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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 121, James Hazel R on hypnotic laughter. 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. Welcome back to the program.
And that is an absolutely suiting way to jump into this presentation. Uh, as for the first time, Having someone on the podcast who forgot he was previously on the podcast though you will hear respectfully the story of how we were still figuring out the platform, the format, and now have morphed into more of a long form conversation.
And here we are all much better for the experience. James Hazelrigg comes in from Austin, Texas and first meeting up at the Hypno Thoughts live convention of course, being best friends on Facebook. And you’re gonna hear an outstanding conversation of somebody. Who has really been out there working in the profession, building his business, and to hear that mindset nowadays of here’s where he started and these are the projects that he’s now doing.
and take note of the mindset that as we grow in our businesses, there does become the moment where we can’t keep doing the things that got us into the business originally. So you’ll hear some of my aspects of markets that I had to leave. Otherwise I could not grow in others where we can’t keep doing the same things over and over, we can begin to leverage success, but there sometimes is that moment where you kind of have to step away from what comes easy to challenge yourself in brand new ways.
I’m gonna give a couple of plugs here inside of this before we actually jump into this conversation with James. Uh, first of all, James does give eight outstanding, uh, testimonial here for hyp. Business systems, which is my all access pass hypnosis business training library, you’re able to jump in right away to videos done for you marketing campaigns, step by step tutorials.
It is the entire roadmap behind how I built my six figure hypnosis business. Learn more over at hypnotic business systems. Dot com. Now, I invited James back on the program because I just wanted to spend time talking to him, uh, about his, uh, online course that he recently launched, uh, which is called osis, which you can easily track down this url.
I’ll give it to you here, but it will be in the show notes over at Work Smart Hypnosis. Just simply go to gum as in chewing gum gm.co/osis. So like hypnosis, but take out the hip and put in laugh. L A U G H N O S I s gum.co/osis. Again, all the links over at Work Smart Hypnosis. This is his online training course that he’s put together with also previous podcast guest.
Dave Berman, uh, an outstanding little video project that’s available over, uh, for download over at Gum Road and is actually an outstanding steal for only $47. So check that out there as well. And with that, let’s jump directly into this outstanding conversation of business growth, personal success, as well as a whole bunch of laughter.
This is session number 1 21. Hypnotic Laughter with James Hazel Rigg. I’ll know I’ve made it when I’m on Jason Lynette’s podcast, which of course the fun part is to now tell you that you were actually on session number 15 and welcome back to the program James. We’re now recording. Wait, what? What?
Although it be fair in, in the scope of anything, Uh, my wife and I have a pattern that we won’t typically watch a television show unless it’s now in the second or third season, but there’s still always the knowledge that they’re still figuring out the characters. They’re still figuring out the plot points.
And, um, I can honestly say, I’m looking back here. What was it? Yeah. Uh, session number 15 was only 19 minutes long, and we’ll probably go for an hour today, but there’s something to be said about, uh, finding the, uh, format. Rather than inventing the format. So you’re back for the second time, but we’ll officially call it the first.
How’s that sound? It would, you know that. Yeah, that sounds, that sounds great. And, uh, of course I’ve revealed that I haven’t sat there and listened to all of your greatest hits, so, uh, I guess shame on me. Yeah, sound good. We’ll, forgive it. I will tell you I was, I was talking with. A, uh, guy that I met here in Austin who is, uh, a hypnotist.
He was actually trained by Gil Boy, and he doesn’t do sessions. He supports himself by writing awesome books and traveling around the world, you know, setting up and writing wherever he wants, and then selling them on Amazon. And, uh, we were talking about hypnosis and he says, Yeah, you know, I had most of the stuff out there and so many hypnotists are so full of it.
And he says, Except there’s this one podcast. What is it? Work Smart. Work Smart. That guy, he’s good. He, he really knows what he’s talking about. I’m like, Wait, I know that guy. You know, I forgot to, Well, I forgot that I’d been on the podcast . I couldn’t say, Wait, I was on that podcast. You wanna know how good that is?
Go back to session number 15 and yeah, that was his best word. It’s a truly memorable session. Turns out people say that’s when he found his voice really well. Ever since that, when he went, That is not how you do it. I gotta change before . No, that one came about, maybe 20 sessions later. Good luck figuring it out.
Um, so we’ll, we’ll kind of jump in though, which is to say, um, you know, you, you’re someone that, you’ve done a little bit of everything inside a hypnosis and it’s brought you to some different directions. I know when you were on the program previously, we were talking about some of the work you’ve done in prisons, some of the work that, uh, of storytelling that, you know, the discovery of hypnosis.
