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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 43, A conversation with Jonathan Chase, part one. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, Your professional resource for hypnosis training and out. Standing Business Success. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Hey there, and welcome back.
It’s Jason Lynette. This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast. And if you’re just joining me here, I share the intention behind this program really came about from attending. Several hypnosis conventions over the years. So whether it’s GH, Hypno, Thoughts Live, I just recently did, uh, MidAmerica Hypnosis Conference, the Hypnobirthing Conclave local events as well, meetups and all of that.
You know, here’s my phrase. The pre and post convention stuff is really great, and if you’re making the trip to any of these events, Do yourself a favor and round out the trip with some more specialized training, whether it’s pre or post convention. The workshops that are selected for these events are outstanding.
Yet in my experience, the really fun of it was what you would learn just by way of conversation, whether it’s at the bar in the evening, in the hallways of the convention, hotel, the stuff that you really just cannot structure, the stuff you really cannot. To really learn the ins and outs of how it is.
This one person really looks at hypnosis and the work, the thought, the insight they really put into that. So really this podcast here is a bit of a passion project, and I say that in a clever way of basically saying, this is also for me, and that’s specifically why I reached out to Jonathan Chase.
Jonathan and I reached out to each other and set the plan to talk for about 20, 30 minutes. And of course that means, Now this is part one of a two part series as we went on for an hour the first time actually chatting. So I want you to hear the immediate connection that was there and really the thinking that he puts into his work, and specifically more so in part two of this recording.
You’re gonna hear the background to it in part one. But as we get into part two, you’re gonna hear about a project, and I’ve gotta cheat here and get the name again, The Marvelous Mechanical Mesmerist, which is this production, this play that Jonathan is now a part of. He’s helping to write that. Is bringing hypnotized volunteers from the audience into the structure of a theatrical play.
You know, look at the way that we talk about hypnosis for the most part. Here’s the category of work with clients. Here’s the category of work on stage, and really this is just a whole different level of how to approach it. That’s just fascinating and that’s what prompted this convers. We’re gonna jump right in.
I would point you back to work smart hypnosis.com. There’s gonna be several links on both parts one and two of the series with John Chase, including some videos, including some links, including some various resources to check out. Just a fascinating chat, a delightful experience getting to meet Jonathan Chase.
Let’s jump in. This is part.
When I first started, I probably spent, you know, something like a hundred grand over a five or a six year period going everywhere, following everybody. I paid money, I borrowed money, maybe an hundred grand’s an exaggeration, maybe something like 25 grand. Mm-hmm. , which in those days was management level, yearly wages.
On getting enough information and learning my craft enough so that I could start running, not crawling. Yeah, right. Yeah. And I started running and I’d earned that money back and the same amount within the first 12 months. Because I’d ask the right questions to the right people. I’d badged people. I virtually stalked people, , you know, and Ken Webster, who is one of the longest running hypnotist in a single venue in the world.
Yeah, I know of Ken. It’s a battle I think between him and Anthony Ks has been doing it in their venue the longest. You know, I won’t allow you to say, but. But Ken’s been doing Blackpool for many, many years. And if you listen to Ken’s story, Ken went out to Spain, he learned to do stage ship gymnast. He went out to Spain.
He went out there for two weeks, stayed for two years, earned a lot of money being a stage hypnotist. And in those days, in Spain, you know, you could live like a king for 200 pounds a week. . He came back, he went to the manager of the, of his local big 2000 seat theater and he said, I want to do a show here.
He said, Now so off. So he sat in front of his office for six weeks until I eventually walked him one day and said, Alpha Fox, eight Ken, you can add one night. And that started his career? Yeah, because he wanted. Yeah. Now I look at it this way. Speaking from a client’s point of view, would you want to walk into the office of somebody really wants to be there, or would you want to walk into the office of somebody who could afford to be there?
Or would you want to walk into the office of somebody who thought it was a good idea? Yeah, but we don’t prepared to put anything into it to get it. Now, I agree with you as much as I put advert doing training course, people come. And we do, we get about 50% of the people who just hyp Mount Curious because we actually advertise for hur.
