Session #279: James Vera on Hypnotic Growth

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

---

This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 279, James Vera on Hypnotic Growth. 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. So it’s an interesting thing that many of us have taken our businesses, our training events, our client sessions.

Online, just out of necessity is that’s kind of what 2020 has kind of presented to us. That being said, many of us were doing sessions and trainings online in advance of that. However, I wanted to make it a point to have James Vera on the program here who may be a new name to many of you, but someone you’re gonna come to know and respect very quickly as you hear this incredible personal conversation with someone who sincerely cares about the results of his clients because it was actually.

Seven or eight years ago that James put together a website specifically highlighting doing sessions online, which you’ll hear the funny website that I’m now realizing I should have done years ago. But then again, everything else is working, so, uh, perhaps not. So if you’re local to me, grab the website.

You’re gonna hear the story. But what’s cool about this conversation with. Is first of all, you’re gonna hear again the sincerity to his approach to how he worked with his clients, but also an amazing appeal in terms of how he really gives credit where it’s due. And I say that not just because he spends a lot of time talking about my program, which when he joined it, it was called Hypnosis Business Bootcamp.

This is what’s now [email protected]. But more so too, how James references. The Jack wins, Mike Bendel, Chris Thompson, Sheila Grainger, people who he’s learned from, that this is one of those admirable qualities in our profession that I tend to find quite openly is part of the longevity of a lot of people in our field.

That willingness to give credit where it’s due, which makes me now tell a story on the podcast that I have never told before. And the story is about Don Martin. Who’s out in the St. Louis area, well known in the National Guild of Hypnotist NGA Circles. This is not a story about Don. This was a story about two people who were in the audience at one of Don’s presentations.

You’ll see why I tell the story. I’m at a conference and someone suddenly goes, Did you see Don Martin just premiered a brand new pain relief t. And I go, Cool, Tell me about it. What was it? Well, he took someone’s hand and he made it numb, and they moved the numbness around their body. I’m like, That, that, that’s glove anesthesia.

They go, No, this is different. It’s like on their hand where they would wear a glove. He filled it up with anesthesia. And seriously, I had to respond. You just use the words glove, anesthesia, and again, this. And I finally told Don the story when I last saw him as well, . But again, this willingness to research our profession, this willingness to give credit where it’s due and this willingness, and this is a big part of this conversation that I, you’re about to listen to, the willingness to make it our own.

because it becomes that blend, that morph of our techniques and how we customize for the individual in front of us and whether it’s some of the business strategies, which again, thank you James, for doing an amazing job of highlighting, you know, some of the results that you’ve seen as a result of using some of the principles I’ve shared in the hypnotic business systems program.

But more so as well, this ability to make it his. And this strength as I now has become one of my key phrases, frameworks, equal freedom. That when we have a framework, it allows us to appropriately sit back and really listen to the client, customize to the person in front of us, because now it only takes a few specific modifications to make the process be exactly what they.

When they need it. So you’re gonna hear from a true hypnotic worker in this conversation, and it’s an absolute delight to finally have James here on the program. You can check him out [email protected], which will link to that in the show notes [email protected]. And well, he brought it up, so let’s mention it too.

Check out Hy. Business systems.com. You don’t have to struggle. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when you’re starting up. So this is why I’ve published what I did to get the business up and running, as well as what’s working right now. And this is now a lifetime access all Access pass program, which even once you’re paid into the hypnotic business systems community.

We keep adding new stuff to it. So, uh, I may need to reach out to James to go, Have you seen this video yet? Cuz you mentioned this one thing and that’s why we put something in there. So again, an evergreen growing library to give you the support that you need to continuously either start or scale up your hypnosis business.

You can check that out hypnotic business systems.com or get a bit of a preview hypno formula dot. James brought up the story of me insisting he raises prices. I’ve actually got a webinar specifically around the theme of adding more value to the work that you do, and you can check that out. Feel free on [email protected].

So couple of links to explore though. Here we go. Episode number 279, James VE. On hypnotic growth. The first entry in hypnosis actually was when I met a woman, a respiratory therapist, but I met a woman who had stopped smoking. I was doing her interview. Asking her if, if she had stopped smoking because she had C O P D.

She said, Oh, yes, I stopped 20 years ago. And I said, Really? How did, how did you stop? And she said, she stopped through hypnosis. And I really started laughing. I, I really didn’t believe her. I said, Wait a minute. You like, how, how long did that take? She said, No, I walked into this guy’s office, I promise you.

And then I walked out an hour later and I never smoked again. Mm-hmm. . So I said, Well, geez, as a respiratory therapist, instead of just telling people to stop smoking, like maybe I. Learn how to do that. And so I Googled and I found a local organization that that got me started. It was a great foundation, at least to get me out the door, and I thought I knew a lot when I first started and realized as time continues to go dow the rabbit hole, that you just keep learning and learning.

