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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 253. Zach Penson on how to get 100 million views in one month. 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. Okay, just, wow.
I got a chance to meet Zach, who’s the guest on the program this week on the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast. Zach and I first connected, I think it was early in September, which I was already starting to see some, uh, buzz about this guy online that suddenly here was this video, which we’re gonna link to it over in the show [email protected].
Here is this video of this guy doing basically street hypnosis, demonstration hypnosis on a beach, and just this interaction, and suddenly seeing all these at the time, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, and then eventually millions of views. And suddenly, as the social media cycle goes, Even my phone started ringing.
So this becomes a bit of a similar story. If you rewind back a couple of years back, we had Chris Jones on the podcast. Chris is the hypnotist who shook hands with Howie Mandel on America’s Got Talent. Where here came this viral moment where people started the notice hypnosis and whatever you thought of it, suddenly we all started to benefit.
So it kind of falls into that category that all media. Is media. I’m not even gonna put the word bad or good on that. Just all media is media that people were calling me and saying, Hey, I saw this video, can you help me with fill in the blank? And this became this whole sort of momentum. And I’m starting to see this guy pop up.
He’s speaking at other conferences, there’s stage hypnosis show clips, and suddenly I see these uh, posts that he’s hanging out in Washington, dc which is kind of my backyard, or at least 20 minutes north of where my office and my home are. So it became, Hey, let’s get together and have exotic burgers, Thunder Burger, Washington, DC.
You gotta go and just getting a chance to sit down and chat and setting the goal to eventually record. And well, here we are. And what I really wanna highlight here, and I may have given a hint at the preamble to this in the episode with Amy Charlow a couple of weeks ago. I know that a lot of you out there identify primarily as the hypnotist, the hypnotherapist, and perhaps the stage stuff.
The comedy work isn’t quite your goal. You need to listen to this episode. And I do make it a point as Zach and I engage in this sort of instant fame, as it were career, that he’s been able to not. You know, necessarily just luckily fall into, but he’s gonna tell you the step by step nature of exactly what he’s done, the willingness to fail, to learn, and really put himself out there and just, you know, play the game of going, Let me just do what I’m passionate about and see what happens.
So, and we wait about 20 minutes into the chat for me finally to call out The fact that as of the time of this recording, just at 24 years old, having accomplished a lot more than many in this industry, often will do. And the classic phrase, the times they are changing. So you’re gonna hear some dialogue around how to harness social media and specifically the story.
As he reveals it, and we recorded this just as a heads up, we do a bit of batch production in this Work Smart Hypnosis series. So we actually recorded this back in the day on December 10th, 2019. It’s launching on January 30th, 2020. So Zach and I kind of had a chat after this recording about how, well he’s talking about what the numbers were at the time when we recorded.
Yet this is launching about a month and 20 days later, and some of these are gonna be much further along at that point. So this ability to reach out to other networks, this ability just to put yourself out there and make use of whatever built in audiences that you’ve got. And a nice plug back to the first episode I did with Michael Desalt, basically saying that again.
You know, if you’re in your office, you’re not working. So this willingness to get out there and share what you do, I share personally the, the mission statement behind Virginia Hypnosis when I first launched it, and you see this sort of digital media empire, it’s now eventually morphed into, was that I’m gonna get out into the community and I’m gonna talk about what I’m passionate about.
And by accident that’s gonna bring me a lot of clients. And that’s exactly what it’s done over the last nearly dozen or so years that I’ve been doing all things involving hypnosis. Even before launching Virginia Hypnosis. So take note of this conversation, we go for a good hour and there’s some amazing nuances towards just this willingness to jump in, to challenge the model of how we all do it and how we all feel comfortable doing some of the same things day in, day out, and just this willingness to put that energy out there and see what people respond to.
And again, just change the game in a very rapid amount of time. So get inspired by this one, especially with this title of, Basically put How to get 100 million Views. In one month, which, for what it’s worth, and we don’t necessarily need to link to it in the show notes cuz that’s not the game of thinking that, oh, someone took my bit.
Cuz many people have done something similar. But it’s a bit of a playfulness On Facebook Messenger, after we chatted, Zach talks about doing a routine with bodybuilders, which I looked at his, and there’s tens of thousands if not more of, you know, views on that. And I found a video clip of me back in like January, 2017, I think it was somewhere around that, maybe June.
And doing a rather, not exact, but similar routine again going on about three years ago at this point. And just for the playful nature of going, Hey look, I did something similar back when I was focusing on, you know, on that stuff. But at the same time, at least the time of this recording, 880 views. Well, Zach’s the a hundred million view guy, so, um, listen to him on that one.
So just some amazing nuances to look at how we can interact with the world around us through social media, how we can really increase the reach of what we do. And again, just the genuine passion to really get a message out there and help to influence this great work that it is that we all do. So we’ll link on the show [email protected].
Zack followed the similar track that I did with having a name that most people, um, don’t spell right the first time, but Zack Pinsen, p i n. C I N C E on all the different social media platforms, whether it’s YouTube, Facebook, tos, and all the others. Just type in his name. That’ll take you there. We’ll link to everything in the show [email protected].
We’ll put up this now classic beach time video. And while you’re there too, check out hypnotic workers.com. Again, all about reinventing the wheel. This is where you can get the full access pass to my hypnosis training library. And we’re not just talking about inductions and techniques for change. The real highlight, the real meat of hypnotic workers is that they were real client sessions genuinely from walking in the door to walking out the door, the entire intake process, so you can model exactly how the process was built, how it was customized to the individual, and every word of it has been trans.
We don’t need any more scripts as hypnotists, we need transcripts. Model what works and see the actual systems of taking all the stuff you know how to do and learn new ways of putting it all together and customizing on the fly. That’s what hypnotic workers is all about. Plus, on top of that, it’s a thriving online community with practitioners, hundreds of them around the world interacting and supporting you along your way.
So check that out. Get the all access pass now [email protected]. And with that, here we go. Episode number 253, Zach Penson on how to get 100 million views in one month. So for me, I got into it initially doing magic cuz a lot of stage hypnotists tend to do. And I taught myself magic and card tricks and slight of hand after my sophomore year of college just for fun.
Cause I thought it would be cool and why not? And so taught myself magic. Initially just learned on YouTube, just learning basic card tricks. Cut chuff. I couldn’t even shuffle deck of cards when I started. So it was just completely ground zero. Just why not? This’ll be fun. And so after I did magic for a few months, I just continued to do it more and more and loved performing and entertaining and seeing the reactions at doing the simple card trick would elicit from somebody.
And so I started taking it more seriously where I would get into more the professional books and DVDs and resources. And after about a year or so, I was enjoying entertaining enough. I thought, You know what? Why not just experiment in other types of entertainment initially just because I thought it would make me a better magician, the more types of entertainment I could d my diversify myself in.
And so that’s when I started doing comedy a little bit, did some standup comedy, Open Lake Nights, joined an improv comedy troop on campus and just continued to learn more types of entertainment. And it was what, halfway through my first semester of my senior year. So second to last semester of college, I decided, you know, why not learn?
Hypnosis stage, hypnosis. I’ve done magic, I’ve done comedy. My first experience or exposure to hypnosis in general was seeing Paul Ramsey do a show my freshman year at New Hampshire. Nice. And for me at the time, I had no inkling that I had ever be learning it. No desire to learn it, but I just thought it was like the coolest thing ever.
I was like, this is amazing. How is this either possible? This is so cool. I said, Anytime there’s a hip theist, I’m always going. And so I went to every show that Paul did or any other hip theist did at my school. Um, but as a senior, I was like, you know, I’ve been learning magic. I’ve been doing comedy. I’ve always side hypnosis was the coolest thing.
