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The Tim Ferriss Show
#833: Jack Canfield — Selling 600+ Million Books, Success Principles, and How He Made The 4-Hour Workweek Happen
01:37:36
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- [00:02]
Tim Ferriss
Hello everybody, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today, I'm so happy to finally have on this podcast. He effectively made my career. Certainly the four hour workweek would not have happened without him, which is a backstory a lot of folks don't have. Jack Canfield. You can find him online. Jack canfield.com that's Canfield C, A N F I E L D. He is a bestselling author, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur. He's the founder and CEO of the Canfield Training Group which trains entrepreneurs, corporate leaders and more how to accelerate the achievement of their personal and professional goals. Jack is the co author of more than 200 books including the Success how to Get from where youe Are to where youe Want to Be and perhaps most famously Chicken Soup for the Soul as a series which includes 44,0 New York Times bestsellers and which has sold more than 600 million copies in 50 plus languages around the world. He has conducted live trainings for more than a million people in more than 50 countries, holds two Guinness World Records. We'll talk about that. And is a member of the National Speakers Association's Speakers hall of Fame. I love Jack. He's so kind, so generous. He's been so patient with me even when I was a very boisterous, chest puffing, early 20 something way back in the day. And you can find all things jack@jackcanfield.com without further ado, please enjoy a very wide ranging, very practical, very tactical conversation with none other than Jack Canfield. Optimal. Minimal. At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
- [01:38]
Jack Canfield
Can I answer your personal question now?
- [01:41]
Tim Ferriss
It is inappropriate time. What if I did the opposite?
- [01:44]
Jack Canfield
I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. Ferris show.
- [01:57]
Tim Ferriss
Jack. Jack. Jack. It is so good to see you.
- [02:00]
Jack Canfield
Glad to see you my friend. Yeah, this is fun.
- [02:02]
Tim Ferriss
I'm so thrilled that you're here and that we're seeing each other again. It has been a long time and as I warned you before we started recording, I said I really doubt people in my audience have the full context or even partial context. So I want to give them some of the backstory because one could make a compelling argument that I owe my career as such to you because you made the introduction to Stephen Hanselman who became my book agent. At the time he was a, I suppose, former superstar editor on his way to becoming an agent. So we were both starting out in a sense. And you made that introduction. But there's even more backstory that I have to share with folks. That would have been 2005, 2006. I was around 27, 28 at the time. Much earlier this would have been when I just moved to Silicon Valley. I was riding around in my mom's hands, hand me down POS minivan, which was broken in every way imaginable, listening to Personal Power 2 on cassette tape to and from my job as I commuted on 101. I was eating at Jack in the Box in the parking lot of a Safeway a couple nights a week because that's what I could afford. And I was volunteering for a group called the Silicon Valley association of Startup Entrepreneurs, which is a mouthful, but esvase and I had volunteered, which I still recommend to folks, because I knew nobody. Nobody knew me. And I always tried to do extra jobs as a volunteer. And eventually they said, wow, this kid really likes working for free. Let's give him more responsibility. Hey, would you like to organize some speakers for a main event? And I thought to myself, absolutely. This is a great way for me to meet some of my heroes. And I invited Trip Hawkins of Electronic Arts. I invited you because of the phenom. Of course, we'll talk about it. But Chicken Soup for the Soul invited all sorts of folks, and that was the first time that we met. You graciously agreed to come to that, and here we are more than 20 years later, and I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. So thank you for all of that. These are these sliding door moments where there's no way I could play the alternative. But the what if certainly looms large. What if you hadn't said yes to come to that event? What if I hadn't reached out and said, jack, all these notes I have from this lecture I've been giving to this high tech entrepreneurship class, is there anything here? And frankly, I hoped you would say no because I didn't want to write a book. And you were like, actually, I think there's something here. And before I could say anything, you started making introductions, and here we are. So thank you for everything, Jack. I really appreciate it.
- [04:43]
Jack Canfield
Let me just say, you're someone who knows how to take advantage of an opportunity. You've done really well.
- [04:52]
Tim Ferriss
You got to take your shot when you can take your shot.
- [04:54]
Jack Canfield
That's right.
- [04:55]
Tim Ferriss
And it's been one hell of a ride I'm thrilled to have you on. And I was looking through some of the materials beforehand. We're going to run out of time before we run out of topics. But ultimately, we will rewind the clock and go back to some of the beginning chapters. But I have to ask, because there is a bullet here. The story behind more than 300 million copies sold in China. How does that happen? Because I'm imagining Chicken Soup does not have the same connotation over there. So I don't even know if the title's the same.
- [05:25]
Jack Canfield
Well, what happened is a company called Ennui Publishing and they decided to publish the book. And what's interesting is we had a contract that they would pay us 10 cents for every book sold in China. But Ennui was half owned by the government and half owned by private equity. So they decided to make it a textbook to teach English to kids in high school with Chinese on one side, English on the other. And they printed millions and millions of books. Because it was in the schools, which was the government side, we didn't see one penny of millions of books sold. So I learned how to write better contracts in the future. But the fact is, a lot of Chinese people have had major transformations because of the books have taken off and they have sold then in the general public as a result of kids learning about them in school, showing it to their parents, so on and so forth. So it all works out. It all paid off. But that was a major lesson for us. You got to be really, really careful when you're. When you're interacting with the Chinese and making deals. They're very, very clever.