Mm-hmm. . But those Hur are people who are planning on coming to do it, and they’ve been told that we’re really, really good at starting people off, so that’s why they’ve come to us. Right. I share, it’s kind of like my filter on all the business stuff that I do is that I only can teach the stuff that I’ve actually done.
Rather than teaching pipe dreams rather than theories, rather than, here’s the current trend that I haven’t yet tested. Yeah. It’s to position myself as the Guinea pig and then to show as I’m teaching it. Well, here’s how I did that, which is why if you look carefully at all the materials that I put out there, everything’s really the language of.
This is the roadmap behind what I did. It’s the fun of over here, the business of making claims and having to back them up. And I’m of the mind that, well, if you don’t make claims, you don’t have to back ’em up. But at the same time, here’s the stuff that I’ve done though. The challenge becomes, I can’t always teach it the way that I did it because people don’t often have the same mindset.
I was the one that signed the big scary lease and went, Okay, I have to make this work. Yeah. When other people may be more appropriate given their scenarios, given what’s going on, to slowly ease into something. I came from a family where everybody was self-employed and it was very much, If you’re gonna do it, you better do it.
Well, you know, maintaining your mind, Zoe clues, I dunno if you’re aware of Zoe, but she left the recording industry and decided she was gonna be a hypnotherapist and she thought, right, okay, I’m gonna really need something to drive me to get this business going. So she went to Harley Street in London, which has gotta be the one of the world’s most famous places, you know, for therapists and surgeons and doctors.
And she hired the most expensive office she could afford. And then she thought, Right, I’ve gotta pay for that next. Yeah. You know, and, and that, that drove her onwards. But she didn’t want to go in. She didn’t want to think, Well, do you know what I’ll do? I’ll convert my spare bedroom. Mm-hmm. first, you know, and it is sort of like, I see this all the time in stage hypnosis because like, if people ask me, John, really?
What are I, I’m a, I’m a stage hypnotist, I’m an entertainer, I’m a performer, I’m a writer. You know, that’s what I am mostly. And I’ll say it all the time, you know, there’s big long discussions going on about what’s the best audio to use and now discussions whatsoever at all of, what am I actually gonna say?
I’m on microphone. Mm-hmm. , that’s gonna set me apart from everybody else. And I mean, when I started. I copied other people’s acts the same way as everybody else starts. Fair enough. But then I started to work with some comics, some great comics in, in the uk. Maybe people like Ken Dub that you’ve never heard of, but like other ear are huge, you know?
And I used to corner them in dressing rooms. Threateningly, you know, saying, What if you were a HSIs, what would you. What would you say? And it’s right what you said. It’s interesting what you said there because there’s this, I can only teach what I’ve done and I love this. Oh, I only did this cuz it’s fun.
Right. So what are you gonna do when you turn up to a gig that’s probably going to put you in front of another five or six people who can book you for big corporates and that, and you turn up with a flu and you feel like you’re gonna vomit your head’s? Aching so much is hard to. Your knees are weak, you are sweating like a pig.
Where do you find, uh, I’m gonna have fun to actually go in that dressing room, get changed, put some makeup on, which you never do, but it hides the sweat. Yes. Spray your throat with as much chemicals as you possibly so that you can talk for the next hour and a half nonstop. Go out there. Where do you find the smile from?
Where do you find the good evening from? because if you haven’t got that, and if you don’t think that it’s gonna sometimes be bloody awful and bloody hard work, then forget it. Because all, all you are going out there is you are gonna have fun. But do you know, and I’ve seen this time and time again, Jason, in 50 years time, you are still gonna be doing high skills.
You’re gonna be not heard of, or your website won’t be on the internet. because the opportunities that come along where you’ve had to really work hard because you really, really wanted, not because you’re having fun, but because you can’t not do that. Yeah. You’ve gotta dig deeper than just having fun to do that.
And I think that’s why I’m going for the high ticket more and more now, because I find that the people who pay the high ticket are the people who can reach down and find. It’s the people who turn around to me and say, I wanna do what you do, but I want to do it better. Mm-hmm. , you know, and the people who’ve got the goods to say that, and the people who’ve got right, wrong, and I, I’m gonna do it different.
