Jack Canfield Sold 500 Million Books. Here's What He Told Me Most People Get Wrong About Wealth.

Intro & the book gift

Jack: Hey Andrey, good to see you buddy, so nice to see you.

Andrey: I'm super excited, super pumped. I've been visualizing about that for 12 years — now it's time to do it.

Jack: All right, let's go.

Andrey: Welcome to CEO for a Day, the show where high-performing founders and CEOs learn how to scale from $100 million to $1 billion and beyond by learning directly from minds who've done it. Today's guest is not just a global icon — he's someone who changed my personal life. Back in 2012 I attended Jack Canfield's training, Train the Trainer, and had the real privilege of assisting him behind the scenes at his Breakthrough to Success event. That experience opened my mind, transformed my thinking, and planted the seeds for everything I built since — from my real estate empire to this very show.

He's the co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, a publishing phenomenon that sold over 500 million books worldwide. He is the author of The Success Principles, a speaker, a mentor, and one of the most influential people in the personal development space. So today we go deep — not just into personal success, but how to build a billion-dollar business, team, and legacy.

Please help me welcome Mr. Jack Canfield. Jack, it's an absolute honor to have you here. I've been waiting for this for many, many years. And I want to thank you for being a transformational leader who changed many thousands of lives. And as a gift, I want to give you a book — Total Financial Awakening: My Story How I Built a Real Estate Empire — and you inspired me to write it.

Jack: Thank you. And as I said on the cover, this book will make you believe that you can be financed. Yeah, you've got to believe first. I love the picture with the $100 bills making a little house — that's very clever. Someone just gave me — you can buy on Amazon these $100 bills but in packs of like $10,000 — they actually bought enough for a million, put them in a briefcase, and sent it to me like a drug deal, you know.

Andrey: Yeah.

Jack: When they're training — I'm going to use it as my affirmation.

Andrey: Good. But first I want to briefly tell the audience how you've impacted my life personally. I came to this country with no money, no English — I'm still learning it — and no connections. And when I attended your workshop, Train the Trainer, it's a workshop that you do, one week long, and that completely changed my life. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I want to share with you a couple of goals that I achieved. I wanted to graduate from Harvard University. I was afraid and scared to make a million dollars, so I wrote, "I want to pay a million dollars in taxes," because it sounded more believable. I wanted to donate a million dollars to public charity to impact people's lives. I wanted to write a book. I wanted to build a $100 million business. At that time I didn't have anything at all.

And because of your work, your teaching, your mentoring — I re-watched The Success Principles and everything you recommended. I followed the blueprint, because like Tony Robbins says, success leaves clues. I just looked at your book The Success Principles and said, "Hey, where did Jack go? How did he learn how to read 100 books a year?" And I know you said you read one book a day — that was unbelievable. I just followed your blueprint, went to Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach, went to Ecuador with Anita Sanchez to do the Ayahuasca, and it was also an incredible experience.

Jack: And you learned speed reading too, didn't you?

Andrey: Of course, so you could read faster.

Jack: Yeah, exactly. That's a phenomenal skill.

Andrey: And now we just spent three days with you at the mastermind group and I want to rewrite my next ten years. So what I'm doing on this show — I grew the company to $100 million in revenue, and our plan for the next four years is to grow it to a billion dollars so we can impact more lives. I want to increase my private foundation and improve opportunities for my employees. And last time I went to your training in 2012, since then I became really skeptical, pragmatic — because you run a company, no one is hugging you, no one tells you "hey, positivity." People usually call you and send you challenges, or if it's a big problem we say it's an opportunity to learn. So I'd like to start: how would someone reframe growing a company from $100 million to a billion dollars? What framework would you recommend?

Jack's mentors: Jim Rohn & W. Clement Stone

Jack: Well, you have to expand your consciousness to hold that number. As you know, in our workshops sometimes we do something called muscle testing, where I'll have someone say, "I'm comfortable, ready, and able to earn a hundred million dollars a year." And if their arm goes down, it means some part of them isn't — some part of them is afraid of it. Afraid that people are going to take their money, afraid they'll kidnap their children, afraid they'll never have any free time. So we have to surface the limiting beliefs that are holding you in place.

I can only speak from my experience. Many years ago I was in Texas and a guy said, "You've got to go see John D'vor — he's amazing, he'll help you." At that time my goal was to make eight million in personal income after taxes, and I kept saying, "What's my staff? They can't hold that vision." John said, "Put your hand out." He said, "I'm comfortable earning 8 million a year" — my arm went weak. He said, "No you're not. It's not your staff." So he did a lot of work with me to change my beliefs and realign energies, and then it was like — $8 million a year, strong. A hundred million a year, strong. A billion dollars a year, strong. All the money in the world and no one else gets anything, strong. You know, it was like — I don't want to do that of course — but all of a sudden my whole energetic belief system shifted.

So you've got to be able to hold that concept and believe it's possible. And then you've got to start visualizing what that would look like. That's why it's so valuable to have heroes, mentors, models — whether it's Richard Branson or Bill Gates or somebody — and then start reading what they write so you get how they think. Someone just came out with a book called How to Make Lots of Billions of Dollars.

Andrey: Oh wow, I never read that.

Jack: Yeah, I think that's the title — someone just told me about it. But it means you go "lots of billions" — that totally shifts you. So you've got to be able to hold that and then develop the sense that it's possible without it ruining your life, because a lot of people think they're not going to have any free time if they do that.

