Session #335: Dawn Smith on Hypnotic Introductions

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 335 Don Smith on hypnotic introductions. 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. Let me kick this week’s episode off with a personal nuance.

First before I introduce this outstanding convers. You’re about to listen to. One of the pieces of advice that we often hear in business is that it takes money to make money. And to some degree that might be true. And yes, we can deliver a better quality product. We can scale to audiences around the world, thanks to things like paid traffic or investing in the right.

Technologies to do that. However, in spite of the fact that I am kind of digging in a groove right now as the pay to play guy in terms of marketing and promotion, I will always tell everybody, start with no cost to low cost strategies to begin your business, because chances are most of us have more time than money.

In the early days, and the benefit really becomes, think of an open mic of all things. It’s at the open mic that the comedian, the poet, can get up and kind of workshop new material. You know, based on the feedback of the audience, that’s where we see what people like. And indeed we also find out what they don’t like.

So I bring this up because again, by starting with no cost to low cost, that’s where we get really good with our messaging. That’s where we kind of perfect what to say, when to say it had to respond to that question. And over time it looks so smooth. It looks so polished when someone asks you that question that may be a little bit more difficult for others, but you know what?

You’ve already answered it a whole bunch of times, so you’re ready for it. Which perfectly leads us into this week’s phenomenal episode with Dawn Smith, who’s at a Pensacola, Florida, and appropriately titling this week’s episode, hypnotic introductions. Dawn has a bit of an interesting background because she grew.

With family members of hers already doing hypnosis, so it was already part of the accepted vernacular at home. And to hear the stories in terms of. What it was like growing up with that already around the sort of adventure of going off and taking formal training, then coming back, exploring other careers, and now doing phenomenal work as a full-time professional hypnotist, and the transitions, the growth that she’s had over a very, very impressive span of time.

So for those of you that are just looking to launch, you’re gonna hear some inspirational nuances in terms of how to get out there and become found. For those of you that might be timid about talking of what you do, you’re gonna hear just from a place of passion, the strategies, the ways to just introduce what she does.

And I still stand by this statement. As much as we can scale things international, it’s easier to win locally. To be found by people and hear the nuances of, again, working in person options out there in terms of working online. Just a real worker in the industry, and congratulations, Dawn, on what you’ve built.

As always, you can check out the show [email protected] to see how to connect with Dawn to hear more from our great guests this week while you’re there to check out hypnotic business systems.com to see this is the Hypnotic Business Systems Library, the all access pass. To my hypnosis training library, as we like to say, guessing sucks.

Here’s what’s actually working. You could go off and put in all the years of effort that between myself and my community we’ve done to figure out what actually works in this rather unique industry. Or make a small investment in yourself, join hypnotic business systems and get more than three dozen proven business action plans to get you up and running faster and easier.

That’s available right [email protected], but you can always check out the free preview by way of a free on-demand workshop, six steps. To a six figure hypnosis business. You can get that right [email protected]. And with that, let’s jump directly into this week’s phenomenal conversation.

I’ve said phenomenal three times. That’s how you know I’m serious about this. Here we go. Episode number 335. Dawn Smith on hypnotic introductions. Well, it’s really interesting because I am a second generation hypnotist. My mom was a hypnotist, and of course, you as a hypnotist in the seventies, and for a woman to be a hypnotist and that timeframe, it was, you know, very rare.

And she was, you know, really successful at what she did. And so all that overflowed into our home life. So we lived rather hypnotically. Nice. Okay, so we’re gonna spend the next 45 minutes on that . No, because so many people, you go through a training and the catch phrase off and develops that, Oh, some of these things about how the mind works.

I wish they taught this to us in school and to instead have grown up with it. Like what, what themes were around growing up? Well, one of the themes that were was always around was, you know, our, what we think and what we say. And the way we use our mind has power. And so she would, my mother would always say, you know, let’s not manifest something into existence that’s not there.

You know, if you’re complaining about something or you’re having a negative thought. So we always really. Before we said something, we really thought about it and we would also challenge our thought, Is this true? Is this real? Why are we thinking this? And so we, we did that just all the time. And I was pretty much probably 19 or 20 years old when I got out into the real world and realized that all these people had all these negative thoughts and didn’t realize that the things they were thinking became their words, and their words became their actions.

And so I started realizing, Wow, people don’t know this and we’ve just been doing this our whole life. Yeah. Well I love that point that there’s this almost attitude of having figured out the world that we often bring into some of this, that we hear the dialogue is there, is there a story that stands out in terms of, you know, having that in the household and then hearing maybe even friends or people around you saying otherwise?

Um, yes. So when I was a, you know, when I was a teenager, I, you know, you, you know, 15, 16 years old, you’ve got friends that have all that teenage angst and stuff, and I would always look at my friends and say, Why are you worrying about that? You know, I didn’t use the word mindfulness or say, let’s, you know, be present.

But I was like, Why are you worrying about these things? All you have to do is change how you’re thinking about it, and they. What, what are you talking about? Changing the way I think’s not gonna change anything. And I would just start naturally explaining to them different ways to kind of stop their negative thinking, you know, in the way that I understood it at age 15.

