Session #329: Advertising- To Pay, or Not to Pay?

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 329 advertising to pay. Or not to pay. 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. Now, it’s a bit of an interesting story that over time, those of you who have maybe followed a bit of what I do and what I’ve done in my hypnosis business over all these years.

The simple phrases that often we reserve the right to learn and the words of a good friend, If you were not suggestible, you would not be able to learn. And I say that because part of my message on this week’s episode is a bit of an update as to the personal stories that I’ve shared. And no, it’s not that I told the story incorrectly before, it’s that what I learned, what I figured out in the early days of running my hypnosis business.

Was extremely successful. I did launch and have a six figure business seeing clients in my first full year of seeing clients as I opened up Virginia Hypnosis in November of 2009. Now the catch though is that over time again, we can learn new things. So part of this messaging is a bit of a, If I knew then what I know now, and I’ll give you a preview into where we’re about to go inside of this episode.

It’s that. And let me give a disclaimer here though. First of all, um, this is not a commentary on how anyone else teaches business. This is entirely an internal story in terms of how I used to look at the world versus how I look at it now. So I say that because there are others who talk about how to grow your hypnosis business without paying for advertising.

And I used to say the same thing. In fact, I used to be proud of the same message. But then I learned a few tricks and that’s what this week’s episode is all about. So inside of what we’re about to chat about here, there are four specific stories and I’m sure as often is a few others that will pop up along the way to illustrate some things that I’ve discovered to think differently about how we drive our hypnosis businesses.

So be ready to take some notes. Be ready to have maybe a few opinions changed. My goal is always, in terms of teaching people how to better run their hypnosis businesses is at times to give you the almost insane attention to the detail behind a lot of what I do, so that then you can make those better decisions that are the right fit for what you do.

If you understand the how and the why beneath the strategy, it’s no longer the shiny object syndrome in business as to someone going, Oh, just do Facebook. Oh, it just run ads on Google. There’s much more to it. When you understand the logic and the psychology beneath it, you’ll see exactly how really at the core of it, there’s a reason why we call the program Hypnotic Business Systems.

It’s the same replicatable systems in the foundation, and then from there, it’s the modifications for the different platforms. That’s where we’re going in this week’s episode, though, as a bit of a free preview. I’d invite everybody to check out the website, jason webinar.com. That will actually redirect over to a free on-demand presentation, six steps to a six figure Hypnosis business.

This is not just about telling you the names of what you should look at. In massive detail, you’re gonna see me break down six specific things that even today I still consistently do within my business to keep the clients coming in. So check that out. That’ll redirect you over jason webinar.com. And with that, let’s jump directly in.

Here we go, episode number 329. Advertising to pay or not to pay. So as I hinted a few moments, My history. Let, let’s start. First of all with a bit of a peeling back the curtain and talking about what I did before I started to pay for advertising in my first year or so of doing hypnosis. It was find an audience, talk to them.

So it was everything from going out and yes, doing the chicken lunch circuit, the dry breakfast tour, we’re talking about like Rotary and Kiwanis and Lions clubs and uh, even the occasional Moose Lodge and Elk’s Lodge, uh, and the Eagles Air, different name. Wherever I could find people, I would do business lunch and learns anywhere that people gathered.

I would find out what their specific needs might be, and then I would craft a presentation to introduce hypnosis to them around that concept. Which, let me just pause there for a brief moment because right there, that’s different than what I see a lot of people trying to do. I keep hearing the commentary that, Well, Jason, I’ve heard you talk about that.

You’ve got a whole module on giving talks inside of hypnotic business systems, and I’ve reached out to groups. And they told me that they didn’t want to talk on hypnosis. Here’s what you need to understand. It’s not that they didn’t want a talk on hypnosis, it’s that instead they did not yet know that they needed to have someone come to their group and talk about hypnosis.

Do you see the difference? So lead with the value. You know, I’m gonna come into your group of entrepreneurs and I’ll, uh, teach a goal setting strategy to feel more confident when you’re speaking to a group like this. And inside of that, I would introduce hypnotic concepts. And, Hey everybody, here’s my easiest upgrading language.

We call it upgrading cuz it’s a better term than upselling. Same idea, but you’re defining the process by upgrading someone’s experience. Listen to this. You can make use of everything I’ve just shared with you and grits get some great results though I know some of you might want to get results even faster and even easier, and that’s why I do work with people one to one if you’ve got questions about that, see me after the event.

