0216: Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny with Speaker, Trainer, & Worldwide Best Selling Author Mark Victor Hansen

Hi everybody, this is Mark Victor Hanson. My website is markvictorhansen.com and you are listening to EA interview EA interviews episode.

216 inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority Effect interview. Have you ever thought about publishing a book? I know I have and I've done it and I'm very thankful for that. And my goal with doing it is helping a ton of people and I'd like to think that I have but I'm gotta be honest, this is a little surreal because I have none other than the co author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and his new book Ask Mark Victor Hanson on the show today and I know he sold millions of books. Last I saw that it was over 500 million books. I know he's helped a lot of people including myself. I remember reading the books when I was younger and still do. Excited about his new one. It's very good and we're going to be talking about it and his speaking and just everything he's done over the years. So I'm going to just frankly shut up and get him on here because this is very exciting. I know you want to hear from him. We're going to bring up right after we thank our sponsor Mark Victor Hanson. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's, that's freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mark Victor Hansen. Mark, how are you feeling today?

Better than ever. It's a delightful, beautiful day and I look out the window and see the cactuses in Scottsdale, Arizona and the sky is blue and it's a perfect temperature today it's about 75 or 80 outside.

Well, I will definitely take that because it was cloudy here in Detroit the other day. I'd like to say it's a nice day today, which it is. But I know you have better weather year round. Is that one of the reasons you decided to move there?

We love the desert. It's peaceful, it's calm, it's beautiful, it's quiet and the people are blissfully. I've never been to a place that everybody smiles and talks to you even with masks at a grocery store or Costco or wherever.

Sounds like a very friendly place. How long you been there?

Very small population, same size as Israel here in all of Arizona. It's the same size and geography and about 5 million people, although people are moving here in droves from snow country.

How long have you been there?

We've been buying real estate here for a long time and lived here over five years full time. My wife had lived here a lot of her life earlier than that.

Oh, excellent. Well, I want to ask you about your new book. I know you've done so many over the years, and I'm appreciative of that. And I know expert authority world is also. But there you go. Ask.

Get it on the screen. Yeah, yeah. The bridge from your dreams, your destiny. We think everyone's got a great destiny. And our destiny has become helping everyone find their destiny by we're teaching in this book that you got to ask yourself, ask others, and ask God. And that what we're asking people to do is get a copy at Amazon because most bookstores aren't open again yet. And then join askthebookclub.com and we want to help you become a master asker. We're getting hundreds of letters a day already that's only been out since April. And what's astounding to us is that people are going over it with their best friend. And when they do, they're discovering who they really are, what they're supposed to do, and most importantly, what their destiny is.

Why do you think so many people have such a hard time to do that?

Ask.

Well, you know, we're saying you got to ask yourself. But when you're a little kid, you ask everybody who, what, where, when, why, how. And obviously we got five kids and six grandkids and grandkids had a sleepover last night. And they ask grandpa, me and Mimi, my wife, everything. But most people push it down. Oh, just shut up. Come on, Mario, you know that. Or don't quit asking. You know, and then you go to school and they say, now sit there, shut up and listen. And I'm going to implode everything into you, which is not good education according to Socrates or me or anyone. And then you go to work and they say, no, no, we'll tell you how it is, or you go in the military. And they'll say, you do exactly what you're to obey. And so we get squished down. And right now we believe, as you know, my corporate symbol on One minute Millionaire is a butterfly. And we believe you cannot look at caterpillar and predict butterfly. And right now, 8 billion of us are in a cocoon and it's time for us to go over a book and we think Ask is the best transformative book ever written. Based on the results we're getting with people. We test it in advance and as long as you're in this cocoon, find out who you really are, who you want to buddy up with. Right. Like.

Shakespeare said, all the life's a stage and most of us can't tell who the walk ons are. So when you start to really ask a deep is this person to walk on or is this person significant to me? And then you start asking your God, God, what's your destiny for me? God, what's your destiny for me? God, what's your destiny for me? 400 times before you go to sleep at night, you'll wake up and be ready to write it down. Because your inner soul, your inner higher self knows what you're supposed to be doing. Being in heaven.

