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SEVENTEEN
ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT
Persistence leads to success
♦
hen the kids were young, I always taught them to ask for what
they wanted.
Tosca was eleven when I took her to see the American singer Laura
Branigan’s concert. She was a big fan. I knew the photographer of the
resort where the concert was. He gave us tickets, because we couldn’t
afford them. He also gave Tosca a picture of Laura onstage, singing.
The next day, we were sitting at a table in a restaurant, and
nearby, incredibly, was Laura Branigan herself, having lunch.
Tosca wanted to get her autograph, but she was terrified. She kept
saying, “I can’t go and ask her for an autograph.”
I said, “Well, if you don’t ask her, it’s already no. But if you do ask
her, there’s a chance she’ll say yes. So your answer is either a no, or
maybe a yes.”
Tosca thought about it and said, “Okay.”
She went over and asked.
At first Laura said, “Wait! How did you get this photo?” She had
never seen it. Tosca told her from the resort’s photographer. So
Laura signed it. Tosca beamed. This was a huge success. She has
never forgotten that.
When Tosca was looking for investors for Passionflix, Kimbal said,
“If they keep on meeting you, it means they are still interested.” And
she has found that to be true.
If they say definitely no, you move on.
But if they don’t say no, you have to keep trying until you get to
that one yes.
• • •
Every time I moved to a new city, I had to build up my nutrition
practice again. In South Africa, it was easier—doctors were always
thrilled that I was opening an office near their practice and would
send me patients right away, so I expected even more enthusiasm in
Canada. But that isn’t the way it happened.
If I wanted patients, I was going to have to ask for what I wanted. I
started by writing letters to the doctors in Toronto to tell them that I
could help their patients. I discovered that most of these letters were
ignored, as they go to the office manager. Still, you can usually expect
a few responses if you mail out one hundred notices.
After I sent out the first group of letters in Toronto, I thought my
phone was out of order, because nobody was calling me. I started
calling the doctors’ offices. Most office managers would say that the
doctors didn’t want to see me. If I kept calling others, I felt sure I
could get to twenty who would agree to set up an appointment. And I
did. I was following my own advice: there’s no such thing as a
guaranteed yes, but if you don’t ask, it’s a guaranteed no.
I’d sit in the waiting room, sometimes for an hour, waiting for my
appointment. I’d ask the doctors to send their patients to me who
had pre-diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure. I knew if I
could get them to improve their eating habits, their blood values
would improve within three months. An added benefit was avoiding
the side effects of drugs.
Doctors were reluctant to send patients to me. They would say,
“Insurance doesn’t cover nutrition counseling; they cover drugs for
weight loss.”
Or they would say, “Patients won’t listen to you.”
I knew that patients would listen, if I just had a chance. If they
would send a few patients, I would show them results. When you
have good eating habits, you have more energy and feel fantastic, but
it takes time and persistence. That was the basis of my nutrition
counseling. Eventually, four doctors sent me a few patients as a trial
run.
• • •
Real results don’t happen overnight. A patient might come with labs
stating high blood sugar. Three months later, if they would stick to
their meal plan, they would lose twenty pounds. Their blood sugar
levels would be normal, and their risk for diabetes would decrease.
Once the patients’ results showed marked improvement and the
doctors took notice, I started to become very busy. It took around six
months before I was seeing clients from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. On
weekends and holidays, I did my paperwork and sent out patient
reports and more letters of introduction with brochures describing
my work. I started approaching newspapers, magazines, and TV
stations for media work. That was not easy. They were not interested.
I was still an unknown.
In an effort to become more known, I attended dietitian
conferences while developing talks so that I could get more speaking
engagements. Again, a long process. I did one talk on nutrition, and
then I sent the brochures out to corporations. I did another talk, and
then I sent out more brochures. Eventually I was giving many talks
and was consulting to the food industry. I soon became chair of the
Consulting Dietitians of Ontario, then president of the Consulting
Dietitians of Canada. Now the media would call me all the time,
asking me to comment on stories in the news or with questions about
nutrition.
In 1994, four years after we arrived in Toronto, I gave a talk for the
Canadian Dietetic Association. There was a publishing executive in
the audience.
After my talk, she said to me, “I want you to a write a book!”
This happened only because I persisted.
• • •
Some women can be shy, or lacking in confidence, or scared of
rejection, so they don’t want to ask for what they want. Men don’t
seem to have that problem. They think they’re fabulous and deserve
a better job, a raise, more benefits, the corner office with windows,
even if they’re obnoxious and incompetent. We’ve seen that way too
often.
I remember meeting someone who had just been fired. I asked her
where she was going to find another job. She said she had put it out
to the universe to provide. I said sending out a résumé could be
better. If you send out twenty résumés and don’t get a job, welcome
to my world.
Remember that persistence works, sometimes. Not all the time—if
you ask and they say no, you move on. But if you want something,
you’ve got to keep asking.
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