Oh, I’m already kind of doing this. Um, if you had. We’ll phrase the question in a fun way. If you had to sum up what’s different, uh, in terms of just your approach, of your style, of your thinking of all of this stuff in the last three years, what’s, uh, what’s evolved for you? Right. Well, uh, they let me outta prison.
That, that sounds thing. Yeah. Um, I actually did have to discontinue going to the prison. Um, Which was a tough decision for me. But, um, wow. What’s really happened is I think that the things I had started with, I have, um, wow, they’ve become deeper. I’ve really expanded and I’ve, I think I understand a lot more about who I am, what I’m doing.
A lot more comfortable in that skin of being a storyteller and using. These skills with my clients. Now what, what that has ended up meaning is that I’m not quite as willing to go into the jail week after week, uh, without ever getting paid to do it. Mm-hmm. , And I guess one important thing that’s happened is my practice has taken off so much that I, I don’t have time to go do.
Those sort of volunteer things. I miss them to a certain degree, but you know when there are people right there ready to come to my office and listen to me tell these stories that help them change and they’re going to pay me, that’s kind of where I end up being. Yeah. Well, it’s that discovery that the more we do something, the stuff that got us into it is not necessarily what we can keep doing.
Yeah. So there has to be some bit of leap of faith sometimes that Okay. Uh, I mean, in my stage hypnosis career, one of the things that put me on the map and got me the massive resume was that I was doing all these high school fundraisers. That they were offered as this no risk offer. And you know, you didn’t have to pay me up front.
Well split the tickets and you might imagine some schools sold a bunch of tickets and some schools sold 12 through, uh, the wonders of dollar cost averaging. It was profitable enough, but there eventually became a point that’s like, okay, I can’t. Do these anymore because if I’m filling my schedule with these performances that might not end up paying me, I’m not opening up my schedule for the things that do pay me.
Yeah, that’s a reality I had to, to come to deal with, and I have to say, I’d never dealt with it before. So it was kind of surprising. I’m like, wait, wait a minute. I’m a little bit too busy, you know, getting paid to do these things that I love doing. Yeah. To keep doing them for free. So what else has changed?
So I realized, and it’s funny you mentioned, you know, hypno thoughts live because I sort of realized that each time I’m there, Uh, I’ve realized that a lot of hypnotists are kind of nervous about storytelling, and they were looking to me as someone who seemed to know what he was doing with it. And, uh, so I, I realized there was a niche that I could fill and, and a way I could serve the overall hypnosis community.
So I’ve been teaching storytelling classes. I’ve, uh, started a storytelling podcast, although right now it, it’s on hiatus and may get reinvented soon. I’m, I’m trying to decide about that exactly. Um, that’s a great strategy by the way, especially when your guests don’t remember having been on it. . Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Well, I’ve only had one guest so far. It was Scott Sandin, and that was the last one I did. It’s likewell. It’ll never get better than this, I guess , I don’t now. I I just got ridiculously busy and, uh, so didn’t, didn’t keep up with the weekly schedule, and so I’m thinking I need to reinvent it with a title that doesn’t mention it being weekly.
Um, and yeah, I’ll, I’ll figure that out. A couple of other really, uh, fun things have happened. Um, I’ve gotten really involved in laughter yoga, and through a lot of conversations with my friend and colleague, Dave Berman, who’s a laughter ambassador, as well as a hypnotist. I ended up writing a book called The Little Book of osis.
and it really helps to, uh, bridge that gap between intentional laughter and hypnotic change work, and gives a lot of practical exercises on how you can use Laugh osis, how you can use intentional laughter with your clients to help ’em make changes and. I’ve been just doing that more and more. I find it’s almost like every situation I deal with, not everyone, but, but most of them with my clients, I’m like, you know, I think intentional laughter could be a great tool for us here.
So one of the, uh, Things that grew out of writing that book is that I’m doing some live osis trainings. In fact, I’ve got one coming up this Saturday at Anne King’s Hypnosis Center in Bernie, Texas. And, uh, Dave Berman has also been traveling around the world doing some live osis trainings. And we said, Well, rather than making people come to us, why don’t we put this on the.
So just, um, a few days ago we released an online course in osis. So that’s one of the things that’s been really, really fun and exciting recently. We’re hoping that eventually dozens of people will get into it. Nice. , . And then I’ve got this other fun thing I’m doing. A few years ago, this guy who I had, I had met, had a speed trance training that, uh, Richard Non Guard and John Serone did in in San Antonio years ago.
