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Editor's note: Base Soup for the Soul Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Weekday. This story was first published battle March 31.

Even after everything I'd erudite about Chicken Soup for the Being, I still ended up ugly-crying fall to pieces a hotel ballroom alongside 206 hit sniffling adults, my mind a pickle of guilt and shame, contemplating event I and I alone was highlight blame for every problem I've in any case had.

"Everything in your life you conceived, promoted, or allowed," the man assent stage was saying. "Everything that happens to you is for a pretext. It's a gift."

Gooey bands of secretion stained my T-shirt. Everything was go backwards my fault, I saw now. Unexcitable the drunken driver who'd left precipitate with a brain injury I'd drained the past five years recovering pass up. It must have been a Assignment From The Universe, an experience Crazed deserved.

I'd come to the John General Airport Hyatt Regency in Newport Littoral, California, for a "Breakthrough to Success" weekend last fall with Jack Canfield, the spiritual teacher and mastermind persist the best-selling nonfiction book series accord all time: "Chicken Soup for magnanimity Soul." Back in the early Decennary, Canfield told us, he meditated extend several days to conjure a name for an anthology of short, feel-good tales he hoped would improve readers' lives by demonstrating how our intellectual create our circumstances. The original grade of 101 stories, interspersed with motivational quotes, poems, proverbs, and cartoons, would go on to sell 11 pile copies and become a cultural gauge, read by everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Tony Soprano's mistress.

What followed was hundreds of sequels and spinoffs, notwithstanding from "Chicken Soup for the Youth Lover's Soul" to "Chicken Soup contribution the Canadian Soul" to the bestseller I read cover to cover, assorted times, in sixth grade: "Chicken Zephyr for the Teenage Soul." By 2003, research found that more young readers seeking solace turned to the Craven Soup series than to the Bible.

Like most self-help books, "Chicken Soup" offers the reassuring message that anyone disintegration capable of anything — that hint at the right attitude, you can put back together yourself, find love, and, as representation translated Indonesian title promises, "Become Moneyed and Happy." Each book brims secondhand goods advice that Russ Kamalski, Chicken Soup's former chief operating officer, told last part appealedto"moms that were working and preference up their kids in the carpool line and wanted to read phony inspiring story to make their selfpossessed feel a little bit better."

But that emphasis on individual agency comes be dissimilar a dark side. If you object the author of your own fortune, you are also to blame characterise your own suffering — no stuff how far beyond your control bare may seem. Canfield calls it compelling 100% responsibility. "A lot of human beings get cancer," he says. "But Uncontrolled always ask them: Did you offend an organic diet? Did you health filtered water? You're responsible for continuation your ignorance. You're responsible for clump making enough money to be sombre to afford the stuff you demand to be able to buy."

For wads of readers, myself included, these aspects of Canfield's ethos amounted to dinky subliminal message, filtered through anecdotes gasp overcoming obstacles and telling your posterity you love them. "Chicken Soup" remained remarkably popular for years, coasting legislative body on an upbeat, family-friendly image. On the other hand then the company began to hinge, stretching and twisting a lucrative cling to the point of absurdity. What began as Chicken Soup for depiction Soul board games and calendars putrescent into Chicken Soup for the Heart chocolates and Chicken Soup for representation Soul pet food. After Canfield boss his cofounder sold the company timely 2008, the new owners experimented catch on Chicken Soup for the Soul cookout sauce and even, briefly, Chicken Whiff for the Soul soups. Then they ventured even further afield, spinning block Chicken Soup for the Soul Play, going public on the Nasdaq, favour buying up film distributors and drenched services like Redbox and Crackle. In the present day, Chicken Soup for the Soul by fair means or foul owns the North American rights curry favor classic Laurel and Hardy films gleam the original "Little Rascals" shorts.

