Session #312: Leon Sankofa on Filling the Gaps

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 312 Leon Sankofa on filling the gaps. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Now, I know I come on here pretty often and say that this is a conversation I’ve been wanting to capture for quite some time.

And you know what? This is a conversation I’ve been wanting to capture for quite some time. I first met Leon Sankofa a number of years ago just by interacting at different conferences and keeping up in terms of email and getting to know him, first of all, as someone who was first and foremost actually.

And part of the origin story, you’re about to hear a social worker, but then hearing the ways that here, it was a passion about hypnosis, and I’ll tell you specifically, one of the things that we end up talking about in this conversation is just the nature of how we present it to other people. You go first.

You heard that theme when I had Dr. West Rocky on the program a couple of weeks ago with improvisational healing. The whole mindset that the way that you present something is how it’s often received. So in a very smooth, confident conversation, talking about different modalities of therapy from his background and just simply folding in.

Methods of hypnosis and NLP so that, how do we make hypnosis not weird to people that we’re introducing it to stop assuming it’s weird. A quick story here. Person’s going through my class a number of years ago. This was a training back when we would do it over the course of multiple weekends and kind almost like how we do work.

Smart hypnosis live now in the course of multiple evenings, spread out over several. To say it politely, in every training there’s like usually that one or two people that from the start just kind of set themselves apart and just clearly this person has found their calling, this person is ready to jump in.

And it’s not even the fact that they’ve maybe done something before, they just kind of get it. And you maybe been that person yourself, otherwise you wouldn’t be listening to me right now. So to say it simply, the one rockstar student in one of my training events years ago, Suddenly comes in, it’s the next weekend.

And I mean, she just looks like someone’s rolled her over with a steam roller and metaphorically, and she goes, My family says I shouldn’t be doing this. They’re concerned about it. Maybe I should call it something else. And my only response was, It’s not what your family members are saying, it’s that you are agreeing with.

Become the biggest advocate. You’re sitting in a space called Virginia Hypnosis, which I called it that because I worked from the assumption that people in Virginia wanted to do hypnosis, which back to this conversation with Leon, I did my best to not nerd out and get into local references. But as you’ll hear, hit one of his practices.

He has five of them now. Uh, one of his practices is actually right around the corner from where my grandparents used to live in the furniture store my grandfather worked at, right when they moved from the Bronx to New York, down to Portsmouth, Virginia. That’s a whole other story, by the way, . But looking at building a local offering.

And there’s some key takeaways inside of this conversation, which yes. We’ll talk about methods of change in terms of hypnosis and nlp. What I really want you to hear from Leon is this mindset of not going into an interaction with the idea of your hands up, that you’re looking to receive something, but instead, almost as if with the hands down, that we’re always.

Giving. So this mindset that as a trainer himself, as a practitioner, and this, this reframe as a businessman who has a skillset, by putting that focus, that emphasis elsewhere inside of what we do. That’s what then allows us to do the work that we are the most, most passionate at. And yes, along the way build a thriving business that supports itself and enriches the lives of many others, the people who work for us, the people who hire us for our services.

So this whole enterprise mindset, you’re gonna hear in this conversation, this is phenomenal. You’re gonna be inspired and even hearing where things are going. Great. And yet, here’s a retreat center. Here’s foster care work he’s getting into as well, just to truly. Inspirational conversation. I, I reference in this chat a recent TV appearance on local TV station down in the Hampton Roads, Virginia Beach area.

We’ll link to that over in the show [email protected]. And I’ll tell you, I do wish I was recording and when we turned off at the end of this, because we got into a chat about something he’s heard me say in the business training community that Leon’s also a part of this mindset that in the 21st century.

You are a media company first that happens to provide products and services and, and he fed this right back to me. He goes, as soon as he heard that something clicked, and here it was no longer the model of knocking on doors, introducing, dropping off pens and brochures. It was instead, I’m a social media company.

That offers this service where now here’s the flip that we were talking about when the recording stopped, that. Now instead of him doing the outreach, people are coming to him and that’s really what we’re talking about inside of hypnotic business systems, which an update for those of you that are not yet a member of this community, we’ve kind of remodeled some of the program stuff inside of that, that now it’s all about showing you what to do.

Teaching you step by step how to do it, but I’ve gone in and put some upgrades because now I’m also giving you some of the assets to get started even faster. Some done for you marketing campaigns, tutorials of videos, some images you can use on your website. It’s all about helping you to make these changes faster and easier, which you could go to hypnotic business systems.com and check that out.

Let me point you somewhere. New. Head over to Jason Webinar. Dot com. If you go to jason webinar.com, that’s a fancy redirect, so it’s easy to find. Jason webinar.com will give you access to an on-demand presentation, a free online workshop, six steps to a six figure hypnosis business. Now, as soon as you schedule time to watch that presentation, make sure you’ve blocked a good 45 minutes, which is a little bit longer than what I normally do on the web in terms of a free online class.

