If we’re not willing to step on our fear, even intense fear, even stuttering fear, right? I’m stuttering, shaking fear. If we’re willing to step on that fear with some courage, you never know how magnificent the answer will be, and it might so far exceed what you expected. So again, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Mark Victor Hansen is probably best known as the co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series and brand, setting world records in book sales, with over 500 million 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.
Crystal Dwyer Hansen is an international speaker, researcher, corporate consultant, author, and entrepreneur. Her expertise is in the field of human potential. Through her years spent as a Transformational Life Coach, and Wellness/Nutrition Expert, she has seen people experience profound and lasting transformation in relationships, career, health & wellness, by tapping into their own inner resources.
Crystal’s research in the fields of neuroscience, epigenetics, and quantum physics provides the scientific knowledge she uses to help people use their minds proactively and evolve their consciousness to move themselves out of misery and into a fulfilled and happy life
Her book Skinny Life – The Secret to Being Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit, is available Barnes & Noble.com and Amazon.com.
Crystal and Mark just released a new co-written book called ASK!The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny
Transcription:
Career Nation:
Welcome to the career nation show today. We are so lucky to have Mark Victor Hansen and crystal Dwyer Hanson on the career nation show. They don’t need any introduction, but for the, maybe the 0.5% of the folks. That might not know about them. Let me share a little bit about Mark and crystal. You may know Mark as a best-selling author, he’s authored over 35 books probably is best known for chicken soup for the soul.
And with more than 500 million chicken soup for the soul books sold worldwide more than a hundred licensed products. It’s probably one of the most. Successful publishing franchises on the planet today. Mark is widely known as an American inspirational motivational speaker. He’s a trainer author.
Serial entrepreneur and member of multiple boards of directors. you may have seen at him across mediums, such as television. He’s been on Oprah on CNN to today’s show. It’s been on print and time, us news and world report USA today, New York times. And of course the entrepreneur Mark is also passionate.
Philanthropists and a humanitarian Mark has helped so many charity organizations out there. Horatio’s Albert scholarships habitat for humanity, American red cross operational smile, and so many more. And currently he’s the co-chairman with his beloved wife, crystal of child health global fundraising campaign.
Let me share it a little bit about crystal. Crystal is an international speaker. She’s a researcher, a corporate consultant and author, and an entrepreneur, her expertise in the field of human potential. And through our years spent as a transformational life coach and a wellness, nutrition expert. She has seen people experience profound lasting transformation in relationships and career.
In health and wellness. And she’s done that by tapping into their own inner resources, Crystal’s research and the field of neuroscience right down to quantum physics provides the scientific knowledge that she uses in her practice, her niece, her books, Guinea life, the secret to being physically, emotionally, spiritually fit is available on Barnes and noble.
And on Amazon, she travels the world with Mark and of course she speaks, inspires and teaches leadership. Here’s the thing crystal and Mark have just released a wonderful co-written book called ask the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. Please join me in welcoming Mark and crystal to the career nation, Mark and crystal.
Welcome to the show. We’re honored. Thank you. Thank you. It’ll be a pleasure to be with you and everybody listening and watching. Thank you. Thank you so much. And how are you guys doing? Are you getting Scottsdale right now? Yes, we’re in Scottsdale. It’s beautiful. We’re starting to see the temperatures trend down a little bit.
We’re finally going to break a hundred this week and stay below triple digits. And we’re super excited when we get down into like, And easy, 89, 90 degrees. We’re thrilled. That’s cool for us, you know? , it’s wonderful. And, hopefully the temperatures cool down and get even better weather, by the way you guys are looking great.
it’s interesting that you know, many of the folks that I’ve been talking to recently. have mentioned that, you know, yes, VR in COVID times and let’s acknowledge that. But at the same time, even though it may seem difficult and challenging, but many people are saying this is one of the most creative, one of the most productive times of their lives.
Do you guys feel similarly? I’ll go first and then she gets to answer also. But, the fact of the matter is that in 1898, when America went into depression, four things came out of it. The little boys flew in airplane called Orville and Wilbur. The guy created ringy, dingy, the telephone Alexander Graham bell, and another guy drifts and made a little thing called internal combustion engine tonight and changed the world.
And then, you know, all those things happen. And then electricity was found by Edison. Then same thing happened. So, what we’re saying in our corporate symbol is a butterfly. I think, you know, you cannot look at Caterpillar predict Kristalis, which is where we’re at. We’re in the cocoon, 8 billion of a serenity that gum, it doesn’t matter whether it’s India or Africa or Europe, or here, we’re all in it.
But when we come out, we’re going to be high flying butterflies. And what we’ve discovered. Could we have been doing all these creative meetings? Is it when people read, asked they buddy up with somebody and ask every question and they figure out how to repivot reorient re-invent and find that they’ve got brilliance inside.
