#833: Jack Canfield — Selling 600+ Million Books, Success Principles, and How He Made The 4-Hour Workweek Happen

24:57Yeah, sure. So she had done that. She said, why don't we sell other people's stuff. So we'd added other product and I hired a high school kid to come in after school and to sell the books, you know, ship them out and so forth. So long story short, I did not make a hundred thousand dollars. I made 92 ,328 dollars, but I went like, okay, this is a success. Then my wife says, you think it'll work for a million? I said, only one way to find out. So literally we set a million dollar goal and that happened with Chicken Soup for the household the second year. I got four checks, Tim. You know this because of your success with the books.

25:33The first time you get a check for a million dollars for three months royalties, you go like, are you kidding me? It changed my life. Yeah. I mean, that's a juggernaut of a success, but people probably don't realize quite how much rejection went into that. But maybe we could start at the beginning, at least the Genesis story. Where did Chicken Soup for the Soul come from? Everyone listening has seen this book at some point. Chances are, unless they're 18 perhaps and have never been into a dentist's office or a physician's office or an airport or fill in the blank, right? I mean, it's ubiquitous.

26:13How did it start? So I was going around doing workshops for teachers on self-esteem, motivation, that kind of thing. And I was always telling stories. Just because I noticed when I was a high school teacher, if I was talking historical facts, kids were looking out the window. If I was telling a story about an escaped slave who became an ambassador of my own story or something from Jet Magazine or Ebony Magazine, the kids would pay attention. So stories capture us. And all the great teachers, Buddha, Jesus, we know they told stories and parables and so forth. So one day, somebody said, this story you told about the Girl Scout who sold 3 ,328 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in one year, is that in a book anywhere?

26:55My daughter needs to hear that story. I went, no. And over the course of two months, I must have had four people a day say, is that story in a book? Is that story in a book? Is that story in a book? Is that story in a book? So I'm coming home on a plane from Boston to LA, where I was living at the time, and I said, how many stories do I really know? So I wrote down every story, the dog story, the Girl Scout story, the puppy story, the Mount Everest story, whatever. It was 70 stories. So I said, okay, that's a book. So I made the commitment that every night I would write, work on a story, and at the end of the week, I would have two stories.

27:27And if I did that for a year, I'd have 101 stories, you know, 108, whatever. So I did that. And when I was about, I don't know, five, six through, I had breakfast with Mark Victor Hansen, who became my co-author. And we were having breakfast in Beverly Hills at this place. All these human potential leaders would come to this breakfast. The Inside Edge, it was called. So Mark said, what are you working on? I said, I'm writing this book. And he said, you should let me finish it with you. I went, that's like telling Stephen King you should be his co-author because he's five, six of the way through the book?

28:05How do you justify that? He says, well, some of the stories you tell you stole from me. I said, maybe three, Mark, come on. And he said, but I'm a much better salesperson than you. You can be, I'll be the upfront voice person. I said, well, give me 30 more stories and we'll talk. So I had 70 at that time. So he said, okay, came back, he did it. So basically it was a marriage made in heaven because he really was good at getting the word up. We were in a mall once. Believe this, Tim. We're in a mall. I think it was B. Dalton bookstores. They were in a lot of malls. Yeah, I remember B. Dalton. Yeah.

28:42And so we're doing a book signing and there's nobody there. So Mark goes out into the mall and he just starts walking up and down the mall yelling, are you guys crazy? There's a book signing in B. Dalton right now with these two amazing authors about the best book in the world. You all should be in there. And so he's doing that. And about 40 people came in to beat Dalton, and then Mark walks up to the front of the room where I am, ready to do the little talk before the signing. They all gasped, like, you're the guy who was in the hall. I was too shy to do that. It worked out really well. But you talked about rejection.

29:16We were turned down by 144 publishers once we had a manuscript. It took us over a year to sell the book. So, you know, when I think about that story and I think about, you know, the 4-Hour Workweek, which was also turned down, Steve and I got front row seats, obviously, to this by 37, 39 publishers, something like that, imprints within the publishers. Maybe, tell me if this resonates or not, but you can have a bad idea that gets rejected, right? Just because something gets rejected a lot doesn't mean it's a good idea. But in this case, I had tested everything in the classes. So I knew what worked.

29:52I knew that the material stuck, so to speak. And you had been testing these stories also in front of audiences. And people had been asking you, where can I read this in a book? But was there anything else that contributed to the perseverance to go through that many rejections? I think it's what you just said for us too, because we had tested these stories over and over and told them we got standing ovations. Many of the stories in there, the first book, were what often are called in the speaking business your signature story that other people had let us use with their signature stories. So we knew they were tearjerkers, they were inspirational, they made you laugh, they made you feel like you want to call up and tell your mother, I got to read you this story.

30:32So basically, we knew that. Like you said, you knew that from your experience. What I find in the book world, especially in the New York publishing world, is everybody wants something that's a copy of something that already worked, you know? sure so basically when you come along with something radically new like your idea was and our idea was up until then no collections of short stories had ever worked because they were all fictional and they were too short to like get engaged with the characters and really like go you know get involved whereas all these stories were in categories like on love on overcoming obstacles you know grief and so forth that are the human things that everybody lives with which this is why they're so touched by it.

31:16And we just knew to stick with it. We would have self-published eventually, and I would have made a lot more money, but I didn't really want to be a publisher. I wanted to be a speaker and a writer. So I'm going to read something here. You can tell me if this needs some fact-checking, but this is from Thrive Global. This is a Q &A with you. So here we go. It's just a paragraph. Eventually went to ABA, the American Booksellers Association, and went booth to booth for two or three days. And on the final day, this one new publisher employee said, well, read the manuscript. Some people wouldn't even take it.

31:50And they read it in this case and loved it. And they said they'd publish it. We said, how many books do you think you'll sell? And this is their response. Oh, 20 ,000 if you're lucky. And then your response, I think this is you. Well, we want to sell a million and a half in a year and a half, I said. This employee laughed. And then a year and a half later, we'd sold 1.3 million copies. To sell 1.3 or 1.5 million copies is so hard. I mean, it is so hard to do unless you happen to be very, very lucky somehow in capturing lightning in a bottle. But usually there's a lot of elbow grease behind it.

32:28So two things. Well, actually, I guess it's just really one thing. What went into selling that many copies over a year and a half? And were you still using affirmations? Was that still one of the ingredients in the cocktail? Yeah. And then we were doing the mindset work. I always say it's mindset, skill set, and ready, set, go. The set, go. I wanted another set. It's action. So someone had told us that the book, The Road Less Traveled, the author of that book had done five interviews a day for the first year. Five interviews a day. Scott Peck. And that book was on the New York Times list for 12 years.