I love, I love that you're saying that because, you know, God gave me the vision for the show after my father passed a few years ago. And it, it never made sense to me prior, but once I started it and I just went for it, everything started clicking and it was like everything I've been doing my whole life was just prepping me for that because I incorporate so much of, you know, five, six different things, you know, because traditionally podcasts are audio only. Well, my background's in video production. I did modeling and acting, and I've incorporated all the stuff I've learned along with band, choir and drama in that. And it was just like, like you're saying, I knew I needed what I needed to do. You just. So you're saying, just get out of your own way.

Get out of your own way and then ask the questions in depth. And usually those questions don't get asked until, like what you had your father transitioned out of life, out of physical form. Spirit lives forever, I believe, and I think you do. And so what happens is that's what Crystal and I discovered. We've traveled to 80 countries, talked to almost 7 million people around the world, and we met wonderful people, good people, professional people, educated people, nice people. But the difference between somebody who succeeds a little and somebody who's vastly successful is one thing and one only. And that is they ask and they fulfill their destiny. Now, each of us has got a destiny, I believe, and we can discuss that if you want. But most people never ask themselves, well, I'm an engineer, Mario. Don't you know it? I'm a lawyer, Mario, or I'm a medical doctor and they box themselves rather than say, hey, wait a second, I'm a student of the universe. What is it? You know, if you read the Bible in the beginning, the chapter on Genesis in the beginning, God created And then number 28 created you and I in the image and likeness. Therefore, my position is you're here to do two things. One is create and the other is contributed. And then the question is, you know, the big guy said, the greatest amongst you is servant of all. So how much are you contributing? And people say, mark, why don't you retire? You're A, old and B, you got plenty of money and you've sold a half billion books. No, no, no, My goal is always a billion books because that's the message I got, because nobody can do that. And I've been told hundreds of times I can't do it. And I go, thank you very much, you're wrong. And I'm going to live the 127th options for renewal. So I got plenty of time. And, you know, if you really doing high quality of service and high quality of life, why not have high quantity?

I love that. I thank you for saying that because so many people think, well, I want to have a big whatever, business life, success, whatever. But they think they have to do it at a lukewarm, you know, it's that whole quantity over quality thing. And I've also said, why can't you do both? Why would you want a lot of something that's not great?

First of all, I agree you ought to be fulfilled and fully functioning at all levels of your life. Like, well, my grandkids are here who are really precocious, if you'll forgive me for saying so. And they ask all the questions and we're willing to do explore anything with them. And it's just, it's wonderful. But that's really where we're supposed to be. And all the people that are retired in Detroit that they made a lot of money with GM or Ford or whoever or making mirrors. I don't care what they did. I've been Detroit and talked about hundreds of times over my lifetime of 44 years. And it's a great city that you live in, but the point is that you're not supposed to stop. There's nowhere that's, oh, you're 45 or you have a million, or you have 10 million, go though, and retire. Golf's wonderful, fishing is wonderful, bridge is wonderful. All those things are wonderful. But they're not a destiny, they're an escape. And the point is, the only way you feel good about yourself is if you're working, if you're stretching, if you're challenging, if you're coordinated and are going forward and by asking bigger, stronger questions. And my line in the book is the size of your question determines the size of your result. Now, if I just wanted to touch one person, I've done that a lot of times. But we've already touched. I've had a billion readers, I'm pretty sure, even though half a billion books, because there's a pass along value in India 12 and China minimum five. And you know, so the point is that books aren't allowed in China by and large. And yet I've sold 374 million books in China and got some problems with the government. But the people I love totally, right? And so what happens is that you and I are in this wonderful position that for the first time, Peter, saying, well, why are you selling books and your book sales are off the Richter scale? Well, we're doing podcasts, but the podcasts are literally now around the world. Like we did two in America one day, one in Canada, one in Israel, and the last one late in the afternoon was 10 million people in Vietnam. And if you told me Vietnam sales would go off the Richter scale, I'd say, no, no, no, no. I need to do the 20 best bookstores in America. I know this business. No, I don't know the business because the business change. And for all of us, we've had in the last eight months more change in eight months than we've had in 80 years.

So you're basically saying you can do a world tour now without ever leaving home.

Correct? If you're willing to work. Remember I teach that you got to do mass and effort and massive right thinking to get the massive right result.

Well, I want to go a little bit more into detail. I definitely want to touch on the destiny. But I want to talk about your seven steps that I was reading through. Why don't you take us through that so expert authority world can experience them.

