Session #427: The “Future of Hypnosis Survey” with Scott Sandland

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

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Hey, Scott.

Hey, Jason. How’s it going? It’s good.

It’s what is it? 07:19 A.m., where you are right now. It is, yeah. So we just worked together on this Future of Hypnosis survey for Hypnothoughts, and pretty interesting findings, right?

Some very surprising ones. A lot of stuff that I’m happy to see.

Which one quick thing before we officially dive in. This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast Session number 427. The Future of Hypnosis survey with Scott Sandland. I have to do that every time.

No problem. 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.

Hey there, it’s Jason Linett, and I’m here with Scott Sandland early in the morning. How you doing?

I’m bright eyed and bushy tail on an early Monday morning, and this is.

Why we are recording audio only. And let’s officially dive in for those that don’t yet know you or know your story, I think you’re probably one of the most frequently appearing guests here on the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast. Could you give that sort of thumbnail intro of who you are and what do you do?

Sure. I was the world’s youngest Hypnotherapist in the 90s, opened a clinic, had my private practice, drug rehab centers, dental offices, doctors offices, universities. I worked in all these clinical environments. I was very clinically oriented and did a bunch of that work and built a website called hypnothoughts.com. Hypnothoughts became a giant thing, sort of organically, which was fun. That turned into a conference, which is now Hypnothoughts Live. And Hypnothoughts Live is the biggest Hypnosis conference in the world.

Outstanding. And part of the shape of this is that year number twelve is what’s coming up next year, correct? Yeah. What have you seen as, from your perspective, like, one of the biggest shifts that’s occurred in this industry as that conference has continued to grow over the years?

There’s a few really big ones that have happened that I’ve been really excited to see. The conferences were completely owned by Certifying bodies when you and I were coming up in the industry, and that’s because they were really the only ones that had a mailing list. And so that was the only way to organize enough butts into seats. And so you had the ABH or the NGH or the Imdha or the Whoever. They were really the only ones who could put on an event. And with the creation of the Internet and all the things that have happened there, it’s very obvious to understand that a lot of people have mailing lists now. And so the idea of a conference is more democratized, and so there are more conferences coming from different perspectives and priorities.

And I think that’s been a really interesting shape, I also think because education can be online now, book learning can happen anywhere. So the value proposition of the conference is much more about intimacy and connection. So I see those two things side by side being a really interesting opportunity for especially people in the mid tier of their career to be able to be connected to and exposed to relationships that can impact their professional life.

That’s one of the things you just said there about how here’s the journey of what’s now able to do online and how things can spread online, and that’s become one of those passionate dialogues of mine that’s not just the this is better than this or that’s better than the other thing. But instead, each platform has its own separate strengths, its own separate abilities. And one of the key things that I’ve also heard you speak about is making sure that here’s the live experience and what that accomplishes and how the online can do other things, yet to understand clearly what the strengths are as a result of that.

Yeah, both things are important and really valuable. And so having there’s just this opportunity to get both and I think there’s people who want to say, well, which one’s more important for me right now? Which one’s more important for somebody at this stage of their career? Or which one’s more cost effective? And I don’t think those questions are as useful as they need to because practically you can say, well, here’s both. And everyone gets to make a choice every day. And you can say, well, is this a point in your career where you can afford to get on an airplane? Maybe not. Is this a point in your career where you can afford to take a pre conference workshop from a mentor? Hopefully, but maybe not. But if you can’t, no problem.

You can still do the online stuff at a more affordable price, or you can do the online stuff because you met the person at the conference and that’s what exposes you to doing hours and hours with them online for years.

And a wise person once said, what if we could change the dialogue so that now the people in this industry become so much more successful, so it doesn’t have to become the game of this one or that.

Yeah, I think that was me.

That was me.

That was you.

That was me.

He was wise when he said it. Don’t be fooled now, guys.

That’s about it though.

He peaked. But no, I think in the early and even the 2000 to 2010 and maybe even a little bit in the teens, there was this weird time where we really had bad echo chambers and there were just these silos and people would get into a funnel and they would stay in that funnel. They wouldn’t cross train, they wouldn’t be exposed to new ideas and so they would think that their school of thought was the only or best school of thought. And I think the last five years has done a really good job of breaking that down. I mean, there’s still remnants of it, of course, but I think the average Hypnotist is more diverse and cross trained than the average Hypnotist was ten years ago.

I go back to a specific moment and I even forget which specific conference it was. I know who it was who said it. And no, we’re not sharing that, but it was this dialogue as to, oh, someone’s doing a workshop on this topic. And the response was, well, I’ve been doing that same method my own way for the last 25 years and I see no reason of changing it, so I’m not going to go. And I heard that and the first internal thought was, one, why the hell did I buy your book? And two, it was that’s kind of that cue to get out of it. Like I had a passion in my former career of backstage theater management, and when the passion clearly was gone, it was the cue to go.

Here’s this other thing, though, that I’m excited about, which kind of brings us to the topic at hand, which we’ve connected a number of times over the years. And we got into a conversation recently and I brought up the idea of let’s do a larger survey. And I’m going to drop a name here that I think maybe two people in this audience might recognize. It’s a friend of mine by the name of Dominic Perrone. He’s not known as a marketing guy. He actually is. I say this without ego, he’s the Jason Linett to Djace, but he’s not the guy who does the teaching. He’s part of running the business. And basically he kind of walked me through a survey strategy of how do you get people to open up and share their genuine opinions? How do you make it fun?

And were expecting what, like a couple of hundred people in the low end to actually respond to this. And I think, yeah, were putting.

This together thinking 200, maybe 250, which would have been great numbers.