33:06500 and 12 weeks. That's so long. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think it's a record. I mean, you were really close, I think. Maybe you still are, I don't know. But the reality was, I thought, well, if that's what works, let's do it. So Mark and I actually had gone to five best-selling authors and then read about Scott Peck. And we talked to John Gray, who wrote Manate for Mars. We talked to Ken Blanchard, who wrote The One Minute Manager. We talked to Barbara DeAngelis, who wrote the book on love. And then another book on TM that someone had written that was successful. And we said, what should we do?

33:39and they all said, do as many interviews as possible, get in front of everybody. I know you did the blogger thing, which was brilliant. We did the radio thing. Now I think podcasts are better than radio. I always tell new authors because the people listening to them, they're your audience. There's a focus, whereas radio may have a bigger reach, but not everybody's your audience. So five a day, every day for a year. So we created what we call the Rule of Five. there's a book by john kramer called how to sell a million books something like that it's a great book we bought the book and we took every idea that was in that book and we made a post-it two by three post-it put it on the wall and if you went down the wall of our company at that time self-esteem seminars it was just covered with post-its and every day we'd take something off and either do it five times or take five post-its off and do each one time call a church can we talk in your church?

34:32We call five PXs in the military, and we say, are you carrying our book? Can I send you one? If you like it, will you carry it? Call bookstores. Are you stocking it? Can we send you one? If you like it, will you carry it? Call them back two weeks later. Did you get it? It was like nonstop. We were giving talks at churches on Sunday morning, Wednesday night, you know, whatever. They're the ones that have bookstores. We do signings. We signed in the parking lot. I spoke at every damn conference there was. I didn't care where it was or how long it took to get there, if it was there. We did radio shows that were like at two in the morning.

35:07Maybe a trucker driving through Montana will hear it, but maybe he'll like it. Maybe he'll buy it. Maybe he'll tell his daughter and his daughter will tell her friends. So literally, it was that level of nonstop activity. And it was interesting because we were pretty amped up in the beginning and we talked to the psychic guy. He was in trance. He'd go, it would be as if you would go to a tree with a very sharp ax and you would take five swipes at that tree every single day. Eventually, even a redwood would have to come down. You know, we went, okay, rule of five. That's what we're gonna do. What prompted the trip to the psychic?

35:45Do you remember? Yeah, I do. We knew his wife and she was a friend of ours and then he kind of turned psychic, if you will. He was doing these readings and they were awesome. So we just thought, well, why not? Let's ask him what we should do. And how old were you or what date was this, either one, roughly when the first Chicken Soup for the Soul came out? 93, and I was born in 44. So what is that, 49 years old, something like that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And when it hit, right, when you sold the 1.3 million copies in a year and a half or whatever it added up to be, how did that change your life? Or in what ways did that affect your life?

36:30Well, it allowed me to move out of a very small house. It allowed me to get a better car, all that kind of stuff. I think more so it was an affirmation from the world that the work I was passionate about was needed. And so it wasn't just the money, it was the confirmation that my intuition, that my passion was correct. You're probably familiar with the concept of ikigai, which comes from the Japanese, where if you'd love to do something, that's one thing. Are you good at it? Does the world need it? And are they willing to pay for it? So all four of those have to come together for this thing that you're passionate about to actually work.

37:08In this case, it did. So I thought, okay, my purpose is needed. It's going to work. I can make a living at it. So that was a big confirmation of that, I think more than anything. And yeah, I bought three sweaters in different colors and all that kind of stuff. I went through my nouveau riche stage for sure. I mean, if the sweaters were the extent of the nouveau riche, then I feel like you have very good restraint. The title itself, Chicken Soup for the Soul, because that ended up to be such an incredible format also for extending that into a million different verticals, right? Chicken soup for the fill in the blanks.

37:46So where did that, this I suppose is a nod to the intuition or unorthodox approaches, but how did that title come to be? Well, we had an agent who was going to take us to New York and meet with publishers and we didn't have a title. So Mark and I said, well, we're both meditators. So we said, well, let's just meditate and ask the universe, source, God, whatever you want to call that energy for a title. So Mark would go to bed. Mark's really hyper. He'd go to bed chanting, mega bestselling title, mega bestselling title, mega bestselling title. I would just go and every morning I'd sit for an hour and I'd say, okay, God, give me a title.

38:24And on Wednesday, two days, nothing happened. Third day, I'm sitting there and all of a sudden this chalkboard appears, green chalkboard like in school, and a hand comes out and writes chicken soup and script on it. And I said to the hand, what the hell does chicken soup have to do with this book? And a voice said back, when you were a kid, your grandmother gave you a chicken soup when you were sick. And I thought, but this is not a book on sick people. And the voice answered back, people's spirits are sick. They're in resignation, hopelessness, and fear. We were in the first big recession, 1993.

38:58The Gulf War was going on, downside. A lot of things that are happening now were happening then. The economy was tanking and people were losing jobs. So timing was good in terms of people needing inspiration. That played out well. So I went chicken soup for the spirit, chicken soup for the soul, and I got goosebumps. Well, my wife, she got goosebumps. Told Mark, called Mark, what do you think of this? He got goosebumps. Called her agent. He got goosebumps. Went to New York, met with 21 publishers, seven a day for three days. Nobody got goosebumps.

39:32so basically that led to you know the 144 rejections and you're right we went to the american booksellers association boot the booth we're both wearing backpacks full of these spiral bound like 20 stories from the book the best stories would you publish this book will you be interested in this book you know and most people wouldn't even take one let alone and then peter vegzo who's the guy who did publish it you know and you're right he said 20 000 and He said no. And he laughed. He laughed out loud at us. And later he said, yeah, you know. He took out an ad in New York on a billboard thanking all the publishers that rejected Chicken Soup for the Soul.

40:15He may have just laughed. Was it laugh as in I don't believe her? Or was he like, that's some chutzpah? No, he laughed because he thought we were freaking crazy. He thought we were insane. You guys are nuts, you know? What happened was the first shipment he made was 800 books to, I think it was Barnes & Noble, might have been Borders. And they sold 80 books the first week. He said, when you sell one-tenth of your inventory the first week, that's a phenomenon. Next week, 92. The next week, 150. He said something was happening. It just shocked him. And they started with those presses that do this kind of thing, you know?

40:53And then they had to go to a rotary press like you see in the movies when the newspaper's getting printed. And they had three shifts just doing nothing but printing chicken soup for the soul. And I remember one December, the guy who was in charge of the money, the CFO of that company, told his staff, I never knew this till later, he said, don't take any more orders for delivery in December. I don't want any more revenue for tax purposes this year.

41:22and meanwhile right you're following the rule of five you're calling the churches you're speaking in on sundays you're calling the px's you're doing all of the things were there any particular breakthrough moments or interviews looking back at these hundreds of things that you tried were there any that really seemed to help the book break through? I think, you know, as far as interviews go, being on Good Morning America definitely made a big difference. Being on Fox and Friends, in other words, major national TV shows, which didn't happen immediately. You start out local and you basically create some reels of, you know, you're someone that can talk and they'll consider you if they're a producer on the big shows.