So what happens is in the book we say there's seven roadblocks and at any given time, most of us are feeling two or three of them. First one is lack of self worth, which I'll talk about if you want. Second is fear. And right now a lot of people are being crushed by fear, which is unfortunate. Next would be excusology. Next would be pattern paralysis, where that's the way we've always done it here at so and so Company or so and so.

I've done it my whole life.

Yeah. And by the way, Einstein, who is my teacher's teacher, I had booked Mr. Fuller in grad school for seven years as a research assistant to Dr. Fuller. But Albert said, you know, definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a new result. So the point is we're in this transformative time where if you do it from a spiritual point of view, I'm not doing. There's nothing good about COVID But the fact of the matter is, when we're being shut down like this, it is a time for a breakthrough. If you don't allow yourself to break down. That's why these podcasts are so important, to cheer people on, to encourage people, to excite people, to inspire them at the depth of their soul and being and find their bigger self rather than their smaller self. Smaller self. You drink too much, eat too much, watch too much TV or whatever bigger self is. How productive can I be during this? And can I be productive in a transformative way for me and the marketplace? I define an entrepreneur as somebody who finds a problem, fixes it, scales it, and makes a vast profit.

So you were talking about the roadblocks that we go through. Do you feel that there's any variations of those or that there's other ones or it's always the same ones and people just get stuck in different ways?

Wow, that's a great question, Mario. Let me just do one of the examples. We have the example of a guy just a little north of you in Toronto, Bob Proctor, who's been my friend for 40 years and now is 87 and in great shape and still contributing, has millions and millions of listening to him every day. But Bob was nowhere from and had his parents pushed down on him. And he went in the Navy and Canada and he got pushed around. They said, don't you listen, Bob? And he finally came out of the Navy, and he was a fireman, and exhausted as a fireman, looking around, seeing all the guys in the fire department, nothing but drunks. So he said, Look, I make 4,000 a year. I owe 6,000. This isn't good. I'm going to go to the richest guy I know and ask, what did you do? And the guy said, read this book, think and Grow Rich, which is sort of a predecessor to my book, One Minute Millionaire, Same kind of zone, and I love it. And he said he read it and decided he was going to be healthy and rich. Starts window washing, exhaust himself laying on a street in Toronto surrounded by first responders and policemen, said, you want to Go to the hospital. He said, no, I'm just exhausted. Goes home, rests up, and says, if I can't wash every window, I won't wash any windows. And remember I said, a profitable business that you scale. He ends up doing so well, he makes a million a month. He has a window washing in Toronto and Montreal and Atlanta, Georgia, and in London. So. But what he did during that time is he read the book again and again and said he changed out of the wrong pattern and got into the right pattern. Because you're either evolving going up or you're devolving going down. And most people in a crisis are saying, oh, it's dark and scary in here. Well, I'm sure the caterpillar saying, it's dark and scary. And I used to scroll around and see everything. And now I don't know what's going to happen. But pretty soon you break out of the cocoon and you can go forward if you have a destination that you figured out and you put in writing.

Let's talk about that destination, because it sounds like that's part of the destiny.

Perfect. Because when I went bankrupt 1974, for six months, I'm sleeping in a sleeping bag in front of another guy's room because things were really bad for me. And I finally got what I wanted to do. I wanted to talk to people that care about things that matter, that would make a life transformative difference. So I go to my four roommates in Hicksville, Long Island, New York, and I say, any of you guys know somebody that's young, not a lawyer, not a doctor, not a famous person, not a celebrity that's speaking and making money? And yeah, yeah, this kid is older than you a little bit, but he's out in Haupaud, Long Island, New York. I jumped beat up Volkswagen to bankruptcy courts and not get taken from me. Get out there, listen to the guy wow the audience for three hours. Chip Collins. I go up to him at the end, I shake his hand. I say, I'm Mark Victor Hansen. Teach me how to do this business, please. I'll buy your lunch. He said, look, kid, I own the five boroughs. I want real estate. Used to have real estate. I'll teach you how to do it in a life insurance business. So I said, that'd be great. So I did the life insurance business. Did a thousand talks a year. Somehow I keep going off screen here. A thousand talks a year for the first three years. And it was amazing that it worked. And, you know, I built a business. Then they said, you had that In a book. And it was amazing that I did a little book of stories which. Let's see if I can go up on my screen here. This one that's got red at the bottom.