I think we’re looking right now at about 490 and they’re still rolling in.

Yeah, we’re going to round 500, which is fantastic.

And the shape of it becomes not just for the sake of data collection, but creating a mechanism to look at information without sort of subjecting it to our own personal opinions. And I’ve got the list of some of the questions that were here. I’ll give one specific link the whole way through this just to keep things easy. This is episode number 427. So if you go to worksmarthypnosis.com four two seven, we’ll give a link directly to the survey, which is still live right now. But questions such as who is the number one non Hypnosis person you think every Hypnotist should learn from? We’ll talk about that one here in a moment. Every Hypnosis convention needs to have blank or I’m not going to one ever again.

Let’s see another one about how would you make an online hypnosis education, resource and community an absolute win. And if a presenter started talking about blank, I’d get up and walk out of the class. We apparently have the whole set list of music, because one of the questions was and this was, if you’re curious for the purpose of let’s bring some fun into it again and reengage, you get ten minutes to speak to all the hypnotists of the world. But first, what would be your walk on music, Scott, right now? What’s yours?

Well, I just gave a keynote, and the song I chose was Power by Ren. I thought it was a fun choice.

OOH. Not. I got the power by no.

There’s a handful of songs by Queen that I think people should walk into as, but I chose an obscure British pop culture guy.

I gotta go. Sarah Borrelli’s brave.

Nice.

What would happen if you say what you want to say?

Let’s see, that requires courage, and we’re here for that.

And she rocks. Anyone you ever wanted to train with but haven’t had the chance to? And I think we got to start with the final question, which was, what’s the question we should have asked you? And what’s the answer to that question? As I was seeing the data roll in, I think one of the most common one was, why haven’t you invited me to speak? And Scott. Why is that?

Because we’ve never invited anyone to speak. We have a speaker application form on our website. We don’t want to create favorites. So we just created one button that anybody in the world can click on and apply to be a presenter, and we make sure to tell every single hypnotist, hey, if there’s anybody you’d like to have speak, give them this link. And I don’t know why, twelve years later, of doing that exact same way for twelve years.

And I could see the technical connections on the back end of this as were rolling it out, and it was how we could see who clicked from the emails to go to the survey and the PS of all the emails. Now, the good news is, of course, that application button is still there and live right now. Right, Scott?

Yes. Oh, wait, no. Applications for Hypnothoughts Live 2024 are now officially closed.

So, Hypnothoughts Live 2025, stand by for exciting announcements here. We’ve got to start with one that I think was kind of fun for all the wrong reasons. The question is, who is the number one non hypnosis person you think every hypnotist should learn from? I poured into that list and let me defend myself for those who saw the post that I did over in the Hypnothoughts group, which, yes, I’m aware that people like Tony Robbins andrew Huberman have very clearly studied hypnosis and can be easily categorized as hypnotists. The same as Chase Hughes, the same as Richard Bandler. However, I was putting it through the filter. I should have included Chase in this list. The filter was who are sort of the Hypnothoughts regulars.

So collecting all the answers, mike Mandel showed up as the first hypnotist of our community, which, again, the question non hypnosis person. And it was Hans Rudy Whipp who swooped in to go farsing. The brain negates the negative. So I think they officially proved that premise, right?

Well, sure. Or just proved that hypnotists are terrible proofreaders that’s right there.

The reason why I think the consensus on the question we had one about this was a playful one. Scale of one to ten, how sick are you of the argument that scripts are bad? Followed by, okay, but seriously, what’s your favorite script and the shape of it? This proves this is why I think the collective answer was you could study them as a mechanism for my phrases. This is a model of how one hypnotist did one session with one client, with one specific issue on that one specific day, and to look at it from that angle. But I think we officially proved why don’t read them cold for the first.

Time in person, right, because you might read the exact opposite of the sentence in front of your client and make them start smoking.

Or that Melissa Tears is the number two non hypnotist, and she wasn’t sure how to take that award. I did tie with Richard Nongard for number three. I know. Yeah. But some of the names that popped up really do make sense of tony Robbins andrew Huberman, bruce Lipton, Wayne Dyer. We’ve got this list here. There’s a few on here that passed away a number of years ago.

Yeah. Which surprise to me.

Scott, can you work on that?

I mean, not without some serious smelling salts, but we’ll do what we can.

And just for my connections to masterminds that I’m inside of and places that I learn, I’ll only point out that one of the names on here, fun fact, and keep an eye out for what he’s up to. Russell Brunson, who was the founder of ClickFunnels, came running up to me at an event recently, which that’s kind of cool. And it was. I just bought all of Joe Vitali’s hypnosis library. He’s retiring. He’s downsizing. I just bought his entire library. What should I read first? Like, he came to ask me, yay. So keep an eye out to some of what he’s up to. I was happy to see a number of business related people on here.

I was, too. I think that’s really telling of what’s happening in our industry. I think there’s a lot of people who are saying, okay, once you understand more than just the fundamentals of hypnosis, once you really understand what’s going on, then making sure you operate your business like the business that it is, I think is a wonderful thing.

Now, you’re the one who also runs an AI company so I’ll let you kind of set the stage for what we then did with the data to then be able to then ask some questions and find things out.

Sure, pretty straightforward stuff. What we did is we took all the answers that everybody gave and put it into basically an Excel spreadsheet and then we took the spreadsheet and fed it into Chat GPT and just did some basic pattern recognition on themes and trends and sentiments that were coming out of each answer. And that gives us a good we also read everything, but that gives us a great sort of aggregate thumbnail of each question and answer.