But here’s again, what’s different. It’s not. Telling you the things to do, you’re gonna leave that presentation with a few specific steps of exactly how to produce better videos, how to use the language of your client, and I’ve made that available to you for [email protected] as we talk about improving our skills as hypnotists.

We’ve got the next Work Smart Hypnosis live and online training event coming up very soon, The one kicking off in April. If you’re listening to this in February, 2021. As this launches bringing once again in Richard non guard and as a guest instructor for this, every time we’ve done this, we’ve sold it out, so check that out.

Work Smart hypnosis live.com again. We’ve upgraded everything. Go watch the new video at the top of work smart hypnosis live.com. You’re gonna see even more as to who the event is for, because as a preview, about half of the audience are brand new to hypnosis. And then again, the other half of the audience tend to be people who are well trained and perhaps already working professionally.

But hey, look at the symbiotic nature of the synchronicity, as it were, because it’s all about helping to fill in the gap. Thanks, Leon. I’ve been saying that for the last couple of weeks and you used it too, and we called that the title. So a couple of free resources to check out jason webinar.com for that business workshop.

And again, head over to work smart hypnosis live.com to learn more about the next live and online training, whether you’re already working, whether you’re brand new, check that out. Love to have you there. And with that, let’s jump directly into this outstanding conversation. Here we go, episode number 312.

The man who’s moving up to Virginia, Northern Virginia, as I’m leaving . Here we go. Leon Sankofa on filling the gaps. Well, I actually started off in, in the school of business at, uh, Norfolk State University. And, um, after being, after going through a semester and a half of the School of Business, I was really bored with it because at that level, I had, I had been raised in a family business and many things that they were teaching at that level.

things that I had known before I was 12 and 13 years old. I had to figure out how to get what the profit margin is and customer service and, and, you know, customer. A lot of those things we, I’d already known. I was like, Is this where this thing is going? ? Yeah. What was the, what was the family business? We had a grocery store, so it was either, I was either raised in the front.

Grocery store or the back of a kitchen. So it was a restaurant or a grocery store. And that’s been my life raised around my father all the time in our business. And that’s, that’s kind of, so my mission in life was to, to rise up and take over the family business and take it to the next level. And I thought that was my mission in life.

Yeah, Which I’m from originally. Right around where you live. Where, Where was this at the time? This is Newport News, Virginia. Yeah. Nice, Nice. Which is where I, I went to college for a bunch of years. So then I love that story though, of getting kind of frustrated with the state of business. So then where did that transition occur out of that?

Well, I was actually, and I was also a young father growing through college. So I knew that I had to maintain sustainable income to continue to support this young child that I was raising. Mm. So I knew I had to go back to school because jobs that were being offered, I left for, I left for a year and a half.

So, but jobs that were being offered weren’t the kind of jobs that I felt that bring me to kind income or the hours that I could actually work. You know, those jobs offer me stinky hours, you know? Mm-hmm. . So I went back to school. I didn’t want go back in the school of business, but yet I felt like I had learned a lot about business and had a great understanding of, you know, small, my small business entrepreneurship that I could.

So I didn’t wanna lose that. I had a psychology class, interestingly enough, at Christopher New. Yeah, University where you were. And I told a professor, I love this stuff, man. I love this stuff. This is, the mind is so deep. And so he’s, And I said, But I don’t wanna lose what I learned, what I know and understand about business.

And he just shared, there was something called, um, Organizational psychology, industrial organizational psychology. He said, You will be able to kind of go there, work in business, understand business climate and you can still kind of branch off and learn this psychology thing. And it was a perfect match for me
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But at Norfolk State, I met another guy who was saying, Man thing called social work, man, you can, you can basically do everything with the master’s degree. You’re have to work till you get your doctorate and you can work in industry, everything. And I was like, Really? So I ended up looking into it. I got accepted.

At Virginia Commonwealth University in the school of Psych School of social work, which at which at the time was the, was in the top five social work programs in the country. Oh, excellent. So I went to, I went to VCU and had a great time. So that’s how I pared into social work. Somewhere after that, I started working, you know, in the field as a, as a counselor, beginning counselor, and a therapist.

Eventually, opportunities came around where I could not just, you know, because I had this business mind, I was everywhere I went, I was trained that you go there, you understand it, and you learn how to build it for yourself. And that’s exactly what I did. After I realized the mechanics of what’s happening here, I figured out how to develop, organize, and create my own business, and I started a private practice.

Actually started a private practice in 2001 and began working with grants, did mediation services for a very long time. Mm-hmm. , which is really great. A great avenue, by the way, for, for hypnosis. People, you know, get certified in mediation. Yeah. Could you talk a bit more about that? When you say mediation, like from the outside perspective, how would you describe exactly what that is?

