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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 84, Richard Cole on being Hypnotically memorable. 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. The world has become a whole lot smaller.
Hey, it’s Jason Lynette here, and that’s the theme of this week’s podcast session featuring Richard Cole. Richard is actually somebody that you’ll hear. He and I have known each other and spent some time together on the phone, at least over the last eight or nine years. And still comes the revelation that he and I have never actually met in person, which is kind of the origin of my catchphrase, that so many hypnosis conventions as I interact with all of you that, wow, hey, we’re already best friends on Facebook.
That. That benefit of being able to expand our circle of influence. The other hypnotists, the other instructors, the other workers out there that we interact with who are out there doing a good job, getting great results with their clients, with their presentations, and really just. Spreading the good news of all things that is hypnosis.
Richard’s a guy that’s been around for quite some time and has really explored all different markets inside of hypnosis, whether it’s hypnotherapy, whether it’s clinical research, whether it’s doing stage presentations and even letting him take it to other markets as well as. Really expanding some of his own ideas that are, uh, you’re gonna hear about insight of this, this conversation you’re about to hear as well.
So we’re gonna jump right in. You can check him out online, you’re gonna hear all the links. Get all the details over at the show [email protected]. This is session number 84. Richard Cole, on being hypnotically memorable.
You know what, I don’t think we’ve ever. Yeah, I know. It’s that fun thing of the internet that we’ve known each other for. Oh, at this point, how many years? Oh my word. Very long time. Since at least oh eight, so at least eight years. Mm. Yeah, I mean, then again, you’re not welcome in the country, so that might have something Hey, hey,
I’ll remember that when you wanna come to Toronto. I know, I know. We’ll, we’ll get, I’ll send some letters. We’ll get you back in. The way we usually kick this off though, is kind of that origin story, and I know you kind of came into hypnosis in a slightly different direction than most people did. Tell me a little bit more about that story of just discovering it and how you kind of launched into all of this.
When I was, how I got into the whole stage hypnosis thing, I was, was really. A, an interesting way. I came about it. I remember when I was, I’ve always been a performer, always been an entertainer. I think my sister told me that when I was like seven years old. Well, actually I know I was, I was seven years old and I was skeleton number three in monster mash at my, uh, grade one play that we had.
Then I was also Casey at the bat. I think that was probably grade three . And so, um, throughout, throughout. School years, I, I got involved with Magic and then at the age of, I think it was 11 or 12, my dad took me to the college where he worked the Ontario Police College in Elmer, Ontario. And, uh, he snuck me in because for the recruit, they brought in two entertainers and these entertainers would ultimately influence the rest of my life.
The opening act was this guy, his name, his name is backwards. And he’s what I would call a true mentalist. He would be able to say things backwards and then play them back on a real, real tape, and it would be exactly what he said only in forward. It was very cool. Oh, And then he would also be able to write things backwards on a blackboard and then backwards and upside down.
And it was, it was just fascinating. He did some memory stuff. He would ask the audience to name, uh, capital City or a city, somewhere in the world, anywhere, and he would be able to name the, the capital. That country. He would name the growth domestic profit. Uh, what, where in their population. It was just fascinating and amazing for me as a 12 year old.
But the headline entertainer, he was the comedy stage hypnotism. Well, hang on. Before you get into that, I wanna explore, you made the comment about someone who would actually be the real definition of a mentalist. Yeah. Uh, there’s, there’s, there’s mentalist. It’s a form of entertainment. Now, where a mentalist is, is like somebody who uses magic tricks.
Technically. It used to be called mental magic, right? Where using magic tricks or electronics, you give the perception of psychic ability or the ability to read people’s mind, when in reality it’s all, you know, slight of hand and mm-hmm. and psychological influence and. Magic tricks. Whereas a real mentalist is, is someone who uses the their real abilities like memory techniques, reading people’s body languages, you know, that sort of stuff.
Now I’d ask you this cuz I know you have a background in that as well, that in my early years I kind of came into it from a similar direction that I had the hobby of doing magic. I did some of the mind reading stuff as well. And I know there’s a lot of people who very comfortably blend the two yet for me.
It was kind of going back to that exact statement. I can’t remember who it was, but he did what was classically called the magazine test. Mm-hmm. , where he handed out maybe 20 copies of this issue of Newsweek that released that day to the audience. And there really was no trick to it. He had memorized the magazine.
Right. And the downfall though, and this is what kind of influenced me though, was that when he then went on to present something else, which very clearly had this. Magical effect to how he predicted something, it detracted from what he had previously done. Yeah. So here was something that was absolutely real and yet he pulled away the quality of it by then presenting something which clearly could not have been real.
