TBF 36 | Writing Bingeable Books

 

Asking questions is so powerful that it can help you produce a bingeable book series. Today, Tracy Hazzard talks to Mark Victor Hansen, the co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and his wife Crystal Dwyer Hansen, who co-authors Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny with him. This conversation focuses on their book Ask!, its inception, and its aim of helping people fulfill their ultimate destiny. They dive deeper on the power of asking questions and how it promotes critical thinking and eventually fulfilling goals. Listen to their wise words as they also share their insights about relationships, how to write your own bingeable book series, and helping change the world for the better.

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Writing A Bestselling Bingeable Book Series With Mark Victor Hansen And Crystal Dwyer Hansen

We are going to do something unusual because I have a great opportunity. I am here at the City Summit event, which is a big entrepreneurial event that happens every year. It happens in conjunction with the Oscars so that they can run a gala benefit as well. They bring amazing speakers here. I have got Mark Victor Hansen and his lovely wife, Crystal Dwyer Hansen. I was excited because I’ve met Mark a lot of events before over the years but we never got a chance to do an interview. Normally, we talk about TV shows, radio hosts, podcast hosts and what makes them bingable. This is an author that’s bingable. We’re going to talk about that.

Me?

You’ve never been called that one.

If you don’t know who Mark Victor Hansen is, he is the co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul series. We’re talking about great series, Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul. We’ve got a lot of Chicken Soup for the Soul out there. That’s binging when we go from one to the other or we share it with our friends or family. To me, when something gets bought and used or read and then used again and again and shared, we’re onto something bingable.

In America, it’s a five pass long and in India, it’s a twelve. In China, where we have been going, we’re not going now, but for many years it’s 15 to 16. It’s amazing.

The ripple effect and the residual of that. How long has it been since you did Chicken Soup for the Soul, the first one?

We created it on June 28th, 1993. We were blessed to have 500 million people bought it, so billions have read it.

Also, shared it.

I did eight money books, One Minute Millionaire, Cracking the Millionaire Code, The Richest Kids in America, because I believe that this is an entrepreneurial acceleration seminar. Everybody needs to be an entrepreneur.

How do you go about doing something where you think that you have this concept that’s going to go and be a series, be something that you can spread the message slightly differently, but to a different audience? Do you think about that ahead of time?

Yes. Crystal and I started this series. I’m going to let her tell you what Ask! does.

I’m excited that you’re going to mention that already. Ask! is your latest series.

It’s our latest book called Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny. You were asking about the process of how do you start a book or start a book series because now we have the one book, but we think that this could become a series. What it starts with is an idea that you feel you have to share with people because it’s that important. In the case of Ask, we see so many people who are smart, amazing, educated, likable, but they’re not getting what they want. They’re not fulfilling their what we call Your Ultimate Destiny. We look at the second group and these groups are equal. The group that’s incredibly successful in achieving all kinds of things are smart, scrappy, and likable. It was bothering us.

What’s the differentiation? What’s missing?

We love all these people but what’s that differentiation? There’s something there. We started breaking it down, we have these little morning meetings that are also our meditation and we go, “This group knows how to ask. They learned how to ask. They were mentored at some point in their life to know how to ask.” That’s the differentiator and it’s funny because we figured out there are three channels through which you need to learn to be a master asker and that is, ask yourself, ask others and ask God.

I love that. It’s funny. We were talking about this. My Vanessa is quite the little asker. That’s how I would describe her. Every evening when I put her to bed, she has this mom attitude, where this is my time to stall for bedtime, I’m going to ask all my good questions now. They’re important. As I’m about to shut the door there’s one more question. One day, she says to me, “Mom, what does it take to be smart?” I was like, “That’s a great question.” The first thing I did was I said, “You start with asking great questions.” That’s the first thing. I said, “You did that so it’s asking great questions. When you read a lot, you learn a lot, you go out there, and you think a lot about it and form your ideas. That’s how you become smart.” This is what I tell her. I keep thinking about if the one thing that I can instill in my kids is curiosity, I’ve done a better job as a parent. You’re onto something with that.

