Ep #590 – Interview with Ask co-author Mark Victor Hansen
Mark Victor Hansen is 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 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. Mark and his beautiful wife, Crystal Dwyer Hansen, have co-written their newest book called, ASK! The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny.
Here’s some of the topics we covered:
- The power to ask
- The size of your question determines the size of your result
- Who to ask
- The power of giving
- 7 roadblocks to asking
- When you change your thinking, you change your life.
- Only two opinions matter
- Unfolding your baggage
- Questions get you through every problem
- Linear vs Exponential thinking
- Quantity plus quality of service, coupled with positive mental attitude, equals unlimited compensation.
- Visualize to realize and materialize
- You can’t fix stupid
To find out more about our guest:
https://www.markvictorhansen.com/
Full Transcript Below:
Rod
Welcome to another edition of How to build a “Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing”. I’m Rod Khleif and I am thrilled you’re here. And I’m more thrilled with the guests that I’m interviewing today. If you don’t have you haven’t heard the name Mark Victor Hansen, then I don’t know what rock you’re hiding under. But I want to tell you a little bit in my intro to give him a little credit because he’s so incredibly humble. The bio he sent me, I had when I researched, I had no idea of all the things that he’s accomplished. So first of all, he got turned down 144 times to try to get his book published. Okay, and he has now published over 500,000,000 books. Yes, you heard that correctly. Think about that again 500,000,000 books. In fact, me being the capitalist that I am, I try to do the math on what that equated to for total revenue. And it’s in the billions guys. So really impressive. He co-authored that with Jack Canfield, another awesome guy. And then he’s also written co-wrote the book “Cracking the Millionaire Code” with Robert Allen, who I happen to have on the–he’s coming. Being interviewed in two weeks on the show. I met at a mastermind was another awesome human being, but and then has written “Cash in a Flash”, “The One Minute Millionaire”. And what’s really cool is Mark was born on January 8th. Elvis’s birthday, which also happens to be Rod Khleif’s birthday, which is kind a cool.
Mark
Even better.
Rod
Right. You know, but you’re so humble buddy. I mean, you’ve been on The Today Show, CNN, Oprah, USA Today, New York Times Entrepreneur magazine, just so freaking cool. And we’re going to talk about you and when you won the Horatio Alger Award, which is just so awesome. Yeah. I don’t I mean, I could keep going guys but you get the message. You want to listen to today’s episode for sure. And he’s just written a new book with his lovely wife called “Ask the Bridge From Your Dreams to Your Destiny”. So we’re going to dig into that book today for sure because I bought it. And it we both have it in our hands. It’s very cool. It’s it’s an awesome book with great stories. And so welcome to the show, my friend. I’m gonna stop talking, let you talk.
Mark
First of all, thank you. And thank you for doing all that you’re doing because back when I went bankrupt 1974, I learned to ask and luckily I asked my way. I asked the wrong question first. I”ve been I built the “Wall street Record Club Botanical Gardens Aviaries” all the cool stuff in New York. I was 20 something and I thought I was a real hot shot. I’d been to graduate school with Buckminster Fuller Ironsides best student, I would say. Not that I’m Bucky’s best student, but I tried to be Bucky rather Mark and went bankrupt. But the good news is I’ll talk about every part of it. But just from a real estate point of view, I started to mastermind. Which is one of the things you’ve got to ask. You got to ask yourself, what is it that I want? And then really number two is you’ve got to ask yourself, put it in writing at every level and we’ll talk about that if you’re open to it. And then one of the things I want to do is I want to do in real estate. And the third thing is you’ve got to have a mastermind. Two come together. The power of eleven. And I’m– I don’t know. I’ve watched a few of your videos on most abundantly impressed, but nobody does it alone. It’s a team sport together. Everyone accomplishes miracles. And I had a little mastermind back on Long Island New York, and the guys who owned the garbage dump started doing flipping houses. And they come to me one day and I said, I want to buy real estate. But I remember, I went bankrupt so I got no credit. And they said “well, you don’t need credit with us. We’ll buy you buy it. You pay for it. We bought it for seven. You’ll sell to you for 14. You put 2,000 down. We’ll rent it”. I went wow. Three years later we sold it for 58,000$. Now to your people, then the question that I want to ask. And I know we’re starting at a high velocity and I hope that’s okay with you Rod.
Rod
Yes, absolutely.
Mark
The amazing thing is– here’s the question is you want to know what works and what doesn’t work. You’ve got to ask yourself, what mistake did I made that I don’t want you, the listener to make? And that was and you had your own $50,000,000 universal life experience. I’m up on your bio too. So just you know, I do my homework.
Rod
Thank you.
Mark
Where are we screwed up or I screwed up. I won’t blame my investment partners is it we should have bought all East Islip Long Island, New York goes available. Nobody is buying an interest rate is at 28%. The houses were derelict. This guy was great at fixing up. He was you know, I’m not mechanical. I’m a thinker. I’m just–I’m an intellectual property guy. I told my dad he wanted me to take over the bakery and I said “Dad, I’m a white glove guy. I’m not sure what one is, but I wouldn’t be good in the bakery. Please”. For nine years old, I didn’t like it. It doesn’t fit me. What fits me is writing and talking and being on podcasts like this just and I love it. By the way, I hope you can tell.
Rod
Yeah. Well you know, it’s funny you referenced the mastermind and you know, Napoleon Hill talks about in his book “Think and Grow Rich”, you get two like minds together. They create that third intangible mind, that’s greater than the sum of the parts. And you know, I’ve given away thousands of copies of that book at my life events because it’s such a powerful book. But you know, I’ve created my own mastermind as well, prompted by that book. And now it’s got 14,000,000,000 in assets in it. Multifamily operators some really, you know, like you say I want to be around people that think what I think is hard is easy. And we all know the power of a peer group. Right? And so I love it. Well you know, let’s dig right into your book buddy, because I’m not completely finished because I couldn’t get it in time. But I love it. And I’m almost– about three fourths of the way done. You know, tell us a little bit about the book. Why you wrote it with your wife and what the message some of the messaging is. And then let’s just have a fun conversation about it.