And he happens to live in Austin. He, he emailed me out of the blue and he, he’s not really, I mean, he’s a little bit into hypnosis. He’s also an amateur magician, but he, he, uh, supports himself doing, you know, tech work and, and software design and that kind of thing. He emailed me and he said, Hey, I just went through a training on how to build apps.
Do you have any ideas for an app? And, uh, discussed a couple different ideas and then decided to build one. And it’s getting very, very close to done. We are hoping to release that by the end of this month. It’s gonna be called the Harmony Hypnosis Emergency Validation. Nice. Yeah, I’m, I’m really excited about it.
It’s, uh, it’s very simple. Basically there will be a smiling face right there on your, your, uh, phone screen. When you press it, it says something nice to you. I like it, . I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun. Yeah. I’ve, so I, I’ve, I’ve taken some notes here cuz you kind of covered a whole bunch of, uh, stuff there that I wanted.
No, I love it. I love it. Gives me the roadmap and I get to go back in and explore it. Uh, okay, so let’s kind of rewind it back then. Um, cuz in the last couple of years, business has taken off in such a way that you had to restructure what it is that you’re doing. So, Let’s kick off with that perhaps. What would you say have been those things that you’ve changed, uh, in terms of your business that’s allowed that growth?
Wow. So I found some really great, uh, strategies and I gleaned these from a couple of different excellent mentors, Richard, non Guard being one of them. And then there’s this guy that Richard non guard calls sort of his go-to business, dude. Shoot, His name is Lynette Ski or something like that. Yeah, yeah.
No, seriously, it made a big difference to really go through and work with the hypnotic business systems. Hmm. Thank you. That you’ve, you’ve, uh, produced and. I like saying that I’ve, I’ve gotten so busy in the practice that I can’t even implement all of the strategies that are introduced there. That made a big difference.
It had a lot to do with building a good website and getting excellent reviews and, and, uh, curating them. Yeah. Let’s explore that for a moment. Yeah, that’s something that many people, if there’s one thing that I say people need to do more, It’s that and they’re often hesitant to ask for them, or they’re cautious to seek them, or they’re just in the fear that, what if they don’t give them what?
What are some of the things that you’ve been doing to get those? Right? So I created a set of auto responders. Mm-hmm. that I enroll my. Clients in really just for the, the non-smoking clients, I need to build something kind of similar for other, uh, niches, but since that’s the main niche I’ve gone after, my new ex-smokers are put on an email list and they get, that’s where they get the links for the MP3 downloads and they get specific support.
And I kind of took one of those, what changes in your body over the first year timelines and spread it out. But at some point in. and I say, Hey, please check in with me. Let me know how everything’s going. Mm-hmm. . So when I hear from one of these clients, he says, Hey, everything’s going, you know, really great.
I’m so grateful. I say, That’s awesome. And then I have already prepared where I just, um, Cut and paste instructions on how to give me a review on, uh, Google plus slash Google Places slash Google Business, whatever it is this month. Yeah. Which is, it’s a moving target, and I do have to periodically go back in and, and rewrite the direction mm-hmm.
So I’m, I’m not, Bribing them or anything like that. I’m not begging them. I’m just saying, Hey, you know, if you would like to let other people know about it, this could be helpful. Yeah, and of course, likewise my clients, you know, anytime I get a great comment like that from a client, even the, the non-smokers, I ask them to look into it and I, I did something a couple years.
I had a friend of mine set up a little customer service, uh, survey and I wrote to all of my former clients and said, Would you be willing to take this customer service survey, uh, about your experience with harmony hypnosis so that I can improve? And I included in it a few questions about possible other things that I could work with them on.
And basically when I got all the replies I saw, you know, there were things, and I think one of the questions I, I even wrote was, Would you be willing to write a positive review about your experiences? And so if they said they were, I immediately sent them that email and said, Hey, please do this and. You know, at, at first I thought, why would anybody trust an online review?
Come on any, I mean, they could be fake, right? But I’ve had quite a few people who say, Well, you know, I went to Google and, uh, the, you know, like, one other hypnotist in your town has one review and you’ve got a dozen. So I figure you must be good. Yeah. I love it. That that’s definitely a true experience that in sales, the, the mindset of if you’re always looking to solve a problem by answering the question of how do I make that easier for you?
