Session #278: Jason Tollen on Hypnotic Accountability

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 278. Jason Tolin on hypnotic accountability. 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. Welcome back to the program and you.

Or a treat with an outstanding conversation with Jason Tolin, a real hypnotic worker out of Colorado, where we talk about the aspects of growing his business. Getting a ton of reviews online though, we’ll get around to that here in a moment because here’s a bit of a fun fact. This program launched on June 25th, 2014, and this episode number 278 is coming out on June 25th.

2020. So how about that six years. Celebrate good times. Come on. Oh yeah. So I want to give a huge thank you to all of the previous guests who have been on the program. Uh, thank you to all of you who have continued listening to it. We’ve got a whole lot more in store coming your way, but just taking this quick moment to celebrate six years of putting these episodes out on a weekly basis, and one small ask of you if you head over to work smart hypnosis.com/.

iTunes. If you’re an Apple user, that’s where you can head and leave a review for the program. It’s your reviews that help us to continue to reach even bigger audiences, create an even bigger impact with the, the more overall successful, the more overall successful mindset, or even head over to the Work Smart Hypnosis, which Jason Lat podcast page on.

We’ll give the links to these online and leave a review of the program on the Facebook page as well. My one simple ask of you is that if you’re a regular listener to the program, share your thoughts. Help us to reach an even bigger audience. Six years running, we must have been doing something right and definitely.

So with this week’s episode featuring Jason Toland. Some of you might not yet know Jason, though you’re about to meet him very rapidly and someone. Who I referenced again, as really being a worker in the industry. And I got to know Jason a number of years ago, uh, as we work together on a couple of projects and he’s here this week to share some updates in terms of how he’s continued to see a successful practice in the midst of everything.

Global Pandemic, everything that is 2020. Some really fascinating insights. About grabbing a better hold of our personal finances and our financial success in terms of how we manage money as business owners or even just as individuals. The mindset around evolving our business to better focus on the clients that we know we’re going to get success with.

And really how critical it is to make that transition, uh, towards, uh, you know, working full time and the skills that we have in helping to reach an. Bigger audience. So again, someone who’s truly a hypnotic worker within this industry and helping a ton of people. And, uh, we’ve been featuring this on, uh, some other projects that are currently going on right now adjacent.

We put out, uh, a while ago, a training inside of hypnotic business systems on strategies to get reviews from your clients. And, uh, Jason is rocking this out. He’s got more than 65 star reviews online by way. Google by way of Yelp and just really someone who is putting stuff to use, really doing the work and clearly creating a amazing impact with his clients, not just in person, of course, in Colorado, but also clearly around the world as so many of us have pivoted our businesses online these days.

So take note of this, uh, convers. Really follow through with some of the tips and strategies, and especially some of the insights that Jason shares in terms of, again, getting our mind around our own financial acumen. This is one of those things that I wish I had done earlier in my journey. We’ve got it in order now.

Uh, but I give you a cool quote around this. Something that, uh, I tend to stand by now. Uh, quote from Dave Ramsey. You might have heard his podcast, his radio show, his. Total money makeover. But something I heard him say, and we quoted this in a Facebook group a while ago, that savings is an emotional issue, not a financial issue.

And it’s kind of like the priest oppositions and nlp. There was a period of time where I wasn’t making that a priority, and yet, like the priest oppositions, we don’t necessarily have to immediately believe they’re true, but if we operate from the premise as if it were true, we find a way to make logic of it and shift our actions to better move forward.

And sure enough, Personally, as soon as I moved to the mindset that it was more so an emotional issue than it was a financial issue, we got rid of the credit card debt, we got everything in order, and it makes it so much easier to continue to grow the business and of course, you know, down the road, save for retirement and set aside money for the kids’ college education.

So, Jason really helps to emulate this mindset, and it’s something that, again, for those of you in business systems, we’re gonna be adding some content around that as well. But Jason, share some really cool, actionable strategies in this week’s session. And if you’re looking to further scale your hypnosis business, we’ve got a free on demand presentation you can check out by heading over to Hypno Formula.

Dot com. It’s where I’ve put together the Hypnotic Pricing Formula workshop to help you to think a little bit bigger about the offerings that you share for your clients. Some really cool strategies to make use of evidence based research to build valuable programs for your clients. This is a completely free on-demand workshop.

You can check that out right now at Hypno Formula. Dot com. And with that, happy six years to you. Thanks to Jason for, uh, sharing the stage on this outstanding conversation, which I want you to take some action on as well. So here we go, episode number 278. Jason Tolin on hypnotic accountability? Well, my introduction to hypnosis, for me, it feels like it happened gradually over time.

I had come from a background of personal growth, self-help work, grew up in sort of the, the traditional, I call it the traditional dysfunctional American family where. It wasn’t so bad that it was, you know, a horror story, but family didn’t get along that well at at moments in time and so I grew up with some confusion and I grew up with some negative feelings and negative ways of looking at things that led me to fast forward to about 30 years old and I realized I don’t want to keep going in this way.

Yeah. So I started doing a lot of growing. I got into present moment work. Mm-hmm. , which to me came through some Buddhist practices and some me. And as part of that, I started reading lots and lots of books to get myself out of this kind of depressed way of being that almost invariably there’s a chapter in, in any of these books that are worth their salt, that talk about the unconscious or the subconscious and.