My wife likes to say four times more talent than any of us over emergence. So we’re cheering people on to wake up during this shutdown. Sequestrations. Exactly. Yeah, no. And I just wanted to add to that, that, you know, we released a book and in the middle of a pandemic and we had this conversation about whether to go forward with it or not.
And when Mark and our publisher and I met, we all decided, you know what, we need to go forward. The bookstores might be closed, but they can get it on Amazon, which is where 80% of the books are sold. Anyway. And this book was made for these times truly because we’re all sequestered. And we all sort of had an intuitive feeling about that, that the world needed this book now more than ever.
And because we’re all having to kind of take a new look, a fresh look at our lives, and we had had this sort of. You know, undistracted time to do that. And so what a great time to start asking yourself those questions that in many cases have been long overdue.
And that is when the publisher called the COVID and said, do you want to push it back with it? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I take adversity my whole life, which 309 bestseller to turn into advantage. And what’s true is that we did, we both knew podcasting, but suddenly we had to switch because there’s no bookstores to go to.
I mean, we had one meeting with 11,115,000. We’re going to sell a lot of books and they got called up and said, I lost $5 million. You guys aren’t getting paid. I didn’t get paid. And the meetings were canceled. So all of a sudden we’ve done these podcasts. And I got to tell you we’ve done them. Absolutely everywhere.
Like sometimes five a day, two in America, one in Canada, one in Israel, one in India and in Australia. And it just it’s been mind blown. We did 10 million people in Vietnam. And if you told me that that would work, I would have said, well, I think the world of you, but how’s that going to work? But on Amazon, everybody is buying our book and it’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s a brand new world, but you’ve got to read vector to see where you’re at and where you fit in, which we’ll talk about.
Oh, you’re so right. And there’s so many nuggets that you just drop right there that I would love to unpack guide, frankly. and you know, you’re right. I mean, people are in a cocoon. They’re not traveling anywhere. They’ve got some more time on their hands, even though they might’ve been busy before, they’ve got time to basically look within themselves and reimagine, reinvent themselves and quite frankly, create value.
For others. And, I, and thank you to you. I got the opportunity to read, ask, and it’s quite frankly, one of the most inspiring, one of the most useful books I’ve read. And I’ve, I’ve come to realize how asking how the simple act of asking questions can transform our lives, our relationships, our careers, our businesses, and, I would love to know a little bit about sort of the backstory of the book.
Like how did you guys come to conceptualize ask and how did this book come about? Did you guys, was it always for the last, so many years in the back of your mind? Hey, I want to write a book about asking some really good questions that help us pivot, or was it like a, like an inspiration that hit you at some point and said, Oh, you know, this might be a book.
Tell us some backstory about that. Right. So Mark and I realized at some point that, you know, throughout any troubles we’ve had in our lives, historically, we’ve always used questions. To get ourselves out of it. I mean, questions asking the right questions has always been an important part of our transition and transformation out of more difficult situations to find answers, to find new beginnings and that sort of thing.
So what we started noticing is most people like Mark was saying has, you know, four times more talent and ability than they’ll use in, in, in this lifetime. But for so many, they’re not, they’re not tapping into that. And we see people that are so qualified and we’re going, this guy could be running a city, or this woman could be running a company and they’re barely getting by.
They’re barely making ends meet even though they’re charming, smart, educated, whatever, all of these things. And so we’re like, what is the difference? What is the difference between people who are super successful and tend to get what they want out of life and those who don’t. And we realized that it’s sort of this.
Holding back and not asking for what you want. And that there’s the simple act of asking changes. Everything. There is nothing. There is literally no mechanism. That has the ability to reveal what is hidden, like asking. And so we thought what an amazing thing, if we could teach people is one tool, because it’s a simple tool that we were all born with, but it’s kind of been crushed out of us, to be honest with you.
I mean, if you think about children when they’re born, right, we’re all born with this insane curious curiosity. And we want to know who, what, when, where, why, how, and we also want to constantly ask for more, more and more, right. Absolutely over time through whatever kind of parenting we had or schooling or job situations, or just basically, you know, basic life rejection, that ability and that desire to ask.
And it kind of gets starts to get crushed out of it. So we don’t even realize it’s happening until we look at our lives and feel so disappointed and so stuck. Yeah. We don’t know how to get out of it and, and learning to be a master askers is truly. The way, it’s the key to start changing everything.
You’re so right. And quite frankly, I think that yes, all of those things are true. And what is happening to us now is also we’ll live in this connected world. We’ve got over devices all the time and this questions that we need to ask off ourselves and ask others so that we can actually discover ourselves in a new way.
They, those questions don’t get asked. Okay. And do you guys find like when you interact with so many people and quite frankly meet so many people, like, is this sort of digital hamster wheel that you also mentioned in the book, does that come in the way of us really asking the right questions so that we can actually move, make progress in our lives?