And it’s how I used to open up maybe for my own confidence. I used to open up some of my stage hypnosis program. With some sort of mental magic trick, if anyone’s following along classically be something called a tossed out deck, where you toss a pack of playing cards out to the audience wrapped in rubber bands, people would look at a single card and without even touching them again, you would tell them what the card was out of 52.
But the, the downfall of that was that the rest of the presentation, the stage hypnosis kind of had this air of, well, what’s the trick to this? I used to believe that too, Jason. I really did. I used to believe it when, when I, when I went to see Magician open for a hypnotist show, I thought to myself, Well, everybody in the audience is gonna think that the hypnosis is another magic trick.
I. Maybe, maybe years ago. Mm-hmm. , they would have put those two together. I don’t think so much now that, that they would, I think general, generally people are becoming more believing that hypnosis is real. I, I think I heard you on a podcast with Mike Mandel and you talked about the renaissance of hypnosis.
Yes. And, and it’s becoming, Just more mainstream. Back when I was starting out in, in 1998, you know, hypnosis was still kind of a mystery type thing. So when people, in my mind, when people. Came across a mystery and they didn’t know the answer. Whatever explanation you could offer up to them would become their reality.
So if they had a magician opening up for a hypnotist, then, oh, I don’t know exactly how this guy’s, making these people do stuff. So it must be some form of a magic trick. So I agree. I agree with you that that’s how I think it used to be. Nowadays, maybe not so much. Yeah, I can see. Yep. Maybe nowadays, the thing was continuing with the story, right when, when I was 12 years old, the headline entertainer, the stage hypnotist was actually Mike Mandel.
Oh, nice. And so the, the real mentalist backwards Bob, he was like doing all this memory stuff. So when Mike came out and did his hypnosis show, it. Was perfect. It blended seamlessly. And of course, as a 12 year old kid watching stage hypnotist get, get these, these grown men to do all these amazing things like missing penises and all kinds of stuff like that.
I thought as. Being 12 years old, I thought, I want that power , you know? So, and that’s really where it all started for me. From there, I, I would still, I was still doing magic and I went to high school. I did some magic shows in high school. I was doing theater shows in high school. At university, I was doing some comedy magic at the, uh, comedy.
When I graduated university with psychology in English, I was doing tap jazz and ballet dancing. I know you can’t tell that I used to have the body of a God . Well, some say I still do. I guess Buddha is a God. So nice. Nice. I guess that one. And yeah, and then funny enough, it was. It was in 19 98, 15 years later, after I, I saw Mike do his show at the police college that I saw him again at show Place in Peterborough and, and that’s when I decided, you know, this is what I want to do.
And so I was working my job. Which was manager, restaurant manager at the Burger King here where I live, and I, I said to them, This is gonna be my last shift in February 22nd in, I think it was 2000 maybe. I went full time and Haven looked back. Beautiful. Beautiful. Now remind me in this, there’s a story of when you were getting started that the hypnosis was relatively new to you and you went on a bit of a research or a bit of a.
Yeah. With fellow students to, to really flush out, Okay, if I can really do this, how much can I actually know? Tell, tell me more about that. So what ended up happening was when I got interested in the hypnosis aspect, the stage type stuff, I went and I got a book and I, I mean, I went and I got a book at the only place I knew where I could get a book, which was The Magic Shop.
It was actually Morrisey’s Magic Shop in Toronto, and I got, The Orman McGill book Encyclopedia. The encyclopedia one there. Yes. So read through . It’s kind of a funny story of the first person I ties , and so I read through it and I’m going, Oh, okay, well this, this seems easy enough. And so at the time I was also racing go-karts, and there was go-kart racing tournament kind of thing going on in Hamilton.
So my girlfriend at the time, and a bunch of my friends and I, we rented a. and, and so I’m like, Hey, let’s, let’s try some hypnosis. So my girlfriend Julie, she volunteered ly enough , and so I’m just reading. I’m just reading. Okay. Close your eyes and relax and, and you know, it’s the, um, the progressive relaxation inductions where.
Pretty much all that there was back then. So I’m reading this and I said, Okay, and I flipped the page, and now when I, uh, count backwards, the number six will be gone from your, from your mind, and you’ll open your eyes. 1, 2, 3, uh, wide awake. And I said, Can you count to 10? And she goes, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10.