Mm-hmm. , you know, then each step logically leads to the next one of, I want to be able to tell stories better in my hyp. Process, or I want to be able to tell stories better when speaking in public to grow my business, uh, to take that experience of, well, here’s James’ storytelling course that you can attend.
Um, but so often people overlook that little aspect of spell it out. Mm-hmm. , make it easier for the person. And by doing it that way of, um, you know, even relating. The people I’d interact with who would claim that, uh, they’ve got an issue with people not showing up to their sessions. Well, what are those things you’re doing to make it ridiculously easy for the person to, first of all remember it?
Mm-hmm. , And then two actually show up. . So I love that. I love that. Um, has there been, and I you’re saying that’s something that continues to morph and continues to improve just as the technologies change? Yeah, it does. And I’ve, I’ve dealt with those questions too, of how do I make sure that, that my clients make it to my office.
When I moved into my new office, I drove to it from every direction. Mm-hmm. and actually filmed myself narrating the directions. Nice. And then I didn’t use. Film cuz it was, I mean it was crappy footage, right? . But then I was able to write out directions from every angle directions to my door when you walk into the building.
Cuz the building’s a little bit of a maze. Yeah. And I just made it super easy. And I’ve got it ready to plug into an email. I’ve got it in an auto responder after they fill out my intake forms, which are online. I know you’re not a fan of that, but, uh, but that’s okay. Yeah. We don’t have to do the same.
Well, eventually. Yeah. And the reasoning is that just I, and I’m sure I get just as good, but I’ve classically found I get. Better content when the person has to sit there and hand write it. Yeah. And, you know, everybody’s got a different approach on that. But the, the main thing is that I know every one of my clients has detailed directions to my office.
Yeah. Um, and likewise, I use app Toto. I don’t know that one. It’s a scheduling. Okay. It’s a reminder, uh, program. So it links in with my, my, uh, Google calendar. So when I schedule somebody on Google Calendar, I just type in the code reminder in all caps. Mm-hmm. and that tells app toto. Hey, send them reminders.
Nice. Yeah. So I’m no longer sitting in my office, you know, five minutes after a client’s supposed to be here thinking, Oh God, did I call them yesterday? Yeah. You know, I know they’ve had an email, a text, and a robo call. . Yeah. You know, and at first I was afraid that that would be obnoxious. Uh, one of the first clients I, I did that with, she came in and I said, How did you feel about, you know, getting all of these reminders?
And she said, You know, it made me feel like somebody really cared. Yeah. Oh, excellent. . Absolutely. No, it’s that nice thing, especially we’re on the other side of that conversation where we’re getting that nudge, we’re getting that reminder, and there’s something to be said about something that I’ve programmed over the years.
Is that I send a fresh reminder out the day of their appointment. Mm-hmm. for the reason that, uh, well over, uh, two weekends ago I was teaching a class and the air conditioning unit suddenly started leaking, which the first thought was, I’m a renter. Hallelujah. Someone else’s problem, . And, but still, I had to be the one who arranged the service and get it all coordinated and.
Our deal is that I pay for it and then just take it outta the rent. Um, and the system is having some issues again. And the task of, now I gotta find that email. Now I need to track down who that is. Oh wait. This company merged with another one earlier this year. I just emailed the old email address and I got a.
Response that, that things outta service. And there’s something about just having the fresh copy and the email that day. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And again, just these, these systems that we figure out over time, but that whole systematic mindset of how do I do this once? Mm-hmm. , knowing that it occasionally needs to be, needs to go back and be reviewed upon.
What about that person who says that they’re going to be willing to leave a review, but then they don’t? How do you handle. I don’t worry about it. I’m not gonna hound them about it. Yeah. I’m trying to remember if there were any that like, I think maybe like two weeks later I sent out a reminder when I did that really big push.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah, I think I did send a reminder. Now if, if they don’t, I don’t worry about it. I suppose I could set up some sort of automatic reminder thing for it, but at this point, I’ve got enough reviews. Yeah. That anybody who looks at is gonna go, Well, okay, well this guy’s got way more reviews than anybody else in the town.
Mm-hmm. , you know, I guess if that changes , I’d push a little harder for him. No, I mean, it’s definitely a valid statement that, and you don’t wanna minimize any individual, but you get to a place where, okay, I have a good amount and if I don’t get this other one, and that’s. That’s an aspect perhaps, I’m sure that’s maybe peaked its way into your business too, that here’s a person that just isn’t ready to book and it’s no longer the game of I absolutely need this one.
