Session #293: Anthony Serino on The Identity Factor

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

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 293. Anthony Sarino on the Identity Factor. 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. Imagine the changes that you can create in your life as your focus now.

Away from changing that specific habit or behavior or that unwanted emotion, but instead shifting from the top down, working on that identity, and then watching what follows from there. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette, and we’ve got Anthony Sereno on the program this week sharing an incredible story of transitioning, you know, like most people do from a career of tattoo removal into hypnosis.

You know, like you do. But it’s an amazing story of, first of all, his significant weight loss as a result of working with hypnosis, and then recognizing how even just one single session kind of got the foot in the door, extremely strongly to then create even greater changes, and then being drawn into this community as well, and some great stories about his work with clients and different approaches and some interesting takes on some classic strategies.

What’s also really helpful, Is that for many of you? Yes. We are in a very different world right now and the opportunity to build a business in a timeframe where not as many live in person get togethers are happening, and Anthony does a great job of really setting the value of that local networking audience.

It’s where I’d share as much as in programs like hypnotic business systems. I teach the search engine optimization strategies. That we’ve actually found to be extremely effective and just proven to work for hypnosis. The challenge becomes though it’s easier to win a local search than it is a global audience.

Though, as Anthony says here, you don’t have to be the only expert. You just need to be an expert. So the opportunity to then, Sort of pivot beyond just that local audience and then get that national and even international footing by way of communities that are online launching his own podcast, which you could find links to all of this over in the show [email protected] to check out his podcast, his websites, and all that good stuff over there as well.

While you’re there too, of course, check out hypnotic business systems. Dot com. That’s where you can find the All Access Pest, My Hypnosis business training library, featuring entire business action plans built out for you, done for you marketing campaigns, and really the tools necessary to get out there and start to rock out in your own entrepreneurial adventures.

So check that out, hypnotic business systems.com. And with that, let’s jump directly into this week content. Here we go, episode number 293. Anthony Sereno on the identity factor. So back in 2016, now it was, I was significantly heavier than I am now. I’m a tall guy. I’m , I’m six five, but I was well over 340 pounds and.

I was willing to do anything to lose weight, and I thought I had done anything up to that point, but I was never able to keep weight off. And long story short, I actually ended up going to see Mike Mandel up in Toronto. I, well, I saw him via Skype and I’m not even sure how I heard about him, but someone said I should go see a hypnotist, and I landed on him.

And six months after that, or within the six months after that one session with Mike, I lost 80 pounds. Nice. Yeah. And at the time, and it’s funny cuz I see this play out now with my clients, it’s like, eh, it wasn’t the hypnosis, you know? And but then as I started to keep it off and I realized that, My habits and my behaviors really did change.

That’s when I could look back and say, Wow, something happened that day. So, and then I did what any normal person would do and I spent, you know, countless hours and thousands of dollars like many of us have listening to this, Right. and, uh, researching why and how hypnosis works. And yeah, I dove head first and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Yeah. I love what you said there, where you kind of went back and forth around, I can look back and it wasn’t the hypnosis, but then again the hypnosis was the spark. Exactly. But I think, yeah. Yeah. I think too, I realized eventually it was the hypnosis. It was that moment, but at first I, I didn’t think so.

Well, I mean, it’s where you look at major life changes. And again, these are things that happen. In just a moment and letting that be that catalyst, letting that be as we use hypnotic language patterns here, letting that be that prestige experience that at least got that in motion. Right? Absolutely. So then jumping into sort of your own self study at that point, what were some of the next steps for you?

So I researched a bunch online and then I figured, well, I may as well go to the source that helped me. and I went up to study with Mike and Chris up in Toronto, which was really cool doing the, uh, Mike Mandel hypnosis or the architecture of hypnosis, I think is called up there. And that just blew me away.

They’re like a fire hydrant of information that week. And I almost, I was like, uh oh, what I just get into, But it really opened up this like beautiful landscape that is hypnosis. So I started, I started coming home and, and doing it for free for friends and family, and there was really no intention to make.

At it, I just kind of wanted to help people, but then there’s only so many hours in the day and I had to start charging people. So, So what was the, what was the career path before that? So I actually own a, uh, a tech to removal business as well. So I’ve been doing that actually since 2016 when I was, when I first lost the weight.

And recently I started transitioning out of that and doing the, uh, hypnosis full time. Now something that I know, and I want you to tell the story here about specifically with the tattoo removal business, there’s something that you did in the early stages of that to kind of demonstrate the effectiveness.

The same way that you now have this great story as to Here’s how Hypnosis helped me. You kind of had done something similar with the tattoo removal business. Yeah. Oh yes. So , I think you’re referencing me getting a tattoo myself. Is that ? Yeah, yeah, Yeah. So, you know, now everybody has a tattoo remove business.