- [06:29]
Tim Ferriss
You got to be careful. There is an expression. I'm not going to say that everyone uses this, but in Chinese, which is. Which is if you can trick them, then you should trick them. And not saying everyone subscribes to that, but you got to have your wits about you for sure. Part of the reason I love doing this podcast is it gives me a pretext for doing a bunch of Internet sleuthing on my friends without seeming like a stalker or a crazy person. And I really had no understanding or grasp of your childhood, your upbringing, anything like that. Could you speak to a bit for folks? Just the basics of where you grew up, what you learned or didn't learn from parents or household things of that type.
- [07:13]
Jack Canfield
Well, I was born in 1944. My father was in the Air Force. World War II was going on. He trained bomber pilots, actually. So from the time I was born till time I was six, we lived in three different states with, you know, military bases. I don't remember much of it at all, but when I was six, we moved to West Virginia, which is where I mostly grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia. Steel town, coal mining, all that kind of stuff. And my father was an alcoholic, and he got violent when he was drunk. And my mother decided to divorce him when I was 6. And we went to live with my grandmother, and I actually lived in the attic of her house for years. And then eventually she met my. My stepfather, who would just come out of the Navy. And I grew up poor. You know, we were not wealthy at all. And so my father was one of these people. When I went off to college, I said, father, he said to me, he gave me $20. He looked over me in the eye and he said, now there's. That says, if you need a helping hand, look at the end of your own arm. There'll be no more gifts coming from me. Okay? So I learned early on, you know, I. I worked my way through high school. I was a lifeguard of the country club pool. I had this thing I was in, but not of. I was in the country club meeting girls whose parents were. But I wasn't of that. And I went to a private military school from the fifth grade till I graduated high school. My rich aunt had a son named Jack who died. If I was talking about kismet and fate, if my name was Bob, we'd not be talking right now. But because I was Jack, she adopted me after his death and sent me to a private school in town. So I got a much better education than my brother or anyone else. But I. Again, I was in, but I wasn't of. I wasn't a doctor's son. I didn't, you know, the president of the guy who owned the Cadillac dealership. That was not my crowd yet. I got to hang out with those kids and eventually got into Harvard on a scholarship. Play football. I was a football player. I was honorable mention all state. I was an end. All that kind of stuff. I grew up thinking, you know, you got to work really, really hard. Which I did. I worked my way through Harvard. I cut grass, I cleaned the dorms. I did all. Got up and served food at 6 in the morning and fell asleep immediately in French class. You know, I remember one day, I'm like this, falling. I'm totally asleep in this class at nine in the morning, and this professor comes over and he shakes me awake and he says, you can leave now. The class is over.
- [09:37]
Tim Ferriss
That's very understanding. Content.
- [09:39]
Jack Canfield
I know. Well, whatever. And then I made. This is interesting. I majored in Chinese history. Which is interesting why later I learned that I Had past lives in China and Tibet. And so it made sense to me. But at that time, my freshman year, I got all Cs and everything. Here I was a student, high school, get to Harvard. And I always say I graduated in the half of the class that made the top half possible, you know, so there were a lot of smart, smart kids there, valedictorians from their schools. And I said to my counselor, I need an easy A for my sophomore year. Says, well, this guy, he used to be the ambassador to China. He gives everyone an A. Why don't you take his class? And he knew Chiang Kai check. And Mao Zedong. He had slides of everything, you know, and I got the A. But I fell in love with Chinese history for some weird reason that was my major, you know. So I always tell people, prepare me really well to do the work I do. It had nothing to do with it. My senior year, I took an elective class. I said, I need another easy A. And someone said, take Socrate 10 Socrates Social Relations 10. It's an encounter group. You just sit in there and talk about your feelings and everybody gets an A. So I went over there and I took the class and I fell in love with human potential. Oh my God. There's this thing called psychology and people and human behavior and feelings and, you know, motivation. So I said, well, how do I get into that? They said, well, it's a little late. You would get into psychology, how to study as an undergraduate. I hadn't. They said, well, you could sneak into psychology through education. So I went to the University of Chicago, got a master's degree in education, taught in an all black inner city high school for two years and got teacher of the year. My first year I went to get Jesse Jackson's church. I became friends with people in the jazz community. Really got deeply, I would say probably for a year I almost wished I was black because I thought white people are milquetoast. And these black guys, they got energy and the poetry and the songs and the music and the dancing and the anger and the fear and all that. So then basically I started realizing my students were not motivated. They didn't believe they could learn because they were black in the inner city and they didn't have role models. And that became my passion. How do I motivate them to achieve? And I met W. Clement Stone, my mentor. He was a self made. He was worth $600 million in 1968, which is when I was there. Yeah. His best friend was Napoleon Hill who wrote Think and Grow Rich and together they wrote a book together. And then also he wrote a book called the Success System that never failed. That's where I learned about motivation and setting goals and having vision and values and working hard and using affirmations and visualization, all of that.
- [12:19]
Tim Ferriss
I want to come back to W. Clement stone at 600 million. We'll come back to that because that's a mind boggling number, especially for that point in time. But anytime, even now, but if we back up for a second teacher of the year first in Chicago, what made that possible? What do you think contributed to that?