Yeah. So then from that training then, what were some of the steps that you did to kind of get things up and rotting? To launch it as a business. To launch it as a business. My first mistake was I rented space from another hypnotist, and when my bookings started to exceed that person’s bookings, they told me that my, their space was no longer available.

So I, I did something really weird that I had read in a, it’s not really weird to us, but maybe weird to some people. I had read the Magic of Believing years ago by Clog Bristol. Yeah. So I said to myself, Where I went to bed one night, I said, Subconscious mind, you know, you’re in a pickle. You need an office, you better get one and go figure it out.

And this I have, I’ll tell, I, I don’t even mind saying the price. I say I need an office for $300 a month. And I kid you not, The next day on Craigslist, I found the most beautiful office for $300 a month. And the funnier part about it is, is that seven years later, I still occupy that office. Yep. So then the next step was to try to start to hang with the winners.

I guess, I know that’s kind of a corny phrase, but you know, start to learn what other people who were successful in the industry. Kind of stay away from the negative people. Hang, you might, and let’s pause that for a second. Cause I wanna go back to what you said about the office space. Just to highlight something in there that you know it, it’s the myth that it has to be massively expensive to have that space.

And you actually, up until I bought the location that I’m in now, every office I had ever. Was a Craigslist find. That’s fine. Yeah. And even right now there’s a student of mine, I’m gonna change the cities for, to keep it anonymous here, but a student of mine that imagined he’s now moving from Boston to like somewhere in North Carolina.

And he was looking in, the thought was, well, you know, in the midst of everything, you know, Covid, I’ve been doing sessions online and I don’t think I wanna do an office again. And just on a whim, we did a search in the city he’s moving to to find here was the commercial sublet and a psychologist office.

That was a really, really big, beautiful space. 250 a month. Beautiful. And he goes, Oh hell. Even if I just go there and do the zoom sessions from there. Exactly. That’s gonna be easier than. You know, up until Covid 19, I was doing 50% of my business was in person in Cheshire, Connecticut at the office. And the other 50% was basically, you know, kind of taking your old program called the boot camp.

Work Smart Hypnosis is the podcast which you’re currently a guest on. Welcome, and Hypnotic Business Systems. Is the program it It’s the scene from, uh, Monte Python. It’s the scene from, Yeah, it’s the scene from Monte Python, Life of Brian, where they’re arguing about the names of Jud and People’s Front, or the people’s front of Judea.

I thought we were the popular front. Where is he? He’s that guy over there. Yeah, so we know. So in any case, when it was, But see, I feel honored because when I say boot, There’s only a select few of us that know Yeah. About boot camp. Right. And I’ve got to watch boot camp evolve. Exactly. And so that’s, that’s been fun.

But no, my whole idea in starting online hypnosis now.com was so I could see some people in the office, but that I could become a snowbird and spend the rest of my time in Palm Springs, California. And that’s why I set up the business kind of to, to do both. And, and what’s ironic as I, as we were talking before is the Covid 19 has just turned into all televideo sessions.

And here’s the incredible thing, Jason, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, cuz I know you’re probably doing some of these yourself. But I think what’s incredible is that I’m noticing that the success rate I had, I had a woman stop smoking in her car because she couldn’t do a video session in her house.

Cause her kids were off the wall. Yep. So she went to her car and did it over her cell phone. She just, and that was at the beginning of the stuff in March. She just wrote me a letter the other day. She said, I, she cannot believe she is three months smoke free. and that she, you know, did it in her car and that she’s been trapped in the house with her kids and still has not smoked.

Yeah. So the hypnosis online, I think because people are in their own environment, I think it’s, it’s, there’s, there’s a, there’s an impact there and I, I, I don’t have it measured scientifically, but I can definitely tell you that my success rates with my clients, or I should say, Access rates. Mm-hmm. have really shot through the shot through the roof with the video stuff, The telephone.

Yeah. Uh, you’re making me realize that I should have years ago bought, cause I’m in the Washington DC area, Pentagon parking lot, hypnosis.com, . Cause that, I mean, ever. Ever since opening up in Virginia in 2009, that had always been a category of, you know, at one point the phone session, then video stuff on phones got easier.

But the number of people who left the Pentagon job to go sit in the parking lot in their car and do the session. You, you were sharing something a moment ago before we talked Craigslist for a moment around surrounding yourself with better knowledge, looking for who are the people that were successful and what are they doing?

You were starting on that. Could you share some more on that? Yeah. So at first, you know, I have to tell you, I, I mean, I’m gonna be really candid and transparent here, and I think you know that me, that’s me as a person. So I can tell you that in the beginning I found a lot of garbage. Mm-hmm. , you know, I found a lot of programs that were old.

They were dated, They no longer worked. And you know, and I know this is gonna sound like a cheesy plug for you, but you’re actually, when I joined the bootcamp and I found it through a friend, a friend told me when I was frustrated with all the old crap and I was putting. Putting down the fact that I was just tired of old being pedaled old traded ideas from people who knew how to pedal, which irritated me further.

