Q. You’ve had significant high points and low points in your life. What’s driven you to persevere?
A. I desperately wanted to succeed. I grew up in relative poverty. I said that someday I want to be rich. That’s relative, of course. I’ve always been climbing the mountain, trying to have fun. Even when I went bankrupt, I decided to stop feeling depressed. I wanted to be a speaker, a teacher, an entrepreneur. I’m doing that. … Life is a glorious journey and it’s a challenge.
Q. In your new book, Cash in a Flash, you talk about success being similar to making a cake. How so?
A. You need a recipe; most people don’t have a recipe. You can’t make a chocolate cake if you don’t have chocolate. It won’t come out right.
You have to have the right ingredients. You have to create value or find value. While the economy may be in the economic doldrums, so to speak, 20 to 25 percent of businesses are making more money than ever before. …
It’s the principle of innovation. Look at whatever you do, and make it better from the customer’s point of view. This is a most exquisitely exciting time, if you’re awake. If you’re asleep you'll be recycled.
The economy is in a recession. People aren’t. If you hang out with people who are winning, you’ll get the right result. If you hang out with the wrong people, you’ll get the wrong result. You have to change your conversation inside; you have to change things outside. …
Everywhere I go some people are in the doldrums, and some people can hardly handle it. They’re hiring new people. Go to the highest, best level you can work at. It’s like Dickens wrote: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” It’s about your perceptions.
Q. Cash in a Flash discusses three major terms: Wow Now, Inner Winner and Dream Team. Tell me a little about each of these.
A. Wow Now means you have to have a vision of what you want to do. … The greatest hockey player Wayne Gretsky said to go where the hockey puck is going. I say, go where the market is going. … The vision allows you to do the innovation. We need more vision and visionaries. …
When you’ve got the vision and you wow yourself because your vision is so compelling, then Inner Winner is what your self-talk is. You might be saying, “The economy is in the bag and no one is getting employed.” … Andrew Carnegie who is one of my heroes, said go create your own jobs and your own enterprise. Your Inner Winner can talk you up with positive self-talk. You talk yourself out with negative self-talk. …
The third thing is your Dream Team. You start with one other person and build it. When Jack Canfield and I started, it was just the two of us. Now, we’ve built a whole little army. There’s plenty of business being done by plenty of people. Hang out with people doing business. Hang out with people making more than you. Once a week take a millionaire to a meal. Ask about strategy, if there’s some business you can do together. That’s a recipe for riches. You want to do it in an area you’re passionate. … Turn problem into profits like Jean Nidetch and Weight Watchers. … Everyone’s got problems. Solve it for yourself and you’ll solve it for everyone else.
Go to bed at night, and ask, “What is my unique talent and how can I make a lot of money at it?” You’ll have the answer when you wake up. Your subconscious works for you, but you have to program it right. … Do it 400 times, and it will come to you.
Q. What does it take to succeed?
A. You have to make the decision, then have the heart, mind and soul, and then go with it. The reason my books work is that I want everyone to have prosperity and abundance. … You have to have the strategies. You have to think right, talk right, act right, and meet the right people to get the right results. It all comes out of the thinking. …Everybody is always selling themselves. You’re either selling yourself down the river or you’re selling yourself to greater and greater success.
Q. Why do you believe that most businesses fail within five years?
A. People should always apprentice in the business they want to do. They should have a mastermind dream team. They should hang out with people bigger than they are in the business. Most people get cocky and think they know more than they know. Every industry has five to seven people who are really good. Anyone who starts any business ought to go talk to the best people that are there.
Q. You’ve co-written several books. How do you work through the challenges of working with a partner?
A. You have to stay in communication, and one of you has to be proactive to make sure you communicate. I co-wrote a book with Art Linklater. He has 20,000 employees, he’s one of the busiest men on the planet. He knows when to call when I can talk for 20 minutes.
Relationships are always a challenge. You have to have a good, solid relationship.
And you have to meditate. I meditate at least once a day. When you’re meditating, you focus less on the physical body. The astral body lives forever; that’s the one you need to work on. In meditation, that’s the only place that compresses time. … In the Old Testament it says, “Be still and know I am God.” … I listen to music like “Pachelbel Canon in D.” I visualize my day. I visualize how I will blast through my day in effortless ease, how the day will be stress free. …
I happen to like guided imagery. I do all kinds of meditation. It gets you out of your little pedantic sense of self.
Q. What three things do entrepreneurs need to do in 2010?
A. They need to think bigger than they ever thought. They need to be more innovative than they’ve ever been — not just in their own business.
They need to have better teams than they’ve ever had, who selflessly help each other get their dreams.
They need to write down one business idea every day, no matter what.
________________________
Who is Mark Victor Hansen?
Mark Victor Hansen and his business partner Jack Canfield created what Time magazine called, “the publishing phenomenon of the decade,” with more than 110 million Chicken Soup for the Soul books sold worldwide – one of the most successful publishing franchises of all time.
Hansen’s other books include Cash in a Flash, The One Minute Millionaire and Cracking the Millionaire Code (all with Robert G. Allen), How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life (with Art Linklater), The Aladdin Factor and Dare to Win (both with Canfield) and The Power of Focus (with Canfield and Les Hewitt).
He has also developed an extensive library of audio and video programs in the areas of big thinking, sales achievement, publishing success, and personal and professional development.
Recipient of numerous awards honoring his entrepreneurial spirit, philanthropic heart and business acumen, Hansen was inducted into the Sales & Marketing Executive International Hall of Fame and accepted the Horatio Alger Award for extraordinary life achievement in the area of free enterprise leadership.
|