So in addition to the live talks, Networking. I would go out to chamber of Commerce B and I, There’s all sorts of fundraising events and again, these are the stories you’ve maybe heard me tell before. Uh, there’s a previous podcast episode, which is actually, I believe, the most downloaded episode. I think we called that out a few weeks ago.

The fully booked hypnotist, and it’s a presentation for me at Hypno Thoughts Live, I think in 2017, where just I break down everything I did in that first. And probably even in that presentation, I got up and let’s call that out politely boasted, Here’s what I did and I did not pay for advertising. Before we unravel that, let’s call out first of all that yes, there’s always going to be some kind of operating expense in your business.

You know, um, if you’re seeing Sessions online, you probably should be paying for Zoom. You know, don’t try to rush your session into the free 30 minute version. I had a website, I, from day one was doing email automation, opt-in forms on my sites, bringing people into my world. Um, I had rent back in those days.

I had a physical office and, you know, at that point I was paying for the general operating expenses of the business. But even at that point, there was no paid advertis. And again, this is a presentation that has become, uh, the number one downloaded podcast of this entire series. And how many of you may know me?

I used to get up and say, Here’s what I did, and this was great. I did it without advertising. Here’s the thing though, and I have to quote somebody who I know in the marketing world, uh, if you’ve ever seen the digital marketer content, his name is Ryan Dice. He has a beautiful metaphor for this. We decide we want to have rice for dinner, it’s the heat tonight, and hey, why not?

Let’s have rice with that as well. And that’s easy. You know, we just moved down to Orlando. It’s a warmer climate, a little bit more humid of course, which probably makes it easier to dig up the backyard and plant rice patties. You know, the Everglades are not too far away. I’m sure this is a terrain that’s used to some sort of swamp land, which is kind of what rice grows in.

Probably takes a couple of weeks and you’re probably already realizing how silly the story. Because really there’s a Publix, there’s a Win Dixie, there’s a Sprouts market, there’s a Trader Joe’s all within three miles from home, and we can just go to the store and we can buy rice. So think about this for a moment before I tell you these four specific stories, if there was a way to get your ideal message in front of the ideal audience, Dare I say, every single time.

Do you see how a little bit of money invested makes that a better equation than look at all the time that I was spending in those early days? Time is one of those things that we can’t earn that back. You know, I can make the wrong investment in something, uh, and lose a little bit of money and then do something else, and I could earn money back.

We can’t earn back. Now I am not dismissing what I did before though, because it’s in doing all those live hours, doing all that stuff. I will say this with the pat on the back along the way, that’s how I nailed my messaging. That’s how I got really good, really quickly at making sure in a short amount of time I could explain hypnosis to somebody new, have them see the value, and have them in a very non-salesy, non-pushy way, willing to come in and work with me.

One. So like the open mic night, like the band going on tour and work, shopping, new music. That was my place, That was my venue to be bad at it sometimes to get up and do my 45, 45 second spiel at like a BNI meeting, crash and burn and do it better next week. So do not discount those real time hours because we often need that.

I’ve even heard, uh, in the book, Expert Secrets from Russell Bruns. He actually encourages people to go live on Facebook every single day for about two weeks or so, I believe, and not broadcast it to anybody. You can set the privacy to only show it to yourself this way politely. You can suck at it at first and do it better when there’s actually an audience in front of you.

Uh, so again, that’s the backstory to all of this. Here are the stories I wanna share with you from the journey of my hypnosis business that again, It helped to kind of change the criteria here. Uh, so let’s call it out from my Chamber of Commerce. I, one day sat down next to someone who turned out to be the editor of the local newspaper, and wouldn’t you believe the Rotten Luck they didn’t have a health and wellness column?

Imagine the horror of this local newspaper that didn’t have a health and wellness. . Luckily I was there sitting next to her to go, Hey, you know, I write, I’d be happy to send you a couple of samples of what I’ve done in the past, and if it’s a fit, I’d be happy to write your health and wellness column. You know, I’d even make sure that it’s not just talking about what I do.

It also may even feature other people in the local area. She gave me a response that I loved. Oh, that sounds great. But we love what you do. If you want to talk about things from the perspective of a hypnotist, that would be. and as we like to say, Oh, if I have to only talk about myself, I guess I’ll figure that out.

