#188: Asking Questions: The Key To Creating A Life By Design With Mark Victor Hansen And Crystal Dwyer Hansen

Thank you for that great compliment. We agree. And we've also got even more important than 5 kids in our blended marriage is we got 6 grandkids that we are absolutely in adoration of and Love Grampy and Mimi and spend a lot of time with us everywhere.

Well, I'll just footnote to this. Randy and I have 4 kids and our oldest is 28. She's married and we have— we don't have grandkids yet. We've got a— there's a puppy. And even when the puppy came into the picture, we're like, so what are we going to get called? This is like a debate going on as to what's going to be the acceptable term to describe moving into grandparenthood. So I'm not settled on mine yet, but Randy is Gigi. I'll just put that out there.

That's what she's—

Isn't that adorable? That's a cute one.

Remember, we sat around a table when the kids got married and kind of had that really serious discussion. They named me and I loved it. They actually met at Mimi's. So we're like, why not Mimi? It was perfect.

I read a bit of the bio for both of you guys. What's not written there that you would love for people to know about you?

That everyone, you know, 'cause we got this brand new book out that is rocking for us and it's in the most absurd time, but we didn't know that we were writing a book that was gonna be idyllic for this time. And it's called Ask! A-S-K exclamation point. quotation mark, the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. And what happens is that people have had their— we talked before the show began, because you and I and Crystal are old friends, is that people are in the first time they've got to pivot. They've got to reinvent themselves, reorient themselves, redirect themselves. And we're talking about, we can argue the percentage, but whether it's 30% or 50%, it's a large percent of us that got to rethink it. And no one would have a better book, I don't think, than ours right now to say, hey, wait a second, here's all the questions you could possibly ask. I mean, Socrates, who's one of our heroes,

Hmm.

I wanted to grow up, and when I was in grad school, school, become a Socratic scholar, and be mighty bright and wise and all that good stuff. But he said, the unexamined life isn't worth living. And the truth is, because you and I and Crystal are in consciousness full-time, asking is the trip of trips. It's the journey of journeys. It's the only place to get illumination, insight, answers, and solutions.

Yeah. Interesting. Socrates. So I got beat up with the Socratic method in law school. So I'm not I still have scars from people in the name of Socrates that abused the heck out of us as law students. But I love the expression that all learning is remembering. I think that's attributed to Socrates as well. And what's cool about that is a lot of the things that we're called to speak about aren't necessarily things that have never been said before, or things that are somehow like discovering 5G or something. There's things that we need to be reminded of, but yet The reminder is so important because if we're not living according to certain really tried and true principles, our lives can go sideways pretty quickly. So Crystal, what's your take on— I'd ask you to start with a pivot story, but I'm just curious, what's your take on what's happening in the world right now? That's a really big, broad question, but do you feel like, is your gut telling you, when you check in with your own intuition on this, is this going to be something we look back on 5 years from now and say, a strange blessing, But a blessing nonetheless.

I think so. I mean, I think a lot of blessings are coming out of it, Adam. What I don't like about it is the politicization of these things, which always happens in an election year. I just wish everybody could just be, you know, take the politics out of it and just be real. But yeah, I think it's a time where, you know, none of us have ever been faced with this kind of crisis before. We've pretty much had an easy go of life and never had to face really, I mean, we've faced personal crises and challenges, but this is something that has had such impact and such global impact. I mean, just kind of turned the world upside down. And so it really causes you to dig deep within yourself. And for that reason, it's been a great time for all of us to say, you know, maybe the direction I was going wasn't exactly what I wanted anyway, or maybe I needed this time to look at myself and say, you know, am I really being the best I can be. I mean, it's been a great opportunity in that sense, I think, don't you? And I will talk about a pivot in my life as well,

but— Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out Just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. We're married. I don't recall how long you guys are together, but Randi and I are going to celebrate in another week our 31st anniversary. We know each other since we were in college. It's a long time. And we were saying before we started the show, we're empty nesters now. So to have the combination of being empty nesters, which we love, I'm going to guilt— without any guilt say that. It was one of a very happy day when we, like, all the little birdies have flown. It's good. Really great. And then to be really, to be in this situation of quarantine for so long, for several months where in California, we were really being very diligent about just not getting out in public. It could put a lot of pressure on a relationship. I mean, A, the whole empty nesting thing. I mean, be really clear when it happened. We came, we have this place on a little island and we went away. after our oldest daughter got married and we spent like a month together. It was the first month we'd spent alone since before we had kids. It was a long hiatus or gap to go, do we still really want to spend that much time together? I mean, honestly, we had it really sussed out and go, okay, will this screw it up? Thankfully, it was a really great time for us to even become reacquainted, as you were saying. But it's been a challenge for, I think, a lot of people to be home. And, you know, especially Mark, you're— I know, listen, you've traveled the world, you've put a lot of miles on, on as I have. There were times when, when Randy would look at me and she'd say, don't you have a trip? Like, don't you have a trip planned?