Well, mediation, anyone, First of all, anyone could do mediation. Lawyers do it. Yeah. But any media. But the courts will pay you to do it if you get certified by an approved, by the, by a, an approved court locality. So the Supreme Court of Virginia, the Supreme Court of Virginia, offers a training and a certification and, and, or they endorse certain localities.

To get you the certification and once you get it, it’s a week somewhere. You can get the basics within a week. But most of the money comes from service to deal with child, with children with jdr, juvenile. Mm-hmm. Cations, custody, visitation, child support issues, which correct me on this mediation is usually that step to avoid having to go to court on something.

Let’s try to settle this even before it goes to something law related, or is the law actually involved at that? Both, you know? Yeah. If anyone who, if you have a, if you were divorcing or separating, or let’s just say a woman chose to decide to seek child support from a father that, that she hadn’t done so in the past.

Mm-hmm. doesn’t even mean they are in conflict, but the court assumes because of so much violence that happens between domestic violence that they says we have to, you have to go to, they give you the option, just like you said, they give you the option to come. To come to court or if you can sell it through mediation amongst you too, you can do it easier.

You have her come out better. But if you want the judge to decide it’s gonna be short, quick, and sweet, you won’t have, you have very little say. So a lot of people opt to go to get to see a mediator and that cuts down on the, on the court time. So the judge loves it because now let’s say if I went to court, If someone went to court that, uh, that agreement will come to the judge before their court date cause you still have a court date.

The agreement will come to the judge and the judge signs off and approves the agreement and signs it as an order. It signs it as an order, and you get that part right. He signs it into law and order. That means you’re gonna abide by these, these rules and everything is. And so there’s a training for it.

There’s also federal mediation, and that’s really fancy to get into, but there is a, there’s a sweet spot there to start working with clients who have behavior problems, all kinds of problems that people have in behavior health, that psychology could, psychology and hypnosis could really. Really resolve.

It’s a simple, it’s a simple training. You become, you become Supreme Court certified and it’s a great credential to have on your side. Wow. Yeah, I was asking about that cause I’ve actually had several people come through local trainings where, you know, the favorite part of teaching a course would be, people go, Oh, I’m already kind of doing this, just I know how to do it better now, thanks to the hypnotic language patterns, but to hear this other route that hypnotist can look at this as another sort of avenue.

So, So from that journey, I wanna go back to something you mentioned here cuz I’m always listening for proprietary process. That if we can break what we down, what we do down into a few measurable steps. Okay. We can then better understand it. But I love that you talked about in terms of private practice, develop, organize, And create, so, So talk us through, you mentioned opening up that first practice back in 2001.

What was that like in terms of going that route as opposed to where, let’s say in the social work world, sometimes it would be joining another practice, which, Yes, the experience growing up with a family business. I’m smiling big here because that’s, We were chatting before we jumped on and I looked at the map of your Portsmouth office to go, the furniture store my grandfather worked at, when they moved from New York to Virginia, it’s right at the.

Wow. . But having that benefit of a family business background, was that part of the thinking to then open up, basically open up shop and do your own thing? Yeah. I think because my father always involved us in the process from understanding how to incorporate a business. To hiring staff, buying what are the best buy, you know, how to buy product and services.

So, believe it or not, some people have no idea how to open a business, how to get a business license, So, mm-hmm . But for me it was kind of, well, you know, the process, it was simple situation, you know? So it was really about, it was really about trying to determine what are the mechanisms needing to opening private.

and it all boiled down to, in order to do certain services, you had to have certain people on staff. And so it was really about navigating that and then hiring or negotiating with someone who had those skillsets that I didn’t, certain things I didn’t have at the time to open the practice and then to have, then to be able to receive the kind of clients that I wanted to receive.

So it was really about finding out what you need and then hiring the. Right. That’s, That’s so helpful. There’s a popular phrase that comes outta some of the info marketing community that’s stop asking the question of, how do I do this? And instead when you change it to who do I need to hire to be able to do this?

Yeah. Yeah. It becomes so much easier. I mean, there’s some automated functions of my business that I can smile and say, I have no idea how that works, but Matt does. Though I, I, what I wanna chat with you about then is that idea of growing, growing up and opening up practice, which you now have. Correct me on those three locations.

I have, I have four locations and I’m opening a location in Petersburg, Virginia. I just, the office is established, but there’s some protocols I have to go through to move these types of services that I have that are insurance based service. Yes. And, um, it’s, so, it’s a bit of a process to kind of make that, make that happen.

But the office is, is open, it’s. Waiting for the approvals to begin to run the practice there. Right. Which that, that does put it into a slightly different world than, let’s say the majority of the audience of this podcast. There are many people like you are also in the mental health world where now it’s coming in by way of insurance, though I chat and share that you’re inside of the business community that I run and there’s a group that sometimes pops up and goes, I’m hiring staff but I’m not filling their hours.