Oh a hundred percent. We said, look, there are seven roadblocks to asking. And the ones you just hit on is disconnection because everyone says, well, you don’t understand. I got a screen and I got a cell phone. Well, look, I went bankrupt in 1974. So I’m empathetic and sympathetic to everybody that’s hanging on by their fingernails.
I was at the top. I built the walls to rocket club, botanical gardens. Aviaries cat cages. And I was 26 out of the hot trackers. I’d been in graduate school, the smartest guy in the planet, Bucky fuller, dr. Fuller, who was Einstein’s best student, as you may know, or one of, and now I’m bankrupt and I’m sleeping in a sleeping bag in front of another guy’s bedroom for six months.
And I suddenly went, remember, we’re asking, ask yourself, ask others, ask God. And I asked myself, well, what am I want to do? And I said, well, I want to talk to people that care about things that matter that would make a life transforming permanent legacy difference. And so I went to my roommates in Hicksville, long Island, New York, right.
Nowhere. And I said, Hey, any of you guys know anyone? That is not a celebrity, not famous, not a medical doctor, not a lawyer and young enough that I could relate to talking shit. Yeah. Yeah. They’re just kidding. Hotdog talking to 500 of us in real estate today. Here’s my ticket go. I took my little beat up old Volkswagen.
The bankruptcy courts had not taken this guy walled me for three hours. I asked him afterwards, I go up and say, chip Collins. I’m your new best friend. I need to ask you how to do that. He’s a kid. You ain’t going to make it one in a thousand chances. You could make it, it ain’t going to happen for you, but I’ll tell you what to do.
If you’re buying a free lunch. I said, okay, I’ll buy. Like I buy lunch. So turns out he said standard real estate. I own the five boroughs. You do life insurance. I’ll tell you exactly what to ask. He did. I did only Tony Robbins and I, as far as I know, did a thousand talks a year, the first three years in a business.
Cause I either was talking or selling, talking or selling. You know, 18 hours a day. So I built and then people said, well, do you have it in a book? And the first book I did was stand up, speak out when, cause they said that story has got to be in a book and I sold it to my little audiences. I didn’t have any publisher.
I said this isn’t the New York times best seller, this isn’t a wall street journal bestseller. This isn’t. A national best seller, but it’s my best seller. And it would be my honor, I’ll a Jeep to sign it to you. If you’ve got a wife or spouse and kids assigned, do I want everyone to read it? And we sold 20,000, I make $200,000.
Now, once again, I’ve come from the bottom of the top. I got a new car. I am thinking, Oh my God, I’ve died and gone to heaven. If, if it didn’t get any better,
what an amazing story. And, you know, Both of you have had such incredible journeys and crystal you’ve had your fair share of more than fair share of challenges. You had a two year old who was struggling, and then you ask questions that you, you were able to break into a completely new career. Can you.
When you share your story as well. Sure. Because I think it’s important for people to know. You know, when you look at someone really successful or has had a certain amount of success in life, and it just seems easy. We all do that. We look at human beings, we look at people and go, gosh, they just have it.
Naturally, everything comes easy to them. I wish it did for me, but it’s never true. Right. We all go through these incredible challenges. And for me, mine started quite young. I was one of those kids who, um, Found high school to be really boring and easy. So I accelerated my curriculum, graduated at age 16 and married.
My boyfriend was five years older, not a good life plan. Right. So, you know, two and a half years later, I find myself in a new city by myself, no family, no friends, baby on my hip divorced. And honestly, no idea how I was going to earn money and take care of myself. So I did what I could, all I could think of was to apply for food stamps.
I’d heard about food stamps. So I applied for those. And I remember going to the grocery store the first time to exchange my food stamps for my groceries. And I stood there and, it was like, I had this huge epiphany and it honestly felt like time slowed down. And I had a light shining on my head cause I was like at first an a question just dropped into my mind and it was, how did I get here followed by a second question?
Are you doing everything you can to get out of this? Or are you taking the easy way out? And the second my mind asked that question. I knew the answer. I knew that I was taking the easy way out. I knew I wasn’t doing everything that I could possibly do to get out of the situation. So it was like I had this complete one 80 flip.
And by the time in that, those seconds, by the time I turned over my food stamps to the woman, I will never forget looking at her and thinking. This will not be my future. And it’s almost like I did it with so much conviction. I probably looked a little fierce to her. So I went home and thought, you know, I just, I don’t have any answers, but I do have questions.
And so I just started asking a whole bunch of questions. How can I go to work tomorrow? How can I make money tomorrow? What is available for someone with my skills or lack of to, to, to do, to, to earn money. So, yeah. You know, I worked in my dad was an authority and I had worked in his office. So I applied, I had heard on the radio about Kelly services.
