Jack Canfield talks about creating Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Success Principles, which sold 1.3 million copies and reached schools, prisons, and corporate settings. He's trained over 500 people from 40 countries and built an online certification program to reach his goal of training a million trainers worldwide.
Questions this video answers
1.3 million copies.
They said they would sell 1.5 million in a year and a half.
Over 500 people from over 40 countries.
Chapters
Well, I think one of the secrets of my success is I've always been willing to follow my inner guidance, often when it's not being, how should I say, reinforced and supported by people around me. When I decided to write the Chicken Soup for the Soul book, I didn't even have a title for it at the time. I just knew I had to start collecting stories. And when I told my staff about it, they were going, stories, come on, you're a trainer. I said, no, I have to do it. I'm gonna follow my heart. Everyone thought Chicken Soup wasn't gonna work, including the publisher who finally published it. Thought we might sell 20,000 copies. And we said, we're gonna sell a million and a half in a year and a half. He laughed at us. He laughed out loud, said, you're crazy, Said, no, we're visionaries, we're gonna do this. And we sold 1.3 million. Totally changed my life. The reality is that one thing, taking that step, not giving up, following your heart, trusting your intuition, can literally transform your life. And you never know it until you do it. You know, the problem in life for most people is they disqualify themselves before they even take a chance. They think they're not educated enough. They don't have the right degrees, they don't have the right experience, they don't have the right credentials. They're too old, they're too young. You know, it's really sad because the nice thing about becoming a trainer is that really all that's required is the desire to make a difference, the desire to have an impact, the desire to inspire and empower people to be all they can be. So what happened when the success principles took off and became a best seller is that people started applying the principles not only in their life and in their businesses, but a lot of teachers started teaching the principles in their classrooms. And it made me realize, wow, we have an educational process here. These are human principles. The reason Chicken Soup for the Soul was so successful is those stories talked about the human experience. That's the same for everyone across the board, in every country. And the same is true for these principles of success. It doesn't matter where I've taught. I've taught it in prisons, taught it in at risk youth situations. We've taught it to corporate CEOs, we taught it to sales organizations, multi level marketing companies, Olympic athletes, professional athletes. The principles are universal. That's what's so exciting about them. It really is a life transformative system. And so as a result of that, I Started saying, okay, let's reach a lot of people, let's really go for it. And so we decided to do a the trainer program. And so now I've trained over 500 people from over 40 countries around the world to do this work. And it's so exciting to see these people going back to places I'll never get to and now training thousands, tens of thousands of people. And out of that came my commitment to say, wow, what if we could take this and transform the world? Because there are so many people living in poverty, living in resignation and hopelessness and fear. And it doesn't have to be that way because we've seen over and over it doesn't matter where people are, whether they're living in a third world country or they're living in a ghetto in the United States on welfare, these principles, when they're applied, work. And so I sat down with my staff and I said, are you guys willing to say, take on like a world changing goal and like train a million people to teach this work, whether it's in schools, hospitals, churches, synagogues, whatever it might be. And my staff got so excited, I said, yeah, let's do this. Let's really take it out to the world. Well, one of the things that became really clear to me when we set a goal to have a million people training this, that there are not enough training rooms and days in a year for me to go out and train everyone live. And so we said, okay, we're going to have to use the leverage ability and the scalability of technology to bring this work to the world. And so that's why we created the Home Study program, the online version of this program. And so we videotaped live trainings for over a year and have edited it down into the core essence of what people need to learn in order to become a certified trainer. I want people in Asia, people in China, people in India, all around the world to be able to access this work without the huge expense of live training. As we started to train people online, we're finding that this course is so well designed and so effective that the people are actually doing really great work as a result of it. And so I have finally come to the conclusion that we can now certify people online. And I'm so happy that we now have that ability because I do know a lot of people feel like they want to be a certified trainer and we now have the capacity with great integrity and feeling good inside my heart and my soul that we can say if you go through this course, and you do everything we ask you to do in the way we ask you to do it, you're going to be an awesome trainer. This is an opportunity for people to join something that's bigger than them to make a difference that will outlive them in a world that massively needs this transformation. So it can only happen if other people join me. And so I hope that those people who are listening to this, wherever they might be, will say, okay, you know what? I want to be part of this. I want to make a difference. And if they do, we really stand ready to change the world. No less than that.