But nonetheless, as a newbie, when I came across the bootcamp, Listen, I don’t use some of the ideas that you taught me in the bootcamp anymore. They were great launching stuff. I use a lot of the other ones, but there are some of the beginning ones. Like for example, I started with Groupon. Yeah, I got a ton of business from group.

But there, there came a point in my business when I didn’t have any more $30 slots available. Yeah. And, and so that phased itself out, but that made me a lot of money. Which the cool thing of that is to look at any strategy, which we don’t have to do there. There’s a conversation I had with someone who was calling me yesterday for a training event, and you know, this person very clearly wanted to learn stage hypnosis and was calling about a hypnotherapy training and I just had to call it out to go.

This is not a class that’s gonna teach you how to book cruise ships. By the way, have you turned on a television in the last six months? , maybe not the best part of it. Going through right, right now. Yeah. Maybe not the market I’d be, uh, going after right now. Should come back at some point. But again, yeah.

Really right now, but you know, where, you know, looking at the, the goal of looking at how do I outgrow this? So like you, for example, you mentioned previously that you were subletting from another hypnotist and that became a bit of a challenge. And even if the startup strategy is the space where this is not quite ideal.

Okay, let me do this for a while and let me outgrow it. I, I think too many put down the category of group on or living social. Because they go, Oh, it’s cheapening what we do. It’s, it’s the way that I’m sure you got a whole bunch of clients really quickly and you got really good at it because you had to.

Yeah. And not only that and, you know, I got a, a grief, some came just for the $30 group on thrill. Yeah. You know, and, and that’s what it was. And, but then I, I gotta tell you, I was just getting a text from a guy who, who wants hypnosis for his daughter, who’s got extreme anxiety right now. Young teenage girl.

But he was a group. Mm-hmm. , he was a Groupon guy. And I gotta tell you, I can’t even count how many referrals Yeah. That this, this man has given me, including himself. I’ve seen him through his divorce. I’ve seen him through, I mean, all kinds of stuff. He’s a, he’s an executive. He has set me, psychologists have come to me from him.

I mean, it, it’s just, and that was all from Groupon. Another thing I did that I no longer do, but it was really successful. B and I, Yeah. You know, I joined a networking group and guess what, That was new for me to have to be able to get up in front of people and talk like I’m talking to you right now, and be able to give you a five minute elevator speech about my business and what I do.

And you know what I became, I don’t know what I was. Shake your lambs tail vice president or something, whatever the little contain thing is. But nonetheless, I, I rose up through the ranks and got my meetings for free or whatever for a while. Yeah. But again, the day came when I was driving in subzero weather up here in the northeast to a BNI meeting at leaving my home at quarter of six in the morning for a seven o’clock meeting before my other job.

And I thought to myself, Do I really need to keep. You know, my calendar’s booked three months out. Yeah. And then I’d be like, Well, Jason Ette said in the bootcamp, You can raise your prices once you’re . Well, here’s the thing though, too. Let’s highlight. I love the catch phrase, and yes, it’s some meme somewhere online, but you know, stop calling them soft skills.

Just call them skills. That the years in B and I was the timeframe, at least for me, where I was getting really good about my messaging. How do I be concise about what do I do? How do I explain in a short span of time, this is what hypnosis is and this is what it isn’t. And that became that testing ground where the stuff I hopped by getting up and speaking about it back then.

That’s now what my videos are on the. So the videos that look more polished and more put together and people really go, Wow, that messaging is really good. It’s like, well, yeah, but it didn’t start that way. That’s where it started. And I had the same thing that we don’t get the snow so much down in Virginia that way, but sitting in a meeting.

And I had put up a video, and I do this at times where it’s like, Okay, I’m gonna be outta town for about three weeks for something. Let me just stick up a video and go a little bit more direct to sales than I normally do. Hey, it’s Jason. Let me tell you how the hypnosis works, and here’s how we begin.

Here’s the pricing. If you wanna sign up, the link is below. And I, I don’t have that on the website at all times. If I’m in a spot where I can’t do the velvet rope thing the way that I do it now, we just put the pricing on the website and go, Hey, we’re already booked when I get back. Let’s see what happens.

And I had done that and I’m sitting in the meeting and it’s like another person just signed up from the video. Another person just signed up from the video. Another person just signed up from the video. Yeah, I think I’m done with this . Right? Right. So to look at what do we get from the experience that what you start with is not always where you have to end up.

And just because it worked at the beginning, I don’t do high school fundraisers anymore. Right. But, but I gotta tell you, I mean, and I don’t know, I haven’t really shopped a lot of programs since I joined the boot camp, and I’m proud to say I’m a lifetime member now of that program and the evolvement. But the, the thing is, is that it was the first time that I was profitable.

