Chicken Soup for the Soul: Goals & Growth W/ Mark Victor Hansen
Welcome to Journey to the Sunny Side, the podcast where we have thoughtful conversations to explore the science of habits, uncover the secrets to mindful living, and of course, your own mindful drinking journey. Welcome back to part two of my conversation with my friend, Mark Victor Hansen, co creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul and author of over a billion books sold worldwide, including his latest, Ask, The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny, and classics like One Minute Millionaire and The Power of Focus. In part one, we explored his early inspirations and how he transformed challenges into purpose. Today, we go deeper into the power of habit, the role of mindsets in shaping your reality, and how to build a life so meaningful you won't wanna numb it away. Let's jump back in.
Speaker 1:You know what I wanna know about is the history because you mentioned it, we were talking about goals. And I'm gonna go a little off script of what we were kinda wanting or what we talked about covering, but I think that this would be a really interesting story. And, you know, I've read some of your biography, but I read sort of the later years, and I don't know all the little ins and outs of the story of, like, where you started in the origin story as far as writing chicken soup for the soul, how you met Jack, how you guys pitch those books? Can you share a little bit of that with me? I mean,
Speaker 2:I want to. Yeah. So in nineteen seventy two and three, I'd been in graduate school, the smartest guy to planet as far as I was concerned, doctor Buckminster Fuller. He invented spherical buildings made out of triangles, geodesic domes. He did rolling needles.
Speaker 2:He did he did all these super cool inventions, wrote 40 books. I was with him seven years. And just sat in the energy of a genius. Right? And he was Einstein's best student as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2:And and Bucky would say all of us are born geniuses and get unplugged. So I use the affirmation every day. Back to you're asking about affirmations. I said I'm a genius, and I'm learning to apply my wisdom. I'm a genius.
Speaker 2:I learned to apply my wisdom, and then I'm a genius as a writer, and I apply my writing genius a wisdom. I'm a genius as a promoter of books, and I apply my marketing wisdom. Okay. So that easy to do as an affirmation. It seems to me, and I do it all the time.
Speaker 2:And then it wakes up your inner knower because you're telling yourself what to do. The you gotta make a decision in conscience into the subconscious. So I I go bankrupt in nineteen seventy two and three so fast that I had to check a book out of the library, how to go bankrupt by yourself. Because I built the Washington Criatic Club. I built botanical gardens.
Speaker 2:I built aviaries. I'm 26 years old doing grossing 2,000,000 a year, and I think I'm I'm hot. Man, I am a coolest dude ever. And I went bankrupt because the oil embargo hit, and I was building out of plastic at exactly the wrong time. Right?
Speaker 2:PVC tubes. Anyhow, so my best worst experience for six months then I I back to that question. I said, because I we teach and ask. You ask yourself, others, and God. That's the three channels of asking.
Speaker 2:So I'm saying, okay, God. Look. I'm sleeping in a sleeping bag in front of another guy's room. I made a $100 a month here in Hicksville, Long Island, New York. This ain't doing too good.
Speaker 2:So do you want me to just kill myself? What do you want me to do? And God didn't answer the way I thought he'd answer. God answered this way. He said, what do you wanna do?
Speaker 2:Did I hear that right? What do I wanna do? Tell you what I wanna do. I wanna be a professional speaker and have a ball doing it and love helping and talking to people that care about things that matter that make a life changing difference. So then go do it.
Speaker 2:So the next morning, I'm having breakfast with my four roommates in Hicksville, And I say, hey. Any of you guys know anybody that's not a white haired, a cotton top like me? Everybody that that's young, because back then I was 26, that that really is speaking or somewhere near my age, that's not a medical doctor, not a lawyer, not a professional. And the guy said, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Here's here's my ticket. There's a guy probably ten years older named Chip Collins, and he's speaking out in Hopong, New York. Well, remember bankruptcy could took everything. So I had this beat up old port beat up Volkswagen, a $400 permanently air conditioned pitted with Volkswagen race out there.