So a lot of it came just with having, you know, teenagers that hanging around that weren’t really happier. They were just, you know, going through their own teenage stuff and. My house ended up becoming the hangout house, like the kids would come to my house because it was happy and pleasant there. Not just me, but my parents.

So it was like the cool place to come and know that, um, you could be accepted, but you were going to be guided in a positive manner. Yeah. That’s amazing. So then from that point in life moving forward, like what was the track that you were on then in terms of, you know, profession or interests? What was next?

Well, I was always interested in helping people, um, because of the way my mother helped people. I also had a real entrepreneurial spirit, and that came from my dad. I mean, when I was a young kid, he was, you know, always showing me and teaching me ways to, you know, have my own business or not be working for someone else.

So I had a lot of different things that I did over the years, but even in my, like in my early twenties, you know, I, when I was really young, I went to school to. Do hair. I love being a hairdresser. I did that for a short amount of time, but I realized I didn’t really like that. I just liked owning a salon and training everyone else and you know, the business aspect of it.

So I had a lot of entrepreneurial endeavors over the years and they started. Becoming more and more related to helping people. And so eventually I started doing massage therapy and I was a personal trainer and I did those things. And tho that niche is where I really started using the hypnosis because I would have clients come in for pain and I would use pain control through hypnosis, along with the massage therapy, or they were coming in for a personal training and I would use, um, peak performance mindset for them.

And so, but all of that really didn’t. Serve my desire to really serve people in a meaningful way. It was a small way. I wanted to do something bigger and have a bigger impact on people, and I eventually just decided that hypnosis is the only way to do that. Nice. Which, having that as part of the background, I, I’d imagine in the early years of this, that it was things that, uh, were just kind of picked up around the house, picked up in terms of conversation, or was there formal training back?

The only, it was not formal training to answer your question. Yeah. So my mother would tell me how she did stuff and I even witnessed some of it and I, you know, I actually sat in on some sessions that she did with people. So there wasn’t like that, She didn’t call it an induction, she didn’t call it, you know, a certain technique.

I just listened and watched what she did, and of course, She also hypnotized me for various things when I was growing up, things that I wanted help with, and so I learned primarily from that. So we didn’t have like a sit down lesson. Yeah. It was just more observing it over the years and like she never said, Hey, I’m a conversational hypnotist.

I mean, now that I know more about hypnosis, I recognize a lot of things that she did that she didn’t tell me she was doing. I was just observing it. Yeah. Yeah. Can you remember something that you observed and kind of pulled out then as a method? Yeah. One of the things is that she would never stop talking once she started

Um, and so, and not always, you know, but she would, was very good at, and it didn’t seem or feel like she was hypnotizing somebody. She would just start talking to them. And the thing that I noticed first was that she was feeding back to them all the things they had told her. So yeah, if they were trying to lose weight, for example, and she asked them, You know, what would be the thing that would help you the most?

And they, maybe they’ll give her, you know, one, two, and three examples and then she would feed that back to them as a suggestion. But she would just do it in such a conversational way. It didn’t feel like she was, you know, bossing them the round or being too direct. So they’d really, there was no resistance cuz she was just saying what they had already told.

Yeah, I, That reminds of a weird piece of feedback that often pops up in a training sometimes where I always have to give the disclaimer to say that I’m gonna give you a compliment, but it’s not gonna sound like a compliment. It really sounds like you’re making it up as you go, and that’s how it should be as opposed to, and here I am now about to run you through this specific method.

Right? Something natural about it. I. Yeah, and she would just talk to them and she would, and when you, you know, to a casual observer that didn’t really know what was going on, it just sounded like it was kind of a one sided conversation. You know, she would, you know, have them, she’d use a lot of progressive muscle relaxation for an induction.

And so I learned that. I didn’t even know it was an induction, and I started doing that with all my massage therapy. Lines just naturally. But she would do that and then just lead into a conversation about the changes that they wanted to make, and it was just really fluid. It didn’t seem like a specific technique was being applied.

It just seemed like someone who cared about you was talking naturally about the thing you needed to do and the goal you needed to reach, and how best for you to get. Now this brings up, and we tend to bounce around in this conversation sometimes in a wonderfully nonlinear way, but I, I’d be curious to hear from your sort of expectations coming into this process.

Genuinely being born into it, uh, and it already being around versus now seeing people who are learning, looking to get up and running. Um, what, what do you see as some of those sticking points that other practitioners, let’s say it here, um, create for themselves? One of the things that I’ve noticed when I’m talking to other hypnotists, especially new hypnotists and even some that aren’t so new, is getting really caught up in technique or worrying about what technique you’re gonna use.

Cuz the bottom line is all techniques work in the right situation with the right person. But I hear people saying, Well, should I use parks therapy or is this NLP gonna work? Or should I use this squashing technique? Or what induction should I use? And the truth. It doesn’t matter if you’re listening to your client and you’re being present with your client and you’re really truly paying attention to what they’re saying, they’re going to give you everything you need for that session, and you teach this all the time that the script writes itself when you’re talking to your clients because they know best what they need.

You just have to deliver it to them in a way that they can understand it. They’re gonna give you what they need. So instead of being caught up on. You know which technique you’re gonna use. Just make a genuine human connection to, and listen to what they’re saying. And that’s when the techniques become even more secondary.

