Session #222: Roberta Fernandez on Hypnotic Emotional Resolution

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 222, Roberta Fernandez on Hypnotic emotional resolution. 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. Break out the party hats.

The Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast is now officially five years old. Episode number one launched back on June 25th, 2014. That was the original session on the all positive pre-talk. And here we are now with more than 400,000 downloads all around the world. More than 200 episodes and downloads in more than 80 countries.

However, we are saving. Official celebration of the five year anniversary of the series for next week as episode number 223 launches on the 4th of July Independence Day here in the United States, and it seemed like that was a more pressing and sort of meaningful timeframe to do the official celebration episode.

So standby for next week. For the official party hats. So party hats standing by and speaking of party hats, there’s a transition. I’m very happy to invite Roberta Fernandez onto the program. I’ve known of Roberta’s work for a number of years now. An incredible work in book that she wrote specifically on the opioid crisis and how it is that we can support, and a couple of weeks.

For those that follow my social media streams. Uh, I was invited to be a guest speaker at Ron Ling’s Advanced Pain Management Course, and Roberta and I got to reconnect there at that event, spend some time together, catch up, and uh, there came the official invite to be here on this program. And you’re gonna hear an amazing dialogue from someone who is, I like to say is truly a hypnotic worker.

Someone who not only is out there teaching hypnosis, and you’re gonna hear some incredible insights. About how we as the practitioners, we as the instructors, can really become the ones to facilitate this ongoing renaissance of our profession, but also this mindset of someone who’s truly there to use the phrase playfully, truly there in the trenches doing the work and learning along the way.

So places where the education perhaps may have stalled because it was this more sort of rigorous. This is the one true model of change versus the greater flexibility and truly being client centered. And these are words that we often toss around as practitioners, but you’re gonna pick up some really cool insights from the way that Roberta talks about how it is we become chameleons with our clients, how it is we listen for what they’re going through, and specifically talking about the category.

Pain management, pain relief, categories of work that quite honestly, I find a lot of practitioners are kind of cautious about working with, and I love that she hits this one critical point that from, let’s call it a technical perspective, not everybody can be the person who can go through the entire full blown surgery with zero medications.

I’m of the belief system that may be perhaps with conditioning they can get there. But then again, that’s not the goal of most of our clients who would be coming in for pain relief. So to even look at this sort. absolute mindset that I think a lot of hypnotists are kind of being held back by that I find greater success with my client coming in who is trying to lose weight by embracing the fact that they’re gonna have these indulgences from time to time.

You know, the majority of clients coming to change their behaviors around alcohol. Not all of them are coming in with the goal of completely quitting it. The majority I find are coming. The, Yeah, I do this. I want to do it less and I want to have better control over it. And just so to fully embrace this mindset, well, I could do that, but now I don’t have to.

And just this, this flexible nature that Roberta and I talk about in this conversation and some really cool insights and a. Perfectly time name drop of Al Gore, by the way, which is, uh, one of my favorite highlights, of this conversation, but leveraging the careers, the skills of corporate consulting, environmental sustainability, and specifically emotional intelligence, and how that pivoted directly into this outstanding career as a hypnotist known around the world.

And someone who, if you haven’t done. With her and studied with her. Definitely someone to go off and learn from directly. You can find out more on her website. We’ll link to this in the show notes [email protected]. But the website, Fair Hypnosis, F A R E, which is she wonderfully. Critically shares is an acronym.

Check out the website. To learn more, and while you’re online too, check out hypnotic business systems.com. There’s no need to have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to growing your successful hypnosis business. Whether your goal is seeing clients, whether you’re a stage hypnotist, looking at building those loyal fans rather than the flash in the pan event.

Or if you really want to take your business into the 21st century by launching digital courses and online products. Hypnotic business systems is the all access pass to what I’ve done to build three separate six figure hypnosis businesses. You’re able to get access as low as $57, or simply choose the all access pass to get everything all at once.

Get all the details and join today over at Hypnotic Business Systems. Dot com. And with that, let’s jump directly into this content packed session. This is session number 222 Roberta Fernandez on hypnotic emotional resolution.

Well before I was a hypnotist, cuz I truly had no plans on being a hypnotist, not on my radar. I was a corporate consultant and I was doing a lot of training and consulting in the areas of organizational change and emotion, emotional intelligence, and also sustainability. From a, a well rounded perspective within a company, I found hypnosis just because I went to a retreat where the guy who gave the presentation used hypnosis, and I had never seen it before.

Honestly freaked me out. , it did. I was like, What the hell was that? This is weird. I wanna do this the rest of my life. I know and well, so I wanted to take more training from him, but he had a. A a wait list that was a mile long. And so I thought, well, you know what? Maybe if I know how to do hypnosis, that might be get me an edge to get in his class.

So I came back to Minnesota and I found an instructor. Had no plans. I was the only one in the class that didn’t wanna be a hypnotist. I just wanted to know how to do that thing. And I was the only one in the class that. With a practice. So go figure, right . I know. Yeah, it was, but it changed my life. So I’m kind of this person that says, You gotta prove it to me.

