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This is the WorkSmart. Hypnosis podcast session number 413 WSH Scott Sandland AI and Real Hypnotic Connections.
Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Linett, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, it’s Jason Linett. And you’re joining me now for session number 413 of The Work Smart Hypnosis podcast featuring Scott Sandland, the creator of the hypnothoughts.com website and then eventually the founder of the Hypnothoughts Live convention. You can find all the details for that over at htlive.net you might be noticing if you’re listening in right now, I’m doing this introduction a bit differently than how I normally do it. It’s because this is going to be an episode like some of the ones that we put out over the years in this series, that I’m going to give you an option. You could continue to listen to this podcast episode, or you could head over to worksmarthypnosis.com/413. Type in those numbers that will bring you over to the page all about this specific episode of the podcast. And rather than just listen, you can actually watch it. Scott and I video recorded this and you get to hear us and actually see us have this conversation.
And Scott is probably one of those people who has been on this program as a guest more than many others that are out there. And part of that comes around to, one side of things, friendship that came about from a rather specific style of comedy and humor that we both share. Friendship over the years too, moments where we didn’t get along and then we eventually did, which you could hear that in previous episodes of the program. And really an appreciation that sometimes you run into the scenario that someone has a perspective that may be very similar to yours. And this is what I really appreciate, is that we often have different ways of reaching a specific outcome. Yet at the end of the day, we agree. He says, learn from people who disagree with each other, which is much better of a catchphrase because mine is many more words.
Learn from people who have different ways of achieving the same desired outcome. And it’s that appreciation that we can learn from different voices, we can learn from different perspectives. And those of you who perhaps are familiar with Scott and the Hypnothops Live Conference are familiar with that, of course. Yet also here’s this other aspect. As the creator of several different patents in the artificial intelligence space, someone who has pioneered his own software, which is now integrated into some rather impressive systems over the last couple of years, having used it personally as well. And it is phenomenal as well as how that now applies to sales as well as therapeutic concepts. And in fact, this episode is actually releasing scott talks about this in the episode here. This episode is releasing on Thursday, June 16 of 2023. And as this releases as the video as well as audio podcast around the world.
He’ll talk about this in this conversation. You’re about to listen in on it’s. The fact that he is in Brazil at the time of this release, talking about the ethics of what we should have in mind as AI artificial intelligence really continues to grow. So the shape of this kind of kicks off a bit of a three act structure here. Act One is all about what we should be aware of as change workers, as practitioners, with this thing that no longer can be ignored of AI artificial intelligence, and we talk about it from the perspectives of many of the different softwares that are available to people, let’s say on the consumer basis, such as Chat GPT. From that as theme is really that of generative learning and taking data and turning it into something. The conversation naturally then lends itself over to more of his story about how do we approach learning, and it’s where there is no ego behind this next statement.
I did not tell Scott I was going to put this into the introduction, though I’d be very transparent here. And there’s been a few times over the years that he and I are in rather unique scenarios, and many others fit into this space too, where here are the people that they became known to this industry because they were on this podcast. Here are people that no one else knew until Scott and the Hypnothops team then elevated them and gave them the opportunity to speak and gave them that chance to get up and do something in front of their peers for the first time ever. And unofficially, no, I’m not repeating names, there have been some of those moments of where’s this person, like they were the one who should have been the next big name. And that’s kind of the reason why that this conversation shifted over to the style of learning, the way that we approach education, and even more so, anybody who’s been having some frustrations about reaching out to people on the web.
I absolutely love the strategy that Scott shares in this episode about how to bridge those connections and turn heroes into peers in a rapid amount of time. That itself is worth the entire listen and then perfect timing. This episode is coming out in the middle of June 2023. And sure enough, right around the corner, hypnots Live is happening in Las Vegas in the middle of July 2023. It is the 11th event in its history. It used to be just an online website, a forum, and then it morphed into a conference over time. And this is year number eleven, and there are some rather significant changes as it’s the first time in a brand new location. And just from the feedback of all the thousands of attendees over the years, Scott shares some of the updates for that. Those of you that are going to be there can look forward to.
And those of you that are not going to be there, go to htlive net and register right away because this is a do not miss event. Also with hypnots, the fact that you can really round out that travel, it’s not just the three days. It’s also the fact that there are presenters doing special workshops before the event as well as after the event. They’ve negotiated hotel rooms. Vegas is one of those places that’s kind of ridiculously affordable to travel to. I’ve done my own events in Las Vegas. I’ve also done them when I was up in Virginia at a Springfield hotel down the street. And it was kind of annoying that even with flights, I could do an event in Las Vegas cheaper than I could 3 miles from my house. I mentioned that because the savings also passes on to you. It’s an easy place to travel to.
And with that being the case, expand the trip. There’s incredible options before the event if you want specialized training on this specific protocol or that specific issue. And of course, I do have to give a polite plug that while you could look at the journey of Hypnosis entirely from the mindset of what are the techniques that we use, I would simply ask you, what good are the methods if you don’t have people in front of you? Which is where in a supposed conference event at Hypnots, I’m going to be presenting a workshop called Print Money with online challenges and virtual events. The shape of this event and we talk about this in this conversation too, how what we do as an in person training has had to change. It’s had to change because we are now in a space where information is at our fingertips and we are no longer in a world where simply getting up and lecturing for a two day event, having the same thing occur on the vault line, videos that would happen inside the room, that just doesn’t hold up anymore.
What’s the point? If they could have got the same information at home, why even do it in person? So this is where I’ve intentionally shifted a lot of what I do as much as clearly. We have programs like Hypnotic Business Systems, the Hypnosis Business training hypnotic workers. The Hypnosis training. It’s where when I pop up, especially at events like the Icbch conference that we do here in Orlando in the springtime, still the winter conference, but it’s more springtime. And then Hypnothouts, which happens in Vegas in the summertime. It’s where now my focus is more of the done with you, hands on interactive workshop. Why challenges? Why virtual events? It’s because this is that thing if you’ve ever seen the movie or read the book or know the story, moneyball, where basically they figured out for recruiting a baseball team, here were the analytics to look at.