And I look around at my friends and my friends look at me, and we’re all like, Whoa, this really worked , This really worked. And then we all look at each other. What now? Yeah. . Wait a minute, let me flip to that page. How do we get out of this? So that, that’s how it first started. It, it, and, uh, it ended up Julie, he became my wife, so I may or made a hypnotized her to make that happen.
Uh, that’s still up in the air. So while I was doing this and working at the Burger King, I, I wanted to start doing more shows so that one of the first shows that I did was more of a talk and it was a talk for a, uh, college. I had some friends at a college in, uh, Woodstock here in Ontario. Uh, they invited me out to talk and so I did a talk and did the hypnosis and did a few skits and.
On my way home, I got thinking, you know, how can I make my, my show participants more energetic and more active? So, uh, sat down at the computer. We had the internet back then and sat down and I typed in how do I make my hypnosis show participants more active? And sure enough pops up this tape that I could order.
From the Hypnosis Center called How to Make Your Show Participants more Energetic and Active. And that was by Jeff. Ron. So I got that tape and, and a few subsequent things from the State Hypnosis Center. And then I started, started marketing. I put my marketing efforts out there and I realized that people were paying more and more money to me to come and entertain and to do these shows.
And it got to a point where I started doing some math. And the, the math that I was doing was how much, how many shows do I need to book in a month in order to equal what I’m making at my job? Once I got that number figured out, I, I worked hard to get those shows, which I think we all do. We work hard to get those shows so.
Income of me working, you know, eight hour days for five days a week was the same as me doing a, you know, one or two shows. And I was able to repeat those shows. One thing that I learned very, very early on, and I think you’ll agree with me, is that there’s nothing better than having a, a system in place, a repeatable.
And, and once you have that system in place and it’s on autopilot, that that opens up a whole, a whole new world for you of what you can, what you can do. Yeah, absolutely. Especially, I mean, approaching it from that perspective of starting out. I, I mean, I probably shared before similar story of working in nonprofit arts, which was rather nonprofit for just about everybody involved.
It turned out, and that was that turning point of going. If I want to do this full time, what does this actually entail to, to get things started? So actually when I left that career, I was a full time stage hypnotist at that time, and it’s only a year or so later. Okay, I’m doing a bunch of shows, but I’m home Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I guess I could be seeing these clients and then that gradually took over.
So, but, but yeah, having those systems in place that I wanna run this aspect of my business again, I just need to rinse and repeat and now the phone is, Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And it got to the point where I realized I was making more income doing my shows than I was doing my J job. And, and so just decided full time, let’s go full time and let’s, At that time I was working, I think I was working the um, high school market.
Which, which seemed to be popular at or just starting to be popular at the time. So, you know, there were 754 high schools in my province that I could, that I could market to. And that’s what I did. That’s what I did. And then once that system was in place where I was getting repeat shows with the high schools, start looking at a new market and the.
Corporate market was, was looked like, looked to me like it might have been a little bit difficult to get into at that time, but there was one that I wanted to focus on because it was fun. And that was the resort industry. Yeah, so, so I put a system together, I put a system in place. Ended up getting my, My first year was only two shows.
That was for 11 weeks at my full price. And then the following year was four shows. I think it was four shows and. just by repeating that system. So I now had two markets pretty much on autopilot. It wasn’t very long before I was doing corporate shows, just just because the systems, the systems that were put in place were working and I just kept working the system.
I’d bring up one of the reasons that I reach out to you to have you on here other than uh, uh, handsomeness, of course would be that in the time that we’ve known each other, you’ve always been someone that I’ve recognized is you kind of find your own way of doing. That you find your own systems of approaching things like even so far as at one point I, I think the title of the workshop was The Scientific Exploration of Past Life Regression,
Yeah, that you’re not afraid to have an idea pop into your head and go, Well, how do I make this work? And then just fully pursue it and make it happen. We, we had, I, I, I started, I started hearing more and more and some of the, some of the courses I went to, um, like I went to some of the Jeff Ro trainings in Las Vegas and this, this was really when the, the trainings were just starting out.
They, they were just starting out and, uh, he brought in one guy, I think it was Kevin Ho. He brought him in and he was talking about doing, doing shows at, for community, not shows, doing lectures for community colleges and, and I thought, Wow, that’s like, I’ve got, I’ve got a community college right here in town.
It’d be nice to offer them something up. And I know people didn’t know what to offer, but I was intrigued with past life. And just because of where I was coming from, it, I’m kind of scientifically based. So you couldn’t , I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to leave out the aspects of other people’s beliefs or, or influence them in any way.