And at the time I had really bad knee pain and the I, I told the instructor so, Prove it to me that this works. Mm-hmm. . So we had a couple sessions. I didn’t have any anymore pain and I was like off and running. Nice. Yeah. Nice. So I want to dip back into that previous career because these are words that are often thrown around and it’s where a lot of us working with business clients that pops up when you say, Corporate consulting?

Like what specifically? When you talk about like sustainability mm-hmm. , like what was the shape of that? Well, I originally started looking at it from the environmental perspective cuz it was an area of interest. Um, but I was in Florida at the time and it was like a very, they didn’t care about, they don’t care about the environment there, , they don’t, I mean, their whole tourism depends on it, but they don’t really care.

Oh, okay. So it wasn’t a great market. I ended up getting a client in Minnesota, but in the meantime, I was exposed to a lot of other things during that time period and worked with a guy out of Switzerland, excuse me, Sweden, by the name of Alan Atkinson, who had this great platform for working with businesses and helping them be more sustainable, not just environmentally, but economically and socially, and.

You know, the whole deal. And so I was kind of the US liaison here and I started doing training out of St. Paul in Minnesota and I ended up training for companies like Kemps and Pan Air and Chase, uh, what’s called something else at the time, but, um, some really big companies. And it kind of morphed into this idea of organizational change because what I realized was that.

You couldn’t change a company unless the people within it changed. Yeah. And so that idea of emotional intelligence, it just kind of all blended into this process that I ended up developing. And so when I became a hypnotist, people thought, Wow, that’s a big change. And I’m thinking, no, it’s not because I’m just changing people with a different tool.

you know, it’s just a use of a different tool. So I, I really think that what I did in the corporate sector is really the same thing. It’s just one on one. Right? Yeah. And that, that category of emotional intelligence. I tend to find really is that category that there’s a bunch of different strategies and principles that are inside of that.

From, from your side of things, how would you have defined that emotional intelligence work? Well, part of it, it was about relationships. So you know, you know, technically being emotional intelligence is getting in touch with yourself so that you can understand how other people are feeling and perceiving things and which to put that in a similar context, the way that most.

Basic practitioner in LP courses are basically how to run the process on yourself. And in some schools have thought, then the master has had to run it on others. Right. And when you look at, when you look at hypnosis or you look at therapy, I mean, why do people do it? Because we’re all working on ourselves, right?

And, and so what I found was in the corporate sector, you know, there’s a real disconnect there because you have such a hierarchy with management levels and they’re really out of touch with what the people. Them or above them or whatever are, it didn’t matter which direction you went with. You know, how they, how they felt and how they were viewed.

And so that part of change was about, uh, looking at the individuals involved in change and where they were coming from so that there could be a better understanding. And so it’s the same thing that we’re doing with our clients. to me it’s like no difference. I’m just using a trance state to work at a deeper level.

Yeah. Yeah. So was there a specific turning point for you where this officially became what you wanted to do? Oh, yeah. , So I was practicing for about, I guess about a year, maybe a year and a half, and I ended up having to have my knees replaced. They were just shot. And so, because I was doing a lot of training, I had a big contract with Kemps and I, I was training all of their managers over a two year period.

And so I, I had to do this in between these scheduled trainings, and I also had a really big client there, a. A big accounting firm called fl, and I was teaching them my processes and helping them kind of drive it through their organization. And so I, I was kind of finishing up with them and I decided to have both my knees replaced at the same time, which is a big deal.

Mm-hmm. and I just used self hypnosis, didn’t have to have a transfusion, which is very common because it’s a bloody surgery and I didn’t take any pain meds. That sentence could be taken so many different ways. I know. Sorry, . Sorry about that. But it, but it, but it. It was astounding to me. And I remember my first day of rehab I’m, Cause I had to stay in this facility.

I had a lot of stairs at my house, so I couldn’t go home right away. And so I’m in this facility, I’m looking at all these people there and you know, a lot of them were a lot older than I was. And they were afraid and insecure and they had pain. They weren’t sleeping, they didn’t have any confidence, they were lonely.

And I’m thinking, Oh my God, I. I have to do this. So I took the next, uh, couldn’t drive for six weeks, and so I made a promise that I would, I would find an office during my recovery the day I could drive, I’d sign a lease, and I closed up my consultancy, finished up with all my clients, and I started a practice and I’ve never looked.

Yeah, I love that turning point where we kind of reach that point where it just kind of clicks to go, I gotta do this. And especially, you know, to hear that story where I, I share a quick anecdote here and a woman that I worked with that I’ll shorten the version of it, but she basically comes in and goes, My husband and I, we just got married and her phrasing was, Really clever about this.

She goes, Biologically, it’s both of our fault that we can’t have our own children. So we’re in the process of adopting, we’re building our dream home right now. We’re running this great business. So basically breast cancer’s the last thing I need right now. Uh, and she goes, Here’s everything that the, Yeah, here’s everything the doctors are doing to support me.

