The 65 Yr Old Who Built KFC

The one. The only. Colonel Sanders.

“I just say the moral out of my life is don't quit at age 65, maybe your boat hasn't come in yet. Mine hadn't.”

No matter where you start, it’s where you finish that counts.

Fired? Get back up.

Bankrupt? Rebuild.

Rejected? Keep going until they can’t ignore you.

The world would have you believe that success is a young person’s game, that opportunities shrink with each passing year. But that is a lie.

So in today’s newsletter, we’re talking about a man who reached the ripe old age of 65 with still not a dime to his name, staring down the barrel of life's harshest realities.

When you hear the name ‘Colonel Sanders’, what comes to mind?

A jovial old man in a crisp white suit, offering a bucket of golden-fried chicken with a smile that radiates southern charm?

Or perhaps, the iconic red and white logo that has become a beacon of comfort food for millions across the globe?

Well, he’s certainly not a spring chicken.

But you see his face every time you dig into a sumptuous KFC.

And behind that amiable image lies a story that is anything but ordinary.

It’s a story of a man rejected over a thousand times – with nothing but a recipe, a dream, and a stubborn refusal to quit.

Forget the fiction: This is the real-life story of Colonel Harland Sanders.

And the recipe for success (and mouth-watering fried chicken).

Today on David to Goliath:

1. Survival Over School

2. Temper Unleashed

3. Ferry to Nowhere

4. Stability vs Ambition

5. Crowned the Kentucky Colonel

6. When Success Turns Sour

7. On The Road Again

8. The Explosion

Survival Over School

Harland Sanders was born in 1890 on a little farm in Henryville, Indiana.

At just five years old, his father Wilbert passed away, leaving a void that forced his mother to take up work at a local tomato canning factory.

She’d also be sewing for nearby families, and often away for days at a time in a desperate bid to provide.

In the absence of a guiding hand, the responsibility of the household fell squarely on young Harland’s shoulders.

He became the caretaker, the provider, and most unexpectedly, the cook. Turns out, he was a natural.

In seventh grade, Harland dropped out of school. Not because he wasn’t smart, not because he didn’t have potential. Because life demanded it.

There was no time for algebra when survival was the only equation he had to solve.

So he took up work as a farmhand in Greenwood, Indiana, earning $10-15 a month, plus room and board.

His days were spent feeding animals, performing odd jobs, and learning the kind of lessons no classroom could ever teach.

By the time he was 12, his mother had remarried, and the family moved to the suburbs outside Indianapolis.

But there was no peace for the boy who had already become a man. His relationship with his new stepfather was nothing short of a battlefield.

Finally, at the age of 13, things came to a head at home and Harland was sent back to Clark County. Back to where it all began. Back to square one.

Over the next 28 years, he became a true nomad of the American South, taking on an incredible array of jobs.

Each one adding a new layer to the man he was becoming.

Temper Unleashed

A burning desire to escape the life of mediocrity led Harland to fake his age and enlist in the U.S. Army.

After just a year, he was honorably discharged—a respectable end to a brief military stint.

“I think a dream is just a suggestion to start something out, do something.”

But then came the railroads. The veins of America’s burgeoning industrial power. Where the nation’s future flowed.

And for a young man with ambition pumping through his own veins, they represented a ticket to something more.

He started at the bottom, as all great stories do.

"The hard way builds solidly a foundation of confidence that cannot be swept away.”

Emptying ash pans from the steam engines in Alabama.

Then he graduated to fireman, responsible for stoking the flames, managing the steam, and keeping the engines alive as they thundered across the tracks between Sheffield and Jasper.

Harland was a man of passion, of intensity, and yes, of temper.

And it was that temper that often got the best of him.

Insubordination. That’s what they called it when he lost his job, when his fiery nature led him to fight with a colleague.  

But let’s call it what it really was: a refusal to be boxed in, to be tamed.

“One has to remember that every failure can be a stepping stone to something better.”

Even when he tried his hand at law, studying diligently to become a lawyer, his unyielding spirit clashed with the norms.

A legal career that could have been a turning point ended abruptly when he got into another physical altercation, this time with his own client in court.

After that fiasco, Harland was forced to swallow his pride and move back in with his mother.

He picked himself up, dusted himself off, and took on a new challenge: selling life insurance.

It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t exciting, but it was a new beginning.

However once again, his fierce refusal to bow down to authority got him into trouble.

Fired.

Again. For ‘insubordination’.

Perhaps working a job wasn’t for him. So it was time to plunge into the world of business.

Where anything goes.

Ferry to Nowhere

At 30, Harland launched his first startup - a ferry boat service over the Ohio River.

For a while, it worked. The business was running, and it seemed like maybe, just maybe, this was the break he’d been waiting for.

“Hard work beats all the tonics and vitamins in the world.”

But life, as it so often does, had other plans.

A bridge was built nearby, rendering his ferry service redundant.

Just like that, business dead in the water, and Harland Sanders back to square one.

Time for the next venture—an oil lamp business.

It was a logical move – the world needed light, and Harland was here to provide it.

