Session #367: The Best Business Advice I Know

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 367, The best business advice I know. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Linett, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Linett, when you really think about. What good are the skills of professional hypnosis unless there’s actually someone there to work with?

Hey, it’s Jason Linett, and this week’s episode is all about helping you to better empower your hypnotic business. And it turns out when most people are starting what they’re starting or even asking me questions, it’s kind of amazing how often people keep making the same mistake and by making the same mistake, they end up with the same unfortunate results.

It doesn’t go as well for them as they would like. And yes, I’m being a little cryptic here because this is what this week’s episode is all about. Not only am I about to reveal one of the biggest mistakes people make really, honestly in any business, not just hypnosis, but this is a hypnosis podcast. So let’s talk about it from a hypnotic standpoint, but also too, on top of that, let’s completely reveal a few specific strategies that many of you.

Actually, I’m certain all of you could start to put into use right away. If you need more help growing a successful, thriving hypnotic business, check out a simple website. Hypnotic business systems.com. This program is an all access pass to my hypnosis business training library. It features done for you materials that you have full permission to put your name on and produce as your own step by step tutorials.

And it really helps you to take the guesswork out of exactly how to build a successful practice. And plus, it’s a program we keep adding new content to. A little while ago, we added a segment specifically on money manage. Because what good is the income that comes in if you don’t also have a good way to hang onto it as well.

So if you need help growing your hypnotic business, whether you’re brand new and just getting started, and you want to shortcut that learning curve with strategies that have actually been proven to work, or if you’re already out there and yet kind of burning out and running a business that looks.

Everyone else’s and you’re realizing there’s greater potential, we got you covered as well. So check it [email protected]. And with that, here we go. This is session number 367, The best business advice I know. Let me kick this week episode off correctly though with a bit of a disclaimer in that the first thing I’m about to talk about is specifically medical network.

And take note, this episode is not 100% about medical networking, but to start off by talking about medical networking, it reveals the problem to you in a much simpler way. So here’s the story in another group that, uh, I’m just a member of this one. It’s not one that I run, it’s one of the other free groups that’s online.

Someone asks the question about. Doing direct mail to doctors. The conversation then went along to the path of, uh, what should I bring to a doctor’s office to introduce myself and ask them to send me referrals and let’s kind of chunk up here and describe exactly what they were doing and why. I’m not gonna say it’s not gonna work, but why You might, might run into some conflicts.

It would be that to these people, you’re a stranger. . And can I ask you a question? How much of your email do you delete before you even open it up? How many pieces of mail do you receive that you never even open the envelope. You just rip it up and go straight in the trash? And do you see how by reaching out to someone cold, and that’s really what this, this episode is all about.

By reaching out to someone cold, you’re a stranger. They have no rapport with you. And, uh, respectfully or really disrespectfully, it doesn’t matter how pretty your trifold brochure is, they’re probably not gonna talk to you. In fact, even better, as we’re using the metaphor of a doctor’s office, they hire people specifically.

To stand in the way , to make sure the doctor’s time is being used for the more valuable doctoring things, which I’m sure there’s a much more professional term of. So do you see, the challenge is you’re going out to a cold audience, and let’s kick this off. What is the best business advice I know make use of the audiences?

You already have a connection. So let’s talk marketers speak for a moment. There’s cold audiences and then there’s warm audiences. And here’s a simple way of describing this. If you have never heard of me before and this podcast episode is your first time ever hearing my name or my voice, you’re a cold audience.

And if you subscribe to this thing all the way back to June of 2014 when the first episode came out, and if you’re already a member of programs of mine, like hypnotic business systems, well actually no, you’re not a warm audience. You’re a hot audience. Cause damn, you’re attractive. No, it’s because you’ve already done business with me and we’re no longer in that, you know, cold traffic acquisition sequence.

Again, I’m gonna do my best to avoid marketer speak here, So I bring this up. I bring this up because as we look at the equations as to what’s necessary to, let’s say, get started in our business, the best thing you can do is again, make use of audiences that you already have a connection to. Now, notice I did not say make use of audiences that you already know and already know you because, Guess what?

You can actually facilitate a warm introduction. So this happened the other day, and I think this was actually in one of my communities, that someone said, I have a client who works for X, Y, Z company. And he said that, What I do would be a great presentation for the group. And they have several opportunities where they bring in speakers and the suggestion from the client to this hypnotist was, you should call them and introduce yourself, and then they post it in one of our groups.