Chat with us a bit about that idea now of bringing someone else on. And putting effort into booking other people’s. So, and I actually do a, I actually developed a training on this and that. Oh, nice. About it a little bit. Sometimes you have to give to get Yes. I mean, so, so to give me may be, if I need a licensed person on staff, hire the licensed person and let them build their hours.

Let them build the hours under your organization. Show them value. So the value is you have a, you have a location. There’s a phone, all you do is come in and, and I’m making life so easy for you because my value is having someone who has a, who’s a licensed professional, who could actually see the clients, and then there are so many other services that require a licensed person to be on staff.

So there’s a great value of just having him there and it’s not costing you anything but space. Mm-hmm. So, and then it adds cred, adds credibility to your organization. So now you no longer just, in this case, just a, a guy practicing hypnosis. You have a practice that has a licensed professional on your staff and the only thing you did was, you know, created aa a situation that was agreeable to the person.

It worked that to their advantage. And someone will say yes. I think that’s so important that especially, you know, having had staff at one point inside of my businesses in terms of booking other practitioners, most of the struggle that I see of people who try to do something of that nature is that they’re doing the opposite of what you just said.

They’re not doing that give to get that. The thought is, okay, now I’ve got someone else working here, but I need to fill my hours first. Cuz they’re still in that sort of limitation of thinking of their hours. What what I did at one point, and this was a motivational strategy, was to say, Okay, no matter how many people I book into your schedule each day, I’m paying you for this many appointments, whether I book you that many or not, which suddenly meant I had to fill that time, which by having that syno sort of fire lit under me, we made that happen.

But to, to think in terms of how we can provide better value or even so as you’ve mentioned with the licensing, here’s this person’s specific special. This is why they may have seen you, you know, in some media you did a great thing recently on the local, uh, CBS network there in Virginia. But that may be that entry point, but now you, as the director of that practice can go, You’re gonna work with this person because this is what they do.

Yeah. It’s, it’s all about adding value. And so many people try to figure out how to, how to grow independently. They think about their own personal wealth and they don’t realize sometimes you, you have to give a little, you have to sometimes, instead of going with your. Kind of the palms up as if you’re looking for something, go in with your hand, with the palms down as if you’re handing somebody, but both people can gain.

So what I initially did with my practice was I just, you know, I created an office. I had a building, I worked, I still worked at the school full time, and I offered a guy position. And my location and my goal was to create outpatient therapy clients for him. And what this also did was it gave, it opened my, it opened me up to market to the general public in a more, in a, in a way that I could not have, you know, at the time where I just barely had a master’s degree.

And he said this was a seasoned person, had all the license, they had all the, all the credentials. They were already insured with the most major insurance companies and they’re with another company. And all I said was, Hey, if you come here part-time, all the revenue you create would be your. They set up for you and they came over, They did it.

It was great. Eventually they left where they were started doing their operating, their, their private practice full time outside of my. And the inside of my office. And then there are some Medicaid based services that really, you know, pay well. I have, I have all over 40 employees at this time. Excellent.

So congrats on that. Thank you. So when I started doing these other types of, uh, Medicaid based services and these other insurance based services, I had the, I had the people in place. I’ve been doing that since 2001. Yeah. Excellent. Which during this time, you’re still seeing people, but you’re operating in that role of mm-hmm.

Now, from that managerial perspective, building a resource, a solution, giving something back to that community while also still. Doing the work yourself. So I’m curious to ask, first of all, inside of this, is there a specific specialty that you found yourself falling into? Something that you had more passion around?

Well, I mean, I just really, really liked helping people, but importantly, I liked filling in the gaps. And as a, as social workers, we. Our programs sort of one of their key things is to train you to, one is to advocate, and two is to fill in the gap. So if you found a void where services needed you, you should create, you should fill that void with some type of service that you can create.

So I was writing grants. The grants were my fillers. I was writing grants, mediation services, and mediation services. Was bringing in my primary revenue for a long. I had three cities. You contract by the city, by the court. So I had three, I had three courts. By the way, the, uh, Chesapeake Court was a court that was, you know, throwing me 10, 20 referrals at a time.

And so that’s a hundred dollars a, that’s a hundred dollars a referral that’s guaranteed, you know, already paid for. So, so that, that, along with my, my regular. Um, allowed me to bring on staff, pay for those things, and then begin to kind of create programs. So programs I was creating was, I was doing group work, you know, doing anger management in schools.

I was doing all types of group work. I was, you name the group, we can create it. Um, domestic violence, you know, you name it, we did it. And then at some point, At some point we were licensed by the state to provide other Medicaid based services. And then my business sort of, uh, it sort of grew like 2008, 2009.

The business kind of grew and where here I was providing therapy and counseling and training staff and training counselors up until, up until this very day, and it just sort of grew. Grew by then. Cause I have a location in Danville, location in Petersburg. I’ve been back and forth to Northern Virginia, and by the way, we’re building a, I’m building a home out in that area, Caroline County.

