EP 600: Ask!: The Most Profound Tool That Can Take You From Your Dreams To Your Destiny With Mark Victor Hansen And Crystal Dwyer Hansen

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host CEO of We Close Notes Scott Carson.

Hey Not Nation. Welcome to episode 600 of the Note Closure Shows. Thank you so much for listening and sharing. Would really appreciate if you went over and left a five star review and subscribed to the podcast. If you're not subscribed already. But we're so excited about this special episode that we had to have two amazing guests join us here for episode 600. And I'm honored to to have a very special person who has helped me out over the last couple years. He doesn't know it, his wife doesn't know it, but I've read their works and followed them for a while and I'm honored to have Hanson. No, not to be Hanson on here, but I'm talking about Mark Victor Hanson and Crystal Dwyer Hanson. You may recognize Mark from the author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul and A Whole Variety of Things. Crystal is a amazing life coach, entrepreneur as well and so we are so honored. Couldn't think of a better person to have on episode 600 they're talking about their book the Bridge from youm Dreams to youo Destiny. So we get a chance. Go out and buy it, purchase it and let me know that you picked it up. But I think you're gonna really love the insight. And I've got a special bonus. I want you to stick around until the very end of the episode to make sure you take advantage of that. So thank you for being a part of 600 episodes of note Closure Show. And we'll get to the episode. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Nook Closer Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with you today. This is episode number 600 of the podcast and I am totally joy, like a kid in a candy store at Christmas to have two very special guests that helped influence me over the last 15 years. I guarantee millions and millions of you guys that are out there not only here in the United States, but over the 130 countries that the Nook shows listen to. I am so honored to have this couple here to share some amazing things with you guys today. You definitely want to grab a pen and paper to take some notes. Pull over if you're Listening while driving. Get off the treadmill in the backyard or whatever because you're going to get some really great stuff today. And first guest, she is a celebrity coach. She's a certified life coach. She's a business strategist and successful entrepreneur, speaker and author in US And China. Has helped thousands and thousands, if not millions of people with their trainings and articles. You might know him a little bit. He's probably best known as a co author Chicken Soup for the Soul, the brand and everything behind that. I first read Chicken Soup for the Soul but also One Minute Millionaire series as well. Probably the most successful author and book guy out there. We're honored to have Mark and Crystal Hanson join us here today on the Nook Show. So honored to have you guys both today. How are y' all doing today?

Doing great, Scott, and thank you for that warm welcome. We're so happy to be here with you.

You know, enthusiasm is a Greek word. It means spirit within show. Without you just exude. And the new word I just learned is exultant. And exultant means you're over the moon and you are over the moon and we love it.

Amen to that. And that's the thing is life is too short to be in a bad mood. No matter what side of the bed you wake up or what's going on. I'm a big believer that hey, let Gripe complain for 30 seconds and move on because there's so many different things and there's a bigger path than what we have in mind for ourself. But I am so excited about your new book that's coming out. I just got this delivered to me a couple of days later than expected. It's the book called Ask the Bridge from youm Dreams to youo Destiny. And I have to tell you, an amazing book. For those out there that are looking for something that are struggling right now with everything going crazy in the world, we need a little bit of excitement and a positive emotion reaction to things out there to help you guys for going through some things. So first of all, you guys do such an amazing job. Crystal, what would you say is the biggest inspiration for ask and going into it?

Well, you know what it was Scott is we are so fortunate to meet so many amazing people really across the planet. And what we found is most people are over endowed with talent, success, likeability, all of these gifts. But what we found was those who are able to take those gifts and turn them into great success and those who maybe aren't finding the success they want the Biggest difference, because we really wanted to get to what is the heart of that? What is the one thing that makes the biggest difference and that is your ability to ask. And we found there are three channels. And each of these channels is equally important to understand in the asking journey. It's ask yourself, ask others, and ask God.

I was just going to get to those. Those are three huge channels with it. It probably is a varying degree of which one is important, depending on what you're going through in life at any given moment. Can we agree to that, Mark?