Speaker 2:There's about 500 people in the room. Now remember, there's bad times in America. Interest rate is depends on where you're at 28% on real estate on Long Island, and nothing selling. So I walk into a room that is despondent, just consolent, depressed, upset, and angry. Right?
Speaker 2:And they've all got a a license to sell real estate, but lace it doesn't matter. No one's buying at that moment, they thought. So Chip comes in, and he is buoyant. He's bouncing off the walls. He is funny.
Speaker 2:He's rhetorical. He gets them all he changes their spirit. Remember what you just said. You change your mind. You change your life.
Speaker 2:You change your thinking. You change your life. The Bible says, as a man or woman thinketh in his or her heart, soul, so is he or she. At the end of the talk, back then, next thing you're gonna say is hard to believe, but there's no such thing as a microphone or a handheld or a lavalier. And I and Chip's voice is burnt out.
Speaker 2:So I go up and I say, hey, Chip. I wanna take your lunch. He said, what do you want, kid? I said, I wanna do what you do. He said, no.
Speaker 2:You don't, kid. Go get a real job. This is impossible. You'll never make it. And Chip had been the number one salesman at at you know, Kodak is up in Rochester, New York, and I can tell you through the whole story because I read I've read 6,000 biographies.
Speaker 2:I've read Eastman's biography. He even cut the house in half when his wife wanted to divorce and separated her by doing just Cool story. But but Chip is so good. He is ambidextrous. Now before I tell what that means, it means you can use both hands.
Speaker 2:But the joke is the guy saw the guy who's ambidextrous and says, man, I'd get my right arm to do that. But Chip, with his right hand, would write whatever the speaker said when he was the number one salesman at Kodak. And then with his left hand, he wrote what he would have said to teach everyone how to sell and says, I'm gonna go do what that guy does. And he was a miserable, miserable failure at the beginning. And and so he's out of money, and he's got a wife.
Speaker 2:He's got two kids. And it's just not selling because no one's buying it in a real estate market, which you know, the biggest money market. Like, back then, was 6,000,000,000,000. Now it's 12,000,000,000,000 or 14,000,000,000,000 a year real estate transactions, commercial, residential. Anyhow, so and if somebody out there looks up the number and it's different, that's what I remember.
Speaker 2:So that I I just wanna discount disclaim something. Anyhow, so I take Chip to lunch, and he says, look. If you stay out of real estate, I own this for boroughs, and I train everybody. He was training Barbara Corcoran, the the woman on Shark Tank at the time to become we're 60,000,000. So, you know, we had a lot of friends that that are sort of amazing that are trained by the same people because everybody needs to think positive, read positive, hang out with a mentor, a coach, or somebody that can help them get from where they are to where they are, from drunk to sober, from unsuccessful to vastly successful.
Speaker 2:Right? And if you're gonna be successful, be vastly successful, exponentially successful. We'll talk to that in a minute. So he tells me the four things to do, and he said, you gotta call on 10 people. Nine will buy.
Speaker 2:One will. Next day, I'm in that little Volkswagen parking two blocks away walking to this office that has a giant Cadillac out in front of it, and then I I see that this guy's gonna be on the Sixth Floor. It's with Metropolitan. I go up there. There's nobody in there.
Speaker 2:There's no front desk, so I just walked to the boss's office, the back office, which is what you'd expect. Guy was jovial. He was happy. His name was Tony. Big Tony, he called himself.
Speaker 2:He weighed four hundred and fifty pounds naked with his handpan and half empty. We just we really hit it off. We had what's called a Vulcan mind meld, and we really liked each other. I'm with him for at least an hour, and I said, well, you know, so I'm gonna do the I'm a professional speaker. Now I wasn't, but that's what Chip said.
Speaker 2:Say you're a professional speaker, and then you do meetings and you need them and you want an outsider to come in and inspire your people, and I'm gonna raise you 10%, which if I'd really been smart today, I would only do it if I get 10% of the company's increase over whatever they do and and into perpetuity. Right? But back then, I was glad to take a salary. And, Chip, remember, in '74, I did $25 an hour. So four seminars, a $100 paid in advance.