I didn’t really know anything about it, but I just kept reading about it over and over again. I didn’t put any stock in it. And then one day, this is quick little story about how I actually came to believe in the subconscious a little bit. I was reading a book about the Hawaiian religion. It was called Master Your Hidden Self or something like that.

And the Hawaiian religion has. Conscious, subconscious, super conscious kind of concepts in it. And it was a little exercise with the pendulum. Yeah. And I did this, I did this exercise. I made a circle on a piece of paper and I told myself, Okay, if the answer’s yes, self move like this , the answer’s no, move in the other direction.

And I moved my hand that way. So it could, it could feel what it felt like and then, I asked myself, Okay, self, do you live in Colorado? And I waited five seconds, nothing, eight seconds, nothing. 10 seconds, 11 seconds, somewhere in there. All of a sudden my hands started twitching, just the smallest movements, and it started making this little tiny clockwise circle.

That was Yes. And I, I dropped the pendulum cuz I kind of, you know, like, Whoa, I, I didn’t do that consciously. I didn’t do that, but my hand did that. And then that was the first moment I, I kind of realized, wait, there’s something actually to all this unconscious stuff. And so I started reading more about it.

Ultimately I found a course advertised online here through someone who certifies. In hypnosis, in hypnotherapy, and I signed up for it. More out of curiosity, like, yeah, one of the things I’m committed to in life is leading an interesting life. And when I saw that hypnosis course, I immediately, it immediately resonated, Oh, this is, this would be an interesting thing to do.

This fits with leading an interesting life. And so I signed up by the end of the first day, or maybe it was the second day, which was all that intro. But it turned out the intro was part of a longer certification process if you wanted to continue on. Mm-hmm. , I knew I was gonna take the course and about halfway through the course, it was, you know, like a 300 hour certification program.

Halfway through that course I knew this is what I wanna do, this is what I wanna do with my career, because I wanna be able to put a lot of time and, and energy into this and not have to put that time and energy into something else to earn a living. So that’s a very quick version of how I came to hypnosis.

It was more out of growing as a person to heal myself. And now looking back, I can see that I was doing self hypnosis at moments along the way. Yeah. But I didn’t know what I was doing. That’s that aspect that I, I never get tired of, of people who, you know, give that discovery of this is something that I was already doing, but now I can do it on purpose.

And especially that nuance of sort of discovering a pendulum and one of those moments of correct me on this, that sort of brief experience of, Huh, that’s actually doing so. That’s actually doing something. And it was a moment. Some people talk about the experience of hypnosis as a happening rather than a doing.

Yeah. And that was the moment where it was happening to me. In my experience, inside of my experience, it was happening to me and it was like, Whoa, there’s something going on here. There’s more to this than, than I thought. It’s not just some novelty trick. It’s like this is actually a real part of my being.

Right. Even to branch off of that example with the pendulum even to go into the, you know, definitions of Idiomotor response and the micro muscular movements still, Wow. , Yes. That because I’m thinking something, it’s producing a result somewhere else in the body, and even from a personal change perspective, how many other places am I doing.

Yes, and, and there’s a part of me and then by extension, a part of each of us that has something to say about what’s happening in this moment. That is not the part of me that is thinking about stuff. Mm-hmm. , that was, that was enlightening. That was a revolution. And it was like, Oh, maybe this is why I’ve had so much struggle that that was an insight into the moment where it was like, Oh, this thinking part of my mind, maybe this is not the answer to everyth.

Yeah. Yeah. I had really, uh, put that part of my mind through, through the ringer trying to come up with, I, I was trying to think my way to, to happiness was what I was doing. Mm-hmm. . But I, I ultimately ended up realizing that’s not gonna work. There is no tree structure of logic I can construct, where if I get the right initial conditions and the logic’s all consistent, that’s gonna end up at somewhere called happiness.

It just doesn’t work that way. And that Idiomotor response was one of the key insights along the way in my journey. Nice. Nice. So then out of curiosity, what was the career path? Before I was a software developer. Yeah. And I had studied mathematics in in undergrad, and I loved math. I love logic. I mean, it’s like the ultimate use of the rational, conscious mind.

I felt very comfortable there. I wasn’t necessarily happy, but I was comfortable and I loved it and I still do. I still do love that part. It’s, I think it’s one thing that makes me kind of unique in the hypnosis world is this blend of the logical, rational side with the unconscious side. But I started a, So as a software developer Yeah.

And I did that for almost two decades and had a great career. I, I had a great career and I had ended up though drifting. Corporate America, big companies. I was in the banking industry. I had no interest in the banking industry. I was just doing what I thought I should do. Mm-hmm. and I had a realization somewhere in my early mid thirties that if I wake up one day, And I met retirement age, and I’m still doing this kind of work.

I’m still working on other people’s projects, making other people wealthy, and not doing something connected to my heart. I’m gonna be very angry. I’m gonna be furious with myself and disappointed. . Yeah. And so I started looking for other careers and I, I almost went in some other directions before I did hypnosis.

I, I’m also a musician and I almost moved out to the west coast to get into the music industry as a producer, and I took serious steps in that direction. And by the time I got to the actual. You know, yes or no point go or no go. I was, you know, in my mid to late thirties, and I just didn’t wanna get into that game.

