Session #160: Serena Stone on Hypnotic Transformations

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 160. Cerita Stone on hypnotic transformations. 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. Just because something was one way before.

Is no reason. It has to be that way. Now, this is one of those themes that works its way into the process with nearly all of my clients, very early on inside of the process, that a client is often coming in and kind of that stuck state that here they are in that identity as a person still smoking cigarettes.

Here they are. In the identity still kind of trapped inside of a fear or trapped inside of some career that they’re not yet happy with. And to realize that there’s much greater potentials if they make a few significant changes. This is what brings us directly to this phenomenal conversation you’re about to listen to with myself and Serena Stone.

Uh, you’ll hear in our conversation, I first met Serena in attendance at Anthony Galley’s corporate hypnotist Masterclass, and immediately connected in terms of a person. Is moving things in a brand new direction, reaching audiences in a unique way. And as you’re gonna hear in this conversation, has a truly one of a kind perspective in terms of how it is we address change and also take away from this, the dialogue goes into business a whole.

Background from previously a career in military to now working a lot in sales and then taking those same soft skills and bringing that now into a career in speaking and writing in hypnosis. And of course, magic brings its conversation into here as well. Chances are by the time you’re listening to this releasing at around May, 2018, Serena has a book coming out, stuck selling you.

The simple Guide to Self-Promotion, which you can check out the details of that by heading over to serena stone.com details and a whole lot more information over there. I’d also encourage you to head over to just simply work smart hypnosis.com and check out the training page in the top right corner of the page.

Click the training button for all the details and upcoming live courses and online offerings though. With that, let’s jump directly. Into this phenomenal conversation. This is session number 160 Serena Stone on hypnotic transformations.

Hmm. The first thing that got me interested in hypnosis. was, I would say it was in high school. I mean, I had seen some movies that had hypnosis in them. One of them was, um, Black Magic by Orson Wells. I thought it was gonna be a movie about magic, but it was more about, um, using hypnotic. Powers and such.

And then, uh, it was probably 10th or 11th grade one of, um, the fellow students in my class did, uh, talk on hypnosis and to do it, he hypnotized us and or at least gave us a, a visual. I can’t, I can’t think of the word. Um, uh, like an I visualization. No, uh uh, creative visualization. That’s where it’s, Okay. So he is doing a creative visualization, and as we’re going along, he suggested that our fingers would lift up.

And I’m sitting there with my eyes closed, going, This ain’t working. And I opened my eyes and looked at my hand and my finger was up, and I didn’t even know it would be up. And then I looked around the room and everybody else was following along. At that point, I had come out of, Um, hypnosis or whatever you wanna call it.

And I’m looking around going, Holy cow. They’re doing what he’s saying, . And it was pretty fascinating to me. So I started studying hypnosis a little bit. Um, and then I got into it more. And at the time I was also doing magic and, uh, performing close up. I was doing shows and things like that. And I realized that the wording that goes along with hypnosis is wording you can put into the magic to make them feel the, the magic even more.

And as I went along, I learned about conversational hypnosis. So I stick a lot of, um, hypnosis into the, the magic and, um, sales work that I’ve done. I’ve done a lot of sales work for companies. Yeah. And I’m curious, of course, without getting into the secret of how something is done, is there a specific example of.

Pulling in that conversational hypnosis into a magic effect. Uh, uh, one of the magical effects that I have that mixes the magic and the hypnosis together really well is, uh, little routine. I call it chakra lacking. And it starts off with just my hand moving close to their hand, seeing if they can feel the energy.

And I’d say nine times outta 10 people can feel. . And then it goes on to a another thing where we use our auras, the energies that’s around our body to actually move something. Hmm. And then I do what’s called the shock lacking, where. Um, it’s a little magical device that I use. I call it the chakra alignment stick.

It’s a much better name than what the magicians call it, . And, and, um, I use the stick to demonstrate how the energies that I want to have go into them to basically align their chak. Um, happens, and this is where the hypnosis really starts to kick in because now I’m giving them suggestions. Um, and I’ve learned that, um, you can actually use this effect for therapeutic, um, purposes, and it actually works really well because at the end of it, , Uh, what I do is I’m taking the excess chakra alignment energies out of the person, and, you know, whether this is happening or not.

It’s, it doesn’t really matter because it’s just going along the lines of helping the person. So at the end of it, I have them hold their hand up. I have them bring their hand down and there’s. Little thing that I do where there’s a, uh, they have a physical sensation from their hand of a release of energy, and what I tell them is that’s the negativity that’s been holding them back from the goals and things that they want and.