Here’s the treatments, here’s the medications. And I firmly believe they can help me. They’re confident about it, but I don’t want this to become my identity. Yeah, help me with that. And that’s what the work was on. So there you were going through that process, not taking on that identity and correct me here, you were noticing people who were kind of taking on that experience as being a big part of who they were and recognizing as the great philosopher Ron Pope would say, There’s gotta be a better way.

Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting, um, you know, again, we, we all learn to be reflective. I think hopefully doing this business and , hopefully, and, you know, I had done that with several issues in my life. It was who I was and it was in my hypnosis class that I discovered that about myself. And so it was this combination of saying, Yes, I can help other people and I’m the first one I have to help, right?

Mm-hmm. change the way I think, and so, I started specializing in pain management. Obviously that was, uh, area of interest to me. You know, not everybody can do that kind of thing and take no pain meds, but I was very bought into the process and a lot of confidence and I practiced a lot and I thought, you know, everybody can do something, some piece of this, right?

They can be better, they can take less drugs. And at the time the opioid issue was just kind of, Starting to make news and I started paying attention to that and I wrote a book about it. Uh, it was, it’s been a great marketing tool for me to insert myself into the medical community, so to speak, and it’s given me a lot of credibility.

And it, and it’s written for really the simple folks, but also for medical practitioners. So it, it’s just kind of this crossover book that really helped propel me. And I bugged the, the, um, Star Tribune here in the Twin Cities, which is the big newspaper for like nine months to run an article on, because then opioids started becoming really big, but there were no solutions.

It was always about the problem, the problem, the problem, right. And so when the. Finally decided to say, Okay, I’ll do something on hypnosis. Uh, I was thinking, Oh, it’s about time. And he said, But you know, it is that, you know, I just worry. It’s that mind control stuff, . And I, I, I laughed just like you, and I said, You know what?

If this was really true, you would’ve written this article nine months ago. So, you know, it’s, it is just funny how things come around. But yeah, so that became a really. Big area of interest and you know, I’ve used my business influence and the things that I learned. I mean, this is my sixth business. I’ve been an entrepreneur since my twenties.

I haven’t worked for anybody for a very long time, and I, everything that I’ve gathered from those experiences, I’ve kind of brought into this hypnosis. So I’m kind of an eclectic hypnotist with how I look at not only how I do my practice, but how I train my students. Yeah. And I want to go into that concept of you brought up something beautiful with pain relief.

Mm-hmm. that it’s that yes, not everybody can go through the process, you know, doing a full blown surgery without any form of medications. Right. And I think a lot of people are scared of working with pain relief clients because that’s what they expect it’s supposed to be. And you know, it’s where I would hold onto the belief system that.

Language we want to use. You know, someone would say it’s the virtuo. So someone would say it’s the natural ulus, whatever terminology. There is a specific part of the population that just has that, let’s call it as a skill, right? And I think a person through conditioning and practice can do that, but that’s not always the goal.

And I love what you said about, you know, they can make use of some piece of this. Well, you know though, it’s not always the patient’s goal either. So here’s a, here’s a really interesting thing that I find when I work with paying clients. I’ll ask them. So you know, on a scale of one to 10, where one is your most comfortable and 10 is your most discomfort, where are you on an average day?

And they’ll say something like six or seven or whatever. And then I’ll say, So where would you need to be for this to change your life? Where and where do you wanna be? And you would think they would say, Oh, well, zero. I have never had anyone say that. Mm-hmm. . And maybe it’s because they don’t believe they can get there, but.

I don’t think that, I think it’s because they ju if they could feel just incrementally better, you know, maybe, And most of them will say, Oh, a two or three, which is still pretty decent when you think about it, but it’s not like they’re greedy, you know? And so for other hypnotists, I wouldn’t be worried about that because I have to say, I have never, literally never had a pain client that I did not.

Now, some of them I thought could do better. Mm-hmm. , but they didn’t apply themselves. Right? They don’t do the work, but everybody gets some relief. And for, you know, the majority of people, that’s really all they’re looking for. So, and to look at pain, there’s, I mean, there’s so many moving pieces of that. If there’s, if there’s smoking, if there’s weight to be lost, if they’re stress, the quality of sleep.

And as soon as you get that momentum in one of these parts of life, Now it starts to dominate these other aspects where now they’re moving better. They’re feeling better, they’re operating. Absolutely. Well, you know, with a pain client, the secret for me is I and I, I, I was called out at a conference when I was teaching this one day that I was cruel , and I just kind of laughed and I’m like, Okay, whatever.

You can have that opinion. You’re welcome to it and keep it and just be stuck where you are. But how do you really feel? Yeah, really . So, you know, I, I, I use a volume knob, so when they’re in hyp. And they’re just feeling great because that’s essential with a pain client. You need to have them feel amazing in that first session.

Yeah, because they haven’t felt amazing in a long time. And so, and I’m talking chronic pain, so I have them imagine a volume knob, like they’re sitting in their car and they’re looking at the radio and I ask them to turn that up to as close as a 10 as they can get it. And as soon as they get there to let me know and we’re gonna turn it back down.

