Brian Tracy argues you should never give up on a dream, no matter your age. He tells how Colonel Harland Sanders didn't start KFC until his 60s, selling his chicken recipe and building a franchise from nothing. Pick one concrete step to take now.
Hi there. Throughout the year, I've received a lot of questions from my friends on Facebook. So we've decided to sit down and answer these questions and let me give you my thoughts and insights and experiences, and they may be helpful to you. And questions from one person may be a question that you might have asked yourself. So let's get started. Oya Dele from Facebook asked, at what age should one give up on their dream? Well, good question. At what age should one give up on their dream? Never. Goethe said this. Henry Ford said this. Rockefeller said this. You're only as young or as old as your dreams, and as long as you still have dreams and visions and goals, they keep you young. It's the most amazing darn thing. One of the great stories is the story of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Harlan. And Harlan was taught by his mother a special recipe down south in the United States on how to make chicken. When he grew up, he got a job as a short order cook in a small cafe. And he asked his boss if his boss would be interested in this chicken recipe. And his boss said, sure, throw it together. See what the people say. Turned out that everybody liked this special chicken recipe with all these secret herbs and spices. Well, for the rest of his career, right up till he was 65 years old, he either worked in little cafes or sometimes he owned a little cafe. When he was 65, he had a little cafe and he was making his chicken. And he had people coming from all around to eat his chicken. And the highways department built a highway past his little restaurant, his little chicken place, and put him out of business, cut off the road so nobody could get to it. About the same time, he received a Social Security check, his first Social Security check, the age of 65. And he became angry. He said, I'm 65 years old, but I'm not ready to give up on my dreams. What do I have to sell? And he realized the one thing that had kept him going all those years, the mainstay of his little career, was his mother's recipe of 17 or 18 herbs and spices. So he put them together in little bags, one bag per chicken. And he put his pots and pans in the back of his old car and. And he started driving up and down the eastern seaboard, going from cafe to cafe to cafe to ask them if they would pay him 5 cents a bag for his magical combination of herbs and spices. He called on more than 1,000 restaurants, sleeping in his car week after week. And finally, he came across a little restaurant in Toronto that agreed to pay him 5 cents a bag for his herbs and spices back in the 60s. And because of exchange controls, they had to give the money to the Red Cross. That was the beginning of the Kentucky Fried Chicken empire. He began to sell this recipe. More and more people began to put it on their signs. A major corporation came along and said, we could make a real business of this. So they embraced him. They built the franchise. They made him one of the best known people in the world. When he died some years later, he was worth more than $50 million because he never gave up on his dreams. So I don't know if you're 65 and broke and living in your car with pots and pans, with no money, but wherever you are, you never give up on your dreams. Now, I've given you a couple of ideas, so the most important thing that you can do is to take action. So what one action are you going to take as a result of these key ideas that I've just given you? Whatever it is, jot it down and let me know. Remember, one action that you take that you would not have taken in the absence of this discussion can change your life forever.
