Mark Victor Hansen - Creating "Chicken Soup for the Soul" & Selling 500 Million Books

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What is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, we have Mark Victor Hansen here with us. Mark is widely known as an American inspirational and motivational speaker, trainer, author, author, serial entrepreneur and member of multiple board of directors. He is best known as the founder and co creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. With more than 500 million books sold, you may know Mark as the Chicken Soup for the Soul guy. Mark and his business partner Jack Canfield created what Time magazine called the publishing phenomenon of the decade. With more than 500 million chicken soup for the Soul book sold around the world and and over 100 licensed products in the marketplace, it is one of the most successful publishing franchises in the world today. So with that being said, I sat down with Mark Victor Hansen and his wife Crystal and we spoke about not only their journey, but their new book, ask the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. So please, before we get started, share this podcast with a friend. Make sure to follow me on Instagram, Casey, and enjoy today's episode with Mark Victor Hansen and his wife Crystal Hansen. Here we go. All right, what is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we have the legend Mark Victor Hansen as well as his wife Crystal Hansen here on the show with us. Thanks so much for coming on, guys.

We're elated to be with you and with everyone out listening because we want to turn everyone into a rip roaring entrepreneur to fulfill their destinies.

Yeah, thanks, Casey. We're so happy to be here with you.

I love it. So Mark, first question for you, man. I mean, I not only have been a fan of your work, Chicken Noodle Soup for the soul and every piece of work that you've put out there, but for everyone listening today, where did your entrepreneurial journey start in life at 9 years old?

My father. I didn't understand. He was a Danish immigrant, owned a little bakery. Not Making a lot of money. 5 cents a roll, you don't get rich. I definitely wanted a bicycle. He couldn't afford it. I didn't quite get it at nine years old. It doesn't communicate. I just kept beating on him like we wrote in the book, Ask, you ask, ask, ask, ask, ask. So he finally said. I said, can I have it if I earn it myself? He said, pride of ownership follows pride of earnership. I said, okay. I read a Boy Scout Life magazine that said you could sell greeting cards on consignment. I went up to all the neighbors in freezing snow in Waukegan, Illinois, at that time and said, I'm earning my own bicycle. Would you like to invest in one box Christmas card? I sold the most. I won the Book of the. I won the Greeting Card Salesman of the Year and the Entrepreneur of the Year award. Curiously, I just forgot about that one. Nine years old. So I started then, and I've never turned back. Sort of like your story.

Yeah, I love that. And how did you and Crystal meet?

Well, okay. So my mother. I was. I had my life coaching practice here in Scottsdale, Arizona. And my mom called me one day and said I was writing a book because my clients were having such amazing breakthroughs with the work we were doing together. I mean, people who had been depressed their entire lives were suddenly, after five sessions, completely free of depression, anxiety, all these things starting over after horrible life events. So I started writing a book about it. Mom calls me one day and she. And it was shortly after my divorce. I just recently divorced. And she said, you know, I got this email for this Author 101 conference, and there'll be publishers and publicists, and Mark Victor Hanson will be there. And I was like, okay, well, mom, when is it? And she goes, it's the day after tomorrow. I was like, I can't go in la. And I said, oh, my gosh, I'm sure it's sold out by now. She goes, no, no, call, call. I'll babysit the kids for you. So I call Rick Frischman, thinking, it's already sold out. I'll just humor my mom. He called me right back and said, crystal, no, we'd love to have you. We're not sold out. Come over. So a day and a half later, I'm at this conference, right? Mark's the keynote. And of course, I upgraded to the VIP room. And I'm not even drinking. I'm like, I'm not going to drink. I'm going to really chew my horn, talk about my Business and my book. So I'm standing there talking to a speaking coach and Mark's in the corner surrounded by this big entourage of people.

Of course, as usual.

And. And he must have been looking my way, Casey, because all of a sudden this woman was talking with her hands and whacked an entire glass of red wine on my white pants.

Oh my God.

And he must have been looking my way because he broke through his crowd, came to my side and said, oh, I'm so sorry. Let me help you. I think I know where the club soda is. And he pulled my hand and led me out of the room to get the club soda. And then we just started talking and he's like. He asked me what I did, you know, for work and what I was doing, my book ideas. And he just said, there's something really amazing about you. And he said, I think you have the potential to be a great leader, especially for women. And I'd love to hear more about what you're doing, but I'm starving. Have you had dinner? And I said, no, I haven't, but let me run upstairs and change my pants first. So I go upstairs and call my mom and I said, I have to be quick, mom, but how are the kids doing? And she said, they're great. And I said, well, you won't believe this. I'm having dinner with Mark Victor Hanson. And she goes, I knew it.