The techniques become even more natural. And you know the part two of that is, yes, the client does write the script for us, but the clients don’t also realize that they’re speaking in code and they’re talking in specific techniques sometimes too. Yeah, sometimes they are. Just being open and listening and hearing.

It’s like, Oh, that’s what we’re gonna do today. All right, sure. Let’s go there. . Yeah. So then that’s great. Was there another career path that you were kind of following? You mentioned, um, you know, from the hairdressing to the massage to also the training. What else was along that journey? I’m always curious to hear, you know, what’s that pathway?

Back home in this case, but towards hypnosis . Sure. Well, um, when I was doing massage therapy and the personal training, those things were kind of linked together because I started doing personal training so that I could physically rehabilitate my massage clients who were primarily, uh, pain clients, you know, that had a lot of chronic pain.

So one of the things when I was doing that, that I just couldn’t wrap my mind around, even though. I saw it all the time was just the people’s desire to just stay stuck where they were and to not continue moving forward or making change. And so that kind of led me into the world of academia. I went back to college as an adult and I got a degree in philosophy and.

One of the main things that I studied in that degree was philosophy of mind, and you learn how people think and why they think and how they think, and you start understanding things around about their culture and their home life and just everything how impacts how they think. So when I started taking those classes, it just tied together a lot of.

Everything regarding hypnosis, it just, it’s almost like they were the same thing, but just calling it something different. So those things together started leading on the path towards, you know, hypnosis alone, because what was taking forever in a. Massage session for pain control or when I was learning philosophy, I was learning a lot of psychology techniques within that.

It’s really laden in psychology as well, learning things for anxiety and stress reduction, but none of it would streamline the client to just take ’em where they are, to where they wanna be quick enough. And for me, hypnosis did it really quickly. So it kind of just solidified that and also tied it all together.

Yeah, the, the power. And I’ve had so many people from other professions go through a training perhaps, and it’s aligned from Melissa Tears, but the phrase was that I can now sit down with somebody and just ask, What would you like to change today? And to get started on that, to see a process in motion immediately.

Now becomes that ability where now they’re seeing the results, they’re now motivated, and whatever instructions may be a part of, whether it’s physical therapy, whether it’s counseling, whether it’s coaching, the feedback that we’re getting better compliance, we’re getting faster outcomes being a big part of that.

And one of the things about the faster outcomes, that’s the other reason I like hypnosis so much, is because I was finding, especially with chronic pain and people that had a lot of chronic stress too, not necessarily like an anxiety disorder or something, but just a chronic stress from. Things that they couldn’t really control that were happening in their life at the time is one of the reasons they weren’t compliant and sticking to things that their doctors were ordering or their therapists or orders because they weren’t getting results fast enough, so they felt like it wasn’t working.

So with hypnosis, since things happened so quickly and they’re getting the results faster, it makes them kind of stay on track and comply with the things that they need to do even better. So I’ve always enjoyed that aspect of. So I’d be curious to hear the, the combination, So there you were doing massage and progressive muscle relaxation induction to use a technique here.

Uh, how, how did that play out? How were you, were you introducing that? Was that something you were bringing up or just naturally doing? What was the, what was the sort of style of that? I was actually naturally doing it. So a client would come in and I always, so you know, a typical massage say is an hour long, so I would always make mine an hour and 15 or 20 minutes long.

And so client would come in and get ’em prepped for the massage and as soon as I would have them on the massage table, I would ask them to take a nice deep breath and I would explain to them that I’m going to talk to them for a few minutes and that I wouldn’t talk to them through the whole massage cuz I wanted them to.

And so I’d have ’em take a nice deep breath and I would just start in from muscle relaxation, from the top of the head all the way down to the toes. And I’m telling they were melting into the table before I ever even got to their shoulders with my hands. So I would sit, you know, I would talk them and mostly guide them through breathing to start with.

And it didn’t seem odd or anything because. You are there to relax most people. So it didn’t seem strange that I was, you know, asking. It would take, take a deep breath and you know, they’re in a dark room, the lights are dim. So everything was really setting it up for that also. And I had my great music in the background and I just used my voice to get them relaxed for the 10 or 15 minutes.

And then we would do the massage and then afterwards I actually would do some kind of emergence because they could be a little bit if more. Sleep ish, you know, than if I had just given just a regular massage. I’d usually actually count ’em out of it also. Nice. Yeah, it’s amazing how the two seamlessly fit together.

And I forget if I’ve told the story on here before that, um, a former office that I had, it was subletting to a massage therapist shared lobby, and someone comes in for the appointment and he goes, I’m scheduled for two and. We both kinda looked at each other and go, Which one of us are you scheduled for?

And he goes, Both of you . Right? And the quick moment is, Oh, that’s what we’re doing today. Yeah. Okay. And you know, the, the experience of doing the two, I love the nuance though of I’m gonna talk at the beginning and then, you know, it’ll fade away at that point, but then bringing it back in, especially for the emergence, there’s.

Something beautifully hypnotic that’s going on in that experience. Right. So then at what point was the thought process, and I know you went off and then did training, but what was the process then of let’s say, coming back to it and letting this become more career oriented? So I’ve been doing hypnosis, you know, on and off for years.