We are and it’s funny you brought up the children because we talked about that in the book. This is a talent and a skill we’re born with and somehow through the years, it gets shut down through schooling. Don’t ask questions, be quiet, listen, and learn and all of these things. Children are beautiful in their ability to ask because they haven’t had enough life experience to have been shut down yet. We talked about in the book, getting rid of the seven roadblocks to asking and get rid of all that stuff that’s gotten in the way of our being great askers.

I love that. Mark, you’ve talked to over 6,000 audiences.

Everywhere around the world in 80 countries, I love it

That’s a lot of people you’ve touched with your speeches. That’s amazing.

Thank you.

There are three channels through which you need to learn to be a master asker, and that is, ask yourself, ask others, and ask God. Click To Tweet

Do you find that your audience is asking you good questions? Do you get a chance to do that often with them?

Almost everywhere. We’re touring the country so if anyone goes to our website, MarkVictorHansen.com, we give them a free tape. We are also seeing all the places we’re going and almost everywhere we get hired, not because we’re doing it together. We’re doing 3 hours in Las Vegas and in the end, the last hour is nothing but questions. The questions and they’re wonderful, illuminating and revealing because you can’t ask without getting the results. That’s the point that we’re teaching here because it wakes up different parts of your mind. You did a young age and we have a grandson. A few years ago when we were starting to write the Ask! book, we’re in Hawaii on vacation and he got a Gizmo Watch for Christmas.

We love those Gizmo watches.

Only four people get it, the parents and the grandparents, so I knew it’s my grandson, Everett. I said, “Grandson number one, what is it?” He says, “Grampy, do you know these Chicken Soup book?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Are you still writing books?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Can I write a book with you?” I went, “Holy cow.”

That’s a bold ask.

He read the first story in the book. It’s wonderful because he’s innocent. He’s naive, but he’s like your five-year-old it’s the same thing. He’s willing to ask a quality question, got the quality answer and he’s the first story in the book.

I love the idea of that. I found that whenever I do speeches around that the ones that come out and ask the questions, take action. Especially when you stand up in front of an audience and ask your question, you feel that they’re going to hold you accountable.

You’re putting yourself out there.

They’re going to hold you accountable.

There’s a little stress in that and you feel a little vulnerability. In all the research we did with our book, it was so fascinating because we found that first of all, asking yourself questions opens up a part of your brain that is essential. It lights up the part of your brain that does the critical thinking so you come up with these solutions and illuminations and all those things. The other thing is asking other people standing up, putting yourself out there does two things in several studies, but people like you better. It’s counter-intuitive because people think in the studies that if I asked too much, they’re going to think I’m dumb or they’re not going to like me. It’s the opposite. People like you more and it’s the way that human beings bond because we’re a resource to each other.

We want to be helpful. We want to help you naturally. On the show, we talked to a lot of podcasters and we talked to them about how to make their shows better and we’re always asking podcasters what makes them successful? I see time and time again, that the number one thing they say, “How do you get great guests ask?” They say that often. It’s a serious pattern. I could say probably 75% of them will say that is the first thing that they say. It makes the difference between the ones that don’t podcast, the ones do. They’re out there asking. That’s the difference.

You triggered a new formula, A plus A equals R. Ask plus Action equals Result. It’s simple. In Chicken Soup for the Soul, we always did it three pages at a time so you read it while you were in the bathroom or before you go to bed and the book falls on your face.

That’s a bingable tip there.

It was a bingable book because it wasn’t threatening. It wasn’t, “You’re reading 1,200 pages and you’ll never finish it the rest of your life.”

It’s not War and Peace.

