Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.
Uh, it’s, it’s funny, uh, this, I’ll have to take a little bit of a roundabout. So I, I saw my first stage hypnosis show when I was a senior in high school and thought it was cool, not even for like a half second did I ever think I would want to do it. Then I went to college and, uh, the residence hall that I lived in, the hall director would bring in this retired hypnotist once a year and he would do a demo.
In our main lounge and, uh, saw that four years in a row. Mm-hmm. in college. Still never thought like, Hey, maybe I’d like to do that. Like never even crossed my mind. Graduated, taught high school English for three years, Uh, went back to the university, worked in student affairs, running a dorm for five years, and so knew that part of that.
Job was that I would have a responsibility to put on social and educational programming, uh, in my hall. So I tracked down that same retired hypnotist that I saw when I was an undergrad, and I started bringing him into my building. And the third year in a row that I brought him into my hall. I was just talking with him and he was, he, he was telling me this cool story about he had never actually done stage hypnotism as a revenue.
He only did demonstrations to, uh, you know, sort of open people’s eyes to the potential of using it to improve their life. He had had a practice in Rye, New Hampshire for 18 years. So every time he’d come over and do these demos, he’d tell me, um, after the students all left, he’d sit and hang out with me and he’d tell me cool stories, like case studies basically.
So he is telling me this cool case study and when he gets done telling me the story, I. Man. That’s cool. I would like to, That’d be neat. I, I think I’d like to learn how to do that. And I meant like, as a hobby, you know, And right away he goes, I’ll teach you. I think you’d be really good at it. . And, and I was like, and I go, Really?
And he goes, Yeah. He goes, I just have this feeling, Paul, that you’d be really, really good at it. and I said, Well how much would something like that cost? Cuz I, you know, I was smart enough to know that training, you know, costs money. And like Walter Mathew and Grumpy old man, he goes, Ah, horses shit, I’ll just teach you
And, and I was like, Oh, okay. I actually put him off for an entire. And didn’t take advantage of his wonderful offer for an entire year. And then, uh, his name was Bob Chase. And then when Bob came in the next year, my fourth year as a hall director, I said, Hey, does that offer still stand? And he said, Absolutely.
I’ve been waiting for you to get in touch with me. And so I started meeting with him and, uh, you know, he started training me and it just went from there. And I had 160. Co-eds in my building. So once he got me to the point where he was like, Okay, you can start practicing with students. You can’t really do anything with ’em.
Just hypnotize ’em and then take ’em out of state and hypnotize ’em and take ’em out and say, So I threw out an email to my my kids and I was like, Hey, if you wanna know what it’s like to be hypnotized, come on down, hit the couch. And they started coming down. Oh, Paul, I had such a stressful day. Can I do some hypnosis?
And I started doing that with them. And then it was like totally bit by the bug, like once I started actually working with people. and, uh, and so that was it. That was, that was what really did it, was having that real experience with people. Yeah. I love that. Now, let me ask you this, though, from your perspective now, having been at it, uh, for quite some time now, Yeah.
What, what benefit do you think you might have had coming into it by way of witnessing, again, not quite a stage hypnosis show, but kind of more in that category of. The demonstration side of it? Well, I think any time you get to really witness it live and in person, and you get to watch, especially in, in, in any kind of a group setting, usually more than one person gets worked on.
And so when you get to see the variety of ways that people respond in hypnosis, the way their personalities change, all that stuff, You know, even though it’s not clinical mm-hmm. , it gives you this sort of almost like clinical impression though, just to watch, you know, that happen. So I remember, and Bob was great about this, like I said, he didn’t really do shows, he did demos.
And so he did, um, he did age regression with a young woman. Very not like to a, not, not in a clinical way. Yeah. But in like an explorative, experiential way, you know? And so he used to just do this thing where he’d say, he’d do a hand drop and he’d say, I want to drop your hand. Uh, you’re gonna go, you’re gonna immediately see a picture.
Uh, of a memory in your life, a happy, positive picture. And he says it’ll be from around and he’d start with like, um, like 12th grade cuz he knew they were all college students. And then he’d go back by two or three years at a time and he’d work ’em all the way back to like kindergarten. And it was so cool to watch like the real full, you know, true regressions.