Um, . I’ve had some great results with that. Um, I’ve actually been slapped a couple of times doing it I, and I say, Why did you slap me? And they said, I don’t know. It just felt weird. And then I slapped you . It’s a good, healthy reaction. Yeah. So, and many times I’ve ducked and I’ve missed a slap, but I think it’s just the fact that it’s, uh, something that they don’t expect.

And there’s nothing, um, nothing that’s wrong with what I’m doing. It’s, it’s just a sensation that happens that they don’t expect. And I think the other end of the other end of the spectrum spectrum on that is the fact that they’re feeling that release. So now in their minds they’re going, Oh, okay, well my blocks are gone.

Now I can do what I wanna do, and that’s what I’m going for with. So that, that’s the way that the hypnosis works with the magic really well, though. I love what you, the connection that you already made there, that here’s a moment where somebody is feeling something different and immediately going to the place of how that does have a therapeutic aspect to it, of using that with a, with a change process.

Right. And it’s, I mean, in hypno, when I do hypnosis sessions, a lot of times I’ll talk about, you know, letting. Just let go and this is a physical let go that they feel. So I think it gives what the suggestions that are giving them for healing and um, productivity processes to work better in the mind, to have a better grasp and actually work better.

Yeah. Outstanding. So from that initial experience of. Here was the, the experience, let’s say in the classroom to then going off and wanting to learn more. What were some of your steps in terms of getting this all in motion? Well, let’s see. Uh, I was, I was in the military and I was doing my work for the military, Plus I was doing magic shows.

And when I got out, I started working, um, doing closeup magic at a restaurant right next to a comedy. Sunday nights, the Comedy Club started having, uh, hypnotists there. It was actually Jack Locklin was the first hypnotist that they had there. And, um, he would, he would come over to the, to the restaurant to just relax a little bit before the show and then he’d go over there.

So one time I asked him, I said, You know, I do a comedy magic routine. Can I open for you? And he said, So, uh, started, I started working for him and then he left, and I can’t remember the order, but I know Chuck Milligan, I believe, came in and worked for a while, and then Marshall Silver came in and he worked for a while and there was two other hypnotist I just can’t remember right now.

It was quite a while ago, and I was, it was taking me an hour and a half to set up all my magic. Whatnot before the show. And I would watch the hypnotist walk out, tap the microphone, make sure the chairs were the way they wanted them, and then leave the stage . And I thought, Hm, there’s something to this.

Yeah. The classic, uh, pack, pack light, play big. Right, Exactly. And along those lines, I also realized that with hypnosis, all the magic happens inside of their brain, inside of their. or even their mind, so I could create the illusion that an elephant appeared on stage without even needing an elephant, which there’s an interesting insight to that, which if that was the effect, you’re going forward, hypnosis.

You know, so much of magic in recent years has been, and this is in some way, you know, many people would point to David bla for this, that the turning of the camera on the audience, seeing the reaction. So even for those people out in the audience, they’re observing this magical thing happening in the minds of the participants.

And just that reaction itself is just as magical too. Right? Exactly. And one of the things I learned early on is, um, if you, you’re actually hypnotizing the audience as much as you’re hypnotizing the volunteers on stage. Um, so, so when I was, when I was thinking about starting to get into hypnosis, I was thinking, you know, what happens if someone does something and I don’t know how to handle?

Who do I, how do I find out what to do with this? So I decided to look into going to one of the hypnosis schools. I was in, um, Southern California at the time, and I ended up going to Hypnosis Motivation Institute. And this was, um, back when John Kappas was teaching. So I. to experience classes with him. Um, Florence Henderson was my classmate once in a while.

Awesome. And, uh, sorry about the name dropping. No, go for it. Do that and before people start Googling Mother on the Brady Bunch. Go on. Right, right. And I, I got, I became fascinated. Oh, the one thing I learned was we did the hypnosis 1 0 1. And the 20 years of learning by myself and reading through books did not compare to the hypnosis 1 0 1 that I got from the, from hmi.

And I thought, Yeah, this is helping me a lot already. And I learned how to, you know, deal with a reactions and clients that, um, are unwilling clients. What do you do when you have someone like. . So my getting involved in HMI , um, I did get into doing hypnotherapy before I did that. Somehow I ended up running the telemarketing department for hmi.