It’s a wonderful read but it was tough. It’s the same thing with Ask!. We’ve got these stories that are irresistible that they’re compelling that you go, “I can do that.” That’s what a story does. It asks you to ask yourself, if you can do it, you’ll have the courage to ask others and maybe ask big G.

I like the reflection part. We’re in such a busy world. Sometimes we don’t take the time to sit back and reflect on whether or not we should be doing something. Whether or not it’s right for us and that’s always a question. When we’re talking to podcasters, other things out there and we’re talking to speakers and authors. You’re the only interview. I’m going to say that not to be exclusive here, but you’re the only interview I’ve done because I’m organizing this. You’re the only interview I agreed to do. The reason I agreed to do it is that my audience there is perfect to hear your message. If I miss that, I would be remiss in having that be right for my audience.

Thank you.

We appreciate it. That’s kind of you. We’re happy to be here.

When you ask and you have an opportunity and you reflect on that saying, “My audience, listeners or readers need that. They need this.” That’s important for you to take action on that. That’s how I see that. I love that you added that into your formula because that makes a lot of sense to me.

That’s why we picked the title, Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny because here you are with all these things. We all have things in our hearts that we want, desire and we can get but we don’t know how to get them. With the simple act of asking again and again and taking action when you get the answers, responses, and illuminations, it becomes a bridge to fulfilling your destiny. It’s magical. We made the book magical, even the cover is magical because everyone’s life is a magical journey if you let it be.

TBF 36 | Writing Bingeable Books

Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny

How many books have you written together? Is this your first one?

This is our first one together.

What are some of the ones that you’ve written?

I wrote a book and it’s not available now because I’m redoing it. It’s Pure Thoughts for Pure Results. I’m a life coach, a clinical hypnotherapist in wellness and nutrition. That’s my background and the next book I did was Skinny Life: Secret to Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Fitness. I say throw away your scales, stop counting calories and start loving yourself.

Speaking to the way I’m acting now so I love that I’m going to have to pick that up. That’s working together. I work with my husband every single day. We have been working together almost our entire marriage.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Kindred spirits.

On top of it, the COO of our company is our eldest daughter. You see it expand in there. It’s not by choice that happens that way. It wasn’t thoughtful it happened. Working with your partner and becoming co-collaborators in something, there’s quite a power to it. Most people don’t recognize it but I can see that you do and you seem to enjoy it.

The goal is to be with your soulmate. When you put two candles together that are lit, it jumps for full forward. We’re here at a seminar but the exponential acceleration in business is the same thing in exponential acceleration relationship and spiritual growth. It takes somebody else that you can live with love, joy and expand. We’ve expanded each other vastly, I’m thankful to say in the 5 kids and 6 grandkids we love and we assumed before it’s over probably a dozen grandkids.

We’ve always joked that it’s our secret weapon because we don’t stop working. We don’t have rules in our house about you can’t talk about the business after 5:00 because we’re both creative. Your creative happens when it happens and you need to be able to talk about that. That being said, it needs to be talked about because we need to share that and sometimes there is this like, “I cannot take one more conversation now so we’re going to have to take a break.” For the most part, how do you find that? Does it ever get overwhelming? Have you found a good harmony for the way that you work together?

We have. Like you, we get excited about our work that it doesn’t feel like work, so you are discussing a lot of the times, even sometimes in the evenings. Occasionally, Mark and I will get to the point where we’re like, and he’s better at it than I am, “I’ve got one more thing to do. What does this and this?” I’m like, “That’s enough. We need a break. No more business conversation. It’s off-limits this entire weekend or this entire day, we’re not going to talk about it.” I follow his lead on that because otherwise, I’m an organizer and I’ll keep moving forward with one more thing.

It sounds like you have a nice fit together.

We do. We balance each other out.