I love that.

Moms know best, right?

Yeah.

Can I do the second part?

Yeah, absolutely, Mark.

So we go to the best restaurant in Hollywood, right? And it's 9:30 on a Saturday night and it's packed, there's a long line. And I go, oh my gosh, a hundred dollar bill won't get you in. And so I said, well, what are we going to do? So we walk up and the maitre d sees us and he doesn't know anything thing except he sees the Plutarch just emanating out of every pore of her being. So he says, okay, I give up. Who is she? And I remember I teach questions and asking. So I said, wait a second, you don't recognize her? And now his mind's on steroids, going at full tilt boogie through every magazine you could think of, right? Like InStyle and people in it. And he says, okay, I give up. Who is she? Well, we're both of Danish descent. So I said she's the Queen of Denmark. He says, no, she's not. He says, oh my gosh, she is. Who are you? I says, who travels with the Queen? Said the king. Oh, you're the king. Hold on. And in the instant we had a table, and from then on, we started falling indefatigably in love.

That is amazing. And you said something there that stuck out to me. You talked about the art of asking a question what to you makes a great question. And what's your advice for people that are asking questions to others?

Well, what's happened is we wrote this book called the Bridge from youm Dreams to youo Destiny. And having traveled to 80 countries around the world, talked to 7 million people. What we've discovered is they're wonderful people, likable people, educated people, personable people. But the difference between those who succeed a little bit, Casey, and those who are vastly successful, and I think this is probably true for you, is those who are know how to ask. That's number one. Number two, in answer your question, we discovered that whenever we had a problem, like when I went bankrupt, 1974, we asked our way out of it, and Crystal asked her way to get jobs when she was newly divorced and had a baby on her hips. So it just is the way you've got to do it.

I love that.

Yeah. And so what we started doing, Casey, is just. We started examining the role that asking question plays in enabling people to solve problems, innovate, start over, move forward. And we realized that the most successful in the people in the world are actually the best at asking questions and being able to formulate and sculpt the right kind of questions. And so then we determined there are actually three channels through which you need to learn to ask. And that is ask yourself, ask others, and ask God. And each of those channels is equally important. And when we studied and interviewed, like, the master askers that we talked to for the book, they had deployed all of those channels throughout their history of being able to overcome great challenges and get to the top of their game. And sometimes we interviewed billionaires. We interviewed just people with ordinary lives but living extraordinarily happy, successful lives. And they all had that thing in common that they had learned that that asking the right question at the right time through those channels was what got them to the next step. And it's really fun to study those asking journeys in the book.

I love that. And both of you guys have written amazing books. And Mark, I want to bring up, I believe it is, you've sold over 500 million books to date, and that's every day increasing. When did you first publish your first book, and what led you to do so?

Okay, so, by the way, first of all, I love the question. Thank you for that. And you're seeing us, okay, right. Because on the screen. OK, good. Is it when it's 1974, I went bankrupt for six months. I hang out in front of another guy's room, sleeping in a sleeping bag. And all of a sudden it came to me. I want to talk to people that care about things that matter that would make a life transformative difference. So I went down to my three roommates in Hicksville, Long Island, New York, and I asked them, I said, hey, wait a second, do you guys know any young speakers that aren't cotton tops, meaning old people aren't lawyers, doctors, celebrities or famous people in Hollywood or Broadway? And they said, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's kids talking. He's a few years older than you. Out in Haupaud, Long Island, New York, I raised my little beat up old Volkswagen up there. Listen to this guy. Chip Collins became my best friend. Mesmerized 500 people for three hours, at the end of which I went up and I asked, I said, chip, I'm Mark Victor Hansen. I want to do what you do. You teach me how to do it. He said, look, kid, chance of you making is one in a thousand. You ain't going to make it, but I'll let you buy me lunch and I'll tell you if you stay out of real estate because I own the five boroughs of New York and you got to go in life insurance. So I did a thousand talks a year the first three years. And when I was with Tony Robbins one time we were talking and only the two of us did that many talks, first three years. So we sculpted fast. But in answer your question, somebody, they kept coming up and saying, that story is great. Have you got it in a book? So I did. The first book was called Stand Up, Speak out and Win. And I literally tripled my income. I sold 20,000 copies from the platform at $10 each. So I took in $200,000 and I said, look, this isn't a New York Times bestseller, it's not a national bestseller, it's certainly not an international bestseller, but it is my best seller. I want to sign it to you and whoever's important to you and even your dog, if you'll let me. And I pulled inside, you know, 20,000 copies in little audience of six, 10, 20 at a time. But I was doing four or five talks a day. And it was just mind blower how fast it went. And that got me going. And then obviously Now I've written 312 books. And this is the 312 it's going to be. It's a rocking bestseller. Because what's happened is we've done all these podcasts around the world and we're saying, hey, look, this is the best Christmas gift you can give. But get to if you know somebody that's depressed, despondent, disconsolate or suicidal, get him this book and go over it question by question to recultivate who you are. Because Socrates said, the unexamined life's not worth living.