Your ego is designed to protect you — it's not there to help you succeed, it's to protect you. They actually found in research that, back in the days of cavemen, it was the pessimist who succeeded and lived longer than the optimist. The optimist said, "There are no tigers." The pessimist was always looking for tigers and lived longer. So that genetic preference for mindset actually survived more than the optimist. We have to go against that. Your ego wants you not to fail, not to get hurt, not to be rejected — so it's working for you but not for your goals. You've got to work to create the belief, and then eventually you muscle-test and if you can believe it you can move forward. That's the first step: mindset.

Jack: And then I always say read the things that people who are already there write. Like I remember my partner Mark Victor Hansen — when we were doing Chicken Soup for the Soul — he was a friend of a guy who had a big airline, but it was just shipping stuff. He called him up one day and said, "I've just come up with an idea that can make you a million dollars." He said, "Mark, if it won't make me 50 million I don't even waste my time thinking about it." So it was a whole different model.

And I remember Mark met Tony Robbins — they were speaking at a chiropractic conference in New York. That year Tony had made $50 million. And Mark said, "Tony, you made a lot more money than me. I'd like to make $50 million. What advice would you have?" He said, "Do you have a mastermind group?" Mark said yes. Tony said, "What's the most money anyone in your mastermind group makes?" Mark said, "I don't know — $5 million." Tony said, "That's the difference. No one in my mastermind group except me makes less than a hundred million dollars."

So you become the people you hang out with. You want to be in their space, open to their network. They can introduce you to people, they think bigger ideas. If you can't get into their space physically, watch their TED talks, their podcasts, their interviews, read their biographies. And I remember when I decided I'm going to fly first class even if it costs a little more, because I'm going to sit next to a different kind of person than in coach. One of the great gurus said you become like the 10 people you spend the most time with — so you want to move yourself up. If there's a training inviting people to Necker Island to hang out with Richard Branson, you want to go. That's what I would say to start with.

Andrey: And how do you change a belief? Let's say someone has never made more than $100,000. It was interesting to talk to different people during the mastermind group — people have different levels, no one set a limit on how much money you want to make, and people put self-imposed blocks.

Jack: Right, we make it up. No one's going to check on you ten years from now.

We had a person in the group — I won't mention their name because of confidentiality — but there was a man, an immigrant from another country. His parents worked really hard. His dad drove two hours each way commuting to work to make enough money for the family, and his son was able to go to university. His son has a real gift: he can walk into any environment and see ten ways to improve it immediately. You can charge a lot of money for that. And he had this money block. What was it? "It's not okay for me to make that much money, because my parents never had that much. I feel guilty if I make that much money." We had to release that block so he could feel comfortable. He said, "I'm a bad son if I make that much money." I've had several people say that.

There was a guy in one of my trainings who literally wasn't making a lot of money. The technique we use: you want to get in touch with the thing you want that you're not able to manifest. Let's say you want to manifest a billion dollars but you're having trouble. I'd have you close your eyes, think about that — the frustration, the resignation, the sadness, the anger — whatever that "I can't get there" feels like. Then I'd say, "Scan your body to find the place where there's the greatest amount of tension or pain or discomfort," because we're holding our beliefs in our soma, our muscles. What's the feeling that lives inside this physical sensation? Then I say, "Go back to the earliest time you can remember feeling that same physical sensation and that same emotion." And what happens is almost everyone finds themselves somewhere between the age of three and eight — sometimes fifteen, sometimes twenty — but something happened.

Give you another example around money. This woman went back — she never had a lot of money. She's about seven years old. Her mother sends her to the grocery store to buy bread. They didn't have a lot of money. She comes back, somehow she lost the change, and her mother went crazy: "We can't afford this, you can't handle money." So she decided at age six or seven: "I can't handle money." Now she's 40. That belief is unconscious — she doesn't know she has it. But a lot of money actually scares her because she's going to get in trouble with her mom. So we have to go back and help her realize: she wasn't bad, she wasn't unworthy, she's still lovable. Her mother was frustrated because they had so little money and didn't have better skills. And that decision doesn't serve her anymore. What would be a new decision? "I can handle money." We install that through affirmations and some NLP neuro-linguistic programming techniques, and all of a sudden we can test — "I'm ready, able, and willing to have a lot of money, or a billion dollars" — and she'll test strong. That's how we do it. And as you know from the Train the Trainer program, that script for the exercise is available to you — you can use it for anyone you want.

Andrey: Yeah, this is so powerful. I remember in 2012 I really wanted my kids to go to private school but I didn't have any money — private school was like $40,000 — and I didn't make as much. What I did: I created a visualization and prepared to take massive action. I applied the kids to school and they got a scholarship — not from the first school but from the second. For probably two or three years, up until the moment when I was able to generate enough income to pay for the school myself. That was such a great decision. So thank you, again, from my kids. My daughter now wants to go to Harvard. And that's phenomenal because of you. You affect a lot of lives — not only one generation but many generations beyond.

Jack: Well, anyone that ever changes — it's like throwing a pebble in a pond. The ripples go out. As you evolve, everyone around you is energetically affected.

Andrey: So it's incredibly difficult to grow a business. We built the business. By the way — that's a belief, right?

Jack: Let's work on it — that's why I'm here.