Can we go somewhere?

I don't know, I'm not like— I don't see anything on your calendar, you know? Shouldn't you be going someplace, right? So Mark, you're, you're a, you're a guy who's like, uh, I don't know, gone out and slayed the dragons. And to be home, has that been tough for you to be just kind of having to

First of all, I'm indefatigably in love with this glorious, beautiful, wholesome woman that is deep-souled. And it was interesting that you started the whole program with deep breath and breathing, with holding your hand and your heart and your stomach. And it's interesting that we are grounded, right? I mean, the whole thing of bringing up all the chakras, but ours, you know, when I got divorced, it was very painful and expensive, but I wrote 267 things I needed in my ideal woman and that we had to have exactly the same values, that she had to have her own money and her own business. And, you know, we had to be totally monogamous and all that. And one of them was that if we could live just the two of us on an island, that we would never run out of conversation, which comes back to asking. And the point is, we've never run out of talking to each other. We are endless and we are together 24/7. And once we got married, whether I was going to talk in New Zealand or Australia or China or wherever, we've been to 80 countries, she was always there. And you're right, I've traveled 6 million miles. I've got more frequent mile miles than almost anyone. And now we've traveled zero in an airplane. And I'm sorry to say it, but the next level, we're trying to help out the airline business now at 2 levels. Is it in one of our other serial entrepreneurial activities? Is it— the fact of the matter is the airlines are in deep doo-doo for a while. I think you'd agree.

They were. Are you saying they were in deep doo-doo already? Right. Or—

They are. They are. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, you know, the future of work, I think it was Thomas Malone that wrote this, but I might've screwed that up. But he wrote a book called The Future of Work back at the sort of like 2000 or 2001, where he was talking about what it might look like if we all worked decentralized hierarchies and working remotely was the thing, was actually the thing. And 20 years later, hello, we're here, right?

Yeah. Thank goodness for Zoom though. I mean, I've been surprised at how well we can carry on because businesses that can be done in an office with people conferring and that sort of thing, that works really well. And I think it's actually worked better than we all thought it would. But the tragic thing, the scary thing are these businesses that are hanging on by their fingernails. They cannot operate that way. When people— I feel like there's been a bit of insensitivity when people are like sort of the shaming about stay home and stay well and be considerate. Well, if I own a barbershop or I own a gym that I just took my last $200,000 and invested it into this beautiful gym where people— the only way I can do business is for people to come to my beautiful business that I just put all this money. It's not the same. So I think we need to be a little sensitive when we say, be considerate, stay safe, stay home. The hairdresser who's a single mom who owns her own shop and her kids need to eat. And not all the money's— I mean, the government did the best they could, but not all the money came through all the time. And the truth of it is, you can only hang on so long in a small business like that. You can't go many months. You might hang on a month or two, but to think of the fallout, because it's not just, oh darn, that business went out of business. That person, Probably is going to lose all of their wealth, all of their wealth, because everything they had, they put into that business, that barbershop, that hair salon, that little gym, that spa. And so we need to be really sensitive to that. If there is a way to open up and support with masks and with safety, then I really believe that we need to think that through. We can't all just hide in our houses forever. And I don't mean to get on my soapbox, but I really have a heart as an entrepreneur. Yeah. You're the small business person. We have friends and family. Who this means a lot to.

It's devastating. And that said, as you said, it may be not a thing that we can solve in conversation in this moment, but what I think we can do is talk about how you deal with that level of adversity. So this is a segue into asking you about some of the pivots that you guys have undergone, because I know that the old clichés about how you turn around failures, people have heard them. And that old expression of everything happens for a reason, I think people call BS on a lot of the time, And I think so too, that it's not a complete statement to say everything happens for a reason. I feel like you have to also include that that reason is there to serve. And at least in my case, when I've had great adversity, I've found over time that it enabled me to serve in some way, in a way I wasn't able to do before. So what's it been like for you? If maybe you could take us into the belly of the beast at some point where things were, like you described, Anybody who's an entrepreneur knows that it is on a great day, devastatingly difficult to be an entrepreneur. That's on the best of days. And on the worst of days, you might want to— you'd walk the narrow line. So what's it been like for you at some point and how did you navigate it? Because I think if people hear that from you right now, maybe they get that next day to go, you know what? I can keep going another day.

Right. Exactly. Well, for me, Adam, I'll go first and then Mark can go, but just because we were talking about it, but I think one of the most challenging times for me was when I was very, very young. I was one of those kids who found high school to be very easy. I would stand up and teach my English class sometimes. It just, it just didn't seem that difficult. So I accelerated my curriculum and graduated at age 16.