Well, you hit on a couple of things there. I, I don’t know if you know this, but I worked for several years in management for professional theaters. I wasn’t the actor director, designer, I was the stage manager organizing everything and. Making the creative people get along. I have, I think against sms. Yeah.
and, and the experience though was seeing people who would come in at the call time performances, eight o’clock, they would show up at seven 30. And the term we used there was before this TV show that’s popular now. They were the Walking Dead. They showed up, they were sick, they were horrible, yet at eight o’clock stepped on stage and you would have no.
Yeah, and it’s something, I mean, not to bring it to an esoteric level, but it’s something that’s going on in that person that I, I love the phrase they’re refusing to accept the premise that there’s gonna be something holding them back from that experience. That this is what I’m here to do in that moment.
And just that work ethic that was there. That, yeah, because they used to be the kid in the high school getting up on stage and the school play and having fun. It, it brings it to an entirely different level. Here’s the person. I mean, I heard one of them say one time, It doesn’t matter how I feel, it’s a sold out house.
That’s where I need to be. Mm. And the experience of just, you have to make it work. It has to happen, as I said in my book, and you now, I mean, I have worked some dives. I have worked some really terrible dumps in my time, , but it was money and it was your job, first and foremost. But wherever I worked, , I always got changed.
I always took a rowdy, I always took a PA system. I always had the best of the best. For whatever it was I was doing. I even worked, um, in the old days I even worked a couple of Hell Angels houses. Yeah. Because they’d seen me, I did a bit around the rock circuit and they’d seen me on stage and they’d come up to you after a show and say we couldn’t come up on stage cuz we didn’t want easy to see us pranking a bit.
So you are gonna come and do our. And it was said like that you are gonna come and do our hairs. Yes. And I’m not going into details, but like obviously they didn’t, they wanted another, the top shell, they wanted to let their hair then, you know, and do that. But even then I changed. I said, Well, where can I change my jacket?
And the one guy said, Well, you can leave that jacket down there. And I said, I’m not leaving you down here, You rubbing bastards. He just laughed and, and he said, Put it in a cupboard gallery here. I said, Well, I’ve gotta put me hitting at his coat and otherwise I don’t feel right. And he just laughed. And he said, Oh, they’re gonna love you
He said, I said, Why? He said, Because nobody else has had the guts to come in here and dress. I love it, but I treat everywhere that I perform or present as the London play, as the last show I’m ever gonna do. And it’s gotta be the best one. And people think, Oh yeah, that’s, you know, Oh, you just sang that.
But no, that’s how I get through the show. . Yeah. Yeah. That’s my mentality. You know, people say to me, Why are you so absolutely fantastically brilliant? At least that’s what I. because I have to drive myself into that state of mind to go out there and perform 100%. Now the thing is people say that therapy is different, not when you do it my way.
I don’t do therapy any different. I do therapy as a show. You know, in as much as the office fire is, is set up in the way that are want, you know, the people that are treated the way that are on, and I do it that way because they’re paying for that. Well, it’s, so much of it is the, I mean, you go back to Mesmer and so much of the experience, so much of the expectation, the, the recognition that the entire process is about hypnotic suggestion, not just the, now that your eyes are closed, we’re officially working.
Yes, I talk to people like, You must, you must smile at this cuz you must have talked to people who have done the training. And they say, Oh, this is so amazing. This is like lunchtime on day one, you know? And they’re saying, This is so amazing. It took me 20 minutes before to hypnotize somebody. Now I can do it in a few seconds.
And I said, Yeah, well what took you that long? And I said, Well, you have to give them all the suggestions for reen relaxation. You’re waiting for the breathing to slow. And I said, Is that it? Is that what you were taught? That all you’ve gotta do is wait for the breathing to change? Then you can read them the script.
Now, you know an I now that there are dozens and dozens and dozens of courses out there, and this is what they’re teaching our cosis. Yeah. Now that’s scary. That’s scary. I’m not saying that some of the psychotherapy they teach isn’t useful. Of course. The nlp, the bits that were taken from hypnosis anyway is useful.