And if we tracked the recruits of this baseball team versus that. It was counterintuitive thinking, but they’d have a winning team, and I mean, they made the movie with Brad Pitt and I think Jonah Hill, so clearly it’s good. And I use that moneyball term because in the shape of what my business has become over the last number of years, as I’ve migrated everything online challenges, virtual events, those are my moneyballs. And we called the event print money. That’s a chapter out of the book that I wrote, work Smart Business. And it’s the chapter that got the most feedback that we want to have an influx of new, qualified clients. We want to promote an event. You want to fill in the blank, whatever segment, students, clients, online programs, products, whatever it might be, this aspect of the challenge or the virtual event, and the terms are admittedly interchangeable.
And we’re going to workshop all of the crazy low tech ways of doing this, as well as the obscenely high tech ways of doing this during this two day, hands on event. So that by the time you wrap up with me on that Wednesday after that event, you will have the exact blueprint ready to go off and launch. And yes, indeed, I’m going to do the air quotes for those of you that are just listening and virtually print money. That keeps the government off my back for counterfeiting money there. So you can check out all the details of this event. There are limited spots available. That way we can give hands on interactive focus, go over to Challenge worksmarthypnosis.com. That’s where you can find all the details about this event, specifically around challenges and virtual events, which we could look at business the traditional way of fingers crossed, hope people eventually come in.
The greatest benefit as a preview, even for those of you that are already signed up for this event, the greatest benefit is the fact that we can easily speed up that journey how we can speed up that journey of the Rapport building that has to occur for someone to go from curious shopper to then here’s my credit card. We can pull off in a rapid amount of time what used to take several weeks, if not months. And for so many of you, without any sort of follow up mechanism in the running of your Hypnosis, business, turns into, who is that? Hypno pursing? And I just call this one instead. This is how you become memorable. This is how you easily achieve that expert status. Check it out. Reserve your spot. Now, over at Challenge worksmarthypnosis.com, I will also just mention that if you’re not yet registered for Hypnothots Live, it would be inappropriate for me not to mention this, that the thank you page, when you sign up for my post conference, actually gives you the ability to register for the Hypnothops convention at a substantial discount.
Check that out. Challenge worksmarthypnosis.com. And also hypnotslive htlive.net. And with that thanks to those of you watching the video version of this where I just did all of that without any notes except for having to remember the name of this episode, all the references and details of this. This is session number 413 you can find by going over to www.worksmarthypnosis.com/413 that will give you the links, all the references, all the details, gives you the video as well. So here we go. This is session number 413 Scott Sandland on AI and real hypnotic connections.
When this comes out, when this video goes live, this interview, I’ll be in Brazil speaking to an international audience about that, of about 5000 people talking about the future of AI in those conversations. And literally this morning I was at an AI for Medicine conference. So this is where I’m spending a huge percentage of my time, as you know. And some of the people watching this know, many of them don’t know this, but my background is obviously as a hypnotherapist private practice, running a clinic, all that stuff. And then started writing AI patents and building AI computer systems about seven years ago. And the long answer short is it’s all really good news for us. I’m actually in the middle of building out a couple of systems that are going to be really helpful for coaches, therapists, hypnotherapists, counselors, anyone sort of in the broad umbrella of mental health to create tools that it’s better than just automation.
I think everyone’s talking about automation and actually this is something this is such a long answer. One of the things I respect about you so much is your ability to create systems and automation. And I do not have that just built into me. My brain works differently and I build things that I like to say, okay, what could it be instead? What could we do different? And you do that, how can we make this efficient and scalable? And I think they’re different in both beneficial mindsets. But there’s this new thing that’s going to be coming that isn’t about how can we make this easier for the practitioner, it’s how can we make this better for humans and oversimplified most conversational AI systems and even just personality AI systems. Think of like Facebook’s systems, Instagram systems, similar obviously all those things. YouTube, they’re all about dopamine, right?
And the whole idea of race to the bottom of the brain stem and all those ideas. What we’re building right now is an AI system that’s optimized for oxytocin and built around the molecules and hormones of connection, intimacy, honesty. That idea of true deep connection is what we’re building out. And I’m really excited about it. And as we’re building, let’s kind of.
Go to the end for this for a moment, which would be what’s going to be that direct, let’s say tangible benefit. Because like what you said about part of it is our current trend of it seems to be more about predictive text more about how do we model something. And you’re right that you start to see more of what you’re looking for when you’re online, which is making me reference that our neighbors got one of the Alexa devices and they got rid of it because they go, were convinced it was tracking us. And I’m standing there going, all of my clothing was purchased on Facebook. Yeah, I’m part of the problem.
Of course it was tracking you online. That’s why those things are cheap or free, right?
Yes.
It’s called surveillance capitalism. That’s the actual term. And you and I already agree. A lot of my clothes were bought on Facebook as well. I was messaging you about swim goggles that I got, and you’re like, oh, I’ve been seeing ads for that. I’m like, of course you were, yeah.
That’s how it works. But I believe that there’s been these unintended and I’m not unique to say this. There have been all these unintended negative consequences as a result of that. The easiest one to say is the fastest growing incidence of suicide in America is in 13 and 14 year old girls. And there is direct correlation between social media and the feeling of isolation and loneliness. And these tools are supposed to help us feel more connected, but they’re not. And that’s because they’re dopamine centric and dopamine creates feelings of withdrawal and slot, machininess and those kinds of things. So building tools that create the Oxytocin might be part of the solution for that.
What would that just in terms of an early perspective of it, like, what would that look like?
What if we had tools that helped us understand each other and appreciate each other more effectively? Empathy, compassion, things like that. You and I are trained in that. You and I are trained in NLP modeling and good pacing and leading stuff and those ideas, and having empathy for a person sitting across from you in a treatment room. And what if we built systems that helped give the average unwashed masses of muggles the ability to understand that about somebody that’s different from them, and to not have as much in grouping and out grouping, but more compassion and understanding of, oh, this is why they think the way they do. And it’s reasonable if you understand this about them. And it’s not that it’s better or worse, but this is a flavor of human that you love.
I’m listening to that. I’m thinking back to, as we often will do, you and I. Here’s the more obscure reference that I can pull out that this one’s going to double down on obscurity. Which was that when I used to work in backstage production theater, here were the two women who were the people? That if you were an actor and you needed to learn a dialect, you bought one of their at the time cassette tapes or compact discs. Nowadays, of course, it’s online and it’s amazing that these two women despised each other, which was very entertaining because we would hire both depending on the specific project. Yet one was the mathematician. Here’s the International Phonetic Alphabet. And for this dialect, you trade out that version of the verb vowel sound for that sound. The other one would come in, though, and this was like a freaking magic trick sometimes would explain here’s why the Northern Irish dialect is different than this other part of Ireland.
