Session #433: Paul Ramsay Didn’t Die & Stage Hypnosis Reignited

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

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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.

Happy 2024. And, yes, I know I am saying that to you. In the middle of February, we took a bit of an intentional pause on this program, as some other projects were very hands on and very labor intensive, and now they’re done, and that’s exciting. And as I kind of looked around at what was going on in the hypnosis industry, I made it a point to reach out to one person in particular who I wanted to be. The conversation that then was the reignition, the restart, the kickoff of, I guess we could say, season 2024 and make it sound even more intentional.

Yet Paul Ramsay is someone who I’ve known for a long time in this industry, and I’m going to let a lot of this conversation just kind of stand on its own, especially for those of you that know Paul and might have wondered, where did he go? And you’re going to hear the entire story. Well, you already heard some of it, because I said, as a joke, it’s like, what if we called the episode this? And he goes, oh, you have to. So that’s why we did a very special introduction there together. For those that don’t know Paul, I would say that one of the things that stands out the most from him is he’s actually become one of the most referenced people on this podcast when different people have been on it going, what was your first introduction to hypnosis?

And Paul was the person that they saw and to hear the shift in his life, the clarity that unfortunate events have brought forward. It’s where now he is building out, along with an incredible team, something absolutely awesome with an organization specific around stage hypnosis, which this is episode number 433 of this podcast series. So all the references, all the links that we point to in this conversation, you can find by easily going over to worksmarthypnosis.com/433. That will bring you directly over to the audio player of this episode, as well as the show notes, a full transcript as well, plus the links and details of this incredible project. And while you’re there, check out hypnoticworkers.com. One of the big themes of this conversation is that of creativity. And my whole underlying principle of what makes a hypnotist effective is confidence, creativity, and flexibility.

We find ourselves surprisingly still in an era at times where there’s the dialogue of this technique is good. That technique is bad. Or if you’re not using this method, you’re not going to get results. And as somebody who appreciates good marketing, when I see it’s kind of one of the laziest hooks you could use to say that this doesn’t work anymore, when meanwhile, here’s all the data that proves it to actually work. Richard Nongard has a great quote on this. He goes, people put down progressive muscle relaxation. It is one of the most well researched and proven methods in our industry. You know what’s great? Data? Yeah, just putting that out there. So with hypnotic workers, it’s an approach to hypnosis, which is all about building confidence, creativity and flexibility.

How do we take the different tools and strategies inside of our hypnotic toolbox and build systems for change? Where now, depending on the person in front of you can feel very confident modifying the work in real time based on that person who is in front of you. Get rid of that fear of what do If this comes in? Learn a system of change in which now it’s purely customized for that person in front of you, building in powerful hypnotic phenomenon so that your client can feel the change taking place, as well as the gorgeous artistry of conversational influence so that the change is in process even before the hypnotic process technically begins. Check that out. Watch the video tour.

You can get started for an extremely low payment over at hypnoticworkers.com I will tell you that I went a little bit longer in talking about hypnotic workers because even I’m still cautious about the episode title, though I got Paul’s blessing. So with that, let’s jump directly in. So happy that we get to call it this and so happy that the title is what played out to be true. Here we go. Session number 433. Paul Ramsay didn’t die and stage hypnosis reignited. So we’re back here once again with Paul Ramsay. And Paul, good to have you back on the program.

Always good to hang out with you, my friend.

And figuratively and literally as we got to hang out, was it about a year or two ago at that university? That was in Tampa.

Oh, my gosh, Jason, do you know that was like, over two years ago.

What day is it?

That was in August of 2021.

Now, if I remember, though, that was a bit of an unfortunate timing event. You were doing a show, and I go, that’s an hour away. And I drove out. You did two of them back to back, right?

Yeah, I did two shows that night at that school, and that was when the delta variant was really big in the whole pandemic scene. And in the state of Florida, there were individuals who were adamant that freedom is really important and you would not be made to wear a mask. And so the students, they filled the room. And it wasn’t a theater, it was a conference room, low ceilings, and they filled the room. It was like, I don’t know, 180 people or something like that.

It was weird that they made everybody kiss when they walked in. I was thankful that I was there as a guest.