42:06But those big shows, we'd be on them and then sales would just boom, you know. But the word of mouth, more than anything, I think, Tim, what we noticed was we'd have these big sales and then nothing would happen for a week or two and then it'd be a big sales. And it would take like people a week or two to read the book, they'd tell everybody. The word of mouth was crazy. And it was like a chain letter. It just kept going and going and going and going, geometric progressions. I think the other thing that was really big for us was a company called Skillpath and another one, I'm forgetting the name of it right now.

42:38But they were doing, sometimes you get these marketing things that say, we're going to be doing a workshop on AI, and we're going to do it in Davenport, Iowa on Monday, and it will be in the middle of Iowa on Tuesday. So there are these people running around doing seminars everywhere. Is it like Learning Annex back in the day, similar or different? Learning Annex, and I spoke at those places as well, is similar, but here's the value of this. What happened is, let's say you're a trainer for this company. You're going to five cities in Iowa in a week, and you're going to teach the same course. And there's someone else teaching how to communicate with your boss, someone else teaching how to use Excel, whatever.

43:20And what happens is that those are places we never would have gone. And in the back of the room, they were selling our books. We got a lot, a lot of book sales in places. And then that word of mouth thing would take over, and it would just keep exploding, exploding, exploding, exploding, exploding. and what's fascinating is I had sent the book to the guy who runs that company and said you know would you sell this book as part of your back of the room because I knew they did back through mostly audio programs back then they were like 60 for six cassettes and so he said well I don't know there's no money in a book you know whatever so then he was a Christian and he always led the Wednesday night men's group or something he always liked to start with a bible story and he gets to the group and he doesn't have a Bible story in his mind, he opens up his briefcase.

44:04There's a chicken soup book. He reads the story. It makes him cry. He goes in, he reads the story to his Bible group. They go, can you read any more stories? That night he read seven stories from the book to his Bible group. He went, maybe I should reconsider. So they did.

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45:35I want to emphasize something for folks, and this is through my own lens and bias, of course, but part of how you can improve the likelihood of word of mouth with a book like that, or any book really, if you're dealing with, especially, I think, nonfiction stories, is practice it in front of live audiences. You just get such valuable feedback. It is not the same. Speaking as someone who's done 800-plus podcast episodes, it's not the same as virtual feedback. Being able to see faces, see when people are getting distracted, see when they're taking notes, to hear what they ask you after you're done teaching or presenting.

46:16It allows you to refine your materials so well. I have thought, actually, I'm sitting here in Austin, Texas right now, and I have an idea for a short book, which of course, I've been trying to write a short book for 20 years. I haven't yet succeeded, but I have this idea for a short book. And I've thought about maybe reaching out to UT Austin here to teach a class just to work on the material and try to present it because it worked so well for a particularly the first book. And for people listening who might think, well, times have changed. Now it's all about TikTok and this and this and this.

46:51Yes, certain things have changed, but a lot is still the same. So I just wanted to speak to the live audience piece of it, because I think it's so powerful. I never write what I haven't spoken about a lot first, for the exact same reason you're talking about. Because I get real feedback about what lands, what doesn't land, where did I confuse, where did I give them enough information, where it was like redundant, you know, et cetera. And people now, they get a book and they instantly go to create an online course, which they haven't taught live. At least teach it online live before you just record it, you know, and put it online.

47:23So yeah, it's crazy what people don't do that they should. To maybe just put a bow on the chapter of Chicken Soup for the Soul. I mean, you've got some crazy accolades related to this, right? The Guinness Book World Record with seven chicken soup books on the New York Times. bestseller list simultaneously. That was in 1999. There are so many bullet points that I could list off that are just completely nuts, right? When you think back to somebody saying, hey, if you sell 20 ,000 copies, you'd be lucky. And then flashing forward to some of these, you ended up selling the name, the backlist, so 220 plus titles, all future royalties, the trademarks, etc.

48:03How did that happen? How did that come to pass? And why did that happen? I think two things. We got kind of burned out on the process. When we first started it, we were doing a book or two a year. And by the end, we were doing like eight or nine books a year because the publisher wanted more because everything has an arc. And so what happened was the success was starting to dwindle. There was a little saturation in the market, perhaps. We're niching books now. The first books had universal appeal across the board. When you start doing sports fan soul or golfer soul, you start to limit the size of the audience.

48:36So we're doing all these books, and we kind of got tired. And I kind of got burned out at the level of not another one-armed guy climbed onto Everest story or one-legged, you know, blank. I mean, I should have been inspired. And it was like, ah. Not another, my mother died, and she loved bluebirds, and a bluebird landed on her windowsill, so I knew it was my mom. And it probably was, but after a while, I'm tired of hearing that. I knew I was getting a bit jaded, you know? Like, is it not the thing, you know? and also i think i was tired so the guy who was the ceo of our company at the time kind of noticed all that and said would you like to sell it and i said well for the right price you know so we sold it for tens and tens and tens and tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars so yeah it was a good offer happened at the right time so that's how it happened as you're noticing the saturation and the niching down and when you're checking in with yourself you don't have a full body yes, right?

49:33You're like, oh my God, another Bluebird story. I just don't know if I can do it. Were you doing things in parallel that you then kept doing after you sold things off? Because for a lot of people, that could become their identity. And once they sell it, they're like, oh my God, what do I do now? And they have this void that could be really terrifying. And I'm just wondering how you thought about what you did after that. And if you already had something in the hopper or if there was another plan. During that whole time I was running seminars and you know like three four five six hundred people seminar sometimes seven hundred eight hundred people in a room.

50:10I did one seminar in India that had seven thousand Herbalife people in it for three days only they only spoke Tamil the whole thing was translated you know and so I had that going that was always happening and the chicken soup was kind of like was a parallel track to my workshops and my seminars. And so basically, yeah, that was always there. I knew I could go back to that and not go back to that, but just shift my energy over to that. And I did. That's when Patty, my business partner, said, you really should consider putting all these success ideas into a book. And that's what led to the success principles, which is the second kind of chapter of my life, if you will, in terms of that being, but I was always teaching success ever since W.

50:56Clement Stone. So yeah, it wasn't like I was like, oh, I'm going to quit being a corporate person and I have no other idea what I'm going to do, which is, I can't see how it'll be scary. And I have a first edition copy of the success principles, how to get from where you are to where you want to be. Because before the four, I think when was the pub date on the success principles? 2005. 2005, right. So it came out two years before the four-hour work week. And I think I have a brief cameo in there probably because of the kickboxing stuff or something else. And so I have a signed copy at home at my parents' house, actually.

51:34I keep it right where I can see it. So I've had that ever since. And what was it like stepping into the success principles? Were you nervous about that because the bar had been set so high with Chicken Soup for the Soul? Were you able to let go of that? What was that experience like? Well, there is a little bit of an identity thing. I became known as the chicken soup guy, and I had to let go of that. Some people still see me that way, which is fine. But no, I think for me, it was a very natural transition. It was a book. I knew how to sell books. People would say, how long did it take you to write that book?