And we’re going on 78 acres of land and we’re creating a retreat center, sort of a project of mine. Oh, that’s amazing. That’s, that’s at a beautiful area down there too. So then along this journey, when did hypnosis show up inside of that? Okay, so, you know, right after college, right after graduate school, 1996, I decided I was really ready for love.

Really. I mean, I think that I never knew love from a, from a sense where I was really wanted to be emotionally, all in all there, you know, just really ready to grow my life in a different way. And so I took a risk. I met a beautiful young lady and. Fell in love and we had a great time and. It all fell apart.

And so I was in grad, I was working on my doctorate degree at the time. I was running a, I was, uh, working a, just got a full time job. Good friend of mine wanted to open a restaurant, and as you knew, I knew that so well. I thought I can basically, I bit off more than I can chew, but in the end, the relationship was what I really desired to have never fully felt like I had one in a real long time, in a way that I desired it and my heart got broken.

And so the thing is I broke up with. And in this breakup, I got bent outta shape and I realized it affected my ability to kind of fully function with the work that I do. It’s hard to sit in front of another client and hear their problems when my head is in space somewhere. So I essentially had to pull it all together.

But when I looked deep into it, it took me maybe two years to, to really date somebody. And it took me an additional, ultimately it took me four years where I reached a point where I was saying, You know what I wasn’t thinking about, I’m gonna go there because I think she’s gonna be there. Or I think her family or someone I know that knew us together were there, or I’m not gonna go there because, you know, there were these, these passive controls.

You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Um, and so these associations, these what we all most call anchors now. Yeah. So, so I, at some. When I look, looking back, it was like, wow, it took me about four years to fully be out of that thing. And so I went to a hypnosis show in Virginia Beach and I saw this guy, what was his name?

I thought he was off the chain. Um, oh, uh, Virginia Beach. Was it? Jay Medicine Hat? Got a Jay Medicine hat. Yep.

And I said, And I. Wow. And I looked at these people and I said, This is real. I knew about hypnosis, so we were in my, in my practice and my training, we were always doing something, but they didn’t call it hypnosis. It was the, it was the, we were doing always, There was always these processes that involved part of that, but it was never called that.

And so when I saw Jay Medicine had, I said, Man, you mean to tell me I could have gotten over that funk? I was. In like a day, a session if I hadn’t known this. And so I decided from that day that I was going to find out how to do it and become the best at it as I can be. And just really dig in deep because people don’t need to have long suffering.

And I met some really wonderful people on the journey of relationships, but could not commit or feel fully focused or be the person that they probably wanted me to be. And I wanted to be in that relationship doing that four year journey simply because my head wasn’t in the right space for that kind of relationship.

And I knew I met some really great people, but what could I. I wanna go inside of that moment because, Well, there’s a personal reason behind what I’m about to ask you. 2017, I did the keynote at Hypno Thoughts Live, and there’s like maybe 20 seconds talking about a similar story that I saw. It was Tom DeLuka.

Who during the welcome week at Newport News, Christopher Newport University came and did a show and how that was fascinating to me and it made me go, I wanna learn as much as I could and someone who’s, I’d say as a friend, someone who’s been on this podcast, I think at least twice now, came up and it was this weird exchange about.

Well, your presentation had a, had a presupposition that state hypnosis is good and I think it’s what’s horrible for the industry, and I just wanna call this out. Correct me on this. Jay didn’t necessarily do a clean show, did he back then? Oh, no. Oh yeah. , which sadly, I’ve only ever seen video of the man. I met him once and then he passed away, sadly, a few years ago, but a bit of a questionable show for a late night comedy club audience.

Talk to me about that connection that you made. Let’s, let’s call it out that so many people make where the audience is educated enough to go, I know this was an entertainment environment, but I bet that can help me with, fill in the blank. Where we as people, we can make that association that yes, it was done in that environment for entertainment, but we can see the value that here’s people making these rapid changes, these rapid adjustments because of hypnotic suggestion.

There you were watching a relatively R rated comedy show and. Oh, this is what I need. , I think. I think because I saw, I saw the value. Yeah, I, I saw change and I saw that, hey, if you can get into somebody’s head and get them to do this and that, then I understand why, how you can get them to stop smoking if this is nice right there.

Yeah, and I think the only sticking point is, well, how long does it last? Because the show is over and you know, do you. Stop. But I knew enough about, you know, I knew a little bit more about, about it to, to believe that this is, this could stick, these things could stick. Mm-hmm. . So that’s kinda where I was. I found, I found a training at some point later I found a training.

and then I started, I started practicing it and then, yeah. So point, let’s go after something you just said there for a moment, if you don’t mind. The, the fact that after the show, those suggestions are no longer there, but for a personal change process, we’re building towards that. Permanence is always the goal, so.

