Ep12 - Mark Victor Hansen

I'm so excited to introduce you to our next podcast guest, Mark Victor Hanson, one of the co authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul and the author of his new book called Ask Mark. Tell us what we are going to learn.

What happens is my destiny is helping you discover your destiny so you don't regret the end of your life because you will be able to fulfill your destiny because of what we're going to talk about.

What is the roadmap to defeat self sabotage, negative thinking and learned helplessness in these unprecedented times. You must get connected, Get Growing, Get Certain and Get Attitude The Get Attitude Podcast. I am so, so excited to have this gentleman be on our get attitude podcast, Mr. Mark Victor Hansen, best known for his being the co author of Chicken Soup for the soul. Over 500 million books sold. I'll say it again, 500 million. I think it's more impressive to say a half a billion Mark. He is also a renowned and highly sought after keynote speaker for corporations and teams all over America with having presented to over 6,000 audiences worldwide for his most dynamic and compelling speakers and leaders of our time. He is also a prolific writer with 307 books, authored or co authored some of those books including the Power of Focus, the Aladdin Factor, Dare to Win and the One Minute Millionaire. And he also just showed me one off screen that I can't wait being up and down times One Minute Millionaire. There, there's the One Minute Millionaire. That thing was awesome. A passionate philanthropist and humanitarian. Maybe we'll get to talk a little bit about some of the great things you're doing for others. And Crystal and Mark are getting ready to release and probably have already released this brand new book called Ask the Dreams from your Dreams to your Destiny, which was I believe released in the spring. So Mark, welcome to the Get Attitude podcast. We're so, so fortunate and thankful to have you. And our listeners are called gappers and I know they're all going to be tuning into this one with their ears open and hopefully their minds and hearts as well.

Listen, I'm honored, thankful and you and I both believe what Zig Ziglar used to say. We all need to check up from the neck up and get our head up all over again.

Isn't that the truth? I'd love to know. When it comes to attitude, do you have a certain definition, Mark, that you use for attitude and maybe give us one of your most profound thoughts on attitude? Or maybe. Who's your attitude coach?

I've had a lot of great attitude coaches. I've listened to, you know, I was. When I went bankrupt, 1974, I started. I'd never listen to audio tapes. I was too sophomoric, if you know that term. I thought I knew everything. I was cocky, arrogant. I was well educated. I thought. So there you go. What I discovered, though, is that I had stinking attitudes and I was reading the New York Times, which is all the bad news fit to spoil a good human mind. So I started listening to Cabot Robert, who is a dean of speakers, and we became close friends, and I traveled and did a lot of talks with Ian Zig around the world, literally. But you start listening to stuff and it changes your mind, because Cabot's tape that saved my life instead of committing suicide back in 1974 was either the Creature Circumstance or the Creator. And I didn't realize you create your own attitude. And the cliche, as you know better than I do, is your attitude creates your altitude in business and life and in life and in geography and in freedom. And we can go on deep as you want. I don't want to overtake your podcast and do a monologue.

I want, hey, you know that the best podcast guests are the ones that just jump on and go. I tend to be a guest on a few, and I know how you feel, but you certainly dropped some big names there. And so let's just jump down that rabbit hole real quick. Cavett Robert, not a lot of people know about in modern, but I used to get the cassette tapes called Masters of Success with Charlie Tremendous Jones and Cavett Robert and. And all these old timers and those. They were little cassette tapes. I still have them. They're fantastic. Talk to me about who Cavett Robert was for those who don't know and what he meant to you.

Well, Cavett Robert was the dean of speakers in America, and he really launched the audiotape business. He did a talk to. This had to be like 1969 or 70. And the first Sony cassette came out with. They were about like $20. He's talking to 15,000 people of the Rotary. And he said, you guys have loved the talk. You've given me a standing base. But this is a brand new thing that every one of you wants to have an audio tape by me called either the Creature Circumstance or the Creator. Then the second tape was, you can't even heat an oven with snowballs, because he was close friends with Will Rogers, who came up with that line, and he said, you get that in his tape recorder, and 15 out of 15,000 people bought it. And he launched a brand new industry. And what he was saying at the time, it's not how big a piece of the pie you get, it's how big we make the pie. And I gotta tell you, that he created. I'm told our industry does 3 trillion a year. If you've got a different number, Glenn, you tell me a different number. I don't care what the number is. Right. It's a big industry. Do you have a different number?

No, I don't. No.

No. That's going to assume that when we were open before COVID and you know, like right before COVID happened, because Crystal and I came out with this new book, we were going to talk once in Washington, D.C. to 15,000 life underwriters, and once down in Florida to 11,000. And then the guy calls up and said, hey, look, they've closed me down and I've lost $5 million. You're not getting paid. I'm not getting paid, but we're not open. And as soon as we do open, we're hiring you. And I thought, oh, man. Anyhow. But Cavett started that whole thing. He taught Zig Ziglar how to sell Tapestry and books from a platform. He started the National speaker association, which I'm a very proud founding member of. 17 of us. Back when $500 was really dear to me. It's like 50,000, you know, today, but yeah, or more. But, you know, he said, give me $500, I'm giving you 500. What am I doing that you're joining and you're gonna help me launch this thing. And you won't believe it today, but back then, all the guys were purists. And I said, well, I work for GM or I work for Ford, and I do. Every time I do talk, we sell three Cadillacs. And these are good guys who. I won't mention their names, but they said we would never spend any time doing an audio tape. And I thought, you guys are nuts. People need take home value of audio tapes. And today what's transitioned from audio tapes is podcasts. And, you know, I've done, I'm told by my publisher more than anyone, we're doing four or five and sometimes seven a day, because that's the way to get. But what has changed in the book business is in the old days, you know, I go to the 20 biggest bookstores and sell more books than anybody, but. And get them all signed in that. But today we're on two in the morning here in America, one in Canada, one in Israel. Then later at night in Vietnam, we talked to, like, 10 million people, and the sales just have gone through the roof. But they're not tabulated by the New York Times because they're now international sales, because everybody other than China buys on Amazon. I don't know if you knew that or not.