Like then this young woman, like her voice changed and she talked like a five year old and she , you know, like, And you sit there and you think, We’re not doing any work. We’re not working on anything. But you still can’t just help but recognize the power of, of what’s happening. It was, it was really a, a big, uh, impressive thing.
There’s something really cool about that, that story there that. You know, we can look at the experience of, okay, now let’s go with a stage hypnosis example. Uh, and this is not to put it down in any way, but you’re on a beach and it’s now getting hot fan yourself. Find a way to cool yourself off. Um, that’s something that people, just to, to use a negative phrase here, people just kind of playing along could produce that similar result, right?
Um, right. But to really bring in that magic of the mind into the experience that there, they were actually. You know, getting that visceral reaction of going back into some sort of experience. Um, Right. It’s where a, as much testing convincing the, you know, the arm lock, eye lock, that sort of thing. I’ll bring into my sessions.
Um, you know, in recent years there’s been some sort of. Positive regression to kind of go in an N LP style, draw out resources, anchor it inside of a first session, which really just simply put negates the need for those convincers because it’s just that, Wow, I haven’t thought of that in so many years.
Wow. Yeah. I really felt that in my body. Yeah. Um, so how has that experience. I mean, to fast forward the story, and we’ll bounce around a little bit here, how, how has that influenced you in terms of the way that you work with people nowadays? Well, I think though the biggest influence from, from Bob being the person who got me started is he was so big at stressing to me that no matter what you do with people, whether you give a demonstration or whether you were to do a stage show, or whether you were to do a, a, a session, that you always.
Give to people somehow. He all, he was stressed it so much. He’s like, You give to people, people come to you. They put their trust in you in no matter which setting it is. And so you make sure you give back. You give them a little bit of happiness, you give them a little more faith and hope you give something.
So, and that really stuck with me. I thought, what a beautiful opportu. To have that every person that you, that you come across, even if it’s on stage. And you know, Jason, I, I, you know, I do about, um, anywhere from 65 to 80 stage shows a year at colleges across the United States. And, and that’s always stuck with me.
And again, if you look at my formal training, I was a teacher and then I was a student affairs professional. I’ve always cared about having some kind of developmental interaction with people. And so that was the, the, the biggest gift of hypnotism for me was when I had that light bulb moment working with Bob, and I started thinking about what I could do with hypnotism.
And I really, you know, I’m a smart guy, but I’m not always, um, smart and so , and so like, there was a moment where I, I don’t know why it took me, you know, anytime at all to think about it, but it took a little while before I had this light bulb moment where I thought you bozo like, You always wanted to be an entertainer since you were a kid, but you’ve also always tried to find ways to interact with people and help them.
And this, this profession lets you do both If you want to, you can spend time on stage having fun and making people laugh and, and brightening their day that way a little bit. Or you can be doing really developmental personal change, work with people and brightening their life that way. and, and so, but it all goes back to, like I was saying, um, Bob really brought that to me early on of saying, no matter what you do, you find a way to, His big thing was, and I still use it, I stole it, shamefully as, you know, as a, as an apprentice to him.
We call that modeling excellence. Modeling excellence. , he, he says, um, He said he, everything he does is you’re beautiful, you’re talented, you’re gifted, you’re beautiful and talented and gifted. And I get emails from people, you know, like I, I worked with a, a nine year old girl once and a month later, her mom sent me an email that said, my daughter still walks around the house some days saying to herself, You’re beautiful, you’re talented, you’re gifted.
Mm-hmm. , you know, and, and, and just to be able to do little things like that for people. I just love it. I feel humbled to be able to do that. Yeah. Outstanding, Outstanding. So then to bounce around, where is it that you spend most of your time working inside of hypnosis these days? Uh, these days, ever since the beginning.
I’m in my 14th year now, and most of my revenue has always been generated by stage hypnotism. Um, I, I work a lot. I have a pretty good presence in the college market. I do a little corporate stuff. I do some high school stuff. Um, and so that’s the lion share of it. But what’s happened is I’m 43 now, and I, and I like to.
Um, think ahead. And I know that, you know, as I get older, I feel like I’ll always connect well with young people to some extent, but I can already see that I don’t connect with them the way that I used to. Uh, , I used to get treated sort of in the beginning. I started when I was 30. Um, I got treated more like a, kind of like a big brother.
