Leaders are not and cannot be made overnight. If anything, leadership success can only be attained through years of motivation and dedication, sprinkled with challenges and sacrifices. Dr. Tracey Jones interviews Mark Victor Hansen, who is a living example of this. The author of the best-selling book series Chicken Soup for the Soul, Mark looks back on his career's challenges and how his skills embedded in leadership made him an author publishing several books, ventured into podcasting, spent time in charity, and even licensed books. He also talks about how politics and the government affects our decision making and why writing and reading are important ingredients in making a true, effective leader.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Mark Victor Hansen – The Price Of Weariness – Leadership 3/5 (TT)
Our guest is the one and only Mark Victor Hansen. You know that name because Mark was the co-creator of the entire Chicken Soup for the Soul series that has gone out in hundreds of different variations and sold hundreds of millions of copies throughout the world. Mark has many years of experience in leading, innovating and marketing. We are excited to know about his perspective on the price of leadership.
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I am excited because I have the one and only, the truly tremendous, Mark Victor Hansen as my guest and you may be thinking, “Mark Victor Hansen. How do I know that name?” We all know that name. Mark is the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series that has been around for more than 44 years of helping people or an organization reshape their personal vision of what is possible. Mark, you can tell us how many Chicken Soup for the Soul series there are and how many millions upon millions of books they sold. Thank you for being here. Mark also has his book out with his wife, Crystal Dwyer Hansen, and it is called Ask! The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny. We're excited to talk about that, too. Mark, thank you for being here.
It's my pleasure. Your dad and I were close friends. He was exceedingly helpful. As you know, he was one of the great inspirations in my life. I've sold 500 million books, but your dad predominantly sold 100 million of other people's books from a platform. He and I would do the Amway meetings. It was cute. Your mom, Gloria, would be sitting in the front row and he said, “Don’t tell anyone I’m not charging.” I need to be charging for the leadership series, the teenage series and whatever the other sales series.
Those are the three that I remember. He will charge crazy cheap. Forgive me. There are five parts to marketing, which we can go through but price is one. He made it irresistible that I would remember the first time I was with him on a program with Amway with 10,000 to 12,000 people, so it's a big number for me. I was only selling a little stuff, but your dad would bring in three truckloads of stuff. Did you help us serve on those?
All of us did. I was the tail end. I was a 5th out of 6. We would make these bundles and we put them in these power pack boxes. It can go crazy.
Your dad helped me raise money at a Christmas park. We did Hershey and we raised money for all the kids that weren't going to have Christmas and that was touching. I talked at Hershey a bunch of times and I always come and see your dad. I went to your home a couple of times and had meals, in church, and all kinds of things in prayer. One time, as a cute aside, when I first met your dad, I'm a 26-year-old desperate to do this. I drove all the way over from Long Island where I was living.
He walks into a restaurant. I'm going to say there are 100 to 400 people’s pack. It’s lunchtime. He says, “Everybody, quiet. Dr. Hansen is going to deliver a prayer.” I go, “What?” Your dad was tremendous, but he was also outrageous that he surprised the bejesus out of people especially me with his antics. I teach in all my books, in 309 bestsellers, and all the companies, I'm a serial entrepreneur, “You've got to be unique if you're going to make it. You've got to be transformational,” which your dad was.
“Number three, it's got to be inevitable.” It was inevitable, but people found it because he was reading through the books, and his adoration, sincerity, authenticity, and love for books. He kissed them and the people go, “I’ve got to have that book series. I'm not a reader. He said if I become a reader,” you're going to be the person you are in five years, except for the books you read and the people you meet. It’s the line I quoted him a gazillion times when I was selling millions of dollars of stuff on a platform.
He loved that. He would hit that price point. It was unbelievable. This is back before Amazon and all that stuff. Those were our vacations. We travel with him and we work the book table. It was a phenomenal experience. I still have people, Mark, that call me that we're at those and now are asking me to make bundles up for their grandkids. It had an impact on people and it lives on.
I'm even one of the guys that bought when he would have given it to me for free. I know he would have been. He was a great man and a great friend. The last time I saw him, I won the Horatio Alger Award a long time ago, but he’ll go every year and he came in with a patch over his eye. He was with Truett Cathy, who is keen on and Mr. Chick-fil-A. It was wonderful.
Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing with our tremendous readers the long legacy that we have. I'm thankful that you have stayed a part of my life. The minute we reached out to you about this show, you're right on the calendar, so you're the real deal.
There are people that believe that I don't know all the people I know like you and your dad. I go, “You didn't know Charlie and you didn't know Zig.” I said, “I was on program. I did youth.” Maybe there are 100 of us. There are probably only 20 or 30 of us that did a lot of work, and I'm one of those. Your dad and Charlie. John Maxwell wasn't around yet, and stuff like that.
You are the real deal and you are helping me, the next generation of leaders. Everybody read this to pull them up. I can't wait to talk with you about the price of leadership. My dad was all about conquering the world, but he was also real and pragmatic. “You're going to love it but I'm not going to baby you.” Tough love was his favorite kind of love because he's like, “I can't coddle you because the world is going to kick you in the teeth and I don't want you to lose it.” He has this Price of Leadership book.
Knowing that you met him at 26 to where you are now and the journey that you've been on, I can't wait to know about the grit, stripes, and scars that you have on your journey to being a leader, Mark. The first price of leadership he says is loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top. It's a big reason why a lot of people don't want to step into leadership because they don't want to stop being one of the boys or one of the girls. Can you talk to me about your journey as a leader and even now, how you process loneliness, what it means for you, and what you would recommend to other leaders out there that may be in a season of loneliness?
In 1974, I've been in graduate school. The smartest guy on the planet as far as I was concerned is Buckminster Fuller. He had fifteen doctorates at Harvard, 2,000 inventions like a geodesic dome and spherical buildings out of triangles. He created a concept called World Game, how to make the world work for 100% of humanity. He’s Einstein's best student. He finished E equals mc2. I'm going to be a doctor of physiology, and the head of physiology was part of NASA. He said, “The smartest guy like me got fired at Harvard and they all came to Southern Illinois University because our president was smart enough to say, ‘I'm not an ageist.’”
Today, we're worried about racism. Back in 1966, ‘67, ‘68, we're worried about ageism. “If you're over 65, you're useless over. Now get out of here.” You and I know that's idiocy because you're getting good. I'm old, so I'm clear about that. Anyhow, I'm writing more profoundly now than ever, but I tried to be Bucky Fuller which was my mistake, and I went bankrupt like that. I had a $2 million business. I built Wall Street Racquet Club, botanical gardens, aviaries, houses, and cat cages, but I was building out of plastic at exactly the wrong time. In 1974, the fact of the matter is the depths, the oil embargo hit. They said we could go to the Arabs and we can write checks on bigger banks and bonds.
I went bankrupt so fast. I had to check a book in the library on how to go bankrupt by yourself. I'm on the court steps in the eastern district of Long Island, and an ambulance-chasing lawyer comes up and said, “I'll take your bankrupt for $300.” I said, “If I have $300, I wouldn't be going bankrupt.” For six months, I'm sleeping in a sleeping bag in front of some other guy's room, and then all of sudden, it finally came to me because in our book, Ask!, we teach to ask yourself, others, and God. I asked myself, “What do I want to do?” What I want to do is talk to people that care about things that matter that would make a life-changing difference.