Yeah. You know, when I was bankrupt and upside down and wished I knew a guy like you in 1974, I'd been in graduate school, the smartest guy on the planet, Bucky Fuller, who's Einstein's best student. Geodesic domes. I was trying to be Bucky. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I went bankrupt so fast I had to check a book in the library. How to go bankrupt by yourself. And I'm hustled on the bankruptcy courts. The guy comes up and said, Buddy, for $300, I'll take you bankrupt. I'll be your lawyer. I said, buddy, if I had $300, I wouldn't be going bankrupt anyhow. After six months hiding out under the sheets and sleeping in a sleeping bag in front of another guy's room, I finally am smart enough to figure out what I really want to do by asking myself, asking others, and then asking God. And I go to my three roommates in Hicksville, Long Island, New York, and I say, I gotta ask you, does anybody here know anybody that's young? Not a lawyer, not a doctor, not a celebrity that's speaking? And the guy said, yeah, he's a few years older than you and here's my ticket, I can't go today. But he's talking to all the realtors about 500. I race my little beat up old Volkswagen out there. I get wowed by this guy for three hours, chip columns, at the end of which I go up sheepishly a little bit, put out my hand and say, chip, can I ask you to lunch? He said, sure. And then can I ask you a plethora of questions? And he said, well, first of all, I love a free lunch, so yeah. And I said, I want to do what you're doing. He said, chance you make is one in a thousand. You're not going to make it. But I'll tell you what to do. If you stay out of real estate, because that's my market and it's five boroughs of New York, you go into life insurance. I'll tell you what to do. I'll never see you again. I'm going on vacation for two weeks. He came back. Just to make a long story short, only Tony Robbins and I, as far as I know, did a thousand talks a year. The first three years, because we're saying you got to ask, but then you got to take massive action. So the big A and ask is take the action to get the result. And I was talking at 6 in the morning, 10, 2 in the afternoon, 8. And in between, I was selling. I had nothing else to do. I was in heaven. And then people said, well, do you have that story in a book? So my first book wasn't asked, of course. It was stand up, speak out, win. And the first year, I sold Scott 20,000 copies from the platform at $10 each. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Bought me a brand new Cordova car with Corinthian leather. I had arrived and, you know, in 1974, the market was at 28% interest. It was in the doldrums. It was dead. It wasn't going to go anywhere. And everyone said the world was coming to an end. And right now, ladies and gentlemen, it's not coming to an end. But you got to ask yourself, just like I did, what is it you can do and fix? What is it you can change? What is it you can do to reboot yourself, to reinvigorate yourself, to retransform yourself into something that's going to be vastly sustainable and vastly profitable?

That's exactly a great question, and I want to ask this for Crystal. Coming from the life coach, do you find people have a tendency a little bit more negative, Nancy, or don't like the four letter word called work? Because that's the one thing that Mark outlined. He worked. And you have to put the work in. You got to put the time. And speaking for six times a day, a lot of people, I think have gotten very lazy and don't want to put in the time and realize it's anything worthwhile. It takes work, Right?

Right. And it takes inner work and it takes outer works that. And so I say people look at the world around them, you know, what's going on out there, and they take all of their cues from that. Okay. And that's exactly the opposite of what you should be doing, because your life experience is really created from the inside out. Okay? So the first thing you need to do is have a meeting with yourself and ask yourself, do I really like the way my life is going, what do I like? What do I not like? What is my vision for my future? What am I best at? What makes me feel purposeful? Because those two things need to come together. Those two questions are critically important. What am I best at and what do I like? If you're really good at something and you don't like it, well, that's not going to be a winning combination. So you need to ask both of those questions and where that comes together. What am I best at? And what do I feel inspired by or do I like doing? What do I feel purposeful about doing? I'm good at bookkeeping, but I don't like it, so I'm not ever gonna do it right. That's not a winning combination for me. But my bookkeeper, Jen, she's good at it and she loves it. She likes doing the puzzle of all of our books and everybody's books and figuring it out. So that's perfect for her. But that's where we all need to come to by asking ourselves those questions. And, and a lot of times people just let life keep coming at them. They don't do that self examination, that asking yourself that is the most powerful thing we can start with because. Well, first of all, studies show that when you ask yourself a question, a different part of your brain lights up. And it is the part of your brain that does critical thinking, ok, helping guide you. And then you ask those questions and question by question, answer by answer, you get an idea, you start to get a solution or an illumination comes to you. And pretty soon, if you keep asking and keep recording your asking journey, you find yourself moving along. And that's why we say it's the bridge. Asking is truly the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. Because if you keep asking, you will keep moving and your journey, it will take you there. It is the simplest but most profound, an amazing tool to take you there.