And now I get treated more like, you know, your uncle who comes by for a visit. And, uh, and you know, before I know it, I’ll probably be getting treated like somebody’s grandpa for all I know . So, so I, I’m shifting, uh, toward, um, more and more session work and more and more training. Um, I, I, I met, uh, a wonderful woman.
I met Sandra Grace at the, uh, NGH Convention three years ago. Um, and, uh, she’s come and, and is sharing her life with me now. She moved out from the Iowa. She left a very successful hypnotism practice behind. Uh, and so we are, uh, working together now to, for. Uh, a new practice together and, and doing coaching and hypnotism sessions and, and that’s a ton of fun.
I love being able to do that. So we’re working, uh, in a transition toward doing less of the, the stage stuff for me and, and doing more, uh, client work. Yeah. Outstanding. Outstanding. So then let me ask you this, just kind of walk us through that experience. Yeah. Someone’s on stage with you and you, you brought up the story of your mentor and, you know, leave them with something, you know, share something with them.
Uh, what is that experience of someone on stage with you? If there’s a specific takeaway? If there’s a specific story that stands out of, I think, yeah, I, I’ll tell you. So. Um, you know, sort of how I’ve branded myself as a stage hypnotist, Jason is because I’m a former educator. Mm-hmm. , I spend way more energy educating my audience about hypnotism than the average stage hypnotist does.
I only work clean. I never do R rated or X-rated hypnotism shows. Um, and so that’s part of why I’ve built such a strong brand in the college market is people don’t want to be getting called by angry parents. Why was my daughter giving someone a lap dance in this hypnosis show? You know? Um, and I do that not so much as a, as a business strategy, but as just, you know, it’s, it’s more congruent with just how I feel like comfortable about doing the work.
And so I work a lot during my show at hitting them again and again with this idea of. And even being playful at points and, and saying, Forgive my language, but being like, Did you just see that shit that just happened? ? Did you see? You know, like, but then following it up and saying, and so if that can happen, what can you do?
What could you do if you would open up and see how fantastically powerful your mind? Like if we can do this goofy stuff and have you roll in, in the aisles laughing because we’re able to give people full on hallucinations and transform them into characters and do all this stuff. What could you do if you buckled down and got serious about it?
For 10 minutes a day or a one hour session every other week, or, you know, and I hit them with that again and again, and I do, I hit them with the, you, you’re beautiful and talented and gifted. And I give them, um, an opportunity to sign up for, uh, an email list that I have where if they sign up, they get.
Seven free hypnosis audio programs. And, um, like I have all these different ways of just trying to continue to use my platform as an entertainer to promote hypnotism to the broader community. And, and so that even gets woven in, in, in small ways, but consistent ways with how I do my show. And I, I mean, it’s so, like, it’s little things that sometimes I didn’t even plan, like early on.
I, I, I put a lot of thought into how I could create a show that was different from everybody else’s show. How could I really stand out? And one of the first things I thought of was, Stop bringing people up on stage to hypnotize them. Like that’s what everybody else does. And I thought, wouldn’t it be more fun to have people get hypnotized while they’re still sitting in the audience, so that their friends or their family that they came to the show with could watch them go into states sitting right next to them?
Well, I’ve done that now for six years, you know? Um, it’s funny like that produces weird little consequences that you didn’t think about. Like I was at a show in Florida and at the end of the show what I do is I have, I have a couple different endings, but they always re, they always involve forgetting your entire show experience temporarily so that you can have that sort of light dawns on marble head moment somehow and be a real fantastic convincer and.
Uh, be one last cool, funny moment to watch the, the, the moment of awakening really happen for them, where they remember well, I was doing this show in Florida, uh, probably five years ago now, where as soon as I emerged them and they had forgotten their show experience, this one young lady on the stage.
Immediately became stressful and very uncomfortable looking in her body language. And she turned in her chair so that she didn’t have to look at the audience at all. She was looking all the way around behind her. And so I
skipped, I was gonna work the chair line and she was about in the middle of it.
And, um, I worked through the first person and released them back to the audience and they walked down the stairs and they remember, and the crowd laughs and applauds and I did it to the second person. And then I noticed by then, at first it was slow. She was just kind of confused. But by now, I get through the second person, she’s turned and doesn’t wanna look at the audience at all.