Is it okay if I say I hated you back then?

Well, I, you know,

I— I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

You're hardly adult.

Well, no, I know. So I accelerated my curriculum, graduated at age 16, and married my boyfriend who was 5 years older. Okay. Not a great plan. I wasn't a genius. I wanted to get on with life and I thought, this is too slow. Let's get moving. So we get married.

Yeah, you were in a rush, right? You were in a bit of a hurry.

I was always in a rush to go find the next adventure, what I was going to conquer. And so 2 and a half years later, I'm in a city by myself, divorced, baby on my hip, no family or friends because it's a new city and honestly no idea how I was going to support myself because we didn't have a lot of money. We just kind of parted ways. I applied for food stamps. It's the only thing I could think of. I was so young, had this baby. So I remember going to the grocery store for the first time and getting ready to turn over those food stamps for my groceries. And all of a sudden, I had this epiphany that was so powerful. And it was like suddenly this light was shining on my head and this question came to my mind. It was like, first of all, how did I get here? And followed by a second question that was, are you doing everything you can to get out of this? Or are you taking the easy way out? And right when that question hit my mind, I knew the answer. I knew I wasn't doing everything I could to get out of it. And this all happened in a split second, but as I was turning those food stamps over, I was saying to myself, this will not be my future. I mean, I had so much conviction in my— I think I was a little fierce when I handed them to the cashier. And in fact, I don't think I even finished the food stamps. So I went home and thought, What do I do now? Because I didn't have any answers. All I had were questions. And so I started asking myself, where can I go to work tomorrow? How can I make money tomorrow? What is there out there that I'm qualified to do? So I'd heard about temporary service agencies online or on the radio at the time. There was no online. Kelly Services. So I applied, filled out the application, and they would call me and give me this selection of jobs to do. And I started filling in at attorneys' offices and setting up booths at malls and doing sales at conventions and things Things like that. And I started learning a lot about myself. I learned that I was pretty good at business and pretty good at sales and I love people. I mean, that was the thing. I love being out there with people. I loved being in that world. So I decided to put myself through real estate school. And in the meantime, someone had approached me and said, you should do some modeling. So I also approached the biggest modeling agency in my city and asked them if they would sign me and they did, fortunately. And I ended up doing some television commercials, which went national. So I had residuals coming in. Wow. So literally a year and a half from the time that I was turning those food stamps over for my groceries, a year and a half from that time, a year and a half later, I was working for the biggest home builder in our valley. I became the number one salesperson for our company and I was making really good residuals and I was getting benefits because I had to join Screen Actors Guild when you make enough money with the residuals. So it was just such a huge pivot that I often thought back on it and it really seemed like this. It was just like these roads could have diverged into completely different destinations.

Almost like 2 different lives.

2 different lives completely. And I realized that. And I think that's my blessing. I tend to have a high level of awareness of what I'm doing. I can look at it, but I'm so thankful. I'm grateful that I was able to ask the questions, because it was the questions that got me out of it, asking those tough questions to myself, but even more importantly, answering the questions honestly. Was I doing the best that I could? No. Honestly, no. I knew I wasn't. And you have to be able to have that level of sort of discipline and sort of self-toughness with yourself and say, is this working? Why isn't it working? Am I doing my best?

Sure.

Am I really looking at this honestly? Whether it's a relationship, career, whatever it is, the questions are so powerful, because And sometimes like now, all we have are questions. None of us, we don't really have a lot of answers, but taking that time with yourself to ask those questions is powerful. And that's why we wrote this book. When we realized the power that asking questions had in our own lives.

I don't know if you feel this way, but I have a theory. Maybe you guys can debunk it or maybe you think the same way, that you can't have a question without an answer. It's cause and effect. So in the natural order of things, it's impossible to ask a question and not at some receive an answer. And the only asterisk to that is you don't know when you're going to get the answer. If you ask a question, what am I here for? Or, is there a God? Or any number of questions, you can ask anything. And some questions, I truly believe when it's time for you to receive the answer, you will. But I also believe there's no situation in which you will not be answered. So Mark, maybe that's a good lead into either your pivot story, or if you want to just tap into that idea of the cause and effect I