I love that. And Crystal, I know that you brought up something earlier about working with people that are depressed or going through hardships. I'd love for you to touch on some of the best principles that you try to go through with your clients if someone's depressed. You know, especially during the time like 2020 where there's a lot of uncertainty in the world and people have experienced a lot of highs and a lot of lows this year. Like what, what is your typical strategy to help somebody go through a hard time or a hard situation?

Right. It's such an important topic to talk about right now, especially Casey. And so what I teach everybody, my clients, my friends, everybody, is that while it seems like our life is happening out there somewhere, okay, we have this perception life is out there and you know, we're ducking and dodging and trying to keep the balls up in the air. The reality is, the true reality is that your life experience is created inside of you. It's created inside of your own mind. So the best time you can spend in your day is taking with that time with yourself and doing, making a deliberate creation. Because for most people, it's not what that you are missing something. Ok, you have everything you need right now. But what we are doing is we are carrying around so much baggage from the past. In the book the Bridge from your Dreams to youo Destiny, we talk about that. We talk about questioning those things, you know, getting in touch with those structures, those deeply embedded structures of self sabotage. They are embedded in all of our minds. At some level, if we are not getting what we want in life, and that is in relationships, in our health and wellness, in our career, in and in our life purpose, it's all the same. We will be held back as long as we keep carrying these things forward that we don't need to carry those things that aren't serving us. So we talk about this. I call it mind excavation. But Mark and I do it every day. I mean, we sit together the first hour of our day is like an hour of prayer, meditation, and asking each other questions.

Wow.

Because that is how you question everything and revect your life. And so let me just talk for a minute about the ask yourself part. Right. Because it starts with that, ok, when you are stuck, when you feel like you don't know where to move forward, you don't know how to move forward, you have no answers. You always have questions. And so we say there are three phases, three critical phases of asking yourself. And those phases are, number one, where am I right now? Where am I right now? Do I like what's happening? Is it working? What things are failing? What do I need to take a deeper look at? There's a hundred questions that will unfold for you under that question. Where am I right now? Because you cannot figure out where to go until you really, deeply understand where you are right now. And then the second phase is, where do I want to be? It's shocking to me, Casey, how few people take the time to. To sculpt their life, to really stop for a second and figure out what do they really want? Where do you want to be? Instead, we're kind of like we just hurtle through, like an asteroid through outer space, you know, and we don't even know where we're going. So if we sit down with ourselves and ask that question, where do we want to be? And all the sub questions that come under that and what Mark and I like to say is, start from the end game, start from the nth degree of success, whether it's success in a relationship, your career. Imagine I am doing right now the most amazing. I have the most amazing career. It's everything I wanted. And then say, what am I doing? Go from there. What am I doing each day? Who am I showing up for? Who's showing up for me? Who are the most important people that I'm talking to every day in this perfect, amazing career that I've created for myself? Who are my top clients? What are my top products? Whatever it is. And in that way, when you start asking yourself these questions, you. You start to literally create the architecture for your life, truly create the architecture for your life. Because there's nothing like asking. There's no mechanism in the world that has the ability to reveal what is hidden, like asking. And when you start asking yourself questions, science shows, this is science, that a different part of your brain lights up. And so suddenly you're using your brain in a more resourceful way. It's the part of your brain that does critical thinking. So if you're not spending time. If you're not asking the questions and asking the right questions, then you simply cannot get to your ultimate place in any of these areas of your life. So then, so let's go back through the phases again. Where am I now? Where do I want to be? And the final one is what specific action do I need to take to get there? Because that's really important. You have to put your asking journey into action. As you start to get these answers, these solutions, these illuminations, things are going to come to you to you need to pick up that phone and call that person that suddenly popped into your mind. Or you saw something in a magazine and you go, oh wow, I didn't know that existed. That would be a solution. All these things that start coming to you, act, act, act. Put it in action and ask yourself what specific action every day? What specific action do I need to take to get there?

I love that. That was an amazing answer, Crystal and Mark, I wanted to bring up something that I know that you are super passionate about and that is leadership. And I want to ask you what in your mind creates a great leader and how can someone become a better leader in their organization?