So they closed the doors, and the windows were closed, and the doors were closed, and then were all just in there breathing on each other. And then they emptied out that first show and then brought in 180 more and filled the room again. And we did it all over again. And, yeah, four days later, I was like, I don’t feel so good. So that was a pretty unfortunate. It literally almost killed me because I had been diagnosed just three weeks before with multiple myeloma, and the combination of the two just completely overwhelmed my immune system. And I went from the doctors telling me, oh, you’re 47, and we caught this early, and you didn’t even have symptoms yet. We just caught it on your blood screening, and they were very optimistic. And I was like, okay, let’s go.

And then three weeks later, I get that. And it took me a month to feel like I was starting to come through it. Then my back really started to hurt. I mean, really hurt. My back was just killing me. And I started losing. I had no appetite. I couldn’t eat. And so I went in to check in with my oncologist and say they were waiting for me to get through the COVID to get me back in and start on treatment and stuff. And they ran another blood test. And she’s like, yeah, your kidneys are failing, and you need to go in the hospital immediately or there’s going to be some pretty serious issues. And I was like, what? A month ago you told me we caught this. She’s like, yeah, that was a month ago.

And I was like, I came very close to not being with us anymore. My back hurt so bad because the cancer was pulling the calcium out of my bones, and my l five vertebra broke under my own body weight. It compressed, so I had a broken vertebra. My kidneys were failing. I tore my left rotator cuff. Just going to sit up one day, but just pushing with my left arm to sit up because, again, all my tissues were breaking down and coming apart. They did a bone marrow biopsy, and 95% of my bone marrow was cancerous at that point, it was really bad, but I’m still here, so it all worked out.

I love the fact that you’re here.

Thank you.

It was, here’s everything going on in the world. And then there were a few of us you shared that news with early on. And what I tend to almost want to ask here more than anything else is like, what’s going through your mind? As here’s the journey of doing stage and everything else that you do. And here’s where were kind of on this upward swing of, hey, we can get back to normal again. What was that like?

It’s such an interesting. The whole thing is really fascinating to me. I was at a point in my entertainment career where I was getting pretty frustrated. The other cultural changes that were already occurring, and I should explain for people don’t know me, I’ve been doing stage hypnotism for 20 years. I primarily work in the college market. And what I was noticing was attendance was plummeting. I mean, just absolutely plummeting. And on top of the attendance being lower, the students who were coming were not as engaged emotionally in the show. They’re very passive. These students consume their entertainment much more on the inside.

Well, I’d give a correlation. Tell me if this is lining up that early. Early on, the interest was magic. I paid my way through high school and paid my way through college doing close up sleight of hand magic at a theme park. But before that, I at one point, was doing the kids birthday party circuits. And one of the things I learned early on is say, hey, if they’re the five year old, the six year olds, you kind of need to teach them how to be an audience. That’s something that they’re not used to because they’ve never seen it before.

And here’s where information at our fingertips and the desire to one time I’m walking through the Smithsonian when we used to live in Virginia area, and I just felt the urge to say to the kid walking through the museum and not even looking at the stuff, but looking at it through the phone going, you’re never going to watch that. But it was amazing because he goes, oh, yeah. And he put it away and was then, like, looking at the stuff, which I don’t want to say kids today, but it seems like that’s a trend. That’s why there’s so many comedians. I mean, Dave Chappelle was one of the first ones that became very vocal about the whole system, where you go to see his show and you’re zipping up the phone in a bag so people can’t use it during the show.

And it’s not because, oh, we don’t want you posting it on the web. That’s a tiny part of it. It’s more, hey, they’re in the room. We want them actually observing the show. That’s why we’re here altogether.

Yeah. And it’s interesting is, again, 20 years, I’ve been doing it long enough. I’ve seen it change, even in that way. Like, I remember getting to this point where phone usage was just skyrocketing, right? And I remember having nights where I would do my show, there’d be 400 people in the audience, and it would be like a rock concert. You just see all these glows out in the audience. And I was like, what is going on? It was so strange. And then that actually went away, the usage and the way people that went away, and it became a much more subtle. Like, a phone would just come up for a moment and then it’d go back down. And I think that’s more the way people do it now.