I go to my roommates. I'm living in Hicksville, Long Island, New York. I am paying $100 a month rent. I asked my three roommates, “Do you know anyone that's not a lawyer, not a doctor, not famous, not a celebrity, and not a cotton top?” Meaning, a white-haired old person. The kid was a few years older than me, but he said, “Yeah, here's my ticket. There's a speaker that wows people out in Hauppauge, Long Island, New York. It's today and it was 8:30 in the morning.” The only thing the bankruptcy courts have not taken is my beat-up $400 pitted window and lives in a Volkswagen on a trip like this. I race out there. I listen to this guy talk for three hours. I am blown away and mesmerized.
Real estate was going where it's going right now. Be clear, we're going to have a stock in my position. I'm not wishing it. I wish it wasn't, but the market is not working. I got a tourniquet on. Anyhow, this guy wowed it. I went up to after. His name is Chip Collins. He became my best friend and my close mentor. You need both close mentors and spiritual, external mentors. Some that you can get to with books, tapes, audios, videos and podcasts. I said, “Chip, I'll buy you lunch but tell me how to do this business.” He said, “The chance you’ll make this is 1 in 1,000. Nobody makes it. It's a tough business and you're going to get hung out there.”
Leadership Success: Talk to people who care about things that matter.
“I own a real estate market in five boroughs of New York. You don't touch that and I'll teach you what to do in life insurance,” which is how I ended up meeting your dad because he's doing a $100 million operation. I start doing little talks at little offices. I did 1,000 talks a year, the first three years. Only two of us in the business have ever done that much. Your dad used to sleep in airports at night. My deal was different. There are eighteen million people that live in Metro New York in five areas and only Tony Robbins and I, as far as I know, did 1,000 talks in the first three years in the business.
Either you get good or you get crushed. That's the choice, it seems to me. Thank God, I got good. The first year, I made $75,000 speaking and I was starting to move up again. Everybody said, “You’ve got that story in a book.” I mastered the fine art of storytelling. I’ve got to tell you, my mother was a phenomenal storyteller and dad taught work ethic to my brothers and me. As Danish immigrants, there were not a lot of choices and dad wanted us to take over the bakery. I said, “I don't know what a white glove guy is, but I'm sure I'm one of those guys.”
Anyhow, I said, “I'll do a book.” I did a self-published book. I used to go to my audience and I said, “This is not a national bestseller and not a New York Times bestseller. This is my bestseller.” The first little audience I talked to is in life insurance in New Jersey. They're paying $10 each. I signed everyone, “You're the most wonderful person,” or whatever I wrote because it was like, “I've arrived.” Like your dad did. “You are tremendous,” is the way he signed one of his books to me a long time ago. That's what he signed.
I sold 20,000 copies in the worst market ever at $10 each. That's $200,000. I tripled my income. I started doing the talk on how to triple your income, double your time off in the worst market. Take that fast forward to now because you asked two questions in one if you don't want my bifurcating your question. We're at the same time again. What I teach, what I believe, and what I know to be the truth is every one of us has got to take adversity and turn it into an advantage and opportunity.
This is why the other book if you go to my website, MarkVictorHansen.com, How to be Up in Down Times, we're teaching how to turn it around because as we're doing this podcast, airlines fired 2/3 of their people. They’re firing their managers, flight attendants, or the pilots. If you're a pilot and you're 55 years old, you've always said, “I'm going to fly for the rest of my life.” You're only allowed to fly to 65. I was on the board of the biggest airline so I'm clear what this looks like. I was on the board of Evergreen Airlines for fifteen years. All the UPS planes are ours. We paint the planes brown, the people wear brown, and all that. It's called white label if you know business. Do you know that term?
Yes.
You should know. Books are white labels and such. Your dad did well by taking dead people's books and bringing them back to life in their books.
Seminal thinkers. It's the wisdom of the ages.
I'm glad to learn from you and talk to you else wise about how to do that again and help. We're in the same place. Each and every one of us has got to pivot. He said, “That’s not fair.” It doesn't matter. The story we got to read from a spiritual point of view from my point of view on leadership is Joseph has many color coats. He had a vision that he would control the world and he went through the tortures of the damned. If you don't know the story, go back and read the last chapter of Genesis, but the bottom line is a critical line here. “What you meant from my harm.” His brothers were tragic to him.
They said he was dead. They put him in a pit. They sold him into slavery. He was in jail for thirteen years. He got besmirched by Potiphar’s wife because he was an elegant, good looking, handsome man. She tried to do seduce him and he said, “I am a man of principle.” The bottom line is, “What you meant from my harm, God meant for good.” This is the most opportunity ever because it's not you alone in the lockdown. There are eight billion of us that are locked down. Everybody on the planet is locked down by respectively their own government, but it's a mistake because we’ve got some ways to solve this, which we can talk to if you want.
That cures the loneliness thinking you're the only one going through this because this isn't just a national thing. This is global. When you said that, that brought to the realization. We're not only helping each other, but this is for the greater good of all humanity to build this resiliency and robustness. Because if it's not this, it will be something else down the road. It always is.
You're always going to have a crisis. I was pro-China and I love the people in China. I hate the government and communism. Communism and atheism are the same and I'm opposed. They are ruthless. They're taking over Hong Kong. I love Hong Kong. When I was a student ambassador to India, I had to fly out of Hong Kong because our university taught teachers to teach in Hong Kong and Thailand. I got to visit all those places because they thought I was smart. I fooled them. It was great and fun. I thought, “I want to live in Hong Kong.” They're merciless. They took over Tibet.
I'm a loving spouse and a Christian. I love the Dalai Lama. He is a man of phenomenal kindness, and they killed 1.2 million of those people. If we allow this to go, it is a mistake of leadership at every level. I don't know what the presidents can do but I know my position is going to stay in my position. We need to keep Hong Kong and Taiwan free. My wife and I got hired. I wrote a book called The One Minute Millionaire, which is the number one book in Vietnam. They paid me $75,000 to come in and do a day seminar on that because I was trying to teach proactive capitalism.
I'm personally a flaming capitalist. Our friend, Winston Churchill, said that you had three basic systems, which are capitalism, socialism, and communism. Candace Owens got a book called Blackout and she says socialism is tested, tried, and terrible. Hitler killed 6 million people and Stalin killed 58 million people. The new guy running China is an absolute Mao. His first line where Hitler said, “I want hegemony.” Do you know this word as a leader?
No. I have not heard that word.
You need to know this word because that means world domination. Nobody knows it. You’ve got all these knucklehead politicians. I’m in judgment. I know judge not to not be judged. Hegemony means world domination. I don't want anyone telling me to be a communist or anything other than what I am, a free enterprise American. Thanks to your dad. I have lots of opinions and most of them are well-founded.
It's an understanding of human nature. If you don't think that this can happen here, you're not paying attention. I weep when I read what's going on in Hong Kong. I'm like, “We're squirreled up here worrying about nonsense.” We’ve got problems, but these people are about to lose it all and be usurped into somebody else. I'm a sci-fi fan. When I would watch Star Trek, the Borg where you would prepare to get assimilated, I have nightmares for years. I'm like, “I can't watch it,” because when you take away our individuality, the ability to work and love work, take the opportunity, and create your own outcome, what is life then? We have the right to disagree and the freedom of choice.
