Inspirational life of Colonel Sanders; Many pass the KFC fast-food restaurants after grabbing the meal and immediately their tongues begin salivating to get that first bite. Yes, it is Finger-Lickin’ good. But before opening that meal in the package, there’s always the white chef in his black string tie and a red apron. It goes without saying that he is least recognized because of the rush in opening the meal and digging into the fries and chicken.
Colonel Harland David Sanders, the founder of the fast-food chicken restaurant, KFC. Very few people know about the life of this man as they put the meal first before the history. Let us take a look into Colonel Sanders’s life before his tasty invention sold across the world in more than 145 countries
It is an inspirational story for those overwhelmed with disappointments and rejection. Sanders had a tough early and middle-age life. He was successful in turning lemon into lemonade.
Born in Henryville, Indiana in the year 1890, Colonel Sanders came from a very Christian background. He was the firstborn in a family of three kids. At the age of 5 years, Colonel Sanders’s father died and since he was the breadwinner, the mother had to step up and get a job. She worked at a tomato cannery and would leave Sanders home to look after his siblings and cook for them. It was then that he nurtured his talent. At 7 years he was a skilled chef and showed great promise for the future.
At 10 years old, Colonel Sanders began to work on a farm. His mother remarried and the family moved to a different town. Sanders had a particularly tough relationship with his stepdad and he decided to drop out of school at the age of 12 and ran away from home to work at another nearby farm. He claimed his dropping out of school was because Algebra was difficult. At 13, he got a job painting horse carriages. At 14, he moved once again to another farm to work as a farmhand.
At the age of 15, upon his mother’s consent, Sanders’s uncle secured him a job as a conductor for a streetcar company. Sanders kept on moving from job to job as he was incapable of keeping them and had been fired, laid off, and rejected 4 times in his young life. By his sweet sixteen years, Colonel Sanders had enough of his studies and decided to drop out of school permanently and join the US Army after faking his age to make it. He didn’t last long there either and was discharged from the army a year later.
He moved to Alabama where he met another uncle who helped him secure a job as a blacksmith for the Southern railway where his uncle worked. You can guess as well what happened next… He got another job at another railway company as a steam engine stoker and was later fired for ‘insubordination’ after he got sick.
Later, he found laboring work with Norfolk and Western Railway. It was then that he met his wife, Josephine King, and shortly after they got married and had 3 children together in their lifetime. While he worked, Colonel Sanders studied law concurrently. By day, he worked as a fireman at the railroad and by night he studied law. He was fired from his job after ‘arguing with a colleague.’
By then, Sanders had already graduated from La Salle Extension University with a law degree. He began practicing law to earn enough money to fend for his family’s needs. He practiced law for 3 years and his legal career came to a shuttering end after a disagreement with his own client in a courtroom, which destroyed his reputation.
It is written in his biography “Sanders failed largely through bullheadedness, a lack of self-control, impatience, and a self-righteous lack of diplomacy.” His wife and children left him and refused to return to him.
Sanders was forced to go back to Henryville and live with his mother while working for another railroad company, at around 25 years old. Later on, Sanders would leave his job and get a new one selling life insurance for Prudential Life Insurance Company. Shortly after he was fired for insubordination. He moved to another city and got a sales job with Mutual Benefit Life in New Jersey.
At the age of 30, he started a ferry company which was an instant success. He decided to sell the ferry company at 32 years old and build a company that makes acetylene lamps. While working for his ferry company as a secretary (because he didn’t have funds and sourced funds outside making him a minority shareholder), he was appointed secretary to the Chamber of Commerce, where he resigned by himself a year later after admitting he was not good in math (Remember the Algebra he hated?).
The lamps business failed massively. He moved to a different city and got a job as a salesman for Michelin Tire Company. He was laid off by the company after it shut down manufacturing operations.
At 34 years old, he got a job as a petrol station manager and when he was 40, the station shut down and he lost his job once more after the stock market crashed leading to high unemployment and poverty in 1930, the USA. He however got a job with Shell Oil at a petrol station in Kentucky. He began serving chicken dishes and other meals at a restaurant nearby the petrol station.
Unluckily, Sanders was involved in a shootout with a local competitor. After this ordeal, he was commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel and that is where his Colonel name originates from. In 1939, when he was 50 years old, Sanders bought a motel which was destroyed 4 months later in a fire during World War II. He rebuilt his motel and included a big restaurant in it.
Sanders’s food began to grow a lot in popularity. It was after this that Sanders began creating his ‘Secret recipe’ which is presently stored in a vault at the KFC headquarters in Kentucky. He tried to franchise his restaurant but was rejected 1,009 times before someone finally took the name. The restaurant that franchised its ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’ name had its business booming and saw high marginal returns. Sanders believed that his restaurant would continue to flourish and he sold it at the age of 65.
Sanders earned $105 monthly from the government retirement pension. Sanders began to franchise his ‘secret recipe’ all over the US. He remarried and he and his new wife Claudia set up a new company in Shelbyville in 1959. He was in charge of meeting restaurant managers and owners interested in the KFC franchise deal while his wife was in charge of overseeing shipments of the spices to restaurants that had taken the deal.
This was highly successful and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) was one of the first fast-food chains to expand internationally. He took a patent of his ‘secret recipe’ method in 1952 and withheld the power to franchise his brand. He branded the business with the tagline “It’s Finger-Lickin’ Good” in 1963. He sold the company for $2M (present-day $18M). Even after selling it, he was still the face of the company. He had a lot of respect worldwide for his culinary expertise.
Sanders was diagnosed with acute leukemia in June 1980 and he died months later in December at 90 years old, a Billionaire. His story is an inspiration that setbacks in life shouldn’t deter anybody from moving forward. Think about the number of times he lost his job, he lost a family… it is all part of life’s tests. Life will test you as many times as need be before you receive everything it has to give to you.
Overcome those rejections and disappointments and keep moving forward as Sanders did. Every time you take a bit into that KFC fry or chicken, it should be a reminder to always believe that life has the best portion set out towards you…you only need to keep moving forward!!
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