“No hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me.”

But just as his lamps were being crafted, electricity started to reach even the most rural parts of America.

Once again, his business was made obsolete before it could even take off.

Harland’s struggles weren’t confined to the business world.

His personal life was a battleground of its own, fraught with turmoil.

Stability vs Ambition

In 1908, Harland married Josephine King, a woman with whom he had three children.

But the pressure of his constant career failures soon seeped into his home.

Josephine, like any partner, wanted stability, security, and a future that wasn’t filled with uncertainty.

Harland, despite his best efforts, couldn’t provide that—not yet, at least.

The strain became too much, and Josephine left him, taking the children with her.

But even as his marriage fell apart, even as he faced the loneliness of a life where nothing seemed to go right, Harland kept moving forward.

If life hadn’t already tested him enough, it dealt him one of its cruelest blows in 1932 when son, Harland Jr., died at the age of 20 due to complications from blood poisoning—an infection he contracted during what should have been a routine tonsillectomy.

His heart was ripped away from him in a split second, and he questioned everything he’d ever believed about the sanctity of the universe.

He was pushed into a deep depression.

Here was a man who had given everything he had, who had fought every battle life threw at him, only to lose his son to a simple medical procedure.

The pain was unimaginable, the kind that no amount of success, no future triumph, could ever fully heal.

And he STILL didn’t give up.

Crowned the Kentucky Colonel

“I only have two rules: Do all you can, and do the best you can.”

At 40, while most men are settling into their careers, Harland was fighting once again to find his footing.

He took charge of a Standard Oil gas station in Nicholasville, Kentucky, but the business collapsed due to the Great Depression, so he opened a second service station in Corbin, Kentucky.

It was here that he started selling homemade chicken to truck drivers, not as a glamorous business strategy, but merely to make ends meet.

The menu was simple: pan-fried chicken, ham, string beans, okra, and hot biscuits.

Good, honest food. Enough to get people talking.

Word spread about the man who could fry up a bird like nobody’s business.

For the first time in his life, Harland had found success. Modest, sure, but success, nonetheless. He had finally carved out a space where his hard work was paying off.

“It came to me that the one thing I could do was cook. And I figured I couldn't do any worse than the people running these places around town.”

A few years later, he took out the gas pumps and turned the service station into his first fully-fledged restaurant –  the Sanders Court and Café – and it became a well-known stop for travellers.

Recognition soon followed, and in 1935, Governor Ruby Laffoon named him a Kentucky Colonel, a title that recognized his contributions to the state’s cuisine.

“If you give good fried chicken with mashed potatoes, chicken cracklin’ gravy, and hot biscuits and vegetables, you’re giving the best the American table can offer.”

But success didn’t mean the end of challenges.

When Success Turns Sour

Around this time, Harland got into a heated argument with a local competitor, Matt Stewart, over a sign.

This was no mere squabble; Stewart shot and killed one of Harland’s managers, landing an 18-year prison sentence for murder.

Even in the face of violence and loss, Harland remained focused on his craft, perfecting his recipe for fried chicken.

In 1939, he made a breakthrough: he developed a method of cooking chicken in a pressure cooker that reduced grease and preserved the flavor, moisture, and texture, all while cutting down the cooking time.

For over a decade, the restaurant prospered.

The customers kept coming, and for once, it seemed like Harland was on a winning streak.

But life, once again, had other plans. In the 1950s, just as he was beginning to enjoy the fruits of his labor, disaster struck.

“The easy way is efficacious and speedy, the hard way arduous and long. But, as the clock ticks, the easy way becomes harder and the hard way becomes easier. And as the calendar records the years, it becomes increasingly evident that the easy way rests hazardously upon shifting sands, whereas the hard way builds solidly a foundation of confidence that cannot be swept away.”

The first blow came when the highway junction in front of his restaurant was relocated, effectively diverting the traffic that had been his lifeblood. The steady stream of customers dried up almost overnight.

If that wasn’t enough, the state announced the construction of a new interstate highway that would bypass his restaurant by seven miles.

Harland saw the writing on the wall.

His business, which had finally given him the success he had worked so hard for, was about to be left in the dust.

In 1956, sensing that the end was near, he auctioned off the site of his restaurant.

A devastating moment – a reminder that even the greatest of successes can be fragile, easily swept away by forces beyond our control.

He took a loss on the sale and found himself again at square one, scraping by on his savings, the proceeds of the auction, and a meager Social Security check of $105 per month.

For most people, this would have been the end of the line—a tragic end to a life filled with struggle.

But Colonel Sanders wasn’t most people.

And this time, he was armed with a recipe.

On The Road Again

Harland didn’t curse the heavens for his bad luck. Instead he did what he had always done – rose again.

Now in his 60s, he shifted his focus entirely to franchising his fried chicken business across the country, collecting a small payment for each bird sold.

“I could see it wasn't going to be easy. I couldn't give a franchise to any old greasy spoon. And I knew the chicken had to be cooked the way I told them to cook it if it was going to be as popular as it could be.”