But when you see the suffix h now in front of something, you expect hyp sis. Yes. And we did a rather interesting thing. I’m gonna put it top of my new website. It’s on my hypnosis installed DVD and get the in, you know, . Go for it. Yeah, go for it. It’s on the balance thing. But what Inbox and, and Jill’s, our video guy.
Whereas they went out to London, suburb Canda Can and Lock, and they just walked up to complete strangers and asked them what HN was. And nearly every one of them, every single one of them said it was mind controlled by somebody else. And then they come into the hypnotherapy situation. The first thing they get told is that all those years of expectation they got building and everything isn’t what they’re going to experience.
And I look at that and think, well, if you’re a hypnotist, if they want line control, that should be fairly easy to set. And then they walk away saying, Hey, you know something. I was hypnotized. And the number of people that I get ring who ask me for consultation have asked me for, They’ve nearly all been to hypnotherapist before and been relaxed.
And when I say to them, Well, did you feel hypnotized? Well, I’m, No. But they were very nice. Yeah. Yeah. And did you ask for your money back? Well, now they were very nice. You know? Yeah. There’s an expectation that’s there. They’re expecting, Yeah. Hypnosis. So to give them that hypnotic experience, whether it’s a moment of phenomenon or anything that’s gonna satisfy that need.
Otherwise, you know, I, I’d say it as you could have done the most perfect, flawless. Therapeutic process and the hypnotherapy side. But if they’re leaving with that phrase of, Well, I felt relaxed, I guess something happened. You’ve missed one of the most crucial elements. I’m not saying it’s not gonna get results because many of these people do get results.
Yet there’s a very clear element, uh, I love the way you’ve said it. The word hypno is at the beginning of it, they’re expecting at least a hypnotic component. Well, do you know, I almost say, I always think, you know what, the last thing you do is the first thing they. Yes, and they are leaving with the world’s greatest hypnotist as far as they’re concerned because they’re leaving with the hypnotist that got them in is shit in the first place.
And the reason that they’re sitting opposite you in your consulting room because they’ve been hypnotizing themselves, that they’ve got no confidence for their whole wife. And if you don’t convince them they’ve been hypnotized and changes happened when they go out, they’re gonna go back to doing exactly what they were doing before.
And do you know something? They’re bloody good at it, . They’re very good at it. They’ve been doing it a long time, and you have to change that. Part of the mind. Well, there’s so much of this process, especially bringing it to the hypnotic pre-talk, that the only purpose of that segment, and I’ve heard this taught elsewhere, the only purpose of that segment is to dispel any fears or misconceptions of the process.
And I think. While that may be valid, what’s more important is building the expectation for the positive hypnotic experience. And if anything, folding into that component of here’s what’s gonna happen, here’s what you’re going to experience, and just breaking that expectation. I found that what you just mentioned about they’re already hypnotizing themselves.
The moment that I can reframe what they’ve already been doing. As a skill that they’re not using properly, that just bypasses all of the pre-talk mumbo jumbo that we’ve been trained over the years, and you’re already an expert at this. I’m gonna show you how to do it better and to let that become that hook that the process hinges upon.
It just dissolves away the fears and misconceptions for the most part, in my experience. And it also shows that they’re utilizing a resource. They’re just not using it. Yeah. That’s why I’m a crap therapist, , because all I do is bang under and tell ’em to stop it. Yeah. . Hey, that works. You know, , the joke that I sort of build as the subtext of my stop smoking process with clients is how deeply hypnotized do you have to get somebody to just tell them, Look, all you have to do is nothing that, That’s it.
Just do nothing. It’s easy, but how deeply hypnotized do you have to get them Where that’s no longer an offensive statement. Where they realize that’s the simplicity, that’s the comfort of it. And in many ways, they’re already an expert at doing nothing in so many other parts of their life. Just spread the nothing around other parts of it life.
See, my style is slightly different because I come from a stateship gymnast’s point of view. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , and even on Stacy practice, you know, I do not spend 20 minutes trying to persuade people. The hypnosis is nice and comfortable because I know that there’s only going to be in a theater with 2000 people.
