“Start own business…Start own business…” It’s like a mantra many keep droning about in their heads for years.
“One day I’ll start my own business.”
Then nothing happens.
Procrastination or fear fetter their feet to a stone wall while dreams of success float about like a balloon on a string.
But time stops for nobody. When will you take courage and cut the chains?
Many do not cut these chains because they know not where to latch themselves onto for stability.
Stability is what a 9-to-5 job seems to give us. Is that why you wait to be laid off before starting a business of your own?
“But I’ll receive a severance package…”
Oh really? And then?
And then you’re on your own, right?
Is that when “Start own business…Start own business” starts beating in your breast again?
Whose Calling You Chicken? Start Own Business Already!
Kentucky Fried Chicken’s founder was 65 when forced to close down his diner. Business was poor.
The man was looking at living off of a measly $105 in Social Security money each month. That was the stability offered to him by the State.
Basically, his own business had laid him off and the only severance he had coming to him was a handout from the government.
He knew then just like you do today that, if he was out of work and receiving a State handout, then he would barely scrape by on $105 a month. In your case, ad a zero to the right of $105 and you’d fill his shoes.
So Colonel Sanders realized that he was knee deep in doo-doo.
He had to change his circumstances radically or basically slowly starve. For a man at the official age of retirement, this fear was not unwarranted.
There are precedents of old people dying alone in a room, forgotten and not found until the smell of their rotting bodies draws attention.
Now, it’s true. The man had been a business owner. The venture had failed in due time. He was destitute and, by the standards of the day, he was old.
Do you think a mind like that would start hearing the rumbling of “Start own business…Start own business”?
I think not.
Most people under such circumstances would rush to relatives, churches, welfare or jump off a bridge. But start a new business? C’mon, old man. Get serious!
Well, serious he got.
“I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.”
Sounds like the “start own business” rumbling actually got him quaking worse than the fear of poverty and homelessness.
Has that happened to you yet?
“There’s no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery,” he said, “You can’t do any business from there.”
So, he began to travel from restaurant to restaurant, far and wide in his starched white shirt, white pants, white beard, marketing his fried chicken.
The Richest Man In The Cemetery. Who Needs Him?
Sanders began his search. He was looking for 1 entrepreneur – just one – willing to collaborate in selling his fried chicken. Because, yes indeed, you do need to know how to sell like a con man!
Sanders would arrive to a restaurant and offer to cook a batch of chicken for the owner and the employees.
In his travels he was rejected over 1,000 times. People laughed at his apparel. But the man was motivated.
He had been working since the age of 10, when he was hired by a neighbor farmer who paid him about $12 a week in today’s money.
He had been a railroad fireman, a justice of the peace after graduating from correspondence school. He had been an insurance salesman, a steamboat ferry operator, a car tires salesman, and a service station operator, where he opened up his diner.
“Start own business…Start own business” kept banging in his head.
“It’s not about opening for business,” he seems to have been telling himself, “It’s just starting again — just one more time – something that is mine. That’s all I have to focus on for now.”
He had tasted the liberty and the stability that comes with doing something worthwhile with himself. He wanted that freedom back! He just needed that one break
The way he put it was:
“You have got to be doing something worthwhile so you can like it because, it’s worthwhile that it makes a difference, don’t you see?”
What an attitude! Do you share in it?
It took getting to Utah where he finally persuaded a restaurant owner named Pete Harman to partner with him.
Today the franchise sells over 600 million fried chickens a year.
Mantras are useless because envisioning your future doesn’t bring it about. You must put skin in the game.
You must get off your haunches and start doing.
Stop visualizing an ‘Open For Business’ sign.
If you’ve heard the rumblings of “Start own business…”, get off your bum and hit the streets.
If a 65 year-old can do it, so can anybody. So can you! Don’t let him outpace you. Cut the chains and be free! Get going! What are you waiting for?