You outline that so well. So many. It's kind of like the many entrepreneurs struggle with the unfinished bridge syndrome of doing so many different things and never moving along that bridge to completion so that they go back and forth. And maybe the bridge to your dream starts out as a rope bridge, but then over years becomes the Golden Gate Bridge. Right?

Right.

But you said something very important, especially in the book, in Michaela's fable, talking about she's sitting there collecting rocks for the king every day, and so many people, I think, I love the analogy, feel like they are indentured servitudes where they have to show up to a job every Day they hate what they're doing. They're not passionate about it. Everybody, including the Foreman's grouchy because they're not doing something that they're called to do. They're not something that they're passionate about doing. Like you said, what would you say would be maybe some of the keys identifying some of the things, what are the emotions or the questions that they should be asking themselves first?

Oh, I thought you were asking Crystal. So because she wrote Mikayla, she did it brilliantly, beautifully, we think a parable is such a metaphor. And it's obviously what Christ dealt with full time as stories. So then you gotta interpret it and understand it. And I will let her answer that. But I wanna go back to what you said. Cause I've really. You're not the first person that's asked, what about this thing about lack of ambition in so many people, particularly the millennials. It comes back to the reason we use that word dream is cause once you unveil your dream, you're willing to go do something, it becomes your magnificent obsession. You wake up and say, wow, that is my destiny. Like when I knew it was my destiny to be a professional speaker, I ate it, I slept it, I thought about it. It was the last thing I thought about at night and the first thing I thought about in the morning. I was beating on my chest, I was asking myself, how do I do these speeches? How do I do them better? How do I learn more, how do I share more? How do I make sure that the audience was getting the results, their take home value so they go out and change. And you know, because I was doing life insurance, I was dealing with the world's biggest company at that time, Metropolitan and State Farm. And there are 1800 of those companies. They kept hiring me because I kept Chip Collins, God bless him. Every Friday we met, masterminded two coming together, power of 11, bringing 30 mine. And I'd tell them what was working and what wasn't working because it was working so well. He said, we're going to go from $25 an hour, $50. And I thought, oh my God, I can't do it, I don't know if I can do it. Then it was 100 and then pretty soon it was a thousand. And I thought, oh my God, nobody's going to pay that. But what I didn't get is that I was teaching guys to sell a million dollar policy. When they sell a million dollar policy, over a lifetime of the policy, they make 100,000 do. At that time, I Don't know what they're going to make today exactly, because it changes. But the fact of the matter is $1,000. 1, 100. If you give me a penny and I give you a dollar, are you going to be a happy camper?

Well, and back to what you said. I like that, Belle. We have a section in the book called Prepare to be a Good Asker, and it talks just about that. And so the three first parts of Preparing to be a Good Asker are belief, okay? You have to start with a belief that. That your answers are out there for you, okay? And that's why that fable of Micaela is so powerful, because it's every man, every woman's story. And that's why we started the book with that. It's so often we all feel like we're just hauling rocks every day and there's no purpose to it and what are we doing? Right? But then when the being comes to Mikayla and implores her to start asking, asking, asking, and then she starts looking around more, starts asking, being more curious about what's going on around her, starts asking more questions, even about what she's doing there and what the purpose is for what she's doing. And she discovers all these answers and then noticing the people and being more curious about the people. And little by little, as she starts being more curious, starts asking more questions, her life just opens up, opens, and you know, the conclusion. We're not going to give it away, but it's an amazing journey that metaphorically we can all go through with. And that's why we start. We want to give people the model in their mind, because stories are metaphors. That. And metaphors are patterns, and our brain thinks in patterns. So when we read these powerful stories, we go, aha. It's so much learning happens all at once. But back to preparing to be a good asker. So, number one, belief. We have to believe that the answers are there for us, that if we keep asking, we will find our answers. Whether we're asking ourselves, asking others, or asking God, those answers are there. Keep asking and they will come to you and believe that you deserve the answers. So that's part of your inner journey work. You got to start with yourself always. And then the action part. Action is so important. You cannot ask these questions and then sit on the sofa with your blankie wrapped around you and go, okay, make it happen, someone. Because it's not a true asking journey. A true asking journey means your physical body is taking action, your mind is taking action. You're doing those things, you're immersing yourself. Like Mark was saying. He asked everybody, he started meeting with the people who were doing what he wanted to do, finding out everything he could, finding out what he could learn to become better and then becoming better, studying, doing it, find out what's going on in the world, take that action and then you will start to see your asking journey become real and alive. And the third part of preparation to becoming a good asker is visualization. We have both used visualization our entire lives because sometimes when we start doing something new, our left brains, especially with all the negative stuff going on, it'll talk us out of it. Like you can't do that, you don't know how to do that, that'll never work. So just try to quiet your left brain down. What Mark and I say is go to that place in your imagination. Just pretend you're making up a story, right? And you write down your absolute ideal vision in its greatest form. Every single thing you want, whether it's career, your relationship, whatever it is. And then from that beautiful picture, that beautiful movie that you just created, put all the rich details in it, what it feels like, what you're doing, who you're talking to, how much you're earning, what sales you just closed. Then go backwards and re engineer it, start writing down the steps, how did I get here? Who did I talk to? What did they say? Where did I go next? And you'll start to see that magically it starts to happen for you. But you have to take time to do these things. The belief, the action, the visualization and it's really, it makes life so much more rich, so much more interesting. Because right now, like you were saying, there's so much garbage out there in the media, we're all listening to negative, negative, negative. And if you think about it, whatever you put in your mind becomes your reality, right? You're letting it in. So you're actually letting the opposite of what you really want dominate your thoughts. And that's crazy, isn't it?