That seemed like such a rat race to start, you know? And hypnosis was just coming onto my radar at that time. And it felt like, you know what, this is something I can do into my older age. Mm-hmm. and Jason to, to put it, one other aspect of that was the music thing. Yes, music is wonderful for other people, but it really was like more about me getting what I wanted out of, out of it.

But, And the hip, the hypnosis side. Really at its core was, you know what, if I’m gonna take a root in life, that’s about helping other people. This is more about helping others and fulfilling myself at the same time, it just felt like the right choice in the bigger picture. So I ended up being comfortable leaving the software industry, even though I still love it.

I still love. You know, putting on the headphones for eight hours and going off of my own world, and writing code, there’s something very satisfying about writing code. Yeah. And artful the same way. There’s something artful about hypnosis, but I was ready to leave it and do something new. Right. And it’s something you said about that combination of.

The logical constructs of everything as well as that creative aspect. I, I tend to ride that same fence of times to go, Well, it could be this, but then again it could also be that, you know, looking at even a technique and asking what else might be going on, what else may be occurring inside of that experience.

And, and you’re right, I, I’m seeing a lot of through lines here that we’ve known each other for a number of years, but I don’t think we’ve talked. On this level of things that I was one step away from taking the big production contract, working in management for theater and looking at the offer going, yeah, no, just no

Ah, I didn’t know. I knew you were in theater and involved in that, kind of involved in the arts in that way. I never actually knew how far you got before you had split off. Yeah, well there, there was the job opportunity to go even further. I was working major regional companies, but to take the next big step.

Being the basically assistant technical assistant production managers just going yet, No, I’m just not interested in that because here was this thing that was a hobby that, Oh, I can work 60 hours a week and get paid for 38 of them and not earn any money and have a hard time sustaining a living and have no social life.

Or here’s this thing where people’s lives are changing. Yes. And I get to be part of that. Yes. Which one? . And in fact, as, as we’re talking about this, another piece is coming back to me, that career provided me with a, a healthy income, you know, not, not the greatest of all time, but it was a solid income and.

I remember being on my own, unable to quit without, I had survived a lot of layoffs cause I was good at that kind of work. Mm-hmm. . But then there came an opportunity to be laid off when I wanted to. And I remember like that salary every two weeks. It was like the needle in the vein. I couldn’t, I couldn’t say no to the salary dropping into the bank account, but when I had the opportunity, To be part of.

This was a mass layoff cuz there was a merger happening. So like hundreds of people were going at once, I was able to say, Okay, yes, let me use this as a jumping off point from this, what I thought was a stable career. And as a lot of us know, as you get older, there really isn’t a stable anything. There’s just what are you creating in this moment and how are you setting up your future, present moments that aren’t here.

And then I was able to, to jump off into an unknown world and open a practice, and that’s the beginning of another story. So I left a comfortable life, but it really wasn’t that comfortable. Deeper down. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then in terms of getting things up and running and actually then launching this into a career, what were those steps that you took?

Well, maybe some of your listeners will be able to, I identify with this. I was in this place where I had dabbled a lot in a lot of things and I had dabbled in hypnosis and I had hypnotized my friends and you know, all that sort of thing. I knew if I didn’t jump with both feet, I wasn’t likely to commit at the level it was gonna take to remain.

In the game. Yeah. You know, get in the game. Stay in the game. I knew that if I didn’t cut off my connection to the old world of software, I was, I was likely to fall back on it. So I jumped in fully and I used some of the, the severance pay. I got to take some more advanced trainings. I actually flew to England to, did a couple trainings there cuz I wanted to learn the state of the art outside of just my home state, just outside of where I lived.

And I then, You know, I did some of the basic things. I created a website, I got an office space. I really had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing the steps to enable me to start working with people. And I also took this attitude, which for someone who was. Coming out of years of, of negative thinking, I look back and I’m kind of amazed at, at myself.

I took this attitude of I’m gonna do whatever it takes and whatever happens is going to be part of the path of it happening, right? So one of the things that I say to myself is, There’s no other way that this happens, other than the way that it is happen. There’s no other way that I become successful as a hypnotist other than the way I am becoming successful as a hypnotist.

Yeah. And I, I kind of jumped into to living that and I said, Okay, I’ve never even thought about running a business. It’s never been something on my, on my mind or in my desire. But if I have to run a business in order to be a hypnotist, that’s what I’m gonna do. Let me learn how to run a business. Yeah. And even to this day, I’m still learning how to run a business

And I’ll say that during this quarantine time, it’s actually been a great time for me to expand on that skillset because there’s a little bit of air, there’s a little bit of breathing space in in our lives, or at least in my life right now that. That wasn’t there before this. So I’m, I’m still learning how to run a business and get better at it, but I’m just, I look back and I’m like, Wow, where did I get that kind of courage that I hadn’t had a lot of times in life to just jump in and say, Whatever it takes, this is what I’m gonna do and I’m going to adapt and be flexible and turn negatives into positives the best I can and really make this thing happen.

There’s, there’s so much inside of what you just said there, that this is something that I struggle with at times, cuz my whole thing is as I talk business for hypnotist is that let me be that hypnosis business, Guinea pig and let it be, Here’s what I’ve done, here’s what I did, and here’s what I found to work.

And mine was the moment of signing the three year lease on an office. Under the premise of, well, now I have to make it work. Yes. As opposed to, No, I thought, I think back to, back in the day when I, I started with stage hypnosis and we’d sometimes do the fundraiser show for the high school and the booking model of that was, they had two options.

