The founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Colonel Harland Sanders faced lots of disappointments on his way to achieving the heights of success.
According to a 1970 New Yorker profile by William Whitworth, Sanders was born in 1890, in Henryville, Indiana. His father passed away when he was just six, leaving him to take care of his siblings as his mother worked for long hours.
He was a decent cook at age of 7 years and dropped out of school in seventh grade as he wanted to work on the farm.
At the age of 16, he faked his age and enrolled in United States Army, and a year later was discharged. He started working as a laborer at a railway but got fired for picking up a fight with a co-worker.
Half of his life was spent working odd jobs like selling insurance and tires, making lightning systems, and operating ferry boats.
Years later he owned a motel and opened his restaurant. According to the Businessinsider reports, in 1939 he discovered that frying his chicken and its ‘11 herbs and spices’ in a pressure cooker resulted in the consistency that he was searching for.
In the following decade, Sanders’ restaurant gained wide popularity and in 1950 the governor of Kentucky gave him the title of honorary colonel.
In 1952, during the boom Sanders’ sold his chicken dish as ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken.’ However, when an interstate was opened nearby, his restaurant faced doom. At that time, he decided to sell it and spread KFC franchises across the world.
Through years of failure and misfortune, Sanders’ KFC gained international fame and he then sold his company at the age of 75 to see it grow more and more.
Keep reading SuccessYeti.com
Also Read: 4 companies that started with failure and are successful today