Why not try to learn hypnosis? And the confidence of having learned magic from scratch and nothing going from, can’t even shuffle a deck of cards to now pretty proficient, magician and performer thought, you know, I’m gonna do this. So I decided to pick up a DVD on hypnosis. I picked up Anthony Jack’s manuring approach, which was a great started resource for me because that DVD specifically looks at sort of the integration of magic and hypnosis and how you can kind of combine the two.
So coming from the magic background, it was really great. So I got the DVD and I told myself, I’m going to watch this dvd. I’m gonna finish it by the end of the week. It was a five hour dvd. So I said, I just have to watch an hour a day. I can do that. And I said, I’m gonna finish this by the end of the week, but I am going to hypnotize somebody by the end of the week.
Mm-hmm. , I did not know how effective the DVD was gonna be. I still didn’t even know whether hypnosis was real, whether it even worked or anything. But I said, You know what? I’m gonna watch this and I’m gonna hit to test somebody. So I did finish a DVD by Friday, and that Friday I was already going out with another friend of mine who’s another magician on campus, and we’re going out doing some card tricks in the student union building.
So I said, All right, this is perfect. I’ll go out, I’ll do some card tricks and then I’ll tell people, Hey, I’ve been learning hypnosis. Can I hypnotize you? Do you wanna be hypnotized? And so that’s exactly what I did. I go up to a group of students and I do a card trick and then say, Hey, I’ve been doing hypnosis.
Do you wanna be hypnotized? And did it. And the first time nothing happened, didn’t work at all. I think I was doing just like super basic suggestibility tests, even at that point. And even those weren’t even going right. The magnetic fingers, It works for everybody. Still wasn’t even working for me since I’ve watched a dvd and then I just tried it and then nothing’s happening.
And so I was like, Oh, that’s alright. I’ll just do it the next person. And did it with the next group. Still nothing really happened and didn’t really work. And part of me is thinking like, was this dvd? Is Sham? Is Ifn is not really even real. Like why? Well, I’ll just keep trying. And a few more times nothing happened.
Nothing worked. And the friend that I was with was, you know, being politely encouraging of like, Hey, you wanna stick with magic? Stick with what you know you’re good at. Are you sure you wanna keep. Failing at this. I said, No. I told myself that I’m gonna hepatitis somebody by the end of the week and it’s Friday, so I’m gonna keep doing this until I hepatitis somebody.
Mm-hmm. . And so it was probably like the fifth or sixth person or group we did at that point. I finally got a few things to work to an extent, right? The induction worked okay. I got somebody to be stuck to their chair and they forgot their name temporarily. And so it was very minimal. But for me, as a brand new, just cracked open a DVD and deciding to learn hypnosis.
To me that was a win and that was a success I was looking for of like, Yes, I ized somebody. Yes, I did it. Oh, I have the gist. And so use that as sort of the check the box. I did it. And from there, just continuing to learn more. I was still in college, was still doing magic, was still doing comedy. It was my senior year taking senior classes, was involved in like eight student organizations on campus, was a resident assistant as well.
And so I had a pretty busy semester, but in the midst of it, just still learning where I could here and there. And as you know, with hypnosis, the challenge of practicing it is that you really can’t practice it. The only way to practice it is to do it versus like as a magician where I could, you know, pull out a deck of cards and practice a trick in my room for an hour or two before I felt comfortable performing it.
The only way to practice hypnosis is just to have people and to just do it. Mm-hmm. . So I would take opportunities that I could to practice here and there, whether I was a retreat and mention it to some friends or do it at back at home with one of my siblings or whatever it is. And so I’d done it just a handful of times.
Over the next few months had still been learning more, so was still watching some DVDs, reading some more books, immersing myself in the material, just taking those small opportunities where I could to practice here and there. And about three months after I had watched that first dvd, I was, it was January at that point, so getting ready to head into my last.
I was at a leadership retreat the week before going back to school, and I would tell students, say, Hey, I do magic. I do hypnosis kind of hobbies of mine. It’s, it’s a lot of fun. It’s pretty cool. And of course people are like, No way. That’s so awesome. That’s so cool. Like, you gotta show us, you gotta do some stuff.
They’ll be so cool to see. And so I did some card tricks for people, easily, people like, Dude, you gotta do the hypnosis. You know hypnosis, That’s amazing. You gotta hypnotize us . So I said, Oh, okay. All right. And after enough people were asking me and saying, You gotta do hypnosis. I said, All right, I’ll do a show at the end of one of the nights this week.
And I had never done a full show before. I didn’t tell them I had never done a full show before. But as I had been reading and learning, I had started to create the idea of, hey, if I ever at data stage show, this is what it might look like. This is some of the routines I might try, this is how I might do the induction.
And just sort of formulating the idea in my mind, and as they asked, Oh, we gotta see some hypnosis. I thought this is a perfect opportunity to put to the test. Again, I don’t know if it’s gonna work. I don’t know how well it’s gonna go, but. Why not? And so I said, All right, I’m gonna do a show at the end of the night.
Fred wants to come check it out. And literally the entire retreat showed up for it. , all 60 students that were there were like, Yeah, that was the show. Let’s go. And it was like probably 10 30 at night or something at the end of the day. Said, All right, well let’s do this. And long story shorted ended up going super well.
I did a full 80 minute stage hypnosis show, had eight super deeply hypnotized volunteers and it was super entertaining, super hilarious. They all loved it and everybody was giving me such good feedback afterwards of, Oh my goodness, that was amazing. That was incredible. That was like better than paid hypnotist.
I’ve seen. That was so good. That was so funny. That was amazing. People that were hypnotized were like, Oh, you were hypnotized by you was deeper than I was hypnotized before, and that was awesome. It was such a good experience. And for me that was giving me all this confidence of like, man, if I could do a really good show like that after three months, how good could I get if I decided to take it seriously?
Nice. And so yeah, was going into my last semester of college anyways, and I was a communication major. Liberal arts didn’t have a direct trajectory after I graduated anyways. And you know, I had dabbled a little bit in thinking, Oh, maybe I’ll be a professional magician when I graduate. But I had never really taken it seriously enough to be like, Oh yeah, I’ll be a professional magician and how am I gonna make that happen or do that.
But doing that hypnosis show is like, look, if I can already do a show that people were telling me they’d pay to go see after just three months, you know, maybe there is something to the hypnosis thing where if I do decide to take it seriously, I could make this a thing. Yeah. And I enjoyed it enough and having enough fun with it that why not?
And so going into my last semester, I decided I was gonna be heist professionally when I graduated, but I didn’t know how to do it professionally. So I’m learning hypnosis, but how do I like make this a career? So literally what I did is I straight up cold emailed hypnotists that I had seen perform live before and heard of, just sent a few different emails to some hypnotists saying, Hey, my name’s Act Vincents and I’m a senior at University of New Hampshire.
I’m going wanna be a professional hypnotist when I graduate. Here’s what I’ve done so far. Here’s what of read so far. What advice do you have? What recommendations you have? What should I read? Just the whole, you know, word vomit of like anything you have for it would be helpful. Like, how do I do this? And one of the people that I emailed was Paul Ramsey being the pist that I had seen perform as a freshman year.
He’d performed at my school every year. As an alumni of UN n h as well. Every year that I was there and he emailed me back the next day was like, Hey, look, sounds like you’re doing great work so far. He’s like, What you need at this point is a mentor, someone to really train you and they’ve help you to get where you are as fast as possible.
He said, I’ve actually a stage hypnosis training program starting up next week, and if you want to join my training, then I’d be happy to mentor you and help you achieve this goal that you have. And for me that was such a cool opportunity of like, man, this hypnotist that I thought was like the coolest person ever seeing the show as a freshman.