Yeah, well, that's where my book is housed and stored, and I love to just give them all the proceeds from my books. So it's wonderful.

We're in an amazing time. If you're awake. That's why you've got to have a good attitude, because if you're asleep and you go, the world's against me and things aren't going, and the economy's against me and my mother's against me. There's a joke that fits her. Can I do the joke real quick?

Well, of course, yes.

Yeah. It's an old joke, and you know it. But the mother goes into his son and says, get up. You got to go to school. Says, nobody at school likes me. The kids don't. The principals don't. Nobody likes me. Why have I got to go? He says, you're the principal and you're 42. Get out of here. So true.

In today's world. Not even to mention. Right.

By the way, we got, you know, we got five kids and six grandkids, and the school's just opened up here now they're already on fall vacation. My little grandkids had a sleepover last night. But the teacher, our teacher of special ed kids, where she's found a lot of kids that are Asperger's positive, that are geniuses, that are 4, 5, and 6 and are doing 6th, 7th, and 8th grade work in math or reading. What happens is the principal says, I'm not going to do open up our schools until all. I mean, the superintendent, until all schools are Covid free. He's an idiot. That's like saying you'll never get sick. Heck, nobody can promise that, right? God can. But other than God, you can't promise that, right?

That is true. And you know, as we do this, we have so much going on in the world, right? So much negativity. And. And Amy Coney Barrett. This will air in about a month. But she's sitting there getting ready to go on the fire line, and I look at her children, and I'm like, boy, their children are going to be firsthand front row to watching what is getting ready to happen. And I've caught just a little bit of that today. What's your advice? Or what's Your attitude, certainly you have been. You've been around. My guess is you have been attacked. Maybe you have had people say you can't do it. You have had people interpret what you're saying the wrong way. What's your attitude? The way you think, the way you overcome negativity of other people.

Okay, well, first of all, I want to go back to the statement you made about our Supreme Court. Yes, we have a Supreme Court that has nine people on it. And I am close friends because I won the Horatio Alger Award, which means I've come from rags to riches and been excessively philanthropic. And we raise a quarter billion a year in Horatio to get at risk kids to either go to college or now more importantly to go to trade school because college is sort of dysfunctional at a couple levels, which we can talk to if you want. Wow. And I'm going to try to help that out. But I'm close friends with Judge Clarence Thomas. I can tell you he is a wonderful guy. He's the one who puts a gold medal around each of our necks. You know, when we win. 10 of us win a year and they're all great Americans that have overcome the odds one way or another. In other words, you know, I came out of relative poverty and my parents were both illiterate and we never had a book in the house. So to say that I would be the world's best selling author and, you know, and I've sold a half a billion books, like you said, but I'm going to sell a billion books, which is just really exquisite and exciting and wonderful and I look forward to it.

Yeah, that's good. And so why don't we jump in?

I sidetracked you and I didn't. Yeah. So what we got to do is get her confirmed, irrelevant that, you know, my wife's Catholic, so we go to Catholic church on a regular basis. It doesn't matter if you're Catholic or Jewish or Protestant or something else. The point is that shouldn't be the point of what she's getting attacked on, which I saw a few minutes ago, like you did.

Yes. And I think come hell or high water, politics is politics. And she's. She's gonna get on. I just don't see how they're gonna stop it unless something's crazy.

I hope so, because she's a good woman. And like you saw, she's adopted kids that needed to get adopted. And Dr. Canfield, Jack and I wrote different books, but I championed. I got two of our five kids who are Adopted. And I championed the adoptive soul in the first line I wrote, just so you know, is that every kid should be a loved kid. I defy anyone to argue that. By the way, I'm on my bully pulpit. I'm ranting and you can see that. And I've got lots to rant about. Just like you get him around and I'm sure he ran to the lock.

Yeah, he calls it puking. But Mark, he calls it what he calls it puking. Don't puke on your prospects. Right, but no, you're here to rant. But you mentioned something and I always love to do this because I don't know that you get an opportunity to do this a lot, but I'd like to backtrack for a bit. I'd love to know your parents names and I'd love to know your parents story because that had to affect your attitude totally.

First of all, my parents were very courageous. My dad is named Paul and my mother's name is Una. Good Danish names. We're part of the Danish brotherhood which got burned down in Kenosha, which I'm part of. That people aren't allowed to go burning down stuff just because they think they don't like people. Right? That's not okay with me at any level. And I want every one of those people prosecuted because they burn all of our family pictures and my relatives and that's not okay. You don't go doing. And those guys ought to go to jail for 10 years like the president says. So you say, well, why? Well, let's just go through it because you asked. My father had a brother, an older brother, 14 years older, big family. Sven, Uncle Sven and Sven created the black band to take all the Jews into Denmark because you know. And the king said, yeah, let's do that. Well, Hitler put a hundred thousand dollar hit on every one of the family in my family.

Oh my mercy.

Uncle, I get goosebumps telling you this.

That's just crazy. Wow, that's crazy. That's unbelievable. You, you guys remarked by Hitler.