52:07I'd say 20 years because I was collecting all that data about what works in terms of success, you know. And the actual writing took about a year and a half. I would write from seven at night. Sometimes all of a sudden I'd hear birds singing and it would be getting gray eyes. Oh my God, I've been up all night typing, you know. So I had the regular - Except bluebird again. Well, I had a regular job, you know, which was to run my seminars. Fortunately, most of them were on weekends and evenings. But basically I would go to bed at seven in the morning and sleep till noon, one o 'clock, then get up and do my business again and then write.

52:42So thank God my wife could put up with all that, but she did. And it worked out really well, but it was not that hard. I like writing. I like wordsmithing. I'll give you an example. So I have a chapter in there about the guy who wrote Sleepless in Seattle, the movie. And the next chapter is about a guy who had, it's a coffee roaster. It's all about perseverance, not giving up. And he's up in Seattle and he's sleeping on these coffee bean bags because he couldn't afford an apartment. Now he's uber rich. But what happened was one of his major clients was a coffee shop down in Long Beach, California.

53:19And he would ship the beans through UPS. And UPS had a strike. And I was able to go, wow, blah, blah, blah. I was writing Sleepless in Seattle. In Seattle, this guy was also sleepless. I love being able to make those segues and stuff. Yeah. And then his chapter is called Going the Extra Mile. Basically, I said, when the strike happened, he said, I can't let this guy flounder and not have the beans he needs. And he drove them himself 1 ,250 miles from Seattle to Long Beach. I said, he was willing to go more than one extra mile. he went 1 ,250. Playing with words like that is really fun for me. Yeah.

54:01What was the reason for continuing to do the seminars? Because you're presumably, you'd done very well financially from, as you mentioned, some of the royalties from Chicken Soup for the Soul. Was there something you got personally from doing the seminars? Was it kind of an insurance policy of sorts to have additional revenue stream? Like, why did you keep doing so many in-person events? I love doing it. It's like, I don't know if you, I know you participate in a lot of sports and you get really good at them fast because of the way you play. But whatever your favorite sport is, you play it because you love it when you're playing it, you know?

54:36And for me, nothing turns me on more than being up in front of a group, sharing ideas and stories and experiential exercises where people are interacting and watching their lights come on, their eyes get bright, their awareness has happened, the breakthroughs happen. And, you know, all of a sudden they're coming up and they think, oh my God, you know, and then watching them name their children after me and write their first book and leave shitty marriages and stop letting them, husbands abuse them. And that just, I love it. I'm kind of sort of retiring right now. And literally that was the hardest part of that decision.

55:12So I had to get my wife to agree that I could do X number of workshops a year, but it's now like, and other people are doing all the work. I'm not renting hotels and filling them and doing all that kind of crap I used to do. I used to have 12 staff, and now I have two. And what is your age now, Jack? 81. All right. You are sharp as a razor's edge. And I have to ask two questions. Number one, what do you think contributes to that? Maybe you also have some fantastic genetics. I don't know. But you're very, very sharp. You have a lot of energy. and then the related question is, and I'm not questioning the decision, but why retire?

55:53Why change what you're doing? I realize there are things I want to do that I haven't done. I want to become a really good chef cook. I want to learn how to oil paint. I play the guitar mediocrely. I want to learn to play the piano. All these kind of hobby things that most people do as they go along in life, I've kind of piled them up at the end. I have a 12-year-old grandson son who I absolutely adore, who's the coolest damn kid. He's an old soul kind of kid and amazingly talented. I want to spend more time with him. I want to spend more time with my wife. I think I owe her that after all the time she's put up with me being on the road.

56:29And I enjoy being with her. And I want to just explore things because they're fun, not because I need to. So I want to read a book because it interests me, not because I'm getting ready to write something or I'm getting ready to, you know, whatever. And it's funny, I never thought I would retire. I told everyone for years I'd never retire. And then I was doing an ayahuasca experience down in Costa Rica. I'll tell the story real quick. So the intention that we were to hold that night was forgive the unforgivable. And I thought, I've forgiven my parents. I've forgiven people who embezzled from me.

57:03I've forgiven people who stole from me. I've forgiven the guy who bullied me in school, forgiven both my ex-wives, their lawyers. You know, I've forgiven everybody. What's left to forgive? But I'll do it. I take the medicine, and I'm lying there on my mattress, and all of a sudden, Vladimir Putin's face comes up. I thought, oh, God. I got to forgive Vladimir Putin, who I think is one of the more evil guys on the planet. So I literally started to see his childhood. I saw what motivated him. He wants to be seen as majorly significant, that he did something outrageously huge, like put the Soviet Union back together.

57:38How does he do that? You start bringing all these countries back that they gave away, like the Ukraine and Poland and, you know, all those places. So I finally forgave him. And I felt this energy just, like, leave my body. I didn't know I had such animosity toward him. And then the next thing I see is my door to my office. And the office opens. And the first three feet of my office is like a shrine to how significant I am. It was like. it was like the guinness book world record magazine covers awards uh honorary doctorates you know people that made me honorary sheriff of this town i've got more damn stuff you know and i realized oh my god part of my motivation has been to feel like i i was worthy of being here you know i made a difference i'm significant you know now there's a huge philanthropic loving service-oriented heart in my body.

58:35But I realized, how many honorary doctorates do you need? I'm doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, Canfield. It's like, I would go away for four days on a trip to give a commencement speech to get another doctorate, and I'd leave my wife and my kids. It was crazy. And so I had that awareness, and I thought, I really need to slow down and take a look at all that motivation. And part of it, being 81, it was my 80th birthday last summer, my first birthday in August, I just realized, you know, there's a lot I want to do that I'm not doing. And I'm going to just shove all this work stuff to decide, not totally.

59:13I've got four books I'm still writing, so I'm not retired, retired. But it's like the road warrior, you know, the three weeks in Asia, the three weeks, yeah, all that. I'm not doing that anymore. I love how four books is the retirement plan. That's Jack's version of lazy. So I'm going to come back to the ayahuasca in a second. But before we get to that, what do you think has contributed to you being as vibrant, full of energy, and as sharp as you are? I think several things. Another one, passionate about what I do. Another one, I follow my joy, follow my passion. So there's not a lot of resistance between what was coming through and what I want to do.

59:53I can't say I'm fearless totally, but I have very few fears in my life anymore. Just, you know, if I want to do it, we'll do it. and so that's that inner struggle is mostly gone that uses up a lot of energy and causes disease in the body i don't have a lot of limiting beliefs anymore one of the books i'm writing is about a belief change process that i've co-developed with somebody that literally works so i've cleared just tons of that stuff i'm a big fan of byron katie do you know her work yeah yeah yeah her work is amazing people can find pdfs online also of the work which are super helpful the turnarounds and so on.