can do both at once, if you don't mind. And I love your interviewing us and our friendship, of course. And then that you got our back. First of all, I agree with what you're saying, because you can't ask a question without knowing it. When I was in graduate school with the smartest guy on the planet, Bucky Fuller, he walked down the street and he said, you'll never ask yourself, like, what kind of tree is that? And 3 days later, somebody said, boy, that's the most beautiful walnut tree I've ever seen. I remember that. distinct in my mind. Here's Einstein's best student, the Leonardo da Vinci of our time, 2,000 major inventions, geodesic domes. And then pivoting to that, when I, you know, I traveled with Bucky around the world for 7 years trying to understand how do you make the world work for 100% of humanity. And I thought, well, I'll just duplicate his domes. And I was in New York City, as you know, I built the Wall Street Racquet Club, Botanical Gardens, aviaries. Trouble. I was building in 1974 out of plastic. We had an oil embargo, which, you know, the Arabs said, we can write checks so big your bank Thanks for Obama's wall. I couldn't get anything and I went bankrupt so fast, $2 million in one day. So it was my day to learn how to pivot, right? But for 6 months, I'm hanging out sleeping in a sleeping bag in front of another guy's room. And then if you ask yourself deeply the question, and the best time to ask a question, like it's called a thought command, right? You say 400 times, what is my destiny? Because our book is about Ask: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny. You ask God, what is your destiny for me? God is, what is your destiny for me? God is, what is your destiny for me? Well, I intuitively did that in 1974, and it said I'm supposed to be a speaker. And I thought, oh my God, what do I want to do? I want to talk to people that care about things that matter, that make a life-changing difference and transformational stuff. I get down to my 3 roommates. I mean, living in Hicksville, Long Island, New York. You know that place.

I know Hicksville.

That and Levittown are not high-priced. Some come from nowhere, and you'd call us a hick. That's why they named it. Anyhow, I got 3 roommates. I said, any of you guys know anyone that's not a lawyer, a doctor, a celebrity, a famous person, that's preferably young, that's speaking? The guy said, look, here's my ticket. You go to the real estate meeting and you go hear this guy. I went and I heard Chip Collins. I raced my little beat-up old Volkswagen after bankruptcy courts out to Hauppauge, Long Island, New York. Guy mesmerized the audience for 3 hours, at the end of which I asked, because we say in our book, you got to ask yourself I'd ask myself, what do I want to do? I want to be a speaker and a trainer. Number 2, ask others and then ask God. And I went up and I said, may I take you to lunch? He said, yeah, I like a free lunch. I said, teach me how to do the business. He said, look, kid, if you stay out of real estate— he was a few years older than I am. He said, if you stay out of real estate, I'll teach you how to do it. And life insurance is the bottomless pit for motivation. You'll never finish it. And, uh, but by the way, I should tell you, Mark, you're not going to make it. 1 in 1,000 people make it in speaking. It's probably the toughest. There are more arrows coming at you than So, I decided to do it. He told me what to do. I called on people every day. I did 4 seminars a day. Only Tony Robbins, who you know exceedingly well, and I did 1,000 talks a year for the first 3 years in the business. At least that's when Tony and I were talking. I'd do them as early as 6:00 in the morning, 10:00, 2:00, and 8:00 or 9:00 at night. And in between times, I was selling seminars because I had nothing else to do. And so, you get pretty good, pretty fast sculpting. And then suddenly what happened to Adam was that people said, man, that story is so great. Because my mother was a sublime storyteller. I got to tell you, she was just— she'd go on a vacation.

I wanted to know where you got it from. Now we've got that answer.

Okay, good. And Mommy was just the best. She'd go on a vacation, we'd come back, I'd be sitting, she'd be on the phone telling people, I thought she went somewhere I didn't go. She was as good as Mark Twain. Anyhow, so they said, we have it in a book. So the first book I did, this is our current book, but it was Stand Up, Speak Out, Win. And I was earning about $75,000 a year as a speaker. Now I got a book and I'm selling for $10. I sold 20,000 copies from a platform of little life insurance meetings of 6 people, 20 people, 50 people, 100 people. And I sold 20,000 copies at $10. I made— I tripled my income. I made $200,000, over $200,000. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I didn't say this is a national bestseller or the world bestseller, New York Times bestseller. I said, this is my bestseller.

That's right.

So what the point is, if each one of us is going to have— get slammed, and what we're teaching in our book Ask is that adversity has hidden in it advantage, adversity has hidden in it opportunity. And what Crystal was saying to you, it's time for all of us to pivot, reinvent ourselves, re-innovate, and come up with something brand new that you've always wanted to do, probably in your heart and soul. And if you ask yourself, what is God's destiny for me, or what is my destiny if you're not into God, It'll— it will emerge just like you said at the preface of this question.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. We have a sign on the property that says, Imagine. Look at this old, really cool metal sign that says, and it's rusty, and it says, Imagine. And I think in part what we're talking about is the ability to imagine, but to reimagine, because we've imagined our life into existence already. We've imagined exactly what we are and what we have. That's how it got to be the way it It is. So to create something from here, whether it's different or it's better, you know, however we judge that, I don't know that that's necessary, but that we're reimagining. That's what the process is. So is the book that you guys have come together to create a book about that, about how it is we reimagine our lives and our destinies?