So I thought, how can I, how can I put something together to take people on a journey? Take people on a, a journey. Into their past life without me having to commit to one belief system or them having to come up to my belief system. Is there a way I can meet in the middle? And the scientific exploration of past life regression with hypnosis just sounded so, so big.
And so it covered all the basics pretty much. Yeah. So that was a, That was a fun, That was a fun course. So then in these experiences of doing shows, whether it’s at resorts, whether it’s corporate groups, whether it’s high schools, I, is there a specific story that kind of stands out as something that keeps you really passionate for all of this?
I first on, it was, it was, it was about getting the shows and doing the shows as an entertainer. I mean, I’ve been an entertainer all my life, at least since skeleton number three in Monster Mash. Nice. And so I want to entertain, I, I love the accolades. As I grew as an entertainer, I started to realize that that business was becoming more important and cradling and grooming and loving the clients.
Helping them create an experience for their guests was, was starting to dominate my mind. Doing a good show, once you have a good show, you can wash, rinse, and repeat that. And as a performer, you know, I would always put one new skit in just to keep me on my toes, but it became more of a, how can I. How can I help the client, the guy who’s paying me the money?
E Eventually I’ve come to learn that, that this is, this is something you’re, you’re supposed to do that a lot of people don’t do it just. I’m just a nice guy. Like a lot of people know me as a nice guy, at least some people do and so I’m always out there trying to help. And so coming up with, with new ways to help a client new explore new avenues was, uh, just really cool.
Like I work with some other, um, some other hypnotist on ideas. They’ll have some ideas and we’ll, we’ll work and brainstorm some ideas and come up with out of the box. You know, I’ve always been a statistical kind of guy. I guess, I guess maybe from the aspect of try it first. Find out what doesn’t work, fix it, try it again.
Find out what doesn’t work, fix that part, and, and just let the numbers tell you what direction to go. Well, I think it’s that ongoing attitude that I’ve really admired of yours, that I’ve incorporated myself, of getting feedback along the way that I think too many people in this profession, both on the stage hypnosis side, as well as even the hypnotherapy side, are kind of working inside of their own bubble of knowledge and not quite reaching out.
That, correct me on this. At one time you had hired a, a team of friends that were kind of watching some of your programs and giving specific feedback on it. Yeah. Yeah. You always, we would try things. I, I would try things out and, and I would ask for their feedback and one of the, one of the things we, we always surround ourselves with friends.
We always say we wanna surround ourselves with people who are positive. I kind of agree with that, but I think you gotta have that one pragmatist, that one devil’s advocate, that one person who will say, . Now, that’s not gonna work. If you surround yourself with people who are groveling at your feet, Oh, you’re the greatest.
You’re the best. You can never, you can, you can never get better because you, you, you just, you’re always gonna think you’re, you’re awesome or you might think something’s not quite right. And, and if you don’t have that, that. Person. That one person that you can count on. Maybe it’s a spouse. I don’t know what your wife’s like, but any, any of my marketing stuff that I come up with, I always show it to my wife.
And I say, I say, Julie, what do you think of this? And she’ll say, Are you kidding me? And you know, cause she’ll give me an honest critique of, of what She doesn’t like it, about it. And she’s representative of the, the target market, right? I mean, you, um, you have to, you just have to have somebody who’s gonna.
A critic in order to, to keep you being creative. One example that I’ll give is a magician friend of mine, his name’s Chris psk, and he’s out of o. And he called, we were at a convention or something many, many years ago, and he said, I wanna show you this new trick I’ve been working on. And so he showed me this, this amazing trick, and basically it’s to music.
And he takes a, he takes a cactus, like a, a sharp pointy cactus, and he puts the cactus inside the balloon, like inside the balloon without the balloon popping. Nice. Nice. Now you can kind of see that in your mind. So it’s like, Wow. And I stood there and I went, Wow. And he looked at me and he said, Well, what do you think?
And I said, Wow, that’s awesome. He says, What do you think I should change ? And I’m like, Dude, you just blew my mind. I, I can’t see anything wrong with what you did. And he goes, He, he goes, It, it, something just doesn’t feel right and I don’t know what it is, and I need you to find out what it is for me. And I’m like, It was just amazing.
And he goes, No, something’s not right. What do you not like? And I said, Well, I don’t like the table. And he goes, The table, ah, it was right there in front of me. And, and it took, it took. Me turning off the, the, the I I love you to death, magician. You’re the best. It’s, it’s to turn off that attitude to, to become really, you know, a pinpoint things that, that he wanted me to, to point out.