1:00:30I did that work for years. I've not ever been with her, but I did her work. I don't get upset about anything. It just is what it is. You know, that whole idea, it is what it is. My desire to change it can also be what it is, but it's not out of anger or out of upset, or it shouldn't be that way. It's all just called, you know, whatever. So that is a big piece of it. I meditate regularly. I cleanse. I told you before we came on that I'm in the eighth day of a 10-day cleanse. So, you know, all this stuff coming out of my body, detoxing, I do saunas regularly. I won't say I exercise every single day because that'd be a lie, but I exercise enough to keep things moving.

1:01:07I only listen to comedy channels on my XM radio. I laugh a lot. I think laughter is very healing. I love your digital detox concept, which I actually put in the 10th anniversary edition of the Success Principles. Amazing. I didn't know that. Yeah, I'll have to send you a copy. I can't believe I didn't do that. So I think that organic food, when I was in graduate school at UMass in Amherst, probably it was 23, 4, something like that. My best friend, we played racquetball every night. He was the owner of a health food store. So I got into the organic thing, the supplement thing, the cleansing thing, all of that really, really early on.

1:01:46And then doing the ayahuasca, the plant medicine, anything that's not clear comes up and out, you know. So that's all good. and I'm very loving. I get massages regularly. All the things people tell you to do, I'm mostly doing. That's a good list. I'm taking some notes for myself. I need to add a few more in the rotation. So you mentioned the ayahuasca, so let's talk about that. I was surprised, not because I would expect anything otherwise, but I wasn't aware that you had these experiences. Is that something that goes back many decades or is there something that prompted you to engage with plant medicine?

1:02:28No, it doesn't go back many decades. I mean, I did not smoke pot in high school and college. It made me fall asleep. So my drug of choice on weekends was a couple beers or, you know, vodka tonic or whatever. And that's another thing I stopped drinking quite a bit ago. But the reality was, I think I, in graduate school, this is so funny because the guy who eventually became the head of drug education for New Hampshire as a person who introduced me to mescaline and peyote and things like that. But I only did a few journeys. I did LSD once, I think. I never did cocaine. I was afraid of all that. I didn't want to get addicted.

1:03:05And I'd seen people who had... So none of that for years and years and years and years. And then Lynn Twist, who runs the Pachamama Alliance, was taking people down to the rainforest in Ecuador to help raise consciousness about, let's save the rainforest. And I went on one of those trips. And one night, one of the journeys, one of the things you do is take ayahuasca in the jungle with a real shaman that's there. And I did that, and I had an amazing breakthrough experiences. And so I became interested in it. How old were you when you had that first experience, would you say? I'm thinking 20 years ago, maybe, with Lynn.

1:03:37Yeah, something like that. And then when I learned about Rhythmia, and I thought, well, I want to do that. And the thing I like about Rhythmia, for those who don't know, it's a center in Costa Rica. And it was founded by a guy who was, in his own words, a total asshole. He was a womanizer, a drug addict, a drinker, got into fights in bars all the time. And so eventually he was going to commit suicide because he couldn't get his life together. He'd been in and out of rehab so many times. and he was worth about$60 million, I think, but he was miserable. So he said he was going to commit suicide.

1:04:11Somebody said, don't commit suicide until you go to the rainforest and work with this guy named Maganda. So he looks him up and looks like a resort and he signs up to go there and gets down there. And the whole thing was, I mean, the resort images were bullshit. It was an old house, dirty mattresses, cockroaches, you know, all this stuff. Hotel paradise, yeah. And it was funny because when he got there, he tells this story, he got there and he flies down, you know, private jet, that whole thing. He gets there and Maganda meets him at the airport. He says, get my bags, man. Maganda's this African guy.

1:04:44And he says, look at your own, man. I don't carry your bags. He was just used to being treated like a king, right? So they get to this place that doesn't look anything like the brochure. And he's about to leave. And he says, come on, man, lie down. And he gets in, there are about eight people lying head to head in the middle of a circle in the garage on mattresses. And they do ibogaine, which is an African thing. Hell of a introduction, yeah. Yeah, but it totally rocked his world because what happened was he ended up going back to his grandfather and he realized his grandfather had been sexually violating him his whole youth and he totally repressed all that.

1:05:20That's why he was so angry, he was repressing. And then finally, I love this last line, he's lying there and Maganda just taps him on the head and goes, happy birthday, man, you're reborn. And he was. And so he decided what he wanted to do was help people have his experience. And the second time he did Ibogaine, he said, you're supposed to open a center, but don't do it with Ibogaine, do it with ayahuasca. So he started that center. So I've been down there five times, do four journeys every time you're there, so 20 journeys. They've been life-changing for me. It's literally life-changing. And I think that's another reason I'm so light and just, you know, it's all good.

1:05:59Yeah, the pharmacology of ayahuasca in and of itself, super, super fascinating. for people who might be interested. Also, outside of the DMT, which is found in the chakruna, the leaves of the shrub, actually related to the coffee plant, but the actual vine itself contains a lot of interesting properties. And there's, I think it's ESPD50, this ethnobotanical search for psychoactive drugs. There's a compendium that goes into, there's a presentation from that that goes into some of the potential properties around neurogenesis and so on, from the beta carbolates and so on themselves in the vine. So even the vine has some very, very interesting properties.

1:06:42What have you observed as someone who's been a practitioner, a student, a teacher in the, for lack of a better term, self-development space for many decades now. What do you think is often missed or undertaught? I mean, you've seen lots of different waves of different things that have become popular, fallen out of popularity. Is there anything you wish folks paid more attention to? I think several things come to mind. I don't think about that very often, but several things come to mind as you ask the question. Number one, I think most people don't understand the impact of unconscious limiting beliefs.

1:07:22They watch the secret, they visualize, they affirm, and then somehow it's not working. They don't know why. And so it's always like either fear or limiting beliefs or just lack of willingness to take action that basically corrupts the process. And I think for me, why I'm writing a book about this limiting belief process is I've just worked with literally thousands of people. Twice a year, I've been doing these free sessions where I'll get 700 people sign up and I'll do this belief process with them. And I'd say 99 % of the people have a major breakthrough. I had a woman got rid of arthritis in like 20 minutes, you know, I mean, ridiculous stuff.

1:07:59So these beliefs we're holding onto that usually got formed between the age of three and eight, somewhere in that range, because of some experience we had, usually a traumatic experience. You make a decision that's never going to happen again. It's not safe to say what I want. It's not safe to ask for things. It's not safe to be sexy, make noise, whatever. What happens is that we don't realize we have that belief. And so we do all the things we're supposed to do and it doesn't happen. And it's very frustrating. And sometimes people give up on the whole human potential movement because they're doing all these things that the gurus were teaching them, but they're not dealing with this block.

1:08:32It's kind of like, I'll tell people, it's like calling up Domino's Pizza to order a pizza and then having this other voice call them and say, forget the order.