You don’t want to be part of the Borg. I met Gene Roddenberry. He was not only a genius but he was a futurist as am I. He studied with a guy here in Arizona where I live that could look 3,500 years. That's why he created the Prime Directive. His prime directive is anti-Borg.
Mark, this isn't a new thing. Look at all the stuff that has gone before the civilizations in the past since the dawn of mankind that have taken over each other trying to eradicate another and slave one another. It is what it is. It's part of our human nature, but we have an option not to do that. That's why I love the fact that what you're focusing on is that bright side of humanity, that God seed we have in all of us. We also have the bad seed, but we also have a way to come out of it. As leaders, that's what leadership is about because otherwise, why do it? Why not just call, fight, cheat, and kill your way to the top? It's the antithesis of leadership.
The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth
When I was a student ambassador to India, I studied and got to go to Gandhi's house. Gandhi said, “There's enough to take care of the needs of everyone, eight billion people, but there's not enough for the greed of a few men or women.” The people that don't have a spirit and don't understand, “Do unto others,” and some of these basic laws of leadership think, “I'll never slip, then they’ll love me.” Because what they're loading is lacking self-love. In our book, Ask!, we say, “There are seven roadblocks to asking.” You can have more than one but disconnectedness and a deep sense of unworthiness, as a leader, if you don't understand, the first leader you've got to lead is you.
You can’t lead somebody else if you don't lead you and you've got to lead you to the highest and best. You’ve got to study other leaders and know principles. Ask yourself, “What are the principles that I'm going to provide?” Mitzi Perdue was with her husband, Frank. He did 42 million chickens a week, and they're all organic and antibiotic-free. She interviewed Frank and Frank has twelve leadership principles that I read in his book. I never met him, but we are like one. Your dad, you and I, and my wife, Crystal would love Frank because I love Mitzi.
It shows that great leaders write great stuff, and then they do stuff that nobody else could do. He's got a family business, the Perdue chicken, and sons have taken over and are doing it right. That's one thing. Real leadership is principle leadership, but most of you aren't learning principles like the idiots that are taking down statues net, which I'm opposed to. I don't understand what they're doing. They're taking out Frederick Douglass’ thirteen statues in one day.
As you know, I won the Horatio Alger Award for Distinguished Americans. That means, I've come from rags to riches and I've been excessively philanthropic and it means that you’ve got to go there every year. Every year, we give $250 billion to take at-risk kids and get them to college. We've helped 37,000 kids graduate college or tech school. It's wonderful. Chris and I are there and we're in the Supreme Court with Judge Clarence Thomas. You get the award in the US Supreme Court. Your dad has earned a gold medal. It's big stuff and there's ten that get matriculated.
I got it in 2000 so I've been going for a lot of years. Judge Clarence Thomas says, “Would you wait in my personal couch? I want to talk to you more.” I go, “Oh.” When a Supreme Court judge asks, I get goosebumps. The point is as big as that wall, he had Frederick Douglass’ personal autographed painted picture. The most important picture that Douglass ever had painted of him and Judge Thomas has it. I thought, “These guys are taking it down.” That guy was a black abolitionist. When I watch on TV and they interview the people that are taking down the statues, they said, “What do you think about abolition?” They said, “What's abolition?” They go, “You are absolutely ignorant idiots.”
It's become an ideology and it's moral relativism, which means the standards, the Judeo-Christian, the love covers all, and the respect for authority out the window. That's what happens when you see this. It doesn't matter. That complete utter lack of respect for anybody that has gone before you and not even contextualize their leadership. I read Proverbs every day and I read Psalms, and I hear about what used to go on in the Old Testament, but that doesn't mean you vilify people. They're different. The world changes and when we lose sight of that, what have we become or what are we becoming? They want us to become nothing of anything that we ever were.
It’s what I teach. Ask! is about how do you figure out how to go the bridge from your dreams to your destiny? What we're saying is everybody has a phenomenal destiny. Books will say, “No. I'm an accountant,” or “I just clean beds here at the hotel.” Let me do a bed cleaning story quickly if I could. You may know this story. It's a great story and I love telling it. Tina Turner gets beat up by her husband. That's called abuse and gives her $0.37 and says, “Get out of here. You'll never make anything.” Because she bought into a lack of self-worth, she ends up being a maid in Ramona, California at Radisson Hotel.
All of a sudden, one day, somebody hears about that named Mick Jagger, where I never would have predicted this. Mick Jagger says, “Where is she? Find out where she is.” He goes personally and says, “You're not a maid. You're one of the great singers of all times.” He built her self-esteem up again. She comes out, does well, and makes so much money. She goes back to the hotel and buys it, and the general manager had been good to her because he liked her music, but he couldn't do anything for her. She walks up to him and said, “Here. I've just bought the keys to this hotel, and now it's yours because you were always nice to me when I had $0.37 in my pocket. You let me eat that day and go to work on day one.”
There are a lot of people that are hanging on by their fingernails. I'm saying I'm sorry that you're there. I've been there twice so I don't like it. Nobody likes it. The point is it's not up to the government. It's not up to somebody else. It's not up to your wife, brother, or sister. Looking for a handout, temporarily you can get fed at a food shelter in Goodwill or Salvation Army, but long-term you need to raise up from the inside out. That's what leadership is about. When you do it, you're going to help a lot of people. I've had over one billion readers. There's no question about that because the parcel value of my books is high. It's exciting, but I'm not done.
The Bible says in Genesis 36, “You live as long as you want, but at minimum 120 years.” The whole Mosaic thing. There would be 127 options for a new one. We live by the quality of life, you want to have a high quality of life, especially if you're contributing because, in the Old Testament, 1:27, God created you and I in the image and likeness. Therefore, it means we're here for two reasons. One, to create, and number two, to contribute. If you're a leader, you're supposed to keep recreating yourself, make yourself new, bigger and better. Everyone says, “Come on, Mark. Why don't you retire?” I'm having a light time of my life. I'm having fun on these podcasts. My wife and I love our 5 kids and our 6 grandkids come over, swim in a pool, play, and travel with us when we could travel.
Even the day before dad died, he's still calling people and asking them what they read and stuff. He’d say, “What do you do?” They’re like, “Charlie, I'm retiring.” I'm like, “Don't say that.” He would smack them on the head and say, “Don't you talk so stupid. How old are you? 65? You just figured it out. Now you need to get back in there and help other people.”
By the way, I never heard your dad say that because I was younger. I wrote a book with Art Linkletter, the guy who created hula hoop and Kids Say The Darndest Things. He’s an amazing guy, but we said in our book called How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life, “Don't retire from something to nothing. Retire, put on four new tires and go in a new direction. More exciting and more opportunistic than ever before.” I wrote the line, but Art said, “I'm not going to quote you because we wrote it together.” I said, “You can't quote me. Let’s just sell the book. It will help a lot of people.”
