Yes. Where does that come from and can you give us an example of when you were told no and you thought um mmm, not taking that. Well, you know it really comes from Girl Scouts. So my family didn't have much money and I really loved Girl Scouts so the next year when we were starting, because I had joined a troop in the middle of the year, we were talking about everything we wanted to do and I realized my family didn't have money for it and so I stayed afterwards and I went to the troop leader and I said I can't be a Girl Scout and she said Sylvia, you love Girl Scouts. I said I know, but my family can't afford it. She said don't worry, we're gonna sell cookies.
And what was important about that is that was as pivotal to me as the science because it she taught me how to create opportunity. Now for people who don't live in poverty, you don't realize that you know how to create opportunity. So she said you know you want to do all these activities, and I want to do all, so she said you're gonna have to sell this many boxes of cookies. And she said what you do is you break it down. You've got your goal. You have the reason why you want to do it, and now you break it down into the different weeks, how many boxes you have to sell, you know, by that time and you can always ask for help. That sounds simple and for all of us who know how to create opportunity, we make our goals and we go yeah, of course, but if you're raised in poverty, you don't know that. You know to wait, you know wait for the next paycheck. You don't know how to go out and create opportunities because if you did, you wouldn't be in poverty. So just that mindset was so eye-opening and mind-blowing for me.
The second thing was I grew up in a very traditional household. All my grandparents were from Mexico. My family only spoke Spanish at home. And also the culture was as children, you don't speak to adults first. You wait until adults speak to you, so I grew up like that being quiet, waiting for an adult to speak. It's really hard to sell cookies if you're waiting for someone to talk to you first, and so that was the other thing. My troop leader said you don't walk away from the site of a sale until you've heard no three times.
Now when you're selling to people at church, your family, friends, everyone says yes, but then I was still far away from my goals, so the question was I had to then face up to my fear. I had to talk to people I didn't know and I chose the first person was a neighbor that I'd seen only coming in and out of her station wagon, but I'd never spoken to her, but I'd seen her and I know she had seen me. So I walked up to her and asked her if she wanted to buy some Girl Scout cookies and she said no. And I stood there rooted in place and I think she looked at me like well, I said no, go away little girl. And then I looked around her and I said is there anybody else in your home that would want to buy Girl Scout cookies and she said no, and again she looked at me like go. And I said would there be anybody's day you would make if you bought some Girl Scout cookies, so she bought one box. And that was so important because it taught me persistence, resilience. That was an important lesson my entire life.