Yeah. And I did that, uh, I’d say I did that for about seven, eight months before I headed back home to Wisconsin. So walk us through. I got a chat telemarketing for a while. Uh, so, so wa No, I had a client one time who that’s, that’s what he did for a living. And I, I just going, Well, what’s the mentality? He goes, Well, you know, on some level it is a numbers game at times.

And just so you know, we have a running tally board of what, um, what people say to us, uh, when they’re not happy that we called. So what, what specifically were you doing in inside of telemarketing? Yeah, we called. Um, we would have a, what you just said. We had, we, we would have a Ms. Grumbles session where everybody would just say their.

Phone call of the day, and that, that was fun and it relieved the tension and stress. So you were actually looking forward to your worst phone call of the day. So you’d talk about it at the end. . Okay. . Um, uh, the, the most interesting thing I was doing with this was, and, and I had to ask them, I said, Is it okay that I do this?

And they said, Yeah, yeah, go ahead and. I was hypnotizing people over the phone. Hmm. And, uh, this was back in the day when we had landlines with the, you know, the handset with the curly cord hooked up to the phone. Sure. A lot of people listening won’t even know what I’m talking about, . But, uh, I was on the phone with this gentleman and I said, deep.

and I heard the phone hit the floor and do one of those things where it goes cl, cl, clonk, . It’s like, Oh my goodness. Hello, Hello. And I know either he would come out of it himself if he couldn’t hear me, or he would go to sleep. Um, and just a, a few moments later, he picked up the phone and he said, Oh, sorry about that

I said, No, no, that’s fine. The only thing I never did was, you know, deep sleep and now you will order the course. I never did that . No, and, and if it’s proprietary information, tell me, and we can kind of move from there, but I’m curious in terms of making that initial conversation of calling somebody and now reaching out to them and.

Discussing something that’s brand new to them, which, I mean, that’s part of what our dialogue would be for the people working with individual clients. For the stage hypnotist reaching out and booking a program, what was, What was that pattern? Interrupt? What was that introduction in doing that? Well, you asked me to remember something a long time ago.

Yeah, word for word, and it better be exact here. And how will you know, um, , first off, the, the people that were, that I was contacting had given us their information. Right. And they, they had gotten, they had, these were permission based calls. Yes. Right. It was, it was, uh, AD that was in the papers had learned hypnosis call for free valuation or whatever.

So I was the one that would call. Um, you know, it was a sales position, so I was talking to them about becoming a member of the cla of the course, and it was their, oh, what is it? Their remote class, as opposed to doing it in the, in the classroom. This was like a mail order type. or nowadays email . Yes. I don’t even remember if they had email back then.

my goodness. Yeah. So those years of being the student of it, and then you know, the discovery that I know you still keep up with the magic as well. Where, where did the hypnosis move for you next? Well, I went back home and I opened up an office and I had an office for about three years and I. I was, I was moving to a, a different area of town, so I closed my office down and I, I started getting more involved in magic and sales.

And like I said, what I learned from hypnosis applied to both of those. I mean, uh, I don’t remember where I heard this, but I heard. The difference between hypnosis and sales is spelling

And I think that’s why they have, like with with sale, when you sell something, they have a three day, um, right, to re send the order. Because I, I think that they understand that when you’re doing a sales call, you’re basically hypnotizing the people to get the product. And if you unscrupulously, you know, sell them the product, they have the right to, you know, uh, close out, close the order so they don’t have to pay.

What I love that you just mentioned there is that, you know, the difference might be just the spelling that, uh, I, I speak to hypnotist about how to grow their business and there’s a, it’s a much smaller group than it was about maybe seven, eight years ago. That here is the one that, Oh, no, I’m more interested in helping my clients.

I’m more interested in doing a program that I am running my business. So, and they’re almost positioning that as something being better and yet the discovery that it’s the same conversation whether we. Creating that sale, whether we’re helping someone move towards the more positive outcome, whether it’s personal change or solving some issue by having the show that it’s the same dialogue, isn’t it?

Right. Exactly. It’s, it’s just a matter of knowing what is morally and ethically proper to present to them and. Knowing what their wants and needs are and then helping them fulfill it. Cuz that’s why you’re there either as a hypnotist or as a salesperson. And you mentioned sales a number of times here, so I’m assuming there’s more to that than just the telemarketing job.