Okay, so first of all, excellent question. Is it every leader has got to first of all be a great self leader. So that'd be number one. And every. The cliche of course is that every reader is not a leader, but every leader is a great reader. And obviously I'm an addicted reader. I've touched at least 50,000 books and not read every one of them in our library, but gone through a lot of them and highlighted them and written notes and that's what somebody has to do because you've got input before you can output and real leadership, you've got to understand what all the leaders did before. The more you can do that, the better. And one of the guys that obviously did that in the film industry is Barry Diller. Out by you and Barry Diller, when he was a young kid, after he graduated college, went through every old movie at William Morris and they said, what are you wasting your time for, kid? You're down here in the files doing this. Well, sure enough, at age 23, Marlo Thomas, his best friend, brings him out to Hollywood and puts him at abc and abc they say, well, what do you think we should do to make this. And he just took the authority. Leaders take authority. That's point number three. And he took the self authority and he said, we'll have Sunday night at the movies. Now this happened way before you were born. So TV was launched when I was a little kid. I'm 72 years young. Never call yourself old with options for a new. But he created Sunday night movies. 75% of Americans had a TV watch it. And then he started more. And the guy's expanded since then, doing all kinds of great stuff. But that's what a leader does. He or she asks himself questions. They are well read in their subject area and they know everything that's gone in the past. So then they can create. Like Crystal said, where are we now and where do we want to be? And he wanted to be the biggest and the baddest or the boldest, so to speak. And that's what I wanted to do in the book business. I want to sell a billion books. Which when people read my wild business plan, because I interviewed the 101 Best Selling Nonfiction and fiction authors, I didn't ask them, casey, how do you write a book? I know how to write. I mean, I've got critics, don't misunderstand me, because I'm the biggest. So I got a lot of arrows. But the point is, I said, how did you market? How did you sell? What did you promote? And I put a wobble business plan together in every book we do, including this one. Ask the bridge from your dreams of death, because I want everyone to master the fine art of asking. And back to your question. Look, you can't look at a caterpillar and see that we're in a cocoon, but we're in it. 8 billion of us are in a cocoon and we're going to emerge as high flying butterflies. If you start listening and reading our book, ask. And I know that sounds pompous, but I think this is the best book I've ever participated in. My wife is not only brilliant, but if you read that first story, which you can ask her about the fable of Michaela, you can't read that or listen to it on audio because we're on every audio, of course, and video. But without saying, holy cow, I gotta go through all this and really catch it.

I love that, Crystal. I'd love to follow up on that. What is the fable? What was it again? One more time. Miquela.

Yeah, the fable of.

The fable of Michaela.

So Mark and I thought it would be really cool to start this book with a parable. And so I started writing it and this story just flowed out. And really the Fable of Michaela is every woman, every man's story. So Michaela starts off, she's lost everything her mother and father died very quickly, one after the other. Her mother was very ill, her father died. Then her home was taken away from her by the bill collector. So she's sleeping in a grove of trees at night, and she's basically an indentured servant at a stone quarry. And this is set in the time of kings and queens, right? So Michaela, her day is about taking. Lifting heavy rocks and moving them from one place to another. And, you know, honestly, that's what life feels like for a lot of people, especially right now. So one night, Michaela goes home hopeless and exhausted and just falls into an exhausted sleep in this grove of trees. And while she's sleeping, this being comes to her, and he takes her on this incredible journey and shows her this beautiful sparkling bridge called the Asking Bridge, the Destiny Bridge. And so he implores her. He said, mikayla, you need to start asking and never stop asking. And so she wakes up from that dream, and something has changed inside of her, and she can't stop thinking about it throughout her day. Then she starts wondering about everybody. She starts getting more inquisitive and more curious about everyone around her. She starts to question. Then she starts, you know, connecting with others through questions. And little by little, every day, her world starts opening up as she asks and asks and asks herself and others and God. And by the end of the. The parable, her entire life has transformed in this beautiful way where she has not only come alive in her own life, and her own life has been so blessed, she has blessed every life around her. And we love the power of a story like that because as human beings, we relate to stories. They are metaphors in our own lives. And it is amazing, Casey, the feedback we are getting on this terrible, like, people, and they are in tears, and they're like, I read this three times, or I woke my wife up and I had to read it to her. It moved me so much, and it made me see my life in a whole different way, and it gave me hope. And it's so rewarding to us because that's what we wanted, you know, we wanted it to speak to every heart and soul and give everyone hope, you know, that your life truly does have a magical quality if you're willing to recognize that, if you are willing to. To take this asking journey with us, because we promise it will lead you to the answers and the steps, the exact steps that you're looking for and that you need to get to the next level of your life.

Yep.

