Susan Friedmann [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today, my special guest is Mark Victor Hansen. Mark is renowned for his contributions to human potential, having transformed lives globally over 30 years. As the co creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, he achieved phenomenal success with over a 110,000,000 copies sold. As an acclaimed keynote speaker, Mark's bestsellers include The One Minute Millionaire and Cracking the Millionaire Code. He's a dedicated philanthropist supporting many literacy and youth causes. Mark, what an absolute honor it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's expert and mentor.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:01:02]:
I love books, read books, and I'm addicted to helping, like you, everyone find the book in them because everyone's here to invent themselves and reinvent themselves, and writing is unequivocally. Once you know what you want, you need to write about it. And not only is goals, hopes, plans, procedures, and that, and what you're gonna do, everyone has a book in them and everyone needs to write it and bring it out. So I'm elated that you're helping people with your book, Riches and Niches, Making It Big and Small Markets because there's a market for every book everyone could create.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:35]:
Lovely. And the fact that your most recent book that you coauthored with your beautiful wife, Crystal, who I know that we're going to talk to at another time, asks the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. And I know that it focuses on asking the right questions to unlock doors to new opportunities and insights. But how can we actually ask the right questions so that we can achieve the goals and dreams that we are thinking of? How do we do that?
Mark Victor Hansen [00:02:10]:
First of all, you don't get what you want. You get what you ask for. And Chris and I said there are 3 levels or 3 channels of asking. Ask yourself, ask others, and ask god. And I'll just do my own experiences. As as you know, on graduate school, I was with I thought the smartest guy in the planet Buckminster Fuller, but I was trying to be him in New York. Built geodesic domes for Wall Street, Racquet Club, Botanical Gardens, aviaries. The good news, bad news is I was building out a plastic PVC, polyvinyl fluoride, wrong time, 1974.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:02:39]:
So I've been in the business 50 years. Bankrupted so fast I had to check a book in the library. I went to the world's biggest library, New York Public Library, checked a book out called, how to go bankrupt by yourself. That was my best worst experience. But then ask God at night. I'd pray. I was sleeping at a $100 a night in a sleeping bag in front of another guy's room in Hicksville, Long Island, New York. So I was not styling and profiling, Susan.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:03:05]:
I said, okay, God. What do you want me to do? God doesn't answer that way. He said, what do you wanna do? And I said, I wanna talk to people that care about things that matter that would make a life transformative difference. The next morning, I go down to breakfast with my 3 roommates. I say, hey, guys. You know anyone young that's speaking that's not a Broadway star, not a celebrity, not a top, white haired like I am now at 76, not a doctor. Said, yeah. Yeah.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:03:28]:
Yeah. There's this kid talking. Now remember, this is the interest rates are 18% of real estate, and this guy's talking real estate. He said, here's my card. I'm in real estate. Just tell me you're me and go watch this guy. And there are 500 people listening to a wonderful speaker named Chip Collin before microphones. At the end of the talk, because I've been an unabashed asker since I was 9 years old, I had to sell my way forward because my parents had no money.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:03:50]:
I go up to Chip whose voice is like this because he's been shouting at 500 people, wound them up and lighten them, made them feel good so they could go out and do well again by in inspiration, which I think is a key all of us need. More than anything, it to turn on the engine called your life. I say, I wanna take your lunch. You're away. Well, good. I said, I wanna do what you do. He said, no. Get go get a job.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:04:11]:
I said, look. I'm buying lunch. Oh, okay. He said, look. If you stay out of real estate, I own the 5 boroughs. And he trained myself, and he trained Barbara Cochran who's a billionaire now with Shark Tank. So he he had good track record. Anyhow, took him lunch.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:04:24]:
He said go to Life Insurance Business, which I did a life insurance Zoom call this morning to 6,000 agents. And my book sales and they asked just to today have already gone straight up again. So, you you know, this stuff works and you can sell on Zoom calls. It can work, and it's 50 years later, just a new mode. I used to talk to 4 meetings a day of 5, 6, 10 people, and I sold 20,000 copies of my first self published book, Stand Up, Speak, Unwin, at $10 each, made $200,000, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. And I didn't do another book for 5 years, which if those of you listening for the first time hearing me ever, most of you, understand I believe you gotta do sequels and prequels. I believe all of you got a lot of books in you. If you don't know sequel and prequel, prequel is before, sequel is after.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:05:10]:
I'm sorry. I'm gonna try to keep this so every one of you catches every message. But I love helping, and I never sold my first book saying this is a New York Times bestseller. I said it it's not, and it's not a national bestseller. But it's my bestseller, and it'd be my privilege and opportunity to sign it to you, your wife, or kid. And if you got a dog, I'll add the dog's name. And like I said, I sold 20,000 copies, did $200,000 1st year, and I thought, oh my gosh. This is the best business in the world.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:05:39]:
Everyone ought to be in it. And, I've tried to inspire people who thought they could read to read. And then my wife and I wrote this great book, Ask, and in front of it is a fable of Mikaela because my parents were from Denmark, and I know every fable, I think, from Hans Christian Andersen, a 147 on Bendu's house in Denmark. I'll just leave it at this country name. I said, Chris, we could have a fable. And she wrote the fable of Mikaela, which is now looks like it's becoming a movie, and she's turned into a screenplay. And Susan will be interviewing her down the line, so you'll get to hear from somebody who's much smarter, wiser, and obviously, like she said, prettier than I am. When I saw her in the audience, I thought, wow.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:06:19]:
Pluck retrudeness just emanates out of every pore we're being. And then I now call her the goddess of exquisiteness, but she's okay. Thank you for laughing. A phenomenally talented writer. So I love it. Question. I love
Susan Friedmann [00:06:32]:
it. Let's talk about some of the common mistakes people make when they're trying to ask for what they want. You said you've gotta ask yourself first, you've gotta ask others, and then you ask God. But what are the mistakes that people make?
Mark Victor Hansen [00:06:45]:
Well, in our book, Ask, the second chapter is dedicated to the 7 mistakes absolutely everybody makes, and we call them the roadblocks of asking. And the first one is worthiness, and and you'd be amazed by the way, all of us have some of these roadblocks. Some of us have all of them. But the first one is unworthiness, the insecurity, conditioning from our childhood or past experience where we don't deserve it. And we do a story by a guy I was partners with in 2 companies, Bob Proctor, who, other than my YouTubes, I love you to watch Bob Proctor. It'll just inspire you at the depth of your being in. I'll just do a quick story about Bob and I are doing a we did the 3% club, getting everyone to be a millionaire, of course. It was so amazing because only 3% of Americans are millionaires, which everybody needs to be a millionaire because our government's full out of control at this moment.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:07:31]:
35 $1,000,000,000,000 in debt. Yikes. Anyhow, woman came up to Bobby and said, I'd write a book, but I'm a single mom with 3 kids, and I haven't got any time. Bob says, look, lady, do you have one minute? Said, yeah, I got one minute a day. What do I do with that? Said, you write 250 words, You do it 250 days, you have a book done. She didn't do it, but Bob did. Born Rich, I wrote the foreword to it and it sold 10,000,000 copies, so it can be done because Bob came out of unworthiness and built himself into worthiness. Second thing is naivete, and it's impossible to know what is possible.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:08:05]:
But we've come into the first time in history where we have unlimited opportunities to sell books, and I'll talk about how to do that in a minute. 3rd, the roadblock is doubt, where we're not sure how to ask because we're encouraged, shut up, behave. Your mother will tell you what's going on. The teacher will tell you what's going on. If you go to the military, the military tells you what's going on. If you go in companies, company tells you what's going on. 4th one is excuses. We're too stubborn and proud to reach and to help.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:08:30]:
5th one is fear, the underlying feeling that we'll lose something by asking, usually love, approval, or dignity. 6th one is pattern paralysis. Brain conditioning helps keep us repeating the same thing over and over. And Einstein's great quote, as far as I'm concerned, is if you keep doing the same thing and expect a new result, you're an idiot. And 7th is disconnection. We become numb to our inner truth, out of touch with our own sense of unworthiness, and we said, don't go for the real desires of our heart. And if you are on this with thousands and thousands of other people, you have a desire to write a book, and you gotta do it. Susan takes you through it, I'm sure, but if you don't do a book, the richest place in the world is a graveyard with all the books not written, songs not sent, inventions not made, business not built, love experiences not had.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:09:18]:
That's why you gotta learn to a s k to g e t. And what we say is, look, we'll teach you to be a master ask for free. Just go on your messages on your phone to 21,000, and then when it comes up, just write down ask, and we're gonna teach you everything Chris and I know for free about asking because we've made ours. Our future days are paid for, but we want everyone to get to financial freedom, time freedom, relationship freedom so you can really be passionate on purpose about what you need to do. And when you're that, you're probably gonna write more books than you ever even imagined you'd write. I mean, like
Susan Friedmann [00:09:51]:
one of the things you talk about was fear. What are people's fears and hesitations for asking for what they want?