Andrey: We built the business and we were hovering around $100 million for the last five years. We wanted to scale, then COVID hit and we had to stop. Then the interest rate environment completely changed — rates went up three times. Then, unfortunately, my general manager and partner in one location passed away. We were on the 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies list for six years in a row, and all of a sudden we stopped growing. And then when I went to Harvard I met a lot of people, and not all of them were talking about positive mental attitudes. There was a lot of skepticism — for example, "What is the chance that a business can succeed? Ninety-five percent will fail within five years." So it's really hard to change that belief when you have a lot of skeptical people.

Jack: Well, you just need to get a button that says "5%."

Andrey: I love it!

Jack: Let me tell you a story — it involves real estate, maybe different than what you're doing. But I was doing an all-day seminar for owners of RE/MAX franchises up in New England, right during a recession. Almost every business person I talked to in America was down about 40%. And then one guy said, "Not me." I said, "Really?" He said, "No, I've doubled my business during this time." I said, "Come to the front of the room." And I said, "You must have a different belief set than they do." He said, "Yeah. Most people, when they hear there's a recession, go: 'I better bulletproof myself — I'm going to cut staff, cut marketing.' And I have a belief that I make money no matter what the economy is doing. I actually make more money during recessions than anywhere else."

The reality is that it's not necessarily the event called recession — it's the response you have to that event. We have three responses: our thoughts, the images we hold, and our actions. His thought was, "I do well no matter what the economy is." When you have that belief, you act differently, and the action is what creates the ultimate result.

And when the pandemic hit, we had about $860,000 in deposits for our live trainings. All of a sudden I'm running a training here in Santa Barbara and the sheriff comes in and says, "You have 10 minutes for everyone to disband." So now I've got all these deposits, people can't come to any seminars — what do we do? A lot of people went out of business. I got on the phone and got seven or eight people who do this work and said, "We're going to brainstorm ways to get through this." That's when I learned about Zoom. We went virtual. We actually made more money because we were able to have people take our seminars online from India, Saudi Arabia, South America. We were doing trainings with 150 people where we might have had only 30 live. And I was doing free belief-change exercises twice a year as lead generation — 2,000 people from 40 countries. I couldn't have done that before the pandemic. We still do online stuff in addition to live stuff.

So again: when there's a problem, you've got to have a strong network. If you're going to be a billionaire, start hanging out with people who are either there, halfway there, or want to be there. You're surrounding yourself with fellow players.

Why confidence is a result of surviving risk

Andrey: Yeah, I'm working on that. So let's work — give an example of how to work on belief. I really want to buy a house on the beach that costs about $10 million, maybe $15. And when I look at the house, in the back of my mind I think about taxes, insurance — and if I grow my business, we have a lot of debt, let's say $70 million at any given time that I have to repay. And if I grow — not if, when — I grow to a billion dollars, I'll have to increase my debt to $700 million, and that's scary. How would you reframe that belief?

Jack: Well, I've stopped calling it debt and started calling it investment, for starters.

Andrey: Investment — okay, I'm going to call my bankers and say "investment."

Jack: Well, you've got to pay it off, I get that. But the worst case scenario: they repossess some of the properties, but you'll survive. Everyone is afraid that something is going to happen and they're going to lose everything — they'll be out on the street. That's the ultimate fear scenario. And you're not. You're always going to do well because you're smart.

I would say there's just the cost of owning a $10 million home. I've got a home I bought for $2 million — it's now worth $8 million — and I pay like $40,000–$50,000 a year in property taxes. I pay $130,000 in insurance, maintenance, two gardeners, a higher water bill because we have irrigation in California. That's just what it costs. If I start thinking about "this will happen and that'll happen," I'll create it. So you don't want to be doing that. You always want to be thinking: what's the best-case scenario?

Now, I teach something called strategy circles: imagine the obstacles and challenges that could come up, and come up with solutions before they happen. Then you realize you can handle it. But if you don't have those solutions in mind beforehand, it seems scarier than it is.

And whenever we're in fear, we shut down the prefrontal cortex — the amygdala takes over. The amygdala is the fight-flight-freeze-or-fawn part of ourselves. When the pandemic hit, that's where everyone went: "I'm going to lose my job, lose my apartment, I'm going to have to live with my wife every day and I'm not sure I can handle that." But whatever the fear is, it activates that part of the brain. The creative part can't function because the energy isn't there. So we always want to be up front, in the prefrontal cortex. That's where we create from — both logical, rational thought and creative thought. That's through meditation: we calm ourselves down, we realize everything's great.

And then, as you know, visualizing that house on the ocean — I remember one guy said, "I visualized a Porsche but forgot to visualize the income that would support it." So you want to visualize both at the same time and make intelligent investments at the right time. I heard that Robert Kiyosaki, when the pandemic hit and people were selling homes, borrowed a billion dollars to buy real estate because he knew it would all be distressed. So there's a time to buy and a time to sell — he was taking advantage of the downside, not being frightened by it.

Andrey: That was actually the perfect time. I did the same thing when real estate went down — there were a lot of foreclosures, we were buying homes for $60,000. I didn't have any money; I had to borrow from hard money lenders. Do you know how much they charge? Twenty points — if you want $100,000, you pay $20,000 just to get the loan, and then 2% per month.

Jack: Like a down payment.

Andrey: Yeah, it's called hard money — you work hard and they get all the money. But then you refinance with the bank. It was scary, but I didn't have anything. They asked me, "We want a personal guarantee." I said, "I'll gladly provide one" — but I had zero dollars in my bank account.

