Harland Sanders held a long string of jobs before finding any lasting success — farmhand, streetcar conductor, insurance salesman, gas station operator — eventually running a small roadside restaurant and gas station in Corbin, Kentucky, where he developed a fried chicken recipe using a particular blend of herbs and spices that built a loyal local following.
In the mid-1950s, when a new interstate highway was built bypassing Corbin entirely, traffic to his restaurant collapsed and he was forced to sell the business at a loss, leaving him, in his mid-sixties, largely starting over financially with only a modest Social Security check and the recipe he still believed in.
As the well-known story goes, he began traveling by car, sleeping in the back seat to save money, visiting restaurant after restaurant to pitch a franchise arrangement — he would provide the recipe and a small royalty fee per chicken sold if they agreed to prepare it his way — and was turned down by a large number of restaurant owners before the concept began to catch on.
By the early 1960s, Kentucky Fried Chicken had grown into a large franchise network, and Sanders sold the company in 1964 for a substantial sum, though he continued serving publicly as the brand's recognizable spokesperson for the rest of his life, having built what became a global business starting from an age when most people were already retired.