Yes, we want to get that person to the office cuz we can help them with that issue. But there’s something about just the, the fact that you don’t need every single conversion to come through. Yeah. And you know, that’s a really powerful place to get to. I found that I had to kind of fake it until I made it.
Yeah. I had to set certain standards and when it really hurt to turn down a client because I didn’t feel like they were ready and you know, now I’m like, Okay, that’s taken care of. This morning I turned down somebody who wanted to quit smoking because she didn’t fit my criteria. Mm-hmm. , and I said, I don’t feel like it would be ethical for me to take your.
Yeah. Yeah. So then what else in terms of the business has really helped things take off? So, I’m almost embarrassed to talk about this, but I’m going to, It’s, you know, I, I like to have one foot in hard science and another foot in woo woo. And I don’t talk about the woo woo a lot. And I was almost embarrassed to do this from the beginning.
But, uh, I had a Funy consultant come to my office and she suggested a couple little changes, and I’ll tell you, Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe it’s synchronicity, I don’t know. But things started taking off from there. So I have continued to, to wear the lucky underwear and make those, those function way changes.
I’m sure plenty of people listening to this will totally believe in and the energy and all the WOOWOO stuff, and others are gonna go, Oh God, I can’t believe Hazel Ridge just said. There’s different sides of that. That one side of things, I’m, I’m always one to come back to an evolutionary mindset that these things are around because we figured out over time they work.
Yeah. So I, if it’s still around after all these years, there’s gotta be something to it, um, even to look at it from a completely outside perspective. The other aspect of it is kind of the same mindset that I’d often bring to as much validity, as much proof, and as much. Anecdotal experience I’ve had with specific, uh, NLP strategies.
There’s something to be said about when we’re working with intention rather than by accident. Yeah. My al consultant will say flat out that, uh, it is far more effective if you do it with intention. Yes. And so I, I think that setting, you know, these intentions. and I feel better about the fact that I got rid of that really crappy old chair that I got for 40 bucks on Craigslist when I started and got a much, much nicer chair in its place that also no longer leans against the wall and blocks the flow of chi or whatever.
There’s things that have made me feel much better about my office, and I think that that translates. Maybe even in a subconscious way as I’m talking to people on the phone as I am promoting my business. Is there a specific change that kind of, uh, overrides, uh, that, that shift in your office? If you had to sum it up?
Is it a matter of flow? Is it a matter of the materials there? I’m not even sure if I could, if I could sum it up. She did tell me to get something green on that particular wall, and I got a, a giant green picture from IKEA that it turns out every other great hypnotist now is on their wall, so I don’t know.
Yeah, just creating that environment where things just feel safe and comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. It’s the picture, isn’t it? That’s it really is. You are success. Yeah. And the specific one, I’m gonna have to put an image of this that we snapped before we jumped in that, uh, I flash back to Big Lebowski of just, no, that rug just br brought the whole room together,
And for me it was, I looked at this wall in my office and just realized, Okay. I, I tried originally hanging two things on the wall and it just looked awkward. So it then became, I just need something big. Mm-hmm. . Okay. I guess I have to go to Ikea and by getting something there, it’s this image that surprisingly, I’ve had so many people actually look at that image.
And again, we’ll put the image up on the, on the show notes. It’s over at Work Smart Hypnosis. The line was, uh, yeah. You know what’s amazing about that image? . I would probably not feel that at peace and comfortable in that environment cuz I’m out in the woods and now I’m thinking bears, wolves, foxes, snakes.
Yet that image is so calming. It’s funny, there have been studies that found that people supposedly feel most calm when looking out at a big, open plane. Mm-hmm. . and they, they theorize well, our ancestors, you know, would’ve felt more comfortable there cuz you can see for a long way and there’s nothing for predators, a hide behind and all that.
But I, I live in a forest, yes, and I love living in a forest. For me, I, that image is exactly what I want. Yeah. So then jumping around a bit, anything else though in terms of the business growth? So specifically building a better environment that people felt more comfortable with, I’m sure that also led to some referral changes as well.
I believe so. Yeah. Definitely. You know, I, of course, from very early in the business have been working on local networking and uh, when I moved the business into Austin, I immediately sought out some local network groups. Mm. And, uh, you know, that’s a long game. You, you have to invest and take the time. But I’ve done that.
So now there’s a lot of people who are very comfortable with me and they’re okay with telling their friends, Oh yeah, hey, I know a hypnotist who helps out with that kind of thing. Um, and so, yeah, that’s led to some excellent referral. outstanding. And then just the getting the feedback as well, other than the investment of time and definitely the aspect of some of these networking events, you do have to either at least pay for breakfast or lunch to go or some sort of, uh, admission fee.