Oh yeah. . Yeah. Where else did, where else did that take you inside of sales? Oh my goodness. All over the country. . Um, let’s see. I was selling above ground pools in Southern California. And, um, that was. That was brutal . How so? That, that was, uh, immoral and unethical. Okay. Sales presentations, , and especially with the people I worked for towards US sales people,

Oh, wow. Yeah. So, um, I didn’t do that one for very long. Uh, the longest one I did was I worked for time owner cable and I was. I was one of the top reps for a subcontractor to Time Warner, and I was also the sales trainer. And again, it felt, The interesting thing is I’ve never trained in hypnosis. Yes, but I have trained sales and so much of what I learned in the hypnosis field, in my hypnosis studies, I applied towards teaching people about sales.

So again, there’s that spelling thing, I guess. Right, right. So then what, what would you say would be a direct through line of that? What’s something that you were going through instead of the hypnosis and going, Oh, I’ve already been doing this. I would, if I’m understanding your question right. I would say it was, um, the persuasion factor that was in it from going from, no, we don’t want this to, You know what?

That makes perfect sense. We need. and to do it along the lines where, again, I keep saying this, but I’ll say it again, where it’s ethical and morally proper to do it without, you know, using improper persuasion techniques, I guess would be a way to put it. Sign of the dotted line or else that kind of thing.

Yeah, getting into that calibration to the person in front of you, and if it’s appropriate, moving to the next step, if not finding the polite way to exit. Right. And most of the time when I was doing sales, my, my job was to leave as quick as I could. And, and I, the way I looked at it was, I’m going into their house and I’m going to focus on disqualifying them for my.

And if I couldn’t do that, then it was, then I tried to make it in my mind, in their mind that they were gonna convince me, , that they needed the product. And more often than not, that’s the way it happened. Cuz that’s what I was projecting, which is a beautiful through line. I mean, in terms of working with our clients to, to present every, if we’re working in the one to one for personal change, Looking at it as in here’s the criteria that you’re not going to be successful with.

And looking for those people who are really committed to that change. Ready to put that in motion. Right. And you know, one of the interesting things that I found was, um, using neurolinguistic programming in my sessions. Before I went into the hypnosis. Yes. And it was almost, it wasn’t almost, it many times I did all the change work before I ever hypnotized them.

So it was like the hypnosis was a bonus and a way to integrate what was going on inside of their minds. So I, I think along the lines of hypnosis, also NLP is something that I’ve used a lot in my. , um, sales and management work that I’ve done. Yeah. So you mentioned getting the training, opening up an office, and the initial entry point was the stage hypnosis.

Where, where did that start to appear within your career? Hmm. It was, uh, . So I, I had said that I was in, um, Los Angeles area and I moved back to Wisconsin and I think it. Probably a ye a year or two after I moved back when I did my first hypnosis show. And I, I, I’m gonna take a guess that a lot of people that want to do, um, stage hypnosis work have, uh, reluctance to get on stage.

And it was interesting for me because I’ve been getting on stage, doing comedy. I mean, I was doing shows at. Our comedy store. When I was in LA I was doing my comedy magic show all over the place and then it took me a while before I did the, the hypnosis. I think it’s cuz like, like with hip, you know, with magic you got a prop, you got what you’re gonna do.

You know how the whole. One hour, however long is going to go. Whereas with hypnosis, , you know this Jason, you never know what to expect. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s where, and I came from a background originally in magic too, that you could spend all that time, uh, behind a locked door, standing in front of a mirror, rehearsing it over and over, and you knew that thing worked.

You knew how to do it, yet you can’t really practice the, the stage hypnosis. There’s, there’s a real, you know, walking the plank moment of it to see, well, let’s see where this goes. Right, , how, how, um, how many times have you stood in your room all by yourself and gone and sleep? Yeah, they always go in.

There’s, there’s, there’s, there’s nothing. You know, when you’re in your room by yourself, there’s no reaction. So I, I think that’s part of, um, what goes on with that is it’s in total, it’s total response and reaction of the, uh, volunteers that you’re counting on, rather than the trapped door that drops the girl off the stage and she disappears.

Which is the time, which is a horrible ending for a stage hypnosis show, but really good for magic or not. No, not

No. There’s, there’s that safety net of it where, you know, one of the first programs that I ever did was just kind of, uh, social gathering and. , Um, then girlfriend, now wife. Her response was, um, yeah, that was good. You just need to work on that expression on your face that telegraphs. Holy crap. It’s actually working.