Option one was the no risk fundraiser. You sell the tickets, no risk. It will split the tickets, which means if they sold two tickets, it was a very long drive home or option, which because I was giving them promotional materials, if they actually use them, that’s the schools that would have, you know, 800 kids in the crowd.

And we’d both end up, you know, earning about two or $3,000 that night, which was not bad. Or option two was just by the, Hey, here’s the program. It’s 1,250 and this way, whatever you sell past those tickets, that’s all yours to keep. And the discovery was that the people, the schools that just bought the show were the ones that sold out the entire auditorium.

Would call me up two days before and apologize going, Hey, we’re really sorry. Can we move this to the gym? We’ve run out of seats in the. Oh, wow. If you have to, because why? The, the first category was the, it’d be nice to, you know, right, Well, maybe if we sell some tickets, we might have some extra money for prom versus, Okay, kids, we gotta sell 120 tickets, otherwise we’re losing money on this.

Right? So that, that’s skin in the game, which there, there’s a balance because that’s something that. Put myself in the position where it had to work and given the expense of the office the way that I had a subletter, the rev revelation was, Okay, I just have to book three clients a month to break even on this.

Yes. Which if I can’t do that, I’m not even trying. Yes. And you want to take risks. The one thing you’re kind of talking about is taking risks. You want to take risks in life and at the same time you want to. Smart risks. Yes. You wanna take intelligent risks and you know, I even remember just as you’re telling that story, I remember when I first started out, I had packages and I made, I think I had a three, I had a six and I had a 10.

And I didn’t really know, you know what, what each package was gonna. Before I just, you know, had to do something. Mm-hmm. . And I remember my first client that bought the six when he came in, We did the first session and it actually went really well. And in those days when you’re starting out, you, you, you’re relying on what you’ve been taught and the foundational stuff, but you don’t really have this experience base yet.

And. It went really well. And I was like, Oh wow. So this is great. And then he said, You know what? I don’t think you can really do what I wanna do in three sessions. Gimme the six sessions. And he threw down his credit card on my desk and I was like, Oh my God. , oh my God, you know, this is amazing. And then that calls me fourth to, Okay, well now what’s gonna happen next?

And so you, you just kind of put these challenges out there in front of you. You keep putting these challenges out there in front of you and know that you will find your way. Here’s another quick anecdote about that. I, as I mentioned, I play music and I began studying jazz piano, uh, probably about 10 years ago.

And my teacher, who is a phenomenal player, he’s a professional jazz player here in, in Denver, and he told me, he said, he said, New students, they think I’ve gotta be ready for the gig. I’ve gotta practice enough and when I’m ready, I’ll get the gig. He said, That’s not really how it works. He said, Book the gig first, and then you, then you go through a moment of gulp, oh my gosh,

And then, then you start working and you start practicing because you are living into the reality that you’re going to play that gig. And that’s kind of how I made the business happen. Or, or like selling those tickets for the show. You, you book it and then you start living into the reality, uh, that this is going to happen.

And you create that reality, and that’s kind of, you know, one more step along the way of growing a business, becoming a hypnotist out in the public. Well, it’s that classic phrase that the first person you hypnotizes yourself, and you know, this is that biggest motivational strategy, which think back to, and this is maybe not the most inspiring example, that you realize you’re in high school and the papers due tomorrow and you get it done.

That. And it’s probably gonna end up being the same paper you would’ve written if you did it over time. And in fact, maybe because of the rushed energy of it, the adrenaline of having to get it done, it might even perhaps be better. I live by the Lauren Michaels quote of, you know, for Saturday or Night Live, whether we’re ready or not, the show goes live at 1130.

Yes. And, and this is something, you know, the folks that were going through the, the train the trainer with for the ICP c h right now, this was that biggest advice that we gave them of, okay, so now you’re an instructor. and we’ve given some timelines about when you can offer your first course in terms of how much time it takes to fill an event.

So look at the calendar and go ahead and schedule your event now. Yes. You know this right now, you’ve got something to work towards because we, we are an industry of people where the majority of the people who are just the hobbyist or the ones going, Yeah, but I need that one other certification. I need this other class.

I need this other. Thing. And you know, there, there always is something else to learn. You mentioned, you mentioned website. It’s never done. There’s always never enough something that can be added to it, and there’s always another training. And the trainings are wonderful and they add real value and it’s easy to get lost in that.

It’s kind of sometimes when it comes to. Doing another training, doing another training. Back to the music metaphor, it’s like a synthesizer person who always wants a new synthesizer cuz it’s got new sounds on it. But you’re gonna do yourself a lot better service if you really get to know what you’ve already got and be able to master it and use it in a wide variety of ways rather than always kind of going for that new training.

And one other thing, it’s funny you mentioned writing a paper the night before it’s due. I’ve been using that exact metaphor, although the other way around, Around , during this quarantine time for some of my clients are looking for motivation and for example, I have some clients, someone who’s an athlete who had some.

Events that he was gonna be participating in that have been delayed due to the, the situation. Mm-hmm. . And so he’s coming at this, How can I stay motivated to keep training because I know it’s gonna happen at some point. And I’ve been using the metaphor like, well, we’ve all had times where we. The assignment is due and we wish we had started sooner, and we’ve all had times where the birthday for someone we care about is here and we wish we had started shopping for that gift sooner.