Which again, there’s the subjective side of it, of looking at it from what we saw there’s, the objective side of looking at what things appeared the most, but then also going into and creating a data engine out of this to basically ask some specific questions. I will lovingly point out that one of my catchphrases is often that you cannot use the phrase politics aside. That being said, politics aside, I do have to point out the irony and again, not about the person, more about the oh, isn’t that interesting? We had three people who said Donald Trump was the non hypnotist they want this audience to learn from, but they also said they’d walk out if people talked about politics.

See, I like those correlations that you can get with a good data set.

Correlation. No, I think it’s just which for those that are listening in know the robots are not coming after, you know, the evil AI warlords are not coming after you either. And we actually we did not plug in people’s email addresses or names into this engine that was then created here, though, we swooped in and based upon the subjective responses asking the question of and I’ll give you sort of the roadmap of some of the things we began to ask. Well, before we even get into that, can you talk about the importance of feedback to you not just in your own personal life, but also especially for something that’s the community too, something that’s grown I’ve heard you say this continues to grow not because of who I am, but because of who this audience is.

Yeah, I think we’re really fortunate there that we have a critical mass of people who are really aligned on this is a team sport. And I mean, there’s a lot of us that all appreciate that. I’m lucky that they believe that I have good intentions and I will be a good steward of their feedback. And so they’re very honest with me and it’s great. And I’ve got people who tell me when we screw up. I’ve got people who give us positive feedback when we’re successful. And this conference, one of the things I started was I did a survey about 15 years ago on what was going on in the industry and I was looking at it. I was like, man, we need to make some changes because people are unhappy and not making enough money.

And the average Hypnotist was making like, $23,000 a year or something like that. And we’re like, okay, we got to do something about this, and that’s part of HPTi, that’s part of Hypnothoughts Live, that’s part of all that stuff. But throughout Hypnothoughts Live, and even just the website before it, I would seek out conversations with people that I knew disagreed with me. I would seek out conversations with people who didn’t like how things were going, and we would listen to their feedback because there were gems in there. And so we have been very transparent about experimenting with different things every year. 20 minutes talks, making the two and three hour talks free instead of $20. A whole bunch of things that we’ve done that have been pretty darn disruptive to the status quo.

And some things have totally backfired, and we got rid of them after one try. But some of them we tinkered with and played with and have really improved our conference. But also the net effect is other conferences have been improved by looking at our feedback and experiments as well.

That’s one of those elements where I’ve heard well, it was originally the story was I heard Michael Elner say, learn from people who disagree with each other, and that was apparently your quote.

Yeah, Michael was a mentor of mine. But on that specific case, the idea went upstream. And it’s important if you’re only learning from people who agree with you, it’s very difficult to learn more. The better challenging ideas are, in the contrarian view, and that challenges you and iron sharpens iron and all that stuff. And the best ideas come out of that. Just real honest debate and understanding of conflicting stuff.

And I’ll just give a bit of a preview to the nerdy part of this. And of course, with your expertise, you probably could do this a lot better than I could. Was that then, once we had the data, we both swooped in, and it was prompts in Chat GPT, such as, based on the subjective information that could be gathered from the survey, please share. And then we gave specific. So Scott and I right now are sharing a screen as we look at this. And I’ve got the list of top 20 emotional desires of the audience. We got to kick it off. What’s number one?

Community and connection. No surprise.

Yeah, I was surprised by recognition and respect. And again, this is the AI description of the data of the desire for acknowledgment from peers and the public suggested by the wish for awards and positive recognition. Scott, how many awards has Hypnothouts given out over the years?

One. It’s a bowling trophy.

Damn right.

I have won a lot of awards. I have a bunch of them on the wall to my left right now, and they’re great. And they are a Pandora’s box. And I understand why people want recognition and there’s good that comes with them, but there’s also a lot of baggage that comes with giving awards that people who want an award don’t really think of until they’ve received the award. But it influences a lot of things in a conference that are unforeseen consequences. So I’m still pretty proud of the we’re not going to give trophies unless it’s a bowling trophy. And I can see that somebody earned something in front of me, and everyone else can see that too.

Being that I’m on the team that won the final bowling trophy, I just want to say thank you for your service and everything that you’ve done.

You did win a Lifetime Achievement in Hypnosis Bowling Award.

I think it was also lifetime achievement in costume design at a Hypnosis Conference bowling tournament.

It was, and it was. It was bestowed upon you by the man who the award is named after roy Hunter.

And the name of the award roy Hunter Stool. There you go. Pause there for impact.

Fantastic thing, the idea of awards.

Well, I’d say one sentence that I think could be many paragraphs. I became aware a number of years ago that in some spaces it wasn’t an award, it was a reward.

It’s a reward, but it’s also a conditional reward. And they’re like, hey, do you want to win another award next year? Play my way. And so it comes with strings attached.

Can you hear the goosebumps I just got, by the way?

I remember going to a conference in, someone says, hey, are you going to the dinner tonight? Are you going to skip it? And I said, I have to go. They’re giving me an award. And they go, oh, really? For what? I go, I don’t know, but just politically, they have to give me one because they haven’t given me one in two years and it would look bad for them to not give me another one for a third year.

Now, for completeness here, could you explain why you’re saying that and why you’re not an arrogant prick?

Yeah, and I was going to say it’s not because I deserve an award. It has nothing to do with merit. It has to do with my mailing list, my reach, and at the time, how many eyes were on me compared to how many eyes were on the person to my left, whoever that might be. And so it was good marketing for them to give an award to me because then the name of that award would be shared to my list and that would be good for them. So the point of that award was marketing for their conference and bribing me to say something nice about their conference when I said to my mailing list, I’m so excited, I just got back from this conference, I won this award. Thanks to the people for putting on an amazing event.