I I remember that my first show exactly what you just said. . Yeah. Yeah. So what is it you did to, and many people are kind of in that startup phase of, where do I get started? What do I do? What, what was it that you did to, to get that first show up in motion? I just went to a bike. . I went to a biker bar and asked them if I could do a show and they said yes,

So that, and that was, that was it. You just, you have to just get the get, get past the nerves that you might have about it and set it in your mind that you’re going to have a show, you know, instead of time limit too. Time limits are great. Yes, for any kind of goal setting, and just go do it. Go. Go, go knock on the door and, and say, Hey, Mr.

Club owner, I’d like to do a hypnosis show. And, uh, the the thing with it is, is just getting out and doing it. And the more you do it, the better you get at what you say. And sometimes it doesn’t even matter what you say. Um, it’s just a real quick example from when I was doing my. . I was training a gentleman and he, we went five days before he ever knocked on a door, and typically I have people knock on the door within their first hour of me training them.

He went five days and I said, Look, there’s no reason for me to do this with you anymore unless you go and knock on that door right now. Mm-hmm. . . So he went up, he knocked on the door and he said everything wrong. Everything was wrong, what he said. And of course the lady said, Sure, I’ll take it . And I went, Okay.

He’s he’s done. He’s done. He’s done. Yeah. That’s totally, that’s totally messed with his head. He’s not gonna stay here. And he didn’t, He was gone like within a day or two. Oh yeah. . that that success, that first, that, that time doing it the first time and having it success like that just kinda messes with people’s.

although, I mean it’s the line that came about. One of the first interviews on the series was, was was Shaun, Michael Andrews, and it’s his quote of, We all wish we could call back our first client and say we got better that to accept. I mean there is some sort of game, there is some sort of numbers aspect to it when we’re just getting started specifically on, on the business side of it, but still along that way.

Finessing, Okay, here’s what I did differently. Here’s how I can do that better. The same way that you know, it’s the stage hypnosis show and suddenly realizing why is it my three volunteers all the way to stage left, Always never go into hypnosis. And then realizing, Oh, here’s what I’m doing. Right, exactly.

And it could just be like a word or a look or whatever. The speaker pointing in the wrong direction was my story. Ahuh. Yeah. They couldn’t hear that that would do it. Which you have to, you have to make those mistakes in order to not make them ever again. Right. And it’s, I don’t know why there’s a, there’s a story going on in my head, right.

Um, that’s not related to to what we’re talking about, but let me just say this real quick. Yeah. When I was training at hmi, I was, uh, I don’t know, this is maybe my 30th, 40th person that I was seeing. And I did, I did the, uh, NLP like I would usually do, and her, she had a fear of elevators. She took the stairs up to the, the second floor where we were, and might have been the third floor.

and I did the session with her and I said, I said, Just go out, go into the elevator, press the button and whatever happens, happens. So she went out and this was, I, I still had maybe 20 minutes left in the session. Cause I figured she would come back and we’d wrap it all up and she didn’t come back. And I thought, Oh.

She just, I guess she just went home, or she just left. She didn’t care. So I, I, I went to the, used the bathroom and as I’m walking along, getting ready to go in the door, the elevator door is open and there she was standing there and she was pressing the button to go back down again. And she looked at me and she went, Oh, I’m sorry.

I haven’t done this in such a long time. I was having so much fun. I’m just going up , going for the joy ride. Right? So, so you never know what you, you never know what to expect until you see the person again, maybe for the next session, or maybe you bump into them later on as to what affects the, the hypnosis had for them, how successful what.

and I mean, that was just a, a really fun way of seeing that when I had done to help the lady actually worked. Yeah, my version of that story was the person that had never comfortably driven on a highway and the phone rings, It’s like 1130 at night and I recognize the number as being the client. I saw that earlier day and and it’s her calling and going, Hey, this is awesome.

I’m driving up and down 2 95 in Maryland. I haven’t done this. This is incredible. I just keep taking the exit and getting back on. This is so easy. Thank you. And I’m having to. Having to match her enthusiasm to go, Hey, that’s fantastic, but are you, do you have the phone to your head? Yes. Okay, good. Cuz that’s illegal in Maryland.

You don’t need a ticket tonight. I’ll see you next. Right. Exactly. . But she was just so excited because of what was going on. It, it’s just so fun to get that, uh, recognition or that feedback that what you’re doing is good in helping people. Yeah. Yeah. So, Tell me a little bit more about the, the work it is that you’re doing these days that I know you’re in residence primarily as magician, though using I’m sure a lot of the hypnosis and NLP in what you do.