What should I do? And a lot of people shared some advice. I swooped in with the same advice I’m giving all of you, right? . Turns out he already had a foot in the door, didn’t he? Yeah. He already had a client who worked for that company and already participated in those events to which would be, Hey, could you send a warm introduction?

Could I ask you to write an email to the person who makes that decision and CC me and introduce me? Do you see what’s different here? Now we have a foot in the door. Now we’re not just stranger off the street now. Instead, we are riding someone else’s authority, even if it’s another coworker, and using that as a mechanism to begin a conversation.

I’ll give you an example of this, of my own and, and this is an example that is in a business that I’m no longer in. I’ve since officially, as I say, retired myself from it. But remember, if you’ve followed my story, part of what I used to do was work in backstage production management for professional theater.

And then I saw a stage hypnotist. I thought, Oh, that’s cool. And that’s part of how I began as the stage hypnotist eventually took a hypnosis certification program just to better understand how what I was doing actually worked. And yes, was the smart alec in the back of the room thinking, I’m not gonna do this therapy stuff.

I just want to do shows in entertainment. And then seeing clients is basically the only thing I did for the next 10 years, running from that point forward. So it, it’s where I had the foot in the door already with the theater world. So this is where in some of you’ve heard me tell this before, this is where the first official stage hypnosis programs I did were fundraisers for theater groups at high schools.

Because I knew the language that they already spoke. I knew the pain points that they had. That was me in high school, and that’s where I started. Now, did you already catch the important part of the story? , that’s not where I stayed in my book Work Smart Business, there’s a whole chapter on build assets and leverage them, and it’s how as we have the foot in the door, we can now use that to do other things.

So in the early days, What I did was I was doing these programs, these fundraiser shows for high schools. They would sell the tickets, We would split the profit based on the number of tickets sold, and yet at the same time, though, I was now amassing of rather impressive client list. Let’s talk financial things for a moment.

We’ll call it dollar cost averaging. It’s often advised that if you’re investing in stocks, you don’t try to game the market and wait for the absolute bottom because most people can’t predict. , you know, uh, it’s where oftentimes the market as a whole outperforms people who are trying to win at individual stocks.

And there might be the story of the one person who bought Tesla when it was low and it took off, and yet here’s all the other investments that, uh, tanked or just went out of business. And, and well, yes, in that example, what that one stock did may have recouped everything else but. You kind of, you know, diversified as you should.

And it’s one thing that then took off and everything else was either okay or sucked. So I bring that up by way of a metaphor here, because, uh, dollar cost averaging, Let me be very transparent with you, . Let me throw my former community under the bus here. Uh, the theater kids were not the popular kids. ? No.

And, uh, hey there. Right here with you. And popular now in a different audience, but in high school, yeah. Not so much. And, and it’s where some of them really got the game of it. And I mean, I got the call from one of those schools early on, Hey, uh, we have a problem. We sold too many tickets and we’re not gonna fit in the auditorium.

Could you do another show or would it work if we moved you to the gym? and like we’re splitting profits based on tickets sold, and now they’re selling more tickets than expected. Okay. If, if you have to. And other times I would drive all the way to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and all the posters for the show were still in the box and they hadn’t sold any tickets.

That’s where we then installed a system in the business as a checkpoint to prevent that amount of travel. I did have friends in Tennessee, at least I had a good trip. So it’s where on average, let me get more specific here. I would have some shows that were an absolute dud. I have others that, as a fundraiser, I walked out with $4,000 in cash and the school had done their fundraising right and they got to keep 7,000 of their proceeds.

Uh, one of those schools is like, well, we didn’t raise money for prom. We raised money for prom this year in prom Next. . But here’s the thing, and this is why I kind of stepped off the path here for a moment to talk about this high school strategy, because that’s what gave me the client list. And then because I now had the client list, I wasn’t now only connected to the theater groups because of our common shared background.

I now had a client list of a couple a dozen, three or four dozen high schools, and I had testimonials from them, which now meant. What was the audience I already had? What was the audience I already already had a connection to? I had a connection then to high schools, and I didn’t have to go to the micro niche.