They wanted me to do that so much, they were going to give me an award so that I would it also makes the award feel less rewarding.

And let me set aside this award that we’ve created from WorkSmart Hypnosis that were about to present and let’s just look at some of these items that popped up for 20. Emotional desires, community, connection, recognition and respect. Professional growth. For that one, I think we can sum that up with Duh innovation and Adaptation. We were having a chat right before we hopped on about looking at how do we measure when something is truly new to the industry versus something that’s already existing, but just presented in a new way, which piggybacks the next point? Ethical integrity. I did see that you corrected me on this. The version of Chat GPT that I was using on my side was struggling a bit because I was using the wrong settings here. So these are, from what I’ve seen, based on just doing a search based upon words.

These are pretty close to being in sequential order of like a top 20. However, they’re not exactly a top 20. So it’s not to say, oh, people think innovation is more important than ethics, maybe the robots are flawed. That’s kind of the top five. Community connection recognition and respect professional growth, innovation and adaptation ethical integrity. Let’s do the next two as well. Creative expression as well as financial stability.

I think that’s a great seven. And somebody could argue about their order and even if with recognition and respect. What we just said about awards, but respect is fantastic and not a reward, but people acknowledging the work of others is great. But I think that top seven, really, people could argue about the order, like I said, but that list, that’s what we want to make sure we’re doing. Creating that community, creating that connection, creating integrity, creating ethics, making sure people have good business acumen and can put food on the table for their family. If we can help make those kinds of things happen, we’re doing great.

Now, let me switch into marketing instructor mode for a moment here. Notice that the first question went into was what were the emotional desires to piggyback to that one was this other question of what are the top 20 logical desires of the audience? And I’ll kind of let you take the lead on this one here.

Yeah, and by the way, I like that you did that as well. So the first one is continual learning. And we’re going to come back and talk about this a lot because this is something that Jason and I have cared about for a long time, the idea of continued education. Simply put, when you’re a hypnotist and I’m preaching to the choir here, you take your certification training, you might even take a specialty class or two, but you don’t know what you don’t know until you get in the room with some clients and you fumble. And that’s when you start figuring out what your continual education should be and you can start learning a lot better because you’re also able to deploy and apply in the real world. So just having continual learning be the first thing makes all the sense in the world.

But what do you think about it?

I look at that one and what you actually said reminded me of the very first time that I went to the Met America Hypnosis Conference. And it was this revelation that, well, I didn’t know what I didn’t yet know, and suddenly I was being exposed to all these new people who weren’t all saying the exact same things. I’ve heard you talk about how and this is one of those aspects that I emphasize the most when I talk about the Hypnothoughts conference, which let’s bring number one non Hypnotist into this dialogue here, which is that you have the environment of a lot of the Mike Mandel people wearing Mike Mandel shirts, sitting in everyone else’s workshops. It’s not and I think just three people will smile when I make this very direct but indirect reference. It’s not.

Here’s all the people who agree with us that are speaking at this event and here’s a list of their presentations so you know which ones to go mean.

There are so many talks at Hypno Thoughts Live that I disagree. Like when we’re going through speaker know, stephanie and I are looking at us and she goes, here’s another one of those that you just don’t think is right. And I’m like, yep, we’ll put them know Saturday before lunch and they’re welcome there. We have a talk on the benefits of regression to cause I think is going to go up right before why you don’t need regression to cause as content. This year I think I’m going to just put them back to back in.

The same room, schedule them both in the same space and again into the octagon they go. Yes.

And that’s the crucible that we should all be creating together, respectfully and learning.

Together in yeah, I’m also looking at the list here. Effective networking, access to expertise. I want to riff on that r1 quick myself here, which is I can think of a time where I was the outsider coming in and I was putting specific people up on a pedestal that I need to talk to this person, I need to find a way to get in front of this person. I want to meet this person and just sit and touch the hymn of the gown and just learn everything. And the revelation that some of the most successful people that we continue to know all these years later are the ones who didn’t put up that wall, didn’t put up that block, and those who did put up that block and very clearly made the dialogue of, oh, only if you.

Pay for it in training do you get that? Are names that we’ve all seen kind of fade away from the space.

And actually, those two, the effective networking and access to expertise, we’re going to be leaning into that a lot this year. I’ll make announcement of it once we put out the schedule and people can see what we’re up to. But those two things are going to be upgraded at Hypnothoughts Live this year. So I was really excited to see that as two and three on the list.

So if people aren’t yet registered for the conference, they can go to HDlive net. Right?

Yeah. By the way, everybody, if you don’t know this, the price goes up throughout the year. So the earlier you buy it, the cheaper it is. And if we ever do any sort of bonus or incentive plan, like buy it before now and we’ll give you this, those are always retroactive, so you risk nothing by getting the lowest price.

Outstanding. Outstanding. And see, that’s always great when the host of the program does the plug for you, it just makes a little bit more seamless.

It just feels natural.

I know, right? Well, I mean, that goes to practical resources and business development. These came in as numbers four and five in terms of logical desires. And I’m going to say something here from my perspective, which I’ve got to soften this so it doesn’t sound in any bit of arrogance or any bit of self righteousness, that here’s this period of time that there weren’t many of us talking about business and how to get clients. And then all of a sudden, some really excellent people also started showing up and also started talking about business, which it’s not the story of the person who came up to me and went, oh, I got to see what the competition is up to. Yeah. That way I know what to do better. And my response was, well, if you see me as competition, then clearly you’re not mine.