And that’s why, that’s why I do have my friends and, and they’re, they come in all shapes and sizes and some of them are right and most of them are. And some of them point out my flaws. And, and I love those people for it because, because they do that. I, if I have some ideas, I know I’ve emailed you some of my idea, my ideas, and you go, Mm, no, You know, And, and that’s what makes, makes you a valuable friend and, and any friend that will, you know, pull you back, pull your reins back a little bit and say, uh, what about this?
what’s that value of really looking at it? And even over time, I’m sure it changes too, things that used to be a really good fit for the program, just gradually, maybe it’s a good reason why you take it out or even we’re just allowed to kind of grow tired of some of the strategies and decide to do do it a better way.
I, I think too, I, in the therapy side, I mean, I, I, I only did a year, I think a year or two of therapy mostly outta necessity. That’s an interesting story too. And, and a lot of people were afraid to try new, new techniques because they just were either unconfident in, unconfident with them mm-hmm. or unconfident with their ability with them.
They were stuck in the attitude of, you know what I do works. I don’t need to change it. I don’t need to change it up. Even though new, new modalities may work or new techniques may work, I’ll just, I’m, I’m gonna stick in my lane. I’m gonna stick in my lane and yeah. Oh, excellent. Excellent. So then there’s an aspect to your presentations that I’ve kind of picked up even from a distance, The wonders of our, uh, pen pal relationship, as it were, , which is on one side becoming, I’d phrase it this way, I think using the terminology of letting the presentation become more memorable mm-hmm.
that standing out that yes, we’re in a profession, especially on the stage hypnosis side now, and I, granted this is a conversation that I have. I can appeal to, I can understand yet. I think it may be a little bit more bombastic sometimes because of marketing that too many people might be doing similar shows.
That, you know, there’s too much of the, Oh, he’s doing the beach routine. I came up with that first when No, you didn’t. So to look at a lot of this, and even as I’m doing presentations, they ask the audience, How many of you have ever seen this type of show before? The majority, it’s still their first time.
So, yes, on one side it’s okay to still do a classically minded show. You’re on a beach, it’s getting hot, it’s getting cold, you’re watching a funny movie. Yet inside of that though, whether it’s bringing props or the audience participation into the presentation, what is it that you do with your programs to make it more memorable, more one of a kind, would you say?
I try to make it bigger. I, I, I try to make it bigger for, for the audience. I’ve, I’ve got a, I got a couple of. That, that I do in my shows, and they involve, they involve props, and if they don’t involve props, they involve a big idea. The, the, the big idea is, is kind of my idea. I call it 110% entertainment.
And basically what that is, is if I can make the audience laugh, that’s my job. That’s, that’s what I’m there to. If I can make the people in the wings laugh and kind of an inside joke, that’s a little extra, right? Mm-hmm. , that’s a little 10% extra. I’ll give you a great example that I’ve put together just.
Recently, over the past, past few shows, there’s a, there’s a classic skit. It’s, it’s called Itchy Toilet Paper or Itchy Dollar Bills, or basically you’re given somebody a Kleenex or a, a tissue or a, a piece of toilet paper. They tuck it into a safe spot somewhere on them, and then you give them the hypnotic suggestion that it becomes it.
Right. So that’s, that’s a classic one that’s been around for a while. There’s a newer one, I’m positive I didn’t come up with this cuz somebody’s gonna go back in the history books and say, Oh, that was invented by Ramsey’s back in 8 42 bc, which is stand up painter like is, it’s a painter. They stand up out of their chairs and they’re painting a picture.
So they paint a picture or they sculpt or they do some kind of art. And so, um, , so what I’ve, what I do is I’ve combined the two and they stand. So, so now it’s a big show for the audience. People are painting or sculpting with their hands, and it’s now an auction. So as the volunteers are standing up there and I’m giving them their accolades, Hey, what did you, what did you just do?
I, I, I sculpted David. Wow, that’s fantastic. Give ’em a big round of applause. Listen, I’m gonna give you a hundred dollars, so I’ll rip off a hundred dollars a tissue. It’s not really a hundred dollars, it’s just a piece of toilet paper. And I’ll hand it to them, , as I’m saying this right now, I suddenly see in the next six months everybody doing a toilet sketch artist type thing.
Huh? Wow. Okay. Well, I’m in it now. Well, it’s recorded now, so there’s evidence. Yeah, . Exactly. It’s the phrase now, best way to hide something is to publish it. Yeah, of course. Nobody will do it. . And then, so what ended up happening the very first time, So I crafted the skit and I came up with the. Uh, to put, put it all together.