Here’s the style of music that they listened to. Here’s what was going on at the time. Here’s where that came from. And without ever getting into the phonetic stuff, the actors had the dialect down.
So Spanish does this better than English. In Spanish, there’s two words for to know something saber and conocer. Saber is to know something intellectually. Konocer is to know something emotionally. So I can saber your address if I can butcher the language, but I konosera you, I understand you. We get each other in Avatar, they say, I see you. But that’s the idea. And so we need to that is.
A rule, by the way. We already figured this out, that you cannot talk anything AI without referencing Avatar and James Cameron. It’s a law.
Yeah, it’s in there. It’s in the Internet rules. It’s in the Internet rules with corgis and shiba enos are the only kinds of dogs.
Pretty much true, yes.
Thank you for that, by the way. You have a corgi and I with shiba enu, therefore proving my point, which.
Means we’re going to have to talk about learning strategies. But let’s stay on this for the moment here. So I ask you from this angle, what would you say without the risk of saying something that becomes, oh, here’s the guy who wouldn’t sign the Beatles because guitar groups are going out of style. In the current state of how people, let’s say, in our space are looking at the use of AI, what would you say are the common errors? The common mistakes?
There’s a few. I’m prioritizing them in my head. The first one is just a lack of understanding of how Chat GPT really works. I was in a conversation with a hypnotist the other day who said, AI can’t be wrong. And I was like, It’s supposed to be wrong faster than us. That’s how it gets to right. It’s brute force at this 10,000 times the speed of human thought, so it can be wrong. And the idea that it’s a source of truth is crazy. The idea that it’s supposed to replace you is wrong. It shouldn’t replace us, it should augment us. We got into this because we want to help people. And if we’re trying to replace ourselves, we are replacing the thing that makes us most human, the desire to create culture and community. And there is an alignment problem and it is complex, but I think there’s a lot of hypnotists who are, oh, they’re also anthropomorphizing it a lot.
They think of it as a creature. And AI is not a creature. And there will not be one this is an important thing. There will not be one big AI that runs everything. There are about 7 billion people on Earth and there will be about 3 billion AIS and they will all be insanely biased and specialized just like us. And we will just learn how to navigate that well.
I mean, just one aspect of that. You mentioned Chat GPT, and it’s the fact that every one of those individual chats is its own separate AI. They may be pulling from similar sources, but it’s how you and I were chatting about how we’ve put more effort into what do we feed into it before we ever consider what to take out from it. But it’s where hopefully OpenAI is not listening right now. My wife is also using the same account for her real estate company, yet we have our own system of how things are named.
Yes. And Chat GPT doesn’t want to be right. This is a really interesting point that people miss.
Yeah.
An LLM doesn’t care about being correct, accurate, or right unless you specifically say, I want you to be accurate and you’re using a plugin that allows you to tie into the web and look up facts. The goal of an LLM is not accuracy, it’s to be similar to other stuff. That’s it. And people don’t understand that. And the fundamental difference in how the trajectories of that are really important, which.
We’Re releasing this, of course, on the podcast, which is audio only, and I’m sure in the intro I referenced that, hey, we also videoed this and you can watch it on the episode too. If you saw me looking off to the side there, or you heard it in the tone of my voice. I did just swoop into Google and the concept of predictive text is trying to guess the next thing. And of course I typed WSH, Scott Sandland just to see what would pop up next. And clearly it’s Scott Sandland, Ontario, Canada.
Scott Sandland, Ontario, Canada.
So we’ll leave out the part where you almost moved to Virginia and I just said, dude, I will just give you the Virginia Hypnosis website, but I can’t help you out with Ontario.
Yeah, that’s true. I did almost move to Virginia and Jason was going to give me the Virginia Hypnosis website that would have because.
We would have thought it would have been really funny and that would have been enough.
It would have been great. It would have been totally worth it.
Yeah, just same website, just superimpose the face over it. So then in the aspect of assuming it is this perfect thing, what would be some of those modifications that people could make? Now if they are making use of anything that’s currently on the market, let’s say more so the consumer stuff that’s more readily available.
Yeah, I mean, Chat GPT is great because of its utility, right. It’s just right there. And even like, the stable diffusions, those are pretty usable. But Chat GPT is great. And there’s a bunch of calendaring things that are good and stuff like that. Where the tools are great are in brainstorms. Where the tools are bad is a major national eating disorder. Clinic just decided to try to use Chat GPT to manage its text call center. It’s like crisis hotline. And they pulled that within 36 hours. A bunch of us, and I mean a bunch of us in AI ethics reached out to them and said, cut this stuff out. I don’t know if I’m allowed to swear on your podcast, but it took them 36 hours to go, oh my gosh, this is backfiring tremendously because the training data didn’t give it what it wants.
Human communication is really complicated and it’s getting close, but it’s just like self driving cars. They’re very good, but when they’re wrong, there’s major consequences. And conversational AI is the same right now. And so we need to be focusing on augmentation, not automation, in critical conversations.
I like what you said about the brainstorming that here’s. Well, then again, I flash to like there’s a task that we often give people in one of the programs that I run around coming up with, what are the topics that your audience is already looking for? If there’s one thing the hypnosis profession needs to hear, it would be that your audience is not necessarily the people who are already diehard excited about hypnosis. I forget if you and I gotten into the rift before around look, I’m not disagreeing with you. All of your clients have limiting beliefs. However, none of them are laying in bed googling on their phone while their spouse is asleep. How do I get rid of my limiting beliefs?
Right? And the idea of you can’t use the word quit smoking. You can’t say quit smoking because no one likes a quitter. So no one Googles smoking cessation.
Or there’s the time that I did get the phone call for the smoking sensation, but that wasn’t legal yet in Virginia.