Right. But then, I mean, the other side of it, and here’s people like Karen Bird who have appeared over the years, alani Midas who have appeared, and some of the things that I’ve seen Rich Guzi and many others making, I used to have to get up. And if I was speaking and this is not about the NGH Conference. It was the time frame where I was going there early on, and it was the dialogue that I’d have to do, like, five minutes of inoculating. It’s okay to earn a living. Yeah. It’s okay to be successful. And now, because there’s many more people who are clearly looking at wanting things that are practical, want things that do help you develop the business that’s accepted that’s normal.

Yeah. I think that generational training of the starving healer and learned helplessness has really been cleaned up in this last generational swing that we’ve had maybe since 2017, something and 16, something like that. I think the people coming into the industry aren’t coming in as starving healers. They understand that the key performance indicators for them is the more people I help, the more money I should make and the more stable my life should be. And that is a totally ethical clean sentence, because helping people in front and knowing that one way to measure that and maximize your ability to do it more is by having it be the only thing you do and not helping people be your side.

Hustle yeah. Which brings us to this next question, which was identifying the top 20 items that this audience is likely against. And for those that are curious, I’ll see if I can pull up the exact quote here. And it’s fun because actually, Scott’s watching me Google it in real time, even though I should have it memorized. There’s a book called One Sentence Persuasion. The author’s name is Blair Warren. We’ll put a link over it in the show [email protected]. Four, two, seven. It’s just where we’ll put everything over there. And it’s this great quote, which, by the way, the book, I believe, is a couple of hundred pages. And it is worth a read, though it really is about one sentence.

People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies. And my screen has a little funny graphic of it, too. You just mentioned something, too, that I’d love to sidebar off of before we go into this. What are the things the audience is against? And it’s that you just referenced something as to. Here’s a trend I saw go away since around 2017, that’s behind the scenes, one of my favorite dialogues is to look at how marketing trends change the way that people speak about things change. There’s a thing that I mentioned to my clients around stopping smoking. Now, this was true of the clients that were responding to me.

This may not be true of all of you, but from like 2007 to 2011, the biggest dialogue was, they’re just so expensive, I got to get rid of these things. Which kind of makes sense. There was a big old real estate recession in the middle of that one where the money in this country was on fire. 2011 to 2017, the dominant dialogue was, I put it in the category of secondary health risk, not like secondhand smoke. Yet. Instead they were getting into those later years, like when suddenly you realize you’re in your early 40s. Right, Scott?

I do know that sometimes, yeah, about that.

And we find where suddenly here’s where, quote, it’s getting real because we’re starting to see some friends that we may have grown up with be affected by major health things. And that’s where it wasn’t the client coming into quitting smoking that was having that direct issue. Though of course, that was happening. The overall trend, you see the value of looking at things from this objective perspective and gathering the data. But that overall trend was, it’s getting real. I need to do something about this. And I was expecting this to change further. But 2017, up until now, even in the midst of a global respiratory pandemic, it was that I’m spending all this time doing something that I’m not even enjoying anymore. It’s just there. And so the global dialogue shifted to that of collectively, it’s the inconvenience.

It takes me more time to cover up the smell of the smoking. I’ve become such an expert at how I can hide the fact that I smoke. There’s people who don’t even know that I do it. And it’s where, by looking at data and collected data over time, people vote with their clicks, with their dollars, with their attention. I’ve seen the stance where it’s had a bit of a renaissance in the last couple of years. But the position of this is the only thing that works. This is the only thing that will get results. I’ve seen that kind of fall away in favor in the last couple of years in the Hypnosis industry.

Totally agree. And I think it’s hard to sell that story, the idea that this is the only thing that works just because contrary data is so easily available that you can’t get away with that lie. And I talked to two women at Hypnothoughts Live this year. It was their first time. Wonderful women. I know their names, but I won’t say them because this would embarrass them. And they had just come from an instructor who said, you are now one of the most well trained Hypnotists in the world. You have finished my intro class. Most Hypnotists never get this good. This is one of the most revered classes in the world. And so they came to Hypnothoughts Live really believing that they knew techniques that nobody else could possibly know. And so I said to them, I was like, Look, I need you to understand.

50% of the people at this conference have had the realization that you’re about to have that none of that was true. And one of the most important realizations you can have is that the feeling you have right now is a shared one that we’ve all experienced of. What do you mean? I was lied to by an instructor who was marketing and telling me that they were giving me stuff that I couldn’t get anywhere else. But it turns out everybody’s had it all along. And I watched these two women, and I actually brought in who happened to walk by at the time, was Melissa Tears. And I said, Melissa, you know that moment where you realize this? And she goes, yeah, of course. And I go, well, they’re having it right now.

And she was wonderful, and not condescending at all, but just understanding and appreciating that there’s that moment of realization of there’s a million ways to do this work and there’s so many differences in nuance and subtleties, and there are some really big, obvious patterns, too.

Looking at this list of top 20 items that the audience is likely against here, number five came in with exactly what we’re talking about. Rigid dogmatism that opposition to inflexible doctrines, or a one size fits all approach in hypnotherapy. Number one. And again, these are close to being sequentially ranked because again, the data engine that were using is pretty close, not flawless, outdated hypnosis techniques, an aversion to old, possibly ineffective methods in favor of more modern evidence based approaches. I have positive and negative feelings about that first one.

Oh, yeah? What are they?

There’s a thing that I do in some of the trainings that I do around how when you look at it, nearly every method can come back to the same methodology. It’s pacing and leading. As you focus on that feeling pace, you can follow it back to the first time you felt that way lead. And now regression is pacing and leading. As you focus on that problem, you can become aware of those two parts of you that are working in opposition towards the same common good. And again, we’re back to pacing and leading.