So this is where we often hear, pick a niche, pick a specialty. Nicheing is a startup or an expansion strategy. Nicheing doesn’t have to be a long term thing you do for the rest of your life, which right there I can hear, I can feel the weight. Coming off of some of your shoulders, . Cause that’s why so many of you are terrified to pick a niche, which is like, what if I pick the wrong one and take it from someone who has changed his specialties and changed his audiences?

Many times over the years and many of them I continued on with some, I don’t do school programs at all now. Like to the point that uh, we gave away some of the schools to other stage hypnotists, No, I don’t have anymore. Don’t email me asking if I can send you shows cuz I’d get that email. Still whenever I talk stage hypnosis on this show, they’ve all been given away yet it was worth it to me just to give them to someone else and.

Look, don’t even pay me a percentage. The fact that I don’t have to manage this anymore is a benefit. But I wanted to tell that story here because, no, that wasn’t just about medical networking. No, that wasn’t just about how to break into high school events. It was instead, I started with an audience that I already had, either people who I already knew or they already knew me.

And from an influential perspective, all you need is a because. So let’s bring this into the context of the startup story of Virginia Hypnosis and how it was things were successful from the very beginning and how I completely uprooted every bit of my life and moved a thousand miles south and now do not have a physical office.

I do everything online. I’m wearing the purple polo shirt right now and I’m wearing Jim Shorts that. Or this morning, cuz this day got busier than I expected it to be and I need a shower. It’s that in the early days, here’s the first office and here was a networking group that I joined, B an I, Business Networking International.

And I built rapport with the chiropractor in that group. And because I now had rapport with that chiropractor and that group, I offered a conversation with him to provide some value, never from the angle as to here’s how I can do what you do better. No. Instead, here’s what your people are running into.

Here’s how what I can do can supplement that. And now this chiropractor started to send me referrals. Once the relationship was then fines, I asked the question again, Hey, do you know any other chiropractors that you’re friends with that what I do would be beneficial for them to know? He goes, Oh yeah, let me grab you a sheet of paper.

And he writes out their names, their email addresses, their phone numbers, and I go, This is great, but can I get you to keep it? Let me take a photo of it with my phone though. Could you actually send a warm introduction to these people and just, you know, write like a sentence or two about things that you’ve already seen that I’ve done that have helped your patients?

He goes, Oh yeah, absolutely No problem. , do you see the sequence? Start with the audiences you already have or the audiences you already know. Establish that relationship and then use that as an expansion strategy with the biggest question you could ask in any business. Who do you know? And by doing so, what this does is it begins to expand your network.

Here was the moment that I walked into Get Ready for this one. I walked. to the dentist in my building, the original Virginia Hypnosis office, and struck up a conversation with the person who I thought was the dentist. But no, he wasn’t, no, he was actually a visiting patient who was a doctor, to which I walked in and, uh, because I’m down the hall, I’m like, Hey, are you the doctor?

And he said, Yes. Well, actually, no. He was a doctor, but he was not the doctor. And somehow didn’t catch what was actually going on and struck up a conversation with me. And there I am, the guy down the hall renting another office. And I thought he was the dentist. No, he was a doctor. He was a plastic surgeon.

And as we got onto the topic of hypnosis, he goes, Oh, I’ve actually been looking for someone who does a better thing for stop smoking. Yeah. When people come in for procedures, they absolutely have to quit smoking because oftentimes, Cutting and moving and stitching skin. There’s some lovely images and it’s that the skin doesn’t heal properly if they’re still smoking.

It takes away the elasticity of the skin. It sucks the moisture out. Yeah. How soon Could you write me like two or three sentences or paragraphs I can put on a, uh, resources page on my website. I mean, this was a three minute conversation. This surgeon eventually became one of my best referral sources over time.

I mean, sending me all sorts of people to which then it became, What other plastic surgeons do you know that you can send an email to them and also include me and just mention a few things as to what I’ve helped some of your people to do. Actually, the real story was I helped their front desk reception to stop smoking and she did the selling for.

And, and never in any of these, by the way, was there ever even a request for a kickback ever? Was there a request for an incentive, an affiliate fee, a referral fee? No. Cause that’s not, that’s not their world. So I bring this up because it, it’s great to have big ideas. It, it’s great to have wonderfully inspiring thoughts and.