I love that. And one of the topics of conversation you guys are bringing up is asking questions. And that's something I do every single day when I'm doing podcasts, when I'm going and I'm in a meeting. And I'm obsessed with, you know, quality questions because that's what overall brings out the quality answer from others. And that to me, has been to a lot of my mentors or colleagues or business partners. And I want to ask you, Mark, what has. What have mentors in your life done for you? And what is the. What is the value of mentorship in your opinion?

Here's the deal. We're not providential. We can't do it alone. No man is an island is a cliche you had to read when you went through high school, just like I did. But the fact of the matter is I really studied Think and grow Rich. And then I'll talk about mentors very specifically. But what Andrew Carnegie taught Napoleon Hill, which taught me, is that one and one don't equal two. It equals 11 if you look at the two fingers together. And what he said is, two minds after one definite major objective form a third new invisible mind that is invincible. It's unstoppable. And when I got with Chip Collins, right, he said, you're not going to make it. But then when he came back, I had 28 talks booked. And he went, holy cow. Because I didn't have anything to do. I was either going to. I was bankrupt already, so I couldn't go backwards. And I didn't want to go on Social Security because my parents said, don't ever do that. So dad was really strong about that. So I said, well, I'll just knock on 10 doors and get, you know, talk a day. And I can live on that. And I was charging only $25 a talk, and now it's 25,000. So we've got to increase, of course, just in America and 75,000 international. So things have gotten a lot better. But little acorns become big oak trees. And so Chip was my first. And then we had a little breakfast meeting every Tuesday morning at 7:30. And if anyone got in front of me after I did that and I was selling seminars or books from the platform, we'd sell 100% of the audience. It was just. It was sort of a mind blower. So Crystal and I are a perfect mastermind. Husband, wives. You know, when I wrote down what I wanted, I asked for what I like in my ideal wife because I've gone through a very painful divorce. I wrote down 267 things. We put a lot of them in the book. But, you know, we had to have the same values. She had to want to travel. She had a love to work. She had to have her own business. She had to be monogamous. We had to, you know, she had to be a great dresser and want to stay healthy and be totally into nutraceuticals. Because most people at your age, and I'm not picking on you, but not you personally, but, you know, they say, oh man, I want a hot babe or I want a dog. I'm some. But even at your age, and you're 20 something, right?

20.

Superficial. How old are you?

20.

Yeah, we're so proud of you for calling it. But would you agree with what I just said, is that most people are a little superficial in their desire?

Absolutely.

Totally.

I mean, I would totally agree with that.

Okay, good. Because I'm not trying to insult anyone out there because, you know, look, I went through a lot of pain and now I'm in absolute joy and bliss. And like Crystal said, every morning we wake up and let me just tell you how that came to be. We're falling deeply in love. We're in Costa Mesa, down from you at a lovely place called Mother's, having a meal and just enriched plugged into each other. And the guy sitting next to us, a man of the cloth, and he says, forgive me, but can I talk to you? And you know you're not going to turn down a man of the cloth. He's wearing his white little collar, little black outfit, and he's 90 something. And he said, you want to know the secret of staying in love forever? I said, yeah. He said, because I can see you guys are really in love. He said, I've been head of Billy Graham's ministries of marriage and relationship for 70 years. I said, well, what is it? He said, you got to pray out loud together every day, morning and night. You want to talk to that?

Well, it's something I'd never done. You know, I was kind of private about my prayers and like, prayed in church or whatever, but I thought, okay, let's try this. And so we did. And there's honestly a new level of intimacy when you. When you pray together and you, you know, ask those questions together and. Yeah, so I feel like one of the greatest things that Mark and I have is that spiritual intimacy, because we're able to do that.

And if I may add the metaphor, I like, is it. I don't know that you've been to Rome, Italy yet? But when you go to Italy, our favorite city is Florenza. You have been.

I have not. No.