Now everybody knows what tattoo removal is like, or you know, and I was doing hundreds of treatments and, and hundreds of clients, and they were like, Well, what is. What does getting a tattoo removed feel like? And I could only tell them what other clients had said because I didn’t have any tattoos and he, I said, You know what?

I am going to get a tattoo to get it removed. And that’s what I did. So I got my logo tattooed on my arm. And over the months following, I was removing it and people loved that. And I’m the type of guy I figured I have to experience it for myself if I’m gonna be doing it to a bunch of people. So . Nice.

Nice. Yeah. Which I think that’s an element that a lot of people, even with hypnosis, you know, we still run into the person who’s, you know, going through an advanced course going, Yeah, but I’ve never actually been hypnotized. It’s like, First of all, yes, you have . Mm-hmm. . But second of all, to have that success story.

So to look at, you know, what things in our life do we perhaps wish to change and to become your own advocate for what you do. Absolutely. And I, uh, the thing too is I, I still, you know, Jason, I, I see, I see heaven test myself. I work with coaches and, and hypnotists. Frequently up to this day because I, I think it’s so important that we, uh, practice what we preach and really work on ourselves as well.

So then outta curiosity then, as you’re still in the tattoo removal business, on top of everything with hypnosis now, are, are there places where you’re bringing those hypnotic skills into that world? Absolutely. And that was another way that it kind of worked its way into my life is I was like, How can I use this in my tattoo removal business?

And obviously, you know, relieving people of their discomfort, whether it’s with glove anesthesia or just, you know, showing them how they can relax during the process. That was really cool. It also had its boundaries. Cause I didn’t want to cross that line from being the tattoo removal guy to now being the hypnotist.

Mm-hmm. and I, I, I worried about breaking the rapport with my tattoo removal clients, but most people were, were pretty open to it. And actually we then like, Oh, what else? Can hypnosis help me for ? Can my hand, What else can you numb? You know, like, and I say that, you know, jokingly, but seriously, they, they.

They figured out that they could apply what I was helping them with in that, uh, treatment room to their life, whether it be anxiety or weight loss or things like that. You know, that brings up a really interesting quick sidebar that you know to look at there. You were in an extremely specialized situation and on their own, they were drawing some associations and connections to then ask about other things.

So that ability to really niche down to something extremely specific, people will fill in the gaps for. . Absolutely. And what’s cool is with tattoo removal, it’s about transformation as well. Mm-hmm. and it, it’s pretty congruent with what I do with the coaching and hypnosis now. And actually it was, it was great because I was able to build this huge list of clients from my other business that I now can tap into for hypnosis.

Yeah, let’s, let’s talk about that for a moment because I’ve when I, when I do the Train the Trainer program with Richard non guard, we often, well, one of my things is always about look for the Hyphenates . And what I mean by that are, here’s the person who teaches yoga but also happens to do nutritional coaching.

And because they already have two specialties, they’re probably likely gonna add hyp. And that’s, that’s an easy market to target. But to look at this aspect of where you were inside of that and you know, here was this other set of skills, is, is there something that the tattoo removal business has informed you in terms of how to work with your clients as the hypnotist?

Absolutely. I mean, just the logistics of running a business first and foremost. Yeah. Because it’s my belief that if we can’t market ourselves better than we do what we do, um, Then we’re not gonna be as successful as we, as we probably could be. And that was a big thing for me is how to package myself and how to, one, build rapport and two, maintain ongoing relationships with clients that really mapped over to an ongoing coaching relationship, let’s say.

Yeah, so. Talk about for a moment, that ability to take that existing audience from, I wanna say a similar, yet also extremely different business and mapping those people from that world into the other world. Yeah. So the first thing I did was I started broadcasting my new services with hypnosis to my email list.

And just sentencing out like my story, talking about my weight loss journey. And naturally people were like, Oh, cool, I wanna lose a bunch of weight really quickly. And they were reaching out and said, Hey Anthony, how can you do this? And what that showed me first was that I was selling a result. I wasn’t selling them anything yet.

but I was talking about the result. Yeah. First and foremost. And they were like, Okay, if Anthony can do this, I can do this. How? How did he do it? And that was my kind of foot in the door. And then that built organically, you know? Starting online when this pandemic hit, I was able to easily transition into that.

So yeah, what’s, what’s really great to highlight there was beginning with just story, beginning with metaphor, beginning with bringing them into something as opposed to, Hey, everybody, remember you paid me for this. You can pay me for that now. Yeah, and actually it was those people who were kind of turned off when I said, Oh, you should use hypnosis, you should try this.