Let me add one more thing, early in our relationship, we’re in Costa Mesa, California. We’re living in Newport, but we were in a Mother’s Market having dinner and there’s a nice little old white-haired man next to us. I thought, “He’s cute,” and I’ll send you leads already. I can’t help but admire your relationship. Do you mind if I tell you how to make sure it stays together forever and ever? He goes, “Whoa.” I would have paid that guy to tell me that. This is divinity coming. It came because we asked because we want to have a magnificent relationship that our whole lifespan, we have the most magnificent life. We do and it fulfills ours and we want everyone else to fulfill theirs. There’s no competition in the universe said, “I’ve been to Billy Graham Ministries for my whole life.” What we’ve discovered in all the research everywhere at Harvard, was a husband and wife to pray together out loud every night before they go to sleep, stay together. It’s that simple. That’s the only one consistent that we can discover and now you get to talk to.

He did say that and I was amazed. It was funny because we were getting married, we were engaged and I thought, “I prayed in groups and I pray by myself a lot my entire life, but I’ve never prayed with my significant other.” It almost felt awkward.

You do it in church but it feels awkward outside of it.

When it’s the two of you, it’s a whole new level of intimacy. When you’re asking about your higher purpose together, there’s something so magical about that. He was right. It turns out he was right.

It is transcendent.

That level of spiritual intimacy takes your relationship to a higher level. I do recommend it with your spouse and significant other. If you can get past that awkwardness and sharing your prayers out loud with each other together and praying together.

I’ve seen some of the research on that. There’s been research done about praying together but also about meditating. If you meditate in groups, you can change the energy in a room. I would think that praying is no different in that sense. It can change the entire energy of your relationship, the room and your trajectory is headed.

We pray every night together, but we also meditate in the morning. We visualize it to realize that visualizing is realizing, where we want to go, what we want to do and if we’re vectoring on a path and one of us are getting off track a little bit because there’s much stuff offered to us. When you’re the world’s bestselling author, you get inundated with good stuff and for me, it’s easy to get distracted. Luckily, she says, “Here are the curves. Here’s what we wrote down. Here’s what we’re going to agree to. You’ve got to say no to this and that.”

The reflection part that you’re talking about, you have to reflect that back into, “Is this right for us?”

I do the same for her because we are raising $1 billion for the Child Help Global Village.

Let’s talk about that. Before you start setting that up, you’ve got a bigger mission and it’s not only hawking a book here. You’ve got a bigger mission. Let’s talk about that. Tell us about what you’re doing there.

We are involved in ChildHelp.org. It’s an organization that’s been around for many years. The Founders, Sara O’Meara and Yvonne Fedderson, rescued these eleven mixed-blood children off the streets of Japan when they were little starlets performing with the USO. These children were set out to die because of their mixed blood and they were racist at the time. If they weren’t pure Japanese, they’re like, “We don’t have enough room for you.” They took this on upon themselves and said to their Commanding General and he said, “You can’t keep these kids.” They said, “We’re not leaving here until we have a home.”

They went to every orphanage in the city and finally found one little Mama Kim who would take them. She’s like, “I don’t have any money for food.” They said, “We promise you, you will never worry about food for these children again. We’ll fix the doors and windows.” The next day, they had the troops over there. The soldiers fixed the doors and windows. It started out as Orphanages International and it became well-known that the government recognized them and stepped in. They asked them to do the same thing for Vietnam. It’s the same thing with mixed-blood children. Operation Babylift because they’ve started the orphanages there.

We all have things in our hearts that we desire that we can get but we don't know how to get them. Click To Tweet

When the war ended, they were going to kill all the mixed-blood babies and these were probably our soldiers’ babies. They stayed up day and night and found adoptive families for these thousands of children and got the military to bring them over. Nancy Reagan asked them to start looking at the child abuse problem in the United States. They were like, “What problem?” They funded a study on it and said the problem so severe was hidden at the time. They have changed every law in every state for child abuse to protect. At the time, children were not protected. The abuser is protected. It was a horrible situation. Mark got involved years ago. His tithes on every book give money back. He met them when we moved to Arizona years ago. We connected with them. Once I saw their mission, I’m like, “We have to help them.”