As a freshman is now gonna train me and mentor me and I get to work with him. This guy that I thought was like the coolest celebrity that now could train me. And then I had this opportunity to do it and I told him, No thanks . Because it was like, this is so cool, this would be great. But I don’t know if the timing’s right.
Yeah. And that’s, it’s my last semester and like I said, is involved in so many things at school already and I had a lot on my plate and I knew if I wanted to take hypnosis seriously, I wanted to be able to really give it the time that it needed to take it seriously already having so much going on at school.
So I was like, Oh, I don’t, like, I would love to do this, but I don’t know if the time’s right, like maybe we’ll wait till the summer and after I graduate, or different time where I can give it more time than it deserves. And Paul was like, Look, this is the trading that I do once a year. So he said, If you didn’t do it this year, you could always do it next year, but then you’re waiting a whole year to do it.
He said, You know, the timing actually works out kind of well, where if you do it over the semester, yes, you’ll be busy during the semester, but. Then you’ll graduate and you’ll finish the course, finish the training by the end of the semester and be ready to just jump right in as soon as you graduate.
It’s so, you know. Yeah. So let’s do it. And so I made the commitment to jump in and train with Paul over the course of my last semester, which is really awesome experience. Um, I’m sure many people in the hypnosis community know Paul and what he done, but great guy. If you don’t, he’s, he’s awesome. Awesome.
Great guy. Even beyond just his skills as a hypnotist, he’s a really great person in general. And would you wanna rewind back for a second, if you don’t mind to go back to, Cause I love the track of, you know, the stereotype of the communications, liberal arts major is, I have no idea what I want to do, but at least I’m learning valuable skills,
Exactly. Yeah. And one of my favorite things about the communication major was that I could take whatever classes I wanted in the communication field. I just needed 10 to graduate so I could take the things that interested me. Public speaking, like collaborative leadership, like argumentation or digital media studies or whatever it was, could take the skills that I wanted and graduate, Yeah, with a general degree, but with the skills that could apply to all sorts of different fields.
Mm-hmm. there. There’s also looking at that moment of looking at the hypnosis, and not that it has to be a comparison or even a, you know, contrasting of things. What would you say about the hypnosis stood out to you differently than the previous magic and the even comedy? So to me, one of the things I really enjoyed, so as a magician, I mean, magic is really the art of deception, right?
It’s your art of misdirection. It’s sort of, as a magician, you become a professional liar. Not to knock the magicians out there. I mean, it’s not an easy field and it requires so much technical skill to learn these light of hand in these moves. But for me as a magician, I actually really enjoyed performing self working.
Because if I had, it did a really technical move or technical trick where I had to worry about the, the slight or the angle, or like, did people see the move? Did I hide it? Well, did they, did I misdirect them? Okay. And if I was worrying about that, I wasn’t really in the performance well, versus if I did a self working trick where the trick would just happen and I didn’t have to worry about the technique, I could really immerse myself in the story and in the presentation and in the communication as a communication major.
And so as a hypnotist, when I didn’t have to worry about that because there’s nothing to hide, hypnosis isn’t fake. It’s not like I’m trying to pull curtain over somebody’s eyes. It’s all real, it’s all happening. So for me, because I was, I had just nothing to hide and I could just be myself and sort of bring my own personality and energy and charisma into my performance.
As a hypnotist, the way I would do with some of the self working tricks where I didn’t have to worry about the techniques and the technicalities, I could just go into that, and that was sort of my bread and butter and the strong suit of, not necessarily the techniques or the skills as an individual, but how I could bring myself into my performance and really just highlight that as a hypnotist where I didn’t have to worry about, you know, hiding a technique or flashing a move or whatever it.
Yeah. Which, I mean, I think part of that there’s, there’s a branding that I’ve put on something that you’ve just perfectly described, which is that aspect of, it’s either somewhere between what I nickname is unstoppable confidence, or just that willingness to throw it out there and just see what happens, you know?
So to look at how, I mean, part of my story of launching Virginia Hypnosis was never once buying into the idea that it was gonna be hard, you know, never once buying into the idea that there’s gonna be some sort of slow or seasonal timeframe. It was instead, if I open this thing up, it’s going to work. And to look to that moment where some early on, Hey, this finger magnets thing didn’t work.
I guess I can’t do this, and they just move on to something else. What would you say drives that, that sort of level of confidence for you in terms of just throwing it out there and just that willingness to say, Well, let’s just do this and see what happens. Well, starting out it was really just that commitment that I made to myself of saying, I’m going to do this because I had.
For so many years, seeing hypnosis as just this such cool thing or experience and now sort of having the opportunity to learn it, right As, as someone that saw the hypnosis shows as a college student, I never had the idea that it was something that I could learn. I always assume like, Oh, these hypnotists must just be naturally gifted or talented, or they just must know these things.
But as I learned magic and be like, Oh wait, all these magicians that I thought were naturally talented and just knew how to do these things, I can now learn how to do what they know how to do. Mm-hmm. , Same thing with comedy. As I did comedy, I could learn how to craft jokes and write routines and perform in front of people, and so with hypnosis, it was this thing that for the longest time I’d been so fascinated by, I thought, You know, I can actually learn this.
And it sort of opened up that possibility for me to learn it. And because I had just been so fascinated by it, that’s where I just made that commitment to say, I am going to do this. I don’t care if I fail. I don’t care how long it takes, because for me, it wasn’t about anybody else. It was just about me.
It was about, Look, this is something that I think is so cool and I have fun with and I enjoy performing. The reason most people give up is because they’re not doing it for themselves or doing it for somebody else, or they’re, if not afraid of failure. They’re afraid of other people’s judgment of their failure, where if it doesn’t work the first couple times, Oh, well, my friends are gonna think of me this way because it didn’t work for me.
I’m like, I don’t care. I could mess up a hundred times, but the point is that I wanna learn this and I’m having fun with it, and I’m enjoying it. Not doing it for anybody else but myself. And that telegraphs to the audience, everyone else. So much better than trying to turn that on. Trying to create that.
Exactly. Yeah. Cause it was just there, right? I mean, and then quite openly, That’s why part of the backstory, I saw you were in dc we got together and had dinner and hung out, and that’s part of why you’re here on this program right now. That there’s so many people, I mean, we have to do it one sec. How old.
24. 24 and, and at 24 you’ve accomplished more than a lot of people in this profession have even done who’ve been doing it for quite some time. And, and it comes about from that place of just this integrity of just going here, something I’m excited about and I want you all to kind come along for the ride with me.
You know, So it, it’s this place of integrity and transparency of just. Here’s what I can do. Let’s see where this goes together. And that’s, that’s infectious to people. That’s where you hear people, cuz we’re gonna come around of course to some of the social media things that you hear people say, Oh, we’re gonna create a viral video.
Which that doesn’t work. It’s instead that, you know, when something clearly has that genuine nature to it. When people see that level of excitement to it, that’s what they’re drawn to. You know? So it’s this sort of myth of saying, let’s create something that’s gonna have this quality. That’s when it comes across as false.
Yet this, I always come back to Steve Martin and what he sort of branded at one point is the business model of just becomes so good they can’t ignore you. Absolutely. And that’s what draws people. And so, so let’s move the story forward then that you had that experience of. You know, just throwing the spaghetti at the wall and seeing what happens.
Doing that big show, reaching out to Paul and going through the training and the mentorship, where would you say that things took that, that turn for you? Well, so it’s actually a good segue talking about, you know, the failures and kind of pushing through and things don’t work because as I started working with Paul, one of his pieces of advice and one of the things I was already thinking about anyways, which Paul just confirmed my process of learning, was he was saying, Look, you gotta do shows in the re halls on campus.