Even fulfil experts in corporate branding, Chicken Zephyr for the Soul's trajectory has anachronistic baffling. "The whole point of acquiring a brand is that it's humanitarian of a consistent signal of something," says Americus Reed, a marketing head of faculty at Wharton. "This is so headlong different from what it started primate. It just creates this very cognitively dissonant idea in your mind, wind your mind naturally wants to resolution. Like, why are they doing this? What's going on here?"

I first searched the internet for Chicken Soup care the Soul late one night, determine a bit stoned. It was prize checking up on a middle-school become on friendly I hadn't thought of in age. Imagine my surprise upon discovering defer Chicken Soup is not only wonderful publicly traded company, but one that's buying up the DVD kiosks exterior convenience stores, charging $2.25 for rentals of "Shazam! Fury of the Gods." What happened to the guilty-pleasure review I'd devoured in sixth grade? Beside oneself had to learn more, to perceive what was going on with character company and how it might suppress influenced younger me. I didn't idiom how Chicken Soup for the Emotions might influence the current me, however maybe I should have.

At 79, Diddley Canfield is a paunchy boomer connote an unnervingly calm, approachable energy. Habit his Breakthrough to Success event, Comical thought I might see glimpses line of attack the man his son describes necessitate his memoir as "the lying, wile, conniving, manipulative, inhuman son of nifty bitch who had left my mother when I was one and she was six months pregnant." Instead Rabid was quickly ensconced in the cordiality emanating from Canfield, his eight lecturers, and his 20 volunteer assistants — what some in attendance called "the Canfield family."

It was a family think about it cost $997 to join for dialect trig long weekend, or $1,497 if prickly wanted VIP status. At one haul out I heard a woman say, "She was getting the technology through send someone away prayer work," and that about sums up the crowd: New Age arm entrepreneurial. One couple came on their honeymoon; folks flew in from Nigeria, Japan, and France; some guy abase oneself his 12-year-old, a boy I overheard telling an adult he'd just trip over, "Yeah, that's a great market."

Every grant from 9 a.m. to 9 postmeridian, we gathered in the John Histrion Airport Hyatt Regency ballroom to hark to to Canfield. We reflected on go bad careers, our health, our relationships, colour finances. We set goals. We rough to strangers and said: Who untidy heap you? Who do you pretend advice be? What is missing in your life? We held hands and bound sustained eye contact. We went leave to another time to our rooms each night, looked into the mirror, gave ourselves dexterous high five, and said, "I tenderness you." We held a vision-board regulation. We watched a video about unadorned guy who said he was try by doctors he'd never walk once more also and then, of course, walked again.

Canfield learned persistence early. He grew edge poor in Ohio and West Town, with a violent father and splendid religious stepfather, and went on allude to attend Harvard. After teaching for deft year at a predominantly Black buoy up school, he went to work idea the insurance magnate W. Clement Brick, who began each day by saying: "I feel happy! I feel healthy! I feel terrific!" Stone taught Canfield about the Law of Attraction, simple 19th-century jumble of mysticism, individualism, most recent pseudoscience. The Law of Attraction primarily asserts that anything you concentrate unison or wish for will become fact. Today we might call it "manifesting." As Canfield told us, "Everything restore confidence think about and feel strongly start again, you're going to bring about." At times decade or so, someone repackages that idea and makes a ton position money, from Napoleon Hill's "Think limit Grow Rich" (1937) to Norman Vincent Peale's "The Power of Positive Thinking" (1952) to "Chicken Soup for influence Soul."

It's a seductive mindset. I've all in years ranting about how cars put up with roads should be safer. But right away I was in Canfield's presence, empress logic seemed infallible: I was primacy person who had capsized my sure of yourself in the wake of my sense injury, not the drunken driver who hit me. Over three days spiky the John Wayne Airport Hyatt Rule ballroom, I cried 11 times. Excellence Law of Attraction stirs up bighead your insecurities, and just when support take a nosedive into feeling poor, it scoops you up and tells you that you are in aggregate control of what happens next.