1:08:45and you wonder why isn't this showing up you know and so all this work that so many of us taught in the secret and so forth that seems to be a missing piece for a lot of people i would say and fear which is based on limiting beliefs is my experience which we imagine bad things happening in the future is a visualization process usually or thought process which we can intervene on as well. But I think those are the two big things that people don't understand very well. And then I think what we're seeing today that I'm more aware is the power of community, the power of support, the power of not being alone, that there are people there to hold you back in line when you go off.

1:09:29My sister just called a couple hours ago and was having a really tough time. And just spending 10 minutes with her, she was back where she needed to be. But if she didn't have anyone to call, which is increasingly true for her as she gets older and doesn't have a lot of friends who've died and so forth. I think that's really critical. And I think more and more people are becoming aware of that. So you're seeing all these communities evolving. And I think one of the reasons that plant medicine is taken off is because it deals with all those limiting beliefs. They come up. And as we say, arrhythmia, what's coming up is coming out.

1:10:00So don't resist it. That's a good one. Get to clear it. I want to come back to something that we spoke about or you spoke about early on with W. Clement Stone in his intake interview when he asked you, do you take 100 % responsibility for your life? And the reason I want to revisit that is that I grew up in a family where there was a lot of complaining. There was a lot of finger pointing, a lot of blaming, and the villain would change depending on the context. And I've worked very hard to try to correct that training for myself. And most of the time, I would say I do pretty well, but there are certainly times when I seem to revert back to that early experience and find myself complaining about, maybe I don't complain, but I blame.

1:10:51Maybe it's just internally. Maybe I don't give voice to it, but there could be some blaming. How do you encourage people to take more or 100 % responsibility? What are the steps for people who recognize that's what they want to do, but perhaps have the habits of blaming, pointing fingers, complaining? Well, I'll start with a story. A couple therapists told me when she was working with a couple and they were arguing about whose fault it was that something had happened. And a therapist said, well, I'm glad to see you agree on something. They said, what? Well, you obviously agree that if you can figure out whose fault it is, somehow that's going to make your life better.

1:11:36That's really, that's outstanding. Yeah. So basically I teach you a little formula equation, if you call it like E plus R equals O, event plus response equals outcome. So when there's an event and you blame somebody or something, the government, the bank, the economy, your mother, your sister, your neighbor, the boss, whatever you're blaming for this experience you've just had, that event plus your blaming does not produce a better outcome. So we all want a better outcome. We want to experience joy, freedom, peace, love, success, abundance, whatever the outcome that we want, health, longevity, whatever.

1:12:16and certain behaviors do not do that. So I've never found a place where blaming produced a better result. You don't feel better. You don't solve the problem in a way that really gets you anywhere because you've just blamed somebody. And it's amazing how much our culture supports blaming and complaining. I used to call bars ain't it awful clubs. Every profession has their own bar they go to. The firemen go here, the police go there, the lawyers go there, the doctors go there and he'd bitch and moan about everything that happened that day. The economy, the president, the minister of the hospital, whatever.

1:12:51So the reality is it lets off steam and you get agreement, but you don't get resolution. You don't get breakthrough. You don't get better results. So if you look at E plus R equals O, there's only three responses you have any control over, your thoughts, your images, and your behavior. That's it. You can't manage time. You can manage your thoughts in relation to time. You can manage your visualizations in relation to time in your behavior. You think we can control things outside of us. We can only control our response to things outside of us and notice what kind of outcome that produces. And what you've done magnificently and what I've done a lot as well is look at who are the people that are succeeding?

1:13:34What are their responses to certain events? How do they relate to this situation? Which ones produce the better results. I mean, your book, the Titans book, is just amazing. All these people telling you what worked and such amazing... If you haven't read that, by the way, guys, please do. It's incredible. So what happens is blaming, we just discovered, we talked about it. And it's incredible what people blame. I mean, look at our president right now. He's blaming everybody for everything. You know, it's just, it's unfortunate, but he does. But it's not producing particularly great results is a result of it.

1:14:08In order to complain, you have to have a reference point of something better you prefer. So I can't complain about my girlfriend if I don't have an image of some woman who's better than my girlfriend. Now, the reality is nobody ever complains about gravity. You've never seen an old person walking through the mall all bent over and on, gravity, I hate gravity. If it wasn't for gravity, I would be all bent over. Gravity sucks. You've never seen that. Why not? Because you can't change gravity. Everyone knows gravity just is. So we don't complain about it. So anything you're complaining about, you have to have a reference point in your mind of something better, better job, better country, better president, better whatever.

1:14:45And what happens then is we, when we become aware of that, we have this better option that we're not willing to risk creating. So therefore we complain about it. It lets off steam. It gets people to go together. Yeah, I know. My wife's the same way. you know, whatever it is, but we don't get a better result. So, you know, I always say, imagine a situation where every woman in the world dies except my wife. Big thing comes down from outer space, zaps the earth with some energy field. My wife happens to be in a lead mine that day. She's the only one to survive. Would I come to work and complain about my wife?

1:15:24No. Why not? It's the only one. There is no option, right? So we wouldn't complain about it. right so basically if you're complaining then my response to that is what would you prefer what would you have to do to create that one of my friends runs a workshop he does over in in europe he's a european corporate consultant and one of the questions he asks people even when they're pissed off at the company they work for he says on a scale of one to ten how would you rate your quality of life working here and they go three he go why so high it's not a zero something's going on there right so why so high which floors them to kind of break the chain of their thought and then he goes so what would be an eight for you never goes to 10 that's too big a leap for people what would be an eight for you well this would be happening this would be happening what could you do to help generate that result what could you do to help make that happen in your company because that's really what you have to do you can't just sit there and bitch and moan, nothing's going to change, you know?

1:16:25Yeah. So you mentioned Tools of Titans and I wanted to just not to push the book, but it brought to mind because I put together these books mostly as reference books for myself and Tools of Titans particular was an example of not wanting to let learnings from these interviews fall through my fingers like sand through an hourglass. And one of the essays in that book is taken from Jocko Willink, who's a famous Navy SEAL commander. He's done a million things since. His first public interview ever was on this podcast ages ago. And he has this, people can find videos of this too, but it's just called Good.

1:17:08And so if you'll indulge me for a second, I just want to read a minute or two of this. So Good, this is the title. And Jocko has a great video of this for people who want, but it's also in the book. So good. This is something that one of my direct subordinates, one of the guys who worked for me, a guy who became one of my best friends pointed out. He would pull me aside with some major problem or issue. This is when Jocko was in the military that was going on. And he'd say, boss, we've got this thing, this situation, it's going terribly wrong. I would look at him and say, good. And finally, one day he was telling me about something that was going off the rails.

1:17:38And as soon as he finished explaining to me, he said, I already know what you're going to say. And I asked, what am I going to say? He said, you're going to say, good. He continued, that's what you always say. When something is going wrong or going bad, you look at me and say, good. And I said, well, I mean it because that's how I operate. So I explained to him that when things are going badly, there's going to be some good that will come for it. Oh, the mission got canceled. Good. We can focus on another one. Didn't get the new high-speed gear we wanted. Good. We can keep it simple. Didn't get promoted.