Speaker 2:And he says, okay. I'll take it and start next Tuesday, which was not far off. I said, good. You wanna write the check or have your secretary write? And nobody's at the front desk, so I'm clear.
Speaker 2:He said, I'm a big boy. I can write the check. I said, great. Great. I'll take it.
Speaker 2:I and then he did the thing of all things that would just blew my socks off before he says it. Look. Ledmark, he had a rail gravelly voice. He said, here's the directly to all the guys. I'm the number one guy and the number one insurance company, Metropolitan in the world.
Speaker 2:You call all these guys. You got it? You tell them. Big Tony told them they gotta hire you or they gotta deal with me because you and I are best friends. You got a kid?
Speaker 2:I mean, like, I felt I was like was like, mafia guy grabbed my hands, and you're gonna go do this back when I was building domes. Those guys say, are you gonna finish the dome in a week? I said, no, sir. I couldn't make one of those things in six months. Once we measure it, once we get the building permit, I I'm not doing anything without a building permit because then I go to jail.
Speaker 2:And and, you know, I dealt with a lot of mobsters, and and they built a lot of structures with me. And it was great fun, but something I gladly talk about now, but not then. But this guy was so amazing that he gave me the director. Well, no. I had a gold mine, and I I was doing four talks a day, a thousand talks.
Speaker 2:I know I'm over answering, but I gotta get the foundation. And then what we did is the first book I did was so published because everybody at the insurance companies, agencies, I was doing little talk, six people to 50 people, four times a day. I'd start at six in morning, do one at ten, one at two, one at six or 08:00 at night and drive around. I was the happiest guy. And and back then, we had giant tape recorders.
Speaker 2:I'd be listening to a tape driving my little Volkswagen until I made so much money in two weeks that I bought a brand new Chrysler Cordoba car with Corinthian leather. I had, like when Chip got back, I had 28 times four talks booked and all that money, and I thought, I'm back. And and I've never gone down since then, but it was it was great. Anyhow, so we did the first self published book. People said you gotta do stories, so I started telling heart touching, soul penetrating stories.
Speaker 2:Best stories in the world are in the life insurance business because they're selling an intangible. They're selling the dad, mom, or somebody's the boss, somebody in the company is gonna die. And and, I put all those stories together, we start telling them. And then selling product, you do a heart touching SoulPen drawing story at the end of a talk. Everybody does a table rush, and they go buy whatever books you've got.
Speaker 2:You know, like, we got if you got kids, you gotta have the teenage old, the richest kids in America, they got that way or your future car, whatever I was selling that day, right, or chicken soup. In in later on. Jack and I were on a meeting with 6,000 people down in San Diego. I may be going too far, but, Jack
Speaker 1:You know, I how'd you meet Jack? Well, I have two questions to ask you. Well, number one is, I know they money is not the number one driver for you. So what was driving you at that time that, like, made you so happy?
Speaker 2:I was just a
Speaker 1:okay. Yeah. And I also wanted to know when when you you and Jack are the, the famous duo. So, like, where did that start?
Speaker 2:What was the So we're talking down at at, this health conference down in San Diego. I was kicked off. He's, no. He was kicked off. I was tie up.
Speaker 2:And after I've signed all the books and everything I can, and he came up to me and bought a package and said, do you know who I am? I said, yeah. You're doctor Jack Canfield. Third in your class at Harvard, you have sold 370,000 copies of a book, a 101 ways, Bill Self esteem in a Classroom. And I went through his whole Vita, and he said, how do you know that?
Speaker 2:I said, for some reason, I have perfect retention on biographies. I don't know why god gave me that, but I love biographies. I read them. I'm an omnivorous reader, and I read yours. I just I think you're amazing.
Speaker 2:And you came out as a Latin scholar. You came out of a nowhere state called West Virginia. Said, don't say that about my state. I said, well, well, few would say that about your state, Jack. And and that you're the smartest guy in the state, that's how you got to Harvard.