- [12:39]
Jack Canfield
I think what happened was it was this school probably five years earlier was all white and Jewish. And then it was this black invasion they would call it in the community. And there was a white flight out to the suburbs. So what happened was a lot of the teachers didn't really want to be there. They wanted to go with the kids who went. So there was a certain kind of malaise and almost an upset that they had. And I think a lot of them didn't treat the kids very well. And the other thing is nobody was teaching African American history. I was teaching history, you know, American history and world history. And I found a book called before the Mayflower. And it was by a guy named Rome Bennett. And it was a book about African American history. It's just a paperback. It was like 3.95. I bought one for every one of my students. And I would teach black history along with white history. You know, history is always written by the victors. So basically white history is our history. And they didn't know any of this stuff. And the fact that I would do this and the fact that I was loving and kind and motivational and believed they could do everything, it made them, I think, just like me because I was on their side. And then they started the African American Club, African American Studies Club asked me if I'd be their sponsor. I said yes. So that was another thing. I ended up coaching the swimming team because the guy who was supposed to do it had majored in basketball. He was a phys ed teacher. He didn't know that much about swimming. I had swum competitively in high school and it was a waterfront instructor, summer camps in Maine and teach kids to swim and all that kind of stuff. So I think the last part of that was that I was starting to do these human potential activities in my classes. You know, I'd get them into pairs and have them do go back and forth, say I can't. Then I'd have them Go replace the sentence with I won't and which feels stronger, which feels more true, which is, you know, and they go, yeah, cancer. Really a victim word. So I was doing maybe 10 minutes of that every day, along with teaching my history, and I think that's kind of why. And the big moment for me, this is so cool. You know, you have these little moments in life where you get affirmation from outside. So Sammy Davis Jr. Was at school. He was going to do a talk to the kids. He'd written a book called I Can, and he was there when I got the award. They give him the award the same day. And I'm walking off stage and he looked at me and he said, you must be really cool to have gotten that award from those kids. I think I lived on that for days.
- [15:02]
Tim Ferriss
I mean, that's a hell of a compliment from a hell of a person and a hell of an entertainment.
- [15:06]
Jack Canfield
Yeah. And you're like 22 years old or something. You know, it's a big deal. Yeah.
- [15:09]
Tim Ferriss
The right words at the right time. I mean, just like you were probably offering the right words at the right time to a lot of those students. Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. I don't know about you, but with so many options for banking and investing these days, also with accounts scattered all over the place, it's harder than ever to track finances. And that is why I am happy to recommend this episode's sponsor, Monarch. Named best budgeting app of 2025 by the Wall Street Journal, Monarch brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface with letting you see your full financial picture at a glance. You can even have widgets that show you your spending and so on so that you don't have to even open the app on your phone. One person on my team has tried four other budgeting apps and said linking his accounts on Monarch was by far the easiest, cleanest interface, et cetera, et cetera. Another one of my employees said Monarch has made it so much easier for her and her husband to be on the same page financially and to track spending as a couple. So why not get serious and get simple about getting your financial act together so you can see everything in one place before year's end. And get Monarch. Try it out. Use code tim@monarch.com that's M O N A R C H monarch.com for half off of your first year. That's 50% off of your first year at monarch.com with code TIM. 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 that create a soft contouring feel. Helix offers a 190 sleep trial, fast free shipping and a 15 year warranty. So check it all out. And now you can get 27% off anything on their website. So site wide. So just go to helixsleep.com Tim one more time. Helixsleep.com Tim with Helix Better sleep starts now. So if we flash forward to W. Clement Stone, how did he make $600 million? That's just not to fixate on that, but I mean that's a non trivial sum of money.
- [17:47]
Jack Canfield
Three ways. Number one, he started an insurance company called Combined Insurance and it was really low premiums, in other words, the price you paid for it. And he believed everybody could afford something. And he wanted to insure the people that often wouldn't be insured by the big companies. And because of that, and then he also hired people that were not college graduates to be salespeople. He had a training system. This is so cool. Think about this. So here's the training system. He'd tell him what to do, you know, maybe a Monday class. He said, now we're going to go tomorrow and I'm going to go in. He's teaching these kids who never graduated college to sell to CEOs of banks and companies. It was intimidating for them. He said, we're going to go in, I'm going to make a sale, at least a presentation. You watch what I did. And so goes in, they do the presentation, either sold or didn't. They go out for coffee afterwards. What did you notice? I did. You did this. You did this. You did this. Okay, but you missed that. Next time, watch that. They go in, they do it again, do that about three or four times in the morning. And a fourth time they're going in and he just turns to the kid and he goes, this one's yours. He just stepped back and the kid, maybe he made it, maybe he blew it. But afterwards they go out and Say, okay, you missed two things. We're going to go to the next one to watch me do those two things. Next one, he'd go, this is yours. By the end of the day, they knew how to sell.
- [19:07]
Tim Ferriss
That's incredible.
