😲At 65, he had been rejected 1,009 times. Then, Colonel Sanders turned his $105 Social Security check into a billion-dollar empire. 🤯

💪A powerful quote, a simple action, and a spark to ensure your continued progress—welcome to Wise Words Weekly!

🤔Every week, we disect, investigate, and unpack a wisdom-packed quote from a wise, successful, and inspirational person. We explore many different self-development topics such as your Personal Growth, Mindset, Well-Being, Relationships, Leadership, and Gratitude. The Wise Words Weekly newsletter is designed to spark your continued progress, one small step at a time. 📈 None of this content should be construed as any type of investment or other professional advice. If you like quotes as much as we do, you may enjoy our Wise Words YouTube channel, too. Click here to check it out.

⚠️ CAUTION: This Quote of the Week is quite possibly going to be painful.

Harsh? Probably. True? Take a look around…

In 1955 The Colonel had:

❌$105 from his first Social Security check
❌A secret recipe
❌Zero yeses

Three strikes, he’s out. Right?

Nope! Not even close! By 1964 Colonel Harlan Sanders sold KFC for $2 million (That’s over $20 million today).

Life tried to beat him into submission. He refused to go quietly.

He didn’t get lucky. He simply refused to die at 25.

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This week, we’re diving into Tenacity & Mindset.

🔥Quote of the Week:

“Most people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.”

- Benjamin Franklin

🤔Reflection:

When was the last time you felt like “I’m too old,” “it’s too late,” or “I’m too broke”?
Write it down. No. Right now. Write it down right now. That feeling is… the tombstone talking.

I loved my grandpa so much. I have so many fond memories of he and I living the good life. I miss those days of us sitting at the picnic table in his backyard, shooting the slingshot he handmade for me. Sure wish I still had that! Grandpa passed when I was a teenager. That was many years ago.

I didn’t know it then but I do now. Grandpa had given up. You can see it in his eyes in this picture.

In his younger days, grandpa was a sailor in the United States Navy during World War II. He started and built a successful painting business. He did a lot of things I am very proud of him for. He encountered setbacks. We all do. Unfortunately, he let those setbacks grind him down. He gave up. He didn’t have to. But, we don’t know what we don’t know.

As you know from reading previous editions of Wise Words Weekly, I stumbled into a completely new world simply by reading a book and then implementing what I learned from it. I didn’t see that coming. It just happened (when I least expected it). All because, I hadn’t given up and was tenacious enough to keep my foot on the gas pedal of making it happen. Mindset is everything.

Don’t listen to that damn tombstone. The tombstone lies. The Colonel proved this.

**Today’s permission slip:
Your best chapter can start on a Tuesday. With $105 in the bank and a car that barely runs (or even a bicycle or just soles on your shoes - stop making excuses).

🏆Why This Can Be Your Superpower

Accepting that “it’s too late” is the fastest way to make Ben Franklin’s quote come true.

Rejecting it is the ultimate cheat code. The moment you decide you’re still alive, you gain:

• Zero fear of looking stupid (you’ve got nothing to lose)

• Decades of compounded wisdom most 25-year-olds don’t have

• A raging fire that early achievers lost years ago

Start treating rejection and setbacks like the free market research that they are. Every “no” the Colonel got told him:

• Pitch needs to be clearer

• Price needs adjusting

• Wrong restaurant

• Need to tighten up my “no assholes” policy

Most people hear 5 no’s and quit (some people stop at the first one).

The Colonel collected 1,009 “no’s” like data points. Then, he won on #1,010.

Start tracking your no’s. Celebrate every 100.

They’re proof you’re still alive.

🔬The Science Behind It

Your brain doesn’t “slow down” with age; it shifts into a bolder, more creative gear.

Dr. Marian Diamond’s landmark research at UC Berkeley showed that older brains actually form richer, more unexpected connections. Around age 25–35 most people hit the “arrival fallacy.” They didn’t become famous or rich “on schedule,” so they just shut down. BIG Mistake!