Whereas for a few years, there were some students who, that phone came up at the beginning of the show, and it stayed up until the end of the show. But I think the bigger thing is that beyond the live entertainment moments in their streaming entertainment moments, their actual processing of information of entertainment is so much more internalized. When something funny happens, when you’re sitting at an airport or on a public transportation or something and someone’s walked, you don’t see a lot of people just dying laughing out loud. Right. They have an understanding that I’m in public and I shouldn’t do that. I think that’s really carrying over to the way they react to live entertainment now. Because I have bits that I’ve kept in my show because they just kill so much. For years and years.

For over a decade, I have a few, right? And then I try to rotate the other stuff around those. And I got to this point right before the pandemic where I was doing these classic bits that I used to get. Just sometimes I would get, like, huge rounds of applause for, and it would be like, am I bombing right now? What’s going on? But then at the end of the show, they would come up and thank me, and they were like, that was so great. Thank you so much.

You were in the audience, right?

Yeah, I was like, right, here’s the.

Important part, and I’m just going to talk over you just for this one moment, because just so that way, no one misses the part where I go, Paul Ramsey, this is where you’re a genius, because you were doing a program that forced the interaction, because you were having them actually vote in real time on what happened next in the program using an app on their phone. So you gave them something to.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. And I still do that. That reminds me, Jason, I was just talking with another colleague yesterday about this is the software graphs out the voting as it’s coming in real time. So the graphs, when there’s a highly contested thing, it’s seesaws, you know what I mean? The graphs kind of have a seesaw effect. They go back and forth and back and I could have never seen this. I wanted the interaction. I wanted them to feel like they were really involved in the show. When I started out originally with remote controls, and there was a radio frequency usb dongle that would plug into my laptop. It would pick up the voting signals from the remote controls, and the software on the laptop would graph out the results in real time.

And as that was happening, when you’d get a close one where there was this sort of visual seesawing, they would be like. And there was a ten second countdown and then it hit zero and one side would be higher than the other and the side that air quote won would all erupt. Enjoy that. They won. And the other one will be like, and now I use a different program called menta meter, and it’s all cloud based. It’s great, but it does the same thing. Even though it’s cloud based, it transmits everything so fast. It graphs out in real time. They don’t do that anymore. And I was just talking to a friend yesterday about this, that it took me a while to notice that. And then I was like, why aren’t they don’t even get, like.

They just don’t get outwardly excited the way they used to. It’s really weird. They’re beautiful human beings. I don’t mean to sound judgmental or harsh about them all. These are simply the observations that I’ve made over years. But they don’t. Ten years ago, there would be students yelling at the other students, trying to influence their vote. They’d be going depict Lady Gaga. Come on, Lady Gaga. And now you activate the vote and they sort of sit there quietly and look at their phones and they touch the button and it’s done. It’s very strange.

Well, clearly, it’s also where around the world, people are not as emotional about voting and things of a political nature. No, no, let’s just stop that. Let’s just stop right there, both of us. I’ve known you for a while. If there’s a Paul Ramsey moment that I can call out here, it’s the fact that talking about what you’ve been through with your health and what was that like? And it goes to, here’s what I’m noticing as the audience and as I see what you’re doing with this international stage hypnotist association, it’s about how do we level things up? How do we build a better dynamic, how do we improve things? Rather than just the classic one school of thought, one way to do it. Oh, it’s not the same as it used to, therefore it’s bad. Instead, this elevation of that audience.

So I’d ask that having time where clearly you had to step away from it. What’s different now as you’re coming back.

Into, you’re doing a great job of helping me connect the dot. I didn’t connect in that whole digression we just went through that I really caused. So I was noticing things were changing and I was frustrated with my job. And then the pandemic happened and I couldn’t do it. And then right when the pandemic started to get better, I got sick and I couldn’t do it for two more years. And then I really realized how much I missed it. And so even during treatment, I got to a point where my first course of treatment was going really well, and the next step was to get a stem cell transplant. And there was this little window in between where I could actually do a little work.

My health was good enough, and the doctor was like, yeah, you could go do a little work if you wanted to. And so I got to go do like four shows. And it was seriously, like that whole year I did four shows. And it was in that little window.

Yeah. What was that like to get back into it?