So if I had to ask you whether it’s counseling, whether it’s even hypnosis in your definition, what makes the change. I think the change stick when you, you have the, when you get the subconscious mind to agree with the unconscious mind, I’m sorry, the conscious mind subconscious mind, which is great because it uses our terminology, but let’s get more specific than that.

What, what has to occur for that to stick then in your thoughts? I’m not sure. I think, I think for me it said it’s what I call the A, what Oprah Winfrey calls the aha moment. Yeah. In therapy, it’s almost like, well, you know, the people believe. Um, time will heal our wounds and what’s really happening is, is at some point subconscious mind accepts the pattern that you continue to throw at it, and then it becomes, it becomes a pattern and you, you move out of that frame of thinking or way of thought or, or way that you believe things earlier.

Mm-hmm. I, I’ll share my formula and tell me if this kind of matches up, which still uses terminology and we often get caught up in just using, Oh, it’s this keyword. When two formulas, as long as one, the change is still congruent to the individual as in it fits. And then second, and this one we kind of play with sometimes.

Second would be that as long as there’s some kind of reinforcement mechanism, Right. Keeping in mind reinforcement doesn’t necessarily have to mean listen to this 18 minute MP3 every day the rest of your life. Though it could, to be fair , it’s that, you know, let’s use stop smoking as a simple example.

It’s a year from now I’m enjoying life better, that I don’t smoke and I’m enjoying that. I feel better and I don’t stink. And that fits the criteria of still congruent and the living healthier. Is it the reinforcement mechanism, as it were? Yeah. And I think you, you said it best. You just said it best simply.

Well, thank you. Thank you. So then, looking at the hypnosis training, I’m, I’m curious to ask this because you know, again, a big part of the audience out there are people who are in, you know, lcs, ws, LPCs, psychologists, psychotherapists psychologists, and so forth. And looking at how we can start to integrate hypnosis in, how does that nowadays fit into the.

Of how you’re working with people. I think for me it fits. It fits well, but I have a little more leverage in than some people because I run the practice, so mm-hmm. , my income doesn’t depend on how many people I see. Yes. My income depends on how many people the staff sees. So, so I, I can pick and choose and I don’t, you know, I, I don’t have to, I don’t have to spend a lot of time trying to find, find clients in that sense.

For me, I have to find clients for the, for the agency. Right. But in terms of the model, I noticed that some therapists, are so afraid of the taboo. The taboo part of what’s been said about it historically. I think that others are afraid that they’ll lose clients because if I saw the issues, you know, these 18 weeks or 18 to 20 weeks, that’s revenue I could be getting that I may not get.

So why I don’t want, why I don’t wanna go down that path. And then there’s this assumption that insurance does not, when not pay for. Quite a few that does, Optima does Aetna. There are a few insurances that do pay for it. So what, Yeah, so that’s interesting that many people don’t look at that as an option.

And I, And respectfully, you’re right. When someone’s model is that I’m gonna see this person. I, I was having a conversation with someone who’s an LPC and part of a decision that they made in their business was, okay, now I have 12 patients. Which those 12 people, they’re gonna see every week no matter what, because that’s the model that they’d been trained in.

And as soon as they did a standard twist on a, an LP fast phobia occur, suddenly was like, Oh, I’m good now. I’ll check in later if I need it. She’s like, I feel so rewarded, but I’m also now terrified of what I’ve now created. How do you go about doing that blend? Or how do you let, let’s go after first the stigma that may be out there.

How do you tend to introduce it to. I think that, I think that I do it without, I think I do it confidently and without shame. Nice. That I believe in it, and it’s okay if segments of the population don’t believe in it. You know, if you believe in something, you should, you should support it the best way you can.

Um, well I, I’d call out something that the reminder that I. Been wanting to have you on this podcast for a couple of years now, and then you popped up and it’s like, here’s this appearance on WT KR down in Virginia and it’s where it’s correct me, like a three or four minute clip. And you’re talking about dealing with stress around the pandemic and the response to things and just conversationally at what you just said there is I think the biggest key about just, Well, I talk about it confidently because I know it works that just in the middle of the conversation it was not, not brace for this Get ready.

I also do hypnosis, and I see even professional hypnotists who just call themselves hypnotists, still do that. Mm-hmm. , which is to go, No, here’s one of the things in the toolbox, and this is just one of the things that fits into this program. Yeah. If you want, if you want it, I can provide it. If you don’t, I got, I got other things we can do.

If you, although based on what you said earlier, chances are it’s still the same techniques with different. Yeah, you . That’s right. We don’t have the do hypnosis. Now, close your eyes and begin to imagine grounded . And that’s a lot of these people have done is they’ve taken psych, they’ve taken the um, the framework hypnosis and put ’em in into other areas.