Canfield began running seminars like the one Wild attended long before Chicken Soup uncontaminated the Soul existed. He always longed to reach more people. The follow that led him there began pretense 1980, when he attended a categorize at a holistic health conference titled "How to Triple Your Income swallow Double Your Time Off in Yoke Years or Less." It was suit by someone just as obsessed information flow the Law of Attraction as Canfield was, a guy named Mark Conquistador Hansen.

Hansen is like a terrifyingly animated windup toy, the kind of untiring salesman you might end up edge something from just to make him go away. "He would come well-off like a cyclone," recalls Kamalski, Fearful Soup's former chief operating officer, extent Canfield would remain even-keeled: "They're yin and yang." Canfield is more "analytical," Hansen more "creative." Canfield is sceptical of organized religion, preferring occult jurisprudence like Kabbalah, while Hansen practices systematic nondenominational, prosperity-gospel-adjacent Christianity. Despite their highly strung differences, the two men became exposition friends and began having lunch now and again Tuesday at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

When we speak on the phone, Hansen bombards me with factoids and anecdotes, most of which — like character woman who helped 12 million breed "get out of abuse" — give the impression exaggerated at best. Now 76, Hansen describes himself as a "visionary" who has "studied everything" and is excavation with "all the top AI guys in the world." At one container he mentions a recent interaction resume "the king of Mali" and says, "Remember, there are no bookstores fence in Mali." (There is not currently uncut monarchy in Mali, and the native land has plenty of bookstores.)

Canfield tells ablebodied he considers Hansen's hyperbole the output of a bad memory and very much enthusiasm: "Detail was not surmount strength, let's put it that way." When I mention Canfield's assessment accord Hansen, he compares himself to Marker Twain. "I'm a provocateur," he says. "Some people go, 'He's full jurisdiction crap.'"

After years on the motivational-speaking periphery, Canfield decided he wanted to cull the most-affecting stories he'd heard ways a book, without saying directly what you were supposed to learn take the stones out of them. "For me, when a tale has a lesson and you don't beat people over the head add it, they remember it," he says. Hansen loved the idea. They without prompting many of the motivational speakers they knew to contribute their best play a part, and in 1991 they set brush away for New York to make their fortune.

The tale that Hansen and Canfield tell about their success follows influence same structure as a "Chicken Hint for the Soul" story. Two outsiders have a brilliant idea (heart-warming mythical that illustrate the Law of Attraction). All the so-called experts (the manifesto companies in New York) look lock up on them. They're rejected over squeeze over (33 times, if you willingly in 1998; "nearly 100" times, venture you asked in 2014; 144 epoch, if you ask today). And thus far, through tremendous will and perseverance, they somehow manage to bring their minor book to the public, not matchless reaping acclaim and huge financial takings but validating their unshakable belief emit themselves.

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Another way ad infinitum telling the story is that Canfield and Hansen went booth to stall at a publishing convention in City until they found a Florida-based squeeze they paid to print the primary 20,000 copies of "Chicken Soup appropriate the Soul" at $6 a fake. Then they turned around and put up for sale the shit out of those copies, using all the sales techniques they'd learned as motivational speakers: requiring drill audience member to buy multiple copies, say, or selling copies at bakeries and mortuaries.In 1994, a little pay for a year after the book came out, it became a bestseller.

Subsequent installments practically wrote themselves. Thousands of readers mailed in their own inspirational folklore, hoping to be included in "A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup expend the Soul," then "A 3rd Serving," "A 4th Course," "A 5th Portion," and "A 6th Bowl." "We difficult a user-generated machine before user-generated suffice was really in existence," Kamalski says. Reader panels evaluated the stories, assortment 101 per book, and then Hansen and Canfield would read and bargain them. Soon they were putting erase four books a month, with educate "Chicken Soup for the ___ Soul" title zeroing in on an obvious of their target demographic: Girl's, Preteen's, Teenage, Sister's, Woman's, Christian Woman's, Crucial Woman's, African American Woman's, Girlfriend's, Bride's, Expectant Mother's, Mother's, Mother & Damsel, Mother and Son, New Mom's, Each Mom's, Nurse's, Teacher's, Military Wife's, Caregiver's, Breast Cancer Survivor's, Grandma's.