And now is exactly that time now is sooner. And how do you wanna be feeling when that time gets here? About how this time was spent? Yeah. And so I’ve been, yeah, you kind of turning that metaphor around backwards. To, um, allow people to have a, a way to relate to, to fitting in or to experiencing, Oh, yes, now is the time.

Right? And if I could have that time, what would I do with it? Here it is, you know, what do I wanna do? Well, it’s that every situation can become its own asset or its own problem that, you know, here’s the situation where someone goes, Well, you know, Oh, I love your story back to hoping to get laid off . I have so many clients right now, which, which.

You know, it used to be we were chatting before we jumped on, about 20% used to be online. Now it’s all of them. And the biggest revelation are the ones going, Yeah, I’ve kind of proven that I can do this from home and I don’t think I need to go back to the office and I’m gonna fight them on that.

Otherwise he goes. And now that I do it from home, I get the job done faster and I’m starting up my own business at the same time and I’ll, you know, transition over where, you know, we can use that time to our advantage. We can use that time to become every reason why things fall apart. We, we were chatting last night, I was teaching a class, a workshop online, and, and we got off on a tangent for a moment about the fact that, yes, there are some businesses that are closing down right now.

We’re talking major businesses, whether it’s Peer one or Jay Crew, or JC Penney, a and where the conversation went was. Well, you know, the virus and the pandemic may be a contributing factor, but then again, what weren’t they doing to be prepared? What weren’t they doing in advance? And you look at companies, you know, smaller clothing companies, maybe something like a Stitch Fix, which I tried and I once, and I still get their emails.

Everything still had to be altered being my height. Mm-hmm. . But , they’re sending me articles, they’re sending me photos and going, Hey, does this look like what you’re shopping for? And they’re engaging me as opposed to. Just being the store that’s trying to sell me something. Right. You know, they’re building value.

So it’s not necessarily just, you know, the world situation that’s closing these businesses. It’s been that perhaps unwillingness to move with the times. Right. And I’ve been able to rely, or to kind of hark back to that, Well, I’m gonna do whatever it takes to make this work. So I’m gonna figure it out. I’m going to jump in and, and learn and use every experience.

As as feedback. Now as it turns out, I have been doing online sessions before all this started, and it was for a very different reason. It was because I know what the life is like when you’re a software developer and you can work from anywhere. Yeah, and I wanted to begin to build that flexibility in, So I started doing online sessions, you know, a few years ago and the approach is, I’m going to figure this out.

And the road, I don’t know what the road looks like. I like to to say sometimes. It rains on the side of a mountain , and we don’t know how the water will run down the mountain. Mm-hmm. , But the water will run down the mountain. Yeah. And that’s what it’s like learning something like this. How to do online sessions, how to facilitate even more, uh, more effectively now.

Here’s an interesting thing some people are, are saying there, there’s absolutely no difference online to working in person. And you know, I, I don’t fully agree with that. I feel like in person has its charm. It’s, it has, its, there is a level of communication that happens when you’re in same room with someone.

That kind of only can happen that way. Yeah. And I love that. And with that said, When we talk about the effectiveness of a session, the effectiveness of helping someone change, I have found there actually to to be no difference. Yeah, I think that’s the delineation that we can say that it’s a very similar experience.

The results can be the same outcome. You know, I flash back to what’s popping to mind was years ago, and there’s a longer story around this, but I’ll just get to the point of it, which is that I was working to refer someone to a hypnotist in New York City, and the whole conversation led to at the time, okay, so there’s Melissa Tears, there’s Mark Carlin, and this story was years ago.

There’s also Michael Elner. Call all three of them. Well, which one’s the best? It doesn’t matter. Call all three, the one you like the best. That’s who you should work with. You’re gonna get the same result with all of them. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. So this time I’ve been looking at this as an opportunity to grow and what, what is being provided here?

What are the raw ingredients? It’s, it’s like if you were cooking a meal, what are the ingredients that are on hand? ? What, What can be done? And, and also, You know, I think Jason, in some ways it’s really cool to be able to say Jason to, to another person with that name, in some ways, using this as a time to grow.

Oh yeah. And in some ways, being a hypnotist, we have a double benefit. Not only we get to be a hypnotist and help others, but we get a dose of it ourselves. The more times we say certain kind of things, a little bit of that seeps in and yeah, and I found that I’ve been really calm throughout this whole time and really centered and grounded and almost from the beginning.

While on one hand you’re saying yes, there’s tragedy going on. There are people that are not well and some people dying and there’s financial chaos happening and without glossing over that or or pretending that’s not there. There’s also a lot of other stuff happening at the same time and what can come out of this, what can come out of this time that is going to.

Make my business stronger, gonna make my clients have a better experience. What is gonna be different when we reach the end of this time that I can be in a position to take advantage of? And I mean that from an altruistic point of view. How can I be positioned to help? When whatever starts to change, starts to change, it’s really been, like I said, an opening, a, a breathing, a time for me of healing and physical healing.

And it, it’s kind of an amazing thing. Again, without downplaying, without minimizing the other stuff, but really also at the same time focusing on what else is is happening, you know? Right. Well, it’s again, what can I do with it? The brain marketing event I did a couple of weeks ago with John Cook. There’s something he said on that event of, it’s a time to that it’s okay to take advantage of the situation.