And it made me real. I was like, oh, this is the best. And it was that same environment that before I had been so frustrated in, and yet now I was delighted. It’s the classic kind of reframe, right? Like the power of a. So then I started thinking about this was the very early seeds of wanting to do something like Isha was. Then I started talking with colleagues and friends about how nice it was and how blessed I was to have this career, and I started wanting to do more and more of that. And so then when I got the stem cell transplant, that, I won’t bore you with the details of that. I’ll just tell you it was the single worst experience of my life. And it was a full year of recovery because I had to grow an entirely new immune system.

And so I couldn’t really be around people for the better part of a year. I couldn’t go to restaurants. I couldn’t go to movie theaters. I couldn’t hang out at parties with friends or anything like that. I could hang out with people outside. And so I had to start finding ways to literally just not lose my mind. I mean, I got really depressed at one point. I was very isolated, and I had so many good friends who checked in on me and did zooms with me. I don’t want you to think it was just all bad. It was a lot of beautiful things. But I had a beautiful talk with my adoptive uncle, Peter Bloom, and he said to me, nephew, you have to find ways to make sure that you’re with people like we’re meant to be with people.

And he said, and I know you can’t physically be with people, but you got to create structures. And he’s like, and if that means you call me, then you call me. He goes, if you get on zoom. And I was like, yeah, I know, I’m working. I’m working it. And so I started thinking, but he’s right. I could work it more and I could do more. So I started creating. The first thing I did was I created a stage mastermind, and it was free. The way you pay to be in the mastermind is contributing, and I was very strict, so I started reaching out to colleagues, and I was like, I want to have a space where we talk about the work. That’s the thing, though, is you have to really be serious about talking about the work.

And if you’re just looking for social time, it’s not the space for you. I want to talk about the work and start getting ready to get back to doing this when I can. And I want to really do it at a great level again. And I’ve been doing that for almost two years now, and it’s been just gorgeous. Maybe the most wonderful project of my entire career, really. And then that made me think, yeah, more of this. And so then I started doing a podcast, and very limited scope, very small scale, but still, what both of those things did was they gave me the chance to have really rich, dense conversations with people who wanted to have rich, dense conversations about the work. And those conversations brought up certain themes and topics over and over again.

And what were working out was this idea or this feeling or sense that there are some real challenges in the profession of stage hypnotism that are just going unaddressed because there is no dedicated leadership really for it. Right. There are these other organizations that we are allowed to belong to, but they are not dedicated to us. They are not focused on us, they are welcoming, they’re wonderful. But the reality is they’re not focused on what we do. And so the issues that we have, the things that we need to get our house in order around, nobody’s pushing for that. And so finally, some of my colleagues and I were like, well, let’s just do it, let’s create it. And so that’s what we did.

Well, to kind of understand that need. Like what are some of those ongoing issues?

There are, there’s a quality issue, for sure, there’s a quality issue in stage hypnotism. There are way too many stage hypnotists out there doing almost identical versions of shows that their trainers taught them and their trainers. And that’s the second there’s a real quality of training issue. And I think that the trainers that are not providing the quality of training that need to be, they’re good people and they mean well, but they aren’t formally trained educators. Some of them are highly successful stage hypnotists and some of them are highly successful business people and I have a lot of respect for them, but in fairness, they’re not good teachers.

Well, that’s where I always look to. I can name people that I know who have trained with you, who we all now know as well. And one of the things that I started to notice early on in really any industry is that, oh, how was that training? And when the feedback was, oh, they were just so giving, they just shared so much value. And this, and all the language is pointing back to the individual. It’s like, okay, well, what are you doing with it? What are you doing with it? Versus when you can see that, oh, this person’s actually churning out people who are now truly putting it into use.

And we have some trainers in this business who like to boast, I’ve trained 1000 students and my interior response to that is, well, that’s great, how are they doing? And then we have trainers who have not trained nearly as many students in the profession and their students are thriving, right. They’re doing great things. That’s one of the things. The quality issue on the performance side is really the bigger issue. Right? We’re not at it yet. So I really believe, I’d like to think I’m not usually the smartest person in the room, but I’m no slouch. And I think one of the things I do a really good job of is I pay attention and I’m always watching and trying to pay attention to what’s going on.