Yeah, off of an idea. Mm-hmm. and that you don’t really seem that threatened, that you share your ideas, that become profitable for other people. You know, it’s sort of like one time this guy I knew was gonna open up a pizza joint here in Connecticut, and I said, a pizza joint. I said, There’s pizza joints all over the place.

He said, Yeah. He said, There are pizza joints all over the place and that should tell you that there’s enough for. There’s enough people to order pizza to make everybody wealthy. Yeah. And there’s enough people to that need hypnotists to make wealth hypnotists wealthy, you know? And that’s what I like about the program, is that it shares today’s ideas.

Hey, you know, you did one day, I don’t know if you even remember this, you said, Hey, for all those that are part of boot camp, if you want me to review your website, hop on a live call and I’ll look through it and I’ll make comments for. And you did. And you know, you were like, Oh, great. You know what? And, and you were like, I can’t really find too many things on your website that I would change.

And that was only because the website was designed basically off of what you had said to design the website. Like have a call to action and you know, all the basic things that you talk. And then you reviewed it and you were like, Yeah, that, And I gotta tell you, it took a while to get natural seo. I had this conversation with Howard Cooper one time.

We were having a a, a chat and we were talking about, you know, getting the website and success and all that stuff, and. And he said, Well, you know, tell me some of the things that you’ve done. And I said, Well, one of the things I did was consistently wrote articles. Mm-hmm. for my website, made it a blog site in the beginning.

And I wrote, and I committed to three articles a month, even if I was repetitive at times. Mm-hmm. . And, you know, seven years later, I have a content. Packed. Oh yeah. Site. And now I’ve started, you know, the YouTube channel. It’s your mind. So give it a minute. And I’m interviewing guys like you to talk about what people can do for their own mind, for mind maintenance.

And we’re all talking about working out and eating better and all these things, but people forget to, to maintain their mind. And especially through all this, this is a great time for people to, to be hearing different perspectives, but really, Like Howard said, if you told anybody that the idea was to just write three articles a month and eventually your site will bring in business, most people wouldn’t want, wouldn’t do the consistency first of all, and they wouldn’t think that it was something that simple that they could do.

Well, there’s a, there’s a conversation that popped up in the trainers group for the other instructors for the ICP c h, and someone goes, You know, what would you do if you want to fill your classes? And I had to respond, put out a podcast for six years, every week, . Right? But the, the themes of, well, let’s take this into a teachable moment, which is that the themes of frequency and recency that consistency, because first of all, Google’s rewarding you because they wanna see that the website is getting updates.

They wanna see that the business is still actually running. But it’s where you can’t really, You used to be able to game the system with Google, but now you can. Because as soon as they realize you’re gaming it by just, you know, putting crap links out there and having it point back to your website, the stuff that.

I’ll just say it here. If you were to hop on five and pay someone 20 bucks to do that, don’t because what they’re doing is the old game, which doesn’t work and may penalize you nowadays, but I love that the core of this is provide better experiences for your people. That’s the solution, which correct me on this, James.

There’s been moments where maybe someone has reached out to you and had a question and you didn’t have to sit and type a 20 minute response to them. You were able to say, Hey, here’s an article that actually addresses that. Exactly. Here’s the next step. The same as this morning. It was a very short phone call because the person had not watched anything on the website, which turns into me going.

Hey, tell you what, Monday at nine 30, is that time also good because this will be a better conversation after you’ve watched the material that I’ve sent you because, and here’s, I forget where I got this line. The video is gonna answer a lot of the questions you might already have, plus the ones you haven’t yet thought to ask.

And now they’re prepared. Now they’re educated. It’s the whole unsophisticated to sophisticated transition. We’re leading with value. And you know, there’s that asset that that doesn’t go away, that could be repurposed into a. James do it. That could be repurposed into, you know, things on a YouTube. The, the biggest thing that people fail to realize in terms of content, all the stuff that you and I think is extremely.

Is someone else’s very specific pain point. And just to figure out what are the questions people are asking. And that’s what we write around. That’s what we produce videos on. That’s what we open up these conversations on. And now the, that’s what my articles are about. Yeah. I mean, they call me with questions and, and or I, something came up with a client or I have a client that had success at something, or I had had success at something.

I mean, let’s bring up the, uh, if you don’t mind, segue over to, uh, another program. That you had teamed up with, which was the uh, Sheila Ranger virtual gastric band. Yeah. Here’s what’s interesting. You know, when I was in high school, I was five eight and I was 150 pounds, and that was my weight for a long time.

And as I got older, I got thicker. And I’m not a big fan of exercise, so I actually had a friend of mine who also did the shield gra come over and do the four sessions with me, and I lost 28 pounds. Nice. Which was fantastic. But then I stayed there and I wasn’t happy because you see for me, if I’m gonna do weight loss, and I know this is no judgment on anyone else who does weight loss, but for me, my own personal thing is I wouldn’t sit there and have a c.