You know, And yeah, so it was actually, it was a blessing that I had built that audience first, and I know not everybody has that, but, I was fortunate in that capacity. Well, it, it’s surprising that a lot of people who come through trainings, whether it’s the hypnosis training or even some of the business stuff that I do, they, they have some kind of built in audience already, and there’s this caution, there’s this fear of, Oh no, but that’s for a different thing, you know?

Which, depending on the market, of course, it could be an extremely big leap. I’m trying to remember who it was that actually was in the business of breeding hermit crabs. Which is an extremely specific reference, and now I’m forgetting who that was and probably shouldn’t say anyway, . But the transition of, Hey, remember when you bought these smelly crabs?

Hey, check this out. Help you stop smoking or help you not notice the smell perhaps, but to look at again how we can get into that and just simply offer the story. And some will follow and some won’t. And I have a horrible representation of this in my brain, which is the fact that. All the old stories.

Dracula would not come into the house unless he was invited, which is not the most inspiring metaphor, but if it works, it works. , . So then getting up and running, did you begin by kind of picking, let’s say a specific niche or was it something else of a general nature? What was kind of your focus in those early days of.

Well, it was pretty organic for me to start doing weight loss. Mm-hmm. , because that was the easiest thing for me to kind of have a little bit of proof of concept was my own story. And people seeing that before and after pictures is huge. And I know you had helped me along the way, making sure that I kept that top of mind for people and, and at the top of my marketing so people saw that.

So it was a lot of weight loss at first, but the biggest thing that really people started asking me about was anxiety. And at first I had like this imposter syndrome, like, am I supposed to be working with these people? You know? But as I’ve gone on, I realized, you know, anxiety, as I, I’ve heard, uh, Dan Kendale say this is, you know, it’s an umbrella term for worry, doubt, fear, all, all these different things.

And hypnosis is great for it. So I was seeing a lot of people for anxiety right off the. And that was whether, you know, I’m, I’m heavily involved in my small business community. I know you’ve been in BNI before and we’ve talked about that. So all these local networking groups really helped, and that really helped me blossom because I had access to these relationships that had been harboring already and the rapport was already there.

Yeah, talk about doing that in the midst of, Oh, you know, Global Pandemic, where these big scale meetings, I mean, I’m flashing back to speaking to not the Chamber of Commerce, but the, uh, Alexandria City Rotary, which I’ve spoken to, Rotary groups, which were three guys. As well as the one, the Alexandria City, which was like 150 people, and I believe they actually said, Hey, sorry, it’s right before a holiday, so we’ve got a smaller crowd.

I’m like, What . So chat with us about doing that in the midst of a time where there’s not as many gatherings. Absolutely. So our group for people, obviously, I don’t know, bni, it’s a networking group that’s international and we have different chapters all over the world, but our local group had about 30 people before the pandemic, which I think is a pretty large size group for, Yeah, BNI, at least in the Northeast and.

We’d meet weekly in person and we’d all get to do our little sales manager minutes and, and give our pitch for our business. And then the pandemic hit and we had to transition to Zoom, which if you’re not familiar with BNI , Jason, you know, there’s, there’s some people who have been in there for like 17 years, 20 years, that, that don’t want to switch over

Luckily we had a president at the time of our chapter that it was seamless, so we moved everything online. I’m actually the incoming president starting Oh, nice. This tomorrow, tomorrow morning actually, and everything. We have a slide deck and it runs pretty seamlessly. So it’s been cool that everything’s moved virtually and we’ve still been able to maintain.

Yeah. What’s interesting is that, you know, looking at, we, we did the episodes two 60 through two 70, which was all about highlighting people who worked on Zoom, and the consistent feedback from so many people from that who had shied away from that originally was that, well, as soon as you do it, you then kind of go, Oh, I get it now.

And I’m flashing back to the people in the chapter that I was a member of that Yeah. Had been there ever since the origins 15, 20 years or so, and to see that, Well, did the membership stick through that or did it grow or did it drop, or what happened? We only lost two people, and I think it was just gonna happen naturally anyways, regardless of the pandemic.

And we actually gained a person because of the fact that we were virtual. So yeah, all in all, it, it was, it was an easy transition. And I think it’s actually almost, it’s better because, People were more engaged in some capacity cuz we’re all looking at each other. Yeah, and I think, you know, with you running your courses online, you’ve probably noticed that as well and so yeah, it’s been good throughout.

Yeah. What’s what’s interesting of that is I can remember back to the meetings where here’s the person who was clearly taking care of business and everything else on their phone. During the meeting and, and you’d have it as much as that was a rule not to be doing that, cuz hey, it’s just an hour and a half, turn it off.

