He was sixty-five, living on Social Security, and sleeping in his car. Then he started a restaurant empire.
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Who Colonel Sanders was
Harland “Colonel” Sanders turned a roadside chicken recipe into Kentucky Fried Chicken, one of the largest fast-food chains in the world.
The struggle
Sanders was born in 1890 in Indiana. His father died when he was five. His mother worked long hours, and Sanders was often left to cook for his younger siblings. He dropped out of school in seventh grade.
He worked as a farmhand, streetcar conductor, railroad fireman, insurance salesman, and tire salesman. He failed repeatedly. He ran a service station in Corbin, Kentucky, where he began cooking meals for customers. His chicken became locally famous.
Then disaster struck. In the 1950s a new interstate highway bypassed Corbin. Traffic dried up. Sanders closed the restaurant. He was sixty-five, broke, and alone.
The turning point
Sanders decided to franchise his chicken recipe. He travelled across the country, sleeping in his car, cooking for restaurant owners, and proposing a deal: use my recipe and method, pay me a nickel per chicken.
He was rejected over 1,000 times. Eventually, people started saying yes. The first franchise opened in Utah in 1952. By 1964 he sold the company for $2 million — roughly $20 million today — but remained the brand’s public face.
“I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, no amount of labour, nor amount of money would deter me.”
The principle
It is never too late to start something that works. Sanders’s greatest success came after a lifetime of failure. The recipe mattered, but the persistence mattered more.
Apply it today
If you are older, poorer, or further behind than you hoped, do not let that define your next move. Simplify your offer. Make it easy to say yes. Then knock on doors until someone does.
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