Mark
Absolutely. So what happened is Crystal and I have travel around the world in 80 countries and you know, those you don’t get to meet her today. You can go online, look at any of our stuff on YouTube or anywhere. We’re everywhere. But we met great people, wonderful people, educated people, good attitude. But the difference Rod between somebody who’s a little successful and somebody who’s vastly successful is one thing only the power to ask. And back to my asking about East Islip is the size of your question, determines the size your result. So if I’d said right I said “well, I just want to own a little income property”. And that’s exactly the opposite of what you say is that you say look buy you know, it’s easier to buy a whole lot than just a little. And right? And buy multi-family, which I’m sure my dad’s experience with that too. So what we’re saying and ask is we first of all found out every time we had a problem. We asked our way out of the problem. Right? And we said “well if that works for us. Does it work for others?” We did our university research. We wrote about that. Then we did interview 26 people that came from nowhere. Overcame all the obstacles and succeeded. But all of it’s because we’re asking in the asking three channels. You ask yourself, ask others and ask God. Seem so simple. And the big guy said “Ask and you shall receive”. But he never detailed how to do it. So we said “wait, we’ll detail it”. And now we’ve had the book out for a little bit and it keeps selling off everywhere. God bless and our publisher. We call them on Saturday, a couple of weeks ago and today we’re sold out again. What are you going to do? And he said “well, to get hardbound because of supply chain problems now it’s eight weeks. So are you willing to go to paperback?” I said “well, what is the problem with that?” They said “POD, print on demand”. You can print one every six seconds. There’s eleven place to do it. So we just said “well, I want people to have books because this is the most trend”. Look I told a lot of books 13, 18 books are written or co-written with a lot of famous people. I’m very thankful sold half million books. But this is going to usurp all that because everyone is given by God two powers only. The ability to ask and the ability to imagine. I mean, you imagine that you could get out of the do back in 2008. If you don’t mind my saying it that way.
Rod
No, I had to–
Mark
You can tell me to be ungentle.
Rod
No I had to– I had to visualize what was beyond that. Otherwise I would have stayed there. It would have been my story. Yeah. No agreed.
Mark
Yeah. You would have been a victim rather than a victor so to speak.
Rod
Right.
Mark
So, we’re teaching people to ask in those three categories and people are in covid confinement cocoons except for your state of mind and they’re starting to break through. But the only way to break through to be healthy again because all you’ve heard depressed, despondent, suicidal. I mean–
Rod
Yeah.
Mark
You know, I did a book long ago that in funeral homes that they give away and suicides are crazy now because people need to break up. People need to socialize. People need the mastermind. People need to get together. Good people need to ask, think, write, talk, write, act, write and get the right results by asking.
Rod
Yeah, no question. And I would tell you, I love that quote about the size of your question equals the size of what you get because it ties right into a question that I asked my listeners. I’m sorry my guests on the show that you know, thousands and thousands of doors almost always ask them. You know, what would you do if you if you could tell your 18 year old self something and it was always go bigger, faster, but you’ve got to ask for the bigger. Okay and that’s the point in that is you know, don’t be afraid to ask. What you need to ask to go larger then and that’s why I love that question the size of the question because so many people will stay. Say small or you know, pretty much everybody start small. But you have that fear around asking for you know, the big things. And like for me, I can equate it to the podcast like asking for luminaries like yourself to come on the show. You know, and I’ve even have that hang up myself. You know, why do I why would I deserve to talk to a Mark Victor Hansen or someone you know and I’ve had incredible people on the show. But you know, it’s just it’s and that’s why I wanted to really dig into this book because I could see the value in those you listening and can see the value in even multi as something as specialized as multifamily real estate because it is all about asking. So you know, I know that you’re a master storyteller and really the best communicators in the world. Tell the best stories. And you’ve got lots of story examples in here of people that have utilized asking to create. I mean starts with this fable in the front. That beautiful story about a woman that was destitute. That just started adding value to others and teaching others. And then she ended up in this set and wanted to speak to the fable. I don’t want to you know, mess up the description of it but it’s just such an awesome story and an example. And then maybe let’s touch on a couple of other stories in the book that tie into the power of the content that you’ve written, that tie into the messaging.
Mark
You got three or four questions.
Rod
Yes. Sorry, let’s stick with the fable.
Mark
Okay.
Rod
So–
Mark
Let’s stay with the fable, the fable. What happened is my wife and I were writing this book together and we’d never written a book together. She’s got a lot of bestsellers. I have a few more but the point is we said we’d write it and we are sublimely in line. And we’re not only soulmates but the higher level, the twin flames. We can finish each other’s conversation and thinking in our kids and our grandkids, all of us and thank God for all that. But she’s writing this fable because of the dreams that she’s been having and like a God sort of channeled it through that’s why when people read it. They feel their soul. I mean, for some maybe we got 121 one letters one day with people saying, I’m a man, and I never cried, but I wrote that fable of Michaela. Now did I cry but I woke my wife up and then my teenagers up. Which is what happened with our chicken soup for the teenage soul. But it just because I want books that are unique, transformative and inevitable will help people get to where they want to get. Which in your case, and most of the listeners is buy some multi-family dwellings, which I totally believe in. And we can talk to that in a second. Anyhow fable of Michaela starts out with this woman who’s lost everything. She’s and my wife started writing and she said “no, you write”. And I said “look, you’re doing such a profound job and we’re going to put it in four parts of the book”. And I said “no, we’re going to have the world’s longest prologue”. I got three Guinness Book of Records but this is going to be Guinness Book record for you. Nobody’s done a 42 page prologue in a fable. And we said I said a fable. Remember I said, you’ve got to be unique. Every business has got to be unique the way you do. Your real estate’s got to be unique to everybody else. So you’ll have more renters, more people want to stay there, more people want to work with you, more mastermind partners. So you go from I think you said 14 or 18 billion. You can go to 100,000,000,000. Right? If that’s what you want. And hopefully you’ve got that written down. Whatever it is you want, you can tell us or not tell us. But this fable, this woman had nothing going for her and also that she gets this Christ like image that says you know, go deep. And ultimately she said “holy cow, I can see the magnificence of what the king’s doing”. And it starts and it’s a fable in time. And we had a major movie company, one to making a movie now which I think is going to be extraordinary. Which is we love the idea because that’s what size you’re thinking is long story short. She starts teaching people to read has a great effect on the second in command of the king and then ultimately gets to transcend to the high. And if the movie comes to pass like I hope it will, I get to be the king and my wife gets to be the queen.