Late bloomers feel that same disappointment and turn it into pure defiance instead.

Then there’s the Zeigarnik effect: unfinished business creates mental tension that grows louder the longer it’s ignored. That dream you buried at 25? It’s screaming at 45 and has an absolutely deafening din at 65. Science says listening now is the smartest move you’ll ever make.

🧬Stories That Bring It to Life

• Whitney Wolfe Herd – Bumble
  Whitney left Tinder after a high-profile sexual-harassment lawsuit against the company and its founders. Received death threats, doxxing, and vicious online harassment that made global headlines. Instead of disappearing, at 25, she launched a “women message first” dating app in an already saturated market. First 18 investor meetings: all men, almost all said no. She still shipped it in 2014 with almost no money and turned Bumble into a public company worth billions. Whitney became the youngest self-made female billionaire in the process.

  

• Hamdi Ulukaya – Chobani
  Turkish-Kurdish immigrant arrives in the U.S. with $3,000, barely speaks English. In 2005, at age 33, he buys a shuttered 85-year-old Kraft yogurt factory in upstate New York that everyone told him was a terrible idea. Takes out a crippling SBA loan, hires four of the original laid-off Kraft workers, and starts making Greek yogurt when literally zero mainstream Americans knew what it was. Suppliers laughed at him, distributors wouldn’t take his calls, and he almost went bankrupt multiple times in the first three years. Now Chobani is the #1 Greek yogurt brand in America and he’s a billionaire who’s given away hundreds of millions to refugees and employees.

• Brian Chesky & Joe Gebbia – Airbnb
  2008 financial crisis: credit-card debt maxed out, couldn’t pay rent in San Francisco. They started selling $80 Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain cereal boxes at the Democratic and Republican conventions just to eat. Investors rejected them 7 times (including one famous “I’m out, this will never work” email). They were literally laughed out of meetings, yet kept bootstrapping with cereal money until Paul Graham accepted them into Y Combinator almost out of pity. Today: $100B+ company.

• Melanie Perkins – Canva
  19-year-old college dropout in Australia. Got rejected by over 100 investors across three years while trying to raise money for a simple graphic-design tool. Lived on savings, taught design classes on the side, and kept cold-emailing Silicon Valley VCs who mostly ignored her. Finally got a yes in 2013 after flying herself to San Francisco and camping on couches. Canva is now valued at $40+ billion and used by hundreds of millions of people.

🏃‍♂️How to Start Today

Practical, no-fluff first steps you can take in the next 48 hours if you’re sitting there thinking “I should have quit months ago, but I’m still here, so what now?”

1. Run the “One-Week Cash Test”
   List every single way you could make $1,000 in the next 7–14 days with the skills, tools, and network you already have (consulting, freelancing, reselling something, teaching a mini-course, whatever). PRO-TIP: Use AI such as Grok to help you brainstorm. It will think of things that make you scream, “Why didn’t I think of that!?”. Pick the fastest one and execute. Goal: prove to yourself (and your bank account) that money is still possible even when everything feels dead. The founders above all had a version of this: Airbnb sold cereal, Katrina Lake packed boxes at 2 a.m., Melanie Perkins taught design classes on the side.

   

2. Do the “100 Rejections in 100 Days” Commitment
   Literally open a spreadsheet right now and title it “Rejection Tracker.” Columns: Date | Person/Company | What I Asked For | Their Answer | What I Learned.
   Your only daily KPI for the next 100 days is to get one “No.”
   Melanie Perkins got 100+ nos over three years. Whitney Wolfe heard no from the first 18 male investors. The faster you collect nos, the faster you get to the yes that matters.

3. Ship a “Minimum Viable Promise” in 72 Hours
   Not an MVP product but an MVP offer.
   Example: “I will design 5 Canva-level social-media templates for your business for $250, delivered in 5 days or it’s free.”
   Post it to LinkedIn, your Instagram story, five relevant Slack/Discord/Facebook groups. Take money upfront (even $99). The second someone pays you, the game changes . You now have a customer, not just a dream.