Yeah, but I think what you’re doing there, if I can do a little inside baseball deconstruction, is what you’re doing is, I think, what anybody does in anything they do once they get great at it, and they can make things simple. And you and I have existed in the world of hypnosis, but also in other worlds where we see people who are world class in something. And when you see somebody who’s world class in something, they appreciate it so much more fundamentally and simply. And their fundamentals are so good that they can see the game as much easier. And that ability to take a complicated thing and simplify it is a major part of mastery for me.

And I just flashed to one memory where I was in Daytona Beach at the Imdha Conference, and you came running over to me and with excitement, you said, I just watched Sean Michael Andrews talk about finger magnets for 20 minutes. It was amazing.

I did. And I was leaning forward for the whole thing. Yeah. Also, and I have said this, I will consistently say this, sean Michael Andrews has the best footwork of any hypnotist I know. His footwork is phenomenal. And anybody who wants to study hypnosis should watch the way that guy moves. And it’s all unconscious. He has no idea he’s doing it, but it’s a master class.

I’m genuinely not bringing this up to give a plug, but sorry, it’s that he and I taught a class together in 2017 and I think you’ve met DG Dale Garner, who used to do cinematography stuff for, I forget, I think it was Discovery Channel. And the way that he was filming the footwork, and we’re trying to break it down step by step, and I still feel like we kind of got it. But again, it’s that specificity of things which well, we flopped to kind of opposite of this topic here, which is number two that popped up was over commercialization of hypnosis. A resistance to the commercial exploitation of hypnosis, prioritizing genuine practice over purely profit driven motives. What are your thoughts on that one?

I like it. I think there are some people who are over worried about it and still sort of in that pre 2012, like you said, the inoculation of it’s okay to make money. I think some of the people are still there, and I can also make guesses about their age. But over commercialization of hypnosis is not the same thing as commercialization of hypnosis. Right? Doing too much of anything, I think, is a reasonable thing to be against.

Well, there was something that popped up, and it wasn’t a heavy theme, but I saw it maybe three or four times. It was around the question of I’ll walk out if and the questions that were asking, other than just for our delight of seeing the number of us that appeared on the non Hypnotist list, cried myself to sleep that night. No, but a lot of the questions were asking in terms of just deriving knowledge and seeing you were disrespected.

But you were appreciated at the same time. They don’t think you’re a hypnotist, but they’d like you to show, you know, look on the bright side.

All that matters is I wasn’t number one, and the fact that Nonguard got the equal rating on that one, I was like again but let’s not make this all about the first question. It’s the same thing as it’s not that marketing or sales is either good or bad. It’s a matter of how it’s put into use.

Execution really matters.

And the thing that I saw pop up only like three or four times was, I agree. Do not turn your entire presentation into a commercial. I’ve been in those before. I’ve hosted events where someone came up to me at the 75 minutes mark because they were running the stopwatch on their phone going, are they going to go back to teaching anything? Because they’ve just been giving a sales pitch for the last hour and 15 minutes, and it went for another 30. There is an awareness that I will throw out there, which is and this is one thing that I think that would make every presenter, whether they have an offer to make to the audience or not, this one little adjustment is going to make every speaker much more effective.

Be aware of the quantity of information and actionable knowledge that can truly be absorbed in the time frame that you’re given. And from that, there always is a next step of the presentation. It might be here’s the book that I read that I learned this principle from, and I’ve been sharing with you what I’ve done with it since. If you want more, go check out the book. It could also be I’m sharing as much as I can in the shape of this hour. And if you’re curious to learn more, see me at my table. So there’s an artful way to do it. I think somewhere we have a video that I made called how to Upsell Without Pissing Off Your Audience. I think it’s also about understanding there’s a theme that kind of developed this year in my world, which is that indirectly invalidating.

Invalidation, which is, are we making the right argument? We see ads running to this audience that say websites don’t work, and yet it’s being promoted from a website. Yeah, there’s a deeper story that I tell in some of the other marketing sectors that I hang in, which is a classic copywriting principle is problem agitate solution. And I saw a presenter at a marketing conference go, well, the problem with that pattern, though, is that the audience, if they’re marketing people, they already know exactly what you’re about to do. And that means that as soon as you start to use it, they stop listening to your message and start listening to your technique. And that’s why today I’m going to share my new way of doing persuasive writing.

And I had to raise my hand and go, you just used problem agitate solution to explain why problem agitate solution doesn’t work. And he goes, let’s move to the second part of the presentation.

See, I’m telling you that’s mastery. Mastery is about appreciating the fundamentals.

But I’d say that’s what I’d see as really the over commercialization, which kind of relates to what we’ve also been talking about, of the rigid dogmatism that of this is the one way, this is the only thing that works. You will not get results if you’re not using this thing.

Yeah, I like the idea of just the naked hypnosis, where you’re like, look, I know what I’m doing. We’re going to be good. Relax. The people who are over processing and overselling and over commercializing and all that stuff all really comes from that same idea of scarcity based marketing. And I love that’s breaking in our profession.

Well, scarcity based marketing doesn’t work. And wait till you hear what actually does work 100% of the time.

You say, I got to know about it. Are there a lot of seats left in that class?

We’re going to say that there’s four spots left, but the room is anyway, you and I are so many inside jokes here. Stereotyping of hypnosis. An objection to the public’s misunderstanding or stereotypical views of hypnosis. What are your thoughts on that one?