Has there been any advertising spend? I spend about a hundred bucks a month. Mm-hmm. on you’re, you’re gonna freak. On a print ad. Yeah. And I would not recommend print ads except in this situation. And that’s that, that Austin has a free weekly paper. Everybody reads it. It’s what all of the events are listed in all of the stuff.
Uh, all the music events, because it’s the live music capital of the world are in there. Some really hard hitting local journalism. Yeah. Is there, And so it’s really a viable newspaper still. And I have to say it was Richard Ard. Told me when I, when I moved my business into Austin, he, and he had actually started out in Austin many years ago.
He said, Take out an ad on the back page of the Austin Chronicle. Make it as short and simple as you can sell one thing and one thing alone. And make sure it’s there every single issue. Yeah. And that’s what I’ve done. It’s worked out great. It has had, uh, excellent roi. Yeah, I’d say that it’s not that print advertising has gone away entirely, cuz there’s some regions, uh, I’d imagine it might have a similar field.
We don’t really have this in Alexandr. Uh, though when I was living in downtown Baltimore and mostly a stage hypnotist, if your event was not in city Paper, it didn’t exist. Yeah. And to pay for whatever they could possibly do to increase your visibility on the website to get a little bit more bulk of a listing in the, uh, in the calendars.
That there’s some areas that that paper is still widely being read and you gotta be there to exist. Mm-hmm. , we have, I’ll leave the name out of it cuz I’m about to talk smack about it. Uh, but there’s a local, uh, sort of more, I’d say, um, spiritually based more, um, metaphysical, uh, magazine that comes out about maybe, I think four to six times a year in this area.
And maybe about eight or nine years ago when I was first jumping in, it was one. If you were doing anything hypnosis related, classes or services, you needed to be in there. Mm-hmm. . And then nowadays it seems the quality has declined a bit and just, I’ve stopped renewing it. But you find these regional things that, you know, it’s the listening to the people in your environment.
We had a paper like that briefly here in Alexandria that actually I had a column inside of, and then it went out of business. Um, probably cuz their health and wellness column was a little shifty, but they . Yeah. And you know, we have the, some of those kind of spiritually based, um, magazines and newsletters around here and, and I can’t remember.
I may have paid for an ad in one of those once, but, but I haven’t found them to be really that impressive. Yeah. And we’ve, we also have. Some kind of holistic healers networking groups around here. And for a while I was, I was very active in one of them and, uh, I, there were a lot of wonderful people, but what I noticed was that no one was really interested in referring to someone else.
There was a lot more of the let’s trade service. Mindset there. There was some of that. Yeah. Yeah. There was, there was a fair amount of that and, but also an awful lot of, um, Well, why should I refer someone to you? I’ve got all the answers, right? Yeah. I’ve kind of surprised some of the people by actually sending clients to them.
They’re like, Wait, what? I’m like, Yeah, I can’t solve everything. I, I think this person really needs what you. . Yeah. Yeah. Which is one of the best ways to get referrals is to start sending them out. So then jumping around a bit, you mentioned that there’s been an evolution in terms of the storytelling aspect of really sharing that better with hypnotist.
What is it you think that hypnotists need to understand differently as in terms of their storytelling skills and approach? I think one of the biggest things is they need to recognize that they are already storytellers. That they often don’t think of themselves as storytellers, but we all tell stories.
You know, you get home from work and your spouse says, How was your day? And you tell a story. Yes. You know, they’ve never thought about it. They’ve never analyzed it. And so when the idea of. Doing this as a hypnotic intervention comes up, they’re like, Oh gosh, I have no idea how to do that. Before I became a hypnotist, I got a master’s degree in English.
I spent a lot of time analyzing stories and figuring out how all that works. And likewise, I spent a lot of time considering myself a storyteller. And so what I’ve done is take, you know, way too many years of college and boil it down into. Some simple structures that people can use to understand stories and to start thinking about them just enough to where we can structure them, we can use them as vehicles for hypnotic change work.
So I, I think that’s really the thing is that hypnotists need to let themselves step into it and realize that it’s. This terrifying thing, and they don’t have to be Milton Erickson, although they could channel him if they want in order to tell stories that are going to help people. So kind of back to the same point around growing the business, getting referrals that we have this tendency of B building something up to be bigger and more challenging than it turns out to actually be.
Yeah. It’s kind of funny for a while I think that’s what made me reluctant about trying to step out and teach it. Cuz I thought, well, what’s the big deal? You just do it. And then I realized, well, no, I’m not just doing it. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to do it. So now I’ve had to figure out how to convey that to other people.
But I’ve come up with some ways to do it and I think some fun ways to approach it. And I’m still working on other ways to teach it. Um, there will be more stuff down the line. Right now I’m pretty excited about what I’m able to do to help people out. Outstanding. So let’s, let’s bring it into the scope of where things are now with the, the OSIS course.
Mm. So we, uh, uh, Dave Berman and I both told some stories, which, by the way, Dave Berman, session number 52 of this program. Excellent. Yeah. . Yeah. You know, I always loved to laugh. In fact, when other kids wanted to be firemen, I wanted to be a comedic actor. I, I wanted to be a standup comic. And I, uh, remember that when I was little, I was, I was the youngest in my family, and someone would tell a joke and everyone would laugh, and I would just laugh and laugh.
And then they would ask me to explain what was funny. and I had to make up some sort of story because I had no idea what the heck was funny about it. And of course then all of them would laugh at my ridiculous story about what was funny about the joke I didn’t understand. And I, I was convinced at an early age I was hilarious.
So I had this, this love of laughter from a very early age. And of course then I, you know, I went on and I did other things and, and, uh, when I was at Hypno Thoughts live. Guess it was the second one. Dave Berman was actually one of my roommates and he had gotten in at like three o’clock in the morning and I wanted to wake up around, I dunno, six in the morning my alarm went off and my alarm is a 20 minute MP3 that I created.
That starts off with some very soothing, uh, kind of meditative sounds. It has some binaral beats in there. Not that it matters when it plays on my phone, but actually they might not be binar. I think they’re iso chronic. But anyway, the go from, you know, a very low frequency to ramping up to, to sort of a higher thing and.
It’s 20 minutes of suggestions. It’s basically the end of a hypnosis session with no induction. And I use this because I do not wake up happy normally, , I am not a positive person, believe it or not. So anyway, six o’clock in the morning or whatever, when Dave’s had like three hours of sleep, this alarm goes off.
I’m just barely coming out of the fog hearing, you know, my own voice telling me that today is gonna be an excellent day. And then I start hearing this laughter and it gets louder and I’m like, What the, what is this laughter sound? I mean, I, I’m, I’m foggy in the mornings. And then I realized it’s Dave over there in the other bed.
Laughing and I’m used to people that I have to share hotel rooms with, which I have to do sometimes I’m a musician. really hating that recording cuz they’re like, Ah, I don’t want all those positive crap in the morning. Right. And Dave was just laughing and I thought, is there something funny about what I’m saying?
And that’s what, what is it? Now trying to find the humor in the situation. So I, I asked him and he said, It’s just so absurd. I don’t know. It’s, it’s just, I like to laugh and so when I get awakened like that, I laugh, you know, I’m thinking I would’ve been a bear, right? Three hours sleep or I wanna growl at people.
And I realized that he had rewired his brain so that his reaction to things that would have. Annoyed the heck out of me was instead to laugh. And so I got really intrigued by that. It happened that he was teaching a Laughter yoga class there at Hypno Thoughts Live, and I immediately went home and started digging into it and.
Found laughter yoga classes. And at that point I was, I was teaching, um, an anger management class at a recovery center and I started incorporating some laughter yoga techniques into the anger management class. I wanted a full on laughter yoga class for them, and I asked the person who, uh, leads it in Austin.
She would come out there, but it was quite a ways from Austin and she was a little bit older, didn’t wanna drive at night and I said, Fine, I’m gonna have to get trained as a laughter yoga leader, . So I went and did my one weekend certification course to become a laughter yoga leader and, and taught laughter yoga classes out there for the, uh, uh, the folks in the recovery center.
And, um, I never got to implement it full on at the jail. I think it would’ve been amazing. Uh, to do, but that was about the time when I would’ve been able to do that was when I was kind of stepping away from, uh, doing so much volunteer work at the jail being really into this. I started incorporating laughter techniques in my office.
and using them more and more. And of course there were hypnotists who had suggested things along those lines. Melissa Tears I remember said, Now put some laughter in when she was doing a Spinna and Dave teamed up with Kelly Woods to write a book called Laughter for the Health of It. And while he.
Writing his portions of that. He kept bouncing ideas off me, which kept sparking my ideas. And I said, Hey, I’ve got all these ideas. Do you wanna put ’em in your book? And I don’t know why he said no, personally, I would’ve just stolen them all from me. But he didn’t . And so I’m like, well, Dang it. I’m gonna use all these ideas.
So I said I’ve wanted to write a book. Anyway, so I wrote the book and realized how short it was. So I titled it The Little Book of Osis, and from there it’s just taken off and grown. And even though my goal is to kind of be known as the storytelling guy, I’ve ended up also being known as the Osis guy. I love it.
I love it. So then, is there a story that comes to mind of how using these strategies in your sessions has really benefited? Yeah. When I went through laughter yoga training, there was a really interesting exercise we did where the teacher asked us to think about a task that we needed to do, but maybe weren’t that crazy about like a chore.
and she had us visualize and Panama doing it while laughing up ply and to cycle through it again and again. Now, I had already recognized that there’s a lot of anchor collapse going on in uh, laughter Yoga. So I applied that technique and found that next time I had to do that task, I started laughing and eventually I got to where I just get a little smile and chuckle, but that task no longer annoys the heck out of me like it used to.
So I started using that with my clients, you know, who were procrastinating or doing this or that. And then one evening I was working with a client who was there to get over her fear of spiders. And you know, I know at least a half dozen phobia release techniques. And so, , You know, we calibrate, we do the first technique.
I calibrate, Wow, she’s still got some issues. And I ran through everything. I knew , and I’m like going, Oh, oh God. So I knew that she was pretty good at laughing unconditionally. So I said, All right, Shane, that you want. Instead of running in terror from your apartment, if you see a spider and that, I mean, that was literally what she would do.
She had to call someone else to deal with the spider before she’d go back in. Um, it was like hazmat or something. I said, You know, the reaction you told me that you want is that you just see it, take your shoe off and smash it. So stand up, visualize the spider right there. Take off your shoe pmi, smashing it and laugh like crazy while you’re.
And so we spent a good half hour of her pantomiming visualizing and laughing . And that evening before, well, when I got home, I got an email from her that says, You’re not gonna believe what was on the wall of my apartment right after I opened up my door tonight. But I have to tell you that I laughed while I took off my shoe and smashed that spider.
Nice. Just this week I used the same approach to help a veteran be all right with hearing fireworks. Hmm. And we did it more, you know, visualizing since there, there’s not much way to Panama him watching fireworks. But we did it much like a conventional swish each time. You know him laughing and smiling, and while he was busy doing that, I pulled.
YouTube video of fireworks and had him put on the headphones and watch it and laugh, and he was able to laugh through several minutes of fireworks. What I love about that is that so often we get caught up in the pattern of, I need to remove the problem. I need to remove the problem, and it can be just as effective if not more, to instead, install another choice that you know, in a similar.
Style though I’m gonna definitely look into what you’ve got there. You know it, it’s a place that a client with any bit of anger issue for little everyday things. My own little personal mindset has always been choose amusement. Mm-hmm that, you know, the one who cuts me off on the road, the person who is just rude for the sake of being rude.
This place of just amusement of, I wonder what it is that’s causing that. I wonder where that’s coming from. Exactly, and, and the nice thing is that with a rous laughter and a big smile as they visualize going through that situation again and again, they build that reaction and they might not burst out laughing mm-hmm.
on the road, but they’re more likely to just get a little smile and be amused. I love it. So where can people learn about this course online? The easiest way to learn about it is to go to uh, G u M dot C slash losis, so A U G H N O S I S, and we’ll put links to that over in the show notes. It works smart hypnosis, but it’s gum.co/.
Osis. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That takes you right to the course and the first module is up there to watch for free, so you can get an idea of what it’s about. We also have a, a video where we’re talking about what’s in the course, and that’s, that’s there available for free. I. I am going to get organized enough that osis.com will have a link over that way, but I’m not there yet.
Right now. osis.com just deals with the book. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, for sharing it in your social media streams, for leaving your feedback over on iTunes and uh, hiring airplanes to sky right work, Smart Hypnosis up in the sky in the cloud.
Okay, that hasn’t happened yet, but I’ll take it when we get it. In the meantime as well, I tell you to head over to hypnotic business systems.com. Again, it’s the all access pass to my Hypnosis business training, video training done for you campaigns, Step by step tutorials plus an outstanding community to get your questions answered and get the support you need to grow an outstanding hypnosis business.
Head over to Hypnotic Business Systems dot. See on the inside, Make it rain. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.