So let me just finish this one little rant because you opened up Pandora's box here that. Well, Sven comes up and kisses my. Remember now, my dad's 14 and this guy's 2014 or 1428. Reich comes up to him and kisses his cheeks and says, hey Paul, here's $100 and a passport. You're leaving for America. Hitler's got 100,000 on you. I'll never see you again. Because he'll probably get me. But he can't get you if you'll leave tomorrow. And he came to America with no English, hating socialism, hating the National Socialist Party, which is. You know, where we're going right now if we don't vote. Right. And anyone out there can argue with me anything they want. But socialism has been tested, tried, and it's terrible. Right? It doesn't work, hasn't worked, won't work, can't work. You're talking to a guy who's a flaming free enterprise who writes seven big, very big money books. I want everyone to become an entrepreneur, which means you find a problem, fix it, and scale it, and do a vast profit.

And so talk to me a little bit about your father. Unbelievable, right? He shows up in America at 14 years old with $100 in his pocket. No parents there. Was he alone?

No. No. Are you kidding? No. No. He had no friends, no relatives. And the first people that he found, you know, because this racist stupidness which is going on right now.

Yes.

First people he met that could speak Danish were black. Cause Denmark owned a little island in the Caribbean that, you know, and he just happened to bump into him. And he'd never seen a black person because Denmark was a little loaded with. I was blond when I was a kid, as are all my brothers and our kids and our grandkids running now. So he. And all of a sudden, you know, he's talking to black people who speak Danish, and he didn't speak English, and there was no such thing back then as esl. English is a second language, which I hope you are keen on. Everybody ought to be multilingual.

Yes. Yes.

And so our grandkids are so right.

And so this. This young man with $100, he's 14, that shows up in America, obviously meets Yuna. Is that her name? Now, was she in America, or did she come with him? And then what was there. Just real quick, what was their love story?

He came with a different family, but. And went through Ellis island and all that stuff.

Wow.

You know, bait cooking for the railroads. And then ultimately, long term, he got to a little Denmark called Waukegan, Illinois, and Kenosha and all that. We have three cities there that. Racine, Wisconsin, they have. And he was a Danish baker and a very, very good one. And obviously, I'm the third kid down. And he said, would you take over the bakery? And I said, dad, I love your bakery, and I like working for you this much. And I'm a white glove guy. I'm not sure what one of those guys is, but that's what I am. And I apologize, but I will not take over the bakery. If I did, I would have made it into like an enemy's because I'm a scaling guy. I believe if you're going to do enterprise, do big enterprise, I love it.

And so obviously, as we all know, bakers start their day at three in the morning, maybe four in the morning. And it's an everyday. There's no day off. What is it that your father taught you or what is it that you feel from him by watching him as you grew up?

Perfect question. And the fact is he started at 11 at night and worked 18 hours a day. He slept very little because he was really dedicated. And you don't make any money selling 5 cent rolls. I'm not picking on dad. It just, you know, that was. He started the trade in Denmark, got here Danish bakeries. He did well because there's little Denmark. They'd buy the bread and buy the rolls and he'd do the big cakes. And he was really a culinary artist. Like he did the cakes at, you know, at weddings and women would jump out of and all that stuff. So he really mastered his art form. And like when the few vacations we got, which were a week long in the summer because August was a slow time, we would do a baker's holiday. In case you didn't know, it means you go from bakery to bakery and you see what other bakers are doing. And I thought, oh, yeah, yeah, now back to your business and mine. We do the same thing. We love listening to other speakers, especially if they're alive, original, unique and authentic.

Yes, yes. And then just to round out the attitude lineage, what about Yuna? What was the attitude message that taught us?

My mom was the front of the bakery, dad was the back of the bakery. But my mother had the best attitude in the world. She always was smiling. She could enroll anyone in conversation that fast. Which she was a master maestro of storytelling. Like even those little week vacations that we took, like the Dells, Wisconsin or something, she'd come back and I'd sit and listen to her on the phone. And my little brother and I, he's two years younger, not little, but younger brother, and we just go, wow, we had a better vacation than I thought we did, right? Yeah.

Sounds like maybe she gave you some of your presentation skills.

Oh, she did, she did. She was a mastermeister. I had. They taught us work ethic. We all had to work hard. Starting at 9, I had to pay for all my own clothes and everything because There just wasn't enough money to do it any other way. And you know, so I was a top greeting card salesman and then I had paper, rocks, shovel snow, did all that stuff.

Now, I know that you've been a part of obviously over 300 books, but let's just take a couple of them. And what I'd love to know is, you know, in a sentence or two or a paragraph, give us the highlight of the book. Give us the big lesson of the book. If you're a gapper out there. And as we always say every time, if you're driving in your car, if you're on a walk, if you're on the beach, you want to buy all these books, you want to read all these books. But we're going to give you a 20 to 30 second synopsis of each book. And let's start with the power of focus. What's the point of the book? What's the message of that book?

The power of focus is. I would have held it up. I knew we were going to do this part of it. I was going to pick.

Sorry.

Other than that, I'll pick second if you don't mind. But everyone needs to focus. And it's not hocus pocus about focus. Are you focused? Are you laser beam focused? Because each of us gets distracted mostly from the computer, mostly from our cell phone or smartphone. And what happens is you've got to master focus. And what. Oh, good. Hot dang, you guys are quick.

Hey, baby. Jason Jolliffe, Studio J is the best. So, but so he'll pull up all the books and we'll put them right up on the screen for you.

Well, the other one I'd like to talk about is that I want everyone to write a book and it's got. You have a book. You is.

Yes, yes. That's wonderful.

So tell us that if you go to my website, Mark VictorHansen.com as of tomorrow, they'll have it up. You get it for electronically for $7.97. It would give you all the three other gift books like no one else could get anywhere. Like if you get it Amazon, that's great. Oh, good. But if you get it from us, you also get from blank page to bestseller, which I just wrote like three weeks ago.

Wow.