He’s like, You’re on a college. That’s a perfect opportunity to start performing where, you know, you wanna get hired at his college campuses. And so he is like, I, I was already RA on campus, a resident assistant working in the re halls and dorms and so I already had connections with the hall directors and people that were running the dorms on campus.
So I said, Look, I’m just gonna reach out to all them and say I’m gonna be a hypnotist when I graduate. And I’ll perform a free show in your dorm. And so I sent emails to all the hall directors and over the course of the semester I performed in 17 outta the 22 res halls on campus. All free shows. Some of them like five to 10 people, some of them maybe 30, 40 at most, but all pretty small shows.
Just sort of workshopping my own skills, practicing what I had learned. Cuz at the end of the day you can read as many books as you want, watch as many DVDs, have as much training, listen to a mentor, give you advice, but experience is the best teacher you’re ever gonna have. And so for me, having that hands on experience was what was really so helpful.
But going back to the idea of, you know, starting from the failures, I was coming off of that really big high of the leadership camp show that I did of like all 60 people, 80 minute show. I had eight people hypnotized outta 60 people and it was super well. So I had a ton of confidence going into doing these Red Hall shows.
So the very first show that I did in the res halls was in my res hall where I was an ra and I put it on as my social, cuz as the RAs, we had to put on socials every week for our residents. So it was the first, em first social of the winter semester. Said, I’m gonna be heist when I graduate guys. I’m a hypnotist.
I’m gonna hypnotize you. We’re gonna do a show. It’s gonna be so fun, it’s gonna be awesome. Like come out for it. And had about 40 people come out to my socials, like twice as many people that would usually come out to my socials. I was like, Yes, a successful social. And so I had 40 people there ready to do a show.
And I do the show and absolutely nobody gets hypnotized. Nice. Nothing happens. And it was just a complete flop and failure and. I felt super embarrassed because everybody was all hyped to see a hypnosis show and I didn’t give it to him. And it was just a mess. And of course, after you have an experience like that, you think of like, Ugh, I never wanna do this again.
Right? I don’t wanna go through that failure or just that embarrassment of saying that I can do something and then not following through. I thought, you know, that did not go well, but the next one will be better. Yeah. And so the next show that I did still was not a very good show at all. I had like one person kind of hypnotized and that’s it.
It was still like 30 people. One person when I said it was better than blue, one before it, and the next show. Is gonna be better than this one. And just kept going. And there were some shows where they did not go well at all. There were some shows where like nobody got hypnotized or one person got hypnotized.
And I had to think on my feet of like, How can I work with this? How can I still use this? Or, This didn’t work last time, so how can I try something different this time? And just continuing to, you know, trial by fire. Just doing all these small shows and we think about people jumping into this stage, hypnosis career industry.
You know, most tis like, they won’t turn up to a show with less than a hundred people cuz they’re afraid to have a small crowd where, oh, if I can’t cherry pick the best volunteers from a big audience, I’m not gonna do it. Where all these shows that I started with after the bigger leadership camp show that I did, were all, again, 30 people at the most, 30, 40 people, but usually a dozen to 20 people where.
I didn’t have a big audience to cherry pick from. Most of the people weren’t even gonna volunteer. So outta the people that even volunteered, how could I really make the most out of what I had to work with? So doing, you know, 17 out of the 22 dorms on campus, the first few shows were crap. They were not good.
They didn’t go well at all. Continuing to grow and improve from them to where the last few shows I did, you know, show 14, 15, 60, and 17 were pretty good shows and we’re really entertaining and we’re a lot of fun and people were enjoying them and starting to get some good video content from them. But just to go from that transition of beginning of the semester falling flat on my face and the show’s not going well, but again, pushing through that failure.
I wasn’t doing it for anyone else but myself. If I was doing it to impress other people, of course I would’ve quit after the first show cuz that didn’t impress ’em. It didn’t accomplish the goal. But my goal was to improve. My goal was to get better. My goal was to commit to getting good at this thing that I enjoyed and that I loved and that I was passionate about.
So I didn’t care how many times it felt flat on my face. Ain’t care how many times I failed, I was going to do it until I got it right, until I found a way to succeed. And you talk about how, you know, already at 24, 2 years, a little over two years, from that first time that I learned hypnosis already accomplishing more than most, most a lot of people in this field.
I tell people the reason I become so successful so quickly. It’s because I’ve failed more than most. Have succeeded. Yeah. I’ve let myself learn from my failures. I’ve fallen flat on my face so many times that most people wouldn’t even put themself in the opportunity to potentially fail. I say bring it on, cuz to me, I don’t see it as failure.
Every failure’s really a lesson cuz it wouldn’t perfect every time and it’s, I succeeded every show. I’d never grow it never get better cuz it, it just works. Why change it? Don’t fix, it ain’t broken. But if it keeps breaking, then you definitely gotta fix it and you gotta learn from it. So every failure’s always been a lesson.
It’s always helped me to improve and get better towards when I finally graduated at the end of the semester in May, I was feeling good and had some good shows under my belt and I was ready to, to jump into doing it. Yeah, Which I’d love to jump in and kind of unravel some of what you’ve just talked about there, because let’s say recognizing, of course the old statistic that 45% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Uh, roughly. Roughly. That’s 47, right? You have newer research on that. Anyway. Yeah. So most of the audience listening to this are the hypnotherapist, and I’d say many of them also are stage he test. And we also have a lot of hybrids as well. But to look at, you know, the sort of arc of what you did there, and this would be the same mark, whether it’s the stage hypnotist, whether it’s the person who just wants to record audio programs and sell things online, whether it’s the person who opens up that physical location, the, the first phase of what you did was to look at, you know, where can I speak?
Where can I get out and be seen? And the follow up question to that is, of course, what audiences do I already have? So I kind of reference here that when I started with stage hypnosis origin, I was working in the theater career and the easiest entry point was fundraisers for those high school theater groups.
I had the foot in the door, I had the street cred. I had something that would solve a problem of theirs. And rather than having to kick off with some market that I didn’t yet have, you know, that was one that I could start with and eventually then either morph into something else or perhaps even grow out of.
But the key thing there, I had Michael Desal on the program, uh, a couple of times over the years, and I think the first time he was on, which will link to this in the show notes that work smart hypnosis.com. He, he just, the phrase stuck with me that if you’re in your office, You’re not working. So rather than sit there, which this kind of goes back to the magic, which rather than sit there in front of the mirror or maybe the camera and practice this difficult slide of hand, move over and over to the point that no one knew you were doing it.
Instead here was a thing that you could only do as, as if they were people that were out there embracing. It’s not always gonna be the perfect scenario. I was chatting with someone the other day that she referenced someone that she has in her local community that’s been studying hypnosis and NLP for like 20 years.
And yet still the phrase for the last five or so years that at least we’ve known this person has been, Yeah, but I’m still working on a website so I can get up and running. As opposed to which again, if you’re in your office, you’re not working, get out there, start talking about it, Start to share it, which I think did.
I think when we get together for dinner in DC we talked about the documentary comedian. Did we? That seems familiar. Yeah. The Jerry Seinfeld one, right? Yeah, the Jerry Seinfeld documentary. Or if you want the faster version or maybe not faster cuz it’s three seasons now. The TV show Marvelous, Mrs. Maisel to look at how the comedian will workshop a routine.
Over and over and over, and it’s this aspect of not does the bit work or not, it’s instead, how do I make it work better? So putting that focus on yourself, having a good time, bringing the audience for the ride is the same way that even the hypnotherapist can have that experience of, let’s say, here’s the client who doesn’t get the result.
And to still analyze rather than just, you know, brush it off and play the game of secondary game. Go back to the Jess Marion episode a few weeks ago for that one. But rather than pass it off as just that, but instead to go, Well what could I have done better? What’s some bit of framework I could put in front of the session that will prevent this?