So I go right to her and I go, Hey, what are you doing? Why are you, why you turned all funny in your chair? I try to make it kind of funny at first. and she goes, What, what am I doing up here, . And because again, remember they started their night in the audience and, and I said, Well, you were just in the hypnosis show.
Did you have fun? And she goes, No, no, I wouldn’t. I would never. And I go, You would never what? She goes, I would never be up on this stage. I have terrible stage fright and I would never ever do this. Like doors. She was, you know, she was like, I don’t understand why I’m here. I’m so confused right now. And I was like, Darling, you don’t gotta be here.
Like you can get up and go. It’s okay. And, and she stood up and I go, But wait, just one more thing. I said, Before you do, I just want you to think about something. When you walk down those stairs and your foot touches the floor, your whole life is gonna change because you’re gonna realize that you can do things that you thought you couldn’t do.
And you’re never gonna have to be afraid of being on stage again because of what you achieved tonight. I just want you to think about that as you walk down those stairs and she looked at me like I was an idiot. you. And then she turned and she walked down the stairs, and when she hit the bottom of the stairs, you would’ve thought she got struck by lightning the way her body, you know, jerked and the whole audience, there’s 600 kids in the audience.
The whole audience gave her a standing ovation and she turned and she beamed. You know, and again, that was not what I set out to do that night, but to be able to have that opportunity to share that with someone, that’s what I, I really cherish about doing the stage work. I know a lot of practitioners sort of look down their nose at stage, Tism.
But if you really did it like I do it, you, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t look down like that. You’d see that it’s a tremendous opportunity to help people and inspire people, and the game is always to look at these stories, to look at these experiences and try to unpack what was the strategy, what was going on, What was it that allowed that moment that clearly that was not
Oh, that’s the routine I always do after the puppet thing. Yeah. It’s not in that moment. I mean, if it comes down to it, tell me if I’m correct on this, it just really comes from. Something that I’ve felt I’ve also done too, which is just to simply be in the moment with the client. Yeah. That, to not be in that experience of I am the almighty hypnotist.
I’ve commanded these things to happen, and that’s why they are yet to have that moment that we can comment on the, the magical quality of the experience of, Yeah, that doesn’t happen every day, Does. Right, exactly. What do you think about that? What does that feel like to actually step in that moment with them?
And it’s by, it’s where so much of, you know, even the fields of improv, acting, improv comedy, it’s about really training the mind to be in the experience and not necessarily thinking ahead and playing the game of when can I, When can I say my really funny joke, I wrote 10 minutes. I’m just simply, yeah, being in the experience and to bring it back to, uh, to Charles Tats deal with what emerges.
Um, but it’s only by being present in that moment that these types of experiences can actually happen. Yeah, that’s so true, Jason. And you know what, I, I always favor like simple explanations and, and simple models. And for me, the simple answer to that or, or add on to that, I’ve always just viewed what, what I do as a sharing of an experience with people.
Mm-hmm. and that’s why I still, all these years later, people go, Do you get nervous when you go on state? I go, No. Why would I get nervous? I, I just like people and I get to hang out with them. And I, I’ve never, from even the beginning, I’ve never viewed it as I have to step into a role as the hypnotist and go on, you know, like, I’m like, I just go.
And I share what I do with people and I, and I sort of love on ’em the best I can while we’re doing it. And you know, and I do things that, that people say you shouldn’t do. Like, I bust out laughing to the point sometimes that I have, like, I basically throw off the rhythm of the show. I don’t do it a lot, but I do it like when people do stuff that I’m like, I haven’t seen that before.
And that makes me, I laugh. And, and I think, um, that’s part of keeping that connection with people, of being right there with them and. It’s, it’s just such a joy to be able to do that. And so that’s, I’ve never gotten nervous about being on stage. I’ve never gotten scared of working a crowd. Um, and I think that’s part of where you say when you’re, when you approach it that way, you’re there with people and you are, you’re more open to seeing the possibilities.
Yeah, absolutely. So then inside of that experience of now, you know, taking from this career that’s been mostly stage hypnosis and now bringing it into the one on one environment, uh, what is it from the stage work that you feel that’s really prepared you to, to work with people in this respect now? The confidence?
Yeah. There’s, there’s a tremendous level of confidence that you get by doing stage work when you have to be up, you know, if you’re, if you’re in an office setting, , Um, and you’re doing a consult and you try something and, and you, you fail. Like you fail for the one person that’s there. And that’s, and still, you know, you’re like, Oh, that sucks.