Because everyone says I'm ready to the blank page. And I go, by the way, not only do I love the blank page, but I looked up everybody that loved the blank page. Every author's had to do it from Shakespeare on. But even in business, I'll just do Barry Diller's Black Story. Backstory. Barry Diller, who's the biggest guy in media. I've never met him, but he said, At 23, I started with a blank page. Nobody told me I couldn't do it. So I did Sunday Night at the movies and I made the biggest thing in tv. So he says, you gotta love the black blank page. And I go through, you know, I'm a good researcher, obviously, so I write, why you got to do that? Okay.

Oh, my gosh, that's so cool.

What book do you want to do next? As you're doing these, you're going to throw them up.

The Aladdin Factor. Just curious how that came about. And what's the point to the Aladdin Factor? What's the takeaway for our people?

The Aladdin Factor was a precursor to this, which will go into more detail.

Oh, yeah, we will. Trust me.

What happened is that Jack and I were trying to sell chicken soup and as you know, 144 people all of a sudden, hit the road. Jack. I said, look, it's okay if you don't like him, but I'm a nice guy. Jack is actually wonderful. I just like to mess with that line. So I'd written a book called Dare to Win, which is on the shelf behind me there. I see it anyhow. Is it. And Jack just. We went to Berkeley and they said, we'll take Dare to Win, Dare to Lose all the way to 14. No, dare to God, because I don't want to do anything. I can't. Prequel and sequel, right? That means before and after for those who have not converts in that language anyhow. And they came back to us when we were number one and number two in the New York Times. And what we said was, hey, wow, we'll do it. And they said, we want you to dare to ask, but we're going to change it to Aladdin. And then we sold 3.6 million in it, and we didn't have any time to do it because we already had commitments to four or five other books. So, Jack, I said, berkeley's going to sue us if we don't do this. He said, well, what are you going to do? I said, no, no, no. They're suing two of us, not one of us.

Right, right.

So he said, we'll figure out. So I said, well, I'll just go interview the 101 best askers. And I interviewed, like, Dave Yoho senior junior and stuff like that, and National Speakers Association. And I put it all Together. Jack codified it and it just went nuts because nobody had done it. And it was a. It was a great sales book. And it just went crazy. And we're thankful for that.

Yeah. The power of marketing, the power of branding, the power of creative title something. I mean, that's pretty. What a great story. And I.

When the movie came out, by the way, when I wrote it, we did not know when we picked Aladdin as a final title, how to ask for and get everything you want. We did not know that the movie was gonna go rocket ships, which my kids and grandkids have even watched it here. I just love the movie. It's a whole new world.

Yeah. Oh, no. I can sing every song. Trust me. Did it with all mine as well.

And thank you for doing that.

Yeah, well, I. I just, you know, good things happen to good people, Mark. And you've obviously been. Fate has been kind to you, I'm sure, but it's also probably not been kind. Tell me about maybe one of the most difficult times that you've had to overcome. That may be similar to people that are listening when you went, shit, this shit's hitting the fan. I'm not sure I'm gonna make it. I'd love to hear that story.

So it's 1974, and the oil pride goes like that. I'd been in graduate school with Einstein's best student, a guy named Buckminster Fuller. And I got enamored with Bucky. And he invented lots of things, thousands of things. But geodesic domes, spherical buildings made out of triangles. A new mathematics, synergetics. And I thought, maybe I'm supposed to go do that. And I'm building. I built the Wall Street Racquet Club, Botanical gardens, aviaries. Because I love to sell. So I sold. We were doing about 2 million a year. But I made a mistake of building out a PVC polyvinyl chloride plastic. When the Arabs said we can write checks of bigger banks amounts. And one day I could get it the next day from Monsanto, I couldn't. And it was my best worst experience. But I crashed and burned. I went bankrupt so fast I had to check a book at the library. How to go bankrupt by yourself. And for six months I'm sleeping out on a sleeping bag in front of another guy's room. Because I went upside down to bankruptcy courts back in the old days in eastern Long Island. Took everything. So I said, aye, aye, ay, ay. Finally I came up to me, what do I want to do? And I said, I Want to talk to people that care about things that matter, that would make a life transformative, impactful, difference. I go to my three roommates. I'm living in Hicksville, Long Island, New York, at $100 a month. So you can see I was not living high. And any of you guys know somebody young, speaking, and that's not a celebrity, not a doctor, lawyer, famous person, and young enough that I can relate to because I still had hair back then. And they said, yeah, this guy, Chip Collins was talking out here in Haupaud, Long island, and here's a ticket. It's a real estate meeting. He wowed 500 people for three hours, at the end of which I go up and I ask him. I say, chip, wow. Can I take you to lunch? I'll buy, but I want you to tell me how to do this business. He said, if you'll stay out of real estate, I own the five boroughs of New York. I'll teach you how to do it, but you do it in life insurance. Anyhow, long story short, you told me exactly what to do, how to say it, And Tony Robbins and I were talking one time together at a big meeting in New York, of all places. And we're the only two guys that did a thousand talks a year the first three years, because I teach, if you want to get out of the doldrums, you got to take massive success in the right direction to get the massive right result. And so everyone came up to me and said, man, that's a great story to have it in a book. So the first book we did was somewhere behind me. That one that's right here. It won't be online. It's stand up, speak out, and win. I don't think it's online.

Stand up, speak out, and win.

Yeah. So I sold it for the platform, and I said, this isn't a New York Times bestseller. It's not an international bestseller. It's not an anything bestseller. It is my bestseller, and I want to sign it to you, Glenn, and your wife and your kids. And if you got a dog, I'll even put your dog in. And they all laugh. And I say, because it's my bestseller. I sold 20,000 the first year at $10 each. I made $200,000. I thought, I have arrived again, and I'm not going down again because I'm going to learn this book business start to finish. And it's been 44 years doing that.

That is so cool. And I'm a member of the national speaker. Oh, look, it he found it, coach. He found it, Mark. So, yeah, I will get that and I'll read it and I'll take whatever you want to send me the. But I'm a. I'm a member of the National Speakers association as well. Right.