Absolutely. And as a transformational life coach and clinical hypnotherapist, Adam, that's exactly what I teach, that you're like, well, it seems that, you know, life is always coming at us, so we're just sort of like ducking and dodging and trying to keep the ball Balls up in the air. The reality is, your life experience is created from the inside out. So, if you don't like what you're getting, you know, when you look at your life, if you don't like it, the place you need to go to recreate it is inside. And, we do that with our imagination. We have this section in the book called, you know, Prepare to Be a Good Asker. And, those elements are, number one, belief. You have to believe that your answer is out there for you somewhere. Mm-hmm. You know, you really— life requires faith and trust. It really does. If you give up all your faith and trust, probably nothing is going to happen because our faith is, and our belief is a great activator. It really is. And you can prove this out in quantum physics if you want. It's kind of where religion meets science, I believe. So belief is the first one. You have to believe you deserve an answer. You know, you deserve the best and you have to believe that your answer is out there somewhere for you. Imagination. We need to be able to sit in that place where basically Mark and I say, start with the end in mind. What is it that you would want if you were having ultimate success right now? That's a great question for people. If you were in your ultimate successful life, what does that look like? Okay. Start from that and then start to answer the questions backwards. Who would I be talking to every day? How would I be spending my time in this perfect ultimate successful life that I'm living? What would my relationships feel like, be like? How would I be treating these people? Who are these people? And all of those things that we can ask ourselves to work backward from our ultimate successful life, it's so important to do that because it becomes the architecture for your life. People don't realize that your life has probably been created pretty randomly if you haven't taken the time with yourself, this quiet time, this reflective time, Time with your own imagination to design your life deliberately. So life will just happen to you if you don't design it deliberately, and that requires using this beautiful thing called imagination. I mean, think about imagination. We're the only animals that can imagine what we want. All other animals are instinctive, and it's just, they go by instincts. They just, it's sort of encoded inside of them. Human beings get to create like a masterpiece, whatever you want. I mean, we have that creative mind, which I think is why it's said that we're created in God's image. God is the ultimate creator. And also, if everything's expanding, even the universe, they say it's kind of unfathomable, but our universe is continually expanding, so it's infinite. So why, if we're part of that universe, why can't we continue to grow? It's our own spirit jabbing us going, I want you to grow. When you're not feeling good about yourself or something feels wrong, it's your spirit going, I need to grow. I need to grow. Yes.

It's kind of a divine discontent. But what you said earlier, I think is really important too, that planning the imagination phase or that is no different than thinking about building a home. You would never just order the wood and the other supplies and say, bring me 6,000 nails and get started. Right? It would be foolish, but yet we live our lives in so many ways on default versus the design process that you're describing, because you would hire an architect. You want to build a home, you get a plan drawn up, or you find plans and you follow the plans, but you certainly wouldn't just clear the land and just start constructing something that wouldn't turn out looking like a shack, I suppose, that might not withstand the elements. I want to go back to something, Mark, that you said earlier about Bucky Fuller. Or Buckminster Fuller, if folks don't know his work, but definitely a— even no word, I could say a futurist and a philosopher and a genius and all those things. There's not one word to describe what this person, this man brought to the world. I'm curious, and this is a tough question. I'm kind of giving you a moment to gather yourself here. So what do you think Bucky Fuller would suggest, recommend, offer to the world in this moment, given what's going on? Because he was a thinker. I mean, a genuine thinker. And I don't know that anybody could answer that, but you knew him and spent time time with him. So if I was going to ask anybody, it's fair to ask you, I think.