- [19:08]
Jack Canfield
It was amazing. So he had salespeople all over the country selling these low price insurance things. Second thing he did, he was a genius when it came to real estate. He invested in a lot of real estate. The coolest thing he ever did. If you go into Chicago on rails, that's a big area where they, you know, bring beef in and they were processing beef all those days. And it's also a big central distribution point for everything. There's a place, it's just huge wide, like six rails wide going into the main station. And there was no more real estate to buy. And so he said to the guys who own the railroad land, he said, can I buy the air rights over the railroad tracks? And they said, sure. So if you go to that part of Chicago, there are all these buildings over the tracks which he got a hundred year lease on the air rights and they built these huge skyscrapers which he then got the royalties for the commissions for the rents for whatever. So he was just very creative. And the third thing he did, he invested well in everything else as well. So a lot of it was investment. And then he also produced Success magazine started by W Cornerstone and he was a speaker, he had books, he sold the magazine. Og Mandino, who wrote the Greatest Salesman. So I'm working in the Stone foundation at one point. So I quit teaching. I worked for Stone.
- [20:30]
Tim Ferriss
Why did you quit teaching?
- [20:31]
Jack Canfield
Because Stone offered me a job. Okay. So Stone said, we have this achievement motivation program. We're teaching teachers to do it, to go into the schools. We don't have anyone to say inner city experience. You do. Would you come work for me? And it was like more than I was making as a teacher. And I went, yeah, okay. And it's him, right? Working for him was amazing. And he just took everybody under his wing, loved them. Imagine you're young, you're 23 maybe. He says to you, working my foundation, go teach this stuff. If there's any training you ever want to take anywhere, it's on me. Go for it. I took 37 weekend workshops that year.
- [21:11]
Tim Ferriss
You're the, you're the edge case he has to budget for.
- [21:14]
Jack Canfield
Yeah, it was like a grant from the government or something. So I took all these workshops, you know, everything from Carnegie to Gestalt therapy and body work and meditation. And so he funded all that, which was great, but he really was an amazing being that just. I learned so much by being in his presence. You know, I'll tell you a story. I got an intake interview, first day, and he says to me, do you take 100 responsibility for your life? And I said, I don't know. He said, to see yes or no answer, son. Think. I said, well, based on. I don't even understand it, probably no. He says, do you ever blame anybody for anything? Yeah. Do you complain about anything? Yeah. Do you ever make excuses why you didn't achieve something? Yeah. You don't take 100 responsibility. So he introduced me to the whole concept of 100 responsibility. And then he said to me, do you watch television? I said, yeah. He said, how many hours a day? I said, I don't know, Good Morning America, the news, maybe a movie at night, you know, 11 o' clock or something like that. So that's three hours a day. Just cut out an hour a day. I said, why? He said, because that'll give you 365 additional hours a year to be productive. Divide that by a 40 hour work week, that's nine and a half weeks. That'll give you a 14 month year. You'll be much more competitive than all the people in your field if you do that. So I did that. You know, he was teaching me in the freaking interview. It was cool.
- [22:41]
Tim Ferriss
What were some of the things that really stuck with you after you got the job? Whether it was through osmosis, whether it was through direct teaching. Why did that job and that mentorship have the impact that it did? Were there any other examples or stories that come to mind?
- [22:58]
Jack Canfield
He challenged me because as an educator, I was probably making back then 30,000 a year if I was lucky. You know, that was like now people like a lot more inflation. But what happens is, he said, I want to challenge you to make a hundred thousand dollars a year. And if you do it, it's only because of what I taught you. He taught me to set goals, to believe in them, to visualize it, you know, as if it's already happening. Have an affirmation. I'm so happy and grateful. I'm now, whatever. And I started doing that and I took the goal of a hundred thousand dollars seriously. And every morning I'd wake up and I'd put a hundred thousand dollar bill on the ceiling. I didn't even know one existed at the time. Banks actually trade them back and forth, but I took a hundred dollar bill. I projected it with a member overhead Projectors. I projected it onto a piece of like flip chart paper, traced it, added some extra zeros, and then I put that on the ceiling. Every morning I wake up, I see that say, my affirmation, which went at that time, God is my instant supply. And large sums of money coming quickly and easily as I earn $100,000 a year. And about, I'd say, maybe a month or two into it, I'm in the shower. I had a hundred thousand dollar idea because I'd written a book called 100 Ways to Enhance Self Concept in the Classroom. And I used to get a quarter 25 cents for every book that got sold. And I said, wow, sell 400,000 books, I get a hundred thousand dollars. That was my first $100,000 idea. And so to make a long story short, because I could do a half hour in that story, I literally started to sell more books. I started a bookstore, literally a mail order bookstore, where you could buy my book, had one product. And then my wife at the time said, you know, we're selling that book. I know what happened. She'd ordered something in the mail. Have you ever ordered something in the mail? And it comes, and then there's like five flyers for other products they have in the. In the box.
- [24:58]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, sure.
- [24:59]
Jack Canfield
So she had done that, 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. But I went like, okay, this is a success. Then my wife says, do 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 Soul. The second year, I got four checks. Tim, you know this because of your success with the books. The first time you get a check for $1 million for three months royalties, you go like, are you kidding me? It changed my life, you know?
- [25:43]
Tim Ferriss
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 this all 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. How did it start?
- [26:15]
Jack Canfield
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 or 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, that 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? My daughter needs to hear that story. I went, no. And over a course of two months, I must have had four people a day say that story in a book, that story in a book, 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. Seventy 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. And 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 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 he should be his co author because he's 5, 6 of the way through the book. How 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. 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 the malls.