Mark Victor Hansen [00:09:59]:
Fear is an acronym. I don't know who made it. I heard it from Zig Ziglar, I think. But fear is false evidence appearing as real. And I'll tell you, we were on a podcast with a a guy worth a half $1,000,000,000, he may be a billionaire now, it was Ed May I let and we were gonna go on his giant, giant podcast, 3rd biggest, I think, in America. And I'd send him a copy of us because we're friends, and he went crazy in his house. He couldn't find it, and he knew I'd sent it. And he finally goes to his 14 year old daughter and said, did you see this book asked by my friend Mark and Crystal? Said, daddy, I read it last night.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:10:29]:
It's the greatest book I've ever read. I outlined the whole thing so you don't even have to read. He said, you know, darling, when I do these interviews, I gotta read every word. And we had the greatest interview, but what he said, it answers your question about fear. He said, here's a guy worth almost $1,000,000,000 and he says, I go into a restaurant with my wife and I'm afraid to ask for a better table, a better space. I got airplanes. I'm afraid to ask for a pillow. He said, I ask all times.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:10:55]:
I've got 10,000 employees. You go, holy cow. So that's why I said, all of us have some of us, some of us have all of them, and you and they show up. I'm gonna call it a hydra head of the 7 roadblocks. They show up at the worst time. So ladies and gentlemen listening, I now authorize you with my new friend Susan and her husband who's a chaplain. If you don't believe you can, all you gotta do is believe. We believe you can, and then you can because what you believe is you achieved, number 1.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:11:23]:
Number 2 is we give you unlimited self confidence. You don't have to be confident. All you gotta do when you're going to ask somebody to say, hey, look. The world's best selling author, Mark Victor Hansen, has sold over a half 1000000000 books. He told me I have the right to ask you. As a matter of fact, I have an obligation to ask you, especially if it'll do you any good at all. I think it's gonna do you a lot of good. So I'm obligated to source and serve you because Christ said the greatest amongst you is servant of all.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:11:48]:
So is it okay if I ask you now? And you can set it up that way, and very few will refuse you. If they refuse you, it's their self esteem.
Susan Friedmann [00:11:59]:
Reflect the
Mark Victor Hansen [00:12:00]:
fact that they're not worthy.
Susan Friedmann [00:12:01]:
Effective questions and ineffective questions. What's the key difference between those 2 when it comes to asking?