There is going to be 15 people max who are going to be any good, and of those five are going to be fantastic. Between you and I, I just want the five. Yeah, which would be fantastic. So yeah, I’ve been impressed upon that. Some of the photos and videos you’ve got the smaller group of volunteers, you’ve got up.
I go straight for the jugular, you know, and say, Look, you’re gonna come up here. I’m gonna make it feel of you. So if you haven’t got a sense of you, me, don, come . Yeah. Gotta love honesty. You, you’re gonna be totally under my control if I want to remove your clothes, I, I will do, I will not remove anybody’s clothes on stage.
God knows what he’s wearing under, under those skins, . I go out there and I am very direct and very forceful, but actually in consultation I’m the same because they’ve already been on the internet, They’ve seen me, they know my style, and they are buying into my style, not into the therapeutic process.
They’re buying Jonathan Chase. I think so many hypnotists in business, they call it talking someone out of the. Someone who’s ready to buy something and then the salesperson keeps talking and ends up killing the sales process when the person was already ready to buy. I think a lot of hypnotists are talking people out of the change.
Well, I can’t do this. Well, I can’t do that. This isn’t what’s gonna happen. You’re not kidding, . Yeah. I mean, if somebody says, What’s it? Well, it’s mind control, right? Well, I’m gonna take control of your mind then. Don’t worry, Betty. And if they say, Oh, I’m a little bit scared, say Good. Don’t worry, Ben, because I want them emotional.
I want them angry. I want them to come up on stage and say, Go on. They not dare you hypnotized me. Because if they’re in that mood, number one, they totally believe they can be hypnotized because if they don’t believe they can’t be hypnotized, they can’t come on stage threatening. Yeah. , you can’t be scared of something you don’t believe in.
Then we know that folic are scared only of what they believe in, not of the thing. So that process works perfectly in reverse for the state’s hypnotist. If somebody comes up with their knees and knocking together, they’re gone. In fact, it’s harder to keep them out of hypnosis than it is to put them in.
And the yearsly absolutely brilliant and I would. Work that way. Very much on a therapeutic situation. Like I say in my book, Don’t look in his eyes. I think I plugged them all now. Is that okay? That’s fine, yeah. Yeah. , it’s only awkward if we do them all at once, so that’s fantastic. . amazon.com, Jonathan Chase.
Exactly. . But no, a lot of the time my consultations, I don’t do therapy. I’m not a hypnotherapist. I’ve never claimed to be one. When I’m doing consultations with people, when I’m doing hyp with people one on one, a lot of the time, it’s very much a case of sit down. What do you think analysis is? You’re wrong.
Mm-hmm. . Cause I, I dunno what your hyp is gonna be. And what we’ve gotta do is find out how good a hyp and t you. Now I know I’m an absolutely brilliant hypnotist head. Do I know that? Well, I’ve done it 70,000 times and it’s worked. How many times have you done it? And they’ll say, Well, sometimes they’ll say one or two, but very often they’ll say no.
I say, Right. So who’s the expert here? Me? So I’m not gonna ask you what hypnosis is or anything cuz you don’t know. So let’s just try some things and see what sort of hip analysis you can do. Yeah. Nice and I’ll do four or five induction. By that time, they’ve either been rein, just, I hate fractioning, it needs the wrong word.
It’s totally inaccurate. They’ve been regist about four or five times, or they haven’t gone at all, and we now know that I either doman, lp, do something analysis, or you know, send them off to somebody and recommend them to somebody I don’t like because they’re hard. Right. And the thing is, everything that I do in my marketing, everything that I do, the way I set myself up, and everything I do in the high price and high ticket and everything quite now, is designed to make sure as much as possible that the person I demograph to be in that chair is the right person right now.
I would love, I would sincerely love to think that I could help every. But it, it’s like I’m in Shell business. We’re putting together a new show for Edinburg. Now, I would love to think that I could go up to Edinburg Fringe and make everybody, you know, all two and a half million visitors that are gonna be there over the time of the festival.