Okay, Now we said yes, everything moved forward. Now there was a hiccup in the journey. I get a phone call from her. You know what, Jason? We were hoping to see that this could be a mutually beneficial relationships, so we’re very happy to have you right in this column. We love what you just sent over. We think it would be a little bit more positive for everybody if you would be willing to pay for advertising.

Also in the magazine, some of you are already cringing and thinking I was now the guilty party of a, of a bait and switch the operating arm of someone. Now, you know, having submit the first article and now no, no, no, we’re not gonna print this unless you pay for it. You could go there. And I almost did.

There’s an important follow up question I now asked. . Okay. Just so I have an idea as to what that might, might look like. What would be the monthly expense? And she told me, Embrace yourself here. $200. In the back of my mind, I am now doing jumping jacks and skipping in circles. Going, Sweet. That’s cheap. By comparison, you’ll hear me say this dialogue later, if I can run the math in my head to go, if I write this article for this local paper, and at that time it doesn’t bring me one client session a.

I’m doing something wrong, you know? And at that point, honestly, I think I’ve responded to go, Oh, what size is that? Okay. Yeah. Cuz I was kind of expecting something a little bit higher in price. Uh, could I get a half page? Yeah. What would that be? And they just bumped it to like 300 or so. Sweet. Um, here’s what I want you to remember from the story though.

Um, under promise, over deliver, I became the hero of this. To them. I wasn’t the guy just giving them 200. No, no, no. I found a way to make it 300. I did insist make sure my paid article, my paid advertisement is never on the same page as the article. Back in Virginia, there was this local health and wellness magazine that always had the advertorial as well as the paid ad on the same page.

It just reeked of this person paid for this. I insisted we even put it in the contract. Do not ever print my ad on the same page as the article. It has to be somewhere else. And here’s the lasting value. The ad did bring in some clients, definitely enough to warrant the 300 bucks a month. You know, uh, the articles, those articles are still on my website.

So it’s not just when it prints. It’s also the value of what you do with it long after the fact, which is part of the next story though again, I give you that to say, don’t put down the entire idea. Don’t lean on the ego of being, I wanna be the next person who’s saying, I didn’t pay cuz I paid. These are pieces I’m still using upwards of 10 plus years later.

You know, and it was supporting a local paper as well, bringing it back to the community, you. , keep it in the family as it were. So story number two around paid advertising. This one has some possible gray area to it, uh, and yet you’ll hear the nuances to it. It was a local magazine that did a feature in different categories every month.

So maybe this month was like dermatologists. This month was like, uh, nurses this month were, um, fitness people. Um, and I forget the category I was. Uh, to the point that actually they thought, at first I was a doctor. I was like, No, no, this is not such a thing for that with hypnotists. Uh, and they go, Well, next month this, this, I go, Yeah, move me to that one.

So the scenario was the white hat area, which is the purity side of it, uh, was that this was by invitation only and nomination. So the best of the best feature. Of Jason, Lynette being the best of the best hypnotist in the area was because here’s the chiropractor who nominated me. They looked into who I was, asked to see some other materials of mine and they said, Yes, you fit the bill.

So one half of this was to their credit and, you know, credibility. It was by nomination and I was nominated. This doctor had sent me tons of clients over the years On the other side. It was a paid spot. Now at this point, this is now a story that’s a little bit more recent in my years, and they explained the feature and I said, Well, what does it cost?

And some of you may cringe when I now tell you it was $1,200. However, this was going out to the most affluent neighborhoods. That part of Virginia, and again, I made sure in advance that one I’d be happy to do this. However, it needs to be laser focused on this one. Specialty. If you write like a general profile, I’m not on board.

I wanted about this one specific thing that I wanna be, one of the main things that I do. They said yes, there’s a hiccup in the story where their editors first wrote this kind of general piece and I’m like, No, no. Needs to be very specific. Otherwise, again, we’re not doing this and they rewrote it and it was great and it was a paid spot.

Now, remember that equation I hinted at before. I am willing at times to invest the income of a little bit of what I do to bring in even more. The article did produce some business as it ran. Once again, that article with permission is still on my website. And if someone reaches out to us cold and says, Does this really work for this issue?

The first thing we do is say, Check out this feature in this local magazine. When would be a good time to check? Get on the phone and chat? I can draw a straight line and I only ever share numbers here. Not to boast, but just to inspire. I can draw a straight line to six figures of income. That I won’t necessarily say that article created, but that article listened to this, that article as an asset helped to create, which again, I could have sat in my office, I could have been there going, No, I am the guy who does this.