4. Schedule the “I Quit My Own Company” Calendar Event
   Seriously. Put a recurring reminder 90 days from today titled “Quit Day Decision.”
   On that day you will look at revenue, personal runway, and happiness. If the trend is still flat or down, you shut it down guilt-free. Paradoxically, giving yourself permission to quit is the single biggest reason people like Tobias Lütke and Hamdi Ulukaya never actually had to.

5. Find Your “Four Survivors” Group
   Text or DM four other founders who are in the trenches right now (revenue under $5k/mo, grinding, no publicity). Start a five-person group chat called “Still Here.”
   Rule: every Monday each person posts (1) one win from the previous week and (2) the scariest thing they’re facing this week. No advice unless asked! Just witness each other. This is the support group Brian Chesky, Anne Wojcicki, and every founder above wished they’d had on the darkest days.

6. Cut Everything That Doesn’t Move the Needle This Month
   Open your bank/credit-card statement from last month. Highlight every expense that didn’t directly lead to revenue or learning. Cancel or pause 80% of them today. Ruthless, but you’re not a hobbyist anymore, you’re a business that has decided to survive.

Do these six things in the next 48–72 hours and you’ll have more momentum (and often more cash) than 99% of people who “plan” for another six months. You’ve already done the hardest part: you didn’t quit when it made perfect sense to.

Now, stop acting like someone who’s about to fail and start acting like someone who’s about to make it. The difference is usually just a couple of weeks of obsessive, slightly unhinged action.

📖 📙A Great Book To Read On This Topic":

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. If you only read one book while you’re in the “should I keep going or shut this down?” trench, make it this one.

Horowitz (co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, but more importantly, the guy who ran Opsware/Loudcloud through near-death experiences that make most startup horror stories look tame) wrote the only business book that doesn’t pretend the hard part is raising money or building product. He’s brutally honest about the moments when:

• Payroll is due in 10 days and you have $2 million in the bank but $5 million in commitments

• Your co-founder wants out

• You have to fire half the company (including friends) on Christmas Eve

• Every single advisor tells you to sell for pennies or just close the doors

…and you still decide to keep fighting.There are no rah-rah slogans. No “just believe in yourself” fluff. Instead you get actual playbooks he used when he was the one sitting alone in the office at 3 a.m. wondering if he was destroying his life. Chapters like “The Struggle,” “When Things Fall Apart,” and “Take Care of the People, the Products, and the Profits - in That Order” read like someone finally telling the truth out loud. Every founder featured in this issue (and most of the ones who’ve made it big) has a dog-eared, highlighted, tear-stained copy of this book. It’s the closest thing entrepreneurship has to a field manual for the days when quitting feels like the only sane option. Read it this weekend. You’ll close the last page feeling less crazy and a lot more dangerous.(PRO TIP: pair it with the audiobook. Ben reads it himself and curses like a sailor. It hits different.)

🙌Thank you!:

If you enjoyed this content, please be sure to share it with your friends and family. Thank you! 🙏😊

🗣️Let’s Connect:

Hit me up on X = @MindRevMedia

I’d love to hear your story and cheer you on!

🤔Congratulations!

You now own the single highest-ROI asset on the planet… YOU!
Start compounding it today.

Here’s to your ever-growing future!

Your friend,

Grant

P.S. Forward this to one friend who needs to hear this. The best investments always come from the best decisions. And, today you just made one!💪 🤜🤛

P.P.S. 🔥Want to unlock the secret to a WINNING MINDSET?!💡 Like building muscle💪, you can train your brain🧠—but only if you know how.

Most people stumble through life, totally unaware their subconscious is silently sabotaging them. Limiting beliefs and habits they are completely unaware of are holding them back from living an absolutely fantastic life full of everything they want and deserve! ✨💰💫

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