No, that’s a whole different thing. But I’m bum. Yeah. And this is something that you and I have had conversations with Richard Nongard about, and I think he was the first one to say it to me. He was totally right. He said, there are a bunch of hypnotists who learn how to do things that are impressive at Hypnosis conferences and in Hypnosis demonstrations to other hypnotists, but aren’t necessarily more effective at getting results for the client. And I think getting this back to what you were originally talking about is one of the nice things about Chat GPT is it’s a sounding board, and you can bounce ideas off of it and say, oh, this system is a reality check. That I say, okay, what are ten or 20 or 30 issues that people care about in search about? And you get a list that is very different, potentially, than what you would have come up within the echo chamber of a Hypnosis class, or even.
What you would come up with through your specific expertise. Though I think of a time, just as an example here, it was that we had this group of, like, 15 people for this Zoom meeting inside of a consulting program, and someone there, she’s an event planner. And the task was she came up with, like, the headline, the name of the specific opt in offer or online program. I forget the specifics of it. And this was admittedly supposed to be a gotcha moment of, well, I tell you what. You’re still torn between these two topics. Put them both here so everybody can see them. And okay, there’s option one. There’s option two. Let’s say the first one is A. The second one is B. Everybody in the Zoom chat just go ahead and vote. And, like, unanimously, it was like, all of them except for, like, one, were for item B.
However, the follow up question was the important one. Okay? Now forget the A and B. If you are in her target audience, if you are someone who would be shopping for the thing that she offers, stick a number one in the chat. We’ll wait. Nobody responded. It’s like so taking it out to market, getting the actual feedback from check out this revolutionary idea from humans. However, the tool can get us closer and start to brainstorm. And sometimes I do have the unfortunate bragging rights, and this shouldn’t be bragging rights of three things that collected over time have sold more than a million dollars each. Again, collected over time, and all three of them have been renamed at least four times, right? Not because I’m finicky, but because I listen to the audience. I look at the different trends, what’s changing? Kind of like when you have a really great online forum and you’re like, you know what?
This should be a conference now.
Yeah, just shift it.
Yeah, we’ll get there. We’ll get there.
So I was just at this medtech conference, and I had all these doctors and chief innovation officers of hospitals coming up to my booth and looking at our technology and all that stuff. And on day one, they were asking, what can your tool do? And I was like, It can help patient physician communication, build rapport, engage in critical conversations, and help doctors navigate giving bad news. And they said, that all sounds nice. And by lunch, I had realized what they wanted to hear, which was medication adherence and treatment plan compliance, which reduces rehospitalization. And they all said, you can do what? And it’s the same thing. I just said it in the way that they were ready to hear it.
You mean like World’s Funniest stage hypnosis? Show versus inspire? Your audience by instilling your message and your mission into an entertaining program so that people actually listen. Yeah, funny how that works. Yeah, the whole what’s in it for me?
Thing, what’s in it for me? Turns out to be pretty d*** important when you’re asking for cash.
It really is. That the difference between like there’s times where I’ve given the advice of, oh, go out and offer talks, and the feedback was, oh, they didn’t want to talk on Hypnosis. No, they didn’t know they needed a talk on Hypnosis.
No, they don’t want to talk on.
Hypnosis that you’re offering to them. And then it becomes now we can sell the mechanism that actually delivers that.
It’s features versus benefits. Right? So Hypnosis is the feature. The benefit is whatever you’re actually doing.
With the but you are going to feel like you’ve had a three hour power nap.
Oh, really?
Absolutely.
How will I know if I’m hypnotized?
Three hour power nap?
Oh, good.
Now that we’re clearly demonstrating our expertise other than the brainstorming aspect. Like, if this was, let’s say, someone who’s relatively established and sort of on that upward swing of beginning to really turn this into a business, if you had to give one or two pieces of advice to go, here’s the thing to consider. Here’s the thing that I think someone to ignore all of this and go, it’s a fad that’s not going to stick around anymore. You and I have already had conversations about things that were perceived to be temporary fads. But here’s the thing that I think the ignoring it right now is clearly a mistake. So what would be like one or two action things for people to actually dive into?
Learn prompt engineering and Priming, which is people are just going to start hearing about Priming now. Priming is prompt. Engineering 2.0 you’ll love it because it’s a more scalable systematized version of prompt engineering. If you’re not already looking at it. I would spend time learning that. I would also start looking at how you can use the plugins. The plugins in Chat GPT are going to be game changing. That’s it. That is the next iPhone. The next app store is in OpenAI. The next App Store is personalized assistants that are your specific plugins, just like your specific apps that make your phone yours. That’s what’s coming down the pipeline. And the rate of change we’ve seen in the last it’s been less than six months since Chat GPT launched. It’s been like five months, three weeks, something like that. It’s changed the world. The rate of change is going to double over the next six months.
So it’s not going to slow down. There’s not going to be a plateau. It’s going to get faster. If you haven’t started learning it now or you think it’s a terminator, or you think it’s unethical, just you are wrong and you need to learn this now. And I promise I’m right and this is just a statement of fact. It’s not because I’m smart and it’s not because I’ve made it. It’s just because this is bigger than the iPhone, this is bigger than the Internet, and everybody’s going to need to know how to use this stuff.
Nice. Well, you bring up theme of learning and we’ll talk about hypnothouts, I’m sure, because good to have you here yet let’s look at it from the angle of modeling learning styles. There’s a theme that I’m always fascinated to have these conversations around, which is, yes, we can look at what’s a good technique, what’s the right variation. You probably don’t remember this moment. I think it was the first time I was at the Imdha conference. It might have been 2014 or 15. It was not the Karaoke year for the four people who know that story yet, it was you coming over and it was like, I just watched Sean Michael Andrews talk about finger magnets for 45 minutes. I’m like, that’s my kind of dialogue. How would you define how you approach let’s put it into the context of hypnosis. After all, hypnosis podcast, how you approach learning something new and integrating something new into the work that you do.
Yeah, so the way I’ve developed a learning style, I’m very auditory and so the way I like to learn is through sound, obviously. And so I watch a lot of YouTube videos and a lot of podcasts. At one, I started at one X speed, then I went to one two, then to one five, then depending on the thing you use, one seven five or one eight. And now I do most of it, two X speed. And so for me that works and I worked up to that speed, but now I do everything I’m trying to learn, I do in audio at two X speed. And that works really well for me. And then I have to synthesize and do something with it. So for me, that means I either need to have a conversation with another person about it or I need to do it depending on what that means contextually.