I mean, I think the first time I did full hypnosis is somebody was when I was 15 years old. So I’ve been doing. Informally for many years. When I say informally, I always had a job or career or something that I was doing. And so when the pandemic hit last year, I was working for a nonprofit organization and we had to shut down for a few weeks.

And I recognized in the beginning that this is a few weeks is gonna be a few months and no telling what’s gonna happen. And that little bit of. Off made me realize I’m not going back to working for someone else and doing something. Even though it was a great organization, it wasn’t reaching people on the level that I wanted to.

And so I wanted to have something to show for my downtime from the pandemic, and I didn’t really wanna waste any time. So I immediately, um, went to work putting together a business. . Yeah. So then of that startup plan, what were some of those elements? What were some of those bullet points you focused on?

Well, the first thing, the very first thing I did was I got certified with the I C B C H and I joined a couple of your programs and, um, I also joined one of Richard Non Guards plans. And so I started those two programs of both of you. And then I knew with those things in hand that I would be set for success because I’ve been around the business world enough to know that I don’t have to recreate the will.

I just need to, you know, surround myself with people that. More than I do and model after people that are great. What they do at what they do. And so that’s why I chose your program and Richard’s program. And so I started those and then I just started consuming and gobbling up all things, hypnosis, , books, videos, other people’s, you know, smaller trainings.

And I was doing that just to make sure that everything that I’ve been doing over the years was still up to par and the standard. And of course I learned an. Amount of other things to add to my toolbox. So I did all those things. And then, um, the very first thing I did though, once I got those trainings was kind of pick and choose where I wanted to start in them.

And that’s one of the things that I love about your hypnotic business systems, is you have it laid out to where you can go from the beginning to the end, or you can jump around if you, if there’s something specific you need to work on. And so I immediately, right off the bat, um, created a vel velvet rope strategy.

So that as I was building my list of clients, I was feeding them through that funnel so that by the time they got to me, they were ready. So I was only talking to people that were ready for change. Yeah. I didn’t want to, you know, spend my time talking to people that were on the fence. Nice. Yeah, I wanna highlight that here.

And it’s not, you know, for those that don’t yet know what this is a reference to, it’s, it’s an application funnel where people go into the calendar, they pick a time, so it negates the game of phone tag. Or you know, I’ll call you at this time. What about that time? Just here’s the link. And they schedule, There’s a few other hypnotic.

Business things that are inside of it, especially the onboarding. Uh, but I, I’m just curious to highlight this for you though, because here you were, you know, really setting your own hours, and correct me on this, you were kind of more using like a co-working space, temporary space at that point, right? Yes, correct.

Yeah. Just temporary space. What, what kind of spaces were you? It was just, it was a shared office space. It was somebody who was a therapist and she was only working a few days a week. So I was working on the days that she wasn’t working and it was great, but it wasn’t allowing me to be full time. And you know, we’d every now and then have a scheduling issue or something like that.

So I was working in a, you know, regular office space, but it wasn’t mine, it was somebody else’s. Right. I would, so I take my bag into work every day. I had a portable little office that I took in, set up every day and then took it home when I. Yeah, I’m trying to remember whose story. It was someone who had an office that was like that, and the story was that it was one room in like a co-working space that was set up for like a therapy sort of configuration.

And the line was, there was one nail on the wall. And behind the sofa were like six different people, certificates, , and just everyone stashed their stuff behind the sofa. You’d go in and hang yours up and now, right? That was your office. Well, I had a little bit of, um, I had a good reason for having my, I was just very transparent with my clients.

You know, we were hit by hurricane. In September. Yeah, last year that was pretty bad and office space is really hard to find and I was just straight up with my clients. I told them, Hey, this isn’t my space. This is where I’m temporarily, temporarily working until I have space. And everyone here knows the damage and they know how hard it is.

So nobody even thought anything about it. I just told ’em what the deal was and moved forward on it and it was never a second thought for. Yeah, well that, that’s the benefit of as soon as you own the story, you know, it’s where I’ve clearly told the entire story of my move recently as I was doing it. So even the clients that I’m working with that are still in Virginia, they know and there’s no surprise, there’s no hiding it.

Um, I’m curious to ask just for specifics here. Would you say you had that space, it was shared. Would you say you had it like a third of the week or half of the week? What was the typical time? I’d say if I added up all the hours it was available, it would only be available to me a total of. A solid two working days.

It might be three, but some of would be a half day. So yeah, if I would say anything, it would total up to about two solid working days. A and just to build some clarity for people’s minds, do you mind if I ask how much you were spending to have that space for? Basically, let’s say, let’s say generously about a third of the week.

I was spending, so I paid by the shift. She, that’s how she did it. And so it ended up being around 50 to $85 a day, depending on how long I took it for the day. Yeah. Which ends up being more than what I’m actually paying for rent now on a new space. Yeah, I was gonna say that presents the situation where, you know, I was always cautious with some of the images from my office cuz it built the idea that that’s what a hypnosis office needed to be when really I was running a full training business and had different people working there at different times.

