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Kentucky Fried Wisdom

Written by: Amber Wright

Article Overview: His friends often ask when he plans to retire, and his response is “retire to what?” These older business owners are proving that age and accomplishment does have its privileges, challenges and rewards!

Kentucky Fried Wisdom

Some years ago I met and spent some time with a legendary business owner who personified a particular branch of entrepreneurship, that being those people who start a business later in life. Meeting a man with one of the best known faces in America was memorable and thinking of him today still makes me smile. That man was Harland David Sanders, better known as Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Because his face was plastered on signs all over the U.S. and Canada at the time, walking down a public street with him was like being in the company of a megastar. People constantly waved, smiled and asked for his autograph.

Well, Mr. Sanders wasn’t really a military Colonel, but was given the honorary title by the governor of Kentucky. But he was a real businessman who started the KFC franchise operation out of desperation when he was 65 years of age. His startup capital was money from his first Social Security check that he used to go on the road and call on prospective franchisees! At the time I was in my twenties and was simply amazed that he started when most people are retiring to their hobbies and focused on spoiling the grandchildren.

Today in our country, more than 5 million people age 55 or older are self employed or operate their own business according to the Small Business Administration. This is the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs across the land right now. The number of self employed people ages 55 to 64 has grown 52% between 2000 and 2007! Jerri Sedlar the author of “Don’t Retire, Rewire,” said two types of people start businesses: those who always planned to and those who cannot find a job.

I think that some of those people are gleefully getting a belated start on their lifelong dream and others are being forced to take the entrepreneurial plunge out of necessity. When you feel that your job might disappear like coastal mist in the noonday sun, you are living with a lot of stress. If you are going to toss and turn at 4am over business, it might as well be about your own enterprise. This current economic crisis should be teaching us that like it or not, everybody has to develop some level of entrepreneurial consciousness.

Buyout packages and golden parachutes often supply the necessary capital and finally scratching the itch to be one’s own boss is a pretty strong motivator to take the risk. My experience producing a Making It! a small business TV show has brought me into contact with hundreds of business owners across the age spectrum. I can tell you that starting a business while your gray hair is beginning to dominate won’t be as easy as you think nor as hard as you might fear. By your fifth decade, you probably know more than you are aware of and have a support network that is broader and deeper than you realize.

I started Nelson Davis Television Productions because of the realization that my bosses who were presented to me as geniuses really weren’t. By that time going to another job interview had about the same appeal as wrestling alligators with a python holding up my shorts. You have to take a great leap of faith and think only of what you want to have happen while obliterating all thoughts of any less successful outcome.

Starting your business is one of those rare categories where the government can actually be helpful. The SBA web site can direct you to some advice and expertise tailored for people 50 and older. Universities and community colleges all over the country have night classes and extension courses that offer just about everything you need to know to take this important leap. Of course you have to supply the self confidence and drive. You have to be the president of sales and marketing. My philosophy is that nothing gets made until something gets sold. Whether you make one dollar or a million, the feeling of self development and realization is worth the effort to be your own boss.

Another reason that thinking of Colonel Sanders brings me a smile is that at age 80 he was still having a lot of fun. He had sold KFC for $2million (about $14M in today’s dollars) to a group of businessmen when he was 74 years old. Like most ex business owners, he wasn’t happy with how they ran the operation when he was gone. I remember him telling me in his heavy Kentucky accent how awful they were. The way it came out of his mouth sounded like “Dem Bastids.” One of the smartest and most successful business owners I know right now is 74 vigorous and healthy years old. His friends often ask when he plans to retire, and his response is “retire to what?” These older business owners are proving that age and accomplishment does have its privileges, challenges and rewards!

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Article Tags: business blog, business owners, colonel sanderskentucky fried, grilled chicken, KFC, small business, wisdom



