Sweet Expectations: The Michele Hoskins Success Bible

From Publishers Weekly
She did it her way and today she has a thriving business built on a tenacious belief in saying no to defeats along the journey. Hoskins created Michele Foods, Inc., when she was a newly divorced mother of three daughters, dreaming a seemingly impossible dream. Taking her great-great-grandmother’s closely guarded family recipe for a delicious honey crème syrup and combining it with sheer determination, Hoskins overcame not only racial barriers (she’s African-American) but also a complete absence of knowledge about the food industry that she planned to infiltrate and master. Hoskins recalls the modest beginnings of her multimillion-dollar business. She and her children worked to devise home-grown marketing methods, distributing product to mom-and-pop shops, later knocking on the doors of major local grocery chains in Chicago and eventually moving into restaurants like Denny’s and national outlets like Wal-Mart. Hoskins survived a brain tumor in the midst of her undertaking and, even in debilitating pain, plunged forward in her workaday whirlwind. "Being an entrepreneur can be an isolating pursuit," confesses the author. "When you start off on your road to being an entrepreneur, no one’s going to stop and say, ‘Oh, wait a minute. Let me give you a course on entrepreneurship.’" This is a real account of triumph in the rough edges of big business. Hoskins relates contributions of family and friends, whom she lovingly credits in the final chapters. Today, she mentors others and offers classes designed for new entrepreneurs.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


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Jean A. Williams is a journalist who has written for the Chicago Tribune, Jet and Ebony magazines, the Chicago Sun-Times, and a number of other publications.


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