I used to say that I don’t pay for it bra and um, McDonald still reminds us that they sell hamburgers and no, that is not the best option. I could come up with, uh, . I am seeing ads. I listened to a podcast and they had an ad for better help. And of course now I’m seeing Better Help ads on, um, Facebook, you know, all these different things.

Advertising is about reminding people that you exist. Educating and informing is always the mindset here. So let’s move things forward in time though, and let’s make it. because, and I, I say this at times where yes, I’ve run Google ads. Yes, I’ve run Facebook ads. Yes, I have had the slightly smug moments of a local hypnotist who did boast in front of a group of people.

Oh, Jason’s the guy running all those advertisements. I don’t do that. We don’t have to do that in the next month. Their ads were right next to mine. Again, go to the store, buy the rice. Think of that story. So it’s the moment in March of 2020 where as I tell the story, the kids got sent home from school early on Wednesday, and they did not go back and around the world.

This was the commentary. This is why we changed the delivery of this podcast for, uh, about a month or so. Um, That episode two 60 onward when we came out twice a week supporting people about here’s how to bring your practice online. Uh, it’s fair to say that there was a window of about a week or so where the phone didn’t ring.

We were all in a bit of a moment of what the hell’s going on, you know? Um, we were hearing messages of two weeks of flatten the ke. Yeah. Um, so. In that moment, there’s about a week where the phone didn’t ring, the website wasn’t getting as much attention, and then it kind of picked up on a very strong bell curve.

There were some events I had to reschedule. There were people I was bringing in guest hosted events, which we moved them online. Um, there were events of mine. I just moved to other months or migrated online, so I had some openings in my calendar. And there’s a mechanism on Facebook. You’ve seen this before.

where if you go to a webpage and you don’t buy anything, now you start to see ads. That’s called retargeting. Uh, I will say this with transparency. You can look up on the web how to do this yourself. In my program, Hypnotic Business Systems, I teach you the step by steps of exactly how to do it. Uh, those of you listening to me right now, before we release this week, I’m recording a new video, by the way, for the program, showing you some of the iOS 14 updates.

Um, there’s new update. On the web that change how you have to run these retargeting ads. The basic idea of this, um, is that if someone’s gone to your website but has not yet hit a page thanking them for booking, there’s a way you can show ads to those people who have been to your stuff but have not yet taken action.

And maybe you’ve heard this of mine before. You need to realize that not everybody is always looking at your website in a time where they’re in a position they can make a buying. Which is the most polite way I can say that. They’re on the toilet looking at their phone. But if they’ve been to your page talking about what you do, but they have not yet booked with you, that is a specific segmented audience that you can show advertisements to and it will stop the advertisements automatically when they become your client.

This sounds complicated. It’s a very simple principle. You can look it up on your own, or I show you exactly how to do that in our rather interesting little industry. I used to see 35 clients a week. I used to do that before I had kids. Now that I have kids, we brought it down to 25, brought it down to 15.

Nowadays, clearly seeing hypnosis clients is not the only hypnosis thing that I do, and nowadays, especially in the recent move, we’re still unpacking Carpet’s coming in next week are stuff from Virginia, arrives in two weeks. I’m kind of capping it right now at like five or six or seven appointments at the moment, just to kind of, you know, relax the schedule while other things are going on.

I was about 12 to 15 on average in terms of what I was filling up my calendar with. Uh, pre pandemic stopped for a brief moment as we rescheduled a bunch of stuff. And because I plugged in that retargeting strategy, I was briefly back up to 25 to 30 people a week. And it wasn’t that before. I wasn’t filling those times.

Those were the number of slots I made available. I was adding in more time. I was doing these marathon scheduled appointments right away. And here’s what I want you to learn from. No one else can show ads to that audience. No one else can show things to people who have been to your website but have not yet booked with you.

Only you can do that. And this is like the one thing that I say to everybody out there, If you’re not yet doing this, rush in and learn how to do this right now. Uh, the advertising spend was so ridiculously low for the amount of people that were reaching out. Uh, I saw that there was a need and I made myself available, and here’s the mindset I made it.

For those people to find me. That’s the mindset behind advertising, which kind of elevates us to where we are now. That was story number three. Story number four is if you’ve been tracking what I’ve been up to in the last year or so, if you want to change your business, you change your audience. Is a lesson that I’ve learned over the years.