We rolled up our sleeves and once in a while I say, “We’ve got to do our own business a little bit at a time. You can’t do charity full time.”

You’ve got to do both. It’s the ability to tie them all.

The truth is that Sara O’Meara and Yvonne Fedderson are angels. Yvonne Fedderson dated Elvis Presley for two years and they’re both magnificent beautiful earth angels because they’ve been taking care of these kids. Nobody ever thought of doing it in such a big way of abuse, neglect, and trafficking. We’ve got four villages. We got one right here in Beaumont, which is Palm Springs for you. In case you don’t know our geography.

I’m from California. I’m from Irvine.

You know your way around.

When you go to Palm Springs next time, go to Beaumont but call first so we can give you a tour. Merv Griffin gave the $375 million villages and these kids are distraught. The psychiatrists couldn’t ask them questions. They have to talk to the dog or horse first or some stuff. These ladies have figured out equivalently a twelve-step process to help every hurting soul.

They are amazing with what they’ve done.

How does this work into what you’re doing with the book, your tours and the things that you do? How does this work in all that?

We always tithe a minimum of 10% or more on everything we do. It’s been more.

Also, your time is valuable.

Exactly because what they need is our leadership. We’re bringing a lot of people to the fold who can help build this. What we’re involved in is we’re chairing this Global Campus Initiative so it’ll be the Child Help Global Campus. It’s to teach the entire world the practices they’ve perfected for all these years, 60 years. It’s going to take a lot of money. We’re looking at probably $1 billion. They didn’t know how to do it, but we are bringing many people into the fold. He’s a fearless asker.

Luckily, I’ve got a lot of rich friends, knock on wood. So far not one of them said no. Back to your question, when you give, you’ll automatically be received. I’m asking people to help not for us because we’re fed for the rest of forever into our kids. What happens is we’re being inundated with miracles. With the stuff that’s showing up you go, “I couldn’t even ask for it.” It’s brilliant. I don’t know how far I should go with this interview. I can go as far as you want and deep.

You start to put that out there and it starts coming to you. It finds you.

You become a magnet because when you put good out there, and the good better you put out, it will find you. The universe is a perfect accounting system. I believe that. It’s wonderful. We love it. We love the good that’s happening.

You have created a community that has a particular direction in terms of social good, wanting to feel good, wanting to feel better, that’s what Chicken Soup is all about. Starting from that and continuing all the way forward into getting what you need out of your businesses and out of your life and where you’re going to go by asking. You’re creating a community around you, that you can now influence and direct into something great, that’s valuable and changes the course of the world.

Even our agent who read the book, Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny said, “I read it once and it was good. I had to read it again. I do 80 books a month. I don’t have time to read any books twice, but your books are that good.” I said, “Thank you.” He’s a great agent. We love, adore and respect him. He’s opened up stuff. Let me give you one of the examples while I can. The book business died in 2008. We went from 19,000 bookstores down to 400. Barnes & Noble is having its own little hiccups and all that. Our agent, we couldn’t love this guy more. I’ve known him for many years and he used to work at Nightingale Conant, the world’s biggest tape company. I made a lot of tapes for him. He said, “We’ve got two publishers that want you and they want you to finish these twelve books.” I went, “We’ve gone from nothing for 10 years to 12 again.”

We got a book coming out in October called You Have a Book in You, behind that we have Speed: Write Your Autobiography. You say, “Why would you do that?” Wouldn’t you like to know what your grandparents and great grandparents and great-great-grandparents did? Especially, there’s great nobility and what my father’s and my uncle did but I would like to know what grandpa, great-grandpa did. I honestly have zero. I know his name and got it from the Bible, but what do I know about them?