The business is gonna be there when you leave. But as much as that was a factor here was that person when now I’ve, I’ve been a guest at a few meetings. and it’s like, okay, everybody has to be engaged and on the entire time, which is keeping them so much more interactive. You realize though, now that you’ve mentioned it, I want to hear one of those sales manager minutes in terms of what it is that you get up the, the format for everyone who doesn’t know.

is that typically at a BNI meeting, there’s openings from the president, from the leadership team, and then comes the reason why everyone’s in the room is to do that brief sort of elevator pitch. The members go first, then the guests go after that. So what’s, what’s one that you found to be effective of drawing that audience?

So B and i is an advocate for always crafting or asking for your perfect referral. And every sales manager minute or pitch that you do is usually focused around that. And that really has been great for conditioning me, um, just having normal conversations with people and always looking out for that specific referral.

And as you’ve always. We need to niche down, and I agree with you. I think it is niche and not niche , but only for the reason it rhymes with rich. We can be respectful of other pronunciations, even if they’re wrong . But yeah, it was a little different for me getting into hypnosis with BNI because once again, uh, People seem to flinch locally when I started doing hypnosis, and once again, I had to worry about selling them the result first.

So those sales manager minutes were really about what hypnosis can do and less about how it can work. And then naturally that led into the conversation of how it does work. So it’s really kind of structured. Every week I do something that builds up to an ask or or something like that, So, mm. He did an amazing job of not answering that by the way,

I know. Yeah. So what, what’s an example of something you get up and do? So I would it, It always baffles me because we always, you know, we all know each other, but we’re always like, Hi, this is, you know, I’m Anthony Sarno. And I, well, the, the phrase in the groups that I was a member of, I was a member of two different groups over time, was always that, well, the meeting is for the guests and the actual one to ones that happen afterwards of the core of the membership.

So there is that aspect of, again, staying top of mind though my, uh, sort of take on that is that, well, you know, Starbucks still reminds us they sell. Apple still reminds us that they sell computers and phones. Oh really? Huh? Who knew ? Absolutely. So I’ll, I’ll give, I’ll give you a pitch real quick. So there you go.

So I would get up and I say, Hi, I’m Anthony Sereno. I’m from New Leaf Hypnosis, which is no longer my branding, but I would say I’m from New Leaf Hypnosis and today a good referral for me. Is anybody who has been failing, like they’re stuck because I would say that they’ve probably been working backwards and focusing on what they need to have to do something in order to be whatever they want to be.

And for maybe example that’s been you, you’ve been focusing on the fact that you think you need more money or you need more clients. But what if I told you that that’s backwards and really need to focus on who and how you need to be to get the things you. And to do the types of things you need to do because if you’re not the type of person to do the types of things that that type of person would do, then you’ll never have the types of things that person would have.

And all of that is a subconscious or unconscious thing that we can work with using things like hypnosis. And I can help you shift who you are in order for you to do the things you need to do. So then you. Have the type of life you want to have. If you wanna learn more, that would be a great referral for me.

But I encourage you, find somebody, or next time you’re in that conversation to um, to have ’em reach out. Thank you. And then that would be, that would be it. Nice. Nice. Which is great because you’re bringing them into a narrative. You’re bringing them into a story, and you did get up. And what you did a great job of there is to talk through one very specific story, yet in a highly influential way using enough ambiguous language.

That people’s stories are now being heard inside of that. Exactly. Yeah. Now you said that’s no longer the branding. So what’s been that, What’s been that shift of that identity? See, see what I just said up there, ? Yeah. So I’ve, uh, I’ve since launched a podcast called The Identity Factor because something resonated with me about six months ago, and it’s what I just alluded to in that, in that little pitch there was, We really need to focus on who and how we’re being.

And people listening to us probably have heard of that be, do, have model. That really resonated with me because that the identity who we’re being, how we’re being is just a culmination of our past experiences from childhood. All the way up to the programming up until now. And that’s what we do with hypnosis.

We change perceptions, we change how people change beliefs. And those beliefs and perceptions are really based on who we are and the story we tell ourselves. And so when we can shift that, that’s when the magic happens. That’s when people start doing what they need to do and start doing the things that they tell themselves they need to do.

So that’s really been. My new packaging, I’m no longer newly hypnosis. I, I focus on building this community through the podcast, through Facebook, which is inside the identity factor. And this just becomes this environment for me to provide value and show people the result. And then, Hopefully they say, Hey, how, how do you get that result?

And that’s my foot in the door. Nice, Nice. So then to kind of unpack that, that premise of the identity factor, looking at working on changing the individual so the behaviors then follow. Exactly. And I know in our community, You know, in the hypnosis community, there’s been people going back and forth on regression, and I know that Jason, you and I have had this conversation before.

I’m not saying I, I lead on that, but there is something about that moment when especially we do something like informed child. Yeah. Where one, they’re doing all the work for us and they’re gonna say things that we would never think to say. And, um, there’s something magical. And I, I’m not someone who does convincers.