Jack: But what you did have — and did have — was you: your confidence and your certainty. And certainty sells. Morgan Freeman, Academy Award-winning actor, says, "If I believe the role I'm playing and I totally believe it, the audience has no chance to do anything but believe it."

So I have a friend, Sheree Carter-Scott. She was applying for a loan to develop her business and they said no. She said to the loan officer, "I want to meet with your board." They said, "What?" She said, "I want to meet with your board. Why? Because no one ever says no to me. You're making a huge mistake. Your bank's going to regret it, and I want to meet with your board and explain to them why I'm a good risk." And they were so moved by her confidence that they said, "Okay, we'll give you the money." Because: I can trust you if you're confident, you display your confidence, you know what you're doing — it would be foolish not to.

Andrey: Yeah, I tried it a couple of times. It didn't work, but I did get a yes. And I remember — the best concept, and I think it will be helpful for everyone watching — asking for help, and asking for feedback, and rejecting rejection. That was the biggest principle for me. With the bank loans, I made a list of every single bank and credit union in my city. I started collecting rejections. I have a Dropbox folder where bankers send emails: "Unfortunately, the loan is not approved." And then when the first bank approved me, the second bank approved, then the third, then the fourth. Now we have a lot of banks that compete for our business because we've borrowed a lot of money from them and we have great relationships.

Andrey: Maybe you can tell us a little about asking? I also noticed during the workshop that a lot of people — especially men — are very uncomfortable asking.

Jack: As you remember, I asked the group, "How many of you have trouble asking or feel uncomfortable asking?" Almost everyone raised their hand — all but three or four people out of twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

What happens is most people are afraid of rejection, because they got rejected as a child in a way that really hurt. So rejection always has that emotional load attached to it. For me, it's a numbers game. What I teach is: "No — next." When someone says no, you say "next." And six months later you can go back again. They may have a different banker, they may have more money, the economy's changed, you're successful now — whatever. So ask, ask. I have a chapter in a book called The Aladdin Factor. The title of the chapter is "Ask, Ask, Ask — 17 Times."

Andrey: Yeah, that's such a great book.

Jack: What happens is: reject rejection means you don't let it stop you. Chicken Soup for the Soul — 144 publishers turned us down. The 145th said yes. I had collected all the rejection letters — most were hard copy back then before the internet — and what happened was I was going to staple the New York Times bestseller list to each one and send it back to them, because we were number one.

Andrey: Oh yeah.

Jack: Fortunately I couldn't find the letters. I don't think that would have been very nice, so God was saving me from doing that. But I would meet people at book conferences and they'd say, "We're so sorry. We regret not having said yes, because we would have made millions of dollars." Nobody ever knows. But what wins in life is persistence — that is really important.

You've got to do it over and over and over, and every time you get a no, I always tell people to ask: "What would have to happen for you to say yes?" I learned that around the 120th rejection for our book. The next person I asked: "What would have to happen for you to say yes?" He said, "We need to know we could sell 20,000 copies." A banker wants to know you have the capacity to pay them back. So Mark and I — my co-author — put 8½-by-11 sheets on every seat at every talk we gave for the next couple of months — a thousand people, fifty people, whatever. When we had 20,000 handwritten commitments to buy the book with their addresses, we went to the publisher. The publisher went, "Okay."

So he told us what he needed. My first bank loans — I got turned down at four or five banks in a row. At each one I asked, "What would have to happen for a bank to say yes? You'd need better this, you'd need that." By the time I got to the fifth or sixth bank, I had all that, and they said yes.

You can always go back. You can go back to any of the banks that said no — now because of your success. And sometimes the situation changes. People are starting a multi-level marketing business, they talk to their brother-in-law, and he says, "Go away with that." Then three months later he just lost his job because of AI — now he's interested. You never know. So go back.

Andrey: That's such a powerful principle. Can you give a couple of lessons on how to increase your self-confidence and ask people for what you want?

Jack: Confidence is a result of surviving a risk. So you're not afraid to ask money from banks now because you survived the risk of that — even when they said no, you didn't disappear, you didn't die, you survived it. And then when you started getting yeses, your confidence went up even more.

Scale the ask, scale the confidence

Jack: So basically there are two ways to do that. One is: scale down the amount. Instead of asking for a billion dollars, you ask for $100,000 so you get comfortable asking. And then the second thing is to visualize asking and getting a yes — because your subconscious mind, which runs you, can't tell the difference between a real event and an imagined event.

The subconscious can't tell real from imagined

Jack: We demonstrate that in the workshop. I'll get people to stand up, close their eyes, and imagine they're up on a terrace on the 54th floor — or the 125th floor — of a building, and there's no railing at the edge. "Now walk to the edge, put your toes on the edge, and look down." And people do this — their bodies react to the vision. Then I'll say, "Walk or crawl back to the middle." Then: "What happened?" "My palms were sweaty." But where were you really standing? In a room. The worst that could happen would be falling two or three feet — but your body thought you were up there.

So we know we can use that to our advantage by imagining a success. Imagining the standing ovation. Imagining the banker saying yes. Imagining you're on the cover of Forbes or Fortune — "Greatest real estate investor in the history of the world" — whatever. So you imagine yourself doing the thing you're afraid of, doing it successfully.