Totally fair. And I will do the best I can on behalf of Bucky. But he was also— the biggest word he liked to do is comprehensivist, because he had all those degrees, 15 doctorates at Harvard. And, you know, I'm pretty masterful in how to make the world work for 100% of humanity. He'd say a breakdown like this, because he, in World War I, he was an admiral trained by and helped write stuff. I get goosebumps telling you, Winston Churchill. Most people don't know that deep stuff about Bucky. Lucky, right? And he'd tell me, you've got to rewrite stuff 15 times. You've got to have a comprehensive plan. You've got to have a 50-year plan, which all this is intrinsic to what you asked, is that for most Americans, long-range planning is, what am I going to do after lunch? No, no, no, no, no, Bob. You've got to figure out where are you going to be 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 50 years from now, because I plan to live to be 127 with options for renewal. But Lucky, look, for the first time, the thing is broken. Let's fix it. But this time, let's have comprehensive Let's have comprehensive cleanup of all the water. And by the way, because we're deep in technology companies, I can tell you those guys— here's what Bucky would say. First, we've got to have the energy, right? And we've been in the energy business, so we can do clean, green, sustainable energy. We own a company called Natural Power Concepts. It has pop-up windmills that go 360, and it'd be perfect in Martha's Vineyard because you've got 7 prevailing winds. I just happen to know your neighborhood. The point is, you've got to have wind during the night because wind comes out 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM, and then you've got to have sun during the day. You have to have wind, you have water, and water is, other than air, the next thing you need the most. Then you got water to have food, food to have abundance, and basically you take care of humanity. Now, it doesn't get rid of the wackadoos. We're going to have those. But the bottom line is there are 4 trillion, half of our 8 billion people, if we agree about the demographics, which I'm pretty good as a demographer, are not taken care of. So the first time we can take care of everyone. Then because of technology and because of things like the cell phone, we can't take care of everyone. One of our daughters is a special ed teacher. They need to be hands-on. Face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, belly button-to-belly button with a kid, but a lot of stuff we could learn electronically. And like we talked before the show started, because we both have kids still in university, those costs should be almost nada. In other words, and only one guy's done it right, here at Arizona State University with 120,000 kids electronically, you got Starbucks paying only 40% of 100%, which is, even that is, from my point of view, exorbitant. Okay? And I'm being a little pushy here, but— So, for the first time Everyone deserves water, food, energy, education. And when I was with Bucky, I wrote down my life goals, which is what I'm going to ask everybody here to do. But I said, look, let's feed unfed humanity expeditiously. And I'm not considering— let's have a world around electrical network. Now I think different. We believe you ought to have localized energy, called energy units. Ours is called a Windcharger, which integrates wind, solar, and hydrogen. Just, we're in the coolest times ever, if people get off their ass and start thinking and being innovative. And you're saying you're being a little caustic. No, I'm saying, look, you're doing consciousness here. We got to expand the consciousness, expand the possibility, not contract it. And we got a bunch of guys doing— we got a multivariable problem. And the problem is not just COVID. The problem is 4 problems instead of 1 problem. And we got to comprehensively look at it. And we have leadership that takes visionary leadership that does it. And that's what Bucky said. Look, how do we comprehensively use crystals for design to make it work for everybody? For the first time we can do that. That has never— by the way, I'm on my soapbox like she was a minute ago. That has never been available before right now, Adam.

Yes, the time is now for sure. Bucky Fuller talked about trim tabs. I remember that reading about just this, this concept of how small things can have such a massive impact over time, like procession, that the ripple effect of things, the butterfly effect, this tiny little I would say in times of pandemic change, really the kind of change we've never seen, I've never seen in my lifetime. I don't think most of us have. We have to be resilient. That's our theory that we think, what's that small thing that we can all do? What's that little trim tab that we can all take advantage of? It's to be personally resilient, be individually resilient, resilient as an organization. So for those that are running companies, small or large, that you create resilient organizations. That's how our species has gotten this far. We have basically everything that could have been fucked up at some point has been. From the beginning of time, any mistake you could conceive and those nobody, nobody could have conceived have been made. So what's different about now? There's really nothing other than the fact that as a species, we've learned to adapt. We've been resilient. We've been agile. We've been able to move forward. And because of that, lives have gotten better. The lives of our kids and our grandkids, you have those beautiful grandbabies of yours and they'll be great-grandbabies before long. And the only thing I know, like I know my own name, is life will be better That may be me being, here's the glass half full. That's fine. So be it. But resilience is an important topic. So I'd love to get a sense of how do you guys define— so 2 questions, maybe you divide them up if you want, but what is your definition, a workable definition of resilience? And then what's something that you do on a ritual basis to produce that resilience within yourselves and within your companies?

Right. So resilience to me is just never giving up. And I think when we're challenged sometimes, especially with something like this, Adam, we tend to get We go into sort of our primitive brain mode. And because things are so different, we don't know what to do with it. Okay? Everything's changed so much and change makes us so uncomfortable as human beings. We have to understand that's our primitive brain going off. But because it feels literally, the change is so great, it feels like things are over, things are ending. And so we get kind of fatalistic. People are depressed. They're losing hope. But we need to remind ourselves that every single ending is a new beginning. Every ending is a new beginning. You need to keep telling yourself that. Every big change presents just a brand new beginning, a brand new opportunity. So if you hold onto that thought, because it's a reality, if you look through history, there have been times, I mean, think of the wars that people have gone through. We just haven't gone through these things where everyone thought life was over. I mean, World War II, Hitler, all of these things, the world was ending. Okay, but humanity comes back and it was a new beginning. We became better than ever. You know, we grew, the whole world economy grew, everything got better. So every huge change, you know, is like an ending of life as we knew it. It's a new beginning. And I think that's really important to hold on to. Our ritual every morning is to do this hour of prayer and meditation.

Hmm.

And that's so important to our health and wellbeing. We know it. I mean, because we get sucked into the drama too. We're humans. I mean, all of us are. When you're hearing all this bad news and it's like, Stay home again, stay home. We feel so stifled, we feel desperate, we feel like we're out of control, right? Because we controlled our life before and now that control's been taken away. So we have to take the time every morning to, you know, we ask each other the questions, we start with asking.