Perhaps for the first time on this podcast, and I will only make this extremely general here, that clearly there’s another business that I also run, and it’s where if you track some of what I’ve been up to in the last couple of months and things I participate in and events that I go to, part of the reason is, is yes, there’s some educational things I’ve been needing in terms of, I’ve always had the skill of growing my business with technology, yet there was the need to grow the business.

With people, and by participating in these things, I want you to hear this carefully. It put me in the room with people who should be in that other program that I also do. So in the words of Kevin Pollock, actor, comedian, partial ocular albino from Wayne’s World. Two, the father-in-law on Marvelous Mrs.

Maisel, and used to host. Podcast, the Kevin Pollock Chat show. Of course, his most important credit is one of the blurbs in the back of What Sports Smart Business, The book that I wrote, If you’re not creating, you’re waiting. So what can you do to create a connection to create a rapport? So let me, in the final moments of this week’s episode though, start this off with the easy path to victory.

Who’s the doctor that you’re already seeing? Strike up a conversation. I don’t think I’ve ever told the story in a podcast, which means now I have to go there that I’ve hinted at it. It’s a class that I taught maybe in 2014, and sadly, the student that I’m telling the story of who made the really amazing joke unexpectedly passed away and he was deep down an incredible guy, and I always think wonderful thoughts of him as I, as I tell this story, which was that I mentioned.

I had recently switched insurance and I always somehow freak out a doctor cuz I go in for a physical every year, you know, cuz they tell you you’re supposed to. And I, and I do, and I go to the dentist twice a year. Um, mostly because that’s what you’re supposed to do. And preventative care is covered by my insurance.

So, hey, game on, let’s do this. And if they can catch something early before it becomes a big issue, that that’s always better. , right? So I go to, which my, my best experience with a dentist was, it was a new dentist. And he looks at me and he goes, Oh, you’re a hypnotist. Are you more ericsonian or more elmanian?

And honestly, I did not like him much as a dentist, but I never left that practice until I moved to Florida because it’s like, oh, he gets hypnosis and referrals were gorgeous. So I go to this doctor for a. and, uh, we like to call this, uh, how not to build rapport. The doctor says to me at the end of it, Oh, what do you do for a living?

And I explain what I do. He goes, Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, I know there’s some research that backs that up, but none that I’ve actually seen personally, so I would never refer to that, that that’s, that’s his version of bedside manner. Uh, this is not a story about doctors. This is a story about that one doctor, to which I responded.

Well, you know, I can see that perspective. I tend to lean on the fact that there’s tens of thousands of peer review journals that are online, and I’m mostly here for my healthcare. I’m not just here for my business, but the good news is you have competition. So I guess I can move to someone else next time.

Which, that was the end of the meeting, and that was the last time I saw that doctor, to which I will censor what the student said. And I love this guy. I miss him. Uh, he goes, So just basically Jason’s willing to get the, uh, prostate exam over and over and over until he gets a decent referral and he makes a specific gesture with his hand, with his finger that is telling you all a story.

Now I’m like, No. . Um, but let’s be fair, the new doctor sent me referrals. So, uh, take one for the team. All right, And on that note, so start with the people that you already know, and it’s where as that relationship, Did I really just go there on this? Yeah. As that relationship is established, now ask, Who do you know?

So you start small. This is the same formula of the importance of nicheing down. It brings you greater clarity because now from there, suddenly in the next office that my office was located in here, it was the office around the corner, which was a mortgage and refinance company with a big sales team. And as I got to know, you’ll love this, as I got to know the owner of that business.

Because he would come around the corner of that office. Those of you that went to the, the last Alexandria Springfield, Franconia office that I had in Virginia, some of you went there or saw videos of it. The directions of that office included the phrase, No, really, There’s more, There’s more offices in the back.

And that’s, that’s where I was. So he would leave his office, sneak around the corner, and smoke in front of my. . So my stop smoking clients would walk in and see this guy smoking and I always have to crack the joke. Oh yeah, that’s Philip. He’s not one of my clients. He’s a mortgage advisor around the corner.

Yeah. Come to the, come to the back and we’d use him as a gag. And it never was a conflict, uh, yet conversations with this guy and eventually turned into, Hey, um, what kind of conflicts do your sales team often run into? Oh, we got such issues with, uh, you know, call reluctance. That they don’t wanna call specific people.