So I applied, there filled out the paperwork and it would start feeding you opportunities based on your skillset. And pretty soon I had some jobs coming at me, then I realized there were other temporary service agencies. So I, I registered for all three of them thinking I’ll have a better selection of jobs every day.
And I started doing all these jobs, like filling in at attorney’s offices and, you know, uh, doing sales, that conventions that were coming through town and things like that. And I started enjoying it and really discovering something about myself. And that was that I really liked business. I like sales and I loved just working with people and being out there with people and making things happen.
And so I, at that point, I decided to put myself through real estate school, saved enough money. And, I. Graduated from that. In the meantime, someone approached me and said, you should do some modeling. So I approached the largest talent modeling it, just the, in our town. And I asked them if they would sign me, which they did.
And fortunately, I, I did some, I did some television commercials. I was cast for those and they went national. So I started getting these incredible residual checks and. When you get, make a certain amount of money in royalty residuals, we call them in the industry that you have, you have to join screen after skilled, after, and then you get all the benefits of, you know, insurances and stuff, which was great for me.
And my little boy, we, we suddenly had great benefits, so what’s really a year, a little more than a year and a half from the time I was turning those food stamps over for groceries, I now was working for the largest home builder in our Valley. I became the number one sales person for the company. And I’m getting great benefits from, from my modeling and growth and royalties, residuals, and checks from that.
And so I often thought back at that pivotal moment where those questions came to me and I’m so thankful. That I was able to ask myself those tough questions, because sometimes we have to be tough on ourselves. We kind of need to parent ourselves. We need to ask ourselves the tough questions. And then we also need to be honest enough to answer them truthfully.
Right. Be courageous enough to say, yeah, no, I’m not doing my best. I can do better. Oh, absolutely. Crystal. And that is again, so many things you mentioned there. That are worth, you know, worth talking about, you know, this, this incredible story where you were literally down and it was, it was those questions that prompted you to think in a different way.
And then you started to make those moves. And just in so many years, you were able to not only come out of that situation, but actually do really, really well. And quite frankly, being very successful, I also think that there’s a part of that is also asking questions and being fruitful to yourself and being really honest when you’re answering those questions or finding answers to your questions.
And by the way, thank you so much for sharing your journeys. And it’s, it’s, it’s rare to find leaders like you who are vulnerable, who are telling so many personal stories about themselves. So thank you for sharing that. And speaking of personally, we would love to know you guys a little bit more. And we’re going to shift gears and we’re going to play a game called favorites.
Are you guys ready for our favorites game? Outstanding. Sweet. So what we’re going to do, what I’m going to do is ask you a favorite thing and you’re going to tell us what’s your favorite thing and why? And our first question is what’s your favorite app? Right. My favorite app honestly, is slumber because I have a really active mind at an at night and I’ll start thinking, and my mind will just not stop.
So I literally slimmer has all these like bedtime stories and they’re just these random stories that can be like a cat walking through the woods or whatever. And just listening to those stories helps me. Just, you know, distract my mind from all the things I’m thinking about and just follow the story and then I can drift off to sleep.
So love. Yeah. So one of your neighbors is my favorite app. Reid Hoffman, who I expect, you know, I’ve never met him, but he created LinkedIn and he’s a Vesper and all that, but he did this thing called scaling and I started listening to it on podcasts. I went Holy cow, cause I own, we own a company called natural power concepts.com, which we’ve got pop-up windows called wind charger and pulsating waves.
We have enough water to put out all the fires in California and a company has got some giant orders now, but it’s amazing to me that we learned. All this stuff that I didn’t know existed, obviously I’ve scaled book sales more than anybody else. So someday you introduced me to read. I want to meet him.
Absolutely. Oh, great apps. Thank you. Thanks for sharing those. and you’ve, you’ve, written so many books and you guys have traveled so much. the next question is about. A favorite quote, have you come across a quote in your meetings, in your travel that you really, appreciate, or you, you really love?
Yes. And I, I love so many quotes, so this is kind of a hard one for me, but I think one of my favorite ones is live life as if everything’s rigged in your favor by Rumi. I mean, why not? Right? Because when you anticipate the best you magnetize the best for yourself. And too many people project, all the negativity that’s being generated from their own minds.
You know, they’re either like thinking about the past failures or projecting their fears from, into the future. And so if you just live life as if everything is a evicted in your favor, how beautiful is it? Oh, it’s outstanding. Maybe all of this COVID situation has also rigged in our favor, so that weaken our creative and productive desks.
Yeah, we sort of believe that, although it’s really tough for a lot of people to go through at 30 million or 50 million unemployed, whatever it is. I wrote a quote book and, I keep expanding it, of course. So. One of my favorite quotes is mind, which is the size of your thinking determines the size of your result and, and being in Silicon Valley and formerly Bangalore, the sides of the thinking being done.