In the office while I’m trying to get somebody to stop smoking. I don’t want to be hugely overweight while I’m working with weight loss clients, because then it just like, Well then why? If this virtual gastric band is so great, then why haven’t you put it in ? Mm-hmm. , you know, so I hit this wall. And there’s a woman in, in a local area over here.

I, I don’t agree with all of her methods, but one of her methods is, is that she basically works with people that will only eat a keto or a paleo diet, which is very similar to some eating things that I’ve learned from Chris Thompson. You know, Chris, and he takes very good care of himself. So I started on this, I hypnotized myself to do keto during the, with, with the ver gastric band.

And I gotta tell you, I just recently, from June 1st until now, just reduced another 12 pounds. Nice. So, and, and I don’t see it stopping from here. I didn’t realize I heard, uh, Vinny there from the Jersey Shore. Yep. I don’t like cheesy shows like that, but he said something in an article which was really, really smart cuz he had lost 50 pounds and he looked fantastic and he said, I have to realize I’m Italian.

I crave carbohydrates, but they don’t like me. And so I finally, you know, the light bulb went off. All the Chris Thompson talk went off and I realized, you know, Yeah, okay, smaller portions, you’re doing smaller portions. I even did 16 eight where I was fasting for 16 hours and at this wall, and then all of a sudden you cut out all the sugar and all the carbs, and this is what I’m doing with my clients right now.

I’m asking, Would you like me to help you cut out all the sharp sugar and carbs, the ones that are going for it? The weight loss, Jason is incredible. Yeah. It’s taken that virtual gastric band program now and, and basically, Super superpowered it, you know? Well, what’s beautiful about that is, again, we can give the option, and I’m sure some want to go that direction, some might not.

Yeah. Some say no, they wanna do their weight Watchers or whatever. I, I go with whatever I tailor. But this is where, again, looking, looking outside of our industry for things that, Well, let’s, let’s rewind back for a moment. If you look at every hypnotic technique that we use, other than like specific induction methods, like the techniques we use for.

All of these methods had an origin somewhere else. And, and what are we doing? We’re using hypnotic suggestion to make that thing more effective. So why, This is why I appreciate the work that Richard non guards said in recent years around taking the themes of mindfulness and his applications of that into hypnosis.

But like you did, here was a quote from Jersey Shore Guy . Um, no, and here’s another one too. I did the whole keto style. I did. I, I’ve learned this trick when someone says they’re doing keto, you go, Are you doing keto or are you doing keto ? Cause there’s some who are just doing low carb and that’s a different category.

But no, I actually have a key. I actually have a keto meter. Yeah, exactly. . That, that, that’s keto as opposed to keto. No, but the, the experience where I did the whole higher fat, lower carb, and I did the Bulletproof Coffee for a while as well. The whole Dave Asbury thing, which has origins older than he is, and there were flaws I found in his book.

And there were people who went after some of his research and yes, he was selling his own coffee. I’ve seen him speak a great guy. But there’s one line in that book, Bulletproof Diet. Where he goes. The older you get, you sooner or later realize that certain foods in a very non-scientific way are toxic to you.

And I read that and went, There it is. Yep. Because I’m like, at this point, here’s the food. If I eat that, I just don’t feel good the next day. Right. If I eat that, there’s the water retention for a few days and it just stays on. Mm-hmm. , And I’ve found a way to kind of emulate that phrase in a segment with clients around you just reach that point where you realize.

It’s not even for the sake of elimination diet. Just, you know what? This thing just doesn’t fit anymore. The other one you’ve probably heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, social media guy. His, uh, it’s not about him, it’s his trainer, Jordan. Scit Jordan has an amazing line for using with clients, which is that if you’re perfect every single day for 12 weeks, you’ll easily hit your goal if you’re really good.

Most of the. You’ll hit it in 14. So relax . Yeah, good one. And I love that it’s just the moment of inoculating around the all or nothing kind of mindset. So is, is weight loss one of the big categories you tend to work with? No, actually before I took the two Grainger program with you. I stopped seeing weight loss clients even though they were profitable for my business.

Mm-hmm. , every single time I had a weight loss client coming, I would say, No. You know what? I don’t do weight loss. Mm-hmm. and I took a two and a half year break from weight loss. Yeah. And it’s because I did not like the success rates the clients were having. Mm-hmm. . And so I said, Stop, whatever I’m doing, direct suggestion, whatever nlp, whatever I’m doing, is not sufficient enough for me to take people’s.

Yeah. So I backed away from it, and then your program came and I said, You know what? I’m gonna give this Sheila thing a shot, and if I start seeing results with people, Yeah. Then I’ll keep going with the weight loss, and then I’ll do it myself so I can talk to my clients face to face. Like, Yeah, I’m, I’m in it with you.

Mm-hmm. , I mean, you’re not in this alone. And they really appreciate that. You know, they, they really appreciate the fact that I’m talking the talk and walking the walk. I think that is an important factor that, you know, and not even let, let’s generalize this beyond just, you know, overweight or even the person who smokes that we, we, as hypnotist, we are expert communicators.