Totally is crazy that our brain is such a programmable device that leads to everything else. Our health, our fitness, our well being and how we approach the rest of the world. I love the symbolism that you talked about in there, in Mikayla's story about as she's listening to these four different dreams that she's having and coming out of the dream and writing it all down detail by detail and journaling. That was one of the most important things I think people don't realize is that's really reprogramming inner thoughts becoming real life world for us. And the fact that so many of us, I see this from people today, want to be viral. I want to do something. I'm gonna record a video or do a training. I wanted to sell it to thousands when I think it needs to come back to just the power of one person and building a moment with one person at a time. We'd all love to be viral, but the fact if we can influence one person, in our case one borrower at a time, one reader, one entrepreneur at a time, that starts to build a real movement to really help not only yourself reach your dreams, but the river rising and us all hitting being successful in our dreams.

Correct, Correct. I mean, when I wrote Chicken Soup of the Soul, what I said is, I want to change everybody's life one story at a time. And then what happened is we were at our zenith, as you know, we were getting 5,000 stories a day. I mean, you know, I said we'd sell a million and a half in a year and a half. After 144 publishers, I asked all of them to take us because I'm the salesman, Jack. Dr. Canfield is a third in his class. Harvard genius inside. I'm not taking anything away from my partner, but when they all said, hit the road, Jack, I said, it's okay if you don't like him, but I'm a nice guy. Jack is great.

I've had the chance to hang with Jack and meet Jack. You have a little bit different personality, but it's yins and yangs, which works really, really well to get things done. Right.

And by the way, the yin and the yang is where we're at right now. It's a 6,000 year old symbol that means crisis equals opportunity. Scott, we are in the biggest crisis ever. 8 billion of us are in lockdown or more or less, right? We're starting to emerge. Government imposed lockdown. And for the first time, a lot of us are gonna have to rethink this reinvention. And I do it as, hey, they're turning trash to cash. This guy spent 300 million 20 years figuring out how to take all garbage. Now all our garbage dumps, 10,000 of them are full. They close, they can't take anymore. We all create five pounds of garbage. He's recycling every atom and every molecule of metal, glass, plastic, water. What does that mean? It means America is resource rich in. We got so much stuff. It's just like what you're saying when we were talking off when we began this. And luckily he's been a student of myself, of action books. And I thank you for that. But our minds are so rich, are so vast. Right? The big guy says, my mind. Your mind has many rooms, many dimensions. If it weren't so, I wouldn't have told you. But instantly, it is where I am. You may be. And what we're saying is all of this talent only comes out one way, as far as we can tell, by asking. And nobody has ever said, do a book on ask. We couldn't believe it that nobody did a book called Ask. I mean, we're the only ones. I mean, it's like having the most important thing ever, and no one's ever taught it. And that's why our book is gone from Nowhere. It came out April 28th, and we're now at one of the best sellers in just two weeks.