Oh my goodness. What I’m doing is so fun, . Um, I am, I call myself the magic mixologist at the Safe House Magic Bar, and it’s the Safe House Magic Bar is one of the longest running. Magic bars in the country, if not the longest, I’m not sure. Um, there, there may be dispute upon that, and I just love working there.

It’s, it’s really fun. I, I’m playing with people’s heads all the time and it’s, it’s really interesting because what I’m doing is I’m mixing hypnosis and NLP and magic. And spy stuff together. So my magic that I’m doing at the bar has to takes all of that and bring and lures them in. Like when people walk by, I say, I say, So are you here for your, are you ready for your.

Um, can’t think of what the word is. . Are you ready for your deception training? And they’ll go, Hmm. And they’ll come over and I’ll show ’em the first magic trick that I usually do. Now there’s a another position that I started working there also, and that is, uh, what we. Money Penny. Now, if you remember the James Bond movies, there’s uh, Miss Money Penny.

You have to get past her to see m Well, when you come into the safe house, you walk down an alley, you see a plaque, a brass plaque on the wall that says international exports. You walk in and there’s four steps up, and there’s a person sitting at one of those old switchboards. You know the ones where you pull the cables out and plug ’em back in.

and you have to know the password. Otherwise you do what we call an interrogation. Mm-hmm. . And in the interrogation, um, I, I say two sentences. That’s basically my introduction and they go along the lines of, um, Since you don’t know the password, there’s another way to gain entry to our restricted warehouse.

And I say that with a wink. Uh, all you have to do is follow my instructions. Enemy agents don’t know how to follow instructions and are eliminated and terminated with extreme prejudice, . So through. So do what I tell you. I’m sick of cleaning up the mess . And that’s basically my introduction or induction I should say.

Yeah. Now, now they do anything I tell ’em to do cuz uh, the motivation is if they don’t follow my instructions, they’re not getting in. And I think that’s a, that’s a pretty good example of hypnosis right there. Well, what’s beautiful about is it’s not necessarily this mindset of, you know, going at it about it by saying, Hey, would you like to see a trick, or, Right, right.

Can I, can I hypnotize you? It’s all in the context of them coming into a place that’s a secret entrance to. Uh, the safe house. Mm-hmm. . Cause we don’t mention safe house in the money painting room. And, and the thing is now, um, if they don’t know the password, and I’m going to do this, what we call the interrogation, um, I’ve come to call the interrogation.

Hypnosis skit training? Yes. , because I take my skits. Uh, they had, they had a list of 50 things they, you know, suggested we do. We can, you know, play off of that as long as we. Keep it cleaner, whatever. And I have people walk around like an elephant swim, swim across the English channel, um, go to Australia, someone took all the comeback out of the boomerangs, we gotta find this, and we’re gonna go all the way across Australia and, and all the way back.

And I have ’em hop across the room like kangaroo. So, um, you know, it’s a lot of fun. And the thing is, is there’s close circuit TVs, so people inside of the safe house are watching . The people do all of the funny things we do. So everything we do has to be visual it in a, in a stage hypnosis show. We do, we do things that are verbal and they can be hilarious.

It’s just that you’re not seeing anything. You have to hear it. And with the tv, there’s no sound. So everything I do has to be visual, and now I can take those concepts and ideas that I’m working on and coming up with and apply them to my show, which I did with the last show that I did. What I love about that is that, again, building, there’s many stage hypnotist who would.

Fold in a lot of extra, let’s call it compliance steps for the sake of compliance. Let me train you to get used to following my instructions. And they, they might be things such as, uh, these two people switch seats. Go ahead and bring your chair a little bit closer. A lot of things that would seem very procedural.

Something that would seem. You know, almost, um, you know, just running people through the motions of something. Yet what I’m hearing from your example, while it’s not necessarily doing something hypnotic necessarily yet, that you’re achieving a hypnotic result without the induction, basically, that it’s the, it’s the character, it’s the interaction that’s doing that.

Right. And, um, one of the things about coming in to the safe house is the, the first thing is you’re walking down an alley. . The second thing is, um, the sign says international exports. I watch . I, I watch many times. There’s like three doors and they’ll try every door cuz it says international exports. It can’t be the safe house.

Right? So, um, so they come in, not when they come in. Okay. They see me and they, um, and. And I and whoever’s doing money, Penny, our first thing we have to say is welcome to international exports. So right there, we’re doing the first thing to you need to do in a hypnotic indu. Uh, the hypnotic process is creating confusion.

