Colonel Sanders

For those of you who haven’t heard the story of Colonel Sanders, please spare a few precious moment of your time as this story is goin to inspire you in your everyday life because it’s a good example of how preseverence, dedication and ambition along with hard work can create success, regardless of your age.

Do you know that Colonel Sanders only started his business and became successful after the age of 65 ? When he was 6 years old, his father died. This makes Colonel Sanders who is a very young boy at the time as the man of the house. Therefore, he holds a very big responsibility in taking care of his family which are his mother and two younger siblings. Colonel Sanders is very talented in cooking as he can cook and mastered various kind of dishes very quickly. When he was 12 years old, his mother remarried but his stepfather often beats and tortures Colonel Sanders. This incident causes him to run away from home.

Sanders had work different kind of jobs from farm-hand, streetcar conductor, soldier, fireman to even as a insurance seller during his working years. At the age of 40, Colonel Sanders started to prepare his special herbs and spices to make the perfect fried chicken. Colonel’s fried chicken was a success as it received huge demands and he was able to make tremendous sale. In 1935, Sanders was awarded an honorary Colonel by the government for his great cooking skill.

At 1950, unfortunately he had to shut down his restaurant business because a new highway was built at his restaurant location. Out of no choice, Colonel had to retired. He eventually found himself broke at the age of 65. This was actually the best time for him to retired with a good pension from his investments but unfortunately he had not saved nor invested any money.

What’s left of him is his old car, a Caddie roadster, a $105 monthly security check and his secret chicken recipe. Not wanting to accept his fate, he then embarked on a journey to sell his secret chicken recipe to set up his fortune. He then started travelling on his old car to different restaurants to sell his chicken. The deal that he offered to the restaurant owner is that for every piece of chicken that is sold, he would earned 5 cents per chicken. The first restaurant owner turned his down with a loud voice saying “ Get out of here, who wants a recipe from a white Santa Clause!”, so did the second, the third …… all turned him down.

As a matter of fact, Colonel Sanders was turned down 1009 times. He would usually sleeps in the car to save money. However, Colonel Sanders keeps on going and going and didn’t gave up. Luck was on his side when he knocked on the door of the next restaurant family owner, the buyer was interested in his 11 herbs and spices chicken recipe and his offer was finally accepted. Finally, the rejections and failures streak ends.

By 1964, Colonel had 600 franchises selling his trademark chicken. At the age of 75, he sold his company for $15 million dollar. In conclusion, you can never stop believing in yourself. You are never to old to pursue your dream.

Kentucky Fried Chicken Commercial - 1969