And you want to do that every day. I recommend — and the people who are really into this recommend — doing it first thing when you wake up, sometime in the middle of the day like on your lunch break, and right before you go to bed. Your subconscious at night will replay — seven times more intensely — whatever happens in the last 45 minutes before you go to bed. If something was really traumatic, your cat got run over by a car or something, you're going to remember that because of the emotional charge.

But the reality is: every time you visualize it you're creating new neural pathways in the brain. I like to use a metaphor. If you go bowling, there are gutters on the sides. Once the ball goes in the gutter, it's not coming out — you're not going to get the pins. Right now you've got gutters in your brain: you start thinking "I want to be a billionaire" and something from your childhood goes, "No you're not, you can't do that" — and you're in the gutter. So we want to create new gutters, new neural pathways. Every time neurons fire together they get a little thicker and the connections get stronger. By repetition, repetition, repetition — pretty soon you've given a speech, or asked for something, a thousand times in your mind. If you do it three times a day for a year, that's over a thousand repetitions. It usually takes about 60 to 120 days to change a belief if you do what we're talking about and have an affirmation like: "I am so happy and grateful that I am now earning a billion dollars a year." A behavior — like getting up and exercising or meditating — you can often change that in 60 days. It's basically using what we know from neuroscience about the brain to create new neural circuits.

Andrey: So let's maybe give an example of an affirmation for people who aren't familiar with that. If I want to be a billion-dollar earner, what should I write as my affirmation?

Jack: There are a number of things you could do. I like an affirmation to start with the words "I am," because you want to affirm you're already there. And then two feeling words — I always say "happy and grateful." If I gave you a billion dollars right now, you'd be happy and you'd be grateful. So: "I am so happy and grateful that I am now celebrating having just earned a billion dollars this year" — or "celebrating that my net worth is now a billion dollars" — whatever that may be. Keep it pretty simple. And then what's the visualization that goes with it?

The thing most people don't realize about visualization: only about 15% of people visualize like a full-color Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie. Most people don't get that and think they're not visualizing — but you can just think it. "It's a red car. It's got a glove compartment. If I open it there's a map in there." You're thinking it, kind of visualizing it. Secondly, you have to hear the sound — what's the sound of your wife saying, "Gosh honey, we're billionaires, we got that house on the beach"? And your kids are going, "Dad, I love it." And then — what would you feel? A lot of times people say, "I don't know what it would feel like to drive a Rolls-Royce." Go to the Rolls-Royce dealer and test drive it — now you know. I don't know what it would feel like to be in the presidential suite at the Burj Al Arab — go there, tell them you're considering a wedding party and want to see the suite. They take you up, you look at it, now you know what it feels like. Or you can watch a movie. We all know we don't want to go to war even if we've never been to war, because we see how hellacious it is in a film. So watch movies of the kind of success you want.

Andrey: That perfectly leads to another principle: being comfortable being uncomfortable. I remember during the workshop you had us go and buy a shirt at Nordstrom. I walked in and bought the most expensive shirt. And now I don't go to Nordstrom — I go to a different place — and it feels even better.

Jack: I had the same experience. I took a job for a training company in LA — I moved from Massachusetts. The trainer was a lot wealthier than I was at the time and he bought all his clothes on Rodeo Drive. He said, "You want to come? I'm going to buy some shirts." So I walk in and the shirts are $130, $150 — now some of those shirts are $250 — better quality material, better tailoring. I was buying my shirts at Nordstrom for $38. And I said to myself, "I can't be a coward — I've got to buy at least one shirt just so I look like I belong." So I bought that shirt, took it home, wore it, loved it. Every time my shirts came back from the laundry, that was the first one I wore. Now I probably have fifty shirts like that. My wife thinks I'm a shirt addict, but the point is I love shirts, I get good shirts, and I feel good in them — this is one I'm wearing right now.

But the point is: every time you risk doing the good thing, your brain prefers it. It's going to figure out how to get that for you because you now have a preference. And if you believe it's possible to have that preference, it will orchestrate things to make it happen.

There was a woman in our workshop who was having a real tough time with her kids — they were not treating her well, and she was really struggling. I got her to let go of the need for them to behave differently. I'll sometimes have someone go up to the wall and say, "Become a car. Become a car. Become a car." And I say, "How long do you think it's going to take before the wall becomes a car?" "It's not going to happen." "Well, your kids aren't going to change either unless something in you changes." So she let go of all that, and within five hours her daughter called, her son called, and they had a great relationship — because the energetic had shifted.

Andrey: That's such a powerful principle. But a lot of people just dream and visualize — it's also important to take action, right?

Jack: Absolutely. I always say: visualization without action is delusion.

Andrey: I love that.

What most entrepreneurs get wrong about wealth

Jack: So what happens when you do what I just talked about — affirmations, visualizations, belief work — you start acting as if. How would you act if you were a billionaire? What would you do differently? I have some friends who every month tip a waiter $100, because that's what billionaires would do.

Andrey: Oh, that's a good idea.

Jack: One of my favorite stories: Bob Hope is coming out of a casino in Vegas and says to the parking attendant, "What's the greatest tip you ever got?" The guy says, "$100." Bob says, "I'm going to give you $200, and you're going to remember that Bob Hope gave you the best tip you ever got." Then Bob says, "I'm just curious — who gave you that first $100?" Says, "You did, Mr. Hope, five years ago."

The point is: if you're a billionaire you can do stuff like that. I'm not suggesting you do it all the time, but I always tell people: at least once a month, tip somebody more — because if you're tipping more, you're coming from a state of abundance. You have to believe "I'm abundant" to do that.