We’re really skilled at, you know, framing things in different ways and frame reframing things. But at the end of the day, you have to put yourself in the seat of the client. And ask what’s their perception? So, you know, I even bring this up when we talk about moments of hypnotic phenomenon. Well, I don’t do those because I think they’re more of a stage hypnosis thing.

Yeah. But what’s your client thinking? You know, if they’re leaving and it’s just the, Well, I felt relaxed, I guess something happened as opposed to No, here’s something where I could actually measure how well I was responding to the suggestion. You know, even if it was as simple as a finger magnets, a suggestibility test.

I eye closures are are remark. You know, when you, when somebody’s eyes are stuck shut, they’re all, you know, they come back and they go, Wow. Yeah, well that was d. I don’t know if I was hypnotized. Well, why, why didn’t you open your eyes when I actually ? Oh, yeah. Huh. So in the shape of things, what’s, what would you say is that issue you’re seeing the most number of people for anxiety.

Yeah. And could you share some thoughts about, uh, some of the strategies that you’re using to help with that? I think, you know, I hate to just plug every single person, all of you that I’ve, uh, I’ve learned from, but I, I have to say, You know, spending a week up in Toronto with Mike. Mm-hmm. , Mike Mendel, you know, I use a lot of his techniques.

I mean, it’s a, it’s a very free flowing thing I do with my anxiety clients, and I really, I, I don’t even have notes usually when I’m working with those clients because I really go free flow completely. I love Mike’s Labyrinth technique. I do a lot of work with the Labyrinth. He has another technique that he calls the gallery technique where you tap him through the gallery.

All of those things are the things that I kind of use. And then I, I throw some Jacqueline stuff in there with the timeline stuff and we, you know, and, and it depends on, on the anxiety client, I use a little bit of direct suggestion and some Eric Sok kind of, I wonders. And, you know, wouldn’t it be amazing if, but I, I think that some of those techniques, whether it’s the arrow technique or the gallery, or any of those, I love them because they allow me to step out of it.

Yeah. My agenda is completely gone. It’s not what I think anymore, and it’s amazing to me to watch their unconscious mind come back to me in a month, in three weeks with these emails that continuously surprise me. I’m like, Really? That happened over after that session? I mean, I’m still eight years into this.

Still floored when I. Either a Google review or an email or whatever. I’m just still shocked all the time of, of what great things can come. Yeah. Is there a specific story that comes to mind where it really surprised you how strong the result was? Um, yeah, I was a young kid. I, I have a cut off, by the way, with, with kids.

I, I have learned because I’m not, I, I say, you know, I’m , I like kids, but I’m not the hand puppet type . So, uh, so no hand puppet for me. So I usually start around 14 or 15, depending upon their maturity level. And I had this young kid come to me who was 15 years old, and he had O c D. His mother said he had O C D.

Uh, he was being treated medically by a psychiatrist. He was on medications. The mother I wanted to talk to, the psychiatrist. She said no, she wanted, definitely she was, she’d sign any waiver with me, but she wanted definitely to have him hypnotized to see if it would help with his O C D. Mm-hmm. . The child had witnessed his uncle killed on a motorcycle and he had also been hit by a car himself all within the same 12 month period, and he had about 50 O C D disorders that he could count everything from.

If he touched a doorknob, his father would die to. It was so crippling that he was being homeschooled, and so he came to me and I can’t remember the hypnotist line that I borrow. But I got real, like, kind of just very stern and I said to him, You’ve tried a lot of medications for this. He said, Yes, I have.

I said, And, and he said, And they’re not working. And I don’t want to take them. And I said, Oh, how come you don’t wanna take them? And he said, Because I’m constipated . Which I thought outta the mouth with kids, you know, I just, uh, I just still think that that was like the funniest line I was, I thought he was gonna tell me something else.

They make me tired, they make me sleepy. Like, okay, fine. So I was like, We’ll start there. And I said to him, I said, Well, you have a choice today. I said, You can walk outta my office and leave all those problems here. or you could keep your problems and walk out and continue to take medication. Choice is yours.

What do you think? And he said, I think I wanna leave all my problems here. Mm-hmm. . And I said, Great. I got buy-in. And so we did the session and the mother called me the next day and she said, I have a problem, and I said, What’s the problem? She said, He doesn’t want to take his medicine. I said, Well, that’s not really cool.

I said, He needs to get weaned off or deal with the medical professional. I said, So I said, You really? You should be working with the doctor on this one. And she said, Okay, fine. So she contacted the psychiatrist. Well, The psychiatrist called me within about 10 minutes after that phone call, yelling, screaming, acting, Not like a psychiatrist, or maybe he was, he was acting like a psychiatrist, I’m not quite sure.