Mark Victor Hansen [00:12:08]:
You wanna be asking effective questions and when you ask them, always, everyone needs to have a journal, and you need to take notes on what works. And whatever question works, that's what you wanna do. When I was learning the seminar business, I worked in Garden City, Long Island, New York for 6 months at the World Center for Dale Carnegie. The guy wrote how to win friends and influence people and stop worrying and start living, and it was a $50,000,000 company. And I always go to the best and ask him if I can just sit and watch what you do. And on Sundays, this woman named Patty Babitz went in and she sat and answered what are called ad calls. They took out big ads in New York Times and The Post and all the New York papers, and the calls would come in furiously on Sunday. And the people would want self confidence, like I just gave all of you permanently.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:12:52]:
You've got it. Just say, you've got it because Mark said I have it, Susan did it, I have it, or Chaplain's husband says I got it. What happened is she asked one question. If, Susan, you were doing the ad call, she said, Susan, have you convinced yourself yet to take the Dale Carnegie course, or do you need more information? If you said you're convinced, good. Write a check for $367 to Dale Carnegie, send it to this address, care of Patty Babich. Done. If you weren't convinced, what do you need to know that would convince you, Susan, that whatever you said said that's what the course will offer. Now will you send me a check? I never saw anyone close faster on one question.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:13:30]:
That was an effective question, and I went from the bottom to the top. I superseded her because I was willing to work more hours. She was way senior. I was just a 20 something. Patty Babich was senior to me, and she made her stash of cash and went home. I said, man, I gotta stay here until midnight. If somebody's calling, I'm not answering. And I just kept doing it, because I believe if you wanna succeed, you gotta do take massive action to get massive right result right here and right now.
Susan Friedmann [00:13:56]:
Yeah. Very much so. And so how can you develop a better habit of asking better questions more consistently? How can you do that?
Mark Victor Hansen [00:14:06]:
Okay. Perfect. And I'm gonna do it in 2 parts. In the book Ask, the bridge from dream to destiny, Crystal and I teach the asking modus operandi to find out what your destiny is. I believe from a spiritual point of view, before you were in your mother's womb, I knew you, Jeremiah says. So the point is, if you came from the other side which all the NDE, all the near death experiences say, yep, you came in with a mission and a destiny. If you don't do it, you get to go back. Why not go deep in your innermost, highermost subconscious mind, something you call prayer, something you call meditation.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:14:37]:
Once you're done putting the kids to bed, the dog is not barking, the spouse isn't interested in talking to you, a 101 times you go, god, what's my destiny? God, what's my destiny? God, what's my destiny? God, what's my destiny? And it'll pop out in the middle of the night, so you gotta be ready. Now it works at every level, the same question. And my wife is a certified hypnotherapist, so it will work that way too. But when Jack and I wanted to get the title, we sat in my jacuzzi one night drinking wine and wrote a 134 titles for what we'd spent 3 years creating, Chicken Soup For the Soul. Couldn't come up with it. I said, look, Jack, let's use this technique. Megabeth Sound Talent, Megabeth Sound Talent, Megabeth Sound Talent, a 100 and 1 times in your bed in up in Santa Barbara, my bed down in Newport Beach. 1 of us is gonna come up with the title.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:15:23]:
This is before the Internet. This is 1989. He calls me at 2:58 in the morning and says, chicken soup. I said, for the soul. I said, we got it. Now a 144 publishers didn't get it. Well, they gave me goosebumps, which god bumps goosebumps, chili bumps, what Jack and I believe is a corroboration of truth in the human physiology. The publisher in houses, Alternis Don gave us pink slips, and, it was amazing.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:15:48]:
And then now we've sold, like I said, somewhere between a half 100,000,000 and 600,000,000 books around the world because Guinness Book of Records where I'm the number one nonfiction author in the world, they only record at a 100,000,000 because like right now I'm number 1 in Greece, which is amazing because the country's falling apart. I'm number 1 in Vietnam where I have been twice in the last couple of years with my wife trying to teach free enterprise because I'm trying to keep communism more out than in to Vietnam. This is my political belief that free enterprise, the only system that ever has worked, can work and will work. All others are terrible and, have been tried and are tragic. That's probably too much, but I'll stop there.
Susan Friedmann [00:16:27]:
So how about the role of curiosity? What role does that play in the process of asking questions and, you know, achieving the goals that you want to?