You know, like in your head you’re like, Ah, I didn’t want that, but it’s. That’s so much lower risk than being in front of, you know, my biggest audience I’ve ever had is 1600 people and , you know, Double Decker performing Art Center full every seat full. And, and that’s a whole other, you know, when you think I’m gonna try this thing, and, and gosh, what if it doesn’t work?
And you get to a point where you go, If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I move on, I do the next thing and I rock it. And when you get to that point where you really buy into that, Then you bring that back to your client work, and it’s the same exact thing. You go, Well, I’m gonna try this thing with ’em.
And, uh, because I have an instinct that’s the right thing at the time, and if it doesn’t work, then I’m gonna go, Okay, well, well, maybe it was the right instinct, but maybe my implementation was wrong. I’m just gonna learn from it and I’m gonna move forward. So it’s growth mindset versus fixed mindset. You know, fixed mindset.
I am the hypnotist, I have all the answers, and then when something goes wrong, oh my God, I don’t have all the answers. I must not be a good hypnotist versus, You know, I’m learning all the time. I’m growing all the time, uh, and, uh, I just don’t, I don’t worry about. So this mindset of, again, this deal with what emerges, let’s just see where it goes and I’ll figure it out as we go.
Uh, there’s a really cool project you recently did with the gh. Do you wanna chat about that for a bit? Oh, sure. Yeah. Give us like the back story behind that. Yeah. Well, I’ve always, again, it comes back to. I, I love people. Um, I, I, I tend to like people in small doses cuz I am an introvert. I prefer, um, one to one interaction with people or small group interaction with people.
Uh, and so I love talking about the work. I’ve always loved talking with people about the work itself and why do they do the work the way they do it? How do they approach their work the way they do it? And so I, uh, I volunteered, I offered. To the National Guild to do a series of interviews with people who were presenting at the convention.
And um, and, and they said, Well, how many do you think you could do? And I said, Well, I’ll do every single one I can do if we can start. But this was about five months out. And I said, If you let me start now, um, I’ll do every single one I can do. And I ended up doing 106 interview. Uh, with people who are presenting at the convention, and it’s like just the most fun thing in the world to sit with your colleagues and talk about what you and they love to do, even if the exact.
Deployment isn’t the same. Right. Even if, uh, someone’s working on, you know, past life regression and I don’t do past life regression, but I certainly can appreciate that they love doing it for people and they, they value doing it for people and, and, um, Or, you know, any numb, There’s so many, That’s a great thing about the convention, right?
There’s so many different topics. And so to be able to sit and, and, and talk with people about those, and to me it’s always the, the greatest gift for me is that it makes me get fired up again the same way the convention does. And it makes me go, Geez, I gotta get going. I gotta do some stuff and I, cuz I, I get infected
.
How enthusiastic these people are for the work that they do, you know? And so then I, I think like, alright, I need to go take that thing off the back burner that I haven’t been working on for two months and I need to get going on it again. Cuz I want to be more like these colleagues who are just getting so much great stuff done and, and making a great impact on people.
There’s something that I really wanna highlight inside of that, which, you know, here, here I am on a similar note. This is now gonna be session number 133 of the series that I’ve done, and good for you now. Thank you. And, uh, now having been downloaded more than 150,000 times around the world, and to bring the story back though, it’s 2013, 2014 or so when I launched this, and it was really the mechanism of going, Hey, these are just conversations I want to have.
These are people that I want to talk to. It’s where you and I were trading a series of emails this morning and went, Hey, do you have this time free? And we, here we are recording now and this will launch next week. Right? But it’s where for that person, brand new to hypnosis, it kind of goes back to the story of there you were as the person booking the person to come in and do the stage hypnosis demonstration.
That it’s that avoidance of being inside of that bubble, that practicing in that quiet area that. We think we’re all by ourselves and just mm-hmm. , how many people out there are willing to share, are willing to give away the information that some of the most successful people you’d meet in this profession or nearly any other, are the ones who are so willing to just have this type of conversation and to, to share that knowledge.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s the biggest challenge I think about our profess. Um, is this culture of we’re all on an island. Mm-hmm. , and, you know, when I was a teacher, I shared a room with a veteran teacher who, um, sort of mentored me even though he didn’t have to. And when I wor and we had department meetings, you know, and then when I worked at the university, we had a department meeting every single week where the 28 of us that worked in that department sat and talked, you know, had developmental conversations about how to create positive changes with students and support their success.