I would like to think that I can entertain every single one of them, and I know I can’t because I’ve been an entertainer too long, and I will now for a fact. That no matter how big or how small your audience is, that somebody in there will not be entertained by what you do. Mm-hmm. And why there is this thing in therapy to think that you can help everybody that walks in through your door.
I don’t get that. That’s wrong. It’s just experientially wrong. Because if you talk to anybody who’s been in the business for more than 10 years and they say they’ve never, ever, ever had a failure, I’ll show you a lawyer. Because our failures, we’ve all had our people who try as hard as we can. It just didn’t work for, I mean, one of my very first people when, when I started doing consultations, one of my very first people, the fifth or sixth person, I saw them twice and then they committed suicide, and that was a good teaching lesson to me that you don’t win the.
So you shouldn’t assume you should win them all. So I think what you should do is set yourself up so that the people that you see are more likely gonna be the ones that you can help, either because you’ve got an empathy with that person, or you understand their condition better than most people, or you just resonate more with that type of.
I think that’s one of those things too that, uh, that I’ve got a class this past weekend that this topic already came up and it was the chat of, I’m the biggest proponent of this stuff, the biggest supporter of it. I will argue with people about how wonderful it is. Yet there were stories we were sharing of, Yeah, this person called me and I referred to this other hypnotist, this person called, and I referred to this.
Psychiatrist and to not look at this as the end all be all, it’s, it’s definitely a very useful tool. I love the metaphor that you can’t go to the home good, the home supply store and buy a hammer and then try to return it the next day and say it didn’t work. Yeah, sometimes it’s just not the right tool for the job.
In many cases it can be. It can be in a wonderful adjunct and supplement and really many times the one tool that is absolutely needed yet to also not paint it as the magic pill for everything. That’s where we end up hypnotizing ourselves and to believing that we could help somebody when sometimes there may be a more viable solution for that individual.
Yeah, it’s like the stage hypnotist who thinks that they can just walk into any situation and have a fantastic show every single time you, you know, that none of them are gonna be tough. That none of them are gonna need work. Like I said, once before, you know, you’ve gotta be careful. You can think you’re very, very good, but you can’t think you’re very, very good because you know you can’t change everything.
Yeah. And you can’t. Do it 100% like that. That’s what worries me about, Well, we know that there’s unethical trainers out there, but there’s unethical therapies out there who are just trying to sell their gear and sell their stuff, especially recordings. And none of them are turning around and saying, Well, you know, This recording stands probably if you use it exactly how I tell you to, it stands a 30 or 40% chance of working because I’m not there with you.
I can’t see how you using it. I don’t know you, I dunno, your condition, your condition might have variables that I amt included in my recording , you know? Yeah. And there’s stuff like that and there just seems to be self you on these people in the business. The thing is, I dunno how you feel about this, but all I say to people who come online courses, one thing you should never, ever do is insult the intelligence of the people who are paying your wages.
And I think that happens too much with the world of H issue and what we tell other people about, you know, we’re insulting their intelligence in thinking that they don’t get, that it might not work. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. , and then we get to the levels. When you get, people start saying, Oh, well, the world’s greatest hypnotist for Hitler and, and Jesus.
And you go, Mm, . Let me think. Yeah. Hang on a minute, . Um, so is that your, is that your ideal client? Now? We’re not going there, . No, no, we’re not going there. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast. And work smart hypnosis.com. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette. And one last quick thing. I hope you’d enjoyed this brief series here with Jonathan Chase.
Part two is gonna come at you next week on schedule, and I’d encourage you to do this. I want these interviews. I want these programs to make you think about hypnosis. I want them to help you to interact with how it is you were trained and how you approach your process. And in many ways, it perhaps might.
You to define your own style as well. So I’d love to hear your feedback specifically. The best way to help us out, Head over to iTunes, locate the page for the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and leave your positive feedback there. That helps us to bump up our downloads, helps us to increase the appearance, and as always, it just makes me happy.
Head over to the Work Smart Hypnosis page over on iTunes and leave your review. I look forward to seeing what you’ve got to.
