Girl Scout Sets Record And Teaches Valuable Life Lesson In The Process

Ever wonder why some people are successful and others struggle?

Are the successful born with something the rest simply didn’t get in the womb… or… is it a skill we can all learn and develop?

That is a question that has been hotly debated for quite a long time. This very interesting and inspirational story may help answer that age-old question once and for all.                         

Here’s the story:  Girl Scouts are just little girls that meet once a week and go on an occasional camping trip… right?

Don’t tell that to Jennifer Sharpe. Why? Because Jennifer knows a little something about selling Girl Scout cookies.  In fact, it seems as though she has it down to a science.

At only 15 years old, the Dearborn Michigan resident recently sold more cookies in a single season than any Girl Scout in the United States ever has. 

How many?

17,323 Boxes!!!

Jennifer was recently honored for her record breaking event and had this to say…

"Make a goal, and don't give up on it. Keep working for it, and one of these days, you'll hit it," she advised aspiring sellers.

"When I was in third grade, the top seller was 10,176 ... I turned to my mother and said, ‘That's going to be me one day,’ and it took me seven years," she said.

Jennifer, a fan of the Thin Mints, used a retail-inspired strategy. She set up shop in the parking lot of Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church in Dearborn. She manned her booth 3-7 p.m. Monday through Saturday. On Sundays, she sold cookies outside a local auto parts store from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

"When I was young, I knocked on doors," said Jennifer, in her 10th year of scouting. "Now that I'm older, I get too many rejections face-to-face. People don't want to buy from a 15-year-old. They want to buy from a cute little Brownie."

Also playing in Jennifer's favor was the extra week the local council added to the selling season. Area troop members hawked their tasty wares from December until March 16, instead of March 9. The extra time was added because the council hadn't met its sales goal, according to Girl Scouts of Metro Detroit's Director of Product Sales, Clare Coughlin.

For 50 Cents More, You Can Get Three Boxes!

"I know how to get people to buy more," said Jennifer, a sophomore at Edsel Ford High School. "If they buy two boxes and they hand me a 10, I'd be like, 'For 50 cents more, you can get three,' because three boxes are $10.50."

The money Jennifer and her friends from Troop 813 raised will go toward a trip to Europe.

But some say the aspiring marketing executive's victory is far from sweet. Some have accused her of cheating because her mother, Pam, sold cookies when Jennifer was at school. But Coughlin said there are no rules against that.

"Jennifer was the one behind this. She's the one who set the goal," Coughlin said. "Parents take order cards to work. To us, it's the same thing. It's a different variant of the same thing -- adults helping a girl meet her goal. We expect a girl to be involved in every way, pulling the order, sharing what they're going to do with the proceeds."

            Wow! It’s amazing what you can learn from 15 years old when you really pay attention – isn’t it?

Too often we think success is something we are born or not born with.  Jennifer, at only 15, knows differently.

And she proved it with her wonderful words: "Make a goal, and don't give up on it. Keep working for it, and one of these days, you'll hit it."

Clearly, anyone can make a goal and never give up on it.  And clearly, if you simply do not give up – you WILL hit it someday. Too often, we think things SHOULD be easier than they are, so we roll over and give up.  Too often we are inches or seconds away from the success we seek.

Nothing is worse than walking away so close to achieving your dreams and desires and never knowing what might have been.

Jennifer will never know that feeling.