1:18:03Good. More time to get better. Didn't get funded. Good. We own more of the company. Didn't get the job you wanted. Good. Go out, gain more experience, build a better resume. Got injured. Good. Need a break from training. It just goes on and on. And then he says, just to put a pin in it, he says, now I don't mean to say something trite. I'm not saying to sound like Mr. Smiley, positive guy. That guy ignores the hard truth. That guy thinks a positive attitude will solve problems. It won't, but neither will dwelling on the problem. No, accept reality, but focus on the solution. Take that issue, take that setback, take that problem and turn it into something good.

1:18:32Go forward. And if you're part of a team, that attitude will spread throughout. And I feel like you reflect that. And certainly Jocko is sort of an archetype of many types. And it's also, for me at least, makes it clear that it's something you train yourself to do. If it doesn't come naturally all the time, just like an exercise habit or anything else, this is something that you have to condition yourself to do with reminders and practices. Are there any reminders or practices that you have for yourself to stay on the rails, so to speak, with the 100 % responsibility? I've always got something I'm working on, and you have to have something that keeps it in your focus.

1:19:18So if I'm engaging in some kind of negative self-talk, then I take and I create an opposite affirmation. I'll put that on some Post-its and put it on the refrigerator door and on my bathroom mirror and stuff like that. because we know it normally, you probably have other data than I do on this, but neuroscience tends to tell us that it takes about 66 days to change belief. And it can take longer depending on who it is and how badly that belief is ground into you through the trauma of its creation. But generally it requires repetition. There's a guy, I forget his name right now. He's the head of peak performance at West Point.

1:19:55He wrote a book about it. And one of the things when I read the book, What he does is when the students are wanting a behavioral change, they create an affirmation, and he teaches them, every time you walk through a door, reach up and touch the door, Jim, and say your affirmation. Now I have a repetitive system that's built in that tells me to do that. Think about how many doors you go in and out of every day, into the bathroom, into the kitchen, out of the kitchen, into your car, back out, you know, whatever. And so it's that level of repetition until it becomes, you know, ground in. They don't have to repeat that.

1:20:28I mean, I know my phone number. I don't have to repeat it. I did when I first got it, you know. And you want to get your new ideas like that. I always say if you can build in four new behavioral shifts a year, think about in 10 years, you got 40 new shifts. That's a lot. So for me, for example, when we read the, what's the book? Shaman from Mexico. Boy. Oh, it's Carlos Castaneda. No, a different one. Different Shaman from Mexico. Yeah, this is me being sharp at anyone.

1:21:03anyway he had these the four agreements that's the guy the book oh this is uh don don mcgill ruiz yeah so my wife and i decided we'll take the four agreements and we'll work on each agreement for three months and so for three months that was the agreement you know not not making other people wrong thinking positive etc and we had to like reinforce that And we had little signs that told us what to focus on and so forth. So I think it's important to do that because, as you know, we are so distracted today now with AI and scrolling through Instagram. And, I mean, I even get caught in that occasionally.

1:21:41I go looking for something on YouTube, and the next thing I know, I'm watching old reruns of Jay Leno.

1:21:49But I think that, yeah, reminders are important. yeah i'm going to use the doorway that is a great cue it's actually something if people want to read exploring the world of lucid dreaming doorways are also really helpful for some of that people can check out steven laberge if you want to go into a really weird town and also for people who might be wagging a finger at me i know that carlos castaneda was not a shaman but it was the teachings of don juan i think a yaki way of knowledge that was the book that i was thinking of. Yeah, that was one of the first books I read. It was a great book. It's a compelling book.

1:22:23I mean, whether it's real or not, it's a fun read. So I'm looking at a blog post. This is from jackcanfield.com. Productivity tips. And you, like me, I'm sure have quite a few blog posts, but you've got, I'll just read the headlines here for a second. There's clean up your messes. Two, focus. Three, just say no. Four, practice the rule of five, which we've talked about a bit, five meditate. And this is going to seem so mundane, but I'm very curious if you could expand a bit on clean up your messes and how you go about doing it. Because I have a few Achilles heels, as I suppose we all do. And one of them is I collect so much goddamn paper.

1:23:04I am a hypographic note-taking maniac and I just have paper. It metastasizes is to cover every flat surface that I have. And I try to take photos here and there and digitize, but it's messy and it really agitates me. And I'm not saying that that's ideal. Maybe it shouldn't bother me. But how do you think about, why is number one of five on productivity tips, clean up your messes? And how do you do it? Well, you're talking to a fellow person who needs the same rehab, just so you know. I take more notes at a conference than almost anybody. And I've got literally books full of notes and taking notes when I'm listening to stuff and podcast things.

1:23:49I think the problem is that every time you look at all that, it's taking your attention. And so the research that I've read says we have the ability to hold about seven attention units at a time. And so what happens is that you'll notice the research also, like if a waitress, if you haven't paid the bill yet, any good waiter or waitress can tell you what you had. As soon as you pay the bill, you ask them 10 minutes later, they don't remember anymore. They don't need to. So what happens is all those attention units are being taken up by things that are incomplete. So messes in my world are incompletions.

1:24:24So anything that's incomplete. Now that can be that thing you started, you didn't finish. It could be that letter you were writing, the book you're not finished up, the notes you have over here. but what I've learned to do is find a place for those things you know like if I have lots of filing systems I have a filing systems in my computer I have filing systems I bought 10 drawers in my office that are file drawers and so things go in those places and if I need to remember something to do it I have a what's called a come up file so let's say I need to do something March 28th I have a folder called March so on the 1st of March I go through that folder of everything I put in there and then I put it into my calendar for those days or I can put it now, you know, called Steve on March 28th.

1:25:06But if there's papers related to that, things we're going to talk about, whatever, it goes in my March file. So it's there. It's not in my visual queue. So what happens is, whether it's a relationship, and we've all had that experience of walking through a grocery store and seeing someone down the aisle we don't want to talk to, so we go down the aisle and hope we evade them, you know, because it's incomplete. So all that energy is taken up because it's not complete. All the things you've never said, the upsets, the thank yous, the acknowledgements, the wanting acknowledgements and not having got them, they're taking up space in your head.

1:25:40So everything you can close up, it's almost like you're taking a piece of paper off the desk and pretty soon you have a clean desk. You know Dan Sullivan's work, the strategic coach? Yeah. Yeah. He's got some great stuff. Well, one of the things I learned from him, he doesn't have a desk. He's got three or four offices with conference tables. And he'll go into one and say, bring over that stuff. And he'll work with one of his people. They do all the things they need to do. They walk out with all the papers. He's done. Doesn't have that pileup shit that I deal with and you deal with. But the reality is that everything is incomplete.