Don’t take advantage of people. Right, right. Yeah. In fact, I would take it even further. If you don’t take advantage of the situation, you’re being foolish in a way. It’s because the situation is happening. Yeah. So if you don’t adjust to the change, if you’re captaining a boat on the ocean and the weather conditions change, and all of a sudden the, the waves are going at a different kind of, in a different rhythm, and you don’t adjust your boat to that, that’s kind of foolish that that would be not wise.

And so there, yes, there’s a very, there’s a difference between taking advantage of a situation in a way that. Helping everyone and trying to take advantage of people that, that I don’t think any of us would, would recommend. Which along, along that journey, I mean this pathway of, There’s a meme that’s online somewhere, which is the, it’s like a dialogue between a child and a teacher, and it’s like, how do I balance a checkbook?

Nope, here’s your record. What about like taxes and all of that? Nope. Here you go. Play this. What about like investing? Okay, we’re gonna play hot cross bun. That so many of the things that really are essential. It’s a bit of a shame that we kind of have to figure out on our own in terms of, you know, tracking our money, tracking our expenses, tracking, you know, how we actually keep our money and then put it into use.

I know we were connecting before on this when we actually got together, and last time I was out in Colorado. You want to share some of those thoughts around finances, on money, some of. Discoveries that you made along the way. Sure. Well, there, there’s a lot, You know, there’s the discoveries of how you run a business.

How does money work there? There’s the discoveries of how do I personally relate to money, how do I feel about that? And that’s a loaded, you know, for anyone pretty much, because you, you grow up in an environment and you get that programming. And I would actually, Broaden what you were just saying about, you know, what, how, what about money?

Here’s a recorder. Do this instead. You could broaden that to your, to your whole subconscious, you know, orientation, your whole subconscious way of being. We don’t get taught about that and we get handed a recorder, do this. And so there’s a lot that can be done there, specifically when it comes to the finance side of things, which briefly, the anecdote is, as soon as Claire came home from school with a recorder, I went online and I bought a book about investing that’s written for kids.

I’m like, Nope, , we’re doing both. Yes, and, And you’re gonna be doing her such a service. And I wish that I had learned a little bit about the unconscious and, and I think to the credit of, I don’t know, schools or society or parents, There is a little bit more of that happening. I, I had a friend tell me about how his kid learned this to do a sharkfin thing where you take your hand and you put it on your forehead when you’re feeling upset and you do a sharkfin where you bring it down along your chest, vertically down around to your stomach, and you kind of like notice what you’re feeling and where, and mm-hmm.

you know, for kids. And, and that stuff’s really great. I, I’m happy to hear that, that, Well, that would’ve been nice to know 20 years ago. Oh, it would’ve been amazing. It would’ve saved me a lot of grief and suffer. And I had more, would’ve had more confidence. But anyway, back about the financial side of things, it can’t be ignored and it’s important.

Uh, I have come to view money. Money is is just a placeholder. It’s just a placeholder for value. It’s a placeholder for social value. And it’s actually like chips in a casino. In a casino, you give them your money and you get chips, and then you do your thing and then you cash out your chips and you get money.

But in real life, Money is the, the chips, and it’s a placeholder for, for social value. And you can get social value out of society by putting value in, and you can cash those chips in somewhere else. And it’s like the oil in an engine. The point of an engine is not to have oil. But without oil, the engine doesn’t run that well.

Mm-hmm. . And that’s sort of what money is like. So you’ve gotta learn how to manage it. And certainly throughout this process right now, if I hadn’t gotten my act together in the last few years, because when you’re starting your business, you’ve got so much to focus on. And just learning the hypnosis side of things, learning the techniques, learning how to work with people, learning how to feel comfortable.

There really is something to that. Um, one thing that I feel like people who get really established in the hypnosis community and, and don’t take this personally. One thing that people who get really good at what they do and they do it for a long time, is sometimes they don’t remember quite as vividly what it’s like when you are starting out and you were having your first client or your first few clients, and.

And like, it’s all you can do to keep yourself together while you’re running through the, uh, the protocols that you, you know. Yeah. And, and it takes some time in the trenches just doing that. And that’s valid and it’s legitimate and I encourage people to hang in there and stick with it because you do move past that time.

I. And then at the same time, you know, it’s easy to leave the finances to the side. And if I hadn’t gotten my finances together before this time hit, I would’ve been in real trouble because there’s been, you know, it’s like a tilling of the soil right now. It’s, they’re going, you know, with the economy, it’s like the, the tractor and the field turning over the soil.

And that would’ve been my finances just getting thrown all about. Yeah, the exact same thought because back. If it was like 2006, 2007, maybe about 15,000, this is before the hypnosis really started to, you know, kick in in terms of a career path. At that point, about maybe $15,000 in debt, student loans. On top of that, a car loan and nonprofit arts is nonprofit for about everybody involved.

And I think at most, the amazing thing when I went from production assistant to equity stage manager, Go Union. My income dropped to 24,000 from 28. Mm-hmm. . So yeah, same thing. That instead of looking at, not just for, you know, the fact that I am earning more clearly now, but also the fact that, okay, we’ve cleared away the debts.

We’ve got money set to the side, the whole thing that. You know, whether it’s Su Orman or Dave Ramsey or Jim, any of these people Yes. About having that set of funds off to the side that, you know, that sort of rainy day funds, something happens, which, which that takes discipline. I think it’s actually a Dave Ramsey line about, you know, savings is an emotional issue, not a financial issue.