- [28:41]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, I remembered B. Dalton.
- [28:42]
Jack Canfield
Yeah. 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 Bidon 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 be 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 like gasped, you know, like you're the guy who was in the hall. I was too shy to do that. So it worked out really well. But you know, you talked about rejection. We were turned down by 144 publishers once we had a manuscript, then took us over a year to sell the book.
- [29:25]
Tim Ferriss
When I think about that story and I think about the four 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. 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. I knew that the material stuck, so to speak. And you had been testing these stories also in front of audiences and people have 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?
- [30:10]
Jack Canfield
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, or what often are called in a speaking business, your signature story that other people had let us use with their signature stories. So we knew they were tear jerkers, 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. So 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.
- [30:45]
Tim Ferriss
Sure.
- [30:47]
Jack Canfield
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. And we just knew to stick with it. We would have self published eventually and I would have made a lot more money, but I would have been. I didn't really want to be a publisher. I wanted to be a speaker and a writer.
- [31:28]
Tim Ferriss
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 and A with you. So. 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, we'll read the manuscript. Some people wouldn't even take it. And 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. So 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?
- [32:43]
Jack Canfield
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. 512 weeks. 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 Men are for Mars. We talked to Ken Blanchard who wrote the One Minute Manager. We talked to Barbara DeAngelis who wrote a book on love and then another book on TM that someone had written that was successful. And we said, what should we do? And 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 it's. 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 eat or do it 5 times or take 5 post its off and do each one time. Call a church, can we talk in your church? Can we 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 non stop. We were giving talks at churches on Sunday morning, Wednesday night, you know, whatever they are, 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. And we did radio shows that were like at 2 in the morning, maybe 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. And so literally it was that level of non stop activity. And it was interesting because we were pretty amped up in the beginning and we talked to the psychic guy he was entranced. 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.
- [35:43]
Tim Ferriss
What prompted the trip to the psychic, do you remember?
- [35:47]
Jack Canfield
Yeah, I do. We knew his wife, and she was a friend of ours, and 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?
- [36:05]
Tim Ferriss
And how old were you? Or what date was this? Either one. Roughly when the first Chibul for the soul came out.
- [36:12]
Jack Canfield
93. And I was born in 44. So what is that, 49 years old? Something like it, yeah.
- [36:17]
Tim Ferriss
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?
- [36:30]
Jack Canfield
Well, 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 know, you're probably familiar with the concept of ikigai, which comes from the Japanese, where is, 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. In 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 it 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.
- [37:27]
Tim Ferriss
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 Blank Soul. Where did that. This, I suppose, is a nod to the intuition or unorthodox approaches. But how did that title come to be?
- [37:55]
Jack Canfield
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. 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 best selling title. Mega best selling title. Mega best selling title. I would just go. And I would. Every morning, I'd sit for an hour and I'd say, okay, God, give me a title. And 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 chicken soup when you were sick. And I thought, but this is not a book. I 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. The 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. So basically that led to, you know, the 144 rejections. And you're right, we went to the American Booksellers association, booth to 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? Would you be interested in this book? You know, and most people wouldn't even take one, let alone. And then Peter Vegg, who's the guy who did publish it, you know, and you're right, he said 20,000. And we 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.
- [40:16]
Tim Ferriss
He may have just laughed. Was it laugh as in, I don't believe her or was he like, that's some chutzpah?
- [40:22]
Jack Canfield
No, he. He left because he thought we were freaking crazy.
- [40:24]
Tim Ferriss
He thought we were insane.
- [40:26]
Jack Canfield
You guys are nuts. You know, what happened was the first shipment he made was 800 books to. I think it was Barnes and 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 shocked him. And they started with those presses that do this kind of thing, you know, and now that. Then they had to go to a rotary press like you see in the movies when the newspaper is 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. In December. I don't want any more revenue for tax purposes this year.
- [41:22]
Tim Ferriss
And meanwhile, you're following the rule of five. You're calling the churches you're speaking in on Sundays, you're calling the PXs. 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. That really seemed to help the book break through?
- [41:46]
Jack Canfield
I think 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 someone that can talk, and they'll consider you if they're a producer on the big shows. But 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 right now, but. But they were doing. Sometimes you get these marketing things and say, you know, 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 these people running around doing seminars.
- [42:55]
Tim Ferriss
Everywhere, is it like Learning Annex back in the day? Similar or different?
- [43:02]
Jack Canfield
They're Learning Annex. And I spoke at those places as well. It's 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. And 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 know they did back to 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, or 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, there'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. Maybe I should reconsider. So they did.
- [44:25]
Tim Ferriss
Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and its culture of unwavering dedication to craft, refinement, commitment to continuous improvement. But why do I bring this all up? Well, the same focus on improving one thing over the span of years is found in today's sponsor, AG1. They are now unveiling AG1 Next Gen, the same single scoop once a day product that I use myself, but now with more vitamins, more minerals, and five new clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support digestive and immune health. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous independent quality and safety certification programs in the supplement industry, so check them out. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1. Listeners will also get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 welcome Kit, and AG1 Travel Packs with your first order. So start your journey with AG1's next gen and experience the difference firsthand. Simply go to drinkag1.com Tim that's drinkag1.com Tim I 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. It allows you to refine your material so well, I have thought. But 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 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. Yes, certain things have changed, but a lot is still, still the same. So I just wanted to speak to the live audience piece of it because I think it's so powerful.