I've never done it this way before. There it is. Stand up, speak out and win. Come on. Stay computer.

Oh, well, at least we're making it visually discerning or interesting to your.

I'll make sure there's a link to that in your show notes page.

Yeah, yeah. Stand up, Speak on winning. How I sold 200,000 copies in the first year and I thought I'd died in Van Amen. I tripled my income. 20,000 copies at $10 each. I said, this isn't an international bestseller. Your people like this. It's not a national bestseller. It's not New York Times bestseller, but it is my best. And I want to sign it to you and your spouse and your kids and your dog, if you have one. And, you know, the first day I had it, I sold 37 copies, made $370 and thought, wow, I'm gone. And then the next year, I sold 20,000 copies and just. It was heavenly because I want everyone to write a book. I even wrote a book called you have a book in you. So it just came out. So it's a. You know, because everyone's going to be better off. They write a book. I have never had this screen jump around on me before. I apologize to everyone watching that. You think I lost my mind and marbles here?

No, you're okay. I'm. You're doing great. It just moves sometimes. It happens.

Okay, well, thank you for being courteous. At least I'm half screen. Okay.

There you go, right there.

I'll stay. Okay, next question. Sir, thank you for being patient.

Oh, my. My pleasure.

It.

You know, I say that again.

Yeah, they're gonna. The people watching go, you may know how to write, but he's dizzy. He can't stay still.

I mean, I. When you first jumped on camera, I was looking at the bookshelf, and there's a lot of people who are like, I want to film in front of my bookshelf. And I'm like, those are all his.

Yeah, they are. I've written three. It says in the literature you got three or nine. But we just finished three more books. What. If you don't mind my bragging, go for it. Thirty years ago, I did audio tapes because audio tapes were what were there. And we did tapes, like 38 sets with night Yuck on it and great titles. That I came up with because I really believe you ought to write a book, but spend more time in the title, in the book almost, and then write a great book and then you're only 10% done. 90% is going to be the marketing of the book. So. Which we can talk to if you want. But I had titles like Visualizing Is Realizing Dreams Don't Have Deadlines and How to Think Bigger Than Ever Thought you could Think. And I thought, well, that was great. And we made a lot of money with them. And I'm very thankful for all the checks I got from Nightingale Cone. But all of a sudden another publisher comes to me, G and B Media, and they said, hey, we want to take all those book. All those tapes and use rewrite them. Because you took Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale, which was listed to about 100 million, and you rewrote it and brought it up to date, and you got 100 million people listen. So we want to take those. We want to go the other way this time. We'll transcribe everything. You rewrite it, and we'll bring it out as a book. And I thought, holy cow, that's exciting. And I read stuff that I found, stuff I'd written and obviously narrated personally 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago. And they're doing all those books and they're publishing them like that, and they're selling like crazy because book sales are up because people are in a cocoon and they're buying books and. And I can't talk for you, but I'd love your answer to this. I am. I follow an author. Like, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. If I find somebody I love, I get addicted to them. And I read everything they got, whether it's, you name anybody. And in nonfiction, it would be, you know, somebody like Scott Peck, who we interviewed, is one of the 101 interviews in the fiction. It'd be like Clive Kussler or Clavell or anyone. I mean, I can go through all of them, you know, because I'm a book addict. Because my parents were illiterate Danish people didn't have any books. And I got hooked on books and got 50,000 in my library, which I've at least touched if I haven't read. And like Jim Rowan told me, he said, don't you just feel smarter walking into your library? And I said, yeah.

I think it's so great because, I mean, this is just kind of astonishing as a published author. And, you know, I have five of my own books and I know what it takes to go in there, and people ask me all the time. Even just yesterday, I had multiple people saying, you know, I want to go through your program, this and that. And it's one of the reasons I made the free course, because I just can't help everyone the way I do at the highest level. But how did you decide I want to do so many books? Did you have the approach of, I have this knowledge and wisdom I want to give to people and share with them, or do you set a yearly goal of I want to publish 10 to 12 books a year?

Or is it a little of both?

We did. Number one is what happened is that you start having compounding pieces of information nobody else has got. Like, right now.