Related Forum Posts
Now KFC is rebranding... - I love Kentucky Fried Chicken - those 11 herbs and spices. Yum yum. Of course with the interference of the government and trans fat the chicken no longer tastes the same.... but I still like it... But all that's beside the point of this post, which is that in 1991, apparently, Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC, and now, 15 years later, they're changing it back, because last year was a down year for them. I'm confused about this, because only yesterday my brother pointed out that the reason they'd changed the name in the first place was because the state of Kentucky was going to charge them a royalty fee for the use of the word Kentucky. I've been unable to verify that... but if its true... perhaps they worked out some kind of deal... I didnt' realize that the state of New York charges non-residents taxes, if they do a portion of their work in that state. For example, when a baseball, football or basketball team comes in to New York to play a team there - the visiting team's players have to pay taxes on the income they earn from that game - to New York. As far as I'm concerned, that's outrageous!!!
How To Make Up for Mistakes? - This topic has more to do with restaurants, I would think, than any other type of business, but I just thought I'd throw it out there. Earlier today I went to my local Kentucky Fried Chicken, where it quickly became clear that probalby 2/3rds of the staff were brand new... As I came in someone was complaining that they'd been given the wrong order, and 30 minutes later when I left, it was just after a man came into complain that he'd been given the wrong order. (Obviously through drivethru.) Why was I there for 30 minutes? I came in and ordered an 8 piece original meal. 5 minutes later I was told it was going to be another ten minutes, as the chicken had just gone down. 10 minutes later, I was told that *that* chicken had been the Extra Crispy, and they had run out of original and so it would be another 15 minutes for that. 15 minutes later...the manager told me that the original recipe had *just* gone down, the person he'd told to do it 15 minutes ago hadn't done it. Now, to make up for my 30 minute wait, the manager did give me 4 extra pieces of chicken, free. And then I got home to discover that instead of being given a side order of coleslaw, I'd been given green beans. Even if the green bean/cole slaw mixup hadn't happened... I seriously, seriously doubt if I'll ever go back to that KFC. Granted it was obvious that they were training in new people, but there's a point where sheer ineptitude begins to be apparent - they should be training people such that no one is on the floor who doesnt' know their job! And even though the manager gave me those 4 extra pieces of chicken as an apology, and although I appreciated it - and felt I deserved it - I will not be going back to that KFC any time soon. So.... from a restauranteur's standpoint, was it a waste of good chicken to give me those extra pieces when chances are I would never return?
Fast food workers - [quote:jxsovz2s] so why do franchises treat their employees like "worker bees" (i.e. work them till they quit or die or at least wish for their own deaths)? [/quote:jxsovz2s] I think that if "worker bees" approach their job with the right attitude, they can accomplish much. There are plenty of other people at the restaurant, so one is able to meet and interact with lots of people, see their personalities, etc. which is good for evaluating employees when you're in a position to hire them yourself. I think the main fault with fast-food restaurants is that they have such a hard time getting employees that they'll take anyone they can get, and then they only give them a couple of hours training before they put them out on the floor. Worse, they put them on the floor during the rush hour, and pretty soon they're in the deep end and not having fun because they don't really know what they're doing, and their managers are snapping at them and the customers are snapping at them and they get so frustrated that they quit. I suppose there are people who can pick up things very quickly and those are the ones that stick around...but there is certainly a high turnover rate. I talked a bit about this a month or so ago, when I related my experiences at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, where it was a comedy of errors, with me having to wait 20 minutes for my food, and then [i:jxsovz2s]still [/i:jxsovz2s]getting the wrong order. (And not the first time I'd had problems at this restaurant.) I have nothing but respect for fast food workers, and if they do screw up, I feel that 90% of the time it's the fault of the managers who didn't train them properly. But I doubt if the managers screw up because they don't care - [i:jxsovz2s]they [/i:jxsovz2s]probably haven't been trained properly in how to train their workers!
God's Diet - Very interesting, from both a health perspective and a marketing perspective. Growing up Mormon we were raised on The Word of Wisdom. No coffee, no tea, no junk food, no smoking, no drinking..etc. All good. But I think its harder and harder to find true, pure food these days. And lets face it, I'm not likely to start growing my own produce or keeping cattle..
Meet Mary Sue Milliken - chef and restaurant owner - Mary Sue Milliken will be at our "Launching an Edible Life" event February 4 in Los Angeles ... come join us! Contact aswift@ladieswholaunch.com for registration details. If there's just one thing you need to open a restaurant, it would have to be a stove, right? Think again. When Mary Sue Milliken and her best friend/fellow chef/business partner Susan Feniger opened City Cafe in Los Angeles in 1981, they had no stove or oven, only a hot plate and a hibachi out back in the alley. Humble digs, especially for two professionally trained chefs-Milliken had attended Washburne Culinary Institute, while Feniger studied at the Culinary Institute of America. Their resumes included stints at three-star restaurants in France, Spago in Los Angeles, and Le Perroquet in Chicago, where they met in 1978-the first women working in that restaurant's all-male kitchen. Rich in experience and vision, but not in funds, they were happy to have a restaurant to call their own and quickly began perfecting a unique, multicultural fare, which incorporated