- [47:00]
Jack Canfield
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 didn't I give them enough information, where was I redundant, 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. So yeah, it's crazy what people don't do that.
- [47:26]
Tim Ferriss
They 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. 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, et cetera. How did that happen? How did that come to pass and why did that happen?
- [48:08]
Jack Canfield
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 eight or nine books a year because the publisher wanted more. Because everything has an arc, you know. 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. They don't where the first books had universal appeal across the board. When you start doing sports fan soul or golfer soul, you know, you start to limit the size of the audience. So 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 climb on Everest toy or one legged, you know, blank. I mean, I should have been inspired. And it was like, yeah, not a lot of my mother died and she loved bluebirds and a bluebird landed on our windowsill. So I knew it was my mom and it probably was. But after a while, I'm tired of hearing that, you know, I knew I was getting a bit jaded, you know, like, yeah, 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? 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. But good offer. Happened at the right time. So that's how it happened.
- [49:25]
Tim Ferriss
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. You'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, 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.
- [50:02]
Jack Canfield
During that whole time, I was running seminars and 3, 4, 5, 600 people seminars. Sometimes 700, 800 people in a room. I did one seminar in India that had 7,000 herbalife people in it for three days. 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 with 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. Clement 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 to be scary.
- [51:05]
Tim Ferriss
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?
- [51:17]
Jack Canfield
2005.
- [51:19]
Tim Ferriss
2005, right. So it came out two years before the four hour workweek. And I think I have a brief cameo in there. Probably because of the kickboxing stuff or something else.
- [51:29]
Jack Canfield
I tell that story.
- [51:30]
Tim Ferriss
So I have a signed copy at home, at my parents house, actually. I 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?
- [51:51]
Jack Canfield
Well, there is a little bit of an identity thing. I became known as the chicken soup guy. 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? I'd say 20 years. Because I was collecting all that data about what works in terms of success and the Actual writing took about a year and a half. I would write from seven at night. Sometimes I. All of a sudden I'd hear birds singing and it would be getting gray. I was, oh my God, I've been up all night typing, you know.
- [52:26]
Tim Ferriss
So I had the regular bluebird again.
- [52:28]
Jack Canfield
Well, I had a regular job, you know, which was to run my seminars. Fortunately, most of them are 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. And so 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. Is 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, you know. But what happened was one of his major clients was a coffee shop down in Long Beach, California. And he would ship the beans through ups. And UPS had a strike and I was able to go, wow, blah blah, blah. Was writing Sleepless in Seattle. In Seattle, this guy was also sleepless. You know, I love that, being able to make those kind of segues and stuff, you know.
- [53:37]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [53:38]
Jack Canfield
And then his chapter is called Going the Extra Mile. Basically I said, he, 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.
- [54:02]
Tim Ferriss
What was the reason for continuing to do the seminars? Because 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? Why did you keep doing so many in person events?
- [54:27]
Jack Canfield
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. And 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. You know, all of a sudden they're coming up and I 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 the husbands abuse them and that just. I love it. I, I'm kind of sort of retiring right now. And literally that was the hardest part of that decision. So 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, now I have two.
- [55:29]
Tim Ferriss
And what is your age now, Jack?
- [55:32]
Jack Canfield
81.
- [55:33]
Tim Ferriss
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? Why change what you're doing?
- [55:55]
Jack Canfield
I realized there were 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 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 who I absolutely adore, who's the coolest damn kid. He's these 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. And 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 would never retire. And then I was doing an ayahuasca experience done in Costa Rica. I'll tell the story with 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, I'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, what's left to forgive? But I'll do it. It. So I, 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, I gotta forgive Vladimir Putin, who I think is one of the more evil guys on the planet. So I, 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. How 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. Who 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 the Guinness Book World Record, magazine covers, awards, 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 it's a huge philanthropic, loving, service oriented heart in my body. But I realized, like, how many honorary doctorates do you need? You know, I'm doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, Dr. Canfield. You know, it's like I would go away for four days on a trip to give a commencement speech to get another doctorate. And I leave my wife and my kids, you know, it was crazy. And so I had that awareness and I thought, you know, I really need to slow down and take a look at all that motivation. And part of it being 81 was my 80th birthday last summer, 81st 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 the side. Not totally. I'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.
- [59:26]
Tim Ferriss
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?
- [59:43]
Jack Canfield
I think several things. I'm passionate about what I do. 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. I can't say I'm fearless totally. But I'm very few fears in my life anymore. Just, you know, if I'm going to do it, we'll do it. And so that's there. That inner struggle is mostly gone. That uses up a lot of energy and clears 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 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, yeah.
- [60:24]
Tim Ferriss
Her work is amazing. People can find PDFs online also of the work which are super helpful, the turnarounds and so on.
- [60:31]
Jack Canfield
I 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, 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. I won't say I exercise every single day because that'd be a lie, but I exercise enough to keep things moving. I 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.
- [61:21]
Tim Ferriss
Amazing. I didn't know that.