I'm friends with some superstar athletes, the best basketball players, best baseball players, and what happens is they are done at age 32 or 35 at the most, right? Skaters, gymnasts, all that. The beautiful thing about the business of being an intellectual is that you get deeper, wiser, brighter, writer, and you compound the people that you're with and you have insights, information, illumination that nobody else has gotten. You say, wow, if I can write this, and you got it, a lot of things happen. First of all.

One of my favorite presidents, the smartest maybe, was Thomas Jefferson. And he said, if you take an idea from me, it doesn't take anything from me. Makes the world brighter. And it's like if my candles lit yours in and you light your own on mine. It doesn't take anything from mine, but it makes the world brighter. Same thing here is that what I want to do is get the 4 billion people, that 8 billion of us, alive on a planet half of us can't read. Well, we're going to change that with podcasts, I believe, because for the first time, we have smartphones. And for $15, everyone in Africa and southern India and China have a smartphone. So maybe we. China's closing down our media.

Which is tragic. I have lots of problems with the communist government. I believe in free enterprise. I despise socialism and fascism and totalitarianism and despotism anyhow, more than you want to know right this second. Anyhow, the point is probably, is it. Is it by my writing, my books literally have gone around the world and they keep getting passed along. And now when people are seeing me on podcast, because whatever number I give you is sort of made up. But based on our calculation, we've talked to somewhere 40 or 50 million people. Before Christmas, we'll talk to 100 million. And I want to sell a million copies of ASS because exposure is the deal. It's a quantity of service plus the quality of delivery with a positive mental attitude that gets you on limited readership.

I love everything you're saying. Say whatever you want. It wasn't too much. I probably wouldn't have directly asked it, but I'm capitalist, believe in free enterprise. Also, I think it's a great thing. And the fact that even when I did my first book, Video Marketing for business Owners, I remember what it was like having $5 and taking three of that to buy a book. No, $2 to buy the book and $3 to buy the yellow highlighters. And when I did my first one, I was designing a course and I was like, you know, what if someone, what if they came where I was? And I go, you know what? I don't want any. I don't want the money to be an issue. But I do believe you should invest in yourself. So I go, if they invest the 20 bucks for the book, I'll give them 20 bucks off the course. So you can start here and go to the next phase. And go to the next phase and go to the next phase. So that way, you know, I always wanted it to just be the desire. And that's what's so great about it. You can literally have nothing and go, I want to make a difference and make that difference and then help people. And I love what you, I've always loved what you've done and I'm so excited to hear you're still doing it. And when I was reading through Ask, I was like, this is great because I've never heard. I've, I can honestly say I've never heard it present, heard it, or presented in a book that way. I've heard people say in a leadership seminar where they go, you should ask for this. And it's like a two, three minute little thought. But the fact that you did a whole book on it, I was like, this is great. And those roadblocks are what stop us, including myself. And you do have to break through them.

I didn't mean to walk over you there. First of all, thank you. First of all, the world is now video centric. So I'm glad that you did something. I didn't know you did that. So I'll go back and look at that. But when we were with the world's greatest movie maker, Peter Guber, he said, from now on, history is going to be video centric. So everything's got to go to video, right? And that's obviously true with Facebook and Instagram and Humma Humma, all the social media, all of which we're getting better at. And we have turned part of our house into a film studio. The other thing about.

What you're saying with the five or ten dollars that you had and bought a highlighter. That's why my hero, Andrew Carnegie, and if you haven't been to his house in New York, Andrew Carnegie's house at 95th and 5th Avenue, it's owned now by the Smithsonian Institute. Cost five bucks to get in. But here's a guy with a third grade education that became the richest guy of his time. But what he's got is marble all around the wall. And he says, no man or woman gets rich without enriching all others. I thought, wow, that's really cool. See, because most people say you got those idiots running for political office now that say we're going to steal all the money from the rich, then everybody will be poor, you dumbass Squared. Number two is it said.

Authors are the wealth of the nation. Now, the only word I'd edit for Andy was authors of the wealth of the world. Now remember, he knew Europe because he was from Scotland and he knew America because he did really well in Pittsburgh and he got to New York. So the point is, we're in no disagreement. I'm just an editor, so I don't mind improving it from nation to world. And I'm sure Andy, Andrew Carnegie would have loved it. If you haven't seen the movie on him and Netflix, you got to watch that and you got to watch the Men who Built America because love that.

Absolutely love that.