Now the. I, I make sure that at that point the client’s very comfortable and they all do it. And then as soon as they get there, they’ll raise their finger. They’ll say, I’m there. I’ll say, Okay, really quick. And I’ll count back from 10 to one really fast. Mm-hmm. and down to a zero and it’s gone. Or it’s very low and that is the best conven.

Ever that a client is in control of how they feel and when a pain, a chronic pain client recognizes that, Oh, it changes everything for them. You’re, you’re right about . I’d phrase it this way for the people who are concerned about that strategy. This is gonna sound like the worst thing I can possibly say, which is that there, there’s actually two demos I have online of me working with pain relief clients.

And for both of them, they both said as soon as I did that, I don’t want to do that. Oh yeah. And it wasn’t, uh, the sake of being, uh, you know, no longer client centered. It was at that point I realized, Oh, we got this. Yes. Right. Because as soon as they buy into the premise that they don’t want it to get worse and they see that they can change it, and the metaphor of a ceiling fan or a light, if you can turn something up, you can turn it down, which that immediate woosh back down, that happens after that.

That’s just one of those strategies that as soon as that’s in there, it really gets, the change in motion changes the entire perception of that discomfort. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so working with pain clients taught me, I think, uh, it was, it was one of my first like aha moments as a hypnotist that you need a lot of tools in your tool kit.

And so I learned to use a lot of different techniques, whether they were ericsonian or they were, you know, storytelling or imagery or direct suggestion or nlp. And also, um, looking at the emotion that goes with chronic pain, cuz there’s always emotion. Mm-hmm. . And you have to get to that what’s in it for them.

And so, I had to develop a whole suite of tools in order to really effectively work with pain clients. And I think that’s one of the things that if you’re really effective at doing that, you need to do. And I think it is what differentiates me from a lot of other hypnotists, because I’m not in a particular camp.

Yeah. You know, when you go to some conventions, there’s the regressionist, the nlp, the Ericsonian people, and to me it’s like, why wouldn’t you wanna know how to do all of that? Right. And why wouldn’t you, you. All of that with your client if they needed it. So, I mean, obviously the more we do things, the better we get at them.

And I have things that are, are greater strengths than others I’m sure. But probably in a session I use a little bit of all of that in any given session with a client. I mean, it’s that flexibility. Yes. That, you know, and people come in and I think the biggest discovery is my, my sort of mission statement I think for this year is that so many people say, Oh, the client writes the script for you.

But then they run the same process they normally would. Exactly. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Right? Where it’s kind of the, it’s the popular thing to say, but I’m not seeing enough people actually living out that mindset. But when you have that greater flexibility when you to use Scott LAN’s line, when you learn from people who disagree with each other, you know, you find that place that.

here comes the client and they express what their issue is, and you realize they’re speaking in the metaphor of a specific technique that you already know. Right? And now you get to modify it exactly for them. Is there a story that stands out of working with a client where you kind of found yourself working in a more flexible nature and maybe digging deeper into that toolbox of things you normally wouldn’t pull?

Oh yeah. Okay. So it’s not a paying client, but last year, at the end of the school year, I had a student come in from a local high school and her goal was to improve her a C T scores. And so, you know, typically I’ll do like four one hour sessions and it’s a lot of metaphor, direct suggestion and LP techniques, you know, like the circle of excellence or whatever.

I use the breath to calm them. And so we have a first session everyth. Good Second session, she comes in and we’re sitting at the desk having our little pre hypnosis consult. You know, How was your week? And she mentioned something about a concussion. And this had not come up yet, and I’m thinking this is important, but you know, teenagers, right?

And so I started questioning her a little bit more about, well, when was this? And you know, what, what came of it? Do you have any issues from that? Because you can obviously No, no, But you know, the doctor said, it just, it really bothers me. She says that I can’t remember what happened that. And I thought, Okay, so much for today’s plan out the window, we’re going for some regression work.

And so took her back to the day that this happened. And you know, who knows if it’s true or not, doesn’t matter. She totally recalled everything nice. And the big aha for her was that the doctors. In the, the implied. Now how they said it, I don’t know, but in her mind they said she would never remember that and that would could be a problem for her.

So basically her insight was, there’s nothing wrong with my memory. And when she emerged, it was just, she was crying. She was so happy. And so I didn’t plan on doing that with that client, . And so she took her a c t, She text me. When she got her score, it went up 11 points. Nice. Which is huge on an a c T.

It’s huge. And so, you know that’s, that’s when you have to look at your client. You have to listen to your. every time they come in and say, Okay, this was my plan A, but we’re switching gears here. Mm-hmm. , because this has changed. And that to me is truly being client centered. Yeah. And that flexibility and just to listen and realize sometimes it is the game of this is what they need today.

Correct. Yeah. And that can change. I mean, you know, I’ve had clients that come in the door and they’ve just had a terrible day. They didn’t sleep the night before. They’re exhausted and it’s like, you know, maybe we shouldn’t even do this session or we’re gonna do this session in the chair at the desk, not in the comfy chair.