And I was actually performing at Carleton University, which is my alma mater here in Ottawa. And I, I got a, I gotta roll a toilet paper and I’m doing my sound check and, and I’m looking around, where am I gonna put this toilet paper? And two of the camera guys, two of the camera operators, while one guy and one girl, they’re standing there and then the sound guy’s down on the side.
And I said to the sound guy, I said, Do you mind if I grab. Stand this, uh, speaker stand. There was nothing on it. And do you mind if I put it right here? And he’s like, Sure, no problem. And I said, I, I bet, I bet you can guess why I’m doing that. Well, I put it up there because the edges of the stage, the stage was, uh, raised up about, oh, I don’t know, four, four feet or meter and a half, depending who hears it.
And I didn’t want anybody to go near the edge of the stage, so I put stand there kind of as a block, right? And when I said, Do you know why this stand is here? One of the camera girls, she goes, Because you’re gonna put the toilet paper on it. And I went, Hmm. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. That’s exactly what I’m gonna do.
And now in that one instant, I said, You know what? I’ve got a funny idea. The camera guy was there, the camera girl was there, and the sound guy was there. The only, these three people were the only ones that were in on the whole thing. And so I do the skit. I start doing the skit and I say, Okay, I’m gonna give you guys all money.
I reach, I grab the toilet paper, which is now on this roll kind of thing, and I pull the toilet paper all the way across the stage. Right? The audience loses it. They start laughing cuz they think it’s funny when I guess toilet paper and bananas are funny things and so we’ll have to come back to the bananas.
But yeah, strawberry paper. Yeah, and, and, and so it goes. And so I’m ripping these sheets off and I’m giving it to the, to the people as it goes. And the, the, I’m looking at the side and the front camera guy’s camera is pointed at the ceiling. Cause because I can see what he’s shooting, right? . And I look over at him.
He’s rolled over, he’s on the floor laughing just because he got it right, he got. That little extra. And so it was, uh, it was quite funny. How did we get on this tangent anyway? I don’t know, but let’s come back to Banana. Okay, Let’s come back to the banana. When, um, it was a very popular skit that was out and it was fall in love with, uh, a person.
And one of the skits was you fall in love with. Or some of them would have you, you know, you fall in love with the hypnotist. I got a banana at one of the magic, one of the magic meetings that we had here in Bellville. My, my Magic mentor, I guess Les is his name, and. . He said, I think you deserve a banana.
So he gave me this big giant banana that he got at some kind of car dealership or, it’s weird how all this stuff happens, and, and he says, I think he can use it in your show. And I’m like, A banana. I don’t know about this. And another friend of mine, his name’s Robin Daz, he said to me, he said, bananas, they’re just funny things.
And, and I was like, Man, it’s the funny thing. This was roundabout the time I was creating a brand. and I had learned about branding and learned about what you were gonna be by your brand. And so I thought, well, I wonder, number one, if I can incorporate the banana in a show. So I ended up using the banana in a skit and it became the highlight.
Of, of the show was when this guy would dance with this banana. It was like a, a three foot banana and they were dancing to music and it was pretty funny. So I incorporated that. One of the cool things I’ve done is a, um, A banana. I have a banana incorporated into my business card, which was really, uh, really cool.
So when I get calls, when I get calls from people, they’ll say, they’ll tell me, they’ll say, Oh, I saw your show. And I go, Oh, cool. And they said, And I’ll ask them, you know, what skit do you remember? I always wanna put them in a. A happy, positive frame of mind before I, I get into the sales pitch with them, so, Oh, what skit do you remember?
And they almost always remember this skit with the banana. So that’s how they’re able to find me. It’s, it’s pretty cool that way. Yeah, I mean, it’s one of those aspects that I’ve definitely learned from you over the years, whether it’s finding that memorable hook inside of the program. Mm-hmm. , or more specifically, you probably know where I’m leading up to on this one.
Making sure the audience actually remembers you, making sure they actually remember your name as well. Uh, yeah, totally. Totally. I, I, I, it started, it started early on, like my friend Kevin and Jason and myself, we are doing a show, it might have been maybe my fourth show. It was at a high school for, for a prom, and it was in Karden, which is northern, well Southern Ontario, but Northern southern Ontario.