I, or, and when I say I don’t do convincers, like I don’t do a lot of arm lock or, or things like that. But when someone’s in an experience that they haven’t thought about in decades and they’re emotional and, and they’re talking to them young, their younger self, that’s a convincer to me. They leave my office saying, Hey, something just happened.

And that’s where I find the magic happens. And that is actually a point I think that is right inside of Dave Elman hypnotherapy, and I know Larry talks about this too. He has a segment he refers to as the quote, half remembered happy place, which is just a great term by the way. But it’s that moment where the person is now re-experiencing something.

That they didn’t know they’d be re-experiencing and that served as well as another moment of hypnotic conviction. So we can do the overt convincers, which is a big part of what I do, but also that’s part of the change process for me. It’s not just the hypno stunt, but it’s also that emotional conviction.

Satisfies really the same point. And I’d, I’d agree with you that I’m someone who’s fallen away from the purity of the, uh, dare I say, the metaphor of the experience. But instead lean back on the metaphor of the experience that it’s that informed child moment where basically we’ve now got a client doing direct suggestion hypnosis on themselves and absolutely that’s where some of the best content comes out of that is, is there a story that comes to mind of working with somebody where that was perhaps, or even something else, was part of the process where really you could acknowledge it wasn’t just change in habit or behavior, it was this sort of top down identity.

Most recently, I had someone who came to me. She was a business owner, and she felt like, uh, she, she couldn’t be as creative as she used to be when she was younger. And we went back and we just found a couple times where she was younger in school and. For example, I’m not, I don’t lean heavily on, you know, the initial sensitizing event or the activating events or anything like that.

But we got back to a time when she was in kindergarten and she was writing her name with little pictures around it when she was supposed to just be writing it to practice her handwriting, and her teacher yelled at her in front of her whole entire class and, We went through a bunch of other memories just like that, where her creativity was stifled and clearing those up.

She did it herself. She was like, like she was literally having this dialogue with herself the entire time for about a half hour. I, I barely said anything. And she goes, Oh, that’s why I haven’t been as creative and all these different things. And I’m just like, Wow, I should pay her, or she should pay herself for doing this.

And she came out. You could tell there was a shift at her, literally at her identity level where she, she knew she could be creative now she could be that person without fear of ridicule or, or anything like that. Yeah. So then how are these people finding you now? You mentioned launching the podcast, you mentioned having activity on Facebook.

What’s working for you? So definitely the podcast is cool because you become an instant expert. I gotta be, I gotta be honest with you, I don’t know anything more than I knew before I started the podcast a couple months ago. Right? I, I mean, I do, but not anything where , someone would be like, Oh, uh, he knows.

Infinitely more now because he has a podcast. No, that’s not it. But what it does is like the new business card, right? Mm-hmm. , And I don’t do it to say I have a podcast. I do it to become that instant expert in something. But what it’s doing now is it’s providing value to people. It’s, it’s. A source for me to give that content at scale and then funnel them into my Facebook group, which is, which is the goal, collect their emails, , and then mark it to them.

But really, I, my intention is to show up for them for right now until I build a community, right. Until I have a, a following. And that’s really what I’ve been focusing. That. That’s probably, I’d say one of the more sustainable methods, and we can take that dialogue and switch out podcast for blog, for writing articles, for a local paper, for writing articles for someone else’s website.

As you know, as many platforms out there where you can be that guest contributor of that ability to really put yourself out there and really. Share that story. And, you know, I, I share the side note as we’re in the midst of prepping the launch of another project, and it was in the midst of building that question always came back to what were the assets that we needed to pull that off.

And at the point it was, Oh, you know, let’s just make this simple, uh, Ted Talk book podcast. Okay. Yeah, just do that. . Was, was there some challenge to overcome in terms of getting those things up and running? Or was it just the, Hey, this is what I have to do, so I’m just gonna do it? Yeah, I can’t emphasize enough how important it was that I built a local network first.

Mm-hmm. , and through things like bni, because that became my core, my core network that was like this tribe that built kind of organically and I had the rapport with them and what happens. They do anything for you as far as becoming your like own little sales people for you and the, if you start a Facebook group, they’re gonna come along with you so, Local networking, first and foremost.

I tell everybody to do it if they can. Obviously now with the pandemic’s a little different, but that was my jumping off point to build these communities. So I already had a little bit of a foundation, and now really it’s all about the Facebook community that I’ve been focusing on. So there’s two things that you just hit there that I wanna highlight there, which is that one.

And this kind of goes back to the conversation of taking people from the tattoo removal business into this other universe here, which is that to never negate that built in audience, that here’s people who already have that no like and trust factor, and they’ll follow you. They may not necessarily be clients at every single point.