In the future. So to always be looking at how we can level up that game. We’ve done a great job of that over the years. I wanna move forward though, because there’s a specific media opportunity that either it happened by chance or happened by purpose, where this is where most of us got to know you. Yeah.
So once I graduated in, in May, it was funny. I literally got, had my commencement in the morning, Captain Gowned everything, and that night, literally same day, I started my NG certification, did the class with Paul to get my certification with the NGH as a consulting hypnotist, hypnotherapist, clinical hypnotist.
Even though I was still focused on the stage for me as someone that wanted to learn as much as I could about hypnosis, the more I knew the better that I could be as a stage of as performer. So I did my NG class certification, and then going into that summer was like, All right, I’m done college. I’m done school, I’m graduated.
And as a professional hypnotist, How am I gonna make this happen? And so it’s sort of navigating that initial dichotomy of anybody that starts anything new, any new job or career field. It’s navigating that weird catch 22, if people aren’t gonna hire you unless you have experience, but then how do you get that experience unless you get hired?
And so I had done all these free shows in the re halls, but still those weren’t the type of shows that I would necessarily get paid to do for bigger high schools or colleges or whatever it was. So for me, my thought process was, well, I need to have social proof. I need to be able to show people because I don’t have, you know, testimonials or previous shows to go off of yet.
I need to show people that I know what I’m doing. I know that I know what I’m doing because I just did all these college shows on campus. And so my thought was really to sort of create my own shows. On the streets. And so what I would do is I went out and started doing street hypnosis, just like I had done street magic earlier.
I kind of took that same principle, you know, the David Blain style of walking up to a stranger, showing him a card trick. I would do that with hypnosis. I would walk up through a stranger on the street and the park on the beach downtown, say, Hey, I’m a professional hypnotist. You wanna be hypnotized? And most people will say no to that question cuz it’s really weird.
First a stranger to walk up to you and ask if they can ize you. But some people would say yes, and I would bring a friend or somebody with me to help me film whenever I was doing this. So I’d always have footage of me doing the street hypnosis. And for the ones that went well, I would put videos online and upload ’em to YouTube and started creating some social proof of what I was doing.
And not only was it starting to create content, which at the end of the day was, you know, biggest piece of value from that. But I was also learning and growing so much doing street hypnosis. Because again, when you do a show and you have 40 people, a hundred people, 200 people, you can pick volunteers from the audience.
So the people that you think are the most open to being hypnotized or most adjustable or whatever metrics you use or measure to determine who’s gonna get hypnotized. But when you walk up to three people on the street and you ask if any of them wanna be hypnotized and one of them does, you hypnotize that person or nobody, it’s like you don’t have anyone to cherry pick from.
You gotta figure out a way to make it happen for them. And so as I was doing all these really like super impromptu mini shows on the street, not only only was I starting to get video content of what I was doing, but I was. Like fast track to learning and improving my skills and always making them better, right?
Like you’re talking about a couple minutes ago of how do we constantly improve or take it to the next level, right? If I do an induction or some suggest suggestibility test in like 10, took 10 minutes and the person had to go in 15 minutes, I’m like, Well, crap, I only have five minutes left to now actually do some fun suggestions or some name amnesia or some hallucinations or anything like that.
So I said, Well, what if I make it quicker and started, you know, making the induction faster or getting rid of the suggestibility tests towards, like now I’d never do suggestibility tests like at all in my shows on the street. I have completely gotten rid of them because I developed techniques where I don’t even need them.
My inductions take minutes where I can just jump right into doing the routines because I learned as I would do it, even though it didn’t fail, it was successful. To me, it was still taking longer than I wanted it to be. And so constantly, that’s one of those biggest things of coming from training, which is that we start to play the game of sanding off the elements that, you know, what happens if I remove this?
Does it still work? Yeah. Right. It’s like the gender puzzle. Exactly. Like keep removing the, the blocks and as lines as it stays up. Right. If you take out of block and it all falls down, you gotta build up the tower and be like, okay, that piece has to stay. Right. But then you figure out how much you can remove.
And the reality is most people, like whether it’s the hypnosis profession or any profession, people tend to just stick with what they know works. Yeah. Right. And that’s where as, so as a stage heist, one of my pet peeves about the industry, if you will, is that I. 90% of stage hypnotists out there are still doing, You’re hotter, you’re cold, you’re on a beach, you’re driving a car, Right?
Literally all of the routines that everybody learned in stage hypnosis 1 0 1, cause they’re like, Oh, this is cool. This is fun, this works. I’m gonna do that forever and for the rest of my life, . So it’s like, yeah, not that they’re bad routines, but like the whole point is you learn routines so that you can start developing your own.
And so you can start making them better and you can start improving on it. And you know, we talk about, you know, oh, it’s challenging to get a show and diversify yourself in the market. Like, yeah, it’s gonna be tough to diversify yourself in the market if your show looks like most s this shows out there.
So as I was doing the streak of those constantly improv. And breaking beyond just what I learned initially and developing new routines, trying new routines or new suggestions or different ideas and, and seeing what worked, seeing what didn’t. If it worked, how can I make it work even better? And to go to your point of, you know, sort of where the social media came in from all this, I started uploading videos on YouTube, started my YouTube channel, so recording this in December.
It’ll be January as people are listening to this. But I started my YouTube channel about a year and a half ago, so at the end of June, 2018. And just started putting up videos of me izing people on the streets. And the first few videos I put up barely anyone watched, right? It was mostly my friends and family when I would share it on Facebook that would watch it to see what I was doing.
And maybe a few random strangers online here and there. But for the most part, most people weren’t seeing my stuff. But again, going back to the other point I made, you know, earlier in my story, if I wasn’t doing it for other people’s attention, I wasn’t doing it to try to go viral or try to go seeing if that happened, awesome.
But that wasn’t the point. Point was. I was having fun, I was enjoying this. I was putting up social proof and content online where even if no one was watching it, it wasn’t going viral. If people that were gonna hire me now have this accessible to see what I could do, that’s kind of the point. And so continue to put more and more content up doing street hypnosis.
As I started to get a few shows and sort of trickle into getting hired and getting paid the do shows, I would film those shows and put the videos from the shows online as well. So then on my YouTube I would have videos of both street hypnosis and the stage hypnosis to show both sides of it. And all those original videos are still up there.
I’d never take anything down that I posted. So you can go back and you can see my early street hypnosis performances or my, you know, early stage shows or whatever it is. And you can even watch like the first Full Street hypnosis performance, cuz I like being able to put up the entire performance on YouTube versus, you know, a lot of people will tend to edit and cut it and make it look.
Super flashy and pretty and make it look like they’re a lot better than they really are. But if I say, Look, here is when I walk up to them to when I walk away, here’s everything that happens. No cuts, no edits. Exactly like you’re standing there watching it. You can see exactly what you’re buying, exactly what you’re getting.
You can see what I do. And the first couple videos, I would literally like split up into three parts cuz they were so long. So it’d be like a 30 minute performance on the street of like, here’s part one, part two, part three. And nowadays, right, I just uploaded a video early this week of like an entire performance in eight minutes from the approach to the induction, to multiple routines, to the, like, everything in eight minutes, like made it a lot faster.
But that obviously wasn’t the case at the beginning. So as I continue to put up more content, having stuff from the streets, having stuff from the shows, I finally had, you know, the Golden Goose finally had that video that went viral and blew up online. It, uh, was in California earlier this year, back in March and was at a conference and event and the week afterwards.