Cause I don’t want you going sleep. Right. So, you know, it, it’s, you just have to go with what the client needs at that moment. I think that’s important. I mean, it’s important that we’re always in control of our sessions. I don’t mean you’re letting your. Dictate that for you. But if you don’t have, I think, a variety of tools and expertise with those tools in your own toolbox, then you’re not gonna be that adaptable to your.

Though there is that aspect of setting the appropriate frame, setting the foundation of where you’re about to go. And I know part of what you do is the e r w, the emotional resolution work, Right? Which there’s an aspect of education that kind of kicks that off, right? Yeah. And so I do an advanced class for hypnotist in addition to an advanced pain class, but it it, I call it emotion resolution work because it’s very all encompassing and quite honestly.

Um, when I do, it involves regression work. It involves forgiveness work, it involves, um, future pacing work. And, and again, because from the corporate sector, I did a lot of systems thinking. So, so it was always looking at where, where do we intervene in that system and, and to make a positive change. But what will be the unexpected consequences as well?

Mm-hmm. . And so sometimes with clients you can have those unexpected consequences. So for example, um, this was not my client, uh, one of my employees here, the hypnotist that works here, Linda, she had a client who was a, uh, high school student, uh, senior. And she was thumb suck. And so she came in for thumb sucking, and Linda did a great job with her, resolved that issue.

She was here all summer. It just stopped. Well, when she went away to college her first year, she called Linda and said, You know, I’m coming home for the weekend. Is there any way I can see you? I’m having sleeping problems. , Well, everything was fine in her own environment, but when she got to the dorm with three other roommates, she started waking herself up every couple hours to make sure that her thumb wasn’t in her mouth,

And so, you know, even though we had resolution of it now, her situation changed. Her parameters changed, and the fear was different. Right? So we had a client that came in a, a child for sleep. And he was, This was an unexpected consequence given to him by a doctor. He was a bed wetter, and so the doctor solution was to set the alarm every two hours and wake him up so he could go to the bathroom.

Well, that cured the bedwetting, obviously. Mm-hmm. . However, it created a huge sleep issue. So as part of our E R W process, we had to come up with a really cool thing, we call it the future self technique, where we asked, in essence, the subconscious mind to look for those potential problems. Putting the client somewhere in their future and talking, you know, doing that kind of parts thing, talking to that future self about how things have worked out for you, because here’s what I believe and what I know, and I think it’s what makes me successful.

I trust the subconscious mind. It knows what the problem is and it knows how to fix it. And if there is something that is an unexpected consequence, as is the result of the work that we might do with our clients or how they might interpret it in a later situation, subconscious mind’s gonna know that.

and so this e r W work is, it’s very fluid, it’s very flexible. It involves a lot of techniques that are out there. It’s kind of a conglomeration of them. Mm-hmm. , but also how to incorporate into that NLP and storytelling and metaphor. I mean, some of these things, I was not very good at this when I started.

This did not come naturally to me. I had to learn it and once I saw the value of it, it, it really. shifted my career. So in any given session, I’m using all those things. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, again, back to that flexible nature. Yeah. That, you know, to find ourselves in that situation where we can use whatever is appropriate for that moment and that there is a statement that, you know, frameworks equal freedom.

That when we have at least a framework to branch off of something to, you know, break away from now we are doing so on purpose rather than while the paper says I should be here on session. Right. Yeah. And you know, and so here’s, here’s how I kind of look at this. So, you know, I mean, we all know who the big players are in the various fields in this industry.

We’re not that big. Right? And one of the things that I see, and, and maybe it’s just from being an entrepreneur for so very long and having to. All the hats when you, you know, when you run a small business, you wear all the hats, right? So you learn to view things from a lot of perspectives. People who say that NLP is the only way, or regression is the only way, or, and Ericsonian technique is the only way, whatever it is, they’re really missing out.

And they, I, I think when you get to that point that you feel like you’ve learned it all and you are the best at it, and this is the only way. Wow. That’s when you should retire . Seriously. No, I’ve, I’ve really mean that. I really mean that. No, it is where we, we sometimes start to even know some of the bigger names in the profession because of the things they teach when.

Right. So the wonders of time travel two weeks from the release of this podcast I’ve already recorded it is Roy Hunter. Mm-hmm. , and you know, and he classically will always tell his students that I only use regression with maybe a third of my clients as much as he’s known for parts therapy. And look forward to this conversation on July 11th when that comes out.

Only using parts with like a quarter of those clients that you know to look. Here’s what the person is known for, To instead be known for getting the results, be known for running the great business. Be known for helping people. Yeah. And, and you know, my motto is when you stop learning, you start dying.

Yeah. And I really do believe that. And, and you see it all the time in any profession, not just our profession. You, you can readily see. People that feel like they’ve, they know it all. They’ve done it all. They are the end all, be all. And they start really, their, their effectiveness is diminished because of that attitude.