But it’s people who want to see what you’re up to now and to make use of that. The second point was making use of that local audience, because also what’s embedded inside of that story is, uh, I know you and I share a passion for comedy work, stand up comedy movies and such, and that’s the place kind of like that.

Environment to workshop material, to test out that pitch, to test out that different way of explaining what you do and where we’re not quite ready for that primetime appearance spot. But before that, that’s where we’re really workshopping that material, seeing what people respond to. That way we’re ready for it when we suddenly launch something bigger.

Absolutely. And just the fact to, you know, go back to bni. I don’t get paid. You people probably think I’m getting paid by BNI . No, no. But, um, correct me, you get your, you get your, uh, membership free the year the president, right. I believe so. Yes, I believe I am getting paid. When you look at the time spend, it’s like, well, okay, thanks

Yeah, yeah. That’s a whole nother story. But it is good because you get, you know, say 30 people in my chapter, uh, for a couple years now, I’ve been talking in front of them, whether in person or online. And what that does is when I want to do a Facebook live. It easily maps over to that. Now I feel com more comfortable doing that or when I’m in front of a, a stranger who I need to build some rapport with, I know how to do that because of that networking group.

And it’s really, it’s, it’s been awesome cuz it just conditions, conditions you to become like this sales machine and yeah, it’s been, it’s been special and I, I can’t thank the people in my chapter and in those groups enough because, And then you go back like one of the tenants of. B and I is givers gain.

And really that goes back to what I think is the reciprocity of life. The ancient ins called it i e, right? The what we put out we receive and vice versa. And so that’s really been what I’ve been focusing on, is just giving, And I, I did a lot for free, like for a long, long time. Like I was just doing free sessions and I was, and some people don’t agree with that, but for me, it worked out because I also picked people who I knew would really benefit from it, and they would become my biggest fans.

So, and that tied into that networking group as well. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So how’s it going with the, the podcast launch? How’s that going? Running the. It’s going really well. It’s writing a podcast and and producing it all by yourself. I, I do not suggest, you know, I have a couple people helping me, like my fiance and a friend, but for the most part, I haven’t hired any VAs yet or assistance, which I will be doing because putting out an episode every week and editing it.

Is not the, uh, the easiest to ask for. Sure. So, but I’ve been staying involved in my Facebook community and that I love doing that cuz I get to engage other members get to engage with each other. Everybody gets to ask questions and something you do, you always encourage people to ask questions in the group, not just personally message you.

And that’s kind of been part of my narrative as well, because that allows everybody to learn in a different capacity and maybe seize things from a different perspective that they had hadn’t been seeing it from. It’s that what you said earlier about building community first, that here are the people who knew you from local.

Now coming over to something that’s going out around the world and that strategy of having a group, as I’m counting in my head, I think we’ve got, what do we have now? We have five different Facebook groups privately for people inside of specific programs. There’s now two public. Groups, which are the free ones, which are really about engagement and just giving that value.

And another platform beyond the podcast. I’d have to always throw in a plug here, podcast network solutions.com cuz they always smile when I mention them. Has been editing my stuff now for a number of years and they’re doing the new project as well. But that place of, there’s something important I think about, you know, getting in there and doing it.

Your, your first on your own to get that path of at least understanding what you’re looking. But then the benefit that way becomes, you now know what it is. You can appreciate the effort that someone’s putting into it. And then that frees you up for more time beyond that as well. Correct me? You are, You are using someone else for a lot of graphic stuff, right?

Nope. I do all that myself. Nice as well. But I mean, the only thing I used it for was most recently you posted something about your podcast. I was like, I gotta copy Jason

on. Yeah. I wanna kind of bring this back around to that idea of shifting identity. That I, I can tell a quick anecdote of that was a breakthrough moment for me working with people for stop smoking. And, you know, it was the, the thought process that it’s not just about changing the habit or the behavior, it’s about shifting that person as to who they are.

And I, I’ll make the story as brief as I can, but a woman who came in to see me, As a result of her quitting smoking, she meets this guy who’s a runner. She wasn’t a runner as she put it. You know that person who doesn’t have to exercise and they just stay naturally slim and you hate them? She goes, Yeah, that’s me.

So she wasn’t fit despite the fact that she looked it and she got into running with this guy, and as they became runners, they had dated for a number of years, eventually married and eventually quit their corporate jobs to open up a running store, and they’re in a part of the state. That doesn’t have a lot of money for schools, so the extracurriculars get cut.

So what else do you do? You start a nonprofit, get a lot of fundraising efforts, and now that funds the track and field program for that entire, not just that county, but surrounding ones as well. And, and I pull this story out when someone asks, Well, what if I backslide? I’m like, Look at this person. She’s become that because she got rid of that thing, which that used to be that spotlight focus.