Too bad Tom’s not here to talk to you about that. My husband, Tom, my audience knows that but you guys don’t. He has fascinated by genealogy in this background and what happens. He happens to have photographs because his grandfather did documentation of the engineering on the islands in the Pacific. He made notes, thank goodness. He was like, “I wished I had sat down, recorded him and gotten the whole story at least I’ve got the notes.” He’s always fascinated by that.

It’s such a treasure.

It’s also important for you to spread that out.

TBF 36 | Writing Bingeable Books

Writing Bingeable Books: Asking yourself questions lights up a part of your brain that does critical thinking.

 

It’s wonderful for everyone not only for commercial use necessarily but to write the story. It’s fascinating and it matters to the people who come after you. They need to know it gives. I feel that it gives you a different foundation to be connected to those who came before you.

There’s a historical connection. There’s a connection now to the generation you have.

Tracy, the only businesses that books will write has to be unique and that’s unique because no one else has done a book on Speed Write Your Autobiography. We say 90 days 22 minutes a day and you’re done. It’s not threatening. We give you all the triggers on how to do it. It’s got to be unique and transformational. When you write your autobiography, which I’m writing Mark on Mark, back to the question it illuminates parts of your brain. In the middle of the night you go, “I know stuff I didn’t know I could know.”

That shaped me and I didn’t realize it did.

Whatever the real number is 18 billion brain cells, but it wakes up. It has to be unique, transformational and inevitable. I believe my heart is inevitable. Everybody’s life story matters and it should be clear.

It’s got to be unique and transformational.

In other words, you can’t look at a caterpillar and see the butterfly. We’re close friends with Nolan Bushnell who fired Steve. Steve Jobs came and said, “Give me $50,000, you get a third of Apple.” He started Chuck E. Cheese and Atari. He’s a billionaire so it’s not a question that he’s not hurting but he said, “I did make one mistake. I should have bought the $50,000.”

We’ve all done one of those.

It has to be unique and transformational.

Number three is inevitable. I’m telling you this now, tell me do you think it’s inevitable that you’ll and I’m not trying to sell one book to you but because you and I are friends for a long time, aren’t you going to write your autobiography now? Before you may not have had to path and now we’re giving you a path.

What I can say is I’m going to push my dad because I want to hear his stories. He does tell the stories again and again. The grandkids go, “Papa, tell me the story about the chicken,” which is a funny story. You’re all going to go, “Why isn’t he telling the chicken story?” We don’t have enough time. I will tell you another time.

I’ve got a lot of chicken stories.

We’ve got a lot of chicken stories. It’ll be those things and they’ll want to hear it again and again. What a shame the generation after them. My kids are young, they don’t get it right and their kids don’t get it.

You need to record it.

In other words, in the old days when you had one phone and household family has to run the phone or radio. I was old enough to have had the first TV in our neighborhood. My dad saved up money to buy a TV so everybody came to our house. With the cell phone, people are not connecting and loneliness is the debilitator of humanity. We think now.

There’s too much loneliness and we talked about that in a book. You can’t ask if you’re not connecting and being with people. We’re too isolated.

You can have all the treasure that you want because it's never been a richer time financially in humanity. Click To Tweet

It’s important. We’ve got a lot of lessons here that we can tie to being bingable. I agree with you, the idea of having something unique is transformational and that it has an inevitable use. You’re going to need it and it’s going to be out there. That characterizes all the products I designed and all the things that I’ve done. I see the characteristic in all of those things and the podcast that we’re out there promoting and doing. The ones that do the best are the ones that have an inevitable tight need. They’re tapping into something people need now.

It is what we’re saying the three T’s are. People have infinitely more talent than they’ve got, we’re asking them to pull it out. That’s number one. Number two, everyone’s got the same time. We all got the same 24 hours. Nobody gets more time. Number three is you can have all the treasure that you want because it’s never been a richer time financially in humanity. Absolute abundance is our divine right. The oldest spiritual leader the Upanishads said, “Out of abundance, here she took abundance and still abundance remains.” You can’t take it all in any way. If you were to say, “We don’t have enough water. We’ve got a way to do atmospheric water generation.”