Mm-hmm.

Because asking sort of opens the conversation and asking reveals the truth. In fact, there is no mechanism like asking that has the ability to reveal what is hidden.

Mm-hmm.

And so asking is really an important part of that process, but just revealing the things that we need to focus on and the truth that there is a lot of opportunity out there. All those truths come out when you start asking the right questions, right? And then the prayer and meditation is all about creating that architecture through your imagination, through asking God for help, getting the universe involved, because we're not alone. I mean, I think what troubles people sometimes is we think We we're alone, but we're not. think everything is just about us. We all get into an ego state, but the asking God part is very important because it sort of pulls back the camera lens and we go, you know, I'm a part of this bigger universe. I'm just a part of it. So what's my piece in it? If I was going to be my very best today in this, in my part in this universe, what's my role in this kingdom purpose?

What's my work to do?

Yeah. What's my role in the kingdom?

And equally, what's not mine to do, right? Because that can be frustrating in itself to think that what you're doing isn't enough or somehow you need to be doing more, where those questions are so powerful. So Mark, do you have a favorite question? I want to repeat what you said a moment ago as well, the idea that you ask to reveal what is hidden. That is something I'm going to sit with today. I'm going to ruminate on that because I think it's— and I'll walk and let that just, what our daughter would say, marinate, because there's something really rich in the understanding and the truth that there's a lot that's hidden from us. I don't care how confident And a person is, they really are. I'll just say this, humility is a really important thing to me. And the idea that there's so much we just don't know is a very powerful tool to sort of wake things up and gain new awarenesses. Mark, do you have a particular question you go back to again and again?

I'll do that. But humility just means to be teachable in the original Aramaic part of the language. So what asking does is it pushes back all that stuff. And gradually we have a dawning illumination. How's that? That's what I think.

That's a Moses moment. Because, you know, think about all the great stuff in the Bible.

Figured out how to part the Red Sea, how to punch a hole in a rock, you know, how to marry a Black woman. I mean, he pulled off some really cool stuff and had the balls— had the guts, sorry— his brother Ramsay and say, hey, I want you to release whatever number of Jewish people. I've heard the number 670,000, 2 million. I'll assume 2 million. But however many servants you had, if I told you you're not going to have them tomorrow, it would surprise the hell out of you, I'll bet, if you were Ramsay. So, back to the question we'd like to ask. Look, we think we've written a book that is absolutely transformational. It's unique, and it's inevitable that everyone's going to read it. But here's what we've discovered. Our goal is to do 100 podcasts before Christmas and sell a million books, but we're asking Everyone, get a copy of the book at Amazon and then join askthebookclub.com, which is free. And once a month you could talk to Kritzelmark, you know, and get to ask anything you want. And it'll start in August. But we're asking something that Scott Carson— I don't know if you've been on his, his great podcast. We've been on it twice because it's so powerful. Anyhow, what he asked us to do is he said, everybody out there, buy 10, 10 of the books, give them to the people that are depressed, despondent, disconsolate, upset, and don't think there's a future, so they know how to think through their stuff. Mm-hmm. And I went, whoa. He said, you ought to do that. And so I'm glad to quote Scott. You know, it just, it's that important. And that's what happened with Chicken Soup, why we sold a half billion books, because people said, you need this.

Yes. Nothing better than when somebody takes, takes your book and literally picks it up and puts it in someone's hand, right?

Worse if it's done in front of you.

Now, of course. Yeah, yeah. Right. Can't make them Read it. That's the thing. But it's a start. It's a start. And so, I'm gonna go back to this one thing. Do you have a question that you go back to again and again in your life? Is there one like revealing?

How am I gonna contribute more today than I did in my yesterdays?

One more time, please.

How do I contribute more in my today than my yesterdays? I have the Christian model. Jesus at the Last Supper and the boys say, look, boss, how do you become great? And he said, the greatest of you, greatest amongst you is servant of all. So, it's always the quantity of service Napoleon Hill taught us Plus the quantity with a positive mental attitude, that equals unlimited greatness or compensation if you're looking for money, which is— I've always taught money in all 7 money books I've written. So I've been pretty keen on coming out of poverty because my parents were Danish immigrants getting out of— Hitler was taking over in Germany and my Uncle Sven was head of military police, 14 years old, and created the Black Band. We took all the Jews into Denmark that he could invite. And he went up to his little brother, my daddy, Paul, and said, Paul, here's $100. Here's a passport. You got to leave. Hitler's got a $100,000 hit on all of us. You're gone. And so, you know, I despise socialism, despise it, not even hate it. I despise it. And so I am a flaming capitalist. I'm trying to teach capitalism to everyone. So, and capitalism is where you contribute and you control the money. I don't want the state controlling it under socialism, totalitarianism, communism. The only thing that makes sense is if we have capitalism in a positive, honest, conscious capitalism to use

No, it's perfect. It goes back to what we said earlier about things that happen that can be devastating. We don't know what we're supposed to do with them. But ultimately what you've done is answer the question, which is that they allow us to serve.