Speaker 2:And good for you, sir. And he said, well, good. Let's go to dinner. And then he said, teach me how to make money because I'm only making a $100 a year, and you're making millions a year. And and so I I taught him, and his wife was a doctor, and I I love Georgia a lot because we'd stayed in each other's houses.
Speaker 2:This got going. But I told you, you gotta put your goals on your ceiling. Most importantly, you gotta carry around a little three by five card saying what you're gonna do. Then you need to put it on the mirror so when you're shaving or women, when they're doing it, when they're shaving their legs or putting on makeup, they read their goals whenever it is. I'm so happy and grateful.
Speaker 2:I'm doing x by x. Right? And our goal when we started was we're so happy and grateful that we're selling a million and a half in a year and a half. So we came out June 1993. By Christmas ninety four, a year and half later, we'd sold a million threes.
Speaker 2:We were 200,000 short. But then the next year, I wrote, I'm so happy and grateful. We're gonna sell 5,000,000. Now our publisher said, look, guys. You're a one book wonder.
Speaker 2:This will never work. 5,000,000. You guys are pissing in the wind. I hope that doesn't offend any of your people. But I'm telling you what he said to us.
Speaker 2:You ain't gonna do it. And next year, we sold 5,000,000, and we sold 10,000,000 a year because you read the gold card. You brand it into your brain. You add it into the fabric of your become what you think about. So, Jack, I I taught all these stories, and he put them together.
Speaker 2:Now we're at the inside edge where both members everybody knows anyone, you know, was on the board of the inside edge with Diana Van Walnut, world's greatest cook book saleswoman, and we ultimately did chicken soup for this little cookbook with Diana. I don't know if I got one here. Somewhere I got one. Anyhow, then we became number one with that. It was great.
Speaker 2:And we even did better than that. We're on QVC, which is we're going back on again, and we sold 35,000 copies of chicken soup of the sold cookbook in fifteen minutes at 02:30 in the morning. If you told me people were watching TV, I was always asleep at that hour. Right? I would have said, you know, you're a really nice guy, but I think you're nuts.
Speaker 2:That ain't bashful. But you know? And then they said, well, you wanna sign them? Said, no. No.
Speaker 2:No. I'm not signing them. I talked to you a week. You only signed $500. But, yeah, so Jack and I met.
Speaker 2:He put the stories together first. I said, you can't do it. Those are all stories I've written, and they're in my products. I own all the copyright. And he said, well, what do you wanna do?
Speaker 2:I said, well, let's do a book together, and we'll do fifty fifty. And and we tested it every which way but loose. And and then everybody turned us down. We went to New York, spent a lot of money, went everywhere, met everybody in LA at the biggest publishers, and they all said no. And even little publishers said no.
Speaker 2:And and this is
Speaker 1:Why did they say no? What were they saying?
Speaker 2:Well, some of them didn't like that I I Jack and I were wearing a lot of jewelry at the you know, I I happen to like jewelry and so does doctor Canfield. And and he said, you guys are too nicey nice. Look. We're Random House. And I I end up doing three books with Random House, get a million dollar each for them, like, minute millionaire.
Speaker 2:Wait a second. You know, if if short stories sold you guys, don't you think we'd sell them? He said, we're not doing short stories. I told you that. We're doing hard touching, soul penetrating stories, and you don't do that.
Speaker 2:We do it. And we are both talking. And then when we launched the book the first year, each of us was doing 250 talks a year, which means you're gone three hundred days a year, which is not good for family. But Mhmm. Know, it's it's the same with I'm going to Vegas.
Speaker 2:As I said, David Copperfield, who gotta claim I'm a friend. Right? He wants us to come to his museum and all that, and I can't do it this time. I'd I've already booked myself way tight before I got there to meet with a lot of people that are who's who of the world that wanna do books for this. But it was amazing that Jack and I were doing 250 talks, and we'd sell them at every talk before it oh, here's how we paid for a 120,000.
