I've mentioned my favorite quote about persistence before but I can't resist bringing it up again because it is so appropriate to the story I am going to talk about now.

I recently received a number of very nice emails from a lady named Trena Knight. Trena owns a cleaning business called Southern Shine PCS located in Texas. I combined information from these various emails and with her permission used them to create this article.

 Trena's Story, or 
 How Your Phone Company Can Kill Your Business 

This is Trena Knight, one of your subscribers to your newsletter. I have owned a cleaning company for now over 17 years. I have over 60 janitorial accounts, over 30 residential and specialize in the final cleaning of new construction. I just wanted to say that I enjoy your website, hints and newsletter...

My company is growing again and I have a lot of work to do getting worker's comp restarted, setting up my new office, my insurance straightened out, advertising and so on. It is very difficult and often times very discouraging because I only have my limited monies to work off of.

My company is still recovering from a disaster caused by a local telephone company that did not complete an interceptor order that was placed on my phone when I bought a home in the next city. I did not find out what had happened until all my calls had stopped!

I had to let everyone go, maxed out all my credit cards just to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on. They not only did not complete the order but sold my number, the number that I had thousands of advertising dollars invested in, to another cleaning company.

Eventually I got the number back, after the damage was done. The phone company is protected by tariff laws so I had no legal recourse and I began the long job of repairing the collapse of my company.

Now, here I am today, almost three years later, with more work than I ever had before. Ironically, the same company that caused me to lose my business and everything I worked for for over fifteen years, is the same company that I have over 40 monthly accounts with at this time.

They don't know that I am being blessed by their company because the jobs were handed to me on a silver platter by another cleaning contractor that has their accounts all over Texas. Well. that just goes to show you, whatever you do, DON'T EVER GIVE UP.

Trena Knight

So, to sum it all up, Trena Knight, owner of Southern Shine PCS almost lost everything she had worked for as a single mother for 15 years because of a clerical error by her local phone company. But instead of giving up she persisted. As a result her company is bigger now than it was three years ago.

And that's excuse enough for me to haul out my favorite quote...

PS - Want to see a photo of Trena and some of her employees? (Trena is third from the right in the top row.)