Well lead with value, which is the other point here. Start with people you know, but lead with value. So this is why I asked the other person to put a few sentences in the email, or in this case I went, Hey, when do you all have like regular meetings? How about I swoop in for like 15 minutes and just give a talk on, you know, how to activate confidence on demand and connect that to the phone.

to which I came in, I wowed them to the best of my abilities for 15 minutes. And, uh, honestly, what did I do? I said the things that I would’ve said to them as if it were a session, but I just didn’t do hypnosis. And, uh, you know, do you mind if ask a quick question as we were, and I, and I got permission to do the final bit, which was, Hey, do you mind if I ask, um, to, you know, make an offer at the end of it, which I’ll keep it brief and I’ll make it as non salesy as.

He goes, Oh yeah, sure, you can sell these people. They love sales. But I still, because it was a cold relationship, until I gave the presentation, I gave a very soft offer, which was in the one that I lean on now more than anything else. So at this point, you could go off and put these techniques into practice and with some repetition, see better consistency in your results though briefly.

If you want some help installing these new mindsets faster and easier, would that be helpful to you? Okay, so I’ll make this brief. I’m right around the corner. This is what I do as a hypnotist, and here’s why hypnosis can help you with X, Y, Z. So I’m here in your office, so let me make this simple. Just come talk to me after the event and uh, we’ll set up a time to have a conversation.

Half of the people became my clients. . So what did I do there? I took a cold room and I turned them into warm by giving them value. Then I made the offer, right? There should be your other big takeaway of this week’s episode, and this is why we hate it when a stranger drops into our messages and starts to try to sell us.

This is why so many of us have moved away from LinkedIn because that’s done there even worse than on other social media platforms. This is why we delete most of our email without opening it. This is why we rip up the junk mail without looking at it. They’re trying to go direct to offer without rapport.

So what’s the best business advice? I know? Warm up a cold audience and start with the audiences. You already have a connection. So some of you are coming from other industries and you have other professions, perhaps if you have permission to make contact with those people, all you need is a, because here’s the work that I’ve done up until now, and because I’ve recently learned this and because I now know how to do that, that’s why I fill in the blank.

Start with the people. You know? Do not try to do this as an island to begin with, and you can take any cold audience. and make them warm over time. You might find a Facebook community, a Facebook group of people who kind of like the story of what I’ve been up to are people who could be your clients and in a very non-salesy way, swoop in.

And we teach strategies around this and the program, but teach strategies to actually begin to provide value. And it’s where people are smart and they’ll figure it out on their own and they get to be the ones to reach out to. when instead . Some of you have seen k uh, as Cino is my virtual assistant, my rockstar admin.

And uh, she is fast and furious at deleting people outta Facebook groups who swoop in and their first post is a sales. Now, I hate that stuff too. That’s why we don’t do that. So take a cold audience, convert them to warm, find a way to get that warm reduction. That’s the path to victory. Jason Linett here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program and especially this one this week.

Share this with every hypnotist. You know, I’ve said it for years. The more we’re all successful, the more we’re all successful. So the one thing that’s gonna grow this industry better than anything else, It’s for us to become even more successful, helping more people and having even more people out there telling the incredible story about what we do.

And you could go off and guess and test. This will sound familiar. You could go off and guess and test and try to problem solve this all on your own. You could try to figure out how to put the messaging together. As I talked about, you could try to figure out how to take these people and nurture the relationship even further.

And what the heck does that even mean when instead. Join us inside of hypnotic business systems and you get to use some of my resources to do this faster and easier. I’m gonna give you outlines of talks. I’m gonna give you products you can reproduce on your own. I’m gonna give you email campaigns.

You’re gonna get the exact language that I figured out that has sold so many clients and so many services over the years. So you don’t have to do the guesswork yourself and, and do the math once you go there at hypnotic business Systems dot. You see how I’m selling a little bit more directly than I normally do here?

Why? Because we’ve already provided value. We’ve taken you from cold to warm and model the sequence as to what’s going on here. Simply getting a couple of new clients with what I teach, or even one new client with really integrating the rights things at the right time, recoup that investment. And yes, that’s how you make it rain.

So let’s make a difference in this profession. Let’s introduce hypnosis to more people. Let’s help you to become even more independent and successful in your own. Check us out hypnotic business systems.com. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.