Mark Victor Hansen [00:16:37]:
You asked the best questions, and that is a magnificent $1,000,000 question because we're born with insatiable infinite curiosity, and it squished out of us because, like, our little 6 year old grandson came to us when we were starting this book and said, we own an energy company, Natural Power Concepts. We're in Hawaii on the beach at the time and the phone rings and it's Everett. And I said, Everett, what is it? He says, I'm in the closet. Can I talk to your grandpa? I said, yeah. I said, are you still writing books? I said, yes, sir. He said, are you writing one now? I said, yes, sir. It's called Ask Mimi. That's what Crystal goes by as grandma as the name, and I are writing it.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:17:15]:
He said, can I write it with you? I said, of course. So he's the first story in the book, which is just amazing because we never squashed out his creativity, and he is at 6th grade now. He is president of the student body class. He does a 103 pointers a day, and and he makes almost $1,000 a month because we teach you gotta perform your whole life starting as a kid, and he charges people $20 to walk their dog or water their plants while they're on vacation or away from their house. He walks around every house in his neighborhood, which is pretty safe, and, makes sure everything's safe and in order. So the point is, everyone has this curiosity, and most parents and grandparents don't mean to with it. Stop asking those questions. And then you go to school and the teacher says, I'll ask the questions here.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:17:56]:
You listen and write down the notes. Well, no. We need to I believe in the Montessori method. I believe in the Socratic method. I believe in all the methods that make you bigger, stronger. And all of them come down to one thing, ask. And nobody had written about asking is profound. Asking propels us through life.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:18:14]:
If you become masterful at asking, you create a masterpiece of a life. And Ephesians said, you're god's greatest masterpiece, so you're supposed to create a masterpiece of life from my point of view. I'm 76, so I said, but I'm gonna live me a 127 with options for renewal because I have the highest quality of life I know, and I have a I want a high quantity of life, and I keep getting younger and better and healthier and happier and more exuberant. And some people say, how do you use all that energy? You've only got 3 things, energy, vibration, and frequency. And according to Nikola Tesla, and he's correct, so you give yourself unlimited energy by asking, how do I have unlimited energy today? Then you up your vibration so your energy goes out and embraces all the people you meet. And and hopefully, it's embracing all of you that are listening, watching, and learning. And then 3rd, you increase the frequency of what you do that you wanna do and can do that'll make everybody better off and no one worse off until we get a 100% of humanity. And I wanna get 8,000,000,000 readers in the world, and I know I'm doing a philosophy of mine.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:19:18]:
But right now, all the big companies I'm with 8 publishing houses because I've been so prolific with 321 books I've written. Is it, god bless Random House and Simon and Schuster and Hay House and ATI, all of which I'm with and more, but they only wanna do the 17% of the people that are in the English speaking countries. I want the people that speak Swahili to read my book. I want the people that speak Japanese to read my book, which I am in Japanese. But the point is I want everyone to have a shot because books leverage you. Jefferson said, I can't live without books. And Mark Twain said, when I go to heaven, a perfect heaven would be the unlimited library. Isn't that a cool land?
Susan Friedmann [00:19:56]:
I love that. And what comes to mind too is there's no such thing as a stupid question. And especially going back to the idea of naivety and curiosity that children have, and they just have minds that it's like they don't care about what they ask. So there is no such thing as a stupid question.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:20:17]:
Yeah. Exactly. The one
Susan Friedmann [00:20:18]:
you don't ask is the stupid one.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:20:21]:
That's right. We tell our 6 grandkids that you got each of our cell phones will answer it if the phone's on. 24 hours a day, we'll answer any question you could I don't we don't care what it's about, whether it's relationship or whatever you want. We're here to source and serve you, and I think that's the right role for a grandparent.
Susan Friedmann [00:20:38]:
Oh, it's a beautiful role for a grandparent because I just love when my grandkids start asking me questions. I was like, wow. I wouldn't have thought to ask that question. But
Mark Victor Hansen [00:20:49]:
Exactly.