And trust me, they’re, they are so confused. They walk in, they’ll say, Is this the safe house ? And I’ll, I’ll shake my head yes. And I say, No, this is international exports. So right there I’m throwing more confusion at them. And then my saying, what I say is just a natural, um, flow to what’s happening for them to get.

which it comes from that confidence that you know, this is going to work. This is the journey we’re about to go on together, which there’s takeaways from that, whether it’s the one to one client, whether it’s doing the stage hypnosis show and walking out and here’s this group of people that you’ve not yet worked with.

Right. And you know, you’re saying that Jason made me think this really helps develop my confidence. In, um, doing the hypnosis with people, because I would say maybe out of 200 people, one person will just go, Yeah, I’m not gonna do this . And I go, Come on, you gotta, you know, grab your gun and assume the, uh, position of a spy holding a gun.

Yeah. I’m not gonna do. All right, fine. , I’ll just let ’em in. But most of the people will play along and have a blast with it. Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned building up the confidence in the hypnosis. Where, where has the, where has the hypnosis taken you? Are you talking about physically or ? Either that or within the career, whatever direction.

I, the open ended question and on purpose. . Okay. Well, you, you and I, um, we, we first met. At the train. Anthony’s training, Anthony Galley’s training. And from Anthony’s training, I am moving in a direction that I’ve been looking to move into and that’s getting more into the corporate, um, corporate speaking, corporate hypnosis shows, things like that.

Uh, I, I guess I’ll bring this up. . I mean, I’m male to female, transgender mo. The bulk of my hypnosis shows I’ve done have been in the male persona, and most of the shows I did, I’d say probably 90% of the shows I did were for corporate. So I have a background of doing corporate hypnosis shows. I’ve done maybe five school shows.

I, I know you had a, a real, um, you, you, what would you say? Cut your teeth on high school shows? Yeah. That was my initial entry point of just going full force after the. After the high school’s market, specifically with the fundraisers and the after proms, and one year doing 250, 300 or so school programs and going, Okay, I did that right now, keeping it a nice, comfortable, maybe three or four dozen a year, which is much more workable and, uh, less miles on the car.

Sure. So, so you went along those lines. What I did was I was into sales, I was into talking to corporate people, so it. Not that difficult for me to switch from selling someone a training program to selling someone. On a hypnosis show for the next, um, meeting or event that they were going to have. So that’s what I started doing and I, and I got a lot of shows under my belt doing that.

And then I decided that I wanted to do the shows the way I wanted to do them. And that was as me, Serena and I, we could get into a long talk about how I changed from one to the other, but. No, a lot of it had to do with my own mental programming and what’s going on inside of my heart and my soul. And the thing about this is that hypnosis never left part of the core.

Of what I wanna do. I mean, I’m still figuring out how to put it all together, but from Anthony’s class, what I’m looking at is getting into the corporate, speaking with my hypnosis, and also helping companies with their different transformational. Um, things that they need to do within their, within their company, because that’s the brand that I’m going with, is that I’m a transformational expert.

Yes. So along that journey, So that re I love that aspect of, you know, stepping into something that felt more right to you, stepping into something that, uh, was a little bit more honest and more true in terms of that, that mental dialogue. How, how is it that you found. You know, doing the hypnosis, doing the presentations has been different for you now by coming at it from a more genuine place, from a more, uh, identity place.

Yeah, it has, it has its pluses and it has its minuses. I, I’m pre, I’m presenting myself as Serena, and I guess I’m having a little difficulty myself accepting the fact that the corporate world will accept me as I. , and that’s kind of, you know, like I’m, I’m, I’m trying to run a race, but I’m dragging a block of cement behind me on a chain.

And I think I just need to snip that idea and go full force, um, know that whatever, you know, whatever I’m doing, I’m gonna have fun with it. And I’m, and, uh, part of my working at the Safe House as Serena. Oh, no, I’m talking about myself in the third, third person, . When, when I’m working, when I’m working at the Safe house, I, I was doing that to find out how the world would accept me in that, in that persona, in that role.

And I understand that people are seeing me as an entertainer when I’m there. and I’m playing around with hypnosis at the, um, at the Magic bar. And like I told you at the as money Penny, I’m also doing, um, what I call the hypnosis skit training. So I’m doing all of this with people and I’m just getting one good reaction from people after another.