There is the only thing, as far as I’m concerned with technology, Bucky used to teach technology is the fruit of absolute fundamental abundance. So we can go to utopia rather than a Bolivian. And, so I am, I am very keen on all that. And so Bucky, like teacher’s favorite quote would be. You know, for the first time ever, we can take care of a hundred percent of your main you man at the, and make us physically and economically successful.
No other age group, generation or life has been able to do that 15 billion years. That is so true. Amazing. I love that. I’m feeling so inspired. Thank you so much for sharing that. you know, the next one is going to be super hard for both of you, but I’m just going to lay laid on the table, which is your favorite book.
That is super hard because there are so many books that I love so much, but I’m going to, I’m going to name a book that most people haven’t heard of. And I just love it. It really influenced me in the work that I do. it’s called the molecules of emotion by dr. Candace PERT, and she’s just a brilliant scientist and she studied the interaction of.
Our thoughts and emotions with our body. And, you know, we’re, are these things two separate disconnected systems or are they one integrated system that, that is a constant feedback loop loop. And truly the evidence shows , through her research and findings that we are one integrated system. So our emotions matter, our thoughts matter.
It creates a real chemistry in our brains. In fact, Deepak Chopra says that, you know, we have a pharmacy. In our, in our brains that a pharmacy of chemicals that cascades through all the time. So these things are so important to remember because they don’t just live in your mind. They live in your body and they can cause health problems and, just problems with how you live and how you project your future.
If you understand the connectedness, then you start to pay attention. To your thoughts and what you’re feeling and just what we just said about the quote about Rumi, you know, living life as, as if everything’s red in your favorite, that’s a thought that will create positive emotions in your body. And so I just, I, I recommend that book to anyone so I could go on and on.
I’ll do the same. I totally booked that most people won’t know call resurrection and he’s talking about resurrecting inside out a lovely guy named Neville Godard, but he goes by just Neville any V I L H O D says, you’ve got to live in the assumption of the wish fulfilled. So you’ve got to be there, which we teach in our book called come from the end result.
And because his book astounded me 50 years ago, I did a set of tapes, which were the top tapes with Nightingale-Conant called. Visualizing is realizing into my blog because of this thing happening book sales, as you may know, are way up, cause people are sequestered. So our publisher came back and said, Hey, we want you to do it as a book.
And they send it back to me. I’ve finished it. Now it’s going to be a super book comes up next month, actually called visualizing is realizing. And I got to tell you. You take something from 50 years ago and you’d go, wow, that was really cool. But now I’ve updated it to where we are because all of us, what you see is what you get.
You got to see with your inner eye, what you want and your outer experience, which is we’re pretty massive. Wow. Those are brilliant books. I love it. And thank you for sharing those. And we’ll put those in the show notes so that, so that our audience can take advantage of those books as well. And of course, we’ll talk about ask and all of the other books that you’ve published.
the next question is about your favorite food. We love food. I love all kinds of goods. You know what I, if I had to pick the favorite, this is truly one of my favorites and orange, not my favorite. It’s so special. Peking duck. I love Peking duck and we’ve actually traveled through China a lot. And, we haven’t had dinner.
We’ve had Peking duck at the original. Peking duck restaurant, the, where, where their dish was created, which is in Beijing. It was a lot of fun. We just slurped down Peking duck, like it was nobody’s business. Yeah. My daddy, as you know, was a Danish Baker that came out of dental work and out of socialism into America and did really well as a Baker, but he made, what they used to call Waldorf Astoria cake red cakes.
So I got to say that. I shouldn’t be addicted to sugar cause I’m married to a nutritionist. And so I don’t get to eat it that much, but it is really a light red velvet cake is beyond spectacular. If it’s made by culinary artists. Certainly if I’m laughing, did all that make sense? I love it. And love your favorite foods as well.
I mean, it’s
mine’s a, it’s actually a lentil soup that my mom makes and it’s totally delicious. and so that’s my favorite food of anything else in the world. Wonderful. Thank you. what’s your favorite music? You know, for me, I love these sort of what I would call Epic compositions like done by David Foster, you know, these beautiful production phase that he produced, Whitney Houston, he produced Celine Dion, Barbara Streisand.
I just love that Josh Groban. I mean, it’s just music that really moves me. I’m going to add to that and say that we won the ratio juror award, as you know, which means we’ve come from rags to rich has been a little excessively philanthropic, and David is with us. But the story that your listeners won’t know, is it 13, he got kicked out of school and what what’s true and why that’s important to what we’re doing here about asking.
Is it no one asks what’s your talent when you’re 13, you don’t know math kid. You don’t know reading, you know, you’re outta here. And then at 13, he produces Barbara Streisand’s most magnificent hit ever. And how do you predict that what he did and his best friend Quincy Jones is also on a with us, could produce Michael and everybody else.