And then I got into hypnotism after. Years of having those structures in place. And the closest thing you that I got was a GH chapter meeting. And, and that was fine, but it wasn’t quite the same, you know? And, um, I think creating, doing these kinds of things, podcasts, video interviews, whatever, anything t
hat brings people to connect with each other over distance is just so important.
We’ve gotta create more. Community within our profession. We’ve gotta create more sharing And, and like you said, Jay, it’s not that people aren’t willing to, it’s just that I think that they don’t feel like the structures are in place, so they don’t know quite how to do it. Right, Right. So it’s, I, I flash back to the, there’s a podcast that I listen to, the actor comedian, Kevin Pollock, uh, who does his, uh, Kevin Pollock chat show and.
One aspect of it has ever since the first episode, every session has had the theme of, we’re not ready yet. Uh, , as I was listening to one this morning, it’s like they’re still dealing with that humming sound in the background. Oh, okay. Um, but the aspect of if you’re not creating, you’re waiting as he would say that, you know, for all these different opportunities.
It’s where here you were with that idea of going, these are conversations I want to have. These are people I wanna reach out to. And, uh, you’ve got an outstanding award for doing that as well. Yeah. It was very kind of them to recognize that it was a, it was a lot of work, but it was totally worth it. It was totally worth it.
And, and I’m still, you know, I’m still working with people that I had those interviews with. I’m following up months later and, and working on projects that I wouldn’t have gotten an opportunity to work. Because of that. And I think that’s, you know, that’s such a big, that’s a big thing that you, you gotta put yourself out there and you gotta, you gotta ask, you know, you gotta, you gotta ask or invite at least.
And, uh, that’s how you get things to happen. Yeah. So let’s rewind it back and bring it into the present as well. There’s a hypnotic statement, uh, from that mindset. Teaching from the years of teaching. You know, the, the conversations on here have brought up the themes of soft skills, things that we’ve picked up from other places as mm-hmm.
Um, you know, the, the theater career that I used to be a part of, working in administration, the days of, uh, rep Imaginating scripts and having Excel documents for every damn prop that went on and off the stage, , uh, makes it so when it’s time for me to, you know, program an email sequence. Oh yeah. That’s easy.
Yeah. What is it about the background of working as an educator? that you feel really is brought into the skills of the hypnotist that you are today? Oh, it’s been so important for me. I mean, I think the, the biggest thing you see with people who are getting into the profession is the desire to have structures, right, To have and, and what they really want are structured processes.
For how to do what they want to do with people. So the, the, the primary way that people do that is they ask and search for scripts, right? And what I’ve been fortunate to have this formal education, um, for years. What it allows me to do is I think like a teacher, All the time, I think with every client, you know, I think just like I would with a student really is I think what do they need to know and what do they need to know how to do?
So there’s a content element. Um, you know, what information needs to be transmitted to them and added to their personal library of knowledge. And then there’s a skills. Um, process based, uh, way of looking at it. What do I have to help them learn to be able to do? And if I give them the right skill and if I give them the right knowledge, they can put those things together and they can create the change that, that they want to have an experience in their lives.
So for me, everything is about all the time. It’s. It’s learning outcomes, Right? As I always think, like I’m developing curriculums, like you said about theaters. You, you have your own process, and my process is a learning based process. It’s what are the learning outcomes, what are the measurable criteria for how, you know someone has achieved those outcomes?
And then you reverse engineer from, from there backwards to and, Okay, so, So what’s the, how do I. What’s the deliverable? Yeah, absolutely. So starting with that end in mind and how do we craft in that direction? Yeah. Yeah. Outstanding. Outstanding. Uh, Paul, it’s been wonderful having you on here. Where can people find out more about you online?
Oh my goodness. Uh, it’s been wonderful spending this time with you. Thank you for having me. If people want to learn about the entertainment side of my professional life, they can visit paul ramsey.com, P a U l R A. S a y. Uh, if they want to learn about, uh, my personal development side of my business and, and how we’re working to do coaching and, and personal development people, they can visit, uh, www.mythirtydayreboot.com.