Okay, well, you need to go down your bucket list, please. When it opens up and it's safe and Covid free. But we've been here a couple of times, and David is the world's greatest sculpture about David, out of the Bible. The guy with the slingshot, right? David and Goliath. But it was made by the greatest sculptor, Michelangelo. And he said, michelangelo, how you make it? David said, I chippy out. Everything's not that. And that's what questions do. They chip out all the stuff that's not working in your life, which Crystal as a hypnotherapist, certified clinical hypnotherapist, says you're doing mind excavation to get to the truth of you, the perfection of you. And what we're saying is, look, the subtitle of this is the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. All of us have great dreams. All of us. And all of us have a destiny. And what you said a minute ago, Casey, is that people are scared. They're shut down. They're afraid and they're uncertain, I think is the word to use. And if I misquote you edit it. But the point I'm making is what questions do is they open you back up. Because we're going to come out of this thing and we're going to come up bigger, better and stronger. And I'll just give one business, because this is an entrepreneurial group you got listening. It's 1898. America's having its first depression. We're shut down, we're cloistered, we're sequestered like we are now. And four things came out of it, in case you don't know. But first of all, Henry Ford did internal combustion, called an automobile. Thomas Edison did a lot of things, but the thing he did that's biggest at this juncture is electricity. Right? Change the world. He lit the place. Before that, we had only a candlelight. Two brothers in a motor, in a bicycle business decide to go to Kitty Hawk and they create flight, which is now, as you know, a trillion dollar business. And little Alexander Graham Bell figures out the ringy dingy called the telephone. And that's what happens when we're shut down. We gotta go deep inside. Like Crystal said, the awareness is within. And you got to ask yourself to pull all that awareness out.

I love that. And speaking of innovations and looking into the future, like, what most excites you about the time after this shutdown? Lockdown. Like some of the innovations and things that you guys are excited about as a couple, but more importantly as a, just as a human species. Like what excites you during this time? I know that you brought up hypnotherapy and that's a very, you know, a very deep word that I'm sure I'd love to hear a thorough explanation on. But yeah, just what are you guys excited about?

Okay, so I wrote another book during this time with Mitzi Perdue of Purdue chicken. They do 22 million chickens a week. And I want you to interview or you're going to find this woman wise and brilliant. But it's called how to be up in Down Times, which is where we're at and which is why we wrote it fast and why you go to my website and get it or you go to Amazon and get it. How to Be up in Down Times. But the first chapter I did was when we break out of this, we're going to do 50, not billion with a B but 50 trillion. Now, because some of your younger listeners don't know how money works. A thousand thousand is a million, a thousand million is a billion and a thousand billion is a trillion. Did you know that by chance for sure?

Absolutely.

Okay, so 50 trillion is a lot of money. We're going to do 50 trillion and I'm saying it in seven businesses, but I'll just do two. We own a company called Natural Power Concepts where we invested millions and it's been frozen for 12 years, which really was frustrating. But we've got pop up windmills that are called urban wind that go 360 degrees and we now have a $720 million order for those because solar is great during the day, but at night wind starts at 6pm to 6am Solar is good 8am basically to 8pm and then so that's that. And we get some other. We get this if you go to our website, Natural Park Concepts, our inventor is the Leonardo da Vinci genius of our time. Our great, great friend who we talk to almost daily. John Petrie, world's greatest surrealist artist. Amazing fine artist John Petrie. P I T R E. Check him out. But the other one is qci. And you can take every piece of garbage, which I wrote my hundred year goals when I was your age. And one of the things I said we got to take trash and turn it into cash. And now we can take every piece of glass, turn it back, every metal, all the plastic, all the stuff. And you say, well, why is that important? You Whether you want to or not, create five pounds of trash a day. And our 10,000 garbage landfills since 1950 are all full. They're full. We gotta convert that, what looks like a liability back into an asset. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. That makes perfect.

Everybody can participate at some level in all this because these are not little businesses. That business needs 22 million people right now. So we're in the most exciting time ever. But we got to open up the economy again. And yeah, we're going to have health problems, but healthy people got to keep their immune system strong. And I know I'm on my soapbox here, so I hope that's not too much.

Absolutely. And you spoke about your 100 year goal. I'd love for you to talk more on that and what that means to you now and how you thought about it when you originally created it.

Well, first of all, we are thin line. First of all, everyone should set 100 year goals. See, most people have no goals and achieve nothing. And then they're damn surprised. And by the way, I hope that's not too costly. That's why Crystal and I said, you got to ask yourself, what do you want to do? Who do you want to be? What do you want to have? Where do you want to go? And you need to unfold this because it's an evolutionary thing. But back to your mentor question of three questions ago. I got to mentor with the smartest man in the planet. I'm in graduate school. I get introduced to Buckminster Fuller, Einstein's best dude. He had 15 doctorates at Harvard. Invented spherical buildings made out of triangles called geodesic domes. Invented the Dymaxion car that runs on three wheels and with alcohol, ethanol and methanol. Fifty years ago, and I was just mesmerized. Traveled with him as a research assistant for seven years. And he got me out of provincial little town thinking. I was born in an industrial town. In school, I had to take every workshop, like metal shop, print shop, stuff that I'm not good at. I'm an intellectual, in case it's not obvious, but some people go, you ain't. That's smart. And I'm okay with that. You get big, you get critics, and that's. I thank every one of them. They don't get statues. Guys like me do. So. And Crystal. So the point is, is that I wrote those hundred year goals. I could not be more excited about them. They're starting to manifest. And you know, one of the. I've got a lot of tapes now that are becoming books. But one of the best selling tapes I did for Nightingale Conant, other than how to think bigger than you ever thought you could think, is dreams don't have deadlines. And that dreams don't have deadlines is exactly it. God's delays aren't God's denials. That's why you gotta write Hundred Year Goals. Because different goals, Casey, have different gestation rates. A chickie egg takes 22 days to go from egg to chickie. A human nine months, an elephant, two years. And one's not better than the other. Obviously an elephant's bigger than anything, but for sure. But they all have prone gestations.