No one should retire to nothing. My cliché is if you retire from something to nothing, you expire. If you mentally expire, your body goes down and your health goes down. I'm dealing with a lot of people that are in their ‘80s like Mitzi. I shouldn't be saying that aspect. She sounds twenty because she's alive, vibrant, excited, enthused and brilliant that it would be a crime for me not to help get her on your podcasts and other podcasts, and vice versa. She has helped us so much. She'd become a best friend. I've only met her by telephone and we wrote a whole book together.
I had somebody call me to ask about dad's books, to get his books for his grandkids and stuff like that. Mark, I thought he was my age. I’m like, “How old are you?” He's like, “I'm 92.” I'm like, “Ninety-two and you're calling up, so we can process your order to get books out there.” He's like, “I'm figuring this all out.” It's beautiful. I look back to loneliness. You said you've been there. We've all been there. Tina Turner was there.
The best thing you said is to get out there. Don't suck your thumb. Don't wallow but make yourself available because the right people will come at the right time when God has that opportunity and that timing in line, but also be open to it. Some people are embarrassed or think it’s owed. Dad would always say that. He grew up in extreme poverty and flunked out of school. He's like, “We didn't know we were poor. We’re just thankful to be thankful.”
That's the whole point. That's why we wrote Ask!, and we didn't know we were going to go into sequestration of time. The fact is that once you get there, you get to ask your way out. There's no better thing to do than read our book. You only get it at Amazon because all the bookstores are closed unfortunately because of the stupidness, and I'm in judgment. I know judge not, and all that, but Barnes & Noble is bankrupt and quite honestly, they can't buy books because they had paid their overhead. Remember, we're only going to be shut down for two weeks and now it’s months. The bookstores are probably not going to come back.
If you look at the evilness of what's happening, what did Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin do? They burnt books. What did Mao do? He killed everybody that was smart. He killed the doctors, lawyers, Buddhist priest, ministers, and rabbis. He killed 78 million people. The first thing you do is you get rid of literacy because people who read, think. People who think, questions. People who will ask questions and say, “No, we're not going to do this,” they remonstrate. I'm shaking them and saying, “Wake up. Read my book. It will transform you.”
The next thing he talked about was weariness. I know you get to a point where the more you love and refuse in your passion, you take care of your health, which is important for leaders because if you're going to run the race, you’ve got to stay in physical shape, too. How do you cope with weariness as a leader? How do you recharge?
I can bifurcate amongst everyone. First of all, I exercise seven days a week. When our gym is open, I spend three days a week because I have a giant body that likes to aggregate fat for some reason. I don't know why it does, but it does. I can look at food and it gains calories. My wife is a nutritionist so she makes sure that we do healthy food. I don't eat junk. Number one is you’ve got to exercise. By the way, because I'm old, you've got to do resistance training. All of us have been taught you could walk or run. It isn't true. Your body needs resistance. You’ve got to do some weights or bands or Pilates or yoga. I don't care what you do.
Leadership Success: Leadership is not up to the government or somebody else. It's up to you.
When Art and I wrote that book, we said, “Live to be 100.” He lived to be 98. The only reason he died is because his wife died and he wanted to be with her. Like my teacher, Bucky Fuller, I was with him three days before he died in ‘89. He promised his wife, “I will die before you.” She calls him and says, “Bucky, I'm going to die.” He immediately left Washington with my good friend Tom Crum. He flew back and held her hand and died two minutes before she did. I thought, “Is that romantic?”
He talked about weariness because back to weariness, Bucky only slept two hours a day. He said, “I can help make the world work.” He convinced guys like me because I'm 1 of the 7 who traveled with him, that we can make the world work for 100% of humanity. Christ said it in John 10:10, “I've come that they may have life more abundantly.” He didn't have the tool technology. He could see it but didn't have it. Now, we got tool technology that we can do stuff that couldn't be done and we could for the first time as real leaders take care of 100% of humanity. I'm excited to be part of that kind of technology.
Mark, you mentioned Buckminster Fuller. I wanted to go back to that. I don't know if you knew this, but he is one of my top five heroes. I read some books by Buckminster Fuller. For our readers out there, I would encourage you to find out about this man. Did you say you worked or created with him?
No. I spent seven years traveling with Bucky in grad school. I was going to be a doctor of physiology when Alfred Richardson and Dr. Fuller were both parts of NASA down in Houston getting us into space. Alfred Richardson was the smartest guy I'd ever heard. He could make you want to learn physiology. He’s entertaining. He looks like crap. He'd been irradiated so he looked gray, but he was funny and light. He always said, “Students first. Faculty second. Administration never.” I thought, “What a cool guy.” He was that way.
One day, I went into the office in his experimental laboratory. I was working with him and he said, “Bucky Fuller, the smartest man on the planet is talking and you're going with me?” I said, “You're Dr. Richardson. You're the smartest guy.” He said, “No, you’re coming into this guy.” We owe under 5,000 kids in the arena. I was at a school of 64,000 people at Southern Illinois University. Bucky starts with ten words I've never heard. Remember, I got a 4.9 and I'm smart. He says, “We're going to talk about cosmogony, cosmology, epistemology, synergetic-energetic map.” Do you know the term sophomoric, Tracey?
Yeah.
I was sophomoric. I thought I knew something. By the way, I got a daughter that is completely sophomoric. She'll call me and say, “Dad, did you ever read Plato's Republic?” I go, “Yeah.” She wants to know if I know about the cave and everything. My ex-wife smirches me a lot. She goes, “You're not as dumb as mom says you are.”
Plato's Cave, people need to watch or read that. That's incredible.
Back to Bucky, if you can get a copy of I Seem to Be a Verb, that’s an easy way in. The next easiest way in would be Utopia or Oblivion because that's where we're at. I've got all 40 of his books memorized. If you're in education and you want leadership, he said, “Education Automation.” That's where we're going, but there's a part of that education of Bucky totally missed. What it's called is entrainment. Entrainment is when you're with a great and inspiring teacher. I had great and inspiring teachers by choice. I ordered all the classes, and then I did the same thing for my kids.
When Elizabeth went to school, I set in six elementary school classes, and mentally, I was firing all the teachers. I got to the sixth one, Mrs. Fellows, who became a great friend. She flunked my little daughter and twice, she said, “She's not emotionally mature, Mark. We better keep her back. She won't know it now, but if you flunk her later, she won't do it.” I go, “Wow.” She sang to the kids. She had a whisper in each other's ear and she did it in English and Spanish. She played the piano. She had them roll up like an ode to make sure they understood the whole alphabet and a cube-like that with a tongue out. I said, “I want to take kindergarten again.”
Do you know the term in Hawaii, akamai? It means you’ve got it together and the results click. Everybody got an A in Mrs. Fellows’ class and in kindergarten, you don't need grades. I had a kindergarten teacher that was that good, well-educated, and loving. My parents are quasi-literate because they spoke Danish, not English. We lived in little Denmark so we didn't have to. I love my kindergarten teacher so much. I went up to her and said, “Miss Schneider, when I get older, I'm going to marry you.” She said, “Mark, that's nice but I'm happily married.” I said, “He'll die.”
That must have meant the world to her. What a high compliment for a little boy to say that.
