Jack Canfield

Jack Canfield Born in 1944, in Fort Worth, Texas, Jack Canfield is the celebrated author and motivational speaker behind the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. As a Harvard-educated person, Canfield clearly possessed the intelligence for crafting such a book, however, it was his tenacity to see things  through that helped him to catapult that book to success. 

In fact, it wasn’t until the age of 48-years old, with the help of his co-author, Mark Victor Hansen, that he set out to write that book, a collection of stories to help inspire and motivate people to achieve their dreams. Yet, things didn’t exactly go according to plan once the book had been completed. 

Canfield and his co-author suffered through 144 rejections from publishers over the course of a 14-month period. When one publisher claimed that it wouldn’t even sell 20,000 companies, Canfield replied that he had hoped it would sell 500,000 copies at the least. The publisher laughed at Canfield. 

Eventually, they convinced one small-time publisher in Florida that they would at least have some nominal success with the book. Little did they know what was in store for them. Chicken Soup for the Soul is an internationally-acclaimed brand that’s sold over 500 million copies in over 20 languages. Canfield’s determination and unwillingness to give up speaks volumes about the characteristics that allow famous people who failed at first to keep pushing forward no matter what the situation.