But the single room, single office, and I’m imagining for yours, You were basically paying for it as you used it and not paying it for you when you didn’t use it, right? Correct. I was, but I was always using it on the day she was off, but I was paying her, you know, for that as we went along. Yeah. So I was paying for it as I was earning money, but still an amazing way to get the foot in the door, have something that you could actually get started with.

As I always say, work to outgrow it, . Right. And I love the nuance though, that what you’re now making use of is technically less. It is, it’s a lot less actually. Yeah. And so now I just recently signed a lease on a space, and so it’s not a, it’s not a, it’s a private office, but it’s in another building with a lot of other therapists.

There’s a, uh, there’s about six of us that work in there. There’s a beautiful reception area, kitchen, all the things that you need. And I have five other. Wellness practitioners in there. Most of them are licensed mental health counselors. And so I like it because when somebody walks in the door, it’s, you know, it’s kind of like having shared space, but not, it’s the best of both worlds.

I have my own private office in there, I can come and go as I please, but it’s set up for wellness and improving your life because of the other type of practitioners that are in there. And it’s in a pretty sought after area in my, um, neighborhood where I live. So, It’s good for clients. They like coming there, they’re comfortable there.

And of course it helps when they come in and everybody there who works in the building’s goal is to help your life get a little bit better. There’s so many options like this. And, uh, I told you this before we jumped on the recording, that this is being recorded about a month and a week or so before it comes out.

And as I said earlier, um, car carpet is soft, putting it in and it’s loud, uh, . So I’m in a, what is it? Pipeline Workspace in Orlando. I’ve been here since early in the morning doing sessions and then a couple of recordings and even to walk around the hallways. There’s so many people doing therapeutic work here.

Some have curtains, some have just the, you know, frosted out windows and amazing reception, so we don’t need to have. Our own space, simply having the one room. Uh, you, you launched a business though during a pandemic. Did you do much online? I did not do much online. Yeah. Um, and which is odd, Um, I feel like as a general rule, for most people, that’s the best way to go.

Cuz you can, you know, work, have people all over the world coming to see you. But, um, because of the pandemic, it just worked out that everyone was so ready to connect with someone. Doing it in person was working for me. Um, and people were so ready to just. Make a change. They, you know, they were kind of like me.

They had some time off. Everybody had to, everybody was shut down and so they had time to reevaluate what they wanted to change in their lives. So it was a real good opportunity. So, and where I live, we were shut down from about March to July. So at the end of July, when everything opened back up and people could, you know, go into another office, they were ready.

I already had everybody. Ready to go. They were ready to see somebody. They were ready to get in office. They were ready to make change. So I just started doing it based on talking and visiting and basically the gift of gab with everybody in town. . Yeah. So to talk about that more of a social way. Of doing the business, which by the way, um, you are only about, um, 450 miles from me.

Uh, which is weird. That’s the fun of Florida. You’re in Pensacola, right? I am in Pensacola. Close, yeah. Cause back to neighbors, back to Virginia is 850. But this is a wide state. Right. Um, we’re quickly learning which is why this, which is why the sound quality is so good by the way, cuz it’s a closer connection.

Right. Oh, that’s good. Well, and we’re on two different time zones still. Cause I’m in central time, so, Oh, that’s right. Yeah. I almost messed that up today. Jason . Because you’re asking, you’re saying, Hey, let’s do three 30. And in my head I’m like, yeah, three 30. And it wasn’t until this morning I realized, oh my goodness, I’m on central time.

Yeah, I’m in the future. That’s what happens there. So more of a social way of getting the business up and running, getting out and talking to people, which you shared something before we jumped on that. I’d love you to highlight that there was a, there was an active choice in terms of keeping a lot of the business.

More based upon, I’m gonna carefully use the term social marketing, not necessarily social media, though. Social marketing is a part of that. Um, talk, talk about that in terms of making that as a decision in the startup timeframes. So, because I had limited space and I had some other obligations that I needed to wrap up before I could just launch full time, full throttle into everything, I was kind.

Carefully curating a clientele, so to speak. And so rather than just putting it out there to every single body and just not having any control over people contacting me, I was a little more careful about that cuz the one thing I didn’t wanna do was have, you know, 50 people call me up today and then I can’t actually see them.

So I was curating the list of people to come see me. At the same rate that I had time and space available to me. So I just talked to everyone. Um, the funny thing is, is by nature, I’m actually an introvert, but I love. Relating to hypnosis and change so much that it’s just easy for me to talk to people. So I talk to everybody everywhere I go store clerks, you know, um, business owners, waitresses, servers.

Everywhere I go, I just talk to people. You know, if you’re talking to people long enough, they’ll ask you what you do or it’ll come up. And I’m not necessarily talking to them to tell them about hypnosis. I’m just creating a connection with them and it’s an authentic connection. And so then when the time does come, they already feel like they know me.

They already feel like, Hey, she’s kind of a friend. Uh, she’s got my best interest because they’ve seen me or talked to me so many times. So I make it a point when I’m out and about to always talk to people, always acknowledge people, and. Make myself known to them so that if they ever do wanna create a change, they have somebody that they can, you know, know, like, and trust.