So in the context of hypnosis, that means I need to practice it hands once or twice to really get it for me. But I can listen to a podcast, I can watch instructional video, any of that stuff, at two X speed, meaning I can get through all that course content in half the time and then have more time for the hands on because the didactic quickly. So I think that’s a great frame for how hypnosis should be taught and learned these days is you should get most of your training virtually at the speed that you can absorb and then go for a weekend class. A conference, obviously, whatever it is, and use that time to exclusively have high value conversations and hands on experiences without.
Pulling it out off to the side because it’s out of reach. There’s a book that’s on my table over here that I paid maybe $20 for the book on Amazon and then spun around and yes, then signed up for this person’s twelve week interactive training, which it’s not in our shared industry, it’s in a different one. And it was like $15,000. But you’ve got the book. I go, yeah, but now I’ve got the ability to put it into life. I’ve got the opportunity to get my questions answered. I’ve got the opportunity to really workshop some of these things and get feedback in real time. I don’t know if I shared this with you, there’s something that I had said on social media might have been end of last year, and it was like this brief little moment where someone goes, that’s offensive. And someone goes, no, it’s right.
And it’s what I’ve now kind of nicknamed that course Junkie Syndrome, where our current fantasy with a program that we do is you sign up and you get four videos and that’s it. But then after you’ve done the task from the four videos, you unlock the next part. And just the brief silliness is that we’re considering moving to a different membership platform that will deliver that. But I’m certain that the moment we put in all the effort of moving, the one we’re currently using will then just unlock that feature.
Yeah, invariably that’s got to happen because that’s how it always works.
Yeah, I almost moved everything over to another platform last year, moved it all back, and then the feature that I truly knew I needed, they just released last week. That’s the fun of it all. Yet it’s this moment of, like what you said about it’s not just the listening, it’s not just the absorption, it’s.
The integration and that synthesizing of the information. So just to pick a topic, I’ll watch five videos on any topic or listen to five interviews on podcasts or whatever, on any topic, and different people, different whatever, and then I synthesize those in my head. And then I have a conversation with a person who knows more than I do or who knows as much as I do on that topic. And that crucible of having to explain it to a person who’s going to ask me hard questions, that’s what makes me know I get it, and that’s what forces me to synthesize it. And until then, it’s just academic. But once I can answer questions about it, I’m there.
Yeah, talk me through in more detail on finding someone who has more knowledge on it and having that conversation with them.
So for me, the way I’m doing that is conferences. That sounds self serving because of Hypnotauts live, but like I said, yeah, it’s a neat little thing. But I’m going to all these conferences now that have medical conferences, tech conferences, and I get any speaking slot I can get, because in some of these, I get good speaking spots. And some of them I get you’re the new guy speaking spots. That’s fine. I’ve got to pay my dues. Sunday morning, 08:00 a.m.. Yeah, for sure. Day 1 hour two kind of talks. Or while everyone’s wrapping up their booths, I’m the guy.
We’ve got young MC performing in the banquet hall and Scott speaking in the.
Parking lot on ethics. Who wants to hear it?
That’s the whole title of the presentation.
Yeah, just the whole thing with the Young MC or is the whole thing. So I go to these conferences and I just seek these people out. And I reach out to them on LinkedIn and I say, hey, we’re going to be at this conference together, and I would love to talk with you about X. I would love to talk to you about the interview. I just listened to you or read where you were on this podcast talking about that. So I’m going and finding, like, heads of labs from Stanford and saying, hey, I love what you’ve been doing with cell phones and people with bipolar disorder. I would love to talk to you about your earlier research on Asperger’s. And they say, wow, that’s a deep cut. You know about that? And I say, yeah.
So, important question when are you dropping the order form? When are you sending them to subscribe to your YouTube?
I’m with you.
Yeah, you get the idea we’re poking fun? No, but I love that because it’s the reaching out and it’s showing. It’s the advanced statement of, I am Coachable, I have already engaged with your stuff, and I’m actually looking to have a real conversation that I know would be of value to you as well.
And I’m going to learn the thing that they care about talking about, and so they’re very open to having that conversation. That’s how I learned hypnosis. I was going to Hypnosis conferences, and I was lucky because I was young and on the West Coast, which means when I went to all the conferences on the East Coast with people who were old, like 45, I’m older now than my mentors were when I met them. And that hurts.
Literally, it hurts to get hurt.
When I stand up, it sounds like I’m a glow stick. But because I was young and from the West Coast, I could stay up later than anybody. And because I was in college, I could drink more than anybody. And so I could go out with Sean Michael Andrews or Roy Hunter or Michael Elner or whoever it was, and just hang out with them all night. And I didn’t need as much sleep. And so I could have these long conversations and just take them out into deep water conversationally. And I got the goods out of them. And that’s still my model. I’m just doing it in continuing the obscure territory. As if Hypnosis wasn’t weird enough, then it became linguistic artificial intelligence. And now it’s other things beyond that.
What I love about that is reaching out and just to share. It’s been part of what I’ve done the last couple of years, and the mantra in my head was, as strong as things may have been going, put myself in the room where I feel like a startup.
Yeah.
Put myself in the room where I go. And the joke was, there’s a group that it’s a mastermind that I joined. Like, you have to run a seven figure business to join this group, and I’m there. And as much as my whole spiel on the Internet is if no one ever put the words imposter syndrome together, you wouldn’t believe you had this thing that someone made up the concept. You’re just a person who confidence. When you’re the person who does the thing. So, like, your level of confidence doing change work. You’ve seen several clients, quite a few. Dozens.
Dozens.
And it’s from that it’s like you know how to kind of navigate. You’ve got stories of things that have gone through, and you and I both.
Know how to get ourselves out of trouble. If a client gets a little sideways.
On something and have listened to enough comedy that we know people who intentionally get themselves into trouble so they can find a creative way out of it. Yes, we’ve already told the first aid story on the podcast before, so it comes around to, again, finding that place where my phrase was, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re the wrong d*** in the wrong d*** room.