Speaker 2:We did a little slip. And it said, yes. I heard Mark or I heard Jack. And here's my credit card. Here's my name.
Speaker 2:Here's my address. Here's my phone number. Yeah. Sell it to me. And and, when it came out, the books were still cheap, $9.95.
Speaker 2:So it's $10. There was one bill. Some people gave us cash, but, you know, we didn't process the order other than the cash. Immediately, we had the credit card, and then so we had 20,000. We actually had 28,000 sold before we published the first book.
Speaker 2:And then people started reading it and saying, oh my gosh. This is in the in our business, it's called hand along. It means that you read it, you'd say to your wife, you gotta read this story. You say to your teenager, you and and we did chicken soup with a teenage soul, which just went nuts. Here's here.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't tell that story just because you asked. This chicken chip with a teenage old, first year out, sold 19,000,000. Now why? Well, we we're doing so well so fast that the head of Time Warner, Larry Kirschbaum, and I became friends. I went to every book meeting, all the called BA Book Expo America, which ultimately won that top award.
Speaker 2:60,000 people go every year or when every year. I don't know how many will go this year. But because COVID, that's changed a little bit. But I'm in in the office of Tom Warner. He said, look.
Speaker 2:I'll buy your company for $40,000,000. I said, we think we want more. Naive little me. We did get more anyhow, but not from Larry. And Larry said, look.
Speaker 2:You're doing this teenage book. You know who my daughter is? I said, Larry, I just know you. We've been together in Germany. We've traveled together.
Speaker 2:We've been in each other's houses. The the book industry is very tight. There's at any given time, there's a million books come out a year, but a 100 of us all pretty much know each other. If you're at the top, you're on the same meetings with other people, either with a publisher at at seminars or whatever. And and and we befriend each other because the media makes it look like we're all in competition to hate each other.
Speaker 2:But if there's another good writer, I read him or her and love it. I mean, isn't like I talked to about the alchemist, not even a question. That's just superb writing. A 150,000,000 copies. So anyhow, so Larry said, look.
Speaker 2:My daughter runs Nickelodeon, and here's her phone number, and I'm gonna call her and tell her you're gonna call her. You're in LA. I lived in Newport Beach at that time. And and just run up and go see her. And I said, boy, my kids would love to get slimed.
Speaker 2:They were little kids at the time. I wanna go deep on that story too. Anyhow, so we tested our book. We we believe Feedback's Breakfast of Champions, so we tested our book on 12,000 kids. Stories that we thought were a 10 out of 10.
Speaker 2:And if you really loved it and read it once and you could go tell it to three people, then it's a 10 plus plus plus. And and Jack and I had 250 stories we were convinced would work. Well, they trashed the stories, including ours because that it were written exclusively on Margaret Franz or exclusively by doctor Canfield And because we didn't put our names on it. So the story had to stand on the merit and strength of the story. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yep. And so every story in here, it every story in teenage old walks on water to a teenager. To you, maybe not. And it's you got how many kids you got? I forgot.
Speaker 2:Three. And how old are you, oldest? 13. Yeah. So this is a perfect book to go buy on Amazon or thrift books.
Speaker 2:I don't care where you buy it. Or every bookstore got them, but have them read the stories to you because it'll open up their heart, open up your heart. You'll remember what it's like to be a teenager because they're scared. They're afraid. They're not sure.
Speaker 2:They feel rejected. They they're not in the right click or whatever whatever the situation is. And so so the cute story is that my little daughter at that time was seven, Melanie. She'd sit on my lap when I did every media interview. Right?
Speaker 2:And she could pretty soon tell the story, so I put her on speaker and I'd say, would you like and if my daughter could tell the story, she's heard it so much, she could do, you know, the Boxy story or she can do I wish I had a brother like that story. And and they would cry. They go, really? So she goes with me before we go to get slimed and do the show on a Saturday. She's at the radio station with me with this guy who's interviewing her the whole time, and they interviewed interviewing me half the time and and Melanie who's a little kid that's not at the very end of the show, he says, Melanie, do you know that you just talked to 2,000,000 people?