- [61:22]
Jack Canfield
Yeah, I 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 or 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. And 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, you know, for longevity.
- [62:04]
Tim Ferriss
It's a good list. I'm taking some notes for myself. I need to.
- [62:07]
Jack Canfield
Oh, come on.
- [62:08]
Tim Ferriss
Add a few more. 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?
- [62:29]
Jack Canfield
No, 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 is a person who introduced me to mescaline and coyote and things like that. But I only did a few journeys. Never. I did LSD once, I think I was Never did cocaine. I was afraid of all that. I didn't want to get addicted. And 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 Pachamam 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.
- [63:30]
Tim Ferriss
How old were you when you had that first experience, you say?
- [63:34]
Jack Canfield
I'm thinking 20 years ago, maybe with Lynn? Yeah, 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 rythmia, 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. He was a womanizer, a drug addict, a drinker, gutted the fights in bars all the time. And. 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's worth about $60 million, I think, but he was miserable. So he said he was going to commit suicide. Someone said, don't commit suicide. So you go to the rainforest and work with this guy named Magunda. 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 a. I mean, the resort images were. It was an old house, dirty mattresses, cockroaches, you know, all this stuff.
- [64:31]
Tim Ferriss
Hotel paradise.
- [64:32]
Jack Canfield
Yeah. And it was funny because when he got there, he tells his story. He got there and it flies down, you know, private jet, that whole thing, and gets there, and Maganda meets him at the airport. He says, get my bags, man. Magona is this African guy, and 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. He gets in there, 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.
- [65:07]
Tim Ferriss
Hell of a introduction.
- [65:08]
Jack Canfield
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. That's why he was so angry, was he was repressing. And then finally, I love this last line, he's lying there, and Magunda just taps him on the head and goes, happy birthday, man. You were 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, Obergain said, you're supposed to open a center, but don't do it with ibogaine, do 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. Just literally life changing. I think that's another reason I'm so light and just, you know, it's all good.
- [65:59]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, the pharmacology of Ayahuasca in and of itself. Super, super fascinating for people who might be interested. Also outside of the dmt, which 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. What 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 under taught? I mean, you've seen lots of different waves of different things that have become popular or fallen out of popularity. Is there anything you wish to wish folks paid more attention to?
- [67:09]
Jack Canfield
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. They 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. You know, 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 because I've, twice a year I've been doing these free sessions where I'll get like 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 had a woman got rid of arthritis in like 20 minutes. You know, I mean, ridiculous stuff. So these beliefs we're holding on to that usually got formed between the age of three and, 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, 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 are teaching, teaching them, but they're not dealing with this block. It'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. And you wonder, why isn't it 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. It's a visualization process, usually, or a 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. There are people there to hold you back online when you go off. You know, my 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's 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. So don't resist it.
- [70:03]
Tim Ferriss
That's a good one.
- [70:04]
Jack Canfield
Get to clear it.
- [70:05]
Tim Ferriss
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, 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. Maybe 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.
- [71:13]
Jack Canfield
Well, I'll start with a story couples therapist 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 could figure out whose fault it is, somehow that's going to make your life better.
- [71:36]
Tim Ferriss
That's really. That's outstanding. Yeah.
- [71:39]
Jack Canfield
So basically I teach 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, you know, whatever the outcome that we want, health, longevity, whatever. And 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, screaming and complaining. I used to call bars ain't at awful clubs. You know, 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 they. And moan about everything that happened that day. Like, you know, the, the economy, the president, the minister of the hospital, whatever. So 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? What are their responses to certain events? How do they relate to this situation? Which ones produce the better results? I mean, you've been. 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 as a result of it. In 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 on gravity? I hate gravity. One for gravity. I would be all bent over. Gravity sucks, you know. 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 person, president, better, whatever. And 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. 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 who survived. Would I come to work and complain about my wife? No. Why not 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 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 1 to 10, how would you rate your quality of life? Working here. And they go, three. They go, why so high? It's not a zero. Something's going on there. Right. So why so high? Which floors them, kind of breaks the chain of their thought. And then he goes, so what would be an 8 for you? Never goes to 10, because 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?
- [76:26]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. 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. And 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, the 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. And 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.
- [78:03]
Jack Canfield
Good.
- [78:03]
Tim Ferriss
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 and 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. Solution. Take that issue, take that setback, take that problem and turn it into something good. Go 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?
- [79:13]
Jack Canfield
I've always got something I'm working on and you have to have something that keeps it in your focus. So 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 on the refrigerator door and on my bathroom mirror and stuff like that because, you know, 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 a 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 a head of Peak performance at West Point. He's wrote a book about it. And one of the things when I read the book that 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 jam and say your affirmation. Now, I have a repetitive system that's built in that tells me to do that. They 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 of, you know, whatever. And so it's that level of repetition until it becomes, you know, ground in. They don't have to repeat. I 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.
- [80:52]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, it's Carlos Castaneda.
- [80:54]
Jack Canfield
Oh, different.
- [80:54]
Tim Ferriss
One different shaman from Mexico.
- [80:57]
Jack Canfield
Yeah, this is me being sharp at 81. Anyway, he had these. The four agreements. That's the guy, the book.
- [81:06]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, this is Don Miguel Ruiz.