And I love great organization.

Yeah. Well, thank you for founding it. I appreciate that. So just. Just as a curious, you know, I finally got to. I had critical mass and unbelievable momentum and I was doing big stage on big audiences and I finally hit it and I was doing it and then Covid hit and I had to clean my schedule. What do you think? I mean, I'm doing virtual stuff and all that. Will we ever be back to normal? Will we ever be in rooms and hotels of 2,000 people and screaming and having a great time? And when do you think that'll be?

First of all, you asked three questions at once and I'm glad to try to do all of them. First of all, I want it today. Right. Because you and I thrive on a live audience, and the audience thrives on us. I watched your stuff online. You and I have never physically met, have we?

No, I wish we did. But I'll come see you whenever you want, brother.

Well, good. So we've been hired now a couple times in November, and we got some pending stuff in Florida. Florida's opened up and Nevada's opened up. So we got stuff on like November 1st, which is sort of amazing to me. Yeah, it's not gonna be big like the old days, but. So the answer is, first of all, I think we should open up now. I think what. What we're hearing is that, you know, Regeneron works. I know when I got Covid, like four weeks ago, I inadvertently took way too much. You're supposed to take 200 three times a day. And I gotten the pills out of Mexico and it said 500, but I was delirious. I thought I was dead already. So I was sweating and freezing and sweating and freezing, and it was 500. So my wife comes in after I'd done the second time because I didn't want to tell her I was dying. And she said, oh my God, you just took eight days worth in two dosage. You're in trouble. You better call our. I got friends that are doctors and I call them. He said, just hyper lubricate. But the next day I was totally well. And today I just. I don't know if you can see it, but at 8 o' clock this morning, I was. I got my little blood test and see, tomorrow I'll know whether I'm antibody free, which. So the point I'm making is only 13 out of a thousand die of it, which is tragic. Look, I don't want anyone to die. That's not the point. Sure, but the numbers are so low, we can't keep the world shut. You take sick people in quarantine and you don't quarantine 100% of us.

I'm a guest on podcasts and I always start when they ask me about this and I say, do you know how many people die on Earth every year? Do you have any idea the number of fatalities due to starvation, by the way?

I don't know that, but it's 1 in 100 in America die because I did the funeral directors meetings a lot. Funeral guys buy. Guys like you and I, they need positive energy.

The point is, 9 million people die of starvation annually.

That's tragic.

Yeah. So I have a keynote called how was your breakfast? Right, because here's the point. We're worried about all this, but there's 9 million people that are starving to death each and every single year. And granted, one life's too many and we're at 200,000, but we sure as hell ain't at 9 million. So I always think that's a bit of perspective I like to do. Let's get back to. Sorry, I didn't mean to preach.

No, you can preach because you and I are on the same page. Let me just go through it, because I own an alternative energy company everyone ought to see called Natural Power Concepts. And we're doing pop up windmills that balance solar so we can have energy 24 hours a day, clean, green and sustainable. And we just got the biggest order ever from a company and trying to get it funded at the moment, $720 million order. So the point is, if you have enough energy, you can have enough water. And a dirty secret in California, those fires aren't out for one reason, there's no water. And you say, well, wait a second, there's an ocean, but salt water kills the plants for 100 years. So if you're a farmer, do you want me to put salt water on your plants? Interesting. You're going to go like this, right? So you gotta have energy to have water, water to have food, food to have abundance. And nobody should starve because of what Bucky Fuller taught me is we have adequate technology. And Today you got Dr. Peter Demandis who wrote abundance is Bucky Fuller of our time. Peter and I are friends and, and I admire all Those guys that I love, tech, technology and we can have enough tech to take care of. 4 billion people are underwatered underfed every day out of 8 billion. So you and I are 100% on the same page.

Yeah, well, God bless you for doing that. And I know and I want to get to the philanthropical piece, so let's just do that very quick. Tell us what has been the most rewarding and moving philanthropical endeavor that you've created that made a difference?

Okay, so let me do the macro. First of all, I wrote a whole little book called the miracle of tithing, which is basically the miracle of giving. And I said there's four T's thinking, which is the most important, which is what you and I are really about. If you cut all the other stuff, yes, we're articulate, yes, we communicate, yes, we speak. But if you're doing good thinking, you get hired. So it's thinking time. You got to contribute your time, right? Your talent and then your treasure. Everybody goes for the treasure and misses the other stuff and then forgets number five, which is a bonus. Be thankful. And I think I've sold more books than anyone because I tithe 10% of every book guaranteed to somebody before we start. And you're right, I've done a plethora of things, but the two big ones are, Horatio, because we got to help all the at risk kids. And I'm doing that in a multiplicity of ways. And then number two is that my wife and I are co chairman of Child Help which has helped ten and a half million kids get out of abuse, neglect. And the worst one is sex trafficking which affects 40 million people. And just I go, how the hell could those. And a lot of those guys and ladies are going to go to jail pretty quick, I think.

Yeah, let's hope so. So let's talk about that beautiful wife, Crystal. Number one, what's your two love story? Where did you meet? How long you been married? And then I want to talk about the new book called ask the dreams. From your dreams to your destiny.

So I got divorced long ago. I'm at a talk in California called author 101 and I see this woman that's just a radiant beauty in the middle of the group. And I go, oh my gosh. Just so you know, I really believe in goal setting. And in our 20th anniversary issue I wrote down, I printed the 267 things I needed in an ideal woman. I knew what doesn't work in a relationship. So we had to have exactly the same Values. We had to be monogamous. We had to, you know, want to travel. We had to love each other's business. She had to have her own business because I don't want somebody marrying me for my wallet. That's not acceptable. On and on and on.

