story. I wonder what she was thinking every Monday before she made those calls. Was she think “ugh, here we go again” or was it “maybe today will be the day.”
Hunter Nuttall on 26 Feb 2008 at 10:32 am #
Wow, what an amazing story! But it makes me wonder how much is too much. Like on The Simpsons when Comic Book Guy said “the restraining order says no, no, but her eyes say yes, yes.” I guess Michelle must have been approaching them in a certain way to avoid coming off as a stalker.
Unstoppable In the Face of Rejection on 07 Dec 2008 at 7:28 pm #
[...] Michele Hoskins’s recipe for success came from her great-great-grandmother’s honey cream syrup. But persistence was the major ingredient. She won a $3 million contract with Denny’s after calling them every single week for 2 years straight. [...]
John Akin on 19 May 2010 at 10:05 am #
thanks for this article this is what i just needed to make my own multimillion dollar idea a success too.
thanks again……………………