Hm. Of being willing to set it off to the side and not treat it as your own. Yes. Uh, what eventually then makes it so someone either can retire or has to work every single day the rest of their life. Yes. Yes. And being willing to dig in and learn how it works. Learn how the financial side of your business works because without that, there’s no rest of the business or you’re.

You’re just chugging along on fumes because you gotta work so hard and every dollar, it’s already spent before you, before you get it, and it’s not a way to go in the long run. So yeah, on the financial side of things, spend some time and learn about business aside from the hypnosis part of things, because without that, Then there is no hypnosis business in the long run, and all those people that would’ve gotten help from you, they don’t get help from you.

Thank you, , that that’s the mission behind it, which I’d share One of the resources I found to be invaluable, which is that if you have an accountant and you absolutely should, if they do not have the, the spirit of an. Of a teacher, fire them. And even if the one who is gonna step you through and go, Well, here’s what you can do.

I, I, I was having issues with the one that I had before. And the new one suddenly goes, Okay, your tax structure is entirely wrong for the shape of your business. You should be this structure. You need to be this format. And here’s what you should be doing. You also have the wrong retirement account, and here’s what we need to do about that before we start anything else.

I’m like, Thank you, . Yes. Someone who’s gonna be that educator role as opposed to just going, Okay, well you owe money this year. Okay, well you don’t owe money this year. It, it, it’s a learning process and of course it’s constantly changing. . Yes. And finding fits for you as an, as an energetic being is important.

It’s one thing that I’m really kind of digging into now is finding fits for what I’m doing and where I’m going. Because if you try to be like everyone, you, you don’t do a good job. Not everyone’s teeth, ev There could be. 10 teachers that have amazing programs, but if you find the two or three that like click with you, it’s a whole, it comes to life in a whole different way.

It’s, it’s even like finding your clients when you start to find the clients that click with you. And I say this as someone who I’m still learning, I’m still doing this, I’m still going through it. And I, but I’m starting to, to see it, It, it’s like, it’s weird how. It evolves. You, you’re running this business, you’re doing this hypnosis, this hypnotherapy with people, and then one year you get a whole bunch of people like a certain way and then outta nowhere, it just kind of stops or changes and you start getting people that are different than that.

Mm-hmm. and. And being open to those energetic shifts, even in the hypnosis. And I don’t know if you found this, I mean you, you must have it to some degree that the way you do the hypnosis really evolves. And I was listening to some of your other podcasts during this quarantine time. I mean, I listened to them, you know, even before this quarantine time and.

People talking about, you know, what kinds of inductions they use or techniques, and then others saying, Well, you know, I don’t really use inductions quite in that way anymore. And, and even that kind of evolution, I found myself like, I barely even use an induction all of a sudden. Yeah. And what I was so, so obsessed with it.

Everyone’s like, I gotta like get good at this. And then once you get good at it, it was like, I, I don’t even really need to do that. My energy just evolved and, and the results have gotten better, but it’s not necessarily about the induction or the not induction, it’s about my own evolution and connection to what’s happening and drawing the people to me that engage that way.

Yeah. Yeah. I’d say the biggest. Sort of shift for me, let’s say in the last six months. You know, I’ve fallen into a familiar pattern with the techniques, which is where, you know, my whole mindset is to go, here are these flexible tools, and it’s a matter of how they’re replied to the person as opposed to just, you know, a system.

But the bigger shift has been the refining of, you know what, these are the exact categories I wanna work with. This is that personality type that I know I get the best results with. So this has been a time where I’ve kept up seeing as many clients for about three weeks, seeing a lot more, just because the calls were coming in.

I’m like, Okay, they’ve got a need for it. Let’s adjust the schedule. But since then, pulling back from that to about where the schedule was before, but really from the mindset of let’s now get into. And look at it from a perspective of these are those people. This is Richard non guard’s slide. I’m just gonna take on those clients.

I absolutely know I’m gonna get a hundred percent success with Yes. You know, And if someone else, if in my head I’ve got an amazing network, and right now we’re all local. So yes, this call comes in and immediately I flash to, you know what, when Kelly T. Woods was on the program, she talked about this. Hey, you know what?

You should work with her for this. She’s West Coast. So, you know, do the math in terms of ours here is people, you know, commenting things on groups and folks that I’ve known and I’ve been sending a ton of referrals during this time. Mm. But it’s not that I feel I can’t help them, it’s that instead I feel this is the person I think does that phenomenally well.

And here are the other things I’m excited about right now. Yes, to give ourselves permission that we don’t have to take every single call. We don’t have to take every single client. Yes, and I think that is a real sign of maturity, either as an individual or as a hypnotist or as a business professional. I think this is also a good one of those places to, to say to the new people out there that are just starting.

That you will hear and you do hear, you’ve got a niche, niche to get rich. You know, you’ve gotta narrowed down. And that kind of, at least for me, it’s happening over time. And I, I tried to do that in the beginning, but I didn’t know myself and my practice that well yet and my, what I really wanted to do. So in the beginning it, it, there is a element of, well, yeah, let me see a whole lot of different people for a whole lot of different stuff and start to find my way and for.