Yeah.

And you know, capitalism is the only system that works. Free enterprise has got to be kept free by those of us. Everyone's got to be productive. No one can be lazy. All the millennials think there's some free lunch or free school or free something. There's no freedom except in free enterprise where you have the freedom to choose what you enterprise. And if we don't defend that, then you get to be a gulag. In China, you get to be a slave and have they tie you up every night and in day you make Nike shoes, which is, I won't buy Nike because I use slavery labor and it's not okay with me. It's anti human. I know, I know, my little soapbox. So if you. That's too much. Tough.

It's not too much. If there's one show that's not going to stop you, it's me.

Oh, good. So the Point is, everybody's got to write their book because you define yourself when you're confined to the page. And I just wrote a whole thing. You can get at my website if you go to markvictorhandson.com about from blank page to bestseller, because everyone has got more in them than they know. And once you start refining yourself and defining yourself by being a little bit confined, which we're all forced into this governmental lockdown, you know, you start going, wow, I knew a lot more than I. And then. Then you go back and read it, you say, wow, that some of that profound. I mean, I'm sure you found that when you wrote your books, right?

What I enjoyed about writing the books was everyone goes, oh, I got so much knowledge. I got so much information. I can talk about so many things. And it's like, good. Just pick one. And as much as I'm very much a creative, I mean.

I'm also. I love the logical side of going, here's the seven steps. Here's the, you know, seven roadblocks. Here's the 12 steps to this you can define is, you know, you get to make that decision. Is the information I'm distilling to you important enough that I think you should know it? Everyone's got all kinds of stories and stuff to tell, but does it add value or not? And when it says yes, it makes it in the book. And the reader, I love that the reader gets the best of the best. It's like you can share all this other stuff through other mediums, but the book, it's like, it's the best of the best. You don't need to question it.

It's eternal. Let me go backwards to what you said, two questions and to what you just said. Everybody thinks they ought to write one book at a time. I disagree with that only because I met. We did a Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul, and I got to be with Steve Allen, the guy who created the Tonight show and had 7,000 songs and 40 major books and totally dyslexic. He read backwards and upside down. So he said, writer's block only happens if you get stuck on one book. So he says, I never write one book at a time. I write 28 books and I dictate them. Because if I get stuck on one dictation, I can go to another, and I'm not stuck there, and then I can go back, and all of sudden my mind is open again. And I thought, so I'm all for us starting something and finishing something, because A lot of. I'd say somewhere around 90% of people I've met my seminars and I've had like 7 million people in front of me. They come up and say, well, I started the book. I said, you finish it? No, look, I met you seven years ago. You did the book. You haven't finished it. You got to start. Finish. But right. It may be if he did some other book, it would keep his juices or her juices running. Does that make sense?

It absolutely does. And I know when I've written mine, people are like, well, I'm stuck on chapter two. I go, well, jump to five, seven, or one, whatever else. Like, just skip around one of the things I teach my author clients in the eight week program. And I made it eight weeks because, like you're saying, you need to get it done. Well, I got 10 books inside me. Great. Finish one.

Yeah, and you can work on the other sometimes. I mean, when Jack and I started, we sat in my jacuzzi because we were both doing pretty well and we wrote 120, 134 titles that we were going to write. Now we haven't done it, but. And answer your question again three questions ago. And I know I'm expounding on old question, but is it. When we went to New York to sell it and we got 144, people say, hit the road, Jack. And I said, it's okay if you don't like him, but I'm a nice guy. Jack's great. Anyhow, we went to Berkeley and they took a book that I wrote, which is behind me somewhere, called Dare to Win and Inject did a lick at it, but we did 14 books in that series because if you're going to do a book, why not do sequels and prequels? I learned from reading our dear friend.