One of our daughters is a special ed teacher. Every one of the little boys wants to marry Kelly, and they're 4 and 5. Here's the interesting thing. When you have a great teacher like our daughter, Kelly, what happens is she has fifteen kids in the morning when school is open and she's heartbroken. They want her to teach electronically. You can't do special ed electronically. Back to entrainment, you’ve got to be with the teacher to get rid of your whatever and there are no learning disabilities. We all have multiple intelligences like Dr. Gardner teaches at Harvard. What they need is exploration.
I want to give you an example of that in leadership if I could. What happened is she found four kids in the morning and four kids in the afternoon that were doing 5th and 6th-grade level. If you'd met Bill Gates when he was four years old like this and didn't know what Asperger's was, you go, “Kids out.” Let me give my example that fits here on leadership. In a ratio, we have the two greatest orchestrators, as far as I'm concerned, of all time. I don't know every orchestrator in the world, but I know these two guys well. They are friends. Quincy Jones, I know him a little bit. David Foster, I know a whole lot. Both of them failed out of school. They’re full-time F students like your dad.
You’ve got to admit that Quincy made a guy named Michael Jackson, and David made somebody named Celine and Whitney. We can go through it. If you haven't seen Hitman or listened to it, you want to do it because their music is the best in the world. The school system does, “This is what you're going to do. You're going to learn it and you're going to repeat it to me.” That's not education. Education is asking you to find out what your talent is. How do you predict that somebody could lead an orchestration, could take somebody that's a good and talented person, and make them an enormous talent?
By the way, I do it with a lot of people because I ran a $100 million company. When we did The One Minute Millionaire, we had 4,000 people coming four days every weekend and 40 weeks a year. I created more millionaires because I said, “There's one right, perfect, easy, and acceptable way for everyone to become a millionaire and there are a million ways to become a millionaire. I don't want you to try to do what I do. I'm going to teach you 38 ways to do IP, Intellectual Property.” One of which was your dad's. He took IP that was public domain, wrote a foreword to it, reprinted it, and brought it out of being dead back to life, and that's viable.
A lot of authors that are dead, like one of my former neighbors who I love, Clive Cussler, he's got other people writing his stuff now even though he's gone, which is amazing. With biopics, we're seeing biographies. If you go to MarkVictorHansen.com, I did a virtual course called You Have a Book in You, in which I want everyone to write a book. Go look at the videos there. It is amazing because one of the guys I got interviewed by said, “Everybody ought to do a documentary now because you can do it on your cell phone, cut in pictures, and bring people that are dead back to life.”
I was on The Adam Carolla Show with four million people with my wife, Crystal. He said, “I'm now doing documentaries and I started with Paul Newman,” who created Newman's Own. Paul Newman, who had such a big heart and dedicated all that money to kids like your dad did with Christmas park, said, “There's a black guy you’ve got to help.” Adam, who's colorblind, says, “What am I going to do?” He said, “There's a guy that is winning the Indianapolis 500, Trans Am, and all that. He goes by half of the name, Uppity.” Adam makes this video with Paul Newman, and then he calls this guy, Up and he comes in. He's got a real name, Willy Ribbs. Willy said, “No, everybody calls me Uppity. It’s half a name.” They said, “That's what you're going to call the movie.”
Adam makes these two movies that I didn't think I would like. I’m a movie-maven. My wife and I went to see Ford versus Ferrari. All of a sudden, Netflix called me offering me fortunes to do Paul Newman's movie, and then they said, “We want Uppity too.” They said, “Everybody ought to be considering that too. If you could write, you ought to be doing documentaries. You could bring a lot of these dead people back to life.” We're thinking that we want to be in that part of the business too, because people will watch more than read, which is tragic because reading opens your mind and imagination, but if you write, you become wise, refined, and defined.
Leadership Success: Leaders are supposed to read, recreate, and make themselves bigger and better than ever.
We would have the book reports and we would earn an allowance by doing book reports. We all did it. We all needed some extra cash. It's like, “Let's start reading.” He took the TVs away, so what else is there to do? Play outside, get a job, read or school work.
He took the TVs away?
Yeah, when we were in high school. The other kids were grown. This was an experiment. There were four older ones, eight years, and then my little sister and I. During us, dad's like, “Trash in, trash out. Clean or somebody speaking about.” We all know this. He took all the TVs. I was probably in middle school. He took him out of the house and said, “No more TVs in the house.” Could you imagine if you did that now? He's like, “Read.” We read more than we typically read, but it was autobiographies, biographies, and history. I like science fiction, so I did a lot of CS Lewis, Isaac Asimov, and stuff like that.
I read most of Isaac. Most of the books, I don't understand how seminal that work is to the videos being made now. They haven't read it, so they assume, “George Lucas created all this.” No, Lucas is exceedingly brilliant and well-read. I read his biography as a matter of fact and Spielberg. I’m talking about leadership here, and I'm the marketing guy. Jack is third in his class at Harvard. I'm not taking anything from Dr. Canfield. That's not my goal. My goal is to say he was the inside. Both of us are good writers. On the outside, I went and interviewed the 101 bestselling fiction-nonfiction authors. I didn't ask them how to write. I know how to do that. I asked them, “How do you market?”
I put it together as a wad of business plans because I said, “In what I teach in my book course, which your assistant said I get to talk to you about, I say you write a great book. You chase greatness, but then 90% of it is marketing and selling.” I spend my time doing, how to do marketing, and selling it because that's what I studied. That's what I've mastered. That's why I've sold more books than anybody. People said, “You cannot sell the Bible.” I said, “Watch this.” I did Chicken Soup for the Soul Bible, and we sold 70,000 a week at Walmart because I figured out what to do. It’s a purple cover so it didn't scare people. It did little stories to get into the big story. You ought to think of the marketplace.
I want to talk more about writing the book. You know by reading a biography or an autobiography, dad did that because he's like, “I know Lincoln more than his mother knows him.” Entrepreneur’s minds go a mile a minute. We can probably juggle 50 plates at a time, whether we should or not is debatable. The next price he talks about, Mark, is abandonment. How do you stay hyper-focused? The bigger you get, the new levels, new devils. How do you stay on point, not get pulled off to mission drift? How do you stay focused on what you need to do? That is how you have become successful. You cannot do it without that focus. What does abandonment mean to you?
You ask all these questions that are deep and multi-level. I wrote a book called The Power of Focus and I said, “What you can do is you’ve got to do it like a best of eight tennis tournament where these two play, and then that one goes. These two play and then that goes when you put it out.” You figure out, “What is the driver’s driver that if you get the driver, you get everything else?” For example, we haven't sold one million of this yet, but I want to sell one million before Christmas. We put a new sign on here, “Over a million sold,” because mine is visually oriented.
My wife and I were looking at it. You put it on the mirror in your office and in your home. In the old days, Jack and I had it in our offices and home for us being number one. We whited out Scott Peck’s name and put ours on the New York Times bestseller list. We put it on our office mirrors because you look at the mirror when you're doing makeup or shaving and the brand's into the brain and edge of the fabric you’re buying.
You're there before you get there because, in Neville’s great book, Resurrection, he says, “You've got to live in the assumption of the wish fulfilled.” You've got to be there before you get there. Visualizing is realizing. I did a whole set of tapes that anyone could listen to. I'm good at it. I visualize and imagine that I could be where I am. I know I still want to do a billion books. The only time I could feel abandoned is if I abandoned myself. That's one level. A different level though is two of our daughters are adopted, so I champion the book, Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul.