Speaker 2:Melanie, what it is. But I wish he hadn't said that because it doesn't dawn on a kid who you're talking to or how you're talking or what's happening.
Speaker 1:That's a cute story. So, you know, you have such a so all that led up. There's all these stories that you have. What is one story when it comes to all the people's lives that you touch that kinda sticks out in your memory that you affected their lives in one way or another.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I've asked everyone to read the ask book here, but if you don't have enough money and everybody needs to get their money stuff together, you need need to read our book one minute millionaire. I'm in I'm in London talking to 7,000,000 people. And then later on, four years later, I'm on on the the biggest, podcast in London is done by my great friend now, Rob Moore. And Rob starts the podcast saying, you know, you goal shamed me.
Speaker 2:I said, oh, man. This podcast is going straight into the hole. I just blew it somehow, and I whatever. I don't even know this guy at that juncture. I mean, he was one of 7,000 people in an audience.
Speaker 2:I didn't know who he was. And I said, excuse me. I don't I wouldn't go shame anybody. I wouldn't I do I I don't think I shame anyone. I would never do it intentionally.
Speaker 2:I may do it inadvertently, but not I wouldn't ever hurt anyone's feeling if I can avoid it. It's just not my style. And he says, well, you're talking to 7,000 people, and you said you gotta have a 101 goals. And then when you get one, you don't cross out. I got the milk.
Speaker 2:I got the butter. I got the egg. You write down victory in god's highest color purple. And and and once you do that, you know, you'll have something that the bad days you go, hey. You did it before.
Speaker 2:You climbed the mountain and it hits the top, and you're gonna do it again. You're just it just pulsates. And he said, my mentor said you should have five goals and no more. And last year, I'd hit before I heard you, I I'd hit, four out of five, so I hit 90%. Something you said I gotta have a 101.
Speaker 2:Well, last year, I hit 31 of them was to make $30,000,000 in a year. And because of you, I did it. So understand, I am indebted to you. I'm thankful to you. Anything you ask me, I will gladly do.
Speaker 2:Well, he you know, people who do books with us all go on a show because it's the biggest show in Europe. And people say, well, why do you care about Europe? And you take all of us through Africa, we do all these podcasts in Africa and India. Look. You get paid the same on every book that sells.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter if it doesn't sell America. It there I I want everybody to have a shot at self help action books. That's the kind I write, the kind I'm helping you write, the kind we write with and for people. And they're everybody needs them, but only 3% of us even know they exist. Like, one of the richest guys here in Arizona, you know, a one garage door?
Speaker 2:You know Tommy Miller? Yeah. Yeah. Tommy Tommy says, boy, that guy gave me a copy of your book. I read it.
Speaker 2:I didn't even know books like this existed. And he said, I didn't read it. I devoured it. I ate it up. I said, oh, wait a second.
Speaker 2:I can ask. And if you go in his office today, he's got a wall as big as my office wall. They're probably 16 feet high by 30 feet long. And in it, it's a glass case, and it's got his new book, which we wrote with him called Elevate, but it's got Dale Carnegie, how to influence people. It's got the yay myth.
Speaker 2:It's got our book ask. It's got thinking, grow rich. And all the people that come and work for him because he had ADD, attention deficit disorder, and a teacher said, you're never gonna amount to anything. You're never gonna get a job. You'll never be any good, so don't even try.
Speaker 2:And now, you know, his company's doing a billion dollars. It's in 50 states. He's buying buying other companies, and he's smoking. And that's the kind of addiction I want everyone to get. Get a positive addiction that you're passionately on purpose about.
Speaker 2:Here's a guy who's told he couldn't learn, and then all of sudden, he gets turned on to learning and said, holy cow. I can build an empire. And now he's built an empire, but he he's got two guys last year that made a million dollars. We're helping them with book. It it just because I I I you know, when I go talk for him and talk with him and go on his podcast, I say, you you got an obligation, not to me.