Yeah.

And so she's in there, and I said to some guy, is she married or single or divorced or what? And she was divorced. So long story short, that night at vip, I got surrounded with people and. And I see her across the way and a lady, inadvertently, which I, you know, saw, she wiped out a glass of red wine and my wife wasn't drinking and wiped it on her white pants. I immediately cut through the group and I said, apologize. Grab your hands. I know where the club soda is. Let's. Let me help you. And we get outside and I say, I see something special in you. Do you mind if we go to dinner? But we can't stay here because a thousand people want two minutes of my time. And it's 9:30. Saturday night isn't gonna work. Can I take you off site? And she said, yeah. So we go to the best Hollywood restaurant.

Oh, cool.

The line's long. And I go, Gosh, $100 bill won't get in. But we walk up and if you see my wife, she's been a top modelist star and all that stuff. And she's the wisest woman I've ever met. But the guy looks at her and goes, oh, my God, she's a movie star. And I can't recognize her. I said, question it. I said, you don't recognize her? And the guy's mind's going through and steroids. People magazine in style. Boy, he can't figure it out. He says, okay, okay, I give up. Who is she? Now we're both Danish. I said, she's the queen of Denmark. He said, no, she's not. Oh, my God, she is. Who are you? Question is the answer. I said, who travels with the queen? I said, oh, my God, you're the king. And we had a table like that.

I love that story. That's so good.

When we're in China talking to thousands and thousands of people, that's a story they always want us to end with. Because everybody loves a good love story. And we are indefatigably in love. We're. The goal, I thought, was to have a twin flame. One in, one in mass mining is the 11, if you look at it right. But when you light a candle and two candles together, it jumps fourfold. It's called synergy. And it's a physics part of the physics of it. And what happens is there's a higher level than soulmate that is twin flame. And we are that rare earth twin flame. And, you know, we both got some experience. We both were married before, we both knew everything we wanted and we. Forgive me. I want everyone to have an idyllic relationship because I really believe out of 8 billion people, there's somebody perfect for everybody. If you're in a relationship that you love, God bless. And if you're single, go find it by figuring out exactly what you want and put it in writing.

I've been married 33 years to the love of my life from six grade. But I've always believed that marriage needs to always include one more person, and that's God. I just believe that a godless marriage is very hard to stay aflame, if you will. But my atheist brother doesn't believe in me.

Two issues. Number one is our ring. My ring has three diamonds, so it's Crystal mark, and God love it. That's number one.

So does my wife. Interestingly now, when Crystal and I are.

Falling in love, we're sitting in Costa Mesa at Mother's restaurant, Mother's Market, and there's a sweetheart of a man of the cloth, white collared guy next to us. And he says, I can see how in love you guys are. Can I interrupt? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, do you want to know what the one secret to staying married forever is? I said, yeah, I guess so. He says, well, I'm head of Billy Graham's minister. I'm 92. And he said, there's one thing you got to pray out loud together every day.

Yes.

My wife and I start every morning with an hour of prayer and meditation together. And we end at night praying. And before that, you know, we'd prayed in church, you'd prayed loud in a group, but you didn't pray spousally. And so we just. It really works. So I don't know if you do that. I'm not asking unless you want to do true confession. Yeah, yeah. You know, but the point is, is it for us, it works?

Well, yeah, no, we certainly do that. If you can put me in your prayers tonight, I'll put you in my prayers tonight as well.

We.

So then let's talk about this book. So you guys get together and you do this book called Ask. Tell us why and what it's about and what's the takeaway?

Ask with an exclamation mark is the bridge from Your dreams to your destiny. Two or three things. First of all, we've traveled everywhere, talked to 7 million people and what we've discovered is that great people, wonderful people, educated people, professional people, some have a good attitude, few do. But what the one thing is that they live, most of them live below the privilege because they've never learned how to ask. So we said look, every time we've had a problem we learn how to ask to go to a new level. And so he said well what if we could teach that? And so he said look, we'll write everything we know. And then we did all the checkout. We checked out at Harvard and Stanford and Cambridge and Mumbai where I went. I studied in India for a while and the biggest rehabilitative India. Anyhow, so we did all that stuff but then we interviewed the 26 master askers and we put it together and what we discovered is you got to ask yourself like I did, getting the work I want, which is speaking and in writing ask others, right. I asked my roommates who's doing this? And I didn't know they would know. And then you got to ask God and I'll just do that one real quick. When Jack and I wanted the perfect title for Chicken Soup, he had a title that he won't cop to anymore. So I'm dying to know, beating up on my great friend. But we in our respective minds gave our God, what is the mega best selling title? God give us a mega best selling title. God give us a mega bestselling title. And he calls me at 2:58 in the morning and says chicken Soup. I said for the soul. I said we got it now the publisher still didn't believe it but we knew that it was worth because we knew that the soul of America is in trouble. It was in trouble then. What you and I have been talking about through this is it's more trouble now what we didn't know is that the world's in trouble. I mean there's nowhere our book hasn't worked. I mean we're in China and India and Japan and all of Africa. And very few people haven't touched our book because it has what in the book business called handlong value. In China one book gets read by 15 because the government won't let books in. And in India it's about 12 people pass along we're told now maybe higher.

That's just unbelievable. So I love the four people to ask. Obviously Tony Robbins favorite quote is your life is determined by the quality of questions that you ask.

Right.

The quality of your life is determined by that. So what an appropriate book. And I think it's going to be, I'm sure, another huge success for you and your wife. Out of respect for time, I am now going to lead you to the closing of our show, which is called Knowledge through the Decades. And we got about 10 minutes, and we got seven decades, I believe, for you, Mark, is that correct?

Yes, I do. Correct and healthy and whole and plan to live be 127, with options for renewal.

Because you live.