Susan Friedmann [00:20:49]:
They've got this sense of wonder that is just so profound that it's like I'm in awe of their sense of wonder. Yeah. People had it. Yeah.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:21:01]:
Yeah. We got 6 grandkids. Our grand twin, the female, is Madeline, Maddie. And Maddie says, grampy, you're on the board of Back to Space. I wanna be an astronaut. Will you help me? I said, honey, I'm friends with the 3 living astronauts, and I've been their friends since back when Bucky and I used to fly to Houston and talk to them. Yeah. So you get to meet them.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:21:22]:
That's my promise. As long if they're alive, you're gonna get to meet them and and others, and they're nice human beings. And they work their buns off, and they are super smart, and they were great pilots first, like Buzz Aldrin who, you know, she knew as Buzz Lightyear because of the cartoons. And I said, Buzz is here's pictures of Buzz and Crystal and I together, and there's nothing you can't ask Buzz. And he is a doctor of physics, and he's really smart, and you're gonna have to, you are really smart. Here's some of the subjects you're gonna have to master. And she said, okay. And she's mastering those books, and it's sort of like Elon Musk who took off at 6 years old and used to read 60 hours a week.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:22:00]:
Can you believe that?
Susan Friedmann [00:22:02]:
Amazing. Absolutely amazing. No wonder the guy's a genius.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:22:06]:
Exactly. Look, everybody that's a genius reads. I mean, look at the richest people in the world. 5 hours a day, Warren Buffett reads. Elon Musk, he said if I wasn't running a company a 100 hours a week, I'd be reading 60 hours a week, and he's put together 8 multi $1,000,000,000 companies. And then Jeff Bezos liked books so much, he started Amazon, which was really gonna be world's biggest library. And with my book, One Minute Millionaire, we melted him down because we sold 3,600,000 books faster than a speeding bullet because we'd figured out how to hit a niche. This is what you wanted to hit.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:22:38]:
We partnered with ancestry.com. Now it was run by Paul Allen, but that's no relationship to Bill Gates' Paul Allen who had Hodgkin's disease. But Paul Allen, at the time, it was illegal. That book came out in 1991. We mailed out so many people, 3,000,000 people. We said, look, Mark will give $250 worth of electronic stuff. Bobby will give 200. If you buy the book between Beck then and Amazon, started at 6, closed down at 11 at 6 o'clock.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:23:05]:
Well, at 6 o'clock, the electronic readout, we're at 750,000. By 10 o'clock, we're at 705, at which time, all of Amazon went and shut down.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:15]:
Broke the system. And
Mark Victor Hansen [00:23:17]:
and and an hour later, I get a call from Jeff Bezos, which looks so obvious now that he was gonna be the richest guy in the world off and on. If I'd known, I would've brought video cameras because I'll send you first class tickets. How many of what they are? I said, it's Bob Iain. We got a marketing guy. I think you ought to have 3 of us. And he was still on a desktop. If you study his history, you see the picture in his stuff that he was on a, door that he had between seahorses, and, you know, I would have videotaped him because, you know, we're the only one he said ever melted and done. He wanted to know how we did it, and we told him.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:23:49]:
And we had great fun, so don't misunderstand. I'm not the Smurching Jeff. I'm just saying he just couldn't believe it because he was a little, you know the term sophomoric? I do. Yeah. Well, he was sophomoric to the max, and he was doing ads. Nobody can sell more books than I can sell, and my partner Bob Allen sold 50,000,000 copies and nothing down, 50 ways buy real estate for nothing down, but it finished a book a year before called Challenge, I think it was the title. Yeah, that's it. And send me any unemployment line, and I'll get everybody making 5 grand a month, or I'll pay them 5 grand for a month, or send me to any city with a $100, and I'll buy a $1,000,000 real estate in a night, stuff that Grant Cardone's now redoing.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:24:28]:
But that's all original Bob. I said, when Bob and I saw we just happened fortuitously. I think God wanted us to see this, but we saw him saying nobody can sell more books than I do. I said, Bobby, I think he's challenging us. Bob says, I'm in. Are you in? I said, I'm in, man. Let's melt him. Let's go back to what it really means.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:24:46]:
If you read Think and Grow Rich, which is one of the many self help books I'd ask you to read again and again and again, The key line as far as I'm concerned is anything the mind can see can conceive and believe, we talked about believe, alright, it can achieve. What is it you conceive that you can do a great and inspiring book? Then if you conceive, you can sell it in a niche market because Susan and I believe grow rich in your niche. Pick niches that no one's messing with. The smaller, the easier to attack, the better, and then jump niches. Go from one niche to another to another, and take ownership of your niche. And I can talk a little bit about that if you want.