Yeah. So we're friends with Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the guy who came in and he's helped 100 million people around the world get out of poverty. And if you don't know his work, he does social care. He says, look, business people ought to do great at their business, but then they ought to have a second business that is a giving business. I wrote The Miracle of The Miracle of Giving book. But the fact of the matter is, is that what happened is one guy can make a difference. Somebody listening to the show can decide, hey, I'm going to start asking myself questions like Dr. Yunus did, and I'm going to take Bangladesh out of poverty and the world out of poverty. I'm going to create something that helps a lot of people. And last year, in just his great country, which is almost a billion people in Bangladesh, next to India, for people who don't know their geography, he got 200,000 people graduate medical school that never would have gotten to go if he didn't exist. And you go, well, that's wonderful, but can I do something? The answer is yes. The answer is each one of us is, back to your first question today, is a human guinea pig. Bucky said each of us is a human guinea pig. We're on trial to test ourselves, to see our mettle, M-E-T-T-L-E, not heavy. How much stuff have you got in you to really test? And we're all having our mettle tested. And I'm so thankful you're willing to ask these tough questions.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode. of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. The question that I'm going to ask— I'm going to point it at myself. And answer the question about what question is really the thing that changed things for me about 12 years ago or thereabouts was I started to wake up in the morning with a different question. And in fact, I think the waking ritual is very important. So you guys shared how it is that you begin the day. As we end this episode, which I'd love to keep going for hours and hours, maybe we'll come up with a part 2. That would be just great. And by the way, our folks know that part of the show notes will include links to be able to get the new Ask book, to find out more about how it is that you can join that community, become a part of something bigger. Good. Because everything you guys get involved in, that's my experience of you, just has this beautiful procession, as Bucky would say, this beautiful ripple effect in the world. So anything we do to support that, we're happy, happy, honored to do that. The question that I ask in the morning is different than the one that I used to. I used to wake up, I don't know if you can relate to this, but put my feet on the floor and the first kind of thoughts and feelings I would have about the day were dread. I was a lawyer. I made plenty of money. I'm a real living example of that money doesn't make you happy. I had a lot to be grateful for at the time with a Beautiful relationship, great wife, 4 healthy kids. And yet I was waking up in the morning and the first kind of feeling, and if I put a word to it, it's a little bit dicey, but I put my feet on the floor and I would just like sort of audibly say, shit. I'd be like, because it just didn't feel like my life to begin with. And I think anytime our freedom, I'm a freedom guy. So whenever I feel as though my freedom is somehow being taken away, I just want to lose my— I'm losing my mind, losing my shit. So that went on for years and years and no amount of money, no amount of success could sort of Later on, I had this sort of pivot epiphany, I suppose, and started that whole process with a different question. And that was, I did a TED Talk about 2 years ago where I revealed the question. The question is, what if I decided to love my life? What if I decided to love my life? And then here's the key, comma, no matter what. No matter what. And I think right now, the world that we've inherited, the world that we've created, the world that we're all living in is a world where there's a lot of no matter I have a son-in-law who's in an internet business and he's crushing it. His business is up 4x from where it was before the pandemic. And we know other people who've lost their lives and people who've lost their businesses, dear friends in numerous businesses. The health and wellness space is in many ways, unless you're in the supplement business, kind of being devastated. If you own a gym, you're bankrupt. 24 Hour Fitness is gone. I mean, can you imagine if Jack LaLanne were around today? What would Jack LaLanne be talking about? But so there's this variety of things that are happening right now. And the only thing that I know is a constant is that we either get to We have to choose to love our lives and love ourselves and love others unconditionally, meaning no matter what, or we don't. So I think what I love very much about both of you is that you are absolutely lovers of life. That doesn't matter whether it's solar, it's wind, it's books, it's whatever it is. You guys are just living enthusiastic, loving lives, spreading something that is hopefully contagious. Because if everybody was to sort of pick up your model, and allow their mettle to be tested and allow themselves to be guided and all those really wonderful things when you ask great questions and get great answers. Well, I think our world is going to be better for sure. So thank you so much for being on the show. I so enjoyed just reconnecting with both of you.

Wonderful. Thank you, Adam. We've enjoyed it so much.

Yeah. Way cool. So everybody, you know what to do. Find the show notes and of course, leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you'd like. And we'd love to just get your comments and find out how we can serve you better. Ciao for now.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.