Speaker 2:You don't own you. Universe owns you. You got no right to eliminate yourself, and somebody on alcohol is eliminating themselves early by despising their own body by by drowning it, I'll say, in something that is toxic to the body. And unless you're a club like you and I go to where you can go to a sweat chamber and and sweat it out in a sauna, a steam room, you know, or exercise until you, you know, purge all the bad stuff out of your body, and and you feel better when that's done. A little painful sometimes to go through any one of those three experiences, but it's it is a nice finish.
Speaker 2:Yes. But you Yeah. It feel really good about You
Speaker 1:can get out of that cycle, but it still doesn't change the mental toll that it's taking on you. Even if you start to feel better and try, it's still it's still if that doesn't align to who you're wanting to be, it's not serving you. And, you know, and this kinda dry makes me think of the something I wanted to ask you as we close, which is like, you know, you help a lot of people get in the right mental space. And if you could sit across from somebody who feels like maybe that they messed up so many times and maybe even too too far gone, and and I like this question for you because you went from one from both extremes. You went straight up, straight down, straight back up, even higher again.
Speaker 1:So what would you say to somebody like that?
Speaker 2:Look. All of us are gonna have it's it's called the vicissitudes of life. That's a big word to say. You're gonna have peak and and valleys. Peak and valleys.
Speaker 2:Peak and valleys. Everybody does. It can't be any other way. I mean, I don't know why God set it up, but that's what it is. And and the line the most important line in Genesis is what you meant for my harm, God meant for my good.
Speaker 2:You need to have that learning experience. And if you crashed and burned and you're devastated and you feel like life's spitting you out, you need to I say this, and it's got sort of a vested interest, but you can go to library and check out my books. I'm not one book more or less doesn't mean anything to me personally, so you're not feeding me. My future days are paid for. I want you to get one of my book.
Speaker 2:Read just 10 pages a day and read it first thing in the morning because that's when you set the tone of the mind. My wife has got lots of degrees, but one is she's a hypnotherapist. She shouldn't practice anymore because we're way too busy in our life. But is it you you got a hypnagogic state in the morning and a hypnopedic state at night. The bigger one is never go to bed thinking a negative thought.
Speaker 2:So tell yourself at night if you're gonna do the line we said, I'm a genius at staying sober, and I'm using my wisdom to stay sober. Right? I'm a genius at saying sober, and I'm using my wisdom to stay sober. I've never said that before, but, you know, if you did that a 100 times before you go to sleep, you're gonna figure out how to do it because your subconscious has to out picture whatever it does because back you asked about habits. Habits are just an out picturing of something you do again and again.
Speaker 2:Like, you and I can both drive a car. And the car, it's automatic. Right? You just get in other than rent a car where you gotta figure out what the tools are. But if it's your car, you know you know where you're going.
Speaker 2:Or if you learned a stick shift, then I'm sure you'd know how to do a stick shift. Is it you know, it it's automatic. Right? My little skip through all this because we think sound learning is an important thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. Yeah. I mean, what you're saying so first of all, like, the example that you gave, whatever your goal is, you could just assert some sort of version of whatever aligns to you. But for me, I know that when I'm not doing some version of what you're talking about, I I definitely feel off.
Speaker 1:Like, normally, I'm always set the intention in the morning and do gratitude in the or sorry, in the evening, do the gratitude and the planning in the morning and the reading as well. And when I'm when I'm not doing that, I notice a huge difference. But what the crazy thing is is I think that you'll probably agree is that a lot of people skip over that or dismiss it because it couldn't be that easy. It couldn't be that obvious.
Speaker 2:Well, look. You set the tone of your mind or we'll call it vibration, and then what Albert Einstein said is, once you set the vibration, you gotta have it. I don't we all know what vibration is. I grew up when there was no phones, and all of sudden, there was party line phones, and then suddenly we got a single line phone. And now we got a cell phone that has infinite 9,000,000,000 I just remember yesterday, 100,000,000 people have cell phones.