Yeah, it's amazing book there, Crystal. With so many entrepreneurs, you working and being a life coach and working with business owners, stuff like that, so many people are struggling right now because they're doing business normal. And I agree with what Mark said about, hey, there's a lot of opportunity besides asking themselves or asking their families and God, what are maybe a tip or two you would tell them to do, to look back to identify opportunities. Because I think sometimes we get so downtrodden or so close to the forest that we're hitting our tree against the head. We can't see the full picture. What are some things that you would recommend to those out there? Those business owners are struggling right now.

Right. And just like any personal crisis, this big global crisis has, believe it or not, created a tremendous amount of potential opportunities for us, you guys. So we really need to be awake to these and don't discount them as something that's for somebody else. Really take a look and say, how can I participate in this new opportunity? What's happened is it's caused us as a country, and other countries are doing the same. But look at who knew? Nobody knew. None of us knew. 98% of our pharmaceuticals were created overseas, that 99% of our Advil was created in a country that doesn't necessarily have our best interest at heart. That all of our manufacturing's gone there for the past 20,000 years, that all of our important medical equipment and being prepared, all of that is. So we're at the mercy we have been at these countries, particularly the one country, China, that doesn't have necessarily our best interest at heart. That is the truth. We all know it now. And so you will see a big change in our economy. And there will be so many much opportunity in that change. So many jobs will be brought back here. And so get ready, get qualified, open up to the opportunities. The supply chains are going to be reworked. The manufacturing is going to come back. Look at some of the training that's available, you know, in cobots and robots. A lot of the manufacturing now is going to require a little bit of this specialized knowledge that's in cobots and robots. What an exciting thing to learn right now. And I know you can tap into some of that specialized training, but start to think how might participate in this new resurgence of America and other countries around the world, because we're all come to kind of this collective conclusion that this needs to change, this needs to shift. We need to be take more ownership of our destiny here, so to speak. But let's get excited about this together and start researching, you guys. Every one of us is going to be needed in this new economy that we're going to be creating, every one of us. And there's so much brain, so many brains and talent out there, so much brains and talent that all of us need to throw in our chips and say, I'm gonna figure out how to be a part of this.

I love it. I love it. What would you say has been the biggest surprise since the book has been published for YouTube? Anything that stands out just kind of like, wasn't expected.

Yeah. So, like, we've been doing all the podcasts now, listen, I know the book industry backwards and forwards and love it. And it's contracting at the time, we're expanding. And so we're. Last week on Thursday, we're doing five podcasts, two in America, one in Ireland, and then at 5 o' clock at night, the last one was in Vietnam. And the guy's got 10 million downloads and thought, oh, man, you know, we've been to Vietnam twice talking last year. So it's not a question of do we love the Vietnamese. We don't like communism, we're flaming capitalists, but we love the Vietnamese people. But he wasn't in Vietnam. He had six Nobel Prize winners listening. We get a call from one of our friends and it says, you got to talk to this guy in the UK that heard you just now. Guy says, my name's Simon Leslie. I own all the airline magazines on 33 major airlines, like American Airlines. I own all of Norwegian, and they're not letting me take magazines on it. And this guy tells me, first of all, he listened to Our podcast like yours. He said, that's the most content rich talk I've ever heard in my life for an hour. He said, I'll listen to it a couple times more. But he said, we can't take magazines on airlines anymore because they're considered dirty. He said, mark, I'm told that you have the best ideas ever because I'm an idea factory and so are you. I'm convinced, Scott, I don't know you very well, but I'm convinced that you live in ideation. Am I telling the truth?

You're right about that, yes.

By the way, every good entrepreneur knows he or she has got to be in ideation. Ala what your last question was. So the guy says, well, what are you going to do? I said, well, look, the cell phone. One of the guys we interviewed is a guy who did 50 Academy Awards, like Rocky and Batman and Rain man and Peter Guber. And you haven't read it yet, but you will. And it's a great story, but he taught us everything's going to go into the smartphone, everything's going to be video centric. I said that to Simon. I said, what are you saying? I said, look, when they get on a plane, it'll automatically go in their phone and it won't go out until they cancel it. And now they got it and that's a hundred. Well, back when flying worked like I traveled a quarter million miles a year, more or less, for 44 years, flying the Fleming sky, so to speak. He said, God, I do American way. He said, I could get them to change. He said, what do you want? I said, I want us to be the contributors. We'll make the videos for it and bring in friends and tell stories that nobody else could do. Because we're going to interview you later on and ask the askers, because you've got a business nobody ever heard of, no offense intended, but you're popularly invisible.