Changed name around, called it something else. R T T R, rt emdr, E F T. Mindfulness, all these other other things that really at the end of the day, at the end of the day, is the hypnosis of that process that you’re doing. It’s what’s causing the client to change. Yeah. I’m smiling cuz I had Chris Leig on the program last week.

In terms of the release of this, and he tells the story in that episode number three 11 about coming out of the timeframe of, you know, the typical thing being a Tibetan Buddhist monk over in India, right? And coming back to the states and deciding to learn hypnosis, and all of a sudden, here’s mindfulness.

All of a sudden here’s being in the present. And it was a nice moment of, Oh, in Virginia Beach, they have a school, um, an a school for autism, right in beach. And I was, they was given a tour and there was a mindfulness room, . When we sat down, I said, You guys are doing hypnosis, right? And the lady looked at me because that wasn’t what her selling point was.

Her selling point was the mindfulness. And I said, This is hyn. Let’s call it for what this is. And then she looked at me and she said, Yes it is. And there was 30 other therapists that were from around this, the city of Virginia Beach and Norfolk, who they just do this power once a year. And I said, That’s wonderful.

And she showed me how they did it, you know, the quiet room and how it, how it was effective for the, uh, autistic kids to get their anxiety down and, and all of that. I was like, you know, it’s, it’s so, it was so great to. Yeah. Which seeing more tools, more things within the tool bag. So then looking at the, the story of you’re building this sort of retreat coming up that’s gonna be coming soon and the work of managing these different practices.

How would you kind of define the day to day schedule that in terms of how you’re able to juggle all of this? Well, I think that when you’re in business for a while, the goal is to be an entrepreneur and an entre means new. And I’m not a new businessman and neither are. So am I an entrepreneur now? So I’m a businessman and so who has a skillset that I enjoy.

But along with that, I think Tony Robbins made it really clear when he said that, you know, you, we have to think about being a, not a franchise, but being a, Oh lord, I forgot the word, but an enterprise. That’s the word. Yes. I have to think about being an enterprise and people who don’t understand. When you’re trying to develop an enterprise there, there’s a whole different process in in place.

It’s beyond being, you know, self-employed means you’re working for yourself. Once you become an enterprise, that means you are truly trying to create a situation where you have all these revenue builders and you can oversee your business while the work is being done and you can guide the business to create the.

Service delivery that you desire. And so that’s where I am. I’m trying to create an enterprise where I’m submitted license for foster care. So we’re waiting on that to come through. And so we’re, I’m excited about how I can implement and resolve some of these issues directly with these kids who, in foster care.

I mean, how, how powerful can that be? Yeah, That’s amazing. But you can only do that when you’re in a position of leadership. Leadership and knowledge. And, and I can’t, I can’t do. Being Leon by myself working in an office, I have to create partnerships. I have to be savvy about getting the right people in in the business and creating a work environment that’s conducive to where we all can and grow, and sometimes still maintain our individuality.

Well, I think what you, part of what you just said there, and even if we wanna get fancy and call it a NLP reframe, the, the mindset of being the businessman who has a skillset. And in my world I would add a few extra words. A businessman who also happens to have the skillset because right out the book, The E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, the classic line of work more on your business rather than in your business.

And even the reframe that I keep drilling for people to think differently about their hypnosis businesses, and this is what I say, even on hypnotic language hacks for other entrepreneurs, that in the 21st century you are in some way a media company first that happens to provide products and services.

Right. So it’s where we put that emphasis somewhere else, which then I still see clients, even though, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, I’m moving down to Florida, keeping the entire business online and, and having that opportunity to still see the people that I work with. Yet, it’s that I do all this business work.

I do the different programs and different media outreach that I do because that’s the mechanism that then lets me do the stuff that I’m the passionate, most passionate about. And yes, continue to scale it up, but also more importantly, the personal side work with those issues that I can be the most passionate about.

So we, we do these things so we can ranch out and serve a greater audience. And I’d love to hear that mindset of, you know, even from someone with, correct me on this, for the credentials, masters in social work, doctorate and clinical psychology, but still beginning with the frame of businessman who has this specific skill set.

Okay. Well it’s the doctorate in clinical sexology, by the way. Oh, talk to me about that. Tell us more about that. Well, sexology is about, it’s really about human behavior at at the sexual core. And so you have. You have a whole population of L B G T Q I, and that’s a population that has a certain set of needs and desires and understanding them.

And then you also have the area where I’m at. One is, well, two, there’s this area that covers, you know, marriage and relationship, more like marriage and family therapy, but understanding from a. A purely sexual, sexual content. And then there is, um, the area where I’m in, which is the focus is on people who have been, who have had sexual trauma.

And so my focus is on working with clients who’ve had sexual trauma because we know that one in three women, according to the statistics, have had some form of inappropriate sexual, sexual touch. Sexual abuse that has ultimately affected their life. And then one in eight boys, similarly. So when you try to peel back all the pieces of what brings them into service, that’s that one shameful piece that that’s not appropriately addressed, not peel back, right question’s, not appropriately asked.