1:26:12You're walking through the hall of your house, you see a little crack in the wall. And you go, oh, it needs to get fixed. Pretty soon, you won't see that crack because you have to block it out of your awareness to pay attention to other things. So now things are not getting handled that need to get handled. And also, if you do keep paying attention to it, that's time you could have spent writing your book or thinking about your project or loving your mother or giving good feedback to your girlfriend or whatever. So the reality is it's really important to clean that up. And there's financial messes, there's garage messes, there's the attic, the tool drawer, the door that has the leashes.

1:26:48Oh my God, I can feel my cortisol piling up as you're listening. Well, sounds like you're in my house on my nanny cam. I'm going to send you. I have a sheet of like 21 things you need to clean up. I used to work for a company called Insight Training Seminars. And if you were a trainer, you had to clean all that up because you had to be living. You were complete. You couldn't teach it if you weren't living it. Think about it. Financial records, your checkbook, not balanced, stuff in your car, clothes that don't fit anymore. I mean, people go down a list of all that stuff. I literally had to go through my clothes at one point.

1:27:24I'm a shirt whore. I love shorts, you know? This is another thing we have in common. No, I have so many t-shirts. It's just unacceptable. It's indefensible. I know. I know. I know. But I had to go through and kind of clean it out, you know, because it got to a point where I couldn't even put anything in the closet. So the rule is if I haven't worn it in the last 60 days and it's not a tuxedo or something like that, it's gone. I love all the decluttering books that are out there and all that kind of stuff. One person said, go through your house, take everything you haven't used in the last 30 days, put it in a box, label the box, what's in it.

1:28:00And if another 120 days go by and you haven't used it, just throw it out because you're never going to use it again. Well, I'll tell you a dirty little secret, which is I moved eight years ago from San Francisco to Austin and I moved all my stuff from California into storage because there was a gap where I was shopping for a place and I didn't have anywhere to put all this stuff. It has been sitting in storage, all that stuff for eight years. I get a bill for it every month and I'm like, I should go down and take a look at that. And I'm like, I cannot allow myself to look at that stuff because I'm going to want to keep all this junk that I haven't needed in eight years.

1:28:38So it's my ignorance is bliss approach. It's a small tax to pay at this point. Oh yeah. George Carlin does a really good routine on stuff if you can find it it's really amazing oh i will find it george carlin what a genius also his his late night bit on heaven and hell people can look that up where it's you know with in heaven the french of the cooks the japanese the lovers and this and this and then in hell x y and z it's also worth checking out but decluttering the 21 things that i need to clean up please do send that to me yeah i will i will is that something we could share in the show notes for this episode.

1:29:20Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I think it's even a page in my book. If not, I'll get it for you. All right, perfect. Jack, we've covered a ton of ground. I don't want to take up your entire afternoon on a Friday, but is there anything else that, I'm not in any rush whatsoever, but is there anything else that you'd like to talk about that we haven't covered? Anything you'd like to say, request of my audience, anything at all that you'd like to bring up that I haven't already prompted? I would just say, kind of self-servingly, that if you would like to know more about my work, the book that Tim talked about, it's found in its 20th anniversary edition, The Success Principles, How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

1:30:01It's really the basis of everything I do. If you haven't read a chicken soup book, start with the first one. It's really brilliant. One thing I did, Tim, I haven't done for all my books, but I did with that book, I literally, after we'd probably edited every story five or six times, went out to Colorado to a ski resort in the summer, took three days, read every story out loud. Because what I know is when most people read, they're sub-vocalizing in their brain, they're not speed reading. And if it didn't sound as one of my actors says, coming trippingly off the tongue, I would rewrite it. And that book went on to sell 105 million copies.

1:30:36So basically, I think that was a good thing to do. So I always tell people, like you said, get feedback, but also read it out loud. How does it sound to you? And then make sure you get, I always say, get feedback from at least 20 people. First Teenage Soul book, we had an entire high school suspend classes for a day. Over 1 ,000 kids read all the stories. So we had an Excel spreadsheet. They all graded every story to scale of one to 10. That book went on to sell, I think, six million copies or something like that. So feedback, I love what Ken Lancer says, feedback is the breakfast of champions, you know?

1:31:15Feedback is the breakfast of champions. And most people avoid feedback because they're afraid of what they're going to hear. And you got to know that we call it constructive feed forward, you know, constructive feedback. But anyway, I would read that book. Go to my website, jackcanfield.com. There's all kinds of things there you might be interested in. And it's interesting, I hadn't, I normally say this, But last night, for some reason, I was looking up something, and I couldn't remember it. And I thought it was, there's a guy named Nick Nanton. He did a documentary of my life called The Soul of Success.

1:31:47And I went in there to find one little thing, and I don't know, called egotistical, whatever. I watched the whole damn hour on YouTube. It's free. Just go The Soul of Success on YouTube, and you'll see one of the most amazing documentaries ever made, I think, because he's an Emmy-winning documentarian. so that'll give you some information about some of the stuff tim and i talked about that maybe we didn't go deep enough on and that's about it i would say you know and we'll link to everything we've discussed in the show notes jack canfield also just to reiterate the spelling c-a-n-f-i-e-l-d jackcanfield.com you can find all that we'll of course link to everything as per usual in the show notes at tim.blog slash podcast for everybody including the 21 things to clean up which is going to ride hard on my OCD, which is properly diagnosed.

1:32:37I'm not just making that up as a swipe against OCD, folks. Big shocker to anyone who actually knows me. I'm kidding. But what I will say as we wind to a close, Jack, is that you've had a huge impact on my life. Your work is at an impact. You personally have had an impact. You've been so gracious, so patient. I don't know if you remember this, but I remember when I was volunteering at that event, S-Face, and I had all the speakers. I had some type of waiver because I wanted to record everything. And the waiver was, I'm sure, all sweeping and full encompassing of everything because I had probably gotten it online somehow.

1:33:14And I remember you had your glasses on and you sort of pulled down the glasses like a very patient parent. And you're like, Timothy, I have some questions about this release. And then you scratched everything out. you scratched a bunch of nonsense out and you signed it you've had an incredible impact on my career and i just want to thank you for all of that and for what you offer to the world as an eternal student and as a teacher well thank you and i really appreciate you taking the time well i've enjoyed this one of the best podcasts ever been on so thank you yeah my pleasure at least i can do and i'll say it one more time everybody who's listening we will link to everything in the show notes, tim.blog slash podcast, just search Canfield, C-A-N-F-I-E-L-D, and it will pop right up.

1:34:02And until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. And thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend. Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.

1:34:40It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday.

1:35:16Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. As many of you know, for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Midnight Luxe mattress from today's sponsor, Helix Sleep. I also have one in the guest bedroom downstairs and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. I also recently had a chance to test the Helix Sunset Elite. The Sunset Elite delivers exceptional comfort while putting the right support in the right spots. It is made with five tailored foam layers, including a base layer with full perimeter zoned lumbar support right where I need it, and middle layers with premium foam and microcoils to create a soft contouring feel.

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1:37:36Thank you.