I don’t worry about it anymore. I think hypnosis is more appreciated than it’s ever been. Not necessarily understood by the general population, but I think overwhelmingly the general population has a better, more positive sentiment around Hypnosis than it’s had in my lifetime. And I think that’s great. I don’t think people really get it, but they believe it’s powerful and can be used in therapy for good.

And I kind of go back to that, well, capitalist side of things. And it’s that the phrase that I keep saying, the more we’re all successful. And I feel it’s really the grassroots of more of us out there working with people, creating results, and spreading the awareness of the stories. That’s what really helps to build this faster. I love all the advocacy that we can do. I love all of the outreach that we can do. Yet it’s where there’s more people who can say, I’ve done this, and here’s what’s great about it. Let’s jump forward because, well, here’s the one that popped up. Oh, side question here this document that you and I have been looking at. Do we want to make that available as just something not even behind the wall of an opt in? Just make it visible?

Totally.

Yeah, I like that. Let’s make up the link for it. Now, it doesn’t exist as we’re recording it, but it will by the time people hear this recording later this week. If they go to members htlive net. Let’s say just the word results. And now that I’ve said that out loud, no, yeah, I’ll make it available over there. Members HDlive net forward slash results. And you’re going to see again, it’s not sharing any private data. And you won’t believe what Dan Candel said about this one, though. Let me read his specific answers here right now.

Yeah, we could read his out loud.

We can do that pretty much. No. Here’s one that’s for more transparency. Top 20 request for improvements to the conference.

Yeah. And again, I love that people are comfortable giving us this feedback. What can we do to make our conference better? We try new things every year. And number one, I think we work hard on number two and three. And four, we’re going to be doing a lot more of this year and we’re changing six as well. This list is totally in line with what we’re talking about. So now that I’ve said a bunch of numbers, let’s talk about what those were.

Yeah. So more diverse workshops. So broader range of workshops covering both advanced techniques and emerging topics in Hypnosis. You also what were the other ones you highlighted?

Interactive sessions and networking events. We’re combining those together. I’ll make the announcement as its own thing. But the pool parties, the bowling, like, all these things that we’ve done are all about creating those conversations and helping a person get access to a mentor, helping that person get access to a role model, an author or trainer that they’ve always wanted to meet to make it easy to knock those walls down and make that happen. And we’re going to be doing more on that side of things this year.

Yeah. And then networking events, access to industry leaders. We’ve clearly talked about I’m curious about number five. And again, these are can I jump.

On access to industry leaders? I want to say one thing, and you get complimented in this, so you want me to say it. One of the things that we did at the bowling was one year we’re like, hey, and if you guys want to dress up in costumes, do it. And were thinking people would get like, bowling shirts, and that’s what I did that year. We got our own custom bowling shirts, and then a couple groups took costumes, kind of to the extreme. And you were one of those groups. Mike Mandel was one of those groups. A couple others were as well. Michael Deshalet, but funny costumes. And it meant that some of our biggest name presenters, some of our most popular trainers were dressed funny. And that meant that it was okay for everybody to have fun.

And I’m bringing this up to say thank you to every one of those presenters and trainers and organizers who did that fun stuff and helped like the 80s party, same thing. So many people dressed up the pajama party, so many people bring pajamas. And it’s so cool to be a new guy and see that the established people aren’t too cool. I think that’s such an important part of our culture.

I was talking about number five, innovative technology demonstrations. And again, I go back to what’s the amount of data that people can truly leave an event and put into use, which that’s what helped me to kind of shift a lot of what I do, where if I’m doing a post conference, it’s more about the implementation and the workshopping versus the entire idea. And you actually gave me the line. This way, you leave the event with the things ready to launch, and it’s again, a way that we can do things differently if something’s in person versus something being online. I’ve got a highlight, number nine, because this one’s got a bit of an interesting history with Hypnothoughts panel discussions on hot topics, hosting panels to discuss current trends, challenges, and advancements of hypnosis.

I’ve been on panels at Hypnosis conferences. We’ve done panels, obviously, at Hypno thoughts live. I like the concept of panels, but we haven’t found the right format.

Well, just as much as we need quality people on a panel, there needs to be a quality understanding as to what the purpose of the panel is, as well as someone who can moderate the panel.

So I was just on a panel the other day at another conference for AI stuff, and I was by far the least qualified person. I was the only one without two PhDs on the panel. The chief innovation officer for Microsoft was the guy sitting directly to my right. And so I was on this panel of brilliant people who were really comfortable being on panels. And they all stayed perfectly in their lane, and they had all been prepped by the moderator on this is the lane I’d like you to stay in, and this is the value you can bring to the conference. And it required two prep meetings to make it all work, but it worked wonderfully well.

And I think the only way to have panels really work is to have every single person on the panel and the moderator all really bought into the same story and what their part in telling that story is going to be. And that’s a tricky team sport, which.

That’s something that I completely agree with the trend of where the 20 minutes talks have become part of Hypnothoughts to say, okay, so that’s also a mechanism for people who are brand. New to be seen and heard for the first time and got to call it out from a structural organizational standpoint that’s easier to put together because I’ve been on panels where one person completely dominated the dialogue. I don’t share this next one for any bit of name dropping, though. It was one of the Alman online conferences that they did, and we did a Business of Hypnosis panel, and it was Sheila Granger, me, Tom Nicole, Steve G. Jones, and it’s four people who are used to hosting things.

Yeah.

And toward the end, it’s like, was one of us in charge of that. And just we all kind of knew how to make sure it was all balanced out. And I mean, this kind of leads us to the second to last point that I’d love to share here. Top 20. Not part of the conference moments that the audience looks forward to.

Look at that list.

