Entrepreneurial success stories have always captivated my attention. I was just watching an A&E Biography piece on Colonel Sanders and was impressed with his marketing ingenuity, particularly this piece:

Back in the 1940's, Colonel Sanders opened up a motel next to one of his restaurants which was located just outside of town. The Kentucky Colonel built a a "nice" motel with nice rooms, and he wanted it to be a family establishment. However, there was one problem: back then, any self-respecting family in need of a room for the night would stay at an Inn in town, never a motel on the outskirts of the city. Back in those days, roadside motels were used for one thing and one thing only, and that "thing" certainly wasn't a family activity.

His solution? The Colonel built a model motel room inside of the restaurant so that the customers could see what the rooms looked like. To ensure that the most important person in the decision making process saw the room, he put the women's restroom in the most strategic place possible: inside of the model room.

That's right: in order to get to the powder room, the lady of the family had to walk through the model motel room, where she would see the nice beds, the dining table with flowers on it, etc., thus showcasing for the likely decision maker that his place was a nice, clean, "family" establishment after all.

It's ingenious thinking like that that makes America great.