I’ve got, I’ve had people, um, give me good comments on Yelp, . Cause at at work I call myself Agent Love. That’s just to remind myself to come from love while , while I’m working. And, uh, like they have reviews and they say Agent love was great. We enjoy. The magic or you know, letting it in or whatever. So, so that’s giving me verification that what I’m doing is taking me on the right path.

and with what I wanna do with the corporate speaking and including the hypnosis, like how Anthony had taught us. I think that’s the next area that I wanna go into. And, um, I’ll go ahead and say this too. The, the areas that I was, that I’m suggested to get into, which is what you might call the low hanging fruit for a person like me is.

um, inclusion and, uh, part of the diversity and inclusion. Yes. And diversity and inclusion is all about transforming from one way that everything’s happening in the office to another way. So a transformational expert is a perfect person to help them with that. What’s really interesting inside of this is to look at it too, from.

We can build that premise in terms of what we do. We can build that premise of this is what I do best. And, you know, to, to over generalize another situation, Here’s the person who’s in my office and they have a fear of public speaking. And to work with them and to find out what they’re looking to do is not something that’s part of their identity, which I’d, I’d go against some of the, like the Myers Briggs testing where it would say, You’re hardwired to be this way, and it doesn’t change when that completely violates the whole principle of personal change, in my opinion.

Yet to have that message of, if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do it my way. And I always come back to the quote, uh, from Steve Martin. I think this is part of the dialogue that you and I had together when I first invited you to come on here. Um, the Steve Martin quote, which was become so good, they can’t ignore.

That there were things that he was doing that weren’t a fit for people in the audience. That yes, he would transition from telling jokes around philosophy to suddenly, um, sticking to, to seemingly through his head. A and there are parts of the audience going, This is just silly. This is ridiculous. Yet the people who got the intention.

The people who saw the message that was underneath it were the ones that stuck with him and became raving fans for all these years. And I was one. Yeah, me too. . There’s an interview I heard recently where, this is my interview, about an interview about an interview, which the dialogue was that Yeah, I stopped touring, uh, because it was lonely and that’s why there’s only three comedy album.

And the response to that is, couldn’t he have brought a friend? We needed more . Yeah, exactly. Though I love the aspect of, again, your personal story into that filter that clearly, you know, stepping in from that role of transformation and embodying that message in a way that’s ex extremely unique to you.

Right. And taking, taking what I’m experiencing in my life and using that as a model to help others. , see that, you know, if you got something you wanna do and it’s really differ from who you are, , you can still make it happen. If you, if that’s what you really wanna do. I mean, I was, I went from, um, super macho guy, 220 pounds, all muscle traveling around the world as an aerial combat motion picture photographer.

to sweeten an adorable seren . So, and, and what was it Anthony had said? Well, that, there you go. There’s your before and after pictures

So, you know, all of the work that we do is transformational work. If I’m working at the bar, the magic bar, I’m trying to transform that whole hum feeling that they have. Into something fantastic and they’re gonna walk away from the bar feeling way better than they did with, uh, with the money Penny. It’s giving them an experience that they’ll talk about.

The rest of their lives because, um, I don’t know. The thing about the the, um, me, the, the Safe House is, it’s a Milwaukee icon and you mentioned the Safe House and anybody in Milwaukee and everybody . Most of the people say, Yeah, I haven’t been there in years, but they have been there and they know what it is.

So it’s one of those iconic things and to give them. The best memory of the place that I can, from their experience with me is like, that’s like my hip, that that’s like the hypnotic, not induction, but the, the hypnotic message that I wanna leave with them or the post-hypnotic. Suggestion is you had such a great time here.

If you don’t come back, you’ll tell your friends, which to bring that even into doing a stage hypnosis show that we’re still part of a community. To even bring that into working with an individual client, you know, representing what we do with passion and being that agent of change for hat person, that these same messages fold from one end to the other.

Yeah, and it’s kind of interesting. The, my, our general manager, he’s agent change

Well, Serena, this has been phenomenal. Where can, where can people find out more about you? Online? I’m at serena stone.com, s e r e n a. And everyone knows how to spell stone Well. Great. This has been outstanding. Thanks so much. Thank you, Jason.

It’s Jason Lyte here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, for downloading it, for sharing it, for subscribing, for relieving you reviews, for basically everything work Smart hypnosis you can possibly do. Once again, check out serena stone.com to see the details on Serena’s book and also while you’re online.

Check out work smart hypnosis.com and on the top right of the page, just click the training button. That’s where you’re gonna see all my upcoming live events and online courses. Look forward to seeing you on the inside. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.