So I’m always open to, to learning something new. I think it’s fine. It it, it may not be like right at the top of my toolkit, but you know, you never know when that client is gonna walk in the door and you say, Oh my gosh, I’m pulling this out today. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Although I wanna ask you a question, which is that there’s a category that’s often put down and diminished of just simply direct suggestion hypnosis.

Yes. What do you think it is that needs to be done properly with direct suggestion hypnosis to make it the most effective? Well, you know. Okay. So it goes back to the person in your chair, . Yeah. I am a very direct person. You might get that impression from this podcast, . Um, so I have a tendency to just say, And you will do this

Mm-hmm. , whatever it is. And for a large majority of clients, I mean, think about it, they’re coming in the door. Everybody wants advice and I don’t give advice, but they. What they’re doing isn’t working, so please tell me what to do. And so a lot of people are open to that very straightforward suggestion.

However, there are clients that are very, they need to be mothered, right? And so I’m saying perhaps you’ll discover, or I wonder if, and then I give them the suggestion, , right? So it’s really. To me, there’s not a lot of difference in it. The one thing I have to say that I don’t do, because I don’t do it well and I don’t like it, it was done to me by my instructor in my sessions, and honestly, it just ticked me off.

It worked , so I can’t complain about it. I can’t complain about too much, but the confusion techniques. Some of them that are out there, a, they boggle my mind cuz I am much more of a straightforward person. That’s kind of the point. I know, I know. I get that. I’m just not really good at it. And so all of that being said, what you’ve heard, heard me say is that if there is something that you don’t excel in either pull out a script and do it from that.

Like an Academy Award-winning actor. Mind you. Yes. Um, not just reading it. Oh, nice reframe . Uh, yeah. But, but you know, it’s like, I’m not necessarily a very good joke teller either. So when I give a talk, I do a lot of public speaking. I don’t start with a joke because it’s gonna fall flat. It’s just not who I am.

Right. So we have to keep it in context too. So, you know, I, I wanna set some parameters for maybe an individual who, who doesn’t feel confident in something yet. Of course, the way we get confident is by practicing. So, you know, bring out your kids teddy bear and practice with them before you tried on a client.

Um, my daughter’s teddy bear has not smoked in years. It’s going, see, There you go, . Yeah. You know, I used to do, I used to do some training, Oh, this is years ago for Al Gore. And it was this, his climate change thing. And it was long, It was like, you know, an hour and a half. And he asked me one day how I learned it so fast, and I said, I practice on my dogs.

And he said, Really? I said, Yeah, I got three dogs. One of ’em is big and old, and the other one is, you know, really passive and just compliant. And the other one’s a young puppy and is just all over the place. So I said, it’s like the perfect audience. Because I get to practice this thing on all kinds of different people and see what the reaction is, right?

So yeah, practice. Practice is good. It’s good. And gonna have to resist sidebar our entire conversation with all the political stories of doing event management back in the day. But , I wanna ask you something that you dropped as a reference earlier, and I love this when the statement pops up that it’s a hypnotist who’s on staff at my office.

Yeah. Tell me more about making that decision to. You know, expand the business to expand it out, to have other people working for you and. Okay. Uh, thank you. So I had a, just a little one room private practice for a couple years before that, I was working outta my house or going to people. That did not work for me at all,

But when I made the decision to do this as a and, and cuz I didn’t know if you could make a living at it truly. I mean, it’s like this is so amazing. Why aren’t more people doing it? And so I, as an entrepreneur, I had to really look at that. And so I had my one room office for about a year and I thought, you know what?

There’s not enough of us in the Twin Cities. I mean, Midwest are very late adopters, and this is not necessarily a great place to be a hypnotist, I gotta tell you. Cause they are, they’re you. Passive aggressive people and not very accepting of strangers in their community, even though they seem very friendly.

Yes, sorry to all the Minnesotans out there, but you know, I’m, What I’m saying is the truth. , so I wanted to raise the level of professionalism around hypnosis, and so I searched for like eight months to find this space. It’s a little bigger than what I’d like. We have four offices here for hypnotist. I only hire.

People that I’ve trained, cuz it is the Center’s reputation. You know, Originally I thought, well, I’ll just bring another hypnotist and lease my offices. I didn’t want them under my umbrella. I was building a brand. Yes. And so I got my CI through the guild, trained with someone else for a little while and that didn’t work out well for me.

So, you know, I’m, I have a big training center here, a beautiful room, and I, I rent it out. I do a lot of different stuff in there. So we have this beautiful center and. I made the decision, even though it’s more expensive for me as the owner of the business to employ people rather than have them as subcontractors.

Yes. Because then I have control over quality and that was really important to me. So yeah, I have a big center here with four offices and it’s about 2,700 square feet. And I have to say when people walk in here, they are, Oh my God. Mm-hmm. , you know, I mean this is not what they’re, I don’t know if they’re expecting incense and candles or love beads in the door.

I don’t know. But you know. But they are . Yeah. That some of them are. And so, you know, I had a lady in here yesterday, she’s one of the leads for the Minnesota Holistic Nursing Association, and I’ve been invited next year to be there. Primary trainer for their big event and when, and so I wanted to invite her here.