It’s going to happen. Time, talent, and treasure, I love that. I wish we could talk for hours. You’ve got more interviews to do. We’re going to talk again. I know we are. You can check out either TheBingeFactor.com or FeedYourBrand.co to get all the information and connect up with Mark Victor Hansen and Crystal Dwyer Hansen. Thank you.

Thank you, Tracy.

Thank you, Tracy. This was a lot of fun.

I’ll be back next time with another binge factor.

Don’t miss Tracy Hazzard’s Authority Magazine article about Mark Victor Hansen and Crystal Dwyer Hansen too!

Important Links:

About Mark Victor Hansen

TBF 36 | Writing Bingeable BooksMark Victor Hansen is probably best known as the co-author for the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series and brand, setting world records in book sales, with over 500 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. With his endearing charismatic style, Mark captures his audience’s attention as well as their hearts. Having spoken to over 6000 audiences world-wide with his one-of-a-kind technique and masterful authority of his work, time and again he continues to receive high accolades from his audiences as one of the most dynamic and compelling speakers and leaders of our time.

His credentials include a lifetime of entrepreneurial success, alternative energy pursuits, in addition to an extensive academic background. Many of Mark’s ideas about the comprehensive XL Cover Article_Page_1success of all humanity came from his years of undergraduate study with the famous Buckminster Fuller, one of Albert Einstein’s greatest students.

He is also a prolific writer with many popular books such as the Power of Focus, The Aladdin Factor, Dare to Win, One Minute Millionaire which has inspired and helped thousands of people the world over to become millionaires. Mark has also made a profound influence through his extensive library of audio programs, video programs and enriching articles in the areas of big thinking, sales achievement, publishing success and personal and professional development.

Mark’s energy and exuberance travels still further through mediums such as television (Oprah, CNN and The Today Show), print (TIME, US News & World Report, USA Today, The New York Times and Entrepreneur) and countless radio and newspaper interviews as he assures people everywhere that “with the right principles and mentors, you can easily create the life of your dreams.”

Mark is dedicated to helping young people become financially literate, and to turn their entrepreneurial dreams into business achievements. He wrote The Richest Kids in America to teach entrepreneurial leadership and financial literacy to kids around the world and loves speaking to young people about their futures.

Mark finds his greatest joy now, in his soul-mate relationship with his wife, best friend, and partner, Crystal Dwyer Hansen. He says a true soul mate relationship allows you to express all that you were meant to be, at your best. Crystal and Mark tour the world together speaking and inspiring audiences. They enjoy spending cherished time with their combined 5 children and 6 precious grandchildren and try to include them whenever possible, into their travels around the world.

About Crystal Dwyer Hansen

Crystal Dwyer Hansen is an Entrepreneur, Certified Life Coach, and Wellness/Nutrition Expert, whose personal coaching, speaking, CD and video programs, books, and articles have helped people all over the world. Crystal’s expertise is in the field of human potential.

Those who have worked with Crystal have experienced profound and lasting transformation in relationships, career, health & wellness. Crystal is a Member of the International Coaching Federation and the founder of Crystal Vision Life, Ltd, (crystalvisionlife.com) and Skinny Life™ a wellness company (skinnylife.com). Her book Skinny Life- The Secret to Being Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit, is available Barnes & Noble.com and Amazon.com. She travels the world with her husband, best-selling author and entrepreneur Mark Victor Hansen, speaking, inspiring, and teaching leadership. They are releasing a new co-written book called ASK! The Dreams from Your Dreams to Your Destiny in Spring of 2020.

They are both passionate about the health of our planet and the need to create comprehensively sustainable energy and water solutions. Together they are owners of Natural Power Concepts, a Hawaii based company focused on cleaning up the planet through natural energy devices, and Metamorphosis Energy, a renewable energy development company. They live happily in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona.

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