The Bible says, as long as you plan to live. So why not put it in writing? I'm going to live be 127. If you have a high quality of life, then you want a high quality. If you had a crumb, your leg die.

Right. Well, it's so funny when you talked about bridging the gap and you heard it at the beginning of my show. Our podcast is about helping people bridge the gap from who they are to who they want to become. And you've dropped some bombs today. You've done some unbelievable things. I know that our gappers are. Their minds are just good.

Well, I'm glad, because the deal is to expand your mind and keep growing and glowing.

Right.

So hit your destiny. What we're saying is, if two people will read our book together and go over every question in the book, what we're Getting is like 100 letters a day already, and it's only been out since April 28th. What happens is they transform. Because, as you know, my corporate symbol is the butterfly. And we're saying, hey, look, you cannot look at a caterpillar and predict butterfly. And we've all been in this atrocious cocoon which is going to release us. And in the cocoons of the past, in America, 1898, the depression, the cocoon. Where did we come out with? We came out with the automobile. We came out with the airplane. We came out with the telephone. We came out with electricity. So out of these cocoons, the other book I wrote that I showed you is called how to Be up and Down Times. And it's free if you go to my website, markvictorhansen.com and I wrote it with Mitzi Perdue. And what we're saying is, look, we're going to do 50 trillion in these seven businesses between 2020 and 2030, and you can just be a little part of any of them and become vastly rich, healthy, happy, and get progress to the world.

I love it. All right, so now we're going to get you Focused on the attitude lessons of knowledge through the decade. I know that you probably don't remember being born, but you are a bit of an electron, so you might remember. But what is the attitude lesson from birth? What is the attitude lesson of being born?

That my parents totally loved me. And I think that is, like I said, the penultimate of benefits. My mother and dad totally loved, dedicated and taught all the right lessons to my. I got three brothers.

I love it. And I'm sure you share that with your children and grandchildren. I have four. And I know the. What do they call that? I have four kids and four grandbabies. How about that? So, yes, they call it. What is that? Love? It's called unconditional love. That's the lesson that you just gave us. Now, I don't know. Now, I'm sure you remember being in fourth grade. Do you remember being 10 years old? What was going on in your life? And what was the attitude lesson that you took out of being 10?

That's when I. My parents couldn't afford to buy a bicycle I wanted. I had a picture on the wall, ride a wheel on Sheffield steel before I ever did the tapes or wrote a book called Visualizing Is Realizing, both of which are true and both which are selling greatly, I'm thankful to say. But I went to bed dreaming about that and I kept beating on my dad, can I have it? Can I have it? And he said, no, no, no, no, kid, when you're 21. And I didn't understand he couldn't afford it. It wasn't like he didn't want to be generous. You know, it's like a $4,000 Trek bicycle today. It was not in his card. So I said, well, could I have it? Armed myself. I was a boy Scout and working toward Eagle, of course, but said, you can sell greeting cards on consignment. Well, that means you get them and you sell them. So I go up to the neighbors and I say, I'm earning my own bicycle. Would you like to invest in one box of Christmas cards or two? I sold 376 box of Christmas cards in one month. I didn't want to sell Christmas cards. I just wanted that bicycle. And my dad, correctly, I didn't like it. But he took half the money, took me to the bank and showed me how to save money and said, you know, you're paying your own way through college. And I go, what's college? I mean, because nobody in our family, I mean, dad didn't have an education, mom didn't. So it wasn't like something I heard about.

That's three attitude lessons at 10. And I love the over delivering way to go. Now you've gone through high school, did you end up going to college? You're 20 years old. What was going on with you at 20? And what was your attitude lesson at 20?

Okay, 20, I'm just going into graduate school and I'm going to be a doctor of physiology. And I think the guy head of physiology was helping NASA and teaching the greatest stuff. This guy, Dr. Alfred Richardson, was such a wow. I go just hang out in his office and talk to him because he was endlessly brilliant, but he looked like crap because he'd been burned by radiation because he didn't know what would do it. And he said, today we're going to see the smartest guy in the planet, Buckminster Fuller. And I go, no, no, Al, that's you. And he said, no, no. Bucky and I are. He's senior advisor, NASA. I'm just one of the advisors to national. And now I'm on the board of Back to Space. So I'm really keen at this stuff Anyhow, so we're, we go see Bucky and Bucky says today we're going to talk about synergetics, we're going to talk about cosmogony, cosmology. He did 10 things I'd never heard. And so he wowed my attitude. He woke me up to the fact that there is a universe and a world and that we could make the world work for 100% of humanity. And I worked with him for seven years as a research assistant. And it just expanded my attitudes.

Yeah, that is crazy. The whole thought of this unending time, space, right? I mean, it's amazing that we are just little specks of dust when it's all said and done.

Two quick things. One is that I got to be with all the astronauts and I'm with Scott Carpenter, General Dr. Scott Carpenter. I said, look, I know I'm not supposed to ask this or be an ass, but what about, do you see any aliens? He said, look, when I was with Albert Meaning at Princeton, he said, if they're not in universe, it's a big lonely place. Scott.

I love it. I love it. Let's go to 30 years old. Do you remember being 30? What was going on with you and what was your attitude lesson at 30?

At 30, I'm just starting to rock as a speaker. I've been bankrupt back at 26. And now a brand new thing hits called Century 21 and franchising. And we're talking to 5,000 people at a time.

I own three Century 21 offices in my history.

Oh, well, then you know, Marsh, you know the story. But listen, it was Mike Ferry, it was me, it was Keith the green. Keith lives here in Arizona, where I live. We just. We just had a ball and then we did it here and we did all of Canada with Peter Thomas. And just Peter's also a neighbor, one of many places.

So you and Mike Ferry grew century 21 in California.