The first line I wrote was, “I want every kid to be a loved kid.” We’ve helped ChildHelp.org. They've been around way before I showed up. The two little ladies that started at the Bob Hope show and they’re little starlets in a TV show you won't necessarily remember, Ozzie and Harriet. They dated the two boys, Ricky Nelson and David. They were superstars. They're with Bob Hope in Japan and all the servicemen left kids of careless parentage. Let's do it in English so everyone knows what I'm talking about here. I have a vocabulary that's unstoppable. I love vocabulary.
They adopted those eleven kids and got the whole military to help out, paid, rebuild the orphanage, and do stuff that you can't do. Many years later, we're still doing it. They've helped 10.5 million kids get out of abuse, neglect, and sex trafficking. These two little ladies, we put them in our book, Ask!, so you can read about them. Sara O'Meara and Yvonne Fedderson. They're diminutive in height, so they are Earth angels. When they come up to me, I get to bend down to hug them. I look like Shaq next to them.
I love when you talk about the tournament because a lot of people get frozen like, “I'm not sure what the right answer is.” It's like, “Just start doing anything,” because stuff is either going to rise to the top or you’re going to go, “We’ve got to stop doing that.” I've never thought of it in terms of brackets and seeing what gets to it.
That's what I put in Power of Focus because I bracket everything. You said, “You've got all these books fighting each other.” My books don't fight each other. Like what your dad did and what I believe, I'll do one of the guys, your dad and I read James Allen. I'm sure he threw that at you, As a Man Thinketh. I can't imagine anyone in the Jones family not knowing that book title. He was a poet laureate of great heights. I can do his poetry if you want.
The point is, what is the bracket that makes it for me? All media is shut off to normal authors. You said to go through the good, the bad, and the ugly. Our publisher, we had three major houses we're with and it breaks my heart that I did three books with Random House where I got paid $1 million each and they've laid off everybody because they're closed. I’d do the metaphor and I'm going to tell you the problem. The metaphor is if I put a tourniquet on my arm and it constricts the blood flow totally, the arm ultimately withers and it falls off. That's what closed down economies do. The scientist is looking at one thing only, and we can't look at one thing. This is a multi-variable problem. We got to open up the economy. We got to open up trade again. That's what caused the depression from 1929 to 1939. They closed on the economy, you can't. There are four kinds of evil that are trying to do that.
Our publisher calls and says, “Crystal and Mark, I’ve got to tell you that the bookstores aren't opening. Barnes & Noble aren't paying your bills because they can't even pay their real estate bills. You're not going to get distributed,” because we were going to do the twenty biggest bookstores. I can name them because I've been to them before. It's not like this would be the first time on this rodeo. I said, “What?” He says, “You're going to have to do something. I can pull back your book. Can we do it?” “No, you don't ever pull back my book. The world needs my books.”
If you'll forgive me for being a little in alignment with God, and I am. My wife and I pray and meditate for an hour first thing every morning. When we were falling in love, we're at Mother's Market. It’s definitively remembered when we lived back in Newport. A little man of the cloth was sitting next to us said, “You guys are so in love. Do you mind if I tell you something?” I said, “Okay.” He said, “I’m the head of Billy Graham Ministries. Here's what we learned in 70 years of work with Billy.” I said, “I love Dr. Graham. He's a friend.” He says people that pray aloud together, stay together and marriages work. My wife who prayed in church and prayed in groups would never pray out loud. We did it and it works. I'm recommending it as one thing we put in Ask! because it is important to do it.
My publisher calls and says, “I don't know what's going to do it.” I started listening to podcasts when I'm spinning. You get tired of listening to the ladies that say, “Push harder. You’ve got to go 120 revolutions a minute.” I'm sweating so hard. I didn't know your eyelids could sweat outside but that's how much you sweat. You get melted down. I'm a lifetime bicycle racer so I was fine with it. The point is, I said, “No, I'll figure out a way to sell,” because adversity is opportunity. Yin and yang, a 6,000-year-old said that crisis equals opportunity. We are in the biggest crisis ever. This isn't a question mark. If it's a question for you, you’re not alive or awake. That's the biggest opportunity ever.
I said, “If it is, then I'm going to figure out how to do it.” Now, I say that podcasts, like you’re doing, are the new television/radio. Podcasts are 1950s when TV, ABC, NBC, and CBS started. We're there now. You say, “Give me a break. Why is it true?” Joe Rogan got $100 million to go to Spotify. He’s not alone, that’s going to happen a lot, I predict. We're having a breakthrough and people are switching from Facebook, which is saying, “We get to decide whether you tell the truth or you tell a lie.” Five hundred major people are switching and saying, “We're going to podcast because this is crazy. We're going to go to individuals,” like you, me, and us.
Leadership Success: Technology today allows leaders to take care of 100% of humanity.
I thank you, God, because there's always a way. That's one of the things every leader has got to know. There's always away and it's not going to be obvious to most people. We start doing podcasts. We're doing 4 or 5 a day. We did one as early as 7:00 in the morning. I got another right after so we can't stay forever. In her bursting, what's happened is that, not only did I learn about podcasting, but now we know about guys like Jeffrey Hayzlett, who does the C-Suite. We got the biggest podcasters and group. If you keep working, you find out what the market is. I'm going to talk about that as leadership. I’ve just got to give the preface here. There's a podcasting newsletter and magazine. Did you know that?
No, I did not.
I’ll introduce you to the guy. He's got us on as a feature but he's so busy. He didn't have us on until August 27, 2020. Relative to some people who are reading this months from now, you're going to go, “That’s past. I can go back and watch Mark on Facebook or somewhere.” You can, and God bless. You'll like it. The point I'm making as Bucky Fuller taught me a gazillion things. One of which was he was a systems theorist. He said, “Every system has an inside and outside.”
This finishes a story I started and didn't finish the loop. I'm glad you're letting me wax on here. Inside and outside, I started outside the podcasting system. In a few months, I'm becoming a master of podcasting. That's why people are starting to call Crystal and Mark, the king and queen of podcasting. As far as I know, and our publisher can't believe it because our book sales are going like that and everybody else was sinking. I'm saying, “All of us need to do this.” If you've got good ideas and you understand what Christ said. The greatest amongst you is a servant of all. Not servant of 1, 2, or yourself but servant of all, then you don't get to quit. That's a retirement thing.
Back to that weekend about Lucas. When I read his book and I read Spielberg's book in one weekend, they'd made $800 million on ET but they made $1.5 billion on licensing. I went into Jack's office, back then he was in Culver City. I was in Santa Barbara. I went to Jack's house and said, “We are going to license books. Nobody has ever done it and I'm going to lead it.” He said, “What do you know about licensing?” I said, “Jack, this much. Zero.” Bucky taught me everything is a system and it has an inside and an outside. We're outside but it's a definite system. It has a beginning and an end. I'm going to know everything about it within a year just because I'm going to monster mash it, and we did.