Rod
Oh, very cool.
Mark
Everybody’s got to read this story because I don’t want to blow it for you.
Rod
Okay, fair enough. Yeah.
Mark
Fully transformational. What’s the best thing you got out of the fable of Michaela?
Rod
Well you know what it is buddy? And I forgot to mention this in your bio is giving and you give so much. I don’t you know, I had a list and I was looking for it again here. And I’ve got so many pages of notes and stuff but you give to so many different things and different you know, and I do as well. And but life is about giving. We’ve got two hands. One to pull ourselves up and one to pull people up underneath us. And you’ve done this your whole life with your with all of your writing. And so you live it probably better than anyone I’ve ever met, frankly. But but for me it was that it was that messaging. It was that messaging around giving and selfless without any expectation. I think that’s what really hit me the most and and resonated with me the most in the past and really the power that comes from it. Now you don’t do it for that reason. You know, we’ve been taught to achieve, to be happy. But when you’re giving, you’re happily achieving and and you’re going to get to that success. You know, and that happiness faster. So I think that’s that was the biggest message for me Mark was that peace. Yeah.
Mark
Giving compounds itself. And you’re right, we’ve tied that every book. And that’s why I think I sell more books anybody ever in the world. I’m not done. I want to sell a billion books because if you don’t have goals, you’re not alive. Right? And I’m 73, but I’m 73 years young because I mean I was exercising at 5:30 this morning. And we know, the point is you got high quality life, get high quality of life. And if you’re going to have a quality life like what do you want to do. And what you said is so accurate at both levels selfless service because Martin Luther King said “All of us can be great if we serve greatly”. And Christ said when he’s at the Last Supper. The guy said “Boss, what do we do to be great?” He says “The greatest among you is serving of all”. Well the point is you’ve got to take good care of yourself first and then once you start giving, you get inundated with other stuff. And I go all the spiritual stuff that you want because I have to be doing a biography on the biggest black ministers of all time right now. I’m just excited.
Rod
Wow. Well I’ll tell you what. I would love to ask you about a couple of chapters in big headings in the book. Like can we talk about the roadblocks? I know that’s he first one, but I’d like to talk about that one because so many people have them. You know for me, it was limiting beliefs you know, I wasn’t good enough. I got picked on in school. You know, we all have that stuff that’s happened to us. But that was for me. But can you maybe expand on those roadblocks that people experience?
Mark
What happened is we started writing the book we said, “what is it that prevents people from asking?” And we discovered seven roadblocks and all of us have one or more at any given time. And some of us have all seven hitting on all cylinders which is really soul crashing. And I’ve never said that word before to those two words together. But no one has the sense of worthiness or unworthiness. Then we’ve got doubt. We’ve got fear. We’ve got pattern paralysis. Where you keep doing the same thing and expecting a new result? Then you’ve got excuses. Or some people call excuse ology. And then you go all the way to number seven which is disconnection. And right now, I don’t know. We’ve got– you know, teenagers. You see them and they live on their cell phone or the screen and they think they’re connected with somebody could reconnect some social media or they’re connected. That’s not a connection. You and I are better connected now and I’m convinced that somewhere down the line in our future, we’re going to synchronize in time and space and become great friends because we’re of like minds. And if I had to say one good thing about the disconnection and reconnection with zoom meetings and Skype and just as a quick aside on skype. The guy who invented Skype had us on. He’s worth 8.5 billion yesterday. And I was just blown away by the deepness of this guy. So everybody, we’re at a first time in history where people can go do phenomenal stuff. And what we’re saying in this book about “Ask” is when you overcome your seven roadblocks and the only way to overcome is look at them, read these stories, see yourself in it and say “hey, wait a second. I’m all up there. I’m looking at me and my sense of unworthiness. And I had the same thing you did”.
Rod
Yeah.
Mark
My parents are Danish immigrants. I spoke Danish you know, not English. I was in remedial reading Rod from 1st grade to 6th grade. Now in kindergarten, I fell in love with my kindergarten teacher. She was Danish and I said “Miss Disby when I get older, I’m going to marry you. If you weighed 400 pounds at least”. But she said “Markie, I’m happily married”. I said “he’ll die”. But in remedial reading, so they thought I was in the dumb class. Well now is World’s best selling author. I got to tell you, maybe I wasn’t that dumb.
Rod
Wow.
Mark
But the point is a lot of kids are put down and one of our five kids is a special Ed teacher. And this all fits together in my mind. And if it doesn’t you know, tell me to look at it again. But Kelly is a special ed teacher. Just 15 kids in morning, 15 the afternoon. And she asks to find out which kids are special. Which he’s found out that four kids in each class have genius level Asperger’s. Where they’re sort of like Bill Gates and all like this. I like you and I may or may not perform in school, but we do end up performing. And it’s amazing. The joke in Harvard is the C student ends up hiring all the A students.