Yeah. What I love about that is nearly any training event is gonna bring up the similar themes about let people know what you do. Don’t just hide it, talk about it. And some would go, Well, what’s a technique for that? What should I say? And the easiest thing is to say, Put a book on the table when you’re sitting at a coffee shop that’s like a hypnosis book and someone may very well stop and go, What’s that?

And now you’re in conversation. But you’re exactly right that the moment we just start to engage and let’s call it out, be human, um, the natural question will pop up as to what do you do? And as soon as that’s there, what, what kind of responses were you getting then is to, then you’re talking to somebody, here comes the profession question.

Now you say hypnosis. What was that, What was that response for you? I’ve had a wide range of responses. , almost all. It has been very positive. Sometimes people don’t actually know what it is, the most recent thing. Um, and she actually became a client of mine for anxiety. Um, she said, We started talking and she asked me what I did and I told her and she said, Oh, so you talked to dead people?

And I said, Nope, that’s not it. And before I could say anything, she’s like, Oh, oh, you’re the one that’s got like that, that does like the tea leaves, and you read ’em and tell people their future. And I was like, Nope, that’s not it either . And so, So I’m cracking, Yeah, I’m cracking up while she’s saying this.

And so, um, she now realizes that I’m gonna let her run the gamut of all these things. And she just kept coming up with all these bizarre things and I finally told her what I did and she was like, Oh my God, can you help me with, uh, Panic attacks and we started talking about that and she booked a client there short, uh, a session with me shortly thereafter.

Yeah. I’m walking into a high school in New Jersey about 12 years ago, about to do an assembly in the front desk. Receptionist goes, Oh, the hypnotist is here. He’s gonna give us the winning lottery numbers. Oh, that’s great. Too bad you can’t do that, . It’s like, You have no idea what I do to you, . No, but most people.

Have responded, just very, you know, excited and say, you know, Hey, I’ve never met a hypnotist. Or, you know, they start asking questions and almost every one of them, when I tell people what I do, they immediately go to whatever it is that they need, you know? Yeah. Oh my, you know, my back’s hurting. Do you help with pain or, You know, I have tests coming up and I’m freaking out.

Cause I live, there’s a college here, so I live in a college town. And you know, I have a test coming up. I’m freaking out. Can you help me? Can you do anything about that? And sometimes they’ll ask me if I can help them with something and they’re almost being sarcastic and laughing like, cuz they don’t think that it’s a real thing you can help them with.

And then when they find out, Oh actually you can. And sometimes if there’s any way for me to do any kind of technique or anything right there on the spot with ’em for just, you know, 30, 40, 50 seconds or something, I’ll do it right then. And so, and they, you know, they like that. And so it’s, it’s just been really, I’ve had really good feedback from talking to people in general and I actually, uh, can thank the pandemic for that because people have been more open, I think, to just hearing and seeing others cuz they were tied up for so long.

You just opened up a loop, by the way. And now there’s like 400 people right now going, Well what would you do in that situation? What was the technique, as we’ve already talked about, um, transcending technique, but now that you’ve opened it, . Oh, Dawn, what techniques would you use then? . Okay, well I, um, recently at the grocery store, I had a girl that was at the, um, she was a, a manager there, and I kind of knew her from going in and out.

Like I said, I talked to everybody and so I knew, knew her and so she was telling me, Oh my God, I’m freaking out. And she told me what she was freaking out about. She had an upcoming. Um, MRI type thing. And so she was just really upset about a medical thing. And so she right there on the spot was starting to escalate.

I’m not gonna say she was having a full on panic attack, but she was, you know, she was talking really fast. Her speech started getting really pressured and I, I held my hand up in front of her and I said, Do me a favor. I said, Just look at my hand. And she looked at my hand. I said, I want you to take nice deep breath.

And I went into, and I said, uh, went into a tapping method. So I started showing, I didn’t touch her since it’s a pandemic. I said, Look, I said, I want you to tap here. And so I had her tapping and taking some deep breaths and so I did like a modified EFT technique, I guess right there on the spot. And she.

Not only did she calm down, people started surrounding us. . I turned around. Now I have to say I felt, I felt good about helping her, but there was a part of me that was like, Oh my God, I have an audience. And it stressed me out a little bit. Yeah, I turned around and there was a handful of people standing there, and uh, one girl was recording me on her phone.

And so, you know, if I can. And so she is somebody, she actually did not become a client of mine, but she did refer her daughter to me. So it paid off for her immensely because she now knows there’s a tool that she can do, and I got a referral out of it. Yeah, I’m just imagining now someone’s putting out the hat and

No, but I mean, to seize the opportunities, these are those moments that really create some of the greatest word of mouth. You know, I, I’ve talked for years about business networking and what I would get up and talk about, what I would get up and do, and here’s the moment where it’s someone about to give their keynote at a BNI meeting.

And simply doing a quick, like two or three minute version of a fast phobia cure, uh, before the meeting and exactly what you just described, um, what was the moment where the person got up and gave the presentation and enjoyed it, Right? And at the end goes, and Jason helped me. Thank you so much. I could have never done this.

And having these moments of just being willing to get out there and if something didn’t work, you could have done something. Exactly, or, or really as you brought up already, the beauty of progressive muscle relaxation. Simply doing something of that nature is gonna dial it down at least some percentage.