I get goosebumps telling you that in a reason I’m doing it of a gene is not for me. I’m doing it. To say every one of you has got some spectacular, super power. I can’t tell you what it is, but if you read these questions, you’ll find out and you’ll unfold and find the greatness within it. And when you find the greatness within you go to your destiny, which is the subtitle of the book, right.
Cause everyone’s got one and if you’re alive, you’ve got it. No matter whether you’re young or old. Oh, that is brilliant on so many different levels. And just shifting gears to asking, you know, Many people who would look at, you would say, Oh, those guys are lucky, but I would argue that, right. I mean, people would look at you and say, Oh my God, they’re so lucky.
They came from, you know, they had a very difficult journey, but they’re not so successful. They really got lucky. But I would argue that. Part of that is understanding who you really are and what your, what your gifts are that you can give to the world. And what you just said, which is, Hey, are you good at math?
How do you good at this, that, and the other, asking that to an average 13 year old, that’s very hard question to answer, but to sort of discover yourself is basically this journey of asking the right questions, which you really simply talk about in your book. And so just on that, There’s seven roadblocks to asking one of my favorite ones there was.
And I’ll try to quote you a little bit there, which is when we are asking, we sometimes fear that we will lose something either that’s love or approval or dignity or credibility. How could, how can one get above that? Get beyond that and ask the right questions. The tough questions, because. Once we start asking those questions, we get the answer, but, but the, this act, this, this difficulty of asking that question is sometimes what holds people back.
Right. It’s such a good question. And that’s why we talk about those roadblocks a budget, because everyone has them. It leaves not at least one of them, probably more than one. Right. But the important thing is to recognize your roadblocks. And we have some incredible stories, about, you know, the roadblocks and stories are interesting.
There are metaphors for our own lives. Metaphors are just patterns that sort of let our brain can follow. Cause our brain really thinks in patterns. But I think as far as the fear factor, one thing that gets us past that is understanding the truth because, when we’re fearful of asking it’s because we’re not understanding the truth, we have a perception and it’s.
A flawed perception. And in the studies that we did, that we looked at the research has been done on asking, people like going into the study felt like if they asked someone for something, either advise, help, something that they would either be perceived as being stupid, ignorant uninformed. Or that they were being pushy and obnoxious, you know, asking for something.
And the opposite is true. If you’re willing to ask someone for something you’re 80% more likely to have your request granted than if you don’t ask. So there’s not much to lose. There is there, but so if we, if we understand the truth of it, it’s not what it is. It’s not, we’re not going to be rejected. Now someone may say may not be able to grant our wish or accommodate us.
But the important thing to remember is it’s not about you, you know, we’re all a little bit narcissistic. So we personalize everything like, Oh, they don’t like me. They hate me. And human beings need love. We all need desperately need love and approval. So sometimes when we get that rejection, it feels like.
Love or approval has been taken away, but we have to remind ourselves it’s not about us. They just, whatever, for whatever reason it has to do with the person we were asking, they can’t grant our wish at that time. And that’s okay. It’s a very neutral experience if we understand that. And so it takes away a lot of that fear and sometimes we just have to step on our fear with this good dose of courage and we have some incredible stories.
Can I just share one little story from the book? Do we have time? Isn’t that a great example? So this woman named Lynn Marquis, came out of college, wanting to go, knew that she wanted to go into the nonprofit space. So she put together very quickly. She put together this, Camp for disadvantaged children because she’d wanted these children who, whose parents don’t have options usually to, to deal with them in the summer.
she wanted to go to a really, rich, full camp together for them. That would be a great experience over an extended period of time and offered so much value. Well, then she needed to get financial support for it. So after a lot of efforts, she got an appointment with the richest woman in her city who controlled a large family trust.
And so she said, she showed up for the appointment at this woman’s beautiful office. And she was so nervous. She was, she said, I was really shaking. There was no hiding it. So she said, I just. Fessed up, you know, just said, I’m so sorry. You know, I’m really honored to meet with you. So please forgive me. I’m really nervous.
And of course the woman was so nice and so gracious and said, sit down and you know, let’s tell me what you have. So she sat down and explained the camp, the benefits of the children, how wonderful it was going to be for these children to have this experience, provided for them. And, the woman asked, okay, so how much are you asking for.
Again, she got terrified because she was young and she never asked for money and it seemed like so much money. So she said, she goes, I literally started stuttering. And I said, I I’m asking for football $5,000, because that’s how much it costs for one camper for the summer. And the woman looks at her and said, okay, but how many campers do you want to have at the camp?
And she said something like, you know, two 85 or something like that. And the woman said, great. I want to underwrite all of them. How much will that be? And she was, Lynn was so stunned. She said, do you have a calculator? I don’t even know because this woman, she was so scared to ask. And so afraid of the rejection.