recipes from Greek, Indian, and Thai cultures, as well as their own mothers' recipes. Once they expanded to City Restaurant in 1985, they became culinary icons, recognized for their fresh mix of refined culinary technique and exotic Third World flavors, all dished up with down-home charm and playful enthusiasm. Now overseeing 375 employees between the Border Grill restaurants in Santa Monica and Las Vegas and Ciudad in downtown Los Angeles, the partners have also found time to write five cookbooks, including the recent Mexican Cooking Essentials for Dummies; host the popular Food Network shows "Too Hot Tamales" and "Tamales World Tour"; and launch the Border Girls brand at Whole Foods Market. What we learned from Mary Sue: Not every venture will be successful, but every experience will be worthwhile. "You've got to bounce back and just keep going. They're all great lessons to learn." Words of Wisdom "I think we both subconsciously were willing to start in a really meager setting, just because it was an opportunity not to work for a man." Penniless But Passionate "We had come home [from France] with the intent to open a restaurant together, and we didn't have a penny to our names. I was 23 years old. I had not been to college. I had no idea how to launch a business. None. Susan had a degree in economics and had been to chef's school. She's five years older than me. But she also didn't have any idea how to launch a business." Cook What You Know "First of all, you just copy things. But then, it starts to be a very personal cuisine, which is what we basically used those three-and-half years at City Cafe for-to create our own personal style of food. And it was so well-received. It started out as country French food, and it kept expanding all the time." Eclecticism, Not Fusion "We did some really groundbreaking stuff. This was in 1984, and still, when our City Cuisine cookbook came out in '87, people said there's nowhere to put this book on the shelves of the cookbook aisles, because you guys are all over the map. And there just wasn't that kind of integration of different culinary ideas. We never called what we did "fusion." We always felt like we stayed very true to the Greek cuisine, or the Indian, or the Thai, or the Mexican, or the Scandinavian, or whatever it was." On-the-Job Training We slowly started learning about business, so when we launched City Restaurant, which was really the thing that put us on the map, it was a 125-seat restaurant with a full-on kitchen. It was on La Brea. We raised the $660,000, and had to do a whole prospectus. I'll never forget, my net worth was $12,000, and Susan's wasn't much more. But we were able to learn by the seat of our pants, and we've been learning ever since." How Much Is Enough? "We were just making educated guesses-or uneducated guesses. In the end, $660,000 was not enough money at all. We were completely short, and we had to get an angel to come in and sign a guarantee on a bank line of credit for us. Really, it was a stressful opening, because we only had like two-and-a-half days in the kitchen with food before we had to open the doors to the public because we were so broke." Hindsight Is 20/20 "If I knew then what I know now, I would have somehow found some financial bridge so that we could have had a little more practice before we opened. I mean, literally, the first couple weeks, there were nights that we didn't even go home, and we were really burning the candle down to zero." It's a Man's World "I think we were both ready to be on our own. And the prospect of working under men, and working our way up, and trying to fight through all of the barriers, looked less fulfilling than just starting out [on our own]. Even though we didn't even have a stove, we still opted to start out calling our own shots." Know When to Grow "The growth ... it's a really personal thing. It depends on how equipped you are for the challenge and stress of growth, and how your business is doing. I mean, we've grown where things worked out really well, and we've grown where it's created a big strain on the existing businesses, and the new businesses didn't work." On Losing Money "When I look back on it, I think, 'Well, I didn't go to college. That's about how much college might cost me. I'll just chalk it up to experience.' Now I have an even better understanding, and luckily, it didn't happen at a time when I really couldn't afford it. But I'll tell you, being an entrepreneur and being in business is a real roller coaster." A Thankless Job Has Its Rewards "When the Food Network came asking for us to come and promote our second book, and they noticed we were funny and how we finished each other's sentences, they said, 'You girls should have a TV show.' The reason we should have had a TV show was that we did all of this really thankless teaching before that, and I'm not even sure it brought bodies into the restaurant. A lot of people might have looked at it as a waste of time. But I think you never know what skill you're going to develop, [and our teaching gave us the skills we needed to do the Food Network show.]" Be a Great Boss "We learn a lot from our colleagues, and from other companies that we want to be like. We're always looking for innovative ways to really make our workplace so phenomenally attractive that we can't lose good people, and we can attract the best. Those are big goals for us all the time." My Most Rewarding Business Moments... "... are when one of our past employees mentions how working for us made a difference in their lives. It's the best feeling in the world!" Be Good at Everything "You have to be a great leader, as well as a great cook, as well as organized, because it's a business of so many details. I think there are a lot of restaurants that fall through the cracks because they're missing the boat on something, and customers just don't come back." All Work and No Play "You have to be willing to walk away when you have a pile of work on your desk and stuff that you really should get done. You've got to be willing to walk away and clear your mind and be in the moment with your children or your husband, or whoever. You have to convince yourself that it's equally, or more, important than your job." This Featured Lady was profiled by Sarah Tomlinson, a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.


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