That is true. I love it, I love it, I love it. Now you guys talk about in the book here how to ask like a child. Can you explain that a little bit to that there? Because that's such a great analogy. Because I think so. I'll just shut up because I think it's so important for those that are listening to this.

It is so important, Scott. And honestly, when each of us were born, we were all born with this incredible ability to ask. We had insatiable curiosity, right? We wanted to know what, where, when, why. We wanted to ask for more, more, more. Because that is natural, that is our human spirit. Expressing itself. And then over time, start to get shut down a little bit. Maybe your parents are like, that's enough. Don't ask anymore. You go to school, the teacher's the authority. Don't ask unless you're called upon. And then whether it's the military or jobs, it's like, just submit to authority. Don't ask questions. So over time and other things happen, we're rejected. You know, we get shut down and we start to hold back. And some of our ability to ask just really gets crushed out of us. And that's why we, in the book, we write about the seven roadblocks to asking. And those are unworthiness, naivete, fear, doubt, pattern paralysis. You know, where we've just gotten stuck in such a pattern, we don't ever break out of it. We just do the same thing over and over and over and over again. It's so important to break out of some of these roadblocks because every one of us has at least one of these roadblocks. Another one is just disconnection where just been shut down. Enough. We've given up. We've given up on the dreams in our hearts, and that's really tragic, okay? No one should give up on the dreams in their hearts. We need to rekindle our human spirit and, and get back into the asking journey and realize that that's what you were made for. You were made to express and ask for the most in life you can. And that's not saying you want to be a selfish person and a taker. We always say that the science of getting rich or the science of richness means you always want to consider how much value half of the circle is. How much value am I contributing to the world, to life, to everything. So that's part of getting in there every day and being a valuable person in every way that you can. I love to tell the story about my daughter's a school teacher. Our daughter's a school teacher and the janitor at her school. She's so in love with them because she said, mom, this man is the kindest, most giving guy. He'll find out. He goes out of his way to find out what the teachers needs and he goes in there and builds things if they need a little this or that or something changed in the room and just does it out of the goodness of his own heart. So what ends up happening is these teachers, he is just inundated with gifts, you know, nice restaurant certificates and gift cards and all these good things. He increases his abundance. Naturally not because he's out there going, give me more, give me more. It's because he's saying, how can I make this whole experience, the children's experience, more valuable, the teacher's experience, more valuable? And if we approach life that way, how can we create more niche, whatever it is? There's a way to create value every single day and then get out there and ask for more. It will come to you. It's incredible.

I love it. And then you hit the next question, the seven different ways to ask. And that was one of the most impactful parts of what I've read so far, was flipping through that. And I said, I got to read that and flip through that and really, really love this. Loved it. I love what you're putting together. Can't wait to finish everything on here. What has been a big ask for each of you? I know, Mark, you shared about the asking or the insurance and metropolitan life and speaking with a guy in real estate. Crystal, what's been a big ass that stood out in your life for you?