I stuck around in California for an extra week or two and said, All right. Since I’m here in California in March, where the weather’s actually nice versus cold New Hampshire, where I was from originally. I said, I’m gonna do some beach hypnosis while I’m here in California. So went out to Venice Beach, did some hypnosis, put a video up on YouTube, and it actually took about a week or two for that video to really gain some good traction.
It was getting good views more than my other videos were. But then after two weeks, that’s when it really just started to spike on YouTube. YouTube. Notice gonna link to it, of course, in the show notes that work smart hypnosis.com. But for those that haven’t seen it yet, just briefly describe what the video was.
Yeah, so it was me doing straight hypnosis on the beach, Beach hypnosis, like I did on Myer video. But it was a girl that was just really, really extroverted, bubbly sort of personality where she had some really, really entertaining reactions to forgetting her name or thinking that I was invisible, or thinking that I was a celebrity.
And you know, when I said I was her favorite celebrity, she opened her eyes, she screams, it’s Kanye Falls back in the sand. Like, Oh my gosh, it is, is freaking out. And so it’s a really, really good, good reactions from that specific video. And that just did really well. And people when they ask like, Oh, well how did it go viral?
Somebody must have picked it up. Somebody must have shared it. It literally went viral organically on YouTube because YouTube saw it was performing well and just kept recommending it. It put it in more people’s feeds because it’s all algorithmically based and if they see con piece of contents performing well, then they wanna share it with more people.
So more people will watch videos. And so it had like about 2 million views in the first month or so, and it just was, was wild. I think at this point it’s got about nine and a half. It’ll probably be over 10 by the time people are listening to this in January. But yeah, it was just really, really cool to finally see a piece of content do really well.
But to the point earlier, if that, you know, doesn’t always happen right away, most people don’t know that viral video that I I had was my 42nd video I uploaded on. . Mm-hmm. for over 40 pieces of content that nobody was watching, or mostly my friends and family were watching or that weren’t going anywhere.
Again, because I wasn’t doing it to try to go viral or try to get noticed or to feel validated by other people’s opinions. I was doing it cuz I had fun and I enjoyed it. And was passionate about performing and being able to put up content for people to see what I liked doing. And yeah. So by having that by, yeah, by having that, where did that take the career from there?
Well, so from that video doing really well, I started to gain a little more traction behind what I was doing. Um, got started working with Bash Entertainment, got a, you know, college agency that I started working with from that, which was the biggest thing that come out of that. Um, and they took notice of the video.
I had a, a connection already through Chris Jones that to know him a little bit a few months before and he was with them as well. And so through my video doing really well and to me knowing Chris as well, that sort of got me to start working with them. Cuz at that point they were actually looking to add to Cida roster and saw that I was doing and wanted to have me on.
And so I joined on with them and they started booking me shows and I just had my first college tour this past fall did about 15 different shows. Um, which for Baby’s first tour is not too bad. Getting started kicking it off , but it was really great. We were just traveling around in all different states, all sorts of different parts of the country and really opening up more doors and opportunities to start to get these bigger shows.
And now literally at this point where I graduated college last year or two years ago, people are gonna be listening to this in 2020. I graduated college in 2018 and 2019 I’m performing at colleges all around the country. didn’t, didn’t take long to just jump in, which, I mean, look at how, I mean, I can, I get this question sometimes, like when people even go through my hypnosis training to go, you know, Well how quickly can someone get started once they, you know, once they actually do their training?
And the answer is basically what helps to mirror exactly everything you’ve just talked about. You get out of something, the effort you put into. Exactly. So you know, here are the people who have decided they’re gonna hit the ground running. They’re gonna put this stuff in motion, and they get those results.
The people who buy another course sign up for another training, which is always good and always valid, yet it’s just kind of spinning the wheels and they’re chasing that One more thing. The, as you said, the greatest lesson comes from actually going out there and doing the work. And sometimes the, the phrase, there’s probably a more inspirational source than this one, but this was Leslie Nielsen, like from the Naked Gun movies.
But in the movie Repossessed, when you fall on your face, you’re still moving forward . That’s right. And it’s that ability to get back up and go, Okay, what can I learn from this? So, and I love the aspect too of, you know, looking at how, Okay, so I started, I love the aspect of, you started with the suggestibility test, but that eventually went, how do I not use them?
You know? Yeah. That’s a similar that I’ve done that it’s, it’s a very rare occasion if I pull that out now with the client in the office, I’m gonna use them to form some sort of through line if I’m giving a presentation or talking about something. Yet it’s not quite using it for the old goal of going, This is how I identify my people.
No, this is a common shared experience that we can create. I wanna come around to something you hinted at, which was the, the fact of not necessarily doing the standard hot cold. You’re in a car, you’re driving world’s greatest dancers, which, why the hell was that ever entertaining? Cause people can just get up and dance anyway without the hypnosis.
All right. So can, can you highlight maybe a, you know, some sort of routine or two that you feel that you’ve done to kind of change that dynamic of how people think about stage? Yeah. So for, for me, especially with some of those routines, one of the reasons that I wasn’t always a fan of them because is because it didn’t always demonstrate if there was just phenomenon in the way that I wanted it to.
Yeah, right. Like you could, And a lot of those routines, like typically just tend to do with people’s eyes still closed. So it’s really just more, imagine that you’re hot. Imagine you’re cold. Imagine you’re in a band, right? And you could bring anybody not in hypnotized state, put them up on stage and say, Close your eyes.
And imagine you’re playing in a band. Imagine you’re sitting on a beach, right? And you don’t have to have somebody into a state of hypnosis to experience that. But when I get people into experiencing like literal hallucinations, like my favorite routines to do are having people think that I’m invisible and I disappear.
And having people think that I have become their favorite celebr. And when you get those reactions right, like the girl on the beach literally screaming Kanye was right because she thinks that I’m Kanye. That’s not like something that somebody who wasn’t hypnotized would be experiencing unless they were a really, really good actor.
And I, and I get all the comments online of people like, Oh, nice actors and has a terrible acting. Are you hire actors for all your videos? I’m like, look, that’s a high school senior. That’s a college freshman. Like these arent professional actors like, but getting people into the state where people are convinced they must be actors because their experiences are that real.
Cuz that’s the thing with hypnosis is when somebody’s in a hypnotized state, their belief on the suggestion is so strong their experiencing it as if it really is real. So in a way, hypnosis sort of makes people the best actors in the world because they don’t think that they’re acting, they’re actually experiencing the suggestions that you give them.
So for me, as I created routines and designed my shows, I wanna think of things like what is going to create. Such a believable experience for people watching this. If they say there’s no way. Like, that was my friend sitting up to like next to the show before we started and now he’s like freaking out and crying because he thinks that you just disappeared.
Like, what is going on? Versus just like, Oh, that’s funny that he’s fanning himself on the beach. Or, Oh, it’s funny that he’s driving a race car and flipping off the car behind him, right? Ha ha. But yeah, he’s probably just playing along. So creating suggestions that really can convince people that look as hyp, those as a hypnotist.
Hypnosis is a real thing, so let’s give people real experiences versus things that could, you know, go either way and are still entertaining. But for me, going beyond just what’s entertaining, also what really hits that sort of nerve of people watching of like, Oh my goodness, this is incredible. Yeah. And so as I’ve designed different routines, always trying new things and new ideas.
And I have a sort of a fun, an interesting story that out of how one of my best routines that I do now at most shows sort of developed and came out of is I, I do this routine sometimes where I’ll have people hypnotized to think that they’re the best impressionist in the world. Because sometimes, you know, people at the end of the most people probably have at least one impression.
They’re good at most. People are too insecure, unconfident about their ability to do it. They won’t perform it. But in a hypnotized state, when I have somebody think they’re amazing at it, they’ll just do it. And so I had this show was at Montana Tech University. It was a smaller show. So I only had four people up on stage for that show.