Speaker 2:It's all on different vibration. And and you go, why? And we there's it's unlimited because universe is infinite. And once you understand that, you set the vibration. What we said earlier, you set the thermostat of your beingness, your self esteem, Maxwell Maltz said in psychocybernetics' book.
Speaker 2:And then pretty soon you go deliver that. Right? If you wanna be poor, you set a low vibration. If you wanna be rich, set a high vibration. You wanna be lonely?
Speaker 2:You said, oh, I'm so lonely. And you keep programming lonely, you're gonna get lonely. If you program to I'm full of love, joy, happiness, success, prosperity, and unlimited good, and I'm meeting all the right people to get all the right right reasons and all the right results right here right now, that's what you go out and
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. So and I I and the reason I love that so much is because I notice it, like I said, when I do and when I don't and and when I do, it's just that abundance not to go too metaphysical, but that abundance not only flows to me, it flows from me. And and it's a feeling and it and it builds momentum in anything that you do, whether you're trying to change habits, be healthier, make more money, put that into your relationship. I fully believe in in this type of work.
Speaker 1:So before we go today, I wanna share with or I want you to share any projects that you're currently working on, maybe trips or anything with your family that you're just most excited about.
Speaker 2:I'll just do three quick things. One is if if you all haven't read a copy of our book, ask, please get it for yourself. Just and and right now, here's the craziest thing. We're selling so many books still on Amazon. The more you sell on Amazon, the lower the price goes.
Speaker 2:So the price is really low right now. It's a $24 book. They're selling it for, like, $16 when my wife looked at it today, and you just go it just shows that we're really rocking in the sales. And you can look at that two ways. Number one, it's great for the buyer, but number two, it's because they would like to put all the other people not get that business at Barnes and Noble, Hudson, Books A Million, or everything.
Speaker 2:So I'd love you to read our ask book and understand. There's like three channels to asking yourself. Ask others. Ask God. That's it.
Speaker 2:But you need to have somebody teach it to you, and we think we teach it about as good well as anybody can do it. Number two is if you wanna do a book, go to Mark Victor Hansen. You've got my three names memorized, I'm sure, but add the word libraryin.com. You got it because I'm library three point o. Library one point o was Alexander the Great.
Speaker 2:He collected all the wisdom of the universe. Library two point o is my hero, Andrew Carnegie. And and we're just at his house, and we went up to the Gilded Age houses up in Newport, which is really exciting. And then the movie show, can watch it on prime now on the Gilded Age, which shows the age before. But today's everybody can be exponentially well off.
Speaker 2:So I want you to all to write a book. And number three is if you ever get a chance, watch my stuff on YouTube or if you can come to one of my seminars. People say, why do you do that? Well, I love meeting people. I love taking pictures with them.
Speaker 2:I love signing my books to them, and I love hearing their stories because everyone has a great story. And what our publishing house does is we take your impact story, as I said, and bring it to life because most people are a little afraid to do that. And back to what we said, you could keep it private or you can make it public. That's up to you. But we wanna help you pull that story out of yourself and and make it an irresistibly compelling read that makes everybody better off and nobody worse off.
Speaker 2:And you know something nobody else knows, and it's gotta be shared.
Speaker 1:Now it's such a great way to end it. Lots of great resources. So well, you know what? Before I leave, I wanna say one thing is that I was driving with my wife the other day, and we were we were talking about you. And there's one thing that I want everybody to know, and that is that, Mark, you just love people.
Speaker 1:I don't care. Like you said, maybe it's not always interpreted in a certain way, but I know deep down that you care about people. And so I just wanted to share that little moment I had with my wife.
Speaker 2:Good. Well, thank you, and tell her hello. Thanks for having me on. A a delight for my soul.
Speaker 1:This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform, having helped hundreds of thousands of people cut out more than 13,000,000 drinks since 2020. And in fact, an independent study showed that Sunnyside reduced alcohol consumption by an average of 30% in ninety days. And as one of our members shared, Sunnyside helps me stay mindful of my drinking habits. It's not super restrictive. So if I'm craving a glass of wine with dinner, I just track it and I move on with my week.
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