I've sold $2 billion worth of books so far and made more. I've done $1 billion worth of licensing when everyone said you couldn't license stuff in books. The best example is when I was a little kid, I wanted my own bicycle. I sold Christmas cards. I read Boy Scout Life magazine and said, “You could sell Christmas cards on consignment.” I’d come up to neighbors like you and say, “Miss Tracey, I'm earning my own bicycle. Would you like to invest in one box of Christmas cards or two? How many would you buy?”
Four. There is no option not to buy.
That's why I said it's either yes or yes. I sold the most ever with this company called Gibson Greeting. Many years later, they come into my office in their little golf stream and say, “We love what Chicken Soups do. We see that you're the top licensing here and here. Would you write Christmas cards for us?” I go, “Yeah.” They came to Mark and not Jack so not only did we do it, we sold 897,000 Christmas cards. We're competing with Walmart. If you told me I could do that 35 years later, I would have I said, “Come on, Tracey. What were you thinking? Why would I do that?” Jack never believed it. He may not cop to the fact that I discovered this opportunity and did it because he got half of everything. We’re 50-50 partners. I promise you that's the way it came down.
We'll talk more about the books thing at the end. Last, vision. People you ran with Buckminster Fuller and Clarence Thomas and you're like, “I can never have that,” but my dad always said that vision is seeing what needs to be done and doing it just. I love that. When Bucky breaks it down to everything is a system. He's right. That was my dad. He was like, “Yes, you can have the motivation but you see what needs to be done,” and then it’s inch by inch life's a cinch. You map out the system. How do you set your vision? How do you grow your vision?
I love the multiplicity of players. First of all, the richest man of all time is worth $6 trillion. Solomon said, “Without vision, we perish.” What does that mean? In English transliterated, it means with vision, we flourish. I have a vision that I’m going to sell one billion books. If you go online and look at my critics, their argument is, “No one's ever sold a billion books so you can't.” Think about it, if no one could sell 1.5 million in half a year then no one could sell 5 million then no one gets 10 million a year. No one could sell 50 million a year. I've done all that. Personally, I'm telling you unequivocally, whether I'm alive or dead, a billion books will get sold and I plan on being alive. That's that part.
Everybody needs a vision. I've redefined then the next word is a system. I love acronyms, as did your daddy. It’s Save Yourself Time, Energy, and Money. That's what the SYSTEM does. You figure out what the system is and a system in broadcasting, for me, is that when we're done with the show, I'm going to say, “Tracey, I want you to recommend me to three other people that I'd do podcast with and write a nice letter of favorable intent.” We'll get 6, 8, 10, or 12 letters to other people, and then we'll sort through it. We'll put it through the values system that we got. You're trying to get to the people that I respect, like I love, respect, admire, and trust you, your dad, and your family. The last part, the story. In Chicken Soup, what was your dad's exact quote about vision?
That vision is just seeing what needs to be done and doing it because a lot of people will see it, but they don't put any execution plans into it.
That's real wisdom. Einstein, I studied him because Bucky was his best student as far as I'm concerned. Some people would argue that but that's not the day's discussion, I get to say whatever I want. Bucky would say, “Genius is making the esoteric, the impossible, and the confounding simple so everybody can understand it.” The best story we have on this is Jim Stovall, who your dad introduced me to. I don't know if you know that.
I didn’t know that.
I’m selling fifteen million books a year and your dad calls me and says, “Mark, I need you to write a foreword to a book.” I said, “If I miss one aperture and is swinging a revolving door going in, my day is gone. I have hardly time, Charlie, to take a breath.” He said, “No, you're going to read this book called The Ultimate Gift.” I said, “Charlie, if it was anyone else I knew and then you want me to write a foreword and endorsement for the back, I'd be hard-pressed. My publishers got us to twelve books a year, which is way too that many.” I'm trying to mock him out of it. He said, “No, you're going to do me one more favor.” I go, “I’ll do you one more favor. I love you and you've been good to me.” He adores my books and did all kinds of stuff. Even sold my books sometimes from platforms. I thought, “That’s cool.”
He’d make fun of me in front of those giant audiences with a chicken soup and hold it up. It was all in good spirit because your dad loved to kick people in front of the audience. You can get away with stuff. I read the book and I am enamored. I want to tell you this guy's story that you may not know. At nineteen years old, he is fast and strong. He has endurance. His whole goal in life is one only. “I'm going to be an NFL player.” Do you know that?
No.
He’s recruited as an NFL player. They do the medical. The doctor comes back and says, “If there's any worse news I've ever had to give, six months from now, you're going to be absolutely, totally, completely blind. You'll never see again.” Jimmy, as he was called by his parents, self-incarcerated in a 9x12 room. By the way, if you haven't had him on, you’ve got to interview him about leadership. He's a genius giant. He's locked in his room and he's got three things. He's got a television, telephone, and radio. He's complaining at his parents and said, “I can’t have a blind meeting, Jimmy. This is stupid.” He goes down and it's an echo chamber of negativity.
Nobody gets to watch over fifteen minutes a media day. You’ve got to shut it off, watch positive podcasts, and read books like I write self-help action books that help you to be self-determining as a leader because that's the critical leadership. Self-determination to action as far as I'm concerned. That is what I believe, teach, and practice. Millions of people have done well around the world. I’ll finish his story. He's sitting at the blind meeting next to Kathy, who is a blind stenographer for a law firm, and he said, “I used to love to watch movies and I'd love to see somebody throw a right hook but now that I'm blind, I can't see it anymore. Somebody ought to do something about that.”
As a Man Thinketh
This goes with your dad's line. This is the whole leverage of my book. Everybody can do something about some problem they got and cache it. They can find the goldmine inside it. The Acres of Diamonds, Russell Conwell who had founded Temple University. He says that and Kathy says, “We’re somebody. Why can't we do it? I'm somebody. Why can't I do something?” He looked at her and all sudden, he got it. They created, in case you don't know it, Narrative Television. They have 40 million people a month at $10 each. This is one of the biggest streaming services in the world.
I wrote the endorsement and a foreword to his book because I was blown away. I said, “This book is wonderful and critical that it must become a movie.” Jim says, “If I lived to be 100 years old, there won't be a day you're not in my prayers. Thank you because I made $100 million with the movie.” The last line in his story in our book, Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny says, “I now write books that I can't read. I now make movies that I can't see.” Everybody that’s saying, “You don't understand how awful it is. Poor me and I'm such a victim.” The goal here is to take victimhood and turn it into victorhood. I've never said that before, but it's an okay word. By the way, when I ran for student political office, it was Mark of Victory with Hanson.
We've gone through the four prices. Anything else, Mark, that you want to share with leaders out there? Some of the top leadership points that you would like to hit back on.
Most importantly, everyone needs to write your own book. I need you to go to MarkVictorHansen.com, my website, and watch the videos and decide whether you can write it now. There are levels that you write. We've got a new book coming out called Speed Write Your Autobiography. Here's the point. When you write, you become wiser, defined, refined, and you read more, which is what your dad and I want. We want everyone to read more because, “All readers aren't leaders, but all leaders are readers,” as John Kennedy said. We need vital, vibrant, and aware leadership. We don't just need intelligence anymore. That's not good enough.