And I did this routine where I said, All right, uh, you’re all the best voice impressionist in the world. And so the first guy said, Oh, what was your impression? He did an Arnold Schwar. Andre impression was like, Oh, I’ll get through the drop, I’ll be back. It was a pretty solid impression. And the next guy sitting next to him said, All, What’s your impression?
And he did the exact same one. He was like, I’m also honored, like I’m the bed or Honor anything. He did an impression as well, and it was funny that they sort of had that dynamic and the, the other two girls who were next to them, one of them did a mini mouse impression and one of them did a Donald Trump impression.
And so after hearing those impressions, I thought, You know what? I’m going to do something with this. I’m gonna turn this into a debate where their impressions are gonna become those charact. And so I said, The girl who’s Donald Trump? Like right, You’re at Donald Trump now running for a reelection. The girl who’s mini mouse, you’re a mini mouse running for president next year to see if you can be the new president in 2020.
And the guy who is Arnold, I said, You are now Arnold Schwartzenegger running for president. The other guy that was Arnold, you are also Arnold Schwartzenegger running for president and you think that the other Arnold’s an imposter and you are the real Arnold. So I had sort of two, two Arnold torture acres running, which was kind of funny.
And as I went through that process of asking them, you know, Oh, like what? What are you gonna do for the country? Or what will you do if you’re elected or what’s your campaign platform? And sort of bringing out some fun responses. I asked the audience to ask some questions. I, yeah. And one of them asked, Hey, which Arnold can lift more weight?
And I asked one of the Arnold, I said, What do you think? And he says, I think we need to break out the weights when I turned the other Arnold. And I say, What do you think? He goes, I agree. And so right there I was like, You know what, we’re gonna improvise this and we’re gonna do something. And so I brought over a.
Yeah. As someone that did improv, improv comedy, that’s one of my sort of biggest skills that’s been super valuable for me is to be able to just improvise moments, routines like this to turn them into something even better than what they already are. So I said, All right. I brought over an extra chair. I put it down in front of the two Arnolds, and I said, All right, you guys are both, obviously the strongest body builders in the world, super ripped in Jack.
But this chair is so heavy and you can’t lift it. It’s completely stuck to the ground. You can’t lift this chair no matter how hard you try it. And so I said, All right, weight lifting competition, whoever can lift this chair wins. And one of the Arnold’s, like, I got this. He goes over and is, he just can’t lift the chair at all.
And the other Arnold’s like, P, come on dude. Like move aside. And he goes over and same thing,
I just can’t lift it. And they’re like, What is going on? And they’re like, All right, we got to work together. And so they both like stand on each one on each side of the chair. They both squat down together. They go 1, 2, 3.
And they literally can’t lift it and are just struggling so hard. And then I say, All right, well watch this mini mouse can lift up the chair easily. So I had the girl who thought she was miy come over and she picks up the chair and the Arnold’s jaws dropped. They’re like, What? They’re like, Dude, mini is jacked.
And it was just such a funny, a funny moment and routine that became at of sort of an impromptu idea that I said, You know what? At my next show, I’m gonna make this into a full routine. And so with that idea and concept, I said, I’m gonna make routine where everybody up front thinks that they’re the strongest body builders in the world, and then there’s gonna be a chair up front where they can’t lift it and they’re trying to prove they’re the strongest and nobody can lift it up.
You know, sort of like the King Art Arthur Sword type thing. Yeah. So I did that, and that was a routine that went really well. That video I have on YouTube of me doing that routine has, I think about like 80,000 views at this point. Like it was really good routine. And the next school I did that same routine.
And however, I didn’t have any extra chairs cuz I had more volunteers than I thought. So I had no more chairs. So I said, Shoot, like literally in the moment as I’m crafting this routine, it’s like, Oh no, I don’t have a chair. What am I gonna use for this? So I look around and I see a plastic water bottle, uh, that someone that they had left me as a performer.
So I pick up the water bottle and said, When you open your eyes, you’re gonna see this water bottle is the heaviest thing in the world. You can’t lift it. So literally improvised instead of a chair, it was now a water bottle and did the same thing where they couldn’t lift up the bottle. And same thing, they stink, they’re super jacked, they try to lift it and they literally can’t.
And as I finish up the routine and I pick up the bottle and I’m getting ready to, you know, just put it back and finish the routine and somebody yells up from the audience. Put it in their hand, . I thought, you know, good idea. So I go over to one of the guys and I was like, Hey, so you think you could like hold this water bottle, right?
And he’s like, Yeah, of course. So I hand it to him and just immediately just, it falls right to the ground and he’s like, What the heck? And he’s trying to lift this and can’t, And then I’m like, What’s going on? He’s like, I don’t know. And he said, What dude? Pick it up again. And so I pick up the bottle again.
I’m like, Yeah, here you go. Hand it to him and again, just falls right down to the floor with it. And he’s like, What is going on? And so again, it created another fun reaction or response out of that, but that specific clip of the guy. Being handed the water bottle and dropping it to the ground cause he thought it was super heavy and not being able to lift it.
That was a clip that I put on up on social media and that one clip has 20 million views online. Nice. And so, but all like, see that all came out of like one routine that wasn’t even the original routine. That improvised and turned into something, which then I turned into a full routine. And even out of that, a part of that routine got improvised to just constantly be reworking like we talked about, you know, as like with the comedian documentary, like you’re constantly working, your bits, constantly improving it.
So for me, having that mindset of like, how can I always make it better? What can I add? What can I try versus here’s my standard set that I do every time and we’re just gonna do this cuz I know it works. But instead of just settling for what you know, works, thinking about what you can create that will work even better has really been a big part of not only how I’ve become so successful, but part of this, you know, virality and getting a lot of these videos seen is because I’m doing stuff that nobody else is doing.
So like, Oh, I saw a hypnotist in high school, or I state fair, and you’re nothing like that hypnotist because you’re doing stuff that’s even crazier or even cooler or that I’d never seen before because I am doing something nobody has said before because, I’m trying to come up with new ideas and constantly improving and improvising.
Yeah. Awesome. Bit of a long story, but sort of a fun example of, yeah, we create new routines. You can bring that into the context of the client in the office, the willingness to observe that, okay, they’re going into some other emotional state, which might not even be a reaction, but you can tell they’re truly processing it and rather talk over it and just assume we’ve got something instead.
That willingness to, And as you’re aware of that feeling, what is that? Describe that. And then from there, whatever they bring you, that’s where you can really branch off that, you know, some of the greatest routines come from just being in the moment. Some techniques for change just come from listening to the client and just being, again, present in the experience and not just falling back to the, uh, sort of autopilot mode.
We’re coming up on time here, but one last thing I wanted to chat about before we mention where people can find you, uh, just briefly talk about some of the things that you’ve been doing in terms of increasing that online influence, specifically the way that you’ve been doing some partnerships to sort of open yourself up to new audiences.
If you could chat about that for a moment. Yeah, so I mean, social media has been really the, the big reason why I’ve been able to get to the point that I’m at now, literal. Now the story of me starting out as a hypnotist that by last the senior year was 20 17, 20 18, so mm-hmm. , little over two years from knowing nothing about hypnosis to now being at this point where I’ve become already an authority in the community, which has been really neat.
But a part of that has been through social media. So starting on YouTube, initially starting up my channel, like I did last summer, starting to put stuff on Instagram. But what’s really has sort of allowed me to get even bigger lately has been joining the app TikTok. And if you’re not familiar with TikTok, right, and maybe more of somebody who does more hypnotherapy or somebody that doesn’t put entertaining content out specifically, even if you don’t, right.
The app, TikTok is where all of the engagement is on the internet right now. All of the organic engagement. Cause the thing with other platforms, when you think about something like a Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, is that your engagement or reach is predicated by the amount of followers that you have.