Susan Friedmann [00:25:23]:
Amen. Amen. I love that. Thank you.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:25:26]:
You're welcome.
Susan Friedmann [00:25:28]:
The more you can penetrate, you know, one small niche, you there's low hanging fruit there that nobody else is interested in or even can think of. This is, I think, a great segue, Mark, for you to tell our listeners more about your services, obviously, the book, and what you and Crystal are offering?
Mark Victor Hansen [00:25:49]:
Can I do 3 things? I know that's a little pompous, but I got 3 things I think Yeah. Hey. Obligated.
Susan Friedmann [00:25:54]:
What am I gonna say? No?
Mark Victor Hansen [00:25:56]:
You could
Susan Friedmann [00:25:56]:
ask the question. Absolutely.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:25:58]:
You got it. My obligation to share with you.
Susan Friedmann [00:26:00]:
Absolutely.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:26:01]:
Please get a copy of our book, Ask A Bridge From Your Dreams, Your Destiny, and better than that, get 2, but and give it to a friend and go over all of it with a friend because all of us need to have a mastermind to agree, create a third new invisible mind that's invincible and unstoppable. And Crystal and I are obviously that, and I'm in a lot of mastermind, but today the book here's the crazy thing that Amazon does, when you're number 1 and the best seller, they sell it for less. Now you think, oh, are they nice people or what? No. They're using as a lost leader, number 1 and number 2. Unfortunately, Barnes and Noble and Hudson, Books A Million, all the publishers and little independents who I love, who made me a rich wealthy man, can't compete. So right now, the cover says 24.95. You can buy it for $12 in Amazon because we're the best seller, so they're selling it cheap. So get it today on Amazon because I can't promise that tomorrow.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:26:51]:
Now do I get paid the same $4 a book? The answer is a 100% yes. So if I sell a 1,000,000 books, that's $4,000,000. So that's wonderful. But I'm more interested in you getting it learning the principles. Number 2, on your messaging, go to 21,000 and ask, and we'll help you become a master asker. Number 3, go to markvictorhansenlibrary.com. And first of all, work with Susan and learn how to do all this stuff. But if you can't get published by a major house, which is tough today, unless your name is Joe Rogan and you have 200,000,000 listeners, major houses are reluctant because they are cash strapped because they don't there's only 400 independent bookstores left, so they don't know how to sell books except at bookstore.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:27:33]:
And Susan and I believe, you know, sell books in niches. Find niches. Like, she and I talked about the fact we did Prisoner Soul and got it out to we gave away 250,000 copies, but that's a a rare book. But we did Chicken Soup with a Chiropractor Soul. We got 77,000 doctors that had just lost their insurance, so that was a negative by the government to weigh all that money. And then the Red Cross was out of blood. Lenny Doyle said, hey, Mark. The Red Cross is out of blood.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:28:00]:
Can you do something to help? You always have great ideas. All of you have great ideas. That's why you're a writer. You have great ideas and you're conceptional, conceive of stuff that nobody else conceives of. You're brilliant, and I want you to pull out your genius brilliance and so does Susan. So the point is we had 2 negatives, and you know in math, a negative times negative equals a A positive. Positive. So Red Cross is out of blood.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:28:26]:
Chiropractors are without their patient load. So I said to the DC doctors, chiropractic doctors, call and said, hey, guys and ladies, there's 77,000 of you seeing 25,000,000 people a month. Reactivate all your old patients. Send them out an email, which had just started, and invite them in for a free adjustment, and you call 800 to give life, bring out a blood mobile, and if they give a pint of blood, they get a free little sampler book from me, and that took us to number 1 for 58 weeks, this one little crazy idea I had. And, give a pint of blood, and we went from no blood at the Red Cross to enough blood that we cryogenically froze blood for a year and a half in advance, which is, like, so week cool. I couldn't believe it. What am I saying? Every one of you can go to any charity and it's cause related charity. Find out who their top benefactor is, write a book for him or her, and have them tithe 10 per and I wrote a book called the miracle of tithing, which businessmen say, what's the miracle of tithing? And I said, you haven't been tithed enough.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:29:21]:
And you got to tie your thinking first, what about you, your time, your talent, your treasure at last, your treasure at last. Thinking, time, talent, and then your treasures, and then be thankful that you can give all of it. That's the most important thing. Be thankful in advance. I ask you to go to mark fiction library.com. See what we're doing if it fits for you. If you can do it alone, do it. We need more books, more thinking, more writing, more excitement than ever before.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:29:48]:
And, Susan, I didn't know she existed as a mentor to you individually 1 on 1 before we started this conversation. I'm cheering you on to have her as your great inspiring teacher mentor because she's a superstar.