It just seems so big. And so outrageous her to ask for $5,000, this woman’s so far exceeded what she had been asking for. And that’s, that is such a profound lesson for all of us, because. If we’re not willing to step on our fear, even intense fear, even stuttering fear, right? I’m stuttering, shaking fear. If we’re willing to step on that fear with some courage, you never know how magnificent the answer will be, and it might so far exceed what you expected.
So again, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. You literally have nothing to lose. That’s brilliant. And the truth will set you free. you know, a lot of our audience members are either in corporate America or they’re entrepreneurs here in Silicon Valley and beyond. And in, in a part of the book, you talk about the asking strategy to know more about your customers.
And rather than sort of telling your customers what you do, what’s your product, what’s your technology, what’s your service rather than doing that? Ask customers, what do you do? And it’s really fundamental to understand them. What are their problems? How can we help? What does the ideal scenario look like?
Can you share a little bit about that asking strategy because that’s so fundamental. And sometimes it’s a disconnect for a lot of smart people that have great products and services, but they’re not asking in the right way. Boy is that true? We got a great partner named Preston weeks and we go into the biggest mining company here in Arizona, which we’ll have to go on name.
And we sat down with them and we found out the day before the biggest $64 billion company had been in. And they just did exactly what you said. Well, I am from MIT and I am small. So then you, and I will tell you the way the world works and it kicked them out of the office. So we decided, and Preston is so such a genius.
He said, well, Just tell me what it is you guys are doing. And I mean, you guys are doing this great copper business, but what is it you really want? And we just sat there and kept probing questions, you know, endlessly. And pretty soon they said, well, this is what we want. This is how we’d like to work at, you know?
And they loved us and they didn’t want, they said, can’t you guys stay. And it’s because you ask question because questions mate. The buyer feel important and they really want to tell you what they want, but you got to start with questions. You have go in and say, here’s my offer. Take it or leave it. And if you don’t take it, you’re an idiot.
Right. And I just want to add to that, you know, you have to start with rapport and again, Human beings. All of us are kind of narcissistic. We start to go, okay, I’ve got all this great stuff. I’ve got this great presentation. I’ve got this amazing product. I’ve got this amazing service. They’re going to love it.
If they just understand everything I’ve got to give them. Right. I’m just gonna, I just need to really communicate that as much as I can and make sure they understand. Yeah, me and my product and my service and how great I am. And that is exactly. The opposite of what will bring you success. Like Mark was saying, you know, you literally have to go in and you have to create report.
And the way you create rapport is going back to being curious about someone, asking about them. Cause there’s no way you have to understand the context into which you are going to sell. If you don’t start by understanding that context by creating rapport. Understanding how they think feel their pain points, what they’ve suffered, what their sacrifice.
There’s so much, you can learn by asking those questions. And if you don’t ask them, it is like you’re selling to a brick wall. It doesn’t, it doesn’t go anywhere truly. And if you just start asking those questions, you almost can spend very little time with what you have. I mean, you want to give a brief overview of what you do, but then go right to the questions, right.
To the questions. with that particular group when Preston was probing them more, it was amazing because when he started out, he said, you know, they, they were really, holding things close to the vest. And then by the end, when he started exploring, you know, he asked some really interesting questions about, you know, the management style.
And is, are there any conflicts within management that make it difficult for you to do business? And they started revealing things that they otherwise never would have. And they and they started saying things. He said like, you know, we shouldn’t be talking about this, but, you know, and all of a sudden you learn so much, your client.
And so then you, then you have this bond asking questions, creates this incredible bond. And now, you know, each other, and in the studies that we did, it also shows that in business scenarios and in personal relationships, The more questions you asked, the more likable you are. Perceived to be. And in dating scenarios, you’re more likely to get a second date or a better question.
Just one hitchhike. When we started this little thing, you and I have never, we’ve never met the three of us. And what did we do? We asked you questions about India and you didn’t know that I’d been a student ambassador to India and, and loved the place and asked you about the different places. And what happened is it wasn’t the snow, you, it was that I’ve done my homework on you.
Just like you’ve done your homework on us. And what happens is you can relate to people. I get goosebumps telling you this questions are the answers. Now that’s counterintuitive because you know, no, no, I’m going to tell you what I got to like it. You hear it? I got to show it on your door.
Oh, that is brilliant. And so many different levels. And, you know, just a few more questions here. So, you know, Those questions makes a ton of sense. It helps you succeed in business and in personal lives, a lot of people are starting to chase this idea or this concept of scale. I want to scale this. I want to scale my business, but at the end of the day, it seems like business is done between people, you know, those conversations are had between people.