Mike Ferry and I trained century 20. Mike Ferry was. He was the hard. He'd beat on people if they didn't do what he said.

Sure.

Still dad philosophically with him. But Mike helped get me from New York to California. So I'm very thankful to Mike. And it turns out his kids are closer to me than the old man. And we're age. He's older than I am by a few years.

Oh, that is too funny. I mean, what a small world. Unbelievable. All right, well, let's.

But Century 21 was great and ReMax. And then all of them, you know, kept hiring me. And Gary Keller will tell you that he started Keller Williams because of Mark Victor Hansen.

No kidding. Well, I need to get Gary on this show, that's for sure, because he sure was an innovator. All right, let's get to age 40. Talk to me about what was going on at 40 for you. And the attitude lesson there.

Attitude lesson was I'm reading all these self help books and then Jack and I run the Same program with 6,000 people down in San Diego. And Jack comes up and says, do you know me? And I said, you're Dr. Jack Canfield. You wrote Hunter Own Ways, Bill Self with you. He said, how do you know all that? I said, look, I study our business. There's nobody. I don't know that I'm a good guy at homework. He said, can I take you to dinner? We ended up. We had a Vulcan mind meld. He said, teach me how to do those stories that you do. And then we decided to do the book. And it took us three years to figure out seven discernments. But it changed our lives. There's no question about both of us are, you know, monster thankful for everything that's happened. I mean, there's no way I can be thankful enough. We've won the book of the Year, Guinness Book of Records.

Right.

You know, 59. I've been 59 times more than Jack because I've written more books than Jack. Jack did some Other stuff.

Well, it sounds like that attitude lesson is the power of synergizing mentorship or masterminding at age 40.

By the way, I think I said that wrong. I've been number one New York College, 51. No, 59 times. Yeah, sorry. I get too many numbers in my head.

It's all good. I tell you what, I'd take four. So I think you're doing just fine. All right.

But you can't get it now because bookstores are closed by and large. They're not selling books because they're not paying their bills because they're trying to pay the mortgage at the damn malls, which is. This is the problem of where we're at today.

It's going to be an interesting. It's going to be an interesting peeling back of the onion to get people that own strip malls and commercial properties that are not collecting rent and the banks are holding the note. It's going to be a very, very interesting time. Let's go to 50. Let's go to 50. When you were 50, did you have a 50th birthday party? Where were you and what was going on?

I did. I never miss having a good birthday party. And by then I was paying for it. And I brought out the Shirells. And the Shirells were wonderful. And they brought as a birthday gift because no one would invite me to a Hollywood party even though I lived in Newport Beach, California. So I said, I'll have 500 people. And they brought out the Temptations as a gift.

Oh, my gosh, that is so cool. What was your attitude lesson at 50?

I can dance all night with a great band and the Temptations. I mean, we just. We partied Hardy until 2 or 3 in the morning, just. And loved every minute of it.

That is so cool. So now we're getting closer. And we got two minutes to go. So 60, tell me what was going on 12 years ago in your life and what was the attitude like?

I have a 60th birthday and Bob Allen comes and he says, I'm going to write this book, One Minute Millionaire. Will you write the Ford? I said, I'd love to. The next day I'm flying to Vancouver to do a talk. And he sits next to me and he says, I want you to write the book with me. And he talked me into it, and I won't do it. If you're gonna read any book by me, it's gotta be unique, it's gotta be transformative, and it's gotta be inevitable that it's gonna be so Life changing that you're gonna talk to 10 people about it. And that's why my book sell. And that's why we did. This is the first of three that we did together. One minute Millionaire. It's two books in one. On the left hand side, it tells you why to be a millionaire. Right hand side is a story that is captivating. Just like if you read this. We start out with the world's longest prologue, which we're told we're going to get a Guinness Book of Record on Fable of Michaela, which my wife wrote. And it's beyond exciting.

That is cool. And then so now you're sitting at 72. At 70. Give our gappers your message of hope, your message that will help them bridge the gap from who they are to who they want to become. And the attitude lesson of today for you.

Okay? So I wrote a book with Art Linklater called How to make the Rest of yout Life the Best of your life. And he was 98 at the time. We said, never retire from something to nothing. Go to something better. Put on new tires, go in a new direction, pivot. Not that you shouldn't golf, not that you shouldn't fish, not that you would play pinochle or bridge or whatever it is you do. But the fact is, you got to contribute. Because the Bible says in the beginning, God created and 28 created us. You got two Cs. You're supposed to create, you're supposed to contribute. You're supposed to do that every day of your life, not go down and retire 65 or quit at 40 because you made a million. By the way, if you think you made a lot of money at a million, you need at least 10 million before you're allowed to retire, because you're not even in the ballpark. Because when you see at 1% interest, you're not making any money and don't expect our government to have any. So that is true. I'm a little tough on seniors. I want you all to come back to work. I want you to teach everyone to learn how to read. I want everyone teach. The millennials desperately need those of us that are senior. Teaching them free enterprise, teaching them how to read. In California, you graduate high school and you can't pay us basic literacy. And it just goes, oh, my God. You ask them how many stars are there in the American flag? Says, I don't know. If it stops waving, I'll count. No, no, no, no. You got to know that this is basic, basic stuff.

Amen. Amen. Well, hopefully you and I can partner on something in the future. Hopefully, we can bridge the gap for Mille to senior citizen. I have some thoughts on that. If it's okay, I may send you an email. Please.

I agree with you. I'm sure already.

Yes. Well, you are so beautiful. I'm so thankful. We're honored to have you. I think that you've opened our eyes. You've opened our hearts. You've helped us bridge the gap. And Mark Victor Hanson, thank you, thank you, thank you for being on our podcast.

Been my great pleasure. Thank you. All right.

You take care. This podcast is a part of the C Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.