George Lucas. The guy who did Star wars said, don't do anything you can't prequel and sequel. So I said, jack, that's one of our 38 principles of writing that our discernments. So we wrote Dare to Ask. Sorry. We started with Dare to Win, then all the way to Dare to Know God. And one of them was Dare to Ask. And when we were number one and two in New York Times with Chicken Soup, number one and a second helping at Chicken Soup. And then we came up with Teenage soul. We sold 19 million. It was off the Richter scale. One year. Is it? They came to us. Well, you guys will finish the second book called Aladdin, which Aladdin Factor, which we sold 3.6 million of. And Jack Said, they're going to sue us. I said, they're going to sue us. No, no, us, Jack, not Mark. They're suing Mark and Jack. So we got to finish this and they demand it in a month or they're suing us. So he said, well, what are you going to do? I said, well, I'm going to get it done, but. And so I interviewed people and that was sort of the predecessor to this. Right. Because it was a great book and now this is a greater book. Because the principle here of why you want to keep writing and why I love writing as a profession and an avocation vocation is that you get better as you get older and the creator is greater than his or her creation. In other words, if you go to Florenza, Italy, and I'm pretty sure you're Italian, is it true?

A little bit, yeah.

So you've been to Florence. They say, michelangelo, how you make it? David? You say, I chippy out everything. That's not David. That's what good writing is. What you said, the guy gets stuck at chapter five and go write seven and 12 because you're not stuck on those right now. You're chipping out what you can't figure out at the moment. That's a good line, right?

Yeah. And the beauty of it is your brain goes to work for you. I mean, people try to do so much on their own and it's like sometimes. Let me rephrase that. All the time. The best thing you can do is just relax and let your brain go to work. Let your subconscious go to work. It's like you have the answers, but you're just so wound up. It's like all these external stimulus, it's like, just relax. I experienced it last night. I was looking for something, couldn't think of it. I go, it'll come to me. Five minutes later, bam. I'm like, thanks God. Thanks brain.

Yeah, exactly. And by the way, I never thought of it. We're saying, ask yourself, ask others, ask God. And we're saying, hey, look, when Jack and I wanted the best title in our respective homes, he was in Santa Barbara three time. I was in Newport Beach. And we did 400 times. Megabest selling title. Mega best selling title. Mega best selling title. Mega best selling title. And he calls me at 2:58 in the morning, says, chicken soup. I said, for the soul. And both of us got goosebumps. Now, we didn't know we get all that rejection, but we knew we had the right title because we thought the soul of America was in trouble. And what we didn't understand was the soul of the world's in trouble. It's sort of like what. If you ever go to the White House, they say the world's always on fire when you're in this office. And that's pretty much true. If you haven't been there, you want to put that in your bucket list. And I've been there a bunch. So the point is that everyone needs to right themselves and discover themselves and the same thing. So that's where I was going. So the setup was. Is go back to chapter five. We're stuck, right? I know exactly what to say. God, tell me exactly what to say in chapter five. God, tell me exactly what to say in chapter five. If God's not the right word, spirit, or infinite intelligence, tell me exactly what to say. And what you just said, it'll come forth. Right? Because your inner knower knows, or you wouldn't have the deal to write the book or desire to write the book.

Yeah, And I'm really so excited that you're sharing this because there's a lot of people who feel like they have something to say, but they're like, I don't know if I could do a whole book on it. What would you say to that.

Multiplicity of. Of answers? Number one is the answer is, yes, they do. And all you gotta begun is half done, as the old cliche. So start and decide you're going to complete it. Number two is if you don't have somebody interview you about all the holes in your book. Because there's nobody that can fill a whole book perfectly. I mean, without having some editor. I mean, and I've had a lot of editors do. Like at Random House, when we wrote One Minute Millionaire, she'd say on page 387. That really belongs on page 27, on column three or four, paragraph three. And I went, how do you. She could hold my books better than I could hold them. And I was writing it, you know, with Bob Allen, and I thought, wow, that is really impressive. There's impressive minds out there. And the other thing is, if you really can't write, what I say is interview, which, you know, is my second chapter in the book. You have a book in you because when Jack and I finished Chicken Soup with this whole. Back in the old days, remember this 1990. 1990 didn't come until 93, because the publisher used to take two years to do it, which is tragic to the book business. And you sort of forget what you wrote because they're so slow today, they're faster today. Now it happens in two or three months, but the point is, they come out once you're finished.

What happens is that I didn't have enough money. I was down money. So I went. I was working in four marketplaces, one of which is chiropractic. And I interviewed all the chiropractors. They were in trouble because they weren't getting paid. The government stopped all insurance payments. So they said, hey, we're all going bankrupt.

And so I said, well, look, I'll just interview the guys and ladies that make over a million a year and have booming practices like pediatric chiropractic or whatever. And I interviewed this guy In Denver named Dr. Dennis Nikita. He said, all I do is I get my patients with a rubber band. I take a rubber band, I put it around my finger. And Mario, if I put this around my finger and.