Yeah. You absolutely need to be in rooms that are aspirational. You need to be in rooms where you think to yourself, I’ve got to be on my game to keep up. And if you’re not putting yourself in those rooms, what are you doing with your time? That’s fun. That’s where the juice is. That’s where everything is when you’re putting yourself in a room where you’re really running your fastest to keep up. So I was a swimmer and a water pole player growing up, and I had a coach who would always say to us, five times every practice, you get faster by going faster. That’s it. You want to go faster. If you just keep being as fast as you can, your fastest gets faster. And that’s why I listen to things at two X, and that’s why I go to places where there are people smarter than me, because if I’m just going to places where there are people who know less than me, what happens?
Where does that end? You end up being your life is just peewee soccer, and we want to be doing stuff that’s better than that.
Well, it’s like you mentioned, this is my experience with Hypnosis conferences that I saw you on the forum Hypnots, because you were the one who created the thing. And it was watching all the posts around Michael Elener, and the story in the back of my head was, okay, he’s going to be at this conference I’m going to in August. I need to meet this guy. And of course, the N was, my room got canceled. Can I sublet? He never booked a room. And it became, I’ve got space. And suddenly there’s the opportunity. And I can think of the dialogue I had created at one point, even around other people, that if I can have a chance to talk to this person about this thing and then to realize the people that are often the most successful are also the most giving and willing to have that conversation.
It doesn’t mean that they don’t possibly have things that they sell or events that they put on. So let’s kind of bring this around to Hypnothots, which is very different this year. That ten years running at one location in Las Vegas, a couple of miles down the road. And I’m sure the change of location is not just the only change.
No, it’s a lot of change. So one of the things that happened was our old location, New Orleans, ten years, great experience. They dramatically raised rates on us, and they didn’t improve anything. They just wanted it to be more expensive for the same stuff. And at the same time, we had been looking for a new place because were kind of outgrowing that space, and it was getting stale. And we got recruited by the Sahara, they called us, and we had this great conversation. We went over and we started looking at stuff, and we started reimagining what it could be, and we wanted to create a space that was aspirational, even for the veterans, the you, the Me, the Ken, the people who’ve been there for a long time, like all our friends, all our peers, like the Kelly Woods. Kelly’s been around for us. She’s awesome.
All these people mariana, Dale Matthews, all these people who’ve been at the conference the whole time, we wanted to create a space where they could have a little bit of that feeling of, oh, there’s still a next level to this. There’s more. I can’t be back on my heels. And to do that in a way that’s still approachable, so we still care about people’s budgets. We’re still doing all the things to make this as affordable as possible. We’re still giving discounts. We made sure everyone has a refrigerator in their room. So if you’re on a budget, you can go to the grocery store across the street and have food. We’re doing little things like we’re not.
Going to say it was the other hotel, but the game of making sure you traveled in a day early so you actually got one.
Yeah, little things like that. No, we want to make it a place. And this new venue, one of the things we did was we got them to commit to every restaurant on the property will be over staffed with waiters while we’re there so that we know food will be easy to get. And we know that means no matter where you go on the property, you’re just going to be running into people and you’ll just have an opportunity to sit down and chat with them. And we’ve built out happy hours every night in the vendor room, where the cheapest drinks on the property are going to be in our vendor room. And so that means people will hang out there. Just happen to be at a table where you’re like a couple of years ago at Hypnothops Live, were at the Alligator Bar, and it was his first time coming to the conference, and it was Tom Nicole, and he and I had never met, and obviously we know who each other are.
And he walks up to me and he comes up with a smile on his face. He goes, hey, is this where the cool kids hang out? And I looked at him, I go, It used to be. Then you showed up, and immediately we became friends off that. Immediately. From that moment, we’re like, okay, we get each other. Neither one of us is going to take ourselves seriously and we’re going to have fun. And that attitude is a really important thing to bring to this new venue.
And you’ve probably heard the story too, I’m sure it’s not crossing too many lines.
It’s to hear.
When Michael Elner told me the story of he was the young guy brought into the room with all the names that were known at the conference, and he goes, we’ll leave out who it was, but they’re all in the room hanging out, and it’s like just gathered in the hotel room. And they’re all peers, but it’s like the big names that you would go, oh, wow. And it’s the other big names poking fun at Charles Tebbits going, does he actually think there’s people who have different parts of them? Like, what’s that about? They’re all jabbing. That’s the friendship.
There’s so much in those moments because as you’ve heard me say a million times, most of our careers are alone with one client who doesn’t appreciate really what we’re doing because they don’t know what a hypnotist is supposed to do. And so they come in selfishly like they’re supposed to, and they get their change like they’re supposed to, and then they leave after saying thank you once and you did a really good job, and nobody gets it. And then the next person comes in and doesn’t appreciate what you just did, and they’re there selfishly for themselves. And so to have these moments where you can actually appreciate each other’s work I call Roy Hunter out for this a lot because his book is The Art of Hypnosis. And I don’t think it’s an art. I think it’s a craft. I think there’s art is something you consider and you appreciate at your own time.
Craftsmanship is building a chair, and if you sit it and it breaks, it was not a chair. You need to have Craftsmanship to do our work. And there’s all these shows where people are making cakes and motorcycles and whatever it is that they’re making, and we’re appreciating Craftsmanship. And Hypnothouse Live is one of the best places on Earth for Hypnotists to appreciate Craftsmanship among their peers and be appreciated for the Craftsmanship that they bring to the work.
The thing that I’ve always seen is that it’s not these are the speakers and these are the attendees. It’s everybody’s in the same room learning from each other.
Yeah, I mean, I’ve learned from people who were there for their first time. And I’ve been a first time presenter. I’ve been a volunteer at conferences because I was broke. And when my first couple of years, I was going to the ABH conference that doesn’t even exist anymore, but it was the second biggest on Earth for a while. And I would go and I’d be a room monitor because I couldn’t afford to do anything else, and I couldn’t afford to go to any other conferences. And so I was holding up the Ten Minutes Left sign, and I had a presenter come up to me and said, hey, thanks for paying attention. Thanks for managing that person who was being a pain in the a** with questions. Thank you. And I asked him a question, and he said, let’s go to lunch. And that was Roger Moore.
And Roger taught me a ton about mantras, and that sort of orange blossom is the mantra that he uses in his stuff. He taught me that just because I happened to be his room monitor, and that’s how I met Melissa Roth and Paul Durbin and all these people. Just because you go and you say, wow, that was amazing. Can I ask you a question? And they say, sure. Let’s take a walk. And that walk turns into 30 minutes.