It’s a big province. It was a snowy day and it was, um, we get to the venue and one guy had said, he said, Hey, great to see you. We’re looking forward to this show. And I said, Cool. You guys ever seen a hypnosis show before? And this is back when you were in high school for five years. So he said, Oh yeah, we had, we’ve had the same hypnotist for four years.
And I went, Oh, that’s very cool. Who was it? And his response is etched on my brain. Hmm. I don’t remember. Mm. that’s what he said. And I thought you’ve had the same guy who did a great show and you can’t remember his name. And so I told the guys right off the bat, I said, We, we need to come up with a skit where people will always remember our name.
And so we created the 18 K ski and it, it’s, it’s done, its job. Perfect. . Yeah. Which inside of that, I mean, it even becomes a bit of a challenge inside of the hypnotherapy side. Yeah. That I had this awkward experience. Mm-hmm. that ended well, but she’s in my office. Well, she calls and the line was, I’ve already done hypnosis before and I just want to do it again for something else.
And you gotta respect the person for just having the assumption that maybe we’re all inside of some big multi-level marketing thing and we’re all working together, which no, we’re not. But she shows up in my office and the first thing out of her mouth. You’re not the hypnotist I worked with before, To which, I mean, all I could think of say is you’re not the client I had here before
But I mean, it was the expectation that, you know from her mind there’s only one. There’s only that one person. And whatever mechanism it is that we do, I mean, this is why inside of my business there’s so much video content. Yeah, of it. It just completely, let me just go there completely eradicates so much of what could be viewed as competition because they got to actually meet me.
The same as you mentioned, you were able to be on the phone with a client and get them into that positive frame of mind before you even actually launched into the business side of things. Just simply being human. Simply being memorable. Memorable inside of that experience. So yeah, the client showing up and you’re not the one I worked with before.
That was, that was the first. Yet, it’s how we can bring more of our own personality into our presentations, even into our sessions, even into how we guide these interactions to really bump up that quality. There’s, there’s so much good research even on the therapy side. Mm-hmm. that, is it this method? Is it that method that was the most effective and.
One of the greatest correlations they found was the rapport with the practitioner was directly proportionate to the results of the client. I completely agree. I I, and I’m sure you’ll agree that, and everyone will agree that we’ve met people in our lives who just, for whatever reason, I guess they used to say the right way, but you and I might call it congruency, people who are congruent with us, people that.
Just have an un unspoken, unwritten connection with, and, and that we get along with, we’d like people who are like ourselves and, and we’ve run into people that for whatever reason, we just, it’s just not working. It’s just not. It’s just not right. I’ve had, like, when I was doing the therapy, you know, there are just some clients who, who just weren’t a good fit.
Mm-hmm. weren’t a good fit and I learned early on that and I, I learned it in business. That, uh, how a client is on the phone or, or when you meet them is how a client’s gonna be the whole time, and that you don’t have to take every show. It’s okay to say no sometimes if people ask you, like, I see a lot of these stage hypnotists and I’m sure it’s still going on in the, um, therapy side where, where hypnotherapist will just take any client.
Whether they’re a good match for them or not. And I, I think it’s not only doing a disservice to the client, but it’s also like given you a really big headache having to deal with this client. So I, I, I’ve just always, I, I’ve always thought to myself, Is this a client I want to deal with? Is this a show I want to do?
If not, I have the ability to say next. Now, I don’t know if people still say that anymore. You understand what I’m talking? Yes, yes. But next is like the if, if you have that system in place and that system is pumping out water flow of clients, then it’s okay to say next because there will be another person come along and you don’t have to, you know, it sounds harsh, but you don’t have to deal with that client if you don’t want to.
Well, I’d say it’s, It’s in everybody’s best interest to. Yeah. Go into that. Yeah. Cause then it’s just that place of, you know, can, we don’t have to be their best friend yet. If it’s just the communication is not going positively. Mm-hmm. , it’s gonna remain that way. I’m, I’m flashing back to. I will, of course, leave the name of the actress out and I will leave the name of the play out of this as well, though it rhymes with, uh, Oppa Cabana, um,
But it was a musical that was made of let’s take this one hit song and stretch it out into a musical. Yeah, exactly. And she described it as it was selling out every single night. The audience was always packed. Yet she goes, I’d walk in, I’d stand at the stage door and I. . Okay. . Yeah. That it was that place of, and the production didn’t last that long.
But it’s that experience of you bring that through the entire thing. You know, we, we can quote, turn it on when we need to. And we do need to have that capability cuz sometimes there’s things going on in our lives. There’s attention where things ought to be. There’s that voicemail that needs to be returned.
