Would you like some chicken soup for your soul?

Along with his business partner Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen is best known for creating what Time magazine called “the publishing phenomenon of the decade”. Chicken Soup for the Soul books are one of the most successful publishing franchises in the world today, with more than 140 million books sold internationally. The name “Chicken Soup” was chosen because of the use of chicken soup as a home remedy for the sick. In this inspiring video, Mark shares his insights on the ideas that went behind his best-selling book, his thoughts on success and the stories in life that inspire him.

The following conversation is an excerpt from SkyQuestCom video interview.

SKYQUESTCOM: Mark Victor Hansen is best known for his series of books based upon Chicken Soup for the Soul. Thank you very much for joining us today. My first question, the original Chicken Soup for the Soul first appeared in 1993, and it's become a phenomenal success. What was the inspiration for the book? Why did you write it? And what were some of your goals for the books when you first started?

MARK: Jack (Canfield) and I are both professional speakers. Jack did the educational market, I did the business market. And I taught him how to do dramatic stories that touched your heart. Everybody cries and then they gave us a standing ovation and bought all our books and tapes so, he came up with the idea that he's gonna do a happy little book.

And I said, "Let's do it together." We worked really hard, and coming up with the title. We did a deep meditation one night in our respective homes and said, "Make a best selling title, make a best selling title." Came up with Chicken Soup for the Soul at 4.30 in the morning. We both got goose bumps, our respective wives thought we're nuts. Then we spent the next 3 years working 24/7 to do it. Went to New York to start it, and 144 publishers all said, "Ain't gonna sell. Short stories don't sell."

Finally, we went to book Expo and and one little publisher - Health Communications said, "We'll take it, but we think we can sell 20,000." And you know, we said, "No, no, no, read our business plan! We'll do a year. In a year and a half, we'll do a million and a half." We did a million three the first year and then, went on to 5 million and 10 million and 50. And now we're at 144 million and our goal is a billion. And we've got a pending contract in China , I can't tell you whether it'll come through.

My partner is a Harvard Mandarin scholar, and he's figured how to interface Chinese and English, which is very tough because we read front to back, China reads back to front. We read left to right, they read right to left. But Jack, he's a genius. I only have brilliant partners. I'm not that smart but I got really good partners. I’m very thankful for it. So the inspiration was we wanted to do a book that would change the whole world one story at a time. And, we're up to 147 books. At retail, we sold $1,400,000,000 worth of books. We have more licenses than anyone in non-fiction. Like we sold $2 million worth of dog food a month called Chicken Soup for the Soul Dog Food and it's all organic and it's really good for dogs

SKYQUESTCOM: What do you believe is the secret to the success for Chicken Soup for the Soul?

MARK: Two, I would say. I mean, we spent 3 years figuring out the formula but because it's instantaneous behavioural change. If you read one of the stories, it's going to, you know, pique your interest, touch your heart, get you to change your behaviour.

I think that we contribute on every book, we tie it on every book we ever write, to a charity that we mutually agree upon, with ourselves and our publisher and the co-authors and all. And you know they helped us a lot, like when we did the third 'Chicken Soup'. I was the spokesperson of the American Red Cross. I've got 1,300,000 volunteers and, our book you know, in just a day or two went to number one because we gave away a little sampler, everybody that gave blood - we're out of blood in America. And I got all the chiropractors, which is a group I work with - 62,000 doctors brought in 100 patients each and give them a free adjustment. And you know the sales just skyrocketed.

And we do different things like that, like we had aside 50 million Diet Coke cases, with ourselves and Nora Roberts’ book Hidden Riches. And we sold enough books in 6 months. All the money went to charity and we raised enough money to get 15,000 kids off the streets in the Boys and Girls clubs, partnering with Coke. We're had Campbell soup cans and we worked it out so when you open up the wrapper, it had an accordion three-fold with our stories all the way through and it sold a little book. We had 600 million Campbell soup cans. I'm blanking out which charity we've done, because we've done about 80 different charities. But it was a giant charity drive and that was really good. So we keep coming up with brand new ideas on how to sell like, somebody said, "Well, you all know you should sell more books!" And well, we did a Chicken Soup for the Soul Bible and we got little stories to get you into the big story. And we sold about 70,000 a week in Wal-Mart so, it is really good!

The rest of the conversation and Mark Victor Hansen’s full-length video is available at SkyQuestCom’s Master Channel.


More about Mark Victor Hansen:

MARK VICTOR HANSEN - America's Ambassador of Possibility. In the area of human potential, no one is better known and more respected than Mark Victor Hansen. For over a quarter century, Mark has focused solely on helping people and organizations, from all walks of life, reshape their personal vision of what's possible. His powerful messages of possibility, opportunity, and action have helped create startling and powerful change in thousands of organizations and millions of individuals worldwide. Mark is an internationally sought-after keynote speaker, best-selling author, and marketing maven.