My first mentor — I was making only $18,000 a year as a teacher in Chicago. I'm 80 years old, so that's a long time ago. He said, "Always carry a $100 bill in your wallet." I have two in my wallet right now. I have credit cards, Black American Express, all of that — so I feel very abundant. But back then he said: "You can never say, 'I can't afford that,' because you've got a $100 bill." So back then it was a big deal. It changes your mindset. You never want to say "I can't afford that" — you want to say "I choose not to buy that right now." It's a different thought pattern.

Andrey: In Miami they add the tip automatically — 20% — so it's done deal.

Jack: Yeah. But I love the $100-bill habit. And when I shared it last time —

Andrey: Since that time I started carrying one, and those $100 bills — I gave one to my wife, I put them everywhere — and that feels different. Yeah, that's such a simple but profound exercise.

Jack: Yeah. And I always say: if you were a billionaire, how would you act, what would you do? Now obviously if you're not there yet, having a private jet would be a stupid decision — don't do that. But start asking yourself: where could I just act more abundantly?

When I first moved to Santa Barbara I was buying $38 bottles of wine. Now I buy $150 bottles of wine. Then I decided to stop drinking — it's been a couple of years — so I'm giving away $200–$300 bottles of wine to my gardeners, to the guy who does my maintenance. They think I walk on water. But I get a thrill every time I do that. I'm abundant.

Andrey: We're going to write that down: if you want to feel like a billionaire, give away $200 to $300 bottles of wine.

Jack: Think about this — I was in Dubai at the Burj Al Arab, the only six or seven-star hotel in the world. Average room could be $10,000 a night. I got to see the presidential suite because they use The Success Principles to train their staff. And they said, "Who buys these rooms?" "Russian oligarchs — they have all this money." We went to lunch and they were all buying wine: $1,000 a bottle, $2,000 a bottle, 1954 French Margaux. And the staff said, "Yeah, we love when the oligarchs are here — that guy will buy a $1,000 wine, and this guy sees that and wants to outdo him, so he'll buy a $2,000 one."

The point isn't that that's a good way to spend money on wine. The point is: start asking yourself how you dress, how you present yourself. I always tell people: you're better off having one really great suit instead of three cheap shirts. When you put that suit on, it's like — "Now I feel different." Start doing that kind of thing.

And I've worn a gold bracelet for years. For me, whenever I wear it, it says, "I'm wealthy." Later I learned from John Gray why kings wear so much gold — not just the crowns but the necklaces. It actually has a vibration of abundance and authority to it. So for me, I have several gold things on — just working with that energy.

Andrey: Wow, I didn't know that story. That's great.

Andrey: Let's talk about rejection — how to get comfortable when people say no, no, no.

Jack: What I teach is that every no is a step toward a yes. One of my favorite authors is Ken Blanchard. He wrote a book with someone about a guy who was selling encyclopedias when he was young. He'd knock on doors, and about every tenth person would buy one. He'd get a no and say, "Well, thank you for the $100." They'd say, "What?" He'd say, "Well, you said no, but I know I only need nine more nos to get to my sale." A lot of times people would say, "Wait, don't go yet — come in, let's talk," and he would sell more encyclopedias because of that.

The point is: whatever the sales cycle — if you're selling a million-dollar printing machine, you may get 40 nos before you get a yes. If you're selling private jets, you're going to get even more nos. Every no is getting you closer to a yes. There's a wonderful book called Go for No. What most people do is: they get a no, they feel depressed. If you get a no and you know it's on your way to success, you go, "Oh wow, great — thank you." Celebrate the no. Set a goal for how many nos you want to get today. Then the no is never a disappointment because you know you need to get some nos to get there.

When I was running workshops in St. Louis, about every ninth person my enrollment teams talked to would say yes. One guy — he was there volunteering for two nights, just a true believer who had taken the training and wanted to give back — he got 81 nos in a row. 81. And the next nine people all said yes, so the average evened out. What if he'd stopped after 50? "Nah, I don't want to do this, it's too depressing." So don't let the no stop you.

Andrey: I actually use this a lot. I was very uncomfortable asking. I don't know why, but if someone at a store asked, "Can I help you?" I was running away because I didn't want to accept help. And now I ask right away: "Hey, here's my list from my wife, can you help me?" I also started asking for discounts or upgrades after your workshop. Every time I arrive somewhere: "Do you have the Andrey discount?" "Who is Andrey?" "It's me." And I also expect they might upgrade me. "Can I upgrade my room for free?" And a lot of times they do, actually, but no one else asked them.

Jack: Exactly. I've gotten a lot of upgrades to first class — though now I just buy it. Before that, I didn't always get a yes, but I got yeses. "Can we get a seat by the window?" You know.

I'll tell you a couple of really cool things — this is the billionaire mindset. I'm with Patty Aubrey, my business partner, and we're down in San Diego. She taught me a lesson. We walked by this Italian restaurant — you could see through the window, everyone was having a good time, it looked great — and there was a big line at the hostess stand. I said, "Patty, we'll never get in there." She said, "Watch this." So she goes up to the host and says, "There's this guy Jack Canfield back here — I bet him a $100 we can get a table. Now I can give you the $100 or I can give it to him. Which would you prefer?" And the host said, "Right this way."