But he was screaming that, How dare I tell his patient he doesn’t need medication? And I said, Doctor, I certainly did not tell your patient that at all. I said, he said, Well, he’s saying he feels fantastic and, and he doesn’t need these meds. And, and you know, I’ve had him on these meds for six months and they’re just now starting to work.

And I said, Oh. I said, Well, I said, The only thing I could probably, I told him to contact you to wean off if that’s what he chooses to do. That’s between you guys. I said, But I said, If your client is telling you. That he feels better. You may wanna listen to him. So that was that conversation that was done.

But here’s what’s more interesting. I didn’t realize he was working with a biofeedback professional, licensed clinical social worker who was a biofeedback specialist. And apparently there’s some nuer numerical thing. I’ve never done biofeedback, but there’s a numerical thing where they, How do you feel this?

Zero to 10. There’s a lot of these kinda scales. Well, apparently, She said by the time he was done working with me, which was three sessions, she said his scores on his biofeedback had improved, improved 75%. Nice. He was back at school. He was the last I knew he was playing football for high school football.

Felt completely functioning. Yeah, and I cannot tell you that every O C D thing that he had went away. I can’t tell you. You know that it’s just some miracle story. I can just tell you that he became functioning again. Mm-hmm. and became a 15 year old kid where he could get a date and stop worrying about if he touched a doorknob, that his, his dad would die.

Yeah. That’s probably my best. That’s one of my best, most pleasing stories. Plus it’s a kid. It’s a kid, you know? Yeah. Well, what I, I love inside of that is the narrative of, you know, making sure that the communication was open. You know, being very direct. I mean, my. Quick version of that was the doctor who I had only sent over a form letter because it was kind of more of a light issue in terms of what we were addressing.

And suddenly the phone rings and it’s the doctor going, How do you expect me to believe that you’re gonna cure diabetes with hypnosis ? And the same way you responded was like, Oh, easy. I never claim that. I never said that. That’s why, because your patient called me up because she’s having a hard time following your instructions, and I’m basically just gonna hypnotize her to be more compliant with what you’ve asked her to.

And the doctor pauses and goes, Oh hell, can I send you 10 more people? , Right. They really do. Although I don’t think I’ll get too many from this particular psychiatrist. Well, you find that there’s some that are very open to it. There’s some that, it just comes down to just, I’ll use the term in a very, you know, non-judgmental way of just ignorance that they don’t know exactly what role we provide.

And it’s where, again, if only that could be a couple of articles on a website. Hm. God, I’ll tell you, I don know flowing around. It just seems like it would be work. It’s probably not worth it though. Uh, , your clients will listen to this and actually follow suit. I know, right? So let’s chat. You did something cool before it was even kind of gaining popularity, but by launching the website online, hypnosis now.com.

Do I have that? Yes, you do. Yeah. So, so talk us through sort of that journey of deciding to do that even many years ago. Well, number one, I would’ve never named the site that today , if I had to rename it. But, you know, it, it’s, it is what it is. Mm-hmm. , I wanted to direct the. Call to action now, you know?

Mm-hmm. definitely in there, but the steps were really basic. I wanted to live in Palm Springs, California half the year, and I wanted to live in Connecticut half the year. Yeah. And I knew it could be done because I thought to myself, I’m doing it myself with recordings off YouTube. Mm-hmm. . So when I get other hypnotists that challenge me about, Oh you can’t do that.

What about if you have an a reaction? Yeah. I love the a reaction question. And I said, Well that’s funny cuz you’ve made how much money off your 17 recordings and do you ever lay awake at night wondering if your. That are listening to those recordings ever had an A reaction? Well, I mean, correct me on this.

Yes, it’s a real concern, but when I really drill down and ask them about sincerely spontaneous, out of nowhere kind of thing, most often you get a number that can be counted on one hand, right? And the same techniques we would do in person to relieve that thing, or the same techniques that are just as effective online.

Or, I like the one again, to quote Mandel stand. Shake your arms. Yeah.

Little bit of that too. They can’t see me cuz this is a audio, you know, shake. Shake your arms. I’m shaking my arms. So shake your arms. Stand up. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually taught my version of that, which is that. And take this moment right now and realize you’re sitting in a comfortable chair listening to someone you’ve paid to say nice things.

There you go. That’s my version of Safe Place nowadays. Yeah. , it just is the blinding flash of the obvious to go, Oh yeah. Okay. . Yeah. And I really, even in my office, to be really honest with you, I’ve not had that many, You know, I’ve had some people, you know, come back. Crying and, you know, very upset and stuff like that.

They, they realized something or something came to them while they were in, while they were in the gallery.

this is very specific. For those that know the technique, it’s very esoteric. For those that don’t, it’s a great method. I use it too. So, um, Mike mait dell hypnosis.com. Check that We’ll link at the show notes. . Oh, actually I thought you were gonna team up with him and have a special program about it. . It’s a mutual love fest, so it’s all good.