It is, what is this? I got something popping up on my screen. I'm going to just say uninstall. I don't know what to do to get rid of whatever that is. I don't know if it's showing up on your screen or not. Anyhow, if you put a rubber band around your index finger, what color does it turn?

Like a purplish blood red.

Yeah. And then if it's long enough, it falls off. Say, well, can a medical doctor get rid of that? No, can a subluxation is what it's called. Can a pt, a physical therapist do it? Can a massage therapist? No, only a chiropractor can. So he built a million dollar practice. So I interviewed all those guys and I made money. And so what I'm saying, to fill the book, if you don't, if you have a topical area, go interview the people that know that answer and fill the other half of your book or other three quarters, a quarter, or 10%. Does that make sense?

Oh, it absolutely does. And you know what I'm hearing is the other good byproduct of it is you're making great relationships with those people, giving them publicity, and it's a win, win for all.

Well, we interviewed 26 superstars in this book, and I got to tell you, I love every one of them. Like everyone says, well, there are cities that are failing. That's correct. So I'm not going to enter. I'm a guy that's positive, optimistic. So we interviewed Mayor Rex Paris, who's the highest paid litigator in the world because he runs a little city called Lancaster, California. So all of California isn't on fire. His city is not on fire. His city has natural energy. Every house has got to have solar energy. There's lights in every street. He ended all the crime because he was willing to go up to the house and say to the, to the thug and say, here's your three choices. Either I arrest you on the spot, you go into training and we get you to be a real productive citizen, or you leave here and never come back because we got your picture and you're done for. I'm putting you in jail for the rest of your life. And he did it with, you know, strong policemen with him. He has no crime in his city. So can a city go without crime? Can a city have 100% peel employed? Going to be more jobs there than ever. And he brought in making electric batteries for electric buses. I mean, I've gone through the factory with Rex and he's just done all these things, right, because he keeps asking questions that does stuff. And then he fights the biggest companies in the world which have to go on name but you know, make wins hundred million dollar lawsuits and he's invincible because he has 57 lawyers ask him every possible question. So when he goes in court, there's no new questions. Is that cool?

That's very cool. And it's one of the things in marketing that, you know, when companies hire me to help them with the messaging, I treat it like a court case and I go, what are the objections you're getting? Because in sales and marketing it only comes down to if, I mean, if they're reaching out to you, they're interested, right? You just have to answer the questions they have and give them the confidence that you're the right decision to go with. And when you can figure out what the hot buttons are and basically beat them to it and use that in your marketing, there's no, oh, I'm getting objections. And you know, they need to think about it. And.

When you know it better than they do exactly what you're saying, there's nothing left. It's like it's either a yes or a no. I do this on every episode. It's the wheel of whatever.

Perfect.

And I got a great question I thought of when we started this.

What would you think the world would look like if everyone was capitalistic and went out on faith, started their own business, asked the right questions and became entrepreneurs and didn't depend on government it so much?

Everyone would fulfill their destiny, be happy, and we would go to utopia rather than dystopia.

How's that do you think it's possible in the next 20 years?

I think it's inevitable. I wrote another book called how to Be up and Down Times, which you get free if you go to markvictorhandson.com and what I say is between 2020 and 2030 we're going to have we're going to do not 50 billion in America, we're going to do 50 trillion, pay off all the debts with these seven companies that are life transformative.

Well, I love that because I've been saying for a couple of years and I'm excited now we get to experience our roaring twenties because I don't know too many people that were around for the 1920s, but I'm definitely going to tear it up for the 2020s and I know you will too.

All right, Mario and all the people listening, thank you. Looking forward to meeting all of you when we get to open up and go back to seminars again.

Absolutely. Where would you like people to learn more?

Just go to markviktorhansen.com and take a look at it or any of my social media. It's all under Mark Victor Hansen. So thank you everybody, but this has been delightful. I hope we get to do it again sometime and I hope I've been of service and value to all the people watching.

My pleasure. Thanks again, Mark. All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode for today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24, 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book. Eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started. Now once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.

Foreign.

You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours, and it's true. And that's why you should visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what? Don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable.

John Cody I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I.

Needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past, it didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation for than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now and I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com.