I didn’t wanna meet her for coffee somewhere. And when she walked in, she was just, I mean, she was literally walking in circles. Mm-hmm. going, Oh my God, look at this place. And so it just set a different tone. And even though she had a high image of me, cuz I had done a 20 minute presentation for them last year, it changed everything about her perspective.

Of not just me, but hypnosis. Uh, that’s a big thing and I mean, that’s part of what motivated my decision to buy the office that I’m now in. And, uh, for those that haven’t seen what Roberta’s talking about, if you go to your website, Fair Hypnosis, F a r e hypnosis.com, you can see some of the images and a bit of a tour of the office that Yeah.

When you first walk in big professional reception area, then in back into the actual office suites and such. But there’s something to be said about that, that environment of success. That there is my, my opposite version of that was back when I was active in a BNI group, we had a life coach who was a member of the group and we kind of really well defined what role I filled and what role she filled.

And here’s the day that she came to the office for one of the standard, you know, one to one meetings like you would do in a networking group. And as she walks in, her jaw drops and. I’ll censor the language, but it was like, Oh, you’re actually legit at this. Right. You’re not, Some wannabe like me trying to pretend I’ve got a big Oh, wow.

No, no, no. I’m gonna ask you all the questions today. We’re not having a conversation. . Right. Which, which does help. Which is not to say we have to have that. No, but it, it does validate as soon as they’re in the space. Oh, this is the place where this happens. Well, here, here we’re in the perception business, right?

Yes. We’re in the, we’re in the business of changing people’s perception. And so like, you know, I knew, I mean, I still, that I’m in three years in this office and in my third year, about three and a half years here of this center, and I don’t have one, I’ve never used one of the offices. Yet it’s fully furnished.

Mm-hmm. , Now I use it, I do use it for students because it gives them a real practice environment, right? Yes. They have a desk, they can sit out doing interviews and practice. They have a chair, a hypnosis chair. So it’s real life practice, which is great. And with four offices. So, you know, we, we can. That’s really nice, but I haven’t, I don’t have a hypnotist in there is my point.

And people said, Well, why did you spend all the money doing the office furniture and decorating it and stuff? And I’m thinking, because it’s about expectation on my part. Number one, if I just leave that door closed and don’t furnish it, how soon do you think it’s gonna get filled? Right. Right. So it’s about perception.

It’s about, about that room in my new office that’s still all boxes, . Yeah. Well, you know, I mean there’s, there’s those areas here too. They did, but you know, you understand what I’m saying? Yes, it is about, it is about that expectation and that image. And you know, when people come in, they’re like, Oh, you have four hypnotists here.

No, I don’t. We have two and a half. You know, and you know, but I’m looking still for that person and honestly the practice isn’t there yet. I don’t have enough volume to fully full-time employee a another person, but it’s coming. Right, right. And so I, you know, I think when we’re structuring our own practice, it’s important for us to really look.

What am, what is my expectation for this? And to set those stretch goals and then start visualizing them, cuz that’s the way it works. Yeah. And I mean, to, to work from that mindset that we can outgrow something as well, right? That, you know, this is what it is right now, but I’m gonna use this space in a different way.

The same as, as much as I do online. The one goal that I had in addition to sort of maintaining the same size space I had before was having one room specifically dedicated for a product. . Yeah. So that’s where the computer is, that’s where, and that’s the room you actually see when you first walk in, which that’s a huge expectation bump as well.

But it’s to, to, to build something that also now supports the local community. If we’re looking at building that local based business. Yep. Because again, there’s that, the more we’re all successful, the more we’re all successful mindset. So I’d ask you the question that having been in this work for a while now, and even leveraging from the, the corporate work, the environmental work you did before, To, to play that, Oh, let’s go this direction, to play that informed child mindset.

Yeah. Yeah. What, what would be that mindset you wished you had when you first got started? What was that sort of, uh, if, if there was a bigger lesson that came later in the career that if you had or had it in place earlier on. Would’ve maybe made things bigger, launched things more easily, or whatever that definition may be.

Well, I don’t know that I can give a definition, but I can tell you my experience. I love my trainer. He’s a very, really good hypnotist and a nice man, but he wasn’t a very good trainer. And I realized when I opened my office, I did not have the skills that I needed and I didn’t have all the education I needed, and so I went around to lots of programs and people and spent thousands of dollars and lots of hours.

Some of them were great and some of them were. Pure garbage. And I didn’t know, I mean, you don’t know what you don’t know, right? Yeah. When you come into this business, and so when I put my coursework together, I, I have created the course I wish I would’ve had beautiful as a new hypnotist. And so, you know, I guess that’s what I would do differently if I would’ve known that I had to do it differently, right?

So what I’m trying to do is to prevent that for other hypnotists. I share a. They get all my stuff. I know. You know, some people would say, Well, that’s not a very good business model. It’s great business model. But here, here is the goal. Here is the goal. I believe that our profession is at this place that is.