Yeah. Networking dinners, local sightseeing, post conference workshops. Didn’t see pre conference Scott. I’m sure that means the same thing. Social nights out, morning wellness activities, discussion groups at hotels. I love that it said casual meetups over the impromptu exchanges. There anything surprise you in this list?

Nothing surprises me on this list. This list of all the questions, this was the list that for me, was the most ratifying. I mean, there is some stuff that we say, okay, we need to lean into that more. But this list is really in line with what I would expect that a Hypnotist sees clients by themselves in their office stereotypically, whether it’s Zoom or whatever. So they’re doing these 1 hour conversations with people, but it’s very little about them. And that client doesn’t really understand the hard work that the Hypnotist is doing. So it actually can be quite lonely. It’s wonderfully rewarding. You get to connect with good people, but you don’t feel as heard or appreciated as you do by your peers or as validated.

And so much of what this list is about community and creating those opportunities to be with people who get each other. And I love that.

And one of the questions on the list, too, let me read the exact question was, you might have noticed that this survey is being hosted on a page currently referred to as Members Hglive.net. That’s nice and cryptic, yet one of the questions was what could make a new online Hypnosis education, resource and community an absolute win for you? And this is going to be slightly cryptic, I’m sure, because all the details are still being put into place. You rolled out the video replays of the Hypnothoughts Platinum event, which, if people go to htlive365, that’ll just redirect you over to that page to check out that we had a couple of hundred people dive into that. Even on the first day that rolled out there, though, kind of share what you see as the vision. And here’s the filter.

I’d love to ask the question from www.hypnothoughts.com was an online form without sharing all the intricate details. It was basically Ellen DeGeneres’s fault that the whole thing fell apart, kind of.

I like that. That’s a good simplification.

Just asks God in person for the it was her and 50 Cent, right?

50 Cent was very and Tony Hawk, actually.

So there’s the triumvert of people who are the reason why Hypnothoughts had to pivot. So. Thanks, Ellen.

Yeah, it was Tony Hawk, 50 Cent, Ellen DeGeneres andreessen Horowitz, the largest VC in Silicon Valley at the time.

And I just feel the need for those powerhouse. I feel the need to not explain this any further than just referencing the names. But yeah.

So the idea was continued education, but also as a meritocracy where it wasn’t about who was more popular, it was whose ideas were better. And if we could all respectfully disagree with each other and share our viewpoints, that we would all learn more and better for it. And it was wonderfully successful. I loved www.hypnothoughts.com. I’m very proud of what it was. And I still have all the data. It’s the largest Hypnosis database in the world and I just have it on a server somewhere. But the idea of let’s make sure we are interacting with each other, let’s make sure that you have access to experts.

One of the really smart things we did was we created an advertising policy so the big names in the industry could advertise, but they had to post two pieces of content a month for free of just ideas in order to be able to advertise. And that meant the thought leaders were part of the community. In these intervening years, I’ve always wanted to do something to bring back more of that and I’m excited that we’re going to be able to do some of that.

Yeah, and it’s nicely self ratifying that the top 20 requests that culminated by the looking at the data really helped to align with many of. The themes that have already popped up here of continuing education, interaction and expert access, networking opportunities, resources, ethical guidance and technical integration tips. Are you ready to chat about what’s around the corner or let it be kind of cryptic for now?

No, I think we can talk about it. Yeah, as much as you want. I’m happy to.

Yeah, well, share the idea that you’ve got from behind it.

Well, there’s a few pieces. So like Jason said, it starts with the videos of the keynotes and then the videos from Hypnothoughts Platinum. And so just start with that much content, which is great, and then from.

There, which I sent an email out about this too, about how the one person who goes, how is it new? It says it’s from 2020 and there was a need to kind of prime the pump, make sure the platform actually worked. And the easiest thing was what already exists. What’s the thing that already exists that more people need to see? And that’s where the Platinum content was. The, AHA, the oh, wow. Let’s just start there.

Yeah. And just to think about it without being too cryptic, think about what Hypno Thoughts and Hypnothoughts Live has from the perspective of access of recordings of some of the best Hypnosis minds in the last 15 years and their ideas on a very wide variety of topics.

Could I edit that phrase a bit?

Sure.

Not just the ideas, not just the content, but also the continuation of that content, the evolution that’s occurred, the things that have been amplified since a presentation. So not necessarily the easy answer of going, hey, rather than sell the audios, they’re on this page now. Instead, here’s a topic, here’s a theme, and here’s the way that the dialogue then continues as a result. So it’s an amplification over time. Yeah.

It’s going to be so exciting.

Awesome. Here, before we wrap this up again, I’ll reference to the things we pointed to all the links I’ve talked about. If you remember one thing, one link, it’s easy. worksmarthypnosis.com/427, that’ll redirect over to the page on the Work Smart website with details around members, htlive.net results. That’s where we’ll just put up the Google Doc. You can see it exactly as it is. Also to check out htlive365, at least for now. That’s going to point over to the Platinum content here and Htlive.net to register for the event. Scott, any final thoughts before we start to wrap this one up that I said would only be 30 minutes, but I think we’ve just now recorded for 60 or 70 minutes.

Yeah, we’ve been recording for days now. Guys, I miss my family. I’ll just say thank you to you, Jason, for hopping on and talking about this with me. And thanks to the people who are listening, who are curious about themes, patterns and trends in our industry. And not just thinking about themselves, but thinking about the water. We’re all swimming in together.

And I want you to now imagine, with every bit of your ability, that the specific song that you just referenced for walk on music is now slowly ramping up in volume, slowly be coming up to full power. And it’s because I don’t want to pay for the license rights to play the song and we’ll use that as your exit point. Sound good?

Excellent. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast.