Jack Canfield faced 144 rejections before a Florida publisher accepted Chicken Soup for the Soul, which sold over 115 million copies in 47 languages. Evan Carmichael explains that resilience comes from clarifying your why and surrounding yourself with mentors who've struggled early in their careers.
Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is Never Give Up. Over to you, Jack Canfield. I wake up every morning with an espresso. Give me go.
Practice faithful persistence means never, ever, ever give up. Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected by 144 publishers. 144 publishers said, we don't want to publish a collection of short stories. The title's stupid, Chicken Soup for the Soul, what does that mean? People don't buy collections of short stories, there's never been, you know, successful chain of doing that. So literally, we spent 14 months trying to find a publisher, and we'd go to New York with our agent, and eventually our agent gave us the book back and said, I can't sell this. So we went to the National Booksellers Association Convention down in Anaheim, and we went from booth to booth to booth for 3 days. And there were 4,000 publishers represented there. And we go, would you publish our book? Would you publish our book? Would you publish our book? And we got no, no, no, no, no. It was late on the third day that a little publisher from Florida, after we'd gotten over 144 rejections, said, we'll read it. And then they said— we said, well, how many copies do you think we'll sell? After they said, yeah, we'll buy it, a couple of weeks later they said, we'll publish it. And they said, well, maybe 20,000 if we're lucky. And we said, our goal is to sell 1.5 million in a year and a half. Now, have you ever told someone your dream and had them laugh out loud at you? He laughed out loud. Now, if we had given up after 100 publishers had said no, I wouldn't be standing here today. You know, it wouldn't have happened. And so you've got to be willing to persevere. Because we didn't take no— see, when the world says no, you say next. Let's practice that. If I say no, you say— next. Absolutely. There's only 5 or 6 billion people out there you can go and ask, right? There's over 4,000 publishers just here in the state of California. So what we have is this endless possibility, but you have to persevere. It's as if the universe tests our commitment. And so today we have 147 titles in print, we sold over 115 million copies, we're in 47 languages, and over a billion dollars worth of Chicken Soup for the Soul books have been sold worldwide. So if you're willing to decide what you want, believe it's possible, Consciously envision the future. Feel the feelings of what it would feel like if you had achieved this goal. You can have anything, and then you take action, both obvious actions and inspired actions. You can do anything.
I love this message, and I agree that the reasons to give up aren't because you don't have the resources. You don't give up because you don't have resources. You don't give up because somebody told you no. You don't give up because somebody laughed at your dream. You don't give up because you're afraid. You don't give up because you feel you don't have the education. You don't give up for all the excuses that are in your head. The reason why you would give up though would be you don't love what you're doing anymore, or maybe you never loved it in the first place, or maybe you don't believe in it anymore. For me, that's when you give up and you move on to something else, 'cause you're doing something that you don't believe in or that you don't love. There's no way that that's the best use of your time. You need to focus your time on the things that make you come alive and where you can have a big impact on the world. But just make sure if you're thinking about giving up, you're doing it for the right reasons, not because you're afraid. So in the early years of my entrepreneurship career, when I was thinking about giving up, I did two things that really helped me stay focused. The first is the why. Why am I doing this? Why is it so important? Think about it for yourself. If you're feeling down right now, why are you doing this business? Why is it so important to you that this succeeds? What's the impact that you want to have? If you do not have a strong why, then your business is dead in the water. So make sure you can center yourself around that and every time you're feeling low. The second thing I did was surround myself with entrepreneurial mentors who I looked up to and looked at their early years, look at their early stories, because any successful entrepreneur that you would look up to, they struggled early on. It wasn't just handed to them. They had setbacks, they had failures. They probably started with less than what you already have right now. And just realizing that gave me the motivation to keep going, that if Bill Gates could do this, if Oprah Winfrey could do this, if Steve Jobs could do this, If these people who didn't have a lot could go and make something of themselves and become massively successful, then I can do it too. So remembering the why and focusing on success stories that fill you with motivation on a daily basis, I found, helped me stay motivated. But it's got to be something that you still believe in and don't give up because you're afraid. So the question of the day today is: When did you consider giving up? What are the reasons behind it? Going a little deep, a little personal. Leave in the comments below. I'm gonna join in the discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to William Chilton. William, thank you so much for buying a copy of my book. Really means a lot to me. For those of you watching, if you want a chance at a shout out in a future video, make sure to grab a copy of the book and email in your receipt so we can keep track. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