We've got to have wisdom. It's got to be eclectic wisdom like Winston Churchill and some of the greats of our time, who are great speakers, but they're also phenomenal leaders and superb writers. Bucky, in 1917 during World War I, he helped write some Churchill stuff and said, “We had to go over everything fifteen times before you'd accept it.” It's important that you understand. If you write your book, you understand who you are, who will help you and won’t help you, and who you are in God so you can have the fullness of your destiny manifested. That's where I look closely.
Mark, where do people get ahold of you? How can they get your books? How do they reach out to you and connect with you? You're everywhere.
They go to MarkVictorHansen.com. If they want to write to me personally, they go to Reception@MarkVictorHansen.com. You can get the books on Amazon because they are the big purveyor of books. Tell them you want it in a hurry because they have suddenly made books non-essential because they're getting food, products, and other stuff, especially Ask! You’ve got to have this too. The first thing I do is 101 reasons why to write a book. The second thing is how to make money starting tomorrow, which is perfect for you because it tells how to prosper doing interviews.
It goes through all the ways to market because 90% is marketing. Last but not least, I teach how to brand to command. That's the book, but the virtual course takes you in deep and then once a month, you have a telephone call with me. I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Inclusive of, most people have lousy titles on their books. The third chapter is how to write a killer title. This is a killer title. Ask! is a killer title. Up is a killer title. Chicken soup is what your mother or grandmother gave you when you get sick? Didn't Gloria give you chicken soup if you got sick?
Yup. She made it.
Your mom was the best. She was always superb to me. Your dad was great.
He knew he could beat up on you so that's why he loved you.
He knew that we would drive around in a car to different meetings together and we would have extensive dialogues on anybody that he happened to be reading it on. If he was driving, you'd say, “You read this chapter and I want you to tell me what it means.” Everybody had to do that with their kids or their mentees.
I remember that all the time. What a way to grow. Don't sit there on a drive and let people just sit there and play on their devices. Talk, read, discuss, apply, and repeat. What I look forward to when we have a gathering is the conversation around the meal.
It’s the mental meal.
The meal was good, but I’ll eat anything. I was in the military so all we eat is tin cans like a billy goat, but I want the deep dialogue. The food that sticks with you.
You’ve tamed the soul. Your father and I read out loud to each other all the time, and forgive me for saying it. You and I are on the same page, but the world is on the wrong page because we'll change channels until we find something interesting to bore ourselves with. Like your dad took the TVs out of the house, it lowers your IQ. We need to have a lot of Qs go. We need to have our CQ, our Curiosity Quotient goes up when you read. Our IQ, our Imagination Quotient. I've never seen that before go up. Your WQ, your Wisdom Quotient. I like these things. You allowed me to. I’m thinking ahead and done.
Here's another one. My book is called SPARK. Your SQ, your Spiritual Quotient. I hear about the IQ and the EQ, but you've got to get that SQ in there because otherwise, that's what ignites you.
Soul is why we did Chicken Soup for the Soul. America was in pain. The same thing with SPARK because the way I define soul is that inner spark that lights you up and enlightens you so you can light and share with others. That's what you're doing, Tracey. It's more now than ever. By the way, whatever number I give you percentage-wise, who knows with fake news. Fifty percent of the people aren't using their soul. They don't even think they have a soul and I go, “Everything has a soul.” They call it Mother Earth because Mother Earth is a soul. We’ve got to take care of it.
One of my 100-year goals is we’ve got to plant 24 billion trees. Three plants, one if you were born, one if you die like in Israel, and if you ever fell in love, you should plant a tree. If you're a serial lover, then you should do the forest. Jack and I planted 250,000 trees. If you go into Yellowstone Park, the sign says, “Hansen and Canfield and Chicken Soup for the Soul planted 250,000 trees.” I've used up many books. I have an obligation to plant the tree. I had to drag Jack and our publisher into doing it. They said, “We don't care.” I said, “You’ve got to care if you want to keep breathing. How do you live long and prosper?”
We’ve got to keep paying it back. God made the earth and we're supposed to be taking care of it. Like animals, good stewards of it. I don't know what to say, Mark. I can't thank you enough for the time, wisdom, and realness. You've touched many things on many different levels. I can't wait to get this out to our audience. I want to thank our tremendous readers. Thank you for reading. Remember to hit the subscribe button. Follow us and do us the solid of a five-star rating. We would be tremendously thankful for that. Thank you, everybody. Never stop paying the price of leadership and have a tremendous rest of the day.
Important Links:
Amazon - Ask! The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny
The Adam Carolla Show - Mark Victor Hansen and Crystal Dwyer Hansen’s interview
About Mark Victor Hansen
Mark Victor Hansen is probably best known as the co-author for the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series and brand, setting world records in book sales, with over 500 millions books sold. Mark also worked his way into a worldwide spotlight as a sought-after keynote speaker, and entrepreneurial marketing maven, creating a stream of successful people who have created massive success for themselves through Mark’s unique teachings and wisdom. With his endearing charismatic style, Mark captures his audience’s attention as well as their hearts. Having spoken to over 6000 audiences world-wide with his one-of-a-kind technique and masterful authority of his work, time and again he continues to receive high accolades from his audiences as one of the most dynamic and compelling speakers and leaders of our time.
His credentials include a lifetime of entrepreneurial success, alternative energy pursuits, in addition to an extensive academic background. Many of Mark’s ideas about the comprehensive XL Cover Article_Page_1success of all humanity came from his years of undergraduate study with the famous Buckminster Fuller, one of Albert Einstein’s greatest students.
His credentials include a lifetime of entrepreneurial success, alternative energy pursuits, in addition to an extensive academic background. Many of Mark’s ideas about the comprehensive XL Cover Article_Page_1success of all humanity came from his years of undergraduate study with the famous Buckminster Fuller, one of Albert Einstein’s greatest students.
He is also a prolific writer with many popular books such as the Power of Focus, The Aladdin Factor, Dare to Win, One Minute Millionaire which has inspired and helped thousands of people the world over to become millionaires. Mark has also made a profound influence through his extensive library of audio programs, video programs and enriching articles in the areas of big thinking, sales achievement, publishing success and personal and professional development.
Mark’s energy and exuberance travels still further through mediums such as television (Oprah, CNN and The Today Show), print (TIME, US News & World Report, USA Today, The New York Times and Entrepreneur) and countless radio and newspaper interviews as he assures people everywhere that “with the right principles and mentors, you can easily create the life of your dreams.”
Mark is dedicated to helping young people become financially literate, and to turn their entrepreneurial dreams into business achievements. He wrote The Richest Kids in America to teach entrepreneurial leadership and financial literacy to kids around the world and loves speaking to young people about their futures.
Mark finds his greatest joy now, in his soul-mate relationship with his wife, best friend, and partner, Crystal Dwyer Hansen. He says a true soul mate relationship allows you to express all that you were meant to be, at your best. Crystal and Mark tour the world together speaking and inspiring audiences. They enjoy spending cherished time with their combined 5
children and 6 precious grand-children and try to include them whenever possible, into their travels around the world.
Mark serves as of the Chairman of a suite of companies called the Hansen Family Companies, co-chairman of Metamorphosis Energy, and is the co-owner and co-founder of Natural Power Concepts.
Mark Victor Hansen is an enthusiastic crusader of what’s possible and is driven to “make the world work for 100 percent of humanity.”