Yeah, it does. It helps a lot. And so, you know, and because I’m talking to people when I’m out and they see my face, you know, they don’t think it’s weird when I’m saying, Okay, girl, you gotta look at my hand and take a nice deep breath. And I approach it from a very friendly, casual. Non domineering way when I’m doing something like that, obviously, but they don’t take it as a put off because they see me and they’ve seen me before and I’ve chit chatted with ’em before, and now it’s like, okay, she knows what she’s doing and so even if they’re not ready, they know somebody else that’s ready for change.

There’s an element inside of this, and correct me on this if I’ve got some bits of this incorrect, but I just. Highlighted for people listening to this that someone could hear this conversation and suddenly go, Yeah, but she’s in a smaller area where people are closer to each other and they know each other.

That won’t work where I live, which is the fun game that people often play. Um, everything you’re saying, there’s always a community that can be found some. Well, as long as there’s people, there’s a community. Exactly. Yeah. , I mean, my town, I think there’s about a quarter million people here, and there is a handful of hypnotists here.

And no matter where you live, there’s stores, you’re gonna be out and about, you’re gonna shop, you’re gonna go into businesses, you’re gonna go to an attorney’s office. Whatever you’re gonna do, you’re going to be out and doing things. And so I, I don’t care what your business is. And I’ve built other businesses on that too.

And so I knew for me that. Worked, you know, just by engaging with people. Uh, I mean, I’ve know people that I’ve seen 50 times and have no clue what they do, and so unless I’m asking, and I just feel like if you put it out there to people, you know, The more people that know you, the more people will know you.

So I feel like if you’re in a community and you think that that won’t work in your community, I would really challenge you to remove that limiting belief. And for what it’s worth, I had two people who scheduled calls with me just to chat things about their hypnosis business and both got the same feedback.

It’s that people do business. With people. And right now you have a really nice looking website with the same stock photos that anyone else can buy, and there’s nothing that makes you stand out right now, it’s just information and pretty photos. So let’s now bring you into the story and let people meet you.

And that’s really what creates that irreplaceable brand, that it’s no longer the game of, Oh, someone else is charging this for the session. I’m only charging that when No, they wanna work with Don. Yeah, it’s, it’s true. And I mean, I’m like that when I wanna have a service done, especially a personal service, I wanna go to somebody that I know.

I don’t wanna go to somebody that, like you said, stock picture and you don’t, you’ve never even heard ’em speak. Like, I wanna have some kind of connection. If it make, it makes it better and it makes you trust ’em a little bit more. So, I mean, I know as a consumer, that’s what I want, so why wouldn’t my clients want the same thing?

Everybody, uh, rewind that back and listen to that sentence like four more times. And that’s how you make a business work in the 21st century or ever in the history of all existence. Nicely stated. Thank you. Yeah. . So then what’s, what’s in the works right now? Because I know here you are moving into, uh, a new space.

Uh, here’s a lot of the world continuing to open up more and more. What are you excited about? Right? What I’m excited about right now is HT Live and taking Ken GTO’s smoking, uh, stop smoking protocol. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually, I heard a testimonial that you did. That’s the main I’ve heard of him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I, um, signed up for his class. I figured you wouldn’t lead me astray, so I, you know, I’ve always been very good at hypnosis and doing, you know, pain control and stress relief and anxiety reduction and even academic performance. Though I always kind of steered away from smoking cessation because I felt like I just needed a little bit more training on it.

And it turns out that I have all those skills to do that. So it’s real interesting because when I decided to take Ken’s class, I, um, Contacted him and he called me and we talked about it and I, he suggested, Hey, make sure you have X amount of clients lined up for when you get back for my training so that you can go home and implement it right away.

And I thought, Oh, I can’t wait that long. So I just started booking them. Now I just started book, book, book, all these stop smoking clients cuz I thought, well I wanna put as many under as my belt as I can so that when I do learn from him, I can see what I can improve, what I’m doing great at. And it turns.

I’m highly successful at it. So Nice. It turns out it’s great. So I’ve had awesome success with smoking cessation for the last four months since I reached out to him, and he told me that that one little thing of him telling me to line up some clients. And so the thing I’m excited about is to really bring that into Pensacola because there’s so many people that need it and I know that I could work nonstop with people for smoking.

That’s one of those things that there’s just such a demand for it. And I always have to, and I, I bring this up in conversation when I, you know, the manager of this co-working space that I’m using today, which second time this month I’m doing just with ongoing projects at home that, um, he goes, Oh, it must be a lot of, And he throws a stereotype at, it’s like, no, there are no, you know, correlations that I’ve had every.

You know, profession, I’ve had doctors who are coming in to quit smoking, right? It’s the person who, you know, fell into a pattern and here’s what’s stuck, and we’re helping them to interrupt that and change that. And I, I think this becomes a through line for any process that you’re gonna see a transition where this no longer is.

What you’ve now stopped. Instead, it’s about where you’re going and what you’re now creating. Right. And as we approach the change that place now, it’s no longer the the game as some people would have in their minds of what if it wears off? It’s like, well, no, this has now become a transformation of identity.