So because now I’m seeing a lot of high level entrepreneurs, online marketers as my clients, in addition to everything else, I’ve changed my business so that now those people are coming through a product and then elevating up into now becoming my clients. If you try to sell to everybody, you very well end up selling to nobody.

So it’s where, right now, here’s a client. I just started working. She’s the owner of a diner. She’s in her seventies. She’s quitting smoking. She’s not in the market for the other big thing that I’m doing now. Here’s someone else that is a retiree who’s getting anxious driving on highways. She’s not my market.

However, think about this. Here’s a high ticket product that I’m bringing these clients through, and then they’re becoming my clients one to one. Go to the store and buy the rice. Right. There are ways, and again, you can look this up on your own. I teach you how to do it in our industry, that I can isolate and show things to those audience members, to the people already in the industry I want to get in front of.

And if that’s the case, yes, I could wait for networking events to come back. Yes, I can wait for opportunities to arise. Yes, I can wait for the opportunity to give a presentation or I can take this killer five or six minute video of mine that educates and informs and invites them to take the next step, show that video to that specific audience, and here’s what’s even better.

I can be hanging out with my kids while that machine is running for me. I can be out in the backyard in the pool, relaxing with the family while that’s running for me, and I get to show up and do the work that I’m passionate about at a hundred percent energy, at a hundred percent quality, because now, well, that’s a hypnotic business system that’s running itself.

So my goal this week was, this popped up in a commentary in one of our groups the other day where someone goes, Oh, I just as a rule don’t pay for advertising. And I go, I used to think like you and like you. I was also wrong. Here are the mindsets to bring it all full circle. And I need to wrap this up cuz I have a client session in three minutes.

Here’s the mindset. I don’t wanna bring this into a gambling metaphor. But play with the house’s money. Don’t spend money you’re not willing to lose. Back to story number one, I could easily lose 200 bucks a month as a learning lesson. It paid off wonderfully. That’s why story number two was a higher investment in terms of what I spent.

So changing the word losing to investing is a better mindset. But again, just like stocks, just like people getting into crypto, just like anything. , if it terrifies you to lose it, it maybe is telling you that you might not be doing that specific thing at the right time. You know, I’m gonna take a moment where I go, Okay, so here’s something that’s going well.

I’m gonna take a little bit of this money, this percentage, I’m gonna put it over there. Let’s see what happens. Let’s see if I can learn how to do this better. But don’t spend what you can’t lose. Um, I, uh, one time I tend to be nice to telemarket. Uh, some of them have joined my programs. Uh, but the one moment of a bit of a very negative statement was someone going, Well, if it’s a budget thing, I’m sure you could just put on a credit card and you know when this pays you off, you can pay it off later.

And I said something really mean and I hung up. You know, that’s inappropriate. Let’s not drive people into debt. Um, you know, with what we’re doing here, use what you’ve got to get up and running, get your messaging good as my story was, then broadcast it to a bigger audience. , but the mindset is often, again, I am willing to invest part of that income to bring in even more, You know, So I’m willing to spend the income of one full client, which I am a bit of a premium these days, to bring in all of my clients the rest of the month.

Micro investment. For the macro income. I am willing to spend the income of one student, of a class to sell the other 35 spots. Do you see the trade off here? Because again, what I wish I knew when I got started, I, I value everything I did to begin, but the big idea is you can’t earn back that time. And if there is a way to get your ideal message in front of the right people at the right time who already want some of what you do.

Spend the money and make it easy for them. Jason, let I here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, for leaving your reviews online and joining our public work smart hypnosis community, which if you didn’t catch it, this episode was broadcast as a live stream and then shared as the podcast the following week.

If what I’ve said this week sounds like something you’re looking to do, I say it from a transparent. You can do what I’ve done. You can put in tens of thousands of dollars into your own education, all these tens of thousands of hours into learning, or look at me. I’ve done it for you. I’ve figured it out, and I show people how to do it in our industry.

So you can see the entire program is [email protected] or get a free preview, jason webinar.com six exact strategies you can use right. Six steps to grow a six figure hypnosis business. Check that [email protected]. Oh, and one more thing. If you have not yet registered for hypno Thoughts, Live 2021.

And if you do have the ability to travel some international travels not yet happening, go to HT live.net. Looking forward to seeing a lot of you there. We haven’t seen each other in a while. Apparently a thing has been going on, so excited to be back together with everyone once again. So check that out.

HT live dot. Everybody, stay safe. Get out there. Make it rain. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.