And how, how do you see sort of this whole, I would say. Philosophy or generation that starting to look at things that are more scaling, more digital versus really asking and connecting and really, truly forming a better network for yourself, a network that is actually going to be fulfilling for yourself.
And you are creating value for that network versus saying, you know what, I’m just going to spray and pray. I’m just going to reach out to as many people as I can electronically. And so, there’s quite a bit of that going on, especially with right now. Right. I, yeah, there, there is a lot of that going on.
And one thing we’re finding is, quizzes, quizzes are a great way to reach your audience and to connect with your audience. I think no matter how big you want to get or how much you think you want to scale up, you better get to know your audience along the way. You better care. About what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling and be asking for feedback in any way that you can, because the results are going to be better.
They’re going to be more lasting. So we believe breakfast feedback is the breakfast of champions. And when we did chicken soup for the teenage soul, which I think every teenager should read that to their parents, because today they’re in house together and not getting along, based on what we’re hearing.
I mean, we’ve got five kids in six rankings. We’re pretty clear what the experiences are except our kids all love us. Thank God. Knock on wood. Anyhow, the point is when we did that, our published that you guys are blown at this time, I got teenagers of, I see these kids getting closed and when they go to the mall with $50, I say what happened to it?
And they said the mall aid that’s okay. So what we did is we interviewed all the teenagers and then Jack dr. Canfield, and I had written all the 250 best stories. And, you know, we went over to don’t, we’d read a thousand to find one, but we had 250. We thought were great. We did. We partnered with Nickelodeon electronically and they went out to 12,000 kids and said, look, make this store, tell us when it’s great and we’re not going to have a name on it.
So it didn’t have Mark Victor Hansen on it. It didn’t have art, Buchwald famous names. They didn’t know who the story was. A story had to stand on its own value. And that book sold 19 million of first-year. Why? Because we tested it, it worked and that’s the same thing we’ve done with. With Ash, we tested out everybody.
And we literally back to your question, we’ve asked everyone for help. And you say, well, would you ask the kids for help? Yeah, we got a kid. I gotta let her name on name. Cause I don’t have permission to tell you her name, but she’s. At a major university, she’s doing communication. She is great. She has done things for us that I came, believed every one of her sorority sisters.
She’s doing it to everybody in America. She’s written, she’s written the bookstores and said, you need to do podcasts podcast, Mark and Chris, all around the world. I thought. Holy cow, you know, she’s a treasure. And when I was back to work back to the whole thing about David Foster and Quincy, both guys who didn’t make it right?
I mean, Quincy got kicked out of school and buddied up. I didn’t tell you with Ray, Charles and Ray Charles said, you got real tough. You orchestrate this. And I’m a really good kid on piano. The point I’m making is that a lot of these kids, if they do what you said, build the relationship capital capital.
And stay glued. We are in an up most unlimited time. Right? You had to read it in high school. Probably what we read it’s the best of times and the worst of times. No, it’s the best of times. If you’re awake, alive, enthusiastic, and tuned in and turned on and know how to ask a hundred percent Mark and crystal, you guys are incredible.
Thank you. Seriously. Thank you so much for your time. Ask is such a phenomenal book, especially in today’s time when we need to take a step back and really learn more about ourselves, about the opportunities that are out there for us, quite frankly, waiting for us. And Mark and crystal, thank you again. How can someone follow you and get in touch with you?
Do you guys do LinkedIn? Twitter? How does it work? Yeah, so I’m crystal Dwyer Hansen on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, crystal Dwyer Hansen. and then of course, Marcus markets, your hands at all of the above. All of the social media outlets. so we love, we love connecting with people. We truly love hearing.
I try to get in there and try to personally like talk to people as much as I can, because I love feedback. I love knowing people’s labs and what their, what their pain points are, what they’re thinking to me, that’s everything. And when you’re able to do that, I really think you build not just customers, you build advocates for your products and, but it has to come from a sincere place.
And for us, it truly sincerely, we want. To make help make people’s lives the best they can be. and then you can go to amazon.com obviously for the book, and then we’re going to be having this little kind of book club, private room book, club discussion. If you go to, after you get the book on Amazon, go to ask the book club.com and join us.
We’ll send you an invitation to the book club discussion. And what happens is we’re going to answer for free everybody’s questions. So, and then the other thing is be good to Mark Victor hansen.com. You get free stuff. You go to. Crystal vision, life.com. You get some free stuff. So we really want, we want to help everybody become infinitely more successful, and it’s doable by a change of mind and a change of heart based on Ashlyn.
Good questions.
And crystal will put those URLs for all of our folks can get to it. And they will also go to ask the book club.com so that they can get their questions answered. And Mark and crystal, thank you so much for connecting with our audience career nation. This is the most successful publishing franchise on the planet, Mark and crystal. Thank you again for being on the show. Thank you. Our pleasure.