And yet I always come back to the magical line of, Lord Michaels was Saturday Night Live. Whether the show is ready or not, we go live at 1130. Yep. And there have been moments where, um, I mean, even as simple as Michelle was eight months pregnant at the time, so no, no ticking clock yet, Yet I’m three hours down the road.
doing a, uh, program at four in the morning and I’m And was your mind on that program? I, I, I luckily had the experience of, I think I told you about this at one point. I worked at a theme park one year. Mm-hmm. , and if there’s any skill I really gained from working a theme park was. They tell you the worst thing you can do is keep a tally of how many shows you’ve done this summer.
Yep. Which of course means everybody did that and to have done the same program. I’ve forgotten the number now, but it’s like 370 something times. It was magical, but it was also disturbing how many times you’d walk onto that stage. Start the presentation and thank you so much. If you enjoyed the program, please stop by guest relations on the way.
Yeah. You still even know the, the lines, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like, did I do the whole thing, thing? Did I say everything? Okay, well it’s still uh, one 20, so I did my 20 minutes. But that ability to go on autopilot when we need to yet to, to not live in that place is the real danger. Yeah. You know, that’s what, that’s one of the things you said live, you know, I’m gonna extrapolate maybe, but live in the moment.
Yes. But still, you know, have have sites on, on what’s around and what’s going on around I think are important as well. I know a lot of, a lot of performers now, a lot of the stage performers, it’s all about shows like numbers. Like, like let’s get in as many shows as we possibly can, and I. I try to grasp in my mind did I ever want to do so many shows and it never happened to me.
Maybe I’m, maybe I just, I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to live more live life more . I, I mean these guys that are, are doing, you know, 300, 400, 500 shows. I recently heard comment and I think it was working. It was about they spend too much time working and not enough time living. Yeah, and, and I, I’ve, well, over the past few years, I’ve, I’ve started to get into fishing.
I enjoy fishing, and it kind of goes back to the, the next ideology of the, not working with just everybody, but if there’s a, if there’s a client that calls me or a show that they want me to do, which I. I don’t feel as congruent with me or I don’t feel as is gonna advance me with that client. I, I have a saying, I’d rather be fishing, you know, than, than dealing with nickel and diving gig sites.
You know, that’s, that seems to be a big thing now with a lot of entertainers are, are these gig sites and they’re, they’re bust in their butt to. Lower paying gigs or complaining about those low paying gigs on the gig sites. I heard a wise man once said, Don’t go on Facebook and cla and complain about Facebook.
I wonder who said that?
I think that was you, man. Yeah. The, the longer version of is if you’re complaining about Facebook, on Facebook, you’ve already lost your argument. , Right. It eventually just came about, Don’t complain about Facebook. On Facebook, which is the, Yeah, the. Yep. How dare they give you this absolutely free resource that you spend so much time on and show you the occasional ad
How dare they do that? And let’s just get the public service announcement out there. If you keep reposting that thing about your protection of your images, that doesn’t exist. That’s not, Although the real scary thing is I now have an ad rep at Facebook that I can call, which is not really bragging rights.
It means I’ve given them enough. And I, I actually made the statement about, you know, I have some students who don’t want to be on your website with fear of privacy issues, but you already know everything about everybody you wanna know about, don’t you, ? Cause she goes, Ha, I can neither confirm or deny that
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aliens are neither real nor not real. Exactly. Exactly. So where can people find out more about you online especially, uh, it’s, correct me the name, it’s the 18 K skit, but also love on the left. Well, I have, I have two products out. 18 k. Dot com and love on the left.com and uh, they could, if they wanna find out a bit bit more about me, my website is Triple W dot that hip no test guy.com.
Fantastic, Richard, finally glad we, uh, got a chance to do this. Yeah, great. I’m glad I could chat with you too, Jason, and correct me. Just on the final closing notes here, the actual definition of the Canadian six. A Canadian sticks pack for, for my American friends is five beers in the six pack because they’re a little bit stronger than the Americans.
Love it. Awesome. I’ll see you. I, I can actually stay at this time. I’ll see you soon. We’ll figure that at some point. Ten four, my friend. All right, see ya. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com. Jason Lenette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, for leaving your feedback over on the Work Smartt Hypnosis page on Facebook, leaving your review over at Work Smart Hypnosis on iTunes.
And also I’d encourage you to head over to. Master hypnotist course.com. This is the master’s level training that I’m gonna be presenting together with Sean Michael Andrews out in Las Vegas in March, 2017. Get all the details [email protected]. We’ll see you there.