And because of that, I remember at a workshop in Las Vegas — it was also the national college football championship, I didn't realize that until I got to the airport. The line to get to the curbside bag-check guy literally went into the parking garage across the street. I realized I was going to miss my plane. So I walked up to the guy and said, "If I gave you $100, could I get to the front of the line?" He says, "Yes sir, Mr. Canfield, right this way."

And the same thing in Vegas — you go to a show and they put you in a crappy seat in the back. "If I give you $100, could I get up front?" "Oh yes sir, right this way." Now I go: "Here's $50, could I have a reasonable seat?" It's called — I didn't know how it was played. That's how it's played. You learn.

Andrey: Yeah, that's amazing. I do the same thing. So people visualize what they want, then get comfortable being uncomfortable, ask for what they want — what else?

Building a team that grows with you

Jack: Well, let's talk about uncomfortableness for a minute. There's recent research done at Pepperdine University, by a woman psychologist at the business school there. They found that the entrepreneurs who were most successful were the ones who were willing to be the most uncomfortable. When I was in the rainforest working with some shamans doing plant medicine — you mentioned Ayahuasca, and so forth — one shaman said, "The problem with the people of the north, meaning North America, is you're all addicted to comfort. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable. You've got your air conditioning, your heaters, your soft beds, your rain gear." But he was also saying: you've got to be uncomfortable to take risks. It's uncomfortable to ask the first time. It's uncomfortable to say, "Well, what would have to happen?" It's uncomfortable to say, "I don't agree with you," or "Will you upgrade me?" — because you're afraid of the reaction.

But the more willing you are to be uncomfortable — as you were when you were talking to the banks — the more likely you are to succeed. Success happens outside your comfort zone. Growth does not occur when you're comfortable. There's a wonderful book called What's in the Way Is the Way. You the leader have to be evolving, and the culture has to be a learning culture.

What happens is: you have to be willing to stretch. That's why you go to Tony Robbins, do a firewalk — that's uncomfortable. You get to the other end and you didn't burn your feet and you say, "Oh my God, what else have I been telling myself I can't do?" Skydiving, scuba diving, swimming in the ocean with sharks. The reality is: we have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to get 20 miles outside of your comfort zone.

The research now shows that micro steps matter too. I always tell people: you live in Miami, right? How many restaurants do you think there are in Miami?

Andrey: Thousands.

Jack: How many do you regularly go to?

Andrey: Five or seven.

Jack: Five. That's called a habit. There are thousands of restaurants you haven't tried — cuisines, whether it's Cuban, Indian, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern — that you haven't experienced, because you go to the same ones. And I bet nine times out of ten you order the same main course, the same drink, the same table, the same wine.

My wife and I, when we go to Paris — our favorite walking city — we just find a restaurant. She actually sees light around the doors, she's a bit psychic. And we go in and say, "Just surprise us, give us your best meal, we don't know what we're going to get." I've eaten escargot — snails — and they're actually good. I never would have tried them otherwise.

Andrey: You know what, I do something similar. I choose a couple of restaurants close to our home so we can walk. But when we go out, my wife and I decided we're going to a new restaurant every single time and try different foods.

Jack: Good. The more you can do that — even driving to work a different route, watching a different TV show, listening to a different kind of music, maybe you're into country but you listen to reggae or hip-hop or rap or whatever. I saw a guy last night called Chance the Rapper — he was on The Voice — most amazing thing I ever heard. His voice was incredible, the music was incredible. It was very soft rap. I've got a whole new thing I'm excited about.

Andrey: All right, Jack — I run a business, and I'm also very caring about my family. I have three kids. What's your recommendation on how to have balance? I know you're never going to have perfect balance, but you need to balance. And what routines do you recommend with your family? My kids are teenagers right now and they don't want to talk to me much.

Jack: Well, what I did and what I recommend is: when I was growing up, my dad would say, "I'll give you $3 if you wash the car or cut the grass." I didn't do that with my kids. I said, "You see this book? If you read it and give me a book report, I'll give you $20."

Andrey: We do the same thing — they read The Economist, I pay them $30.

Jack: One of my friends who is a very successful entrepreneur in Thailand — his father actually did that with him. He hated it at the time. Now he says, "I'm so grateful for my father because I learned all these success principles."

There's a book called The Success Principles for Teens, by the way — you can have them read that because the examples are more teenage-related. Take them to seminars when they're at the appropriate age. Bribe them to go with you if you have to. But I want those kids learning skills.

A friend of mine owns a series of dance studios and is also president of the Dance Studio Association of America. One weekend he said to his kids, "I want you to write either an application to college or a business plan and give it to me Sunday night." His son wrote a business plan, his daughter wrote a college application. He said to his daughter, "Wrong answer." The business plan was more valuable than the college education was going to be.

Now, I'm not saying don't get a college education. But with AI now and everything that's changing, we want to make sure our kids graduate — if they do go to school — with something they can actually market.

My youngest stepson came to me when he was in the sixth grade and said, "Dad, would you give me money so I could buy some scooters?" These were metal scooters everyone was riding. He said, "I can buy them for $30, sell them for $75 on Amazon, and make $45 at my school." I said, "Write me a business plan." He said, "What's a business plan?" I said, "Go to the internet, look it up, and write me one." So he did. I said, "I'll lend you the money but I expect it back with interest." And he did that. That boy is now making $375,000 a year working at a company that teaches people how to sell their companies.