Well, it’s also about really maximizing that experience. It’s where your time frame of starting up, I think back to yours, was the, I can stay up later. I can survive on less sleep. And mine was okay. So I had perfectly systems brain crafted this five year plan, and then it became, oh, wait, we’re planning on having kids next year. I’m going to do all of this stuff now. So, like, in the office, that was the second one in Virginia. You’d walk down the hall, and, I mean, it was just wall candy certificates all the way down the hall, and I’d have the class where people would go, why are they all like these same two years? I go because I knew what was coming. And if anyone’s now wondering why I used to run so many guest events in Virginia, yeah, I got to stay home, bring someone town, and just invite 40 of our friends to also show up there, too.
Yeah.
If it ever was the conference, though, it was that what’s happening before, what’s happening after. How can I really maximize this trip and not just look at it as the three days and instead what’s going on around it? Are there any changes? Because I know pre conference and post conference, any changes to how that’s being managed?
Yeah. So one of the things we did was we really negotiated our room rates down for during the week. And when people look at the room rates, they’re still by the way, if were at the Orleans or we’re at the Sahara now, if were at our old venue, the prices would be almost identical this year. So it’s a little bit more. But the place is so much nicer. It’s just unbelievable. Wait till everyone sees it. It’s so good.
And the names on the contracts of the Orleans, I have them on file here they were.
Yeah, we’ll add it in later. Yeah, we’ll edit that.
I think this is a polite way to say it, that there were many who kind of, okay, we’re coming out of the whole pandemic. Let’s try to keep the rates the same as they were, and they’ll reach this threshold where everything else got expensive.
Inflation happened. Yeah.
I’m looking at the office that’s currently a rental in Virginia. It’s like, oh, that mortgage just jumped. Because yes.
I mean, the last year were at the Orleans, we had to spend, for the same number of people, $30,000 more just on the food belt. Just the food for lunch was 30 grand more, and they didn’t tell us till we got there.
But more people thanked Ken for the drinks.
More people thank Ken for the drinks. So those were great drinks. Yeah. That two grand in drinks, ken, way to don’t pull a muscle patting yourself.
On a bat back to really getting the full value of yeah.
So one of the things we did with the Sahara was we really negotiated down the midweek rates, because that’s an easier time to negotiate with the hotel, is they’re off weekend. And so in doing that, we’ve really optimized for pre and post conference. So you’re already flying to Hypnothops Live, and if you’re coming to the conference, I’m sure one of our pre or post conference presenters you’ve considered taking a class from just because of how many great pre and post conference presenters we have. You’ve already bought the ticket. You’ve got a cheap room. You might even have a roommate. You’re going to know cool people there. You’re going to have momentum. You’re going to have so much enthusiasm that you’re going to learn more. It is crazy to me that half the people that come to Hypnothops Live don’t take a pre or post conference class.
You absolutely owe it to yourself to take a pre or post conference. That’s where my mentors came from. That’s where my friendships came from, was I met them during the conference and then I did post conference with them. And that meant you had more intimacy with them, more one one FaceTime with them. And that’s where those bonds get deeper. And going back to my idea of synthesis by talking about it, that’s where you have the deeper conversations and more hands on training is in the pre and post conference workshops. I cannot emphasize enough how important those are for all the people who are coming to Hypnothos Live next month and.
Very clearly as well. Heading over to Challenge Worksmarthyptosis.com and checking.
Out the yeah, Jason has one. The rest of them, man, you guys got to see it. I mean, there’s some great options and.
Jason’s going to be there too, right?
Of all the choices, that kind of.
Speaks to something that I’ve heard you speak about, too, which is a lot of what I do these days is online. I sit here in the home office. My living room and kitchen are the other end of what was originally one door, but we put in two doors because there we go, soundproofing. Which soundproofing is insulation. This is Orlando. I have a separate air conditioning unit now for this room.
As do I. Yeah, same.
It’s so critical. The future is the mini split. Just the mini split is really what it’s all about. Welcome to AC time with Jason and Scott. No, but it comes around to that time to really dive into it. But also asking the question, what can I do differently in this? Part of my story was in keeping it brief, a group saying, we don’t think the future is an online training, we think it’s bad. Can you help us push that message and look at that unleashed? And instead, though, looking at it from the angle of, well, what can be done differently? And if it is the exact same event that would happen if you got it on let’s date ourselves here on the DVD. If it was the same event that would happen inside of the online library as it really plays out in the room, then what’s the point?
Versus asking the question, what is it we can do differently because we’re in person. So not just because it’s what I’m doing, but here’s an example. It’s that we can cover the education, we can cover the training. Yet this was something that I kind of figured out by chatting through with you at one point. It’s like, here’s the two days where we’re going to gather together and actually do the hands on work. So you’ve got this thing built out and ready to go even before you get home.
So watch me make this a nested loop. I was speaking at a chief Innovation Officer group for chat GPT stuff, and a person raises their hand, he goes, look, what we all really want to know. Is, what are the jobs that will be the easiest to automate out of our organizations now that we have this tool? And I said, if that’s the question, you’re asking yours. Because if all you’re talking about is automation, you totally lost the plot. What we need to talk about is not what makes it easier and more convenient. That’s fine. We need to talk about improving outcomes and recognizing that there are new possibilities that weren’t available before. And what online learning has done for the in person events is make them more valuable if the people make them more valuable. And so you have people who are coming to your event.
They’re part of this. They’re part of your community. They’re doing work smart. And then when they get to the room, you don’t have to teach them inductions. You don’t have to teach them the basics of what you’ve done. In an Icbch certification, you know, you can get right into the meat of a Hypnosis class or in yours, you can get right into more advanced content and have more time for today.
That’s even changed the certifications. Because the playful way of phrasing it is that suddenly you’re an event where respectfully, but not respectfully, the stupid questions don’t happen anymore because everybody’s learned to pretalk. Everybody has now seen a session from start to finish. They have a basic of vocabulary. They know what an intake is. And suddenly now it’s like the questions are qualified. It’s like you reaching out to someone on LinkedIn and it’s not, hey, big fan, sign my book. It’s instead this moment where you can have that deeper conversation.