People, I don’t know why I’m feeling that way in my heart today, to, to, to stay out to those people. Keep going, keep going. Even if you don’t know what your niche is and it, it, it seems like you try to do it, you try to niche and, and it doesn’t really come to you right away. Keep going, keep sticking with it and then eventually you get to what you were just describing, which is more of a mature, and I, I use that.

Gently. Yeah. . It’s a, it’s an evolved, It’s a, it is a, it comes with experience, it comes with practice and comes with actually seeing a lot of people that aren’t what your niche is. Oh, yeah. To challenge it. And, you know, back to where we started in this chat, the, the, you know, Anecdote about a website. It’s never done.

There’s always something else. And then suddenly, you know, and even some of the things that we get known for, it was never, it was never originally my plan to become the guy working with people for their businesses. Mm-hmm. . But that was something I found that people were noticing that I was doing. And they wanted to know how to do it.

The, the category of working with, you know, weightlifting athletes and public speakers, which is a weird transition, was because these people were reaching out to me and I found, Hey, this is kind of interesting because there’s some real measurable success. You know, and here’s a different category to go.

You know what, I think this person may be a better fit for that. Just to, just to keep us on time so we can wrap, let’s say in the next five minutes or so to keep it on schedule. Yeah. If you had to kind of unpack it, what would you say is that biggest takeaway in terms of, let’s say, grabbing back control of the finances in your life?

Well first is to stop being afraid of it. Mm-hmm. , when, when the finances are not the way we want them to be, there’s a tendency to wanna put our head in the sand, or we don’t wanna open the spreadsheet. We don’t wanna open the, the budget and look at edit. Yeah. Because it doesn’t feel good. That’s the truth.

It doesn’t feel good when it’s not the way we want it to be. And what, what’s important to realize is, That feeling of not feeling good, looking at it, that is a better feeling to have than the feeling of not look, uh, not looking at it over time and then ending up somewhere. Cuz you’re still gonna have to deal with it eventually.

So to become comfortable with it, let go of that. Or, or, or just. You know, do it anyway. Feel that feeling and let that feeling know it’s okay and then do it anyway. And really start to learn how to manage the finances. I will give a quick shout out to a, a program, this is not hypnotist related, but it’s a program I did called Profit for Keeps, which is an online program people can go do if they want to.

I don’t know, Jason, if you usually have people, um, promote other people’s programs. Oh yeah. Go for it. I love that. Yeah. So it’s a woman, her name is Amber Dugger. And she is awesome and she runs, she created a program that’s a blend of some stuff that’s taken from Mike Mac Callow’s, uh, Profit First. Mm-hmm.

combined with a budgeting tool called yab. You need a Budget and they’re both phenomenal and she blended them. And that program profit. For keeps really changed my financial life and so I recommend that to anyone starting out. I wish I had had that from the beginning. So that’s ano, that’s something that people can do to get their business on a little more solid footing.

And also their were emotions. She’s very good about addressing the emotional part and the unconscious. She doesn’t use that, that word, but the unconscious beliefs around finances and money in a nurturing kind of way. So that’s something I would highly re. To your listeners. Nice. And how can people get in contact with you?

Yes. Well, my practice is called Mines Eye Hypnotherapy, which is spelled in my creative moment of insight. , M I N D Z A I. Hypnotherapy Mine’s eye hypnotherapy, which I love. And at the same time, you know, for people who run a business, it’s one of those names that half the people get and they love it. And some people call me cuz they love the name and then, and then other people call and they have no idea how to say it.

Is this mimsy, you know, ? So, so, you know, I, I feel like I c but Colorado hypnosis or something like that was already taken, so, Mine’s eye. hypnotherapy.com is my website and people can contact me through there. And that’s the main way that I’m doing it right now. I think I’m kind of just before a period while I, where I’m gonna be reaching out into the community in new ways and for right now, kind of at the tail end of the first chapter of this, this business.

Nice. Nice. This has been fantastic having you on, especially, you know, that moment of jumping into something new, holding yourself fully accountable, and what you said there about, I’m trying to remember whose catchphrase it was that the things you ignore, they don’t go away, they just get worse. And that moment to look at something and you know, to kind of have to become, you know, our own manager, our own boss, our own parent, sometimes around, okay, I’m not allowed to have that thing.

I’m not allowed to buy that. Any final thoughts to share with the listeners out there? Just what I would share right now is to take advantage of whatever is going on. So yes, these are unpredictable times or they’re unknown times, and at the same time, ground back into the present moment, what’s actually happening right now in this moment, and what can you do to contribute?

How can you give away contribution and value and grow your business by doing that and grow your health and your own wellbeing by doing that? Because the world needs as many healthy people as it can get. Reaching out to help others, and that can be done during this time. Jason, let it here once again and as.

Thank you so much for interacting with this program. Again, we’re gonna give you those links in the show notes [email protected], the easiest places to go and leave some reviews online to help us to reach an even bigger audience. You can check out the links to Jason Ton’s website over at the show [email protected] as well.

And once again to be a part of the free on demand hypnotic Pricing Formula work. Which is a fancy word for webinar. Uh, simply head over to hypno formula.com. That’s where you can find the details and sign up for that and get instant access to that event. Once again, hypno formula. Dot com. Thanks everybody for being a part of this ongoing project, supporting this amazing community.

Thanks to everyone for also reaching out to the guest and supporting them as well, and bringing the conversation into the, uh, public work smart hypnosis community on Facebook, and can’t wait to see you all in person soon. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.