And I really believe, Jason, we are arriving in the profession of stage hypnotism in the next, I really think, decade at most. We’re arriving at a tipping point in which what has happened is you’ve now scaled up the supply of stage hypnotists while the demand has remained relatively the same, but we’re getting the product out there more. And what has happened for the past 100 years is we’ve been such a niche form of entertainment that almost every night you can go to a show and you can fill the room, and that hypnotist can say to everyone, how many people here have never seen a stage hypnosis show before?

And most of the room was going to raise their hand, which meant that you were now pretty much destined to succeed in that room that night, because on pure novelty, you were going to get by. Right. But now we’ve scaled up enough where post proms, grad nights, college orientations, corporate events, county fairs, state fairs, it’s out there enough cruise ships that the number of hands that would go up is shrinking and shrinking. And you’re getting to this point where I think it’s going to be closer to half the people in the room haven’t seen a stage show, but have.

Had which one side of things, I mean, good.

Yeah, but half the room now is not going to find you to be an interesting novelty if you’re doing that same kind of traditional show that so many other stage hypnotists are doing. And so then those people, if it’s their second or maybe third at most show, they’re going to leave that venue and go, yeah, so basically, I guess they’re all the same, right? And there’s novelty anymore.

Well, here’s the. Yeah, but that I would throw your way, which is that was how I got started in hypnosis, and I unofficially, but officially retired myself from the stage stuff in 2017. I think it was just because there were other projects that were pulling my focus, and I can think back to the experience of a specific school that I was working, that I did year after year. And I’m trying to do the thing of, oh, let’s make sure it’s different than last year. And every attempt I did that was like, oh, you didn’t do thing. Part of you go to see Jim Gaffigan do comedy, and he’s going to come out and do the encore and just smart man comes out. He does hot pockets.

Yeah, you want to hear hot pockets?

You want to hear hot pockets? And that was where, for so many years, George Carlin refused to do Las Vegas, because, in his words, in Vegas, you’re an afterthought that, hey, we’re out here for a vacation. Who’s in town? Oh, I know who that is. I’ll go see him. And he goes, I don’t like that. But then in his later years, it was the split act, which would be some of it was new. And then suddenly, like, a rock concert, if the band plays that one guitar riff, everyone knows what song it is. And suddenly Carlin and I saw him in those years suddenly goes, you ever notice how baseball is very different than football? And, like, already huge roar from the audience? So there’s a split to that.

From an association perspective, though, what does that do to help to shift that narrative and let’s say, prevent against that issue that, yes, is growing.

Let’s go back to hot pockets. Right?

Which is a phrase we have yet to say ever on this show. I’m so happy, finally. Thank you, Paul Ramsey.

But seriously, can you imagine if Kevin Hart, on his Netflix special, did Gaffigan’s Hot Pockets segment? Like, people would lose their. They’d be like, what is wrong with you? Right? And yet we have hypnotists night after night doing the same symphony orchestra bit. The same. The napkins are dollar bills bit. Sometimes I think, yeah, you go to a magic show and you want to see them cut a lady in half, fine. But I’m not sure there’s a sort of. You go, yeah, but we can’t all just keep running around being like, you’re on the beach and you’re hot, and then you’re like, there’s so many of these bits that people are learning in their trainings, and then they’re taking out and doing in their shows. And again, if we’re doing that at just. Colin Chapman coined the best phrase for it, Jason.

He says there’s too many hypnosis cover bands out there. And that’s what you go some nights, you want to go see the Led Zeppelin cover band. Okay, if you know that. If you know that this kiss cover band is the best kiss cover band, and I’m going to plunk my $40 down, fine. But that’s not what we’re doing in this business. We’re doing it because we don’t know how to do better.

Yeah. Well, let’s talk about the association specifically then. And how does that go about in terms of building that awareness, leveling up that training quality? What are some of the steps that are in motion?

It’s a long term process. Right. It’s a vision that we have that’s going to take years. But we’re starting with continuing education. You know what, and I’ll go one step before that. What we’re really starting with is community. What we’re trying to do, first and foremost, is get people to stop existing in their silos, get out of their silos, get into this digital community, and have these kinds of conversations and create a greater willingness to talk about the elephant in the room, which is the lack of the creativity and originality in the performance. Then we’re trying to support that further with continuing education. So unlike, and I love what I’m seeing you and Scott and Stephanie doing with Hypnotch 365, it’s very similar to that.

We understand that we have to give people a chance to have access to education