Susan Friedmann [00:30:01]:
You're so sweet. I appreciate it. And I believe you have a free gift for our listeners.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:30:06]:
I do. If they go to the 21,000 Ask, on their messages, they get a free book, a free thing. So we would love to make that happen. How's that?
Susan Friedmann [00:30:14]:
Beautiful and generous. Thank you. And as you know, we love our expert guests to leave us with a golden nugget. What's yours, Mark?
Mark Victor Hansen [00:30:27]:
Because I believe in asking so much. I say this, the size of your question, the size of your ask determines the size of your result. When I'm bankrupt, I thought, you know, this is 50 years ago now. I thought, man, if I can make a $100 a year, that's 250 workdays times $400 a day equals a $100, still pretty good wage today. But I met the world's top salesman, Ben Feldman, who had outsold 1500 of the 1800 life insurance companies in America, and I was training in life insurance at the time, and he and I had lunch. And he said, look, you've got kids? I said, yes, sir. He said, if one of them's life depended on you making $4 tomorrow or they die, would you do it? I said, absolutely. He said, now do that 250 times, and all money is 1 zero different.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:31:07]:
So it's 4,000 a day times 250 workdays equals a 1000000 a year, and I started doing it. And I've taught a lot of other people to do it. So I've been asking how to make a 100 grand, which the mind, if you read Psycho Cybernetics, is teleological, doctor Maxwell Maltz wrote, meaning you set a goal, you get a goal, you go toward it. But if you set the wrong goal, you go toward the wrong goal. If you set the right goal, you go to the right goal. If you set a money goal to make 4,000 a day, it's no harder for your subconscious to figure out how to make that than it was to make 400 a day. It's just state of mind creates state of result. State of your question predetermines the state of the answer.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:31:43]:
You've gotta be asking yourself the right question, and our book has a 178 questions that ask you that if you'll write them out in your journal, your life's gonna go from good to phenomenally good, from okay to spectacular. And you'll go from arithmetic growth to geometric growth, and I want that for each and every one of you. And hopefully, somewhere at a future seminar or a letter or a meeting fortuitously at a restaurant or walking down the street, we meet and I get to hear your great success story.
Susan Friedmann [00:32:13]:
Beautiful. That's very inspirational. And to know that listeners, you're gonna have to listen to this multiple times. I don't know anybody who speaks faster than Mark.
I'm like, am I keeping up with you? That was the question.
Mark Victor Hansen [00:32:30]:
I speak fast so I can get more in and I know. Brilliant.
Susan Friedmann [00:32:35]:
You'vetwice as much as anybody else in the time. But, hey, it was a good use of the time. I appreciate it. This has been a whole lot of fun. I've learned a lot. And I know, listeners, as I said, there's so much treasure in what Mark has been saying. Listen to this over and over again, and you'll have the transcript. So read that through.
I hope we capture everything in that.
By the way, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected it to, Let's you and I jump on a quick call to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return that you were hoping for. So go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.com
to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