Rod
Right. Well you know, I just read that Elon Musk has Asperger’s as well. You know, and you know, the richest guy on the planet or fighting with measles for that. But you know– yeah, you know, it’s funny number one was the unworthiness, that roadblock to asking. And that’s been my road block. So it just so resonated with me. Guys, trust me on this get this freaking book because it’ll really it’ll open things up for you because it is all about asking you know, pushing through that fear of building relationships. You know, you guys know multifamily is a relationship business and this helps you push through that fear by asking. And so love it. Thank you for that. And so let’s talk if you don’t mind. Let’s go. Let’s become capitalists for a moment. If we can go to Chapter four, which is how to accelerate business and earnings. You know, and just maybe you know, if there’s anything additional that that you can supplement. I know you’ve got a great story there. And Preston week’s story. And you know, if there’s any points that you can maybe draw some attention to and if not, it’s fine. But I just–
Mark
No. I did by the way, I go to the press one week story. I obviously wrote the book and went over a lot of times so I own every story. But I want to go back to what you said that fits here, too.
Rod
Okay.
Mark
That is Elon Musk. Elon Musk is told by the governor of California, you must shut down your business, lay off 90,000 people. Elon Musk did the first question. Remember ask yourself, ask others, ask God. He asks himself “how is it I could keep this business open, which is everybody watching has got to listen because we’re still in this nonsense politically as far as I’m concerned and other people trying to shut us down”. Because remember when you shut down, Jeff Bezos makes a lot of money because everything gets delivered your house. You’re going to say whatever to incentivize gets done. So what did Elon do is he calls up 3M and says “hey, look you guys. You’re not able to make all these respirators so people can breathe. I have 3D printing. I got metal ensure. I got 90,000 employees. Please just give me 50/50. I don’t want to make a lot of money. I just want to make those for you and keep America going”. But why they did that? What he really did Rod is he made 90,000 cars. He became the richest man in the world. But when he did that, he also said “well, what else can I do?” He said “the battery isn’t working like I want. So I want a thin battery that just thin as your thumbnail”. You can all watch this on Netflix, just like I did. Then he bought a company for 100,000,000$ which remember if you’re with gazillion, you can buy 100,000,000. No big deal. But it’s making graphene batteries. And he said “wait a second. If I could make that the next generation is that we have Uber, Tesla and next generation that we have flying Tesla because now that we got a light battery, it doesn’t weight much. And we can put a person in and I can type in my little address and I fall at your house automatically. And it’s almost perfect with the A.I. that he created because he’s the only car company with 20,000,000,000 miles away. But it’s all back to one thing only. You kept asking the next company bigger and bigger question. Which is to everybody out there listening you say “Well, look. If Rod and Mark told the truth and he says I shouldn’t buy one plex but I think the number is a five plex is what you say. Start with right? or six?
Rod
No. It doesn’t matter. Just think bigger. That’s all. That’s the bottom line. Don’t be don’t limit yourself. Don’t be afraid of those extra zeros. Frankly, they’re easier to buy anyway than a residential one. So that’s the message. So–
Mark
And then let’s talk about the banking of it too. Is that somebody out there, it’s got too much money that they want to lend right now is that correct?
Rod
Oh. Better believe it. Isn’t so much money chasing deals right now. The focus in those you listening the focus is finding deals right now, and that’s it. So you know that’s absolutely it. But I love the–it’s all about asking better questions. In fact, I have this list of questions that I — you guys are interested in personal questions. I asked myself on a regular basis. It’s business questions. It’s you know, questions like who loves me? Who do I love? Just things that get you juiced in the morning. And I’ve got it. It’s a it’s a free thing. I give it away if you want it. Text the word “QUESTIONS” to “72345” and you’ll get it. But more importantly, get this freaking book because you know, the key to having the wherewithal to ask the questions is getting past those seven roadblocks and then you see what’s possible and know what’s possible. So anyway–
Mark
That first story about worthiness. The first of all we have is my own two companies with Bob Proctor and if you haven’t had him on we’d get him on for you–
Rod
No. Oh, no. I haven’t had him on. I’d love to have him on. Yeah, I was thinking Robert Allen. Yeah, I’d love that book–
Mark
They’re both great guys. Totally different and friends also. But Bob Proctor is a guy who you know, started out being put down. No father during the depression is now 87 years young. He’s going to be live to be 100. He’s going to the biggest birthday party ever. He’s asked himself, like I was at his 80th birthday party. And I got to toast him, of course, but he’s going to have a million people at his Las Vegas birthday party when he turns 13 years now, he turned to 100. Is that cool or is that cool?
Rod
That’s really cool.
Mark
Here’s a guy who was earning 4,000 a year and come out of the Navy in Canada. Owned 6,000 is sitting in the bar as a fire person and saying “hey wait a second, he’s got drunks and they’re not going anywhere. I got to go ask somebody, how are you so successful?” The guy said what you already talked about. Think you are rich and he think we’re rich. And he said “No, I’m healthy, I’m happy, I’m successful”. I think he’s read it 400, 500 times. Whatever the number is, doesn’t matter. But he transformed himself and he started by cleaning windows and 25 grand a year. 975 grand and a million a year and then now teaches it. Now he’s building up. I think his company has just passed a billion dollars. You know, he’s literally teaching in 197 countries around the world. So electronically, and you know, he’s locked down in Canada but he wants everyone to get the message. When you change your thinking, you change your life. And he is the most profound and prophetic spiritual guy ever. But he overcame the sense of unworthiness. So unworthiness, I’ve never said this before and I want you to tell me if you don’t agree or don’t agree. But it is a sense of unworthiness could be your asset to your ascent–
Rod
Yes.
Mark
If you use it to your benefit.
Rod
Oh, yes because you’re proving something. I tell the story. I built this 8,000,000$ house on the beach to prove to the world that I was good enough, but I still built an 8,000,000$ house. So it absolutely helps your ascent. But still it’s you know, that pain that you know, the perceived pain that you know, we have these emotional events happened in our childhood. And we perceive them as being factual when the reality is you know, I didn’t have to prove anything and nobody. I didn’t have to worry about being humiliated. People don’t care that much about what other people think but it absolutely helps your ascent no question. I agree with you completely. And I wish you didn’t have to that. Yeah.