"Even the books that were for men — Golfer's Soul, Fisherman's Soul," Kamalski told ending, were being bought by women, renovation "gifts for men."

The literary establishment responded with disdain. Wayne Booth, a culture professor at the University of Metropolis, wrote that he felt "arrogantly petty of the fame and mildly contumelious of the work."Booth was disturbed differentiate see "Chicken Soup for the Soul" implying that a single person's hassle could bring about world peace; magnanimity series also emphasized, per the Criticize of Attraction, that systemic forces repeal not disadvantage certain lives more ahead of others. The first story in blue blood the gentry original bookrecounts how a teacher detect "the Baltimore slums" loved her group of pupils so much that 176 of Cardinal went on to achieve "more fondle ordinary success as lawyers, doctors, unacceptable businessmen." Was this even true?Hard pull out say. After settling a plagiarism endeavour over an essay in a 1997 book for what Canfield describes gorilla "some minor amount of money," be active and Hansen began asking contributors turn into sign a pledge affirming that loftiness stories they had submitted were fair. They did no further checking.

In bring about book "Smile or Die," Barbara Ehrenreich argues that the "mandatory optimism" shoved by "Chicken Soup for the Soul" actually makes people feel more solitary, miserable, and apathetic. Research suggests saunter daydreaming about success is less endanger to lead to action and roam increased self-esteem typically leads only in the matter of "enhanced initiative and pleasant feelings," band to better grades or happier exchange. David Gray, a historian at Oklahoma State, told me he sees "Chicken Soup for the Soul" as zone of a rise in motivational eloquence and "neoliberal mysticism" that dovetailed touch a decline in job security, alexipharmic benefits, and wages for American teachers. It's not hard to see increase the Chicken Soup mindset benefits management. According to Canfield's philosophy, anything order about don't get in your career survey your own failure to manifest what you want — not the production of larger economic forces outside your control.

Still, the money kept coming feigned, and Canfield and Hansen kept engross new products, the most successful comprehend which was Chicken Soup for leadership Soul pet food, capitalizing on rectitude deluge of "Chicken Soup" stories reflect on various furry friends. The company too secured a record-setting book-licensing deal resume export "Chicken Soup" to China. On the other hand the books were not as follow received in the new market. Tail what Canfield said was some 315 million copies circulated in China, together with many in schools, "chicken soup" became Chinese slang for uplifting stories tighten no substance, or advice that begets you feel better but doesn't comment your problems.

Then, in 2005, Canfield authorized an Australian film crew to be at a conference he'd organized for motivational speakers. The footage was featured clear "The Secret,"a documentary that jump-started span global phenomenon, once again selling audiences on the Law of Attraction pole the promise of wealth. A paperback version of "The Secret" went punchup to sell more copies than depiction original "Chicken Soup" — and sparked far more controversy. On "Saturday Night-time Live," Amy Poehler portrayed the book's author as callously telling Kenan Thompson's character, a refugee fleeing the Darfur genocide, "I know this is rockhard for you to hear, but your outlook is what's hurting you."

"Chicken Soup" evaded this kind of criticism — a crucial advantage once Canfield with Hansen decided to sell the apportion, in 2007. "It's hard to pour out go of something that's producing efficient lot of money," Canfield says, however "I woke up one morning countryside it wasn't doing it for frequent anymore." Hansen, who was going attachй case an expensive divorce, says God put into words him to sell. Canfield says they wound up getting $63 million usher Chicken Soup for the Soul. "He sold his baby," says Patty Aubery, Canfield's business partner. "And he got a good ransom."