Could be make or break. And what I mean by that is that we have to choose to go in the right direction to raise the standards, to raise the educational level, yes, to raise the image of what we do. And so I want to graduate students that are really confident and confident in their work that I am proud to say yes.

I train them. And I think that’s really important for all the trainers out there to look at it because I see all kind, I mean, I get people wanting to take some of my advanced classes and I won’t take them in the course because they don’t have enough of the basic knowledge. And I’ll say, Look, I’ll give you a, You can take my my 1.0 course, my basic course for half price, and if you do that, then I’ll let you in the advanced class.

You don’t know everything you’re supposed to know. And there’s a lot of, I had a woman in, she, I know she was here really to interview for a job, but she was coming in to pick my brain, you know, maybe to be, for me to be a mentor for her. She had taken a nine month online course somewhere in Arizona. This woman, she’d never hypnotized anybody.

She had no confidence. She didn’t know if what she was doing was right. I mean, she had book knowledge. I looked at her and I thought, There’s no way hell I would even think of hiring you. And isn’t that a shame? . So I think as instructors, because I’ll speak with that hat on right now, we have an opportunity to really affect the quality and the growth of this profession, and I, I hope that there are enough people out there that are serious about doing that in the right.

I love that, and though there’s value. I, I nickname it as, you know, the reference of the age of reason there. There’s value in having gone through something that you can now look back at and say, Well, it could have done this instead. It would’ve been better if I learned this. I look at some of the training that I had and went, Yes, these are outstanding courses, but my biggest need when I first launched Virginia Hypnosis was.

I’ve got this pary of strategies. How do you put it all together? Right? And I forget if I’ve ever told the story on the podcast and uh, let me apologize in advance and the obvious reason will come outta the story. . When I first got interested in stage hypnosis, someone gave me an incredible gift, which was rather inappropriate, but it turned out to be a spindle of illegally burned stage hypnosis shows.

So not, Not the trainings, Right, Right. But instead, you know, and people sell the DVDs at the shows and somehow he had a bunch of copies of him. But the gift was to say, I’m not going to tell you which ones are good or which ones are bad. Figure it out for yourself. Yep. And needless to say, learned a lot of cool stuff from the really good shows and learned even more from, from ones where I’m watching going, you know, there’s an audience there.

Yeah. Oh, you really are doing an Elman. Uh, lose the numbers with all 18 volunteers down the row. One after the other. 20 minutes later. , . And their audience. Yeah. So it’s that benefit that, you know, as trainers we sometimes do have to present another way of working so they can appreciate how this is what they’re learning is actually something that’s setting them ahead of the game, helping them to really get out there and serve that public.

And really it helps to build up their confidence too, while you’re at it. Well it does. And you know, as a trainer, I, I want to keep them from making basic mistakes. Right. You know, you wanna give them so that they don’t have to go through what you did, obviously. However, every client and seven years into this business, I totally believe it.

I have a 15 year old kid right now that’s teaching me so much . Every client comes to you with an opportunity to learn something from them. And to apply it in various situations. And so that experience is invaluable and that is something you can’t get from a book. But there is that line when it comes to instructors of are you really giving?

The best you have to offer. Nice. And, and I think that’s just, it’s just really, I think it’s about integrity. Yeah. And it’s also where we find ourselves at an amazing sort of renaissance of how we’re learning hypnosis, how we’re communicating with each other. Which on that theme, uh, where can people find out more about you online?

They can go to fair, f a r e. That’s an acronym by the way. You can read all about it there. Fair hypnosis.com can reach me there at [email protected]. It’s pretty simple and there’s all kinds of information there. And I blog every week that’s there. I do a Friday photo, which is kind of inspirational.

I’m an amateur photographer and so it’s always pictures from around the world and feel free to be inspired and. Please don’t copy directly, but get inspiration from my site because I think it’s decent and um, that’s really good. It can help people raise their game. Yeah, absolutely. And any, any final words to share before we wrap it up?

No. I just wanna thank you Jason. I’m so excited to be on this podcast and I wanna thank you for the amazing work that you’re doing for our profession. I sit back from afar and admire your work and in. On the automation side, aspire to be like you, . This actually wasn’t me. This was someone in the Philippines doing the interview for me.

So , I want that Philippine connection. Jason , thank you so much. I appreciate it. And you know, I, everybody out there, uh, if you have any questions, feel free to email me. I, I believe every time I share, I get. Twice as much back. So happy to communicate with anybody.

Jason Lynette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for leaving your reviews online, sharing this on your social media streams. And once again, check out the show [email protected] to learn more about Roberta’s work and also check out hypnotic business systems. Dot com. It’s a place where you can actually get some done for you marketing campaigns to shortcut that learning curve of growing your own successful hypnosis business.

And as we like to say, to get out there as soon as you can, help a bunch of people. And yes, indeed, make it rain. I’m Jason Lynette. See it next week, 4th of July, episode number 223 Coming Your Way for the official five year celebration of the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast. Thanks everybody for listening. See you soon.

Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.