Yeah, I mean, I think. I really think back to, like, a personal crisis that I went through when I was very young. I was 21 years old. I was one of those kids that found high school to be pretty easy. So I accelerated my curriculum, and I graduated at age 16 and married a guy, my boyfriend, who was five years older. Well, two and a half years later, I'm divorced in a city all by myself, no friends, no family, and a baby on my hip. No idea how I'm going to support myself in no job. So I applied for food stamps. The only thing I could think of. And I remember going to the grocery store at the time and getting ready to turn those food stamps over to the cashier. And I had the most amazing epiphany. As I was getting ready to turn those over, a question dropped into my mind. First of all, it was, how did I get here? And the second question that followed that one was, are you doing everything you can to get out of this, or are you taking the easy way out? And I knew, Scott, the second that question flooded into my mind, I knew the answer. I knew I wasn't doing everything I could to get out of it. And so it was this strangest moment. Like a light was shining on my head. And I felt like just. It was such an epiphany. So as I'm turning over those food stamps to the cashier, I'm so. I'm already feeling so convicted inside that. And I'm saying to myself, this will not be my future. This will be the last time I do this. And I didn't even finish the food stamps. I went home and started asking myself more questions. How can I go to work tomorrow? What can I do to earn money tomorrow? I had heard about Kelly services, you know, Kelly girls temporary service agencies. So I registered for Kelly services. And they would call you every day and go, you want to do this job or that job? You could say yes or no. Well, I started getting some jobs and then realized there were two other temp service agencies. And I thought, well, there are. I don't see any rules. You can't register for all three. So I did, because it gave me more options, and I started picking the best jobs. So I started working at attorney's offices, filling in and setting up booths at malls, and doing sales of different kinds when conventions would come through town. And I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I really like business, and I learned that I really like sales. I'm pretty good at it. And that I really love people. And so I decided at that point to put myself through real estate school, get my real estate license. And a year and a half from that moment where I was turning those food stamps over to the cashier, I was working for the top home builder in our valley. I became the number one realtor. And then I also, in the meantime, had approached a modeling agency, because people said, oh, you should go try to model, you know? So I had approached this modeling agency, got signed with them, and I. A couple of my commercials started running nationally, so I was getting residuals. So I went from that moment, probably the lowest moment anybody could describe, to being at a completely different place. And I often think back on that moment, and I did throughout my life, what if I had caved in to my misery? Because I'm telling you, as easy as it sounds here, it was a terrible time for me. It was a miserable time and a scary time. I was crying on my pillow every night saying, how am I going to survive? And it was very, very difficult. But I'm so thankful, so tremendously thankful, that those tough questions came to my mind and probably more importantly, that I was able to answer them honestly. So that's what I'm trying to share with your listeners. We all go through these tough times. I know you're going through tough times. You are not alone. But let's get honest. Let's get serious with ourselves and ask those tough questions that we need to ask. Don't cave into the misery, and let's challenge ourselves. Out of it. And then really be honest with our answers. What more can we do? I know everyone listening here is way more resourceful than they realize. And so we want to help you all find that resourcefulness through this asking journey.

Love it. What is probably the one story that sticks out and asks the stories throughout it. I mean, the one that kind of I chose to read was. Oh, where the magazine the Aladdin felon. Dear to Deborah Rosado's story about. She was at Target and your books fell on her, literally, as she took home the second day. That's a good one. But is there a story in there that stands out?

She's a superstar, but she came out, remember. Now, here's a blue collar worker working in an umbrella factory and not making a lot of money. Husband leaves her. She's got three little bambinis boys, all of which are friends of ours, and she's walking through Target and she keeps going down this one aisle and God's sort of directing her and the same book keeps falling off the shelf. Boom. In front of her, boom. And she's, okay, okay, I got it. I don't know what the sign is here, but I'll get this little book of yours. And it was a book Jack and I did called Aladdin how to ask for it and get what you want. Life. And she went home and read it and it said, you ought to ask yourself, what is it that's available to you right now that's causing you a great deal of pain that if you fixed, you'd make a great deal of profit, Substantial profit. That's the question. And on the way in that night, it was raining like hell. She had an umbrella. She's going up the stairs and boom. And rips her knees open. Now you got three little kids, bags of groceries, and you're bleeding, and there's no man there. There's no console. The kids don't know what to do. You know, you got to take care of yourself. She's laying in bed, reads that and says, I think that's it. I think that's it. I'll put a light bulb in the umbrella. Well, that ends up selling the company for $360 million to Walmart. Of all things, she ends up becoming from invisible person to a very visible person, one of the most powerful. She's considered one of the three most powerful Hispanic women. She's on the board of PepsiCola. She's on all kinds of stuff now. And now she's rehappily remarried, but she says, I just thank you. In my prayers. Every day that you'd write a line like that that just gave. What Crystal said to you a minute ago is that when you ask a question, you get revelation, you get illumination, you get insight. And you can't ask a question without getting an answer. So the question here is you got to do positive questions, not negative questions. What if I go bankrupt? What if I get sick? I did that. What if I go bankrupt? I went bankrupt. A dumb question gets a dumb answer, right? Forrest Gump said. Mama always said stupid is a stupid dumb. And God bless Tom Hanks. And let me just hitchhike in that because you're so open to this. I'm sure you saw the movie Scully. Did you see it about the guy who lands the plane and then they're taking away his retirement? They're taking away his life. They're saying, you could have done something else. And he asked one question. It's literally saved his life, saved his retirement, saved his fortune, and got him out of bespurchment by the faa. He said, how many times did you run a simulation to see how fast I could go to LaGuardia? I used to live in New York, so LaGuardia Airport in Newark, they said 17 times. He said, I had seven seconds. I had to make a decision, and I landed the plane down so everybody could walk out on the wings and get out. And 2,000 people at FAA gave them a standing ovation. I get goosebumps telling you that because you love my chicken soup story. That's a perfect chicken soup story because Tom Hanks played Scully. But the bottom line here is that all of us are gonna have a Scully moment, and some of us are having it right now. Some of us are watching this. Listen to this. Some of us are. You got to understand that you're going to be asked critical questions. You got to ask yourself the right question and ask others the right question. He saved his future, his family, his fortune because they took away his pilot's license and they made him feel bad that he saved whatever it was. I think 317 lives on a plane. If I got the wrong number, it's me, not him.