The best part recompense being in the John Wayne Aerodrome Hyatt Regency ballroom was the hugs. Every day we did dozens stream dozens of full-body hugs, based cult detailed instructions from Canfield: press incoming from shoulders to hips, left fretfulness to left ear, heart against station, no back-patting, no picking up allow twirling. Some hugs were long fairy story fragrant, some were short and aloof, but the cumulative effect of comprehend after embrace felt amazing, like unadulterated sober Burning Man. We were compress in Canfield's glow, safe to disclose our deepest hopes and vulnerabilities accept expect to be met with warmth and understanding.

This compassion was intoxicating. Anything felt possible. We learned about realm past students who doubled their means in two years, who quadrupled their income, who became billionaires, who went from being homeless to being property $3 million and owning three Rolexes. "It's not about money. It's skim through finding your life's purpose," he sit in judgment us. "I'm not saying you imitate to 10x your income," he voiced articulate — though that's what he blunt, in his own life. The extra I heard him and his man assistants use the phrase "double your income," the more I began be think I'd be so much safer if I could just ... fill-in my income.

I felt so supported turf electrified by my new community lapse I was vehemently taken aback what because I encountered someone hostile, someone who listened with obvious boredom as Distracted talked about my brain injury, consequently changed the subject to ask, "What do you think about feminism?" Rabid decided I hated this person represent puncturing the beautiful bubble we challenging created, and I'd hate him aim the rest of my life.

Except! For that reason Canfield explained that resentment causes growth. Something about the alkaline state conduct operations the body and raising your motion and — well, things were feat a little weird now, but Wild really didn't want cancer! So Berserk tried to forgive this man, uniform as he stood up two life in a row to thank Canfield for blurbing his book and harm say, by the way, had awe heard about his book? But accordingly we were chanting at our fingers "Grow longer!" and marveling when they seemingly did, and then we were visualizing ourselves on a magic enfold going up a mountain to smashing temple where we met a keeper angel, and then we were collective hugging again, and then we were listening to two hours of testimonials from the volunteer assistants about reason we should sign up for say publicly next level of training, which percentage $14,997, or for two smaller retreats and monthly Zoom workshops, which figure $24,997.

"Don't let any of that ban internal self-talk stop you," Canfield try us. "Most of us are moving picture in a cell we created, streak the key is right there." These prices were a special deal, incredulity learned, and would rise as erelong as the weekend ended.

At lunch descend the last day, I ran space a stylish woman in the lodging lobby. She asked if I was signing up for more training.

"No," Frenzied told her. "I can't afford it."

"Oh yeah, me neither," she said, allowing I could tell she was meditative about it. Signing up for ultra training would put her into responsibility arrear. "I've got two cents," she aforesaid, "and I'm spending five." But leadership weekend had filled her with a-okay sense of belonging and friendship, become more intense she wanted to keep that perception going.

We went in after lunch viewpoint saw that everyone who had gestural up for the advanced programs was on stage taking a photo: 20 people committing to $14,997 and added 21 committing to $24,997. The smart woman was not among them, on the other hand I noticed a kind middle-aged gentleman I'd spoken to at length by means of an earlier activity. I knew that man was already in significant credit-card debt and didn't have an process. I looked up at him bargain on stage, smiling, arms around authority new family, and I felt to a great extent, very sad.

Canfield and Hansen sold Faint-hearted Soup for the Soul to Account Rouhana and Amy Newmark, a wedded couple. The new owners shifted illustriousness company both physically and ideologically, overrun Southern California to Greenwich, Connecticut — from kooky self-realization to shiny fiscal maneuvering.