And, uh, if they wanna learn about how I train people and, uh, help people get into hypnotism, they can visit www.besthypnosistraining.com now. That’ll do it. Excellent. And it, it’s official that it is the best hypnosis training because you got the website address right? I got the URLs. It must be true, right?
Yeah. Well it’s like Sean Michael Andrews is absolutely the world’s fastest hypnotist cuz he has the. Right. Yeah, that’s exactly, that’s the deciding factor. Um, real quick though, in addition to that, uh, you and I are gonna be together at the, uh, Ultimate Stage Hypnosis Conference happening in January, 2018 out in Vegas.
Uh, and one of the themes that you’re gonna be talking about there is that of innovation. And I know you mentioned some themes in terms of, uh, you know, bringing that, uh, personal development aspect into the program, the aspect of being. In the present, in the experience, really responding to people or even, you know, so much of the effort happening out in the audience.
Uh, what are some of the, the bullet points, as it were, in terms of innovation that stage hypnotist should be looking at? Uh, you sneak that into me on the end and I could go for another hour on that. Uh, , so, So I think the big thing is, um, first of all, having a philosophical approach to your work. I think taking the time to sit down and, and ask yourself, What kind of hypnotist do I want to be?
What, what kind of impact do I want to have on people? And, and how do I again, you know, and then work backwards from that and say, what do, what does one have to know and be able to do in order to be that person on stage? And, and so then, um, once you sort of have that broad landscape of how you wanna operate within the world of stage eism, I think then the, the real innovation part is, um, you know, looking at the reality.
That the, the stateism landscape is a pretty flat one. And, um, you know, there’s a lot of people out there that are doing the same routines that have been happening since the vaudeville days. And really thinking about like, where can you inject? Something new and different into the art form and, and how do you do that?
And brainstorming, you know, and trying to come up with things that feel like they’re accessible and real, and, and possible for you, you know, and, and really looking at like, how can you create. Something that’s innovative because you know, that’s, you know, my show, I created the first truly interactive stage hypnotism show.
People for years have said, Well, the cool thing about stage hypnosis is that it’s interactive. Why? Because for, you know, two seconds at the beginning of the show, someone chooses to leave the audience and go up on stage. You know, once, once. Moment is done and they’re up on stage, there’s no more interaction.
The audience sits there and laughs and the people on stage sit there and do all the heavy lifting, you know, like . So, So I really worked at like, what if you were gonna create an interactive show for real? And so I designed a show where the audience continues to have a say in the development of the show for the entire.
Rest of the show after we get the hypnotized subjects up on stage. Um, can you give us an example of, uh, how you do that? Yeah, So, so what I do is I use technology. I use modern technology. We have a, um, my whole show runs off of a MacBook Pro, uh, with a third party, uh, software that’s polling software. It’s commonly used by colleges and universities.
And what we do is once we get the hypnotized subjects up on stage, we distribute. Remote controls to the people that are still in the audience. And, uh, the, the venue always has to provide a projector and a screen, and we put choices up on stage. What would you rather see? Um, a, a pirate, a wrestler or a drill Sergeant , you know, and the audience votes for the one they want, and that’s the one that I give is so that they get what they want.
It comes right down to you. Uh, now I’ve got three separate shows. I’ve got a pop culture themed show. I’ve got a throwback show where I, I went back and I, um, researched all the music and TV and movie characters that were popular when today’s college students were between seven and 14 years of age. And so it’s all, you know, it’s a nostalgia show basically for them.
And I’ve got a superhero versus super villains themed show. And at the beginning, the audience actually gets to vote on which show they want to have, and then I load that show as fast as I can, and then they get to vote on all of the bits that occur throughout the course of the show. On top of it. So they feel like they have not just a say, they are the, say, they determine the entire flow, uh, and, and entertainment content of that show.
And so, um, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a big departure from what most people do, and it’s been very, very good for me. And, um, you know, there’s, there’s things like that that can be done. You can look and say, listen, there’s always, there’s always some part of, of a stateism show that’s gonna honor, you know, the people who came before us.
There’s always gonna be some element where you do what’s been done for a hundred years. But that doesn’t mean you have to have your whole show be what’s been done for a hundred years. You can find a way to, you know, evolve it a little bit and, and show ’em something a little different. Um, but you gotta put in some time and some energy and some forethought in order to do.
Fantastic.