Now it’s just. Initial stepping stone into something bigger and greater. So the classic hypnotic phrase of start to become aware of everything it is, you were not yet noticing that. Now that’s the smallest, insignificant part of the story. You, you hear the story of somebody you know getting in their car or on their motorcycle and traveling across the entire country, and the story’s not about what pocket they kept their keys in.

That’s. Most insignificant part of the journey. So talk to me more about that identity factor of shifting from, let’s say, would you say it’s from the top down, or how would you define that? Well, I think identity, and we go back to logical levels, which is really the core of my model of change for clients, is focusing on that identity, which then can shift their beliefs and their values, which then shifts their habits and behaviors and then their outcomes.

But I look at my own story and my whole life I had been the quote unquote big guy, and I had built this identity. Which was kind of given to me because everybody was like, Oh, you know, you’re big bone, or you know, your whole family’s big. You’re supposed to be big. And of course, I, I identified as I was, I was always the tallest one in my class, and I was always a little overweight and.

That was not necessarily encouraged, but it was, it was always excused. And then my identity became the big guy. So of course, no matter what I did, my, my habits and behaviors weren’t gonna be congruent with losing weight because I was the big guy. Um, and I really had to shift that as well. And that’s what I saw, you know, looking back, is why I knew, like working with Mike Mandel.

It was those subtle shifts of my identity and just, I don’t know. Can we get controversial for a second? Oh, of course. We’re 36 minutes in. We have to Nice . So I, I’m gonna preface this by saying the views of the guests are not necessarily the views of these Sorry, go ahead. . We’re talking about identity. I, I have nothing else bad to say about this group.

The, When you go to say, a Alcohol Alcoholic’s Anonymous, right? What’s the first thing they do when they stand up and they introduce themselves? They say, I’m so and so, and I’m an alcoholic. And that is just one example of. The need to shift your identity because when we have a smoker that comes in, for example, and I help a smoker, it’s not to make them a smoker who no longer smokes.

It’s to change their identity to a non-smoker because it’s easy to do who you are. It’s difficult to do who you are not. And I did a video on Facebook recently where I went in and I bought my first pack of cigarettes in my life and I had no, I felt so awkward. And you looked so cool though. No, sorry. Go ahead.

I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know how to really open the pack of cigarettes. I didn’t know I didn’t even have a lighter cuz I, I forgot that I needed a lighter. And why is that? Because I’m not a smoker. It’s not part of who I am. And once again, it’s difficult to do who you’re not. It’s easy to do who you are.

So yeah, I look at, See, I’d follow up with the question. This is where I had to pull up my agreement frame. Uh, yes. And is the identity working for. So yes, there may be a, a pop part of the population. We’re still continuing to identify as the problem is serving them. But then again, not every thing is a match for everybody at every specific point in time.

So, for the people who that may not be a fit for, there’s an alternative way to look at it too. Absolutely. And you know, I, I tell people, look, if you’re happy with where you’re at in life and your identity is serving you, and your beliefs are serving you great, but if you look in your bank account or you look in the mirror, or you look at yourself and you don’t like what you see, then I encourage you.

Look at your beliefs, look at your values. Look at who you’re being and how you’re being. Really audit yourself and see how that’s affecting the things you have and the things you’re capable of doing. There’s a phrase I keep using that is that when you’re the person who does the thing, you’re the person who does the thing.

which goes back to, and I learned this from Jeffrey Ronning, who was stage hypnosis center.com that early on when I was in that part of my career, I had a regular weekly program somewhere and I didn’t have promo. I didn’t have a good website yet, but I was able to say, Oh, well, I could send you a video or I can give you tickets to my show.

It’s on Monday nights over at this place in Baltimore, and that was what was booking me. And we would give out so many free tickets to people who wanted to book me for other programs. Of course, they never came, but the difference was everyone else was sending a D V D. Remember those? Only I was going, You could actually just come to my program and actually see it for.

So when you’re the person who does the thing, you’re the person who does the thing, and that then translates directly over to the business of what we do. We opened up a conversation one of the groups the other day about when it’s right to raise your rates, and so many people were in that. Mode of, I don’t know if I can, I don’t know if I should, which, you know, when, when you’re the person who suddenly gets paid that value for what you do, it, it sets a new benchmark.

I mean, I even go oddly, extremely specific to the, uh, the sort of cast system that was regional theater. One of the companies I worked at, There’s different ratings of regional theaters from A plus to A to B, to C to D, and then to D minus. And it’s horrible that it’s named that because it makes it sound like it’s quality.