My other son would say, "Can I have $20 to buy a loaf of bread?" and I never saw the change again. He's working in retail now, working up to being a manager. Totally different mindsets. Your children will be different too — you want to support whatever their skills are. And Brian Tracy says the greatest skill you can learn — and you know this from your banking experience — is how to sell. How do you enroll people to give you what you want? If they learn how to sell, they're always going to be successful.

Andrey: And I want to go back to the balance thing: what advice would you give to your 45-year-old self? Because you're 80 — I'm 44. What's the advice for next year?

Jack: One thing — I want to go back to balance first. Make sure you schedule time as a parent educator — every child needs one-on-one time with you. Not the whole family going to IHOP for breakfast on Saturday, but one-on-one: playing a video game with your son for an hour, doing something different with your daughter. Make sure you do that.

I was recently talking to a bunch of Silicon Valley CEOs and they were all very stressed out, but one guy said, "I made a commitment: I'm going to be home three nights a week for dinner and put the kids to bed." So he puts it in his schedule — he doesn't book meetings then. Rarely is there a true emergency. And if there is and you skip Tuesday, you make it up on Friday, so they know dad is present.

If you're traveling internationally, make sure you call, bring them presents. Find out what their love languages are. My kids all have different love languages — gifts, quality time, nurturing touch. Make sure you do that. And quality is actually better than quantity: if they really have your full attention, that's what's important.

Andrey: That's so great. We meet with our kids on Sunday morning, and we have a scheduled dinner at 7:30. If they can't make it, we'll schedule a different day. And they have to brief me every week. They read The Economist — I pay them $30. At the beginning, two years ago, they didn't really want to. My daughter — she's more artistic — said, "What's this journal?" But now she's publishing her own magazine at 15, and after two years they're both very comfortable talking about politics and economics. That's super cool.

Jack: I'm going to recommend something else. When you have your family dinners — maybe every other week — do something called a heart talk. You say to the kids, "What's up? What are you most concerned about? What's your greatest fear, your greatest excitement?" You're talking about emotions. You pass a physical object around — it could be a glass — and whoever's holding it knows it's their turn. They get to talk for as long as they want, no one can interrupt them, and then they pass it to the left. Your wife does it, the kids do it, you do it. What happens is you're getting a little more intimately into their emotional life — which is really critical.

And it's a great tool for your management team too: people can talk about their feelings, their fears, their excitements, without being interrupted or told they're wrong. They feel they're in a safe space. Very important.

Andrey: Yeah, that's such a great exercise. We've done it a couple of times — on Wednesdays when we discuss.

Train your staff the way Tony Robbins does his

Jack: So — what advice would I give to a 45-year-old? Well, it's different for me at this point. I would have told myself: write more, write sooner. The books have been the big thing. I made a lot of money off Chicken Soup for the Soul, but the other books have been entry points where people read them and then want to hire me to come and speak. They established me as an expert — just like your book does with your financial audience.

For you, I would say: keep doing what you're doing — constantly be involved in growth. Whether it's every quarter or twice a year, do something like the workshop we just did, so you're constantly growing.

And then your staff. I know one of the things you wanted to talk about is how to get your staff to hold this billion-dollar vision. The main job of a CEO is to hold the vision and then hire people who can fulfill it. And the other important thing for you is to start training your replacement — someone who can be you — so you're not always working in the business but working on the business. Systems have to be developed. Are you familiar with Michael Gerber's E-Myth book?

Andrey: Of course.

Jack: Make sure you have those systems in place. And I would figure out some way to do minor profit-sharing, because one of the big issues for growing companies is that people leave, start their own thing, and take everything they know with them. You want to make sure they're invested enough that they don't want to leave. They do this on Wall Street — the big firms always structure bonuses so you get a third this year, a third next year, a third the year after. No one ever wants to leave because they're going to lose their bonus. I don't want you to capture people in a mean way, but you want people to see: "I'd be stupid to leave here because this is constantly growing. As the company grows, the profits grow, and I grow." So have a core management group that you're training, loving, supporting.

And sometimes take the whole team somewhere — a hunting trip, fishing, or, you know — we took our whole staff to an escape room. We spent a whole day doing that kind of stuff. It was totally fun, the whole group came back bonded. There are lots of corporate trainers who run things like that. Your group grows with you.

This is somewhat on track, but here's an idea from it. There was this one guy — he was a financial planner with lots of clients. Twice a year he would hire two speakers — one for the morning, one for the afternoon. Me, Tony Robbins, those kinds of people. He would invite all his clients in for a free seminar. No one ever wanted to go to another financial planner because they didn't want to miss these two days of training. So make sure your staff is getting training from people like me, and Tony, and anyone you bring in. It could be financial planning, how to be a better spouse, anything that's going to improve their life — so they see that the quality of their life is growing, not just their bank account.

The closing — billion-dollar thinking

Andrey: Well Jack, it was an absolute delight to have this conversation with you. And again, I've listened to you many, many times, but every time I listen I get a new nugget. And I'm sure the people watching will take action, get comfortable being uncomfortable, and believe in the vision. Thank you very much.

Jack: You're so welcome. Love working with you.

Andrey: What Jack shared today isn't just about personal development — it's billion-dollar leadership wisdom. Scaling to $1 billion isn't just a business challenge, it's an inner game. If you're serious about growing your company and your impact, replay this episode, take notes, and start applying. And if you know someone building big things, share this episode with them. Because in the end, billion-dollar breakthroughs start with billion-dollar thinking. Thank you for watching. See you next time.