So I was teaching a Hypnosis class a while ago, and it was with HPTi, so we had done 40 hours of online training, and then they were coming for one of their weekend classes, and I was going pretty fast for an hour and a half, something like that, before first break, whatever that is. And I just kind of took a breath and I go, I just threw a lot at you. Are we all good? And everyone just went yes. I go, Any questions? And they were all pen in hand going, no, we’re good. I was like, that’s so cool. They’re so prepped. They’re so ready. They have such good fundamentals that we can do really cool stuff now. And that is if anybody who’s teaching Hypnosis in person hasn’t changed the way they teach Hypnosis in person to be augmented by AI or by tech in general, they’ve wasted a huge opportunity, and it will happen more because of AI, and you will have better tutors and all that stuff, and it’s going to be really cool.
Wait till you see what the Khan Academy comes out within the next six months.
Let’s give the opposite of where we’ve both taken this conversation, which is, I can think to the very first time I went to any event in this industry, and it was, hey, now I’m at the buffet. Now I’m getting a chance to on that newer side of things, that more startup phase of things, to be able to go, oh, here’s this person that I want to go learn more from. Here’s this person that I want to go learn more from. The moment that we all do this, you’re at the event. It’s like, hey, I’m looking at these two events and to go up to somebody and go, what do you think? I’m torn at the next time slot. It’s where I’ve had people come up to me and said, I just went to a workshop. This could have been anywhere. I went to this workshop, it was hideous.
I don’t know. I go, what are you going to next? Why? Just what are you going to next? I’m looking at this one. Okay, that’s good. Karen hand is in the other room speaking on this. Go there.
Yeah.
And here’s something actionable, here’s something tangible. And they had never seen her work before, and suddenly, rightfully so, fell in love. So even for that person who’s brand new to all of it doesn’t necessarily have to be the $18 book that then turned around and made me give someone else 15 grand. It was instead, this is the place to get that sampling and then figure out the next step from there.
Yeah. And that’s one of the nice things about hypnothops, is we’ve got ten rooms going at all times. So when you say, hey, what do I want to go run? We have 20 minutes talks. And by the way, if you think you can’t get value in 20 minutes, most of your Hypnosis sessions are about 20 minutes long. 30 minutes long. Your pre talk is less than 20 minutes long. It better be. There’s a ton of education that can happen in 20 minutes. And you can go, just get that little bit. Or you can go to a 1 hour, two hour, or four hour.
Can I give the strategy for that one? For anyone who’s doing those 20 minutes, please don’t waste all your time talking about what you don’t have time to cover. Yeah, that is what I consistently see. The biggest fault of most presenters is, here’s what I’m not here to cover. Well, I get more into that later. It’s like, no, you can land this one topic. It’s the great phenomenon of the Ted Talk of what’s the one idea?
And this goes back to what a giant nerd I am. I watch a lot of Microsoft build or any of these developer conferences. They have these world class people on for 15 minutes and they explain a multibillion dollar rollout. So they’ve had a team of 5000 people spend three years on a $6 billion project and they explain the whole thing in under seven minutes. And you’re telling me you can’t explain your hypnosis process? That’s kind of like parts therapy. You can’t explain that in 15 minutes because you can do it in 15 minutes. So you should probably be able to explain it in 15 minutes.
I am paying attention, but I did just Google how many minutes was I have a dream and that was 17 minutes.
Yeah, it’s like memorizable, but I’m going.
To need a full hour and I’m going to go over and still be speaking while the next presenter is trying to come in.
Gettysburg Address is 500 words. You can have monumental impact in moments if you are focused. At all these tech conferences I go to, nobody gets more than an hour. Most people get 30 minutes. It’s standard. In most industries, we’re just Hypnotists, or we’re a bunch of wordy sons of b****** about that.
Well, as we’re coming up on that hour mark here, I kind of just give you the stage here for a moment, just to tell everybody who’s not yet signed up what they should know. Even for the people who are signed up for Hypnotauts, what should they be looking out for is this is coming out about five or so weeks before the event?
Almost exactly a month, yeah. So htlive net. We are the largest Hypnosis conference on Earth. We are the most diverse Hypnosis conference on Earth. We intentionally bring in as many new viewpoints as possible. 20% of our presenters are new presenters every single year. We’ve built the entire thing around the idea of community. If you have never been, you owe it to yourself. If you haven’t been in a few years, I promise it has been transformed. Because as many of you know, we try new things every year. This year we’re adding a self care room with free massages. You can just walk in and get a free massage, get a free aromatherapy treatment, get a free Hypnosis is in there all sorts of just to take care of you. We’re adding things every year that are designed to help all of us be at our best.
Because we need to heal the healers, we need to help the helpers. We need to be working with each other so that when we go back to me, I see Hypnothos Live as a force multiplier. All of you are doing such great work, changing lives, helping people in your communities every day. And that’s fantastic. And I sincerely mean that. We are doing so much good in the world that needs it. And I’m really proud that I can just be the guy who is the janitor of this event where all these amazing presenters come and a bunch of them don’t go to any other conferences in the world. They come to Hypnothods Live and you can meet them there and that can transform your career and possibly your life. Some of my best friends in the world, I have meta Hypnosis conferences and I would like that story to be yours.
Hey there, Jason Linett once again. And as always, thank you so much for leaving your reviews of this program as well as sharing it in your ongoing conversations. And simply put, saying hello to us as we get to hang out in places like Las Vegas or even Orlando, where we do the Icbch conference and basically taking this thing that we’ve been doing online and interacting. Clearly, most of you out there, we’re best friends on Facebook. I mean, we wouldn’t become connections if that wasn’t the case. So check out the details for htlive. net. And as well, if you have the goal of really taking the techniques, you know, as a practitioner and putting them into motion and bringing in an appropriate influx of the right kind of clients, that you are excited to help make this an event an absolute must. Check out challenge worksmarthypnosis.com to learn all about that post conference.
The thank you page gives you the discounted link for the HT Live conference. And as I mentioned before, the nature of this interactive, hands on, done with you kind of training is one that, no, we are not recording it and putting it into any products because it doesn’t stand on its own. Which is why, again, if you ever see me popping up and doing something in person, there’s a reason why I’m doing it in that format versus the style of what goes into the other things. So check that out. Grab your spot now over at htlive.net as well as Challenge worksmarthypnosis.com. See you in Vegas.
Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast at worksmarthypnosis.com.