- [81:10]
Jack Canfield
Don Miguel Ru. 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, of 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 I go looking for something on YouTube and the next thing I know, I'm watching old reruns of Jay Leno. But I think that, yeah, reminders are important.
- [81:54]
Tim Ferriss
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 Stephen 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 Yaquhi Way of Knowledge. That was the book that I was thinking of.
- [82:18]
Jack Canfield
Yeah, that was one of the first books I read. It was a great book.
- [82:23]
Tim Ferriss
It's a compelling book. Whether it's real or not, it's a fun read. So I'm looking at a blog post. This is from JackCampfield.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. I am a hypographic note taking maniac and I just have paper. It metastasizes 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?
- [83:33]
Jack Canfield
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. I think the problem is that every time you look at all that, 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. Ten 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. So 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 I have lots of filing systems, I have 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 28 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 in now, you know, like, called Steve on March 28th. But 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 cue. So what happens is whether it's a relationship, 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 acknowledgments, the wanting acknowledgments and not having got them, they're taking up space in your head. So everything you can close up, 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?
- [85:49]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, yeah, he's got some great stuff.
- [85:52]
Jack Canfield
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 polyp shit that I deal with and you deal with with. But the reality is that everything is incomplete. You'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. 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, you know, the attic, the tool drawer, the door that has the leashes.
- [86:49]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, my God. I can feel my cortisol piling up as you're listening. Well, Sounds like. Sounds like you're in my house on my nanny camp.
- [86:57]
Jack Canfield
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 balance stuff in your car, you know, clothes that don't fit anymore. I mean, people go. You go down a list of all that stuff. I literally had to go through my clothes at one point. I'm a shirt. I love shorts. You know.
- [87:29]
Tim Ferriss
This is another thing we have in common. No, I have so many T shirts. It's just unacceptable. It's indefensible.
- [87:35]
Jack Canfield
I know, I know. All right, 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, you know, 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, and 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.
- [88:07]
Tim Ferriss
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. So it's my ignorance is bliss approach. It's a small tax to pay at this point.
- [88:46]
Jack Canfield
Yeah, George Carlin does a really good routine on stuff. If you can find stuff. It. It's really amazing.
- [88:52]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, I will find it. George Carlin, what a genius. Also, his late night bit on heaven and Hell, people can look that up where it's like in heaven, the French are 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.
- [89:15]
Jack Canfield
Yeah, I will, I will.
- [89:17]
Tim Ferriss
Is that something we could share in the show notes for this episode?
- [89:20]
Jack Canfield
Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah. I think it's even a page in my book. If not, I'll get it for you.
- [89:25]
Tim Ferriss
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?
- [89:48]
Jack Canfield
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 his 20th anniversary edition, the success principles. How to get from where you are to where you want to be. It'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 problem in 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. So basically, I think that was a good thing to do. So I always tell people, like you said, you know, get feedback, but also read it out loud. How does it sound to you? You know? 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 1000 kids read all the stories. So we had an Excel spreadsheet. They all grade every story on a scale of 1 to 10. Then that book went on to sell, I think, 6 million copies or something like that, you know, so feedback. I love what Jim lan says. Feedback is the breakfast of champions. You know.
- [91:16]
Tim Ferriss
Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
- [91:18]
Jack Canfield
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, jackcampfield.com there's all kinds of things there. You might be interested. 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. And 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. That's about it, I would say.
- [92:12]
Tim Ferriss
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 L, of course link to everything as per usual in the show notes at Tim Blog podcast for Everybody, including the 21 things to clean up, which is going to ride hard on my ocd, which is properly diagnosed. I'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 has had 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. And I remember you had your glasses on and you saw 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.
- [93:41]
Jack Canfield
Thank you.
- [93:42]
Tim Ferriss
And I really appreciate you taking the time.
- [93:44]
Jack Canfield
Well, I've enjoyed this. One of the best podcasts I've ever been on. So thank you.
- [93:49]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, my pleasure. 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 Podcast Just search Canfield C A N F I E L D and it will pop right up. And 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 1 and a half and 2 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 found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It'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 show 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 Friday, type that into your browser Tim Blog Friday. Drop 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 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 where I need it and middle layers with premium foam and microcoils that create a soft contouring feel. Helix offers a 100 night sleep trial, fast free shipping and a 15 year warranty so check it all out. And now you can get 27% off anything on their website so site wide. So just go to helixsleep.com Tim one more time. Helixsleep.com Tim with Helix Better sleep starts now. I don't know about you, but with so many options for banking and investing these days, also with accounts scattered all over the place, it's harder than ever to track finances. And that is why I am happy to recommend this episode's sponsor Monarch. Named Best budgeting app of 2025 by the Wall Street Journal, Monarch brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface interface, letting you see your full financial picture at a glance. You can even have widgets that show you your spending and so on so that you don't have to even open the app on your phone. One person on my team has tried four other budgeting apps and said linking his accounts on Monarch was by far the easiest, cleanest interface, etc. Etc. Another one of my employees said Monarch has made it so much easier for her and her husband to be on the same page financially and to track spending as a couple. So why not get serious and get simple about getting your financial act together so you can see everything in one place before year's end and get Monarch try it out. Use code tim@monarch.com that's M O N A R C H monarch.com for half off of your first year. That's 50% off of your first year at monarch.com with code TIM.