No, it only relates to the size of the audience. How many, how, how many butts and chairs can they have. And that was the delineating factor. So of course, when suddenly they’ve renovated one of our spaces, we graduated from a l b League of Res, Regional League of Resident Theaters from B to A. But the difference was suddenly now, yes, we all had to be paid more , but it was this, it was this system now that, oh no, now that I’m a Lord, a stage manager, I don’t work for anything beneath that.

When again, it, it’s butts and seats. But coming back around to where you brought that together about, you know, when you can look at yourself as that person who doesn’t keep them in the house. The person who doesn’t buy the junk food. So it’s not the game of, oh, what if I have this outburst and I have to eat that?

I’m the person who stands on the stage and gives this workshop, which means I’m not the person who cancels that day of work, so I don’t have to give the debrief at the speech that day has. I want to bring it around to this though. Has working with your own clients, Help to further enhance that identity of how you see yourself and what that’s created in your life.

Absolutely. And Jason, listen, I’m, I’m not the most technical person. I’m not the most experienced person that’s ever sat in the proverbial, uh, work smart hypnosis interview chair here. But what I can say is that what I learned very quickly was I didn’t have to be the expert. Yeah. I just had to be a expert to whoever I.

That I was talking to and that has given me a lot of power to help people and. I’ve really built my confidence on yes, working with people, getting results. And I think I said this in one of your groups, this goes back to, to pricing. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but raise your prices. . Um, , it’s so important not just for your, not just for anybody listening, but for our industry as a whole.

I think it would be great. Um, but I, and if you flinch at that, I would say there’s some identity issues around money, but that’s a whole nother conversation. But yeah, working with people and. Like I said, I worked for free for a long time, got the results, built my confidence, realized I just had to be an expert to whoever it was I was talking to.

And I just, I’ve always leaned on that because I, I show up for, for people, and I’m very proud to say that, is that I’m all in with whoever I’m working with, whether I, I, I know as much as I need to or not. I hold that space for someone and sometimes. Most of the time it’s just as easy as giving that, giving that space and telling them they can change and changing their perception from I can’t to Ike, is something they haven’t heard about or heard in a long time in a lot of cases.

And just hearing that is, is the change that can happen. Nice, Nice. So where can people find out more about you? How can they get in touch? Yeah, so I would love to have people join the Inside the Identity Factor Facebook group, but definitely check out the Identity Factor podcast. It’s on Apple, it’s on all the, um, all the podcast platforms.

That is probably the best way to reach out via Facebook. Uh, I love interacting that way and yeah, definitely. I’ve been all in all the podcasts. I have like tunnel vision right now. Um, I don’t know if you went through this, Jason, when you first started with your podcast, but it’s like everything’s, I, I all my, my fiance.

Annoyed with me because every waking moment I’m like, I gotta do this with the podcast. So when someone asks how to contact me, I just go, Hey, here’s my podcast. Link. . Yeah, . Well, it’s where for the, for the new project. Now that, again, I’ve got notes from my, uh, editors at the moment as we’re about to batch produce.

The first. 10 episodes of the new program. There’s the game of going, Wait a minute. Okay, So I just need to have like one link, and I won’t say it now cuz we probably will change it based on the alert that just popped up in my phone as soon as I set this . Thanks Toby. No, but the, the opportunity to go, here’s the one place to go.

And I, I think that’s, that’s a good, you know, point for anyone out there listening that I heard from, not Pat Flynn. Smart passive income, but Pat Quinn always have to make sure I say the right sequence there of, uh, the advance your reach team that he was the one who said The ultimate sales conversation is a sidewalk that ends with one path, which is where you could follow me on Twitter.

You could add me to your top eight on my space. You can send a self address stamped envelope to PO Box . Too many options as opposed to go here. Keep it simple. Before we wrap it up, any final thoughts for the listeners out there? I, I just can’t emphasize enough. We are in an industry of showing up for people and holding that space.

and just sometimes telling people that they can, and that is the most important thing we can do is, is showing up and really asking the right, the right questions and giving our clients a platform to change their identity, to shift who they are and shift how they’re being. Because if they’re not the type of people to do the types of things they’re telling themselves they wanna do, they’ll never do it.

So that’s where the magic happens when we shift it at that level. Jason Lynette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program online, for sharing it on your social streams, subscribing, as well as leaving reviews. And once again, check out work smart hypnosis.com.

That’s where you can find the show notes to this specific episode to find out how to get in contact with Anthony. And while you’re online too, check out hypnotic business systems.com. The, uh, sort of unofficial catchphrase of the program is that theory sucks. Guessing sucks. Here’s what’s working right now.

This is where I’m publishing exactly what’s working to run a thriving hypnotherapy practice that spans all around the world. Plus, it’s a community. Get the support of people around you and use what’s working right now. Check that out. Hypnotic business systems.com. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.