He wasn’t just selling chicken; he was selling a lifetime of hard work, of trial and error, of getting knocked down and getting back up.

His method was as unorthodox as it was exhausting. He would wander from town to town, always on the lookout for a restaurant that might be interested in his chicken.

If he found one, he’d walk in and offer to cook for the staff.

If they liked it, he’d suggest cooking for the customers for a few days. The hope was that the public would love the chicken so much that the restaurant owner would agree to a franchise deal.

This wasn’t a glitzy life. He often lived out of his car, scraping by on begged meals and the occasional bit of charity from friends.

It was slow, expensive, and at times, humiliating.

Especially when his recipe was rejected a staggering 1,009 times.

But all of a sudden, Pete Harman, the owner of a local burger joint in Salt Lake City, Utah, agreed to take a chance on it in 1952.

Harman was so impressed with the chicken that he made it a permanent fixture on his menu, and thus, the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise was born.

And slowly but surely, people started to buy in.

“I feed truck drivers, millionaires all at the same table.”

Harland, aged 72, began teaching kitchen staff all over the U.S. his tricks of the trade, convincing them to pay him five cents for every bird they sold.

It was a modest sum.

But for Harland, it was the beginning of something much bigger.

The Explosion

By 1963, Harland’s relentless efforts had paid off. He had franchised over 600 locations, including international establishments in Canada, the UK, Mexico, and Jamaica.

At an age when most people would be content with a quiet life, Harland was just hitting his stride.

His chicken became was a cultural icon, a taste of the American South that people around the world couldn’t get enough of.

So with the business booming, he finally made the difficult decision to pass the torch.

In 1964, aged 84, he sold Kentucky Fried Chicken to a group of investors for $2 million - a sum that, adjusted for inflation, would be worth over $15 million today.

“There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can't do any business from there.”

The investors, led by John Y. Brown, Jr., and Jack Massey, promised Harland that they would uphold his high standards of quality and never tamper with his recipe.

Selling Kentucky Fried Chicken wasn’t an easy decision for Harland.

He had poured his heart and soul into the company, and the thought of letting it go was almost too much to bear.

Harland may have finally been a millionaire, but there’s little evidence that he was ever truly happy with the deal.

“Feed the poor and get rich or feed the rich and get poor.”

But despite his reservations, the sale of Kentucky Fried Chicken proved to be the right move for the company.

In 1966, the company went public, and by 1970, it had grown to 3,000 restaurants in 48 countries.

The brand was stronger than ever, and Harland’s vision of bringing his chicken to the world had been realized.

Even after the sale, Sanders remained central to the KFC brand.

“I'm against retiring. The thing that keeps a man alive is having something to do.”

His face, with its distinctive goatee, white suit, and string tie, became a symbol of delicious, country-fried chicken all over the world.

KFC’s growth continued unabated. By 1971, when Heublein Inc. acquired the company for $285 million, there were more than 3,500 franchised and company-owned restaurants worldwide.

In 1982, it became a subsidiary of R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., and in 1986, it was acquired by PepsiCo for a staggering $840 million.

For a man who had spent much of his life struggling to make ends meet, Colonel Sanders’ final years were a vindication of everything he had worked for.

KFC had become a household name worldwide, and he himself was a legend.

“Sitting in a rocker never appealed to me. Golf or fishing isn't as much fun as working.”

Conclusion

On December 16, 1980, at the age of 90, Colonel Sanders passed away from pneumonia in Louisville, Kentucky.

By that time, his vision had grown into 6,000 KFC locations spread across 48 countries.

Fast forward to 2024, and that number has multiplied to 30,000 locations in 150 countries.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by rejection, or if setbacks have you questioning your path, remember the story of Colonel Sanders.

This was a man who faced more than his fair share of failures – fired from numerous jobs, his legal career in shambles, struck down by the Great Depression, fires, and even the ravages of a fragmented family.

And yet, despite all of this, he managed to create one of the largest fast-food empires the world has ever seen.

Colonel Sanders didn’t let anything or anyone defeat him.

Let’s get one thing straight right from the start: greatness isn’t handed to you.

But what this story teaches us is that failure isn’t the end; it’s just a chapter in a much larger book.

At any point, Sanders could have thrown in the towel. He could have accepted the label of failure that life seemed determined to stamp on him.

But he didn’t.

And because of that, we’re not just talking about fried chicken; we’re talking about a legacy.

The next time you’re on the verge of throwing in the towel, remember: the Colonel wouldn’t quit, and neither should you. 

Success isn’t about age, luck, or a straight path—it’s about resilience, grit, and a belief so strong that not even the world’s worst storms can shake it. 

Your story, just like his, can be truly finger lickin’ good!

Rest in peace, Colonel.

Yours truly,

-Nigel Thomas

Whenever you are ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

#1: Work with me 1-1 to Scale Your Marketing Agency Here

#2:Prefer listening instead of reading? Listen to the Exclusive David to Goliath Podcast Here

#3:Follow me on LinkedIn. Everyday I post stories, frameworks and mindset tips on our charge to 100,000 subscribers