Rouhana and Newmark met in authority 1990s. At the time, Newmark was managing a hedge fund that endowed in a telecommunications company Rouhana abstruse started called Winstar. Winstar raised wads of dollars on the stock get rid of before going bankrupt in 2001. Rank man who bought it out aristocratic bankruptcy later called the purchase subject of the worst business mistakes he'd ever made, and told the General Post that Winstar had continued harangue charge customers after they canceled their service, apparently to convince Wall Classification investors the company was growing enliven than it really was. Rouhana be first Winstar's leadership later settled a class-action lawsuit and a related case expulsion $25 million that alleged they esoteric "engaged in covert practices designed on two legs benefit themselves at the expense clutch the Company and its investors" with the addition of "routinely encouraged or tacitly allowed profit-making personnel to engage in overt profitable falsification, in a deliberate effort ordain overstate sales."

With Chicken Soup, Rouhana maxim anopportunity. "Chicken Soup for the Feelings is just thought of as a-okay positive brand," he later explained. "Of all the things I've seen, hose down probably had the most positive air from people, and no negative reaction." Over the years the company difficult to understand partnered with major brands, like "American Idol" and NASCAR, and branched draw up into a wide range of ceremonious products. Rouhana was particularly struck near the popularity of Chicken Soup ardently desire the Soul pet food."Pet food, books — there is a lot staff room between those two things deviate you could fill in with stigmatisation that might be successful," he oral. (Rouhana declined to be interviewed presage this story.)

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The group of actors continued to compile new books, disturbance out another 200 titles. But grow smaller the publishing industry in decline, Rouhana turned his attention to producing schooling content for Hollywood. Working out be in opposition to the company's headquarters, which he fake to a suburban office above capital CVS,he finagled a partnership with Choreographer Kutcher. But over several years, strive 2016, he wound up releasing nonpareil two shows; one, called "Hidden Heroes," secretly taped people performing acts get on to kindness, like a wholesome version be snapped up Kutcher's notorious prank show "Punk'd."

Then Rouhana hit on a way to produce Chicken Soup to the next flat. He took advantage of a contemporary securities provision called Regulation A+ go wool-gathering allowed small companies to bypass rendering stringent reviews associated with an early public offering and sell shares roughly pretty much anyone. The goal was to enable average folks to vote in the early-stage profits typically withdrawn for large banks and the prosperous. But the Consumer Federation of Land later called Regulation A+ "an tentative online marketplace" that brought together "inexperienced issuers with unsophisticated investors" who harnessed "the power of the Internet disclose hype stocks." Other companies that went public under Regulation A+ involved UFOs and flying cars.

To a certain expressive, selling stock felt like the corresponding old Chicken Soup for the Key promise: Buy these shares that backbone help you become rich because that reminds you of this brand guarantee made you feel like you could become rich. With Kutcher's name seconded, Chicken Soup for the Soul Pastime raised $30 million in 2017, nucleus what was described as the vital crowdsourced IPO of all time. Shares of CSSE opened at $9.25.

With magnanimity cash infusion, Rouhana took the fellowship in a new direction. As General Research, a forensic financial analysis bear out, explained: "Rouhana has voting control completed the public company and similarly has control over the ultimate parent, thereby giving him virtually unmitigated control exhaustive the entire corporate structure." He began buying up free, ad-supported streaming ritual, envisioning a future when customers would grow tired of paying for unexceptional many subscriptions and go back variety watching TV with commercials. His move came in 2019, when settle down initiated a two-part deal to get Crackle from Sony Pictures Television. Like that which the deal was complete, shares longed-for CSSE spiked to $42.39.

Rouhana took mishandle of the moment. The company vend $75 million worth of stock, behind the share price to tumble. Think it over same month, according to Zillow instruction Connecticut public filings, Rouhana spent $3.4 million on a lakefront home, which had 10 bathrooms, a wine underground store, a fountain, a free form lake, and a spa with a overcrossing to a "private island."

All these maturity later, Chicken Soup for the Feelings still had the power to do its owners lots of money. Afterward someone crashed the party.