If you put a video on your Instagram or on YouTube or on your Facebook, and you have. A thousand people following you, you might get 200, 300 views on that video versus if you have a million people following you, you know, you could get 200,000, 300,000 views on that video because it’s all dependent on your number of followers.
TikTok, that is what makes that app so incredible is that it’s all algorithmic and pieces of good content will get seen regardless of how many followers that you have. So if you put a really good video up online, you could have two people post that exact same video. One person with 10 followers, one person with a million followers, and that video will get a very similar amount of use.
Because it’s a good piece of content and it will get put in people’s algorithms and people will watch it regardless of your following. So how I started getting big is I started using the app because I heard that, you know, it was getting big and I literally started just by repurposing content. I already had videos that were already on YouTube.
I said I’m just gonna repost some of the highlights and bigger clips on TikTok. And I had videos that blew up and did really well and to where now I’ve had literally over 150 million views in the past two months. Nice. On that app, which is like wild to think about. I joined the app September, beginning of September, 2019.
So I’ve been on it for about three months right now, and I’m already at 1.7 million followers on the app and over 150 million views in just the past two months. I’m just putting out content. Yeah. And again, stuff that was on YouTube of like, I put it on YouTube and it would get like a thousand, 2000 views and then put it on TikTok and it has like 5 million views because it’s a good piece of content.
But now it’s not trapped by the algorithm of, Oh, I don’t have as many followers, so less people are gonna see it versus it’s a good piece of content, so they’re gonna make more people see it because it’s a good video. Yeah. And so even if you are a hypnotherapist and you’re like, Well, I don’t do stage hypnosis, or I don’t have any entertaining content, Look, I saw a video on my TikTok feed the other week of literally just this random person who is just in the mental health community, mental health advocate and is like, look, I, you know, had people that in my life that committed suicide.
And that’s something that I take really seriously. And if you’re somebody that like struggles, like I wanna help and I’m here to support and remember that your life has me, and just like a quick, inspirational, motivational thing. And that video got millions of views. Or another hypnotist that I know, a friend of mine who doesn’t really do stage hypnosis, but she does more working with clients hypnotherapy.
She started just putting a few videos of her just doing some just cool inductions of, right, right. If she, you know, snaps her fingers and some of these eyes close and just with, you know, some cool music in the background and a comment like what would it be like to get rid of the anxiety in your life with hypnosis?
And she had one of her videos just like that hit a million views again with like no following. And she is now starved to get clients from TikTok. Like, not that you can monetize the platform directly, but people that saw her videos and now are reaching out to her to saying, That was so cool. How can I actually work with you to do that?
Even though she’s not actually putting videos at her session, she’s not putting videos of her with a direct client of doing the actual change work, but just putting videos to sort of give that taste or sample of what she could do, creating engaging content on an engaging platform. She’s gotten clients and made money out of just putting one video online.
Yeah. And so just that willingness, I mean, people are looking for that connection. They’re looking for that rapport through the screen. So just that moment to be genuine on camera, share a story and the the softest call to action of, you know, this is something I can help with. Here’s how to take the next step.
Right. Yeah. And what’s been cool about being on that platform is, you know, a lot of people like, Oh, well, is it just gonna be a fad? And is it gonna be like the platform vine that was big for a year and then died out? Look, whether or not it is, you gotta strike where the iron’s hot. Yeah. Because it will either go away in a year and no one’s talking about it anymore, and you missed this chance to get in will it still was hot or is the next big thing and you miss a chance to become an early adapter because you were too worried about it not being the next big thing.
But how Paul, like I’ve gotten all of these collaborations and opportunities to connect with other creators and other celebrities and have started to hyp. You know, bigger influencers and get my content not just on my page and my platform, but on other people’s pages. I got a, a collaboration on a YouTube channel last week with a channel with 8 million subscribers on their YouTube.
And it was big opportunity that got me to sort of bump up my numbers even more. Not even putting stuff on my channel, but me being on somebody else’s platform. But it’s through people that saw me on TikTok and then they message me on Instagram or they sent me an email or they said, Let’s do something for YouTube on these other platforms.
Cuz really, I mean, right now, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, like those aren’t going away anytime soon. Whether or not TikTok is here to stay, we don’t know, but it’s where the people are right now. And so if you get where the attention is against Strike, where the iron’s hot, that will open up opportunities for YouTube and Facebook and Instagram.
It’ll open up clients. It’s where the people are, right? Go to where the people are, if that’s who you’re trying to reach. If you’re a stage hit theist. If you’re a hypnotherapist, if you’re a hybrid or. Even if you’re just someone that’s not a hypnotist but has a business and wants to reach more people, more and more businesses are hopping on TikTok now because they’re like, Look, this is a really big deal and I know people aren’t gonna be listening to this till January, December now.
So literally like a month later from when we’re actually recording this, there’s gonna be even more that’s gonna come out on TikTok. It’s gonna be even the news even more. So this will be, I mean, in a way, sort of like a, don’t say didn’t call it, but like this is where all the attention is right now. So gotta get on that platform cuz that’s where all the real organic engagement on the internets right now.
Well Zach, this has been awesome. Where can, where can people check out you more online? How could they get in contact with. So my, one of the things about having a unique last name is that my name is available on all social media platforms. So it is literally just Zach Pinsen on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on YouTube, on TikTok, on LinkedIn.
That’s my website. Everything’s just Z Pinsen. It’s Z A C H P I N C I N C. Excellent. And we’ll link to all those over in the show [email protected]. We’ll link to some of these videos as well, but also having you on here. And before we wrap it up, any final thoughts for the listeners out there?
Yeah, I mean, just to really synthesize this past hour, this past conversation that we’ve had, I, we talked about how long does it take to get good, How long does it take to be successful? And really the answer is as long as you want it to take, As long as you want it to take. You know, anything. Zig Ziegler once said that you don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.
You’re not gonna be good. I wasn’t good as a hypnotist when I started. Nobody’s good at anything when they started. But when you just commit to saying, I don’t care that I’m not good, I know through this failure I will get better. Cuz failure is not getting knocked down. Failure is staying down if you don’t try.
That’s true. Failure cause regret is way more than, is way worse than taking a risk. And so many people are afraid to risk it. And what if they do fail? And what if they lose? But you know what’s even worse than what if you lose is what if you never give yourself the opportunity to lose or to get it right in the first place.
And so for me, my biggest encouragement, and I have so many people sending me messages, when you have over million followers online, right? You get all the messages of, Oh please hypnotize me. How’d you become a hypnotist? How can I learn? How can I do it? And what’s your best advice? And I always tell people, I’m like, Look, my best advice is fail cuz failure, your experience, your hands on learning will be the best thing that teaches.
So many people in this community, or even just in other industries as well, they become information junkies. They’ll go to the conference every year, whether it’s GH or Hypno thoughts, they’ll always pick up the new book. They’ll pick up the new DVDs. They’re always looking for the best induction, but they’re not actually doing it.
They’re not using it. Cuz your application experience that you have, that you get from it is what will be what will allow you to grow, will try it. Good. So at the end of the day, most people know what to do. People just don’t do what they know. So do what you know. Just don’t learn anything new. Go use what you know.
Give yourself permission to fail. And when you let yourself fail. That’s when you really succeed. Jason, Lynette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for sharing this on your social media streams, leaving your reviews online, and again, just always considering this as an ongoing resource in your hypnosis education.
Subscribe today if you’re not yet doing so, and reach out to me. Let me know what episodes resonate with you. Reach out to Zach. Let him know what you thought about this episode two, and again, check out the links, everything [email protected]. Plus on top of that, check out hypnotic workers.com.
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