Right. And that old thing just doesn’t fit with who you are now. Yeah. This is who you are now. Yeah. Cigarettes gonna stay the same as it was before. It’s you that’s gonna change. Right, Right. I, I, I, I love that aspect of. Uh, I, I’ve done the same thing as to, um, what was it? My version of that story was lining up people for virtual gastric band.

When I first learned that from Sheila gra Right. And people were going, But I wanna do it now. And I’m in my head going, I’m taking the training in like two months. But I’m pretty certain I understand the theme of it. Let’s do it . Right? Right. And what I learned was pretty similar. There were much better refinements.

Mind you. Thank you Sheila. Uh, but that willingness, a, as you’ve kind of let the theme of this conversation to be, to get out there and interact with people. It’s where I were recording this the last week of June, but I said to you already, this is coming out the Thursday before hypno thought. Because you’ve been very active in that group.

Again, just letting people know you interacting and the whole theme of the more you give, the more you get back. Uh, I recorded, it’s gonna come out in September, but a conversation with Grand Weber from the uk and the whole theme again of creating the opportunities rather than waiting for them to actually.

It makes a huge difference. I just really appreciate you inviting me on. I was so excited when you asked me to come on and talk to you today, and, um, I just, I admire everything you’re doing and I have a lot of respect. Oh, thank you for what you’re doing for our community. It’s a, it’s a rare find sometimes, so I appreciate you.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for making it work too. It’s always great when we’re seeing the results and I learned from all of you as well. So let, let’s go into the specifics here briefly. What is working right now to bring those clients in? I think what’s working, aside from, aside from everything we’ve talked about so far, what, what else is driving that business for you now?

One of the main things I think is transparency. Um, yeah, not, and being very honest about what I can and what I can’t help with, but also transparency as far as what is the responsibility of the client, because I’ve had a few come in that went to other hypnotists and the hypnotist didn’t really tell ’em well, you know, I.

Force your hand to make you go listen to this video or audio or whatever. So transparency as far as what they also need to do, that’s been working really good. And some other little thing that’s been helping a lot is I call everybody the next day and do a maybe a 32nd to a 92nd brief, very brief phone call to them just to check in.

They don’t know I’m gonna call. They’re all excited when I call and I always send everybody a thank you note the next day. And so by time they have a second session with me. They’ve had a first session, they’ve had a follow up phone call and they’ve had a thank you note. And so by the time they get to me, they’re already just sold on whatever we’re gonna work on together.

Thank you. Note physically in the mail and physically in the mail P you wouldn’t believe how actually you would believe it because I think you had mentioned before that you used to do that. Um, yeah. People are thrilled to get an actual piece of mail. Handwritten mail, and I’ve actually even had some people send me a thank you card for sending them a thank you card.

Yeah, , that’s great. I, every, every office that I’d ever had, uh, was walking distance to a post office. And when I was doing that as a strategy, I would actually pre-write the envelopes in the morning, the first line of the, uh, thank you card. I had some custom ones at the time, and the whole thing was like, if I can get it out today.

The day of the appointment, it means they’re gonna receive it tomorrow. That’s gonna be an Oh wow. Which, you know, I just had to kind of prep them in some respect. Um, I was guilty sometimes of writing the first two sentences in advance, customizing the last sentence, . I write it as soon as their session’s over and stick an envelope.

Well, that, that’s like this show as well, just for the insight to it. I do the best that I can. Sometimes we delay it because we batch record the episodes, but the sooner I can record the intro and the outro. The better because then I’m actually speaking exactly about what we’ve just heard. Otherwise, my incredible editors write the first draft of the show notes, and I sometimes have to cheat off of that.

I gotcha. , that’s great. So then as a, as it is right now, just kind of continuing to increase that reach, working on a website and expanding that, uh, awareness around what you do, I’m, I’m loving what I’m hearing in terms of, again, Taking ownership of at the same insight that you just brought up about the the clients.

Thank you. You know, we get out of it what we create into it that, you know, someone’s often asking, will that actually work? It’s like, well one, you actually have to use it. You used one of my favorite lines here, which is that all these techniques work. Um, so where can people best get in contact with you?

How can they. Well, by time this airs, my website will be up. It’s ready to go. It’s just not live yet. So over time, this airs. They can reach me at [email protected] or they can find me on Facebook. I answer anybody that reaches out to me. Outstanding. Uh, this has been great. We’ll put everything in the show notes as well [email protected].

Thanks for the kind words about the programs that you’re a member of too. Any final thoughts for the listeners out. For the people that are just starting out, don’t hide behind training and trying to figure every single thing out before you get started. Just start seeing people and putting yourself out there and it’ll start coming together.

And the other thing is, Make sure you’ve got some premium pricing happening. That’ll help boost your to too. It’s done amazing wonders for me. Jason Ette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, sharing it on your social media streams, and just keeping it in the constant dialogue of our incredible profession.

You could head over to the show [email protected] to see how to connect with Don and learn even more. And while you’re there too, check out hypnotic business. Dot com. Get out there, help more people, make it rain. Help us grow this incredible profession. You can get the free preview once again by going to jason webinar.com for the free on-demand workshop, six Steps to a six Figure Hypnosis business.

Get that right [email protected]. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.