We help people. I need to find, We should probably put that video, if we can track it down the video of you and the audience. . Oh no. Oh my God. We’ll just leave it out. We’ll, we’ll just leave it at that. But I’ll tell you something. A lot of people that were in that class, I think actually ended up contacting you and, and have actually worked with you.

And actually there’s even a couple of ’em I’ve seen on your podcast. Oh yeah. So , so yeah, I, I, I told you, Jason, I have made so much money from your programs that I will always scream your name from the rooftops and I mean, and that’s, there is nobody else a anybody else. If you’ve had a program that I’ve made money from, I’ll go on your program and say the same thing.

But in eight years of, of hypnosis, I’ve taken a lot of programs and they weren’t do this, do this, do this. Mm-hmm. , and then this is going to probably be your result. Yeah. Well, thank you. That’s very helpful for people to get. Listen, I had no clients, zero, zero clients when I joined the boot. Talking to friends, trying to pass the word around.

Mm-hmm. , another thing you did for me, we were sitting at a table one time at a convention and he said, I don’t know, I was talking to you, Thank you for helping me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you said, Oh really? Well, uh, what are you getting for a session? And I told you, and you said, Really? That’s all? And I said, Yeah.

And you said, And I thought I was charging a lot. And you said, Oh. No, no, no. I said, Well, what should I charge for? Three sessions? And you said, I don’t know. Here, I’ll pick a number. And you picked the number. I’m not even gonna say what it is. Doesn’t even matter. You picked the number. So now I said to myself, Okay, none of the other clients that have called me know that I’m gonna say this number.

Mm-hmm. . So I’m gonna say this number and is it gonna be comfortable for me in my stomach? Cuz I have to say the. But really feel confident with the number that I’m saying, like, Yes, then the price is blah, blah, blah, and I have to just let it roll off my tongue. Yeah. So you told me the number. I let it roll off my tongue.

The woman said, Oh, no problem. And she booked and it was $200 more than what I had been charging. Yeah. And then I remembered your calendar technique and you said, Well, if you’re booked out so far, Then, you know, that’s a time when you can start testing out new pricing, right? If you booked out that far consistently.

And then I raised it another $200, um, and now I’m at a comfortable level. , you know, could I possibly raise it more? Absolutely. But I feel like I’m at a value like they’re getting, like it’s e it’s a good trade, right? And so that’s why I stick with that. But yeah, I could keep, I could stand here on this podcast for the next hour and go over technique after technique after technique, and you can say, Yep, that’s mine, that’s mine, that’s mine.

And they’re not all your. There are things that you learned, but that you were able to put a different spin on and say, Hey, check this out. Well, I mean, I, I massively thank you for sharing that though. At the same time, it’s the benefit that it’s what you’ve been doing since we’ve been having this conversation, and one of the first things you said was, You know, I’m gonna give credit.

That I learned this from that person, I learned this from this person, and I made it a point to, you said this earlier, surround my peop, surround myself with the people who were doing positive things. Mm-hmm. that will find those that are very negative and that doesn’t work. That doesn’t work. And we start to kind of move away from that and to realize that, okay, so here’s a method.

It’s been proven, viable by someone else. But still, everything you’ve done, James, you’ve made it your own. You’ve made it fit for yourself. You’ve still recognized that there was gonna be a testing aspect with the payments, with the, uh, pricing rates, but still so congrats on all that success. That’s wonderful.

That’s wonderful to hear and, and thank you so much. Really, really. Yeah. So how can, before we wrap up here, how can people best get in contact with you online? Hypnosis now.com is definitely a way to get in touch with me. Uh, James online hypnosis now.com if you wanna send an email. All the information on how to contact me is there, including my latest episodes of Jer Mind.

So give it a minute. And there’s an episode on there right now with Howard Cooper, and the next episode that’s gonna be published I think is with Tracy Gray. I don’t know if you know Tracy. Oh yeah. And I’m also looking forward to, to you and I chatting about you coming on and, uh, and sharing some stuff that people can do, um, with their mind to main, to maintain.

Excellent. We’ll put all that in the show notes [email protected] too. So in the search function type in Vera, v e r a, that’ll bring you exactly where to go for that. Uh, James, any final thoughts for the listeners out there? If you’re not part of Jason’s educational programs, then you need to sign up.

They’re losing out. Jason Lynette here once again and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, for leaving your reviews online and of course interacting with the phenomenal guests as well. We’re gonna link to James’ podcast series that’s on YouTube over in the show [email protected].

You’ll find a direct link over to. Online Hypnosis now.com website. And again, check out for growing your hypnosis business with proven and tested strategies that actually work. You can check out either the entire program, hypnotic business systems.com or get a bit of a preview. Hey, first taste is free.

Check it out over at hyno. formula.com. That’s an on-demand webinar presentation, specifically about how you price and design programs for your clients. Once again, hypno formula.com. See on the inside. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.