Absolutely. I love that. And Crystal, I want to bring up hypnotherapy. You briefly touched on that. Just how did hypnotherapy come into your life? And I'd love to hear more. So what it means for those that may not know what it is.

Sure. And I love to talk about it. How it came into my life was I was an entrepreneur. I was building houses, and I'm an investor and that sort of thing. And I. A guy that did all my cabinet work indoors showed up one day and he was slim and he looked amazing. I go, tony, what happened to you? I go, you lost a lot of weight. What did you do? Did you go on a diet? And he goes, no, I stopped smoking. I got hypnotized and I stopped smoking. I'm like, wait a second, that's counterintuitive. Stop smoking. You're supposed to gain weight. And he goes, no, I went to see this guy, he's a hypnotherapist, and he hypnotized me to lose weight, stop smoking, and not even crave cigarettes. And I listened to that audio for 30 days. And he goes, I can sit at a bar with my friends and have a beer. I don't crave a cigarette even when they're all smoking. And I got so excited about that because I thought, you know, what if you can change a habit that quickly, you know, without years of psychological counseling, I thought you can change anything. I mean, one of the most tough addictions to break. Right. I had actually already enrolled. I was going to go back to school to get my psychology degree. And I totally revectored. So I went to the largest holistic college here, Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, and I became certified in clinical hypnotherapy. I took tons of extra classes. I studied everything. I studied with Deepak Chopra, the Chopra center of Wellbeing and Meditation. I studied I became certified at Southwest Institute in transformational coaching, life coaching. And I just love this idea. I think I always had a sense that you could change anything if you decided to. That nothing is fixed in stone about your life or what you are getting the results you are getting. And I think I always knew that intuitively. I grew up in a family of nine children, and we all ate it out of the same refrigerator and had the same two parents. But we all had this different path that unfolded based on little microchoices we made all the time. And I thought the power really is in here and those little decisions you are making and those little awarenesses that you have or don't have. And I just. I became obsessed with that. I have studied so many of the masters, but, you know, honestly, I just been able to have amazing results. I also studied, you know, something called emotional freedom technique, which is a protocol of tapping on your meridian points, like acupuncture points. So I would take my clients through this process of tapping to get them into sort of a neutral, calm state where their nervous system is relaxed. And then. Hypnotherapy is not magic. It's not someone taking control of your mind. I tell people you are hypnotized every single day of your life, whether you know it or not. We go through all it is, is a brainwave state. Okay, so it's beta, alpha, theta, and delta states. We go through, in and out of those states all day and into the night. When you're sitting there watching tv, your brain wave suddenly slows down and drops into a high alpha state, or maybe mid alpha even, which makes you really suggestible to what they're saying. Television commercials. That's why people see a beer commercial and go, oh, I can be sexy, have more friends and have more fun if I drink that beer. And the next thing you know, you're buying that brand at the grocery store because it somehow just feels right. Well, basically, hypnotherapy is deciding very deliberately what you want in your life, what you don't want anymore. And then going into that relaxed state of mind where your brainwave actually slows down. And so you have more capacity for change and for deep learning. Because the subconscious mind is very different than the conscious mind. The conscious mind is, you know, our level of awareness where we can see if something's truthful or not. But the subconscious doesn't discern truth. So what happens is we hear things as we're growing up throughout our whole lives. You know, someone tells you, you know, you should wear Black, you know, to hide pudgy thighs. Or why don't you stand in the back so you see, look a little slimmer behind your sister or something like this. I mean, I've seen everything from my clients. And so suddenly you wake up one day and you don't know why, you hate your body and you can't lose weight no matter what you keep self sabotaging. Well, those, those things were not true. A lot of those things, you know, you'll never make it. Why don't you just skip college and just go get a job at Costco because you know you're not a good student. Don't even try that sort of thing. All those things that people are told throughout their lives, they start to become recorded at a subconscious level, especially when they're felt with emotion. Emotion is a strong, powerful galvanizer of memory. And so it locks it not just into your mind, but into your body. I mean, they discover now that you have a lot of the same neural connections in your stomach area that you do in your brain. So that's why people get kind of sick feelings or they get this gut feeling. I mean, there's so much we're learning. And you were saying, what is the future going to look like? I believe one of the greatest breakthroughs we'll see in the next decade will be an enhanced awareness and knowledge of how much of bringing consciousness, science and spirituality together and realizing that we do have so much control over our health, our wellbeing, our outcomes of our success in our career, our relationships when we pull those things together. If you look at spiritual scripture, ask and it is given. Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open. All these things we are told again and again. Pray as though you've already received. You know, that's called visualization. So if we're visualizing terrible things every day, oh no, what if I lose this job? What if my business fails? What if this, what if that? It's a prayer for the worst outcome. And when you put that, combine that with science, quantum physics. Quantum physics basically is the science that proves without a doubt that what we're expecting is what we get in the material world. And even quantum physicists are truly baffled because they don't know how this happens. But to me, where spirituality, consciousness and science all converge into this beautiful place where we realize that like scripture says, we are created in the Creator's image and so we can create as well. And it's just awe inspiring to think about it, isn't it?