Yeah, that's the thing. Somebody had been do nothing but flying for 40 plus years. Have to make a decision in seven seconds. And being judged like that. I agree that totally. We all need to be asked on that. And you said something very good. We have to ask the right questions, the positive questions. Because if we keep asking, what if we fail? What do we fail? It's the other Say, well, what if we succeed? What happens if we succeed? To make things happen to our dreams come true.

So conscious, doesn't care. It'll make you answer a negative question. Oh, you want to go bankrupt? We'll show you how to do that. You want to get sick of this? We'll show you how to do that.

For those that are listening here, what's an ask of our audience out there? We've got investors and people all across the country. Besides going and buying the book, what would be a big ask for our audience out there from you, too?

Well, first of all, I'll do the buy the book and then I'll give the biggest ask I think we have in the book. The first one is we're doing the Ask Challenge. We're saying get the book at Amazon because bookstores aren't open. And then go to receptionarkviktorhansen.com, send us your receipt. We're going to invite you into the biggest book club in history, live and living with Crystal and Mark, and we're going to answer all your questions. It's going to be outstanding and it's going to be fun, and we're going to all grow together because we want to reinvigorate America to its greatness and wonder and awe. And America got here because we're good at work. The second thing is we got a question in there by Peter Demandis and Ray Kurzweil, two of the smartest guys in Silicon Valley. I can give you their credentials, but they're outstanding and are geniuses. But they say, what are you personally going to do to positively affect 1 billion people in this decade? And remember, folks, there's 8 billion. And if you help a billion people and you got $1 out of each one of those transactions in a transactional society, you just made a billion dollars. And I do believe a lot of you are going to hear that question. And if you keep asking that question, you'll figure out how to help a billion people and you become a billionaire and you're going to end up thanking us in the prayers like we just did. The Deborah Rosada show story.

I love that. I love it. So the receptionarkviktorhansen.com was the email to go to send the receipt to. Is that correct?

Yeah.

Awesome.

And Hanson is H a N S E N the Danish way. S E N. Yes.

Not like the band Hansen. Mmm bop.

Not that one.

They're good, though. I went and saw them and our kids got to meet them.

So you gotta have fun. Scott I'm glad you know.

Amen to that. And that's the thing. It's a lot more fun to ask the positive questions. It's a lot more fun to have a positive outlook on things. Your dreams will appear for you will see things you'll never seen before if you just open your eyes and ask the right questions. And honestly, I think that's why I love the talk about asking like a child, because a child's eyes are open to so many new possibilities out there and things in life. So I want to thank you both for coming on the no Closure show. Thank you so much for taking time. It has been a great honor. Thank you for being my guest on my 600th episode, too. I'm honored to have you guys here.

We thank you. It's been thrilling every second.

Thank you, Scott. You're wonderful, and the show is just great. So thank you so much.

Appreciate it. All right, guys and gals, you heard it here. Go buy the book. Send the receipt to reception@markvictorhansen.com to join the largest mastermind group and start impacting the world. Yes, 1 billion people. We all have the ability to help people. Start off with one. Start off by asking yourself the right questions to help yourself to help others out there. Take care of what you need to get done. Learn to pivot. There's a great section here on pivoting as well, too. One of the most impactful books I've read in a long time, everybody. So go out, ask the right questions, and we look forward to seeing all at the top, everybody. Bye.