Mark
The book I’m doing now on the illuminations of Reverend Ike from wishes to riches, Reverend Ike taught me how to think prosperously when I want to kill myself. I was bankrupt. It’s interesting what you just brought up. This is what he said is there’s only two opinions that matter. Your opinion of you and God’s opinion on you. There’s no other opinions about it.
Rod
Right.
Mark
I mean by the way we buy into it. Well the girl– because we got a teenager around us. Right? The teenage grandkids. Well you don’t understand. Sally doesn’t like when you go. She doesn’t like my fingernails. I got a pimple. I can’t go to school. You’re you are going to school.
Rod
It took I had to be 40 to get that memo that people really don’t care that much. And frankly, if anybody rejected me, it’s their own B.S. They just either don’t know me and they’ll know my heart and soul or they’ve got their own crap going on. So you know, that’s but it took a long time for me to get that memo and work through that. And like you said in these roadblocks, you have to consciously work through them. You can’t just read this and say okay that sounds really good. You have to sit and think about them and consciously bring them out. And that’s how you deal with them and you recognize that they have no rational basis. In fact you look at them with your adult rational spotlight and you burn them up, but it takes it takes a little bit of repetition. And now I speak in front of thousands of people a year. But I was afraid to raise my hand in class because of this stuff. And so again, on these roadblocks, when you buy this book and you read this, just take the time if any of them really resonate with you to sit and work through them. You know, consciously. Would you agree with that, Mark?
Mark
Not only agree with it, I want to add in plus something. It is first of all, I want you to get the book and then go over every question with either your spouse or spousal equivalent, your mastermind partner, your church, temple, synagogue or whatever it is, business partner or partners. And if you go through the question, what are you going to do is unfold your own baggage.
Rod
Right.
Mark
And what you had is baggage. I’m to call it up until 40. And that’s really–
Rod
What it is? You’re making this bag of crap behind you, right? That’s exactly right. Yeah.
Mark
And it works against you because your life’s easier and lighter and faster when you do it. So when we wrote Chicken Soup you know, we were selling 20,000 copies a week and New York Times wouldn’t put us number one. So the lady that makes the New York Times list is I read– like I read yours. And she’s a Harvard person like Jack. Jack was third in his class at Harvard. I said “Jack, you’re the right guy to call her you’re crimson. I couldn’t even get in Harvard. Let’s be clear. I went to a state college. I’m a state kid. I came out of no money. And you’re a little bit different place. “Oh, I can’t call”. So I’ve never said this story before. So I think it’s cute. I think you’re like the end. So you said we’re you’re the salesman since your 9 years old, you call up. She says “Sir” and she’s snobby as hell. Arrogant as possible, very hard to ask. You know, If you talk to somebody that went to Harvard, the first sentences I went to Harvard. You didn’t– you can’t even if you could because you read my book. But nobody else talking to me knows all the three schools I went to it’s isn’t possible problem. So I said– she said “you are a multi-author book with disdain and derision”. And I thought “Yeah”. She said “Sir, at Harvard. I mean, at New York Times, we don’t do multi- author book”. So remember I’m good at questions. “You’re sure?” She said “I am sure”. And like you could fear, hold her arms. I said “Lady you read the Bible. And it’s got 66 authors except you add maps and it’s 720”. She said “Boy you read next week”.
Rod
Did she? Is that a true story. That’s freaking awesome.
Mark
The point is ladies and gentlemen, questions get you over, under, around or through every problem and you’re going to have a problem. If you’re going to buy some real estate, you’re going to have lots of problem. You’re going to like he said, we got rejected by 144 publishers. They all actually said “hit the road Jack”. And I said look, “it’s okay if you don’t like Dr. Canfield but I am really nice guy. Jack’s wonderful but I did–
Rod
Jack is awesome. Yeah. No. Jack’s a beautiful soul.
Mark
He is a great–
Rod
I’m not like I don’t know him personally, but I’ve gone to his events like that was one of the boot camps I went to. And I was just very impressed with his energy. Well–
Mark
You we’re going to boot camps like Jack’s and mine and all that. You just everybody needs to do that to open up their mind and open up their consciousness. Open up their awareness or think their opportunities, the possibilities. And they’ve got to come to order just everybody, each one teach one, each one reach one. And we need to reach 4,000,000,000 people that are on in the program yet on the planet. So there’s a lot of opportunity for every one of us.
Rod
Yeah. For sure. I was just looking for a picture just to share with you more than anything else because of my listeners have seen it. Give me just one second. Oh, gosh. Where is it now?
Mark
No rush.
Rod
Darn it.
Mark
I’m just wax on if you want.
Rod
I have a picture of me because again I never went to college, but I saved the lanyards. There it is. Let me just share my screen and show you this one second. I saved the lanyards from all the from that all this is just actually some of them I’ll just show you from the boot camps that I’ve gone to. And of course, I’m a little braggadocios, so in front of front of my Bentley. But you know–
Mark
Would you send that to me? I want to put that up and tell your story and sometimes–
Rod
That’s kind of you. Yeah. So anyway you know, that’s my not college education. Now again I’m better read than most college graduates. I’ve got a huge library and I’m excited to put this in a place of honor there in this “Ask” book.
Mark
I visit and I would like to visit your house.
Rod
All right.
Mark
I’ll sign it to you. Let me just do this lanyard story.
Rod
Yeah.
Mark
Jim and I did all the seminars around the world. And Jim would say there’s two kinds of education. One is academic, which is what you said you didn’t go into graduate work or undergraduate work. But the more important one is when you’re really hitting on with all those lanyards which I’ve never seen that before.
Rod
Oh, thank you.
Mark
And the companies I do Rod were all given certification. Like you want to write a book I’m going to give you, you know, at the hamptoninstitute.com. We’ll give you a certificate. Plus you want to write a book and we’ll help you. We’ll do any part of it.