I love that, that was fascinating to hear. I'm definitely getting. That's definitely a highlight of this talk, for sure. Last question before we wrap up for the both of you. And that is, if you were to give someone listening today a checklist or an exercise to go through to give them after they listen to this and they go on with their day, what would you tell them that they should do and what would that checklist look like?

So one of the. The first checklist I'd say is schedule time with yourself every day, at least 15 or 20 minutes. And, you know, don't let anything come in the way of that time you spend with yourself, because you. You are the creator of your life. And if you don't spend that time deliberately with yourself to create, make your creation the way you want it to be, your life will be a random creation of random things that just. You just randomly let in instead of deliberately channeling your energy, your intentions, and your focus in the right direction. And the second thing I would say, and honestly, I'm not This book is 16 bucks, but I would say, get this book, get ask the bridge from your doomsday destiny and go through. We have something in there called the seven roadblocks to asking. And what we discovered is that everybody has these roadblocks. There are seven of them. They're powerful, and they will stop you in your tracks. They will keep you from getting what you want in life. They will keep you from asking for what you want in life. And we back it up with a lot of scientific studies that have been done about people's resistance and fear to asking for what they want and even feeling like they deserve what they want. So those roadblocks, go through those roadblocks and make very personalized notes about yourself and how those factor into your life and then how to overcome them based on the information in the book. Because you really, when you put something in writing, it becomes real for you. And then I would say, read those things back to yourself every day. Make sure that you are progressing. Because as you take notes, as you ask the questions, as you get new answers, you will start to see, just like the book says, you will see yourself crossing this bridge from the true dreams in your heart to your ultimate destiny.

I love that.

Yeah.

And what about you, Mark? If you were to leave someone today that is listening with a piece of advice or a checklist that will bring them on throughout their day, what would that be and why?

I'm going to hitchhike on what you said and say that because so many Bookstores are closed, which breaks my heart. I mean, we've gone from 19,000 bookstores to 400. And they're having a real struggle because they're just paying the rent, so they can't pay the publisher. So get the book at Amazon. Ask the bridge from your dreams. Destiny. And then number two, my advice is join us. We have askthebookclub.com it's free. And what we're going to do is try to not try. We are going to. Because trying doesn't work. You either do it or you don't do it, like we saw in the movie. You're going to join askthebookclub.com and what we're going to do is help you facilitate with people around the world, become master askers. And it's going to be fun, enlightening, enriching. And we want everyone to fulfill their greatest, highest, most noble destinies.

I love that. And last but not least, where is the best place that everyone can follow you guys on social media along your journey?

So I'm @crystaldwyerhanson, a bit of a tongue twister. Crystal Dwyer D W I E R Hansen on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, all the above and YouTube. And Mark is obviously Mark Victor Hansen on all of those platforms. And we love people to follow us. I love messages from people. I love talking to people. I love hearing about your results. It's really cool. It makes it meaningful for us to hear from you. So please reach out to us. I also have a free resource on my website, crystal visionlife.com it's called Purge Messy Thinking. And it's a guided visualization audio that will really help you get rid of that messy thinking that we all do. And then of course, Mark VictorHansen.com has the how to be up and down times ebook you can on his site. So if you want to visit there. But yeah, please stay in touch with us, get the book, tell us how it's really affecting you at a personal level because we really want to know.

Absolutely. So, Mark, Crystal, last but not least, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on today's show. It definitely was an amazing episode and I'm very grateful for it.

Thanks, Casey, you are fantastic. You are wonderful. So thanks for having us.

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