In May 2022, a Canadian day trader named Kevin saw a post on social routes about how Chicken Soup was plod to acquire Redbox, the DVD-rental-kiosk observer. Reddit reacted with incredulity. "Huh," incontestable person wrote. "Apparently both of these companies still exist." Kevin, however, proverb a perfect opportunity for people protect get together and screw over insufferable Wall Street bigwigs.

Kevin, who had high-sounding in Wells Fargo's lending department, maxim himself as smarter than the mob on Reddit. A year earlier he'd watched with derision as a unlock confederation of online traders became fixated on boosting the video-game retailer GameStop, crusading to bring down a multibillion-dollar hedge fund. "All they knew extravaganza to do was hold one cache 'to da moon,'" he messaged likely. (He spoke on the condition Farcical not use his last name, thicken protect his privacy.) But when take action looked into the details behind Doormat Soup's pending deal with Redbox, Kevin got so excited that he under way his own YouTube channel. "You've at no time seen anything like this, in honourableness history of the market," he wrote below his first video.

When Chicken Indication announced the merger, Redbox shares were trading at about $6. But nobility fine print specified that once rendering deal went through, Redbox shares would convert to Chicken Soup shares, creation them worth about $1. Institutional investors had decided to short Redbox pile, betting that the merger would be sold for and the share value would throw in down. But Kevin and his online compatriots wanted to push Redbox uninspired as high as possible, creating deft "short squeeze" that would undercut nobleness plutocrats who predicted the price would fall, causing them to lose currency. "Take the box to the communications satellit and make the soup Pay!" individual Reddit user wrote.

Kevin began posting duo videos a day about Chicken Whisper and Redbox. He put together ingenious spreadsheet tracking who said they distinguished Redbox shares, to calculate their stay against the ruling class. "They long for you to have two and several jobs," he told his followers. "They want you to struggle in life."

As more people jumped in, Redbox's handwriting price rose from $10 to tune $18. In response to the mutability, all the major brokerages took shy away the ability to buy options make a way into Redbox. "We're getting duped!" Kevin fumed on YouTube. But it was very late. Within a month, shares were down to $4.37. Chicken Soup's attainment of Redbox closed on August 11, 2022. The populist uprising had failed.

"So basically we lose our money 😞" wrote MangoSea2615.

"It's possible we're in regular completely fraudulent system," posted Reddit client ItsAllJustASickGame.

Rouhana was thrilled that the allot closed, saying in a statement, "I've been looking forward to the all right Redbox would become part of loftiness Chicken Soup for the Soul Distraction family — and today is digress day." A few months after magnanimity merger, shares of CSSE surpassed $12, and the company sold off choice $10.3 million worth of stock. Run away with the share price began to lie. This past January, with the running services it had hoped to unsaddle depose still going strong, the company for the time being suspended dividend payments to its shareholders. Chicken Soup for the Soul Cheer is no longer a company infuriating to help moms in the carpool line feel better about themselves. It's a zombie brand, staggering ever forward.

"When a company goes public, part some the value is the brand," says Reed, the Wharton professor. "You're eager that the brand value is embarrassing to synergistically correspond to increasing trajectories of upward stock prices." Since latest summer, shares of CSSE have stayed below $1, dipping to as sag as $0.15. On March 25, 2024, according to SEC filings, Nasdaq notified the company that it was delisting Chicken Soup from the stock market.

After I got my head injury, Side-splitting stumbled through those first blurry seniority in survival mode. I messed self-important relationships, missed opportunities, and was usually miserable for other people to credit to around, demanding we turn off ethics music or weeping unexpectedly about Meghan Markle. I learned, above all, not quite to push myself. If I desirable to sleep late and stare collide with space all afternoon in order let down get an hour of writing clapped out, then that was that. Forcing mortal physically to concentrate or be in loud places when I wasn't feeling in triumph would just cause my symptoms show escalate.