Rod
So hold on before you blow past that. So guys, if you’re interested in writing a book, you’ve got, you teach this, correct?
Mark
Right.
Rod
Okay. So–
Mark
You’ve got to kept Hampton Institute because I think everybody on their bucket list has a book.
Rod
Right.
Mark
Rod, the first thing that goes after your name when you die is your age. So … Maybe at 127 with options for renewal. I’ll tell you that. But next thing is after your age is the book you wrote. Not that you have $100,000,000, a billion dollar business.
Rod
Right.
Mark
Which is amazing to me because, you know, my gen– Bob Allen and I had a $100,000,000 company and we’re doing 387 employees. So the point is, what is it that you want to do and how big you want to get? But everyone’s got to have a book. And if you can’t write a book now. We can write the book for you. We’ll do a soup to nuts and we’ll have your edition. And it’ll be in the market for Hampton’s Library because I’m here to change the world. And let me just go one step further. It gives you credibility, mega credibility and authority and the author–
Rod
Sure. In fact I’d like to expand on that when you’re done. But go please.
Mark
You’ve got some great books. But the other thing that it does is it what Plato said in Plato. And I wanted to go back to something else you said. Because Plato– Socrates, the question asker Plato. Plato taught Aristotle. Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, who taught he conquered the world but Alexander the Great being the wrong man. He thought the map went to Egypt. He didn’t understand or something beyond Egypt and North Europe and all that. It’s sort of a mind blower when you think about it because what I wanted to say that, but 10 paragraphs ago you said ask the right questions and think big. But make sure your mentor’s question or answer doesn’t limit you. Like my mentor in speaking limited me not to buy more real estate sort of I can’t blame him. But he didn’t say “hey, why don’t you go buy all East Islip?” It was not– like I was way past 40 when I realized I look back and when well if I made a mistake, I made a mistake. And that was a big one because you know, I made a couple of big mistakes. And I don’t mind admitting them because I’m trying to make progressively less mistakes. But about books. Go ahead.
Rod
Well what I wanted to say guys, those of you listening. You know, you need credibility with investors, with sellers, with brokers and a book. There’s no greater way than to have a book that you’ve published that speaks to this business in some capacity. So there it is. He’s holding up. You have a book in you. So he sells– so Mark has written a book called “You Have a Book In You” and I would highly encourage you to write a book. And so you know that again, that’s just more value there because–
Mark
I want to be valuable to everybody. And you know, I don’t write books. I write books for me because I absolutely love writing. And you know, I was up early writing with some ideas already. But the point is, every one of us has some piece of information nobody else has got. And what we’re teaching in our this book is what we’re coded with. We believe that DNA and RNA and I want you to go along with it or argue with it–
Rod
Because he’s building up by the way, those are you listening. Okay.
Mark
Yeah. Ask is bridge from your dreams, your destiny and your destiny. Do you believe– let me ask Rod a question. Do you believe everybody has a destiny that’s great? No matter what their chronology.
Rod
Absolutely. They have a destiny. That’s great. They just have to embrace it and take action and make it make a decision and take action towards that destiny. And every one of them has a destiny. That’s great. You bet.
Mark
And then what you and I believe is that one of the foundations of wealth which gives freedom. You read to get freed is my cliche and that’s what I want everyone to write because they read more. But then you also got to buy some real estate because it’s the best net worth generating. And you and I can go through all that if you want because I used to teach it myself. But and I love it and I’m addicted to it. And I will never stop because everybody is going to need shelter. And the shelter of the world by and large, is inadequate and sucks. Worse in most other countries in here.
Rod
Yeah. Well I mean of course I’m– I live, breath, eat and sleep. And I absolutely love real estate. And which is why my wife puts up with me working on Sundays and everything else because I you know, I don’t really work. When you love what you do, you never work another day in your life and it’s obvious that you love what you do. You look fantastic. For 73 by the way. So that’s your– I’m 61 and I didn’t realize your age. Yeah. But thank you. And I stay young because my wife’s quite a bit younger than I am and so you know that’s my motivation. But so love the fact that that you have a program for helping people write a book because it’s such it totally ties into the multifamily investing game for a whole lot of reasons guys like I just said, you know, gives you instant credibility. So, you know, it took me forever to write my darn book though. And literally took me three years. And then I gave away 20,000 copies for free because I really didn’t do it for money. I just want to add value. And finally, literally, like three and a half years later, it’s finally on Amazon right now. And now I’m still giving away for free. But they pay for shipping and handling if they want it. So but anyway. Yeah. So back to back to your “Ask” book if you have another topic there that that you would enjoy talking about more. If not if we could talk about how to accelerate business and earnings. Just some points there if not.
Mark
By the way, you can’t ask me a question in the apps that I would love to expand on. But look at the one just you just did. I love this one. So I’m going to do it a little bit different than the book because they’re going to read the book and they’ll get that. But I’ll do anything in the book specific. But I got to do a talk with Crystal with in Silicon Valley with the 20 smartest guys in Silicon Valley. I’m not a Silicon Valley guy, so I didn’t really deserve to be there. But they wanted everybody wanted to write a book and they wanted me to talk about how to accelerate your life. But right before me, I got great pictures with arguably the smartest guy in Silicon Valley. The guy who started the singularity, the guy who invented nanotechnology. You saw the movie called “Honey, I shrunk the Kids”. I’m sure like we swallow a nanobot. But the guy’s name is Dr. Ray Kurzweil, his partner. And he wrote “Abundance” and all that. Peter Diamandis, Dr. Diamandis actually Peter wrote with somebody else. But they’ve written a couple of stuff together on a couple of companies. But here’s what here’s what Kurzweil says that affects everyone listening. He says “If you are a linear thinker which is what our school system teaches. You take 30 steps. One, two, three, four, and you’re 30 steps down the road. If you are an exponential thinker and ask yourself, how do I think exponentially”. Now remember, he’s had a Google 10 X right now. That’s how do you 10x everything but what Ray Kurzweil and he also wrote a book about health. “If you live long enough you can look forever”. So I’m not trying to sell other people’s books, but it’s a great book. The point is Kurzweil said if you do exponential thinking Rod, it’s two four eight 16. So one dollar is just 30 steps becomes 1,000,000,000$. And he said that’s what Silicon Valley has done. The rest of the world doesn’t get.
Rod
Wow.
Mark
And it’s all the size of your thinking. And whether you’re asking linear questions, how do I just get by today? Do I not get fired from my job today? How do I not get divorced? How do I not get covid? All– if you ask the wrong question, you’re going to get the wrong result. The right question is how do I build an immune system? So I’m resilient and I can’t get sick. How is it that I can have fundamental well so it is endless, self-perpetuating cash flow, which is what you teach and I love because everyone there is enough for everyone. I’m going to wax on one more because you asked the big question and it needs this new state of mind. Create your state of results. So your question is you’ve got to ask yourself, what is my self-awareness going and going to end at a daily basis is my self awareness expanding. Because remember, I could have been a little baker and a little nowhere city called Waukegan Illinois and not loved what I did. Whereas if you ask yourself what is my destination? My destination is fundamentally to positively affect humanity and why you’re not. It’s the last question in the book. We took it from Dr. Peter Diamandis “the X Prize guy” singularity guy who wrote “Abundance”. And Peter says “What are you going to do during this decade. This 10 years, to positively affect 1,000,000,000 people?” Well that’s 1/8th of the world’s population. And we don’t have too many people which is another dumb ass question that people ask wrong. If we design right, like Salt Lake City, which I’m not Mormon. But Lake City was designed right. Right? They built six lane streets and effort because they built for growth. LA was not built for growth. And that’s why I had to move out of California and move to Scottsdale. Right? We’re still not building. And so the guy who’s trying to rebuild it, back to Elon Musk. He’s got the boring company. Right? And he’s starting to develop. Well one of the companies I own “Natural Power Concept” which is a device company. We’re going to take the water from the ocean. Desalinated with the oceans on energy, use the boring company to bring water back to California because we shouldn’t be having any fire. But there have been fires because they don’t have any water to put out the fire. I mean is I talk to you logically, you go mark. Just totally makes sense. Yeah, except I’m not a politician. Politicians say “well, what are you going to pay me or am I going to get more votes?” And the answer for me is no. I just I want to get it done right. Everyone should have food, water, clothing, housing, all the stuff. I mean, one of my goals when I was 21 was Bucky Fuller, just like Elon Musk wrote his goals. Five big goals and he’s hit all of them now. All the way to neural link you know, create energy, store energy. And he’s been storing energy in that new graphene battery, which still blows my mind. I mean the guy can do thinking. I can’t do it. So I admire anyone good thinking like you did. That’s why we’re omnivorous reader. We just read. And so you got the best self education. Which is more important than an academic education I think. And I see that honestly, everybody out there and I’m addicted were five over answered your question. I apologize.
Rod
No. You I want to circle back on something, but yeah, back to Elon. You know a rocket that lands itself. You know, on a moving boat platform. That’s moving in the waves. I mean come on, that was even you know, the fact that someone even thought of that is just astounding to me and how boring under L.A. and we could go on and on with the way that brilliant mind works of his. But you said something that I want to draw some attention to. Which is linear versus exponential questions. Okay and it’s so freaking important because the quality of your life is in direct proportion to the quality of the questions you’re asking. And if you want bigger, a bigger life, you’ve got to ask those bigger questions, those exponential questions. So I really love that. You also talked about self-awareness. And guys, if you’re not looking in the mirror to be a better husband or wife or father or mother or sister or brother or you know, a business person or frankly a human being. If you’re not looking in the mirror to grow every single year and you’re not growing, you’re dying. And self-awareness is so critical. Like Socrates said “a life unexamined is a life not worth living”. And so, you know, really powerful stuff, Mark. Really powerful stuff.
Mark
Well, it goes even to the thing that we’re talking about, about Dr. Napoleon Hill. What he said as a quantity of service plus the equality with positive amount of attitude equals unlimited compensation. And people say “well you know, Mark, you can’t really sell a billion books” back to the question you just asked. And they go no. They said “well, no one’s done it. Don’t you know anything?” Well no one did a half billion before I did either according to Guinness Book of Records, which check your underwear. So the point is, I don’t know how to do it today, but once you figure out number one, what you want. Number two, you put it in writing. Three, you’re going to mastermind. Four, you visualize to realize and materialize. I’ll figure it out. And I think we’re figuring it out with a market Hansom library will help a thousand authors launch in the next year or two. And it just it is wonderful now because it just breaks my heart because I’m good at what I do, just like you’re good at what you do. So when you ask excellent questions, you ask the right question to the right people in the right way. You’re going to get the right result and your life clicks. And by the way, everyone out there listening. One of the affirmation you ought to do, I drive around the car. Just click your fingers you know, and just say my life is clicking. My life is thinking. My business is booming. I’m thinking positive. I’m going to figure out this cash flow thing. I’m going to get the loans at the bank. I’m going to buy multifamily houses like Rod have been teaching me. I’m going to buy into this concept and I’m going to help a lot of people that don’t have housing.
Rod
Right.
Mark
And I’m going to get a lot of like you’re building you– here’s the question. I love Jim Rohn used to ask at the seminar we did to get the leadership around the world. You take– you buy a million dollar house. We’ll take your 8,000,000$ house. Who had the 8,000,000? Did you? No. Did the bank? Not really. That the mortgage company? Not really. Did the builder or builders or the lath board guys or the architect or the–? No. It was a flow. Am I doing that right?
Rod
Yeah.
Mark
I mean 8,000,000 a lot to put in flow, man. I mean every million what I sell in “one minute millionaire” my book with Bob Allen is that every million employs ten people that fast. And every billion employs ten thousand that fast. So we’ve got more billionaires and we’ve got 2,812 billionaires currently listed in America. And I think that number is low because I think it’s been said is the new hierarchy. And then I want to finish that to my own book. So the other day I’m on the show with Mark Deverell, the guy who does Amazon. You need to go in that show. I can help get you on.
Rod
Oh thank you.
Mark
Mark does Amazon bestseller. And Mark starts out this way Rod. And he says, “you are the Roger Bannister books”. Do you remember who? Roger Bannister.
Rod
Sure. Four minute mile. Love of it.
Mark
Right. That’s correct.
Rod
Okay. Yeah.
Mark
In 1953 he’s a medical doctor. And beyond that, if you go under four men miles, your heart’s going to jump out. You remember negative people exist everywhere.
Rod
Oh sure.
Mark
I’ll tell you what you can’t do. But he ran a four minute mile. Well the next week I said “Mark what you may or may not. Know it’s the next week 119 people did it”. And he said “What does that mean?” I said “physiologically and dynamically, we’re no different”. What did he do? He broke the barrier. What I’ve done is I broke the barrier. There’s going to be people that eclipse what I’ve done a half billion although I’m going to keep moving.
Rod
Okay. Can I– I have to stop you for one second because I really want to ask this question before we run out of time because you are so freaking dynamic and driven. What’s that? Where does that come from? What’s the why? Tell me. Tell me the why. And I think I know I’m guessing but I don’t want to guess. I just– can you tell me where all this drive and energy and everything comes from please, Mark?
Mark
Well first of all, I love what I’m doing. Second of all, I’m asking these big questions. And what we’re teaching in the book is at once you ask a big enough question, you’re going to trust and expect the answer to show up because once you ask a question, God gives you what you said earlier. Illumination, solution, revelation, insight, understanding and wisdom. And you know, then Solomon said what your show is doing. And I’m so thankful for what you’re doing. You may or may not know, but you want to go back and read Psalm 72 because what Solomon said and Psalm 72 and everybody ought to read this “your job in life is to become an influencer of influencers”.
Mark
Now people look at me and they go well, you’re seeing your guy, why don’t you retire? You got more than enough money. No, hell I had enough money. 31. I could have retired a long time ago. That wasn’t the goal. And I wrote a whole book with Art Linkletter. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember Art Linkletter.
Rod
Sure.
Mark
We work funny house party. And I was writing with Art when he was 98 years old. Right? So amazing. You know, the point is, there’s no limit to what you could do. And he became–I can talk about that too. The point is, we’re all here to be fully functioning. We’re all here to be fully alive. And I think until people read this book and ask and really embrace the questions and go over them with their significant other person whomever that is, they’re half alive. Because look, Bob Allen and I, we climbed all the highest mountains together Machu Picchu, Fuji, Kilimanjaro, all of it. What happen is we also got to open up all the pyramids in Guatemala. Now if you’d asked a little nobody Danish kid in Waukegan, Illinois whether I get to open up the pyramids in Guatemala. I’d go get out of here. If you asked me if I’d write the biography on the world’s biggest black minister, bigger than Billy Graham but bigger here and bigger in Africa. You know, when I was listening to him tell me to be prosperous rather than in poverty. He said the best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them.
Mark
And you can watch Reverend Ike on YouTube. But we’re finishing his biography right now. His wife said look, you’re the best friend. You’ve got to do this. I said “oh, man. What a great honor”. I mean and because I want to get out of this black and white division stuff because I’m colorblind and I want to hit on one more thing and I’m– you’re so close to the Caribbean there. When my dad finally came to America and he was forced out of my uncle spent 14 years older than my dad created the black man. We took all the Jews into Denmark during Hitler’s regime. And he comes up to my dad and says to my dad Paul’s uncle Fences. And I did get to meet him. He did. But he said Hitler’s got 100,000$ hit on each of us. Here’s 100,000$ on passport. Your ass out of here tomorrow. And he said “I’ll never see you again”. Kiss his cheeks and said “Bye-bye, my little brother”.
Rod
Wow.
Mark
And my dad hated socialism as I do and communism and tyranny and all that. You and I think I’m talking for you. We’re playing–
Rod
We’re on the same wavelength, my friend. Same way.
Mark
So and the point is, everybody can be that that’s the only place to freedom. And we’ve got some foibles and capitalism but we can fix them. Like you can’t fix stupid and tyranny.
Rod
That’s my favorite line. You can’t fix stupid. I mean that’s truly my favorite. My wife hates it at this point, but that’s one of my favorite lines especially in the current political climate that we’re in right now. But let’s not digress too far down that rabbit hole. But listen–
Mark
So my dad, the first people he meets in America, they could speak Danish. Were black because they came from St. Croix, which is a Danish island. He’d never seen a black person in his life. Never. And he said “how do you guys speak Danish?” And they said “we’re from St. Croix. This is what St. Croix”. This is Denmark owns that trust. So my dad absolutely has great pictures. And great– so this thing about blacks and whites not like–
Rod
Oh no. Please. My wife is black, my wife is black and–
Mark
I didn’t know that.
Rod
Yeah. And she really believes that there’s a divisiveness being fabricated and trying to be created in this. But that’s a minefield. Let’s leave that alone publicly. But you know, we have very strong feelings about it as well. It’s really one world. It’s one universe. It’s one humanity. Listen Mark, this has been such–
Mark
One mind.
Rod
Yeah. One mind. That’s it. That’s exactly right. This has been such a treat. I’m so grateful for you taking your extremely valuable time. Guys, get the book “Ask” just freaking get it. Don’t think about it. Just go on your phone right now and get it. You need it. Okay trust me on this. And anyway Mark, thank you so much. I really am grateful that you were on my friend.
Mark
It’s been my great pleasure. It’s been fun. I’m glad I got a new best friend that I didn’t know I needed that.
Rod
I love it. Well all right, guys, we will talk to you later. Thank. And Mark we’ll see it. Thanks, buddy.