And we’re not, we’re not targeting to see where all the traumas lie. So sometimes we kinda heal a wound and they say that, for example, in the postwar in the war, they found that the people who came back from war, who had post-traumatic the most severely were the ones who had a trauma before they went to the war.

Yeah, yeah. So, so, and, and likewise people who have a, if you had a childhood sexual trauma, then you get into a relationship where maybe you was an abusive relationship or, or whatever, you know, whatever trauma that came along, or maybe a severe car accident for. Whatever brought on a trauma, you witnessed a murder or death, or you lost a family member that was traumatic to you, that’s layered onto that sexual trauma.

So your body remembers the trauma. It doesn’t, it doesn’t think about what brought the trauma. Your body just remembers the trauma and it, it creates these really tough layers to get past. So, so my, my desire to learn about. About how to work with clients who had sexual trauma led me to be in. That led me to that narrow focus of looking at the doctrine in clinical sexology.

Fascinating. Yeah. So then looking at the shape of things nowadays here you are working with clients. Is there a transition when you’re then making use of hypnotic work, or is that just blending into everything else that you’re doing? It all blends because yeah, if you have someone who has a sexual trauma and I can resolve that in, in a session or two, I mean, how powerful, how freeing and many of us who are not suffering, we want to find ways to be better, to optimize our lives or our brains really.

And for those who are suffering, we wanna get back to normal. But it, some part of us, we struggle between getting back to normal. And also being the best that we can be. Well, I found hypnosis and hypnotherapy if done correctly, it optimizes the brain. You remove all that, all those, all that data, all that data that’s playing in the background of your brain is gone and now your brain has nowhere to go.

But now let’s take that, that energy, that space, I have that energy where, where I’m not dragging myself down. Optimize my life. I love that. That metaphor of optimizing, that the way you’ve described it there is great that we’re clearing away what doesn’t have to be there, which then metaphorically leaves a bit of an opening and now it becomes, what can I do better?

What can I create instead? Exactly. Yeah. And that’s, and, and it seems to me that when you look at all the therapeutic processes, There is only one that I know of that really works well with. How do you become a better athlete? How do you run faster? How do you become more focused in your pool of golf game?

You know what? What other mechanism works best? When I talked to college and university, the sidebar. When they kind of go, Ooh, we wanna talk about that. I have to tell, I, I go back and tell them the history of, I started with the history of hypnosis. These same people that you study, Cigna Ford, Eric Erickson, what’s the other Eric Guy name?

You know, these so-called forefathers of therapy. They were all practicing hypnotherapy or some form of it, or some branch of it. And just, just to kind of normalize it by saying, these are some processes that you’re doing anyway, Right? Using a, you using a small part of it, and in my opinion, you using the, you using the longest route to get the client to where they need to be.

This has been fantastic, especially in terms of a mindset of giving back to our community, a way of looking at personal change and how we could rapidly help to resolve things, as well as some just really phenomenal business acumen of looking at how it is we can, you know, create better solutions, better options for people.

Leon, how can people best get in contact? They can go to my website. It’s uh, family youth foundations.com. They can go to my Instagram, which is, you know, Leon Sankofa. They can just call the office at (757) 380-0385. Yes, 7 57. This has been great having you on, and we’ll link also in the show [email protected] to the links you’ve referenced, plus the TV clip that I mentioned too.

Before we wrap it up, any final thoughts for the listeners out. And this has just been, It’s always such a learning experience to sit in and talk with you, Jason, that my final thoughts would be that people should continue to listen to your show. Oh, thank you for that. , good chatting with you. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you. All righty. Jason Lenette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, for using it as an ongoing resource in further enriching. Hypnotic profession out there. Check out the show [email protected]. That’s where you can see how to connect with Leon.

You can then link off of that page to see the TV clip that I was talking about inside of this conversation. And plus, check out the new free online workshop, six steps to a six figure hypnosis business. Give you an easier way to find that. Go to Jason Webinar. Dot com. I’ve been owning that for years. We just redirected it.

jason webinar.com. That’ll bring you over to that on-demand presentation. And for those of you looking to empower your skills as a practitioner, check us out at the next Work Smart Hypnosis live.com event. If you’re listening to this in time, the event kicking off in April, 2021 is both myself and Richard non.

Two instructors for the price of one, a whole bunch of resources and giving you the skills to work interactively and plus from Richard’s background and evidence based approach to change. Awesome stuff that’s gonna help you to grow your practice, grow your skills, and help more people. And yes, indeed, fill in the gaps that it’s time to fill in.

I’m Jason. Thanks for listening. We’ve got two more episodes as I’m still in Virginia though, recording a bunch of them before we head out, so stay tuned. We’ve got amazing conversations. Coming your way. See you soon. Stay safe out there. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.