“Don’t give up because God never gave up on you." ~ Unknown
During his 90 years on earth, the
man knew plenty about failure. His early
professional life was largely a string of random enterprises, most of them unsuccessful.
Due to a troubling relationship with his stepfather, young
David dropped out of school and left home when he was just 12 years old. Four years later he lied about his age to
join the Army and was sent to Cuba. He
was discharged after just four months.
Biographers would describe him as a scrappy, hot-tempered
man who loved to swear, and despite a strong work ethic, often found himself
unemployed. He was a farmhand, an army
mule-tender, a locomotive fireman, an aspiring lawyer, an insurance salesman, a
ferryboat entrepreneur, a manufacturer, a tire salesman, an amateur
obstetrician, an (unsuccessful) political candidate, and an airport
owner/manager. He simply couldn’t hold a
job.
What he did
possess was an intense drive to overcome all the hardships in his life.
In 1930, the Shell Oil Company offered him a service station
rent free, in return for a percentage of sales.
What started as a gas station kitchen expanded into a motel-restaurant. He began to serve chicken, ham and steak
dishes. The restaurant burned down 9
years later.
He rebuilt a 140-seat restaurant pressure-frying his
chicken, a method he later patented, which sped up the cooking process. The café became a so popular for its fried
chicken and biscuits, that the state’s Governor designated him a Kentucky ‘Colonel.’
But as the unfortunate man approached retirement age,
highway construction redirected traffic away from the popular restaurant he’d
built over nearly 20 years. In 1956 at
the age of 65, he auctioned off the business for just enough to settle his
taxes and other debts. He was broke.
With nothing but his $105 social security check and a killer
chicken recipe he hit the road looking for restaurants to buy the rights to his
formula.
He lived in his car for 2 years and was rejected 1,009 times
before finally finding a restaurant owner who agreed to use his recipe.
His franchise formula was unusual. He sold his "Original Recipe" of 11
herbs and spices to franchisees and trained them on his cooking process. They paid him 5 cents for each chicken sold.
By 1963, there were more than 600 locations. In 1964, Colonel Harland David Sanders sold
the company to investors for the equivalent of about $15 million today. Expansion accelerated, and the company went
public in 1966. Franchisees did very
well for themselves, and Kentucky Fried Chicken became a restaurant success
story. Today the chain of more than 39,000
restaurants operates in more than 50 countries.
Its annual global sales is second only to McDonald's.
All because he never gave up!
“My Child, I have a wonderful plan for your
life. If that means going through a dark
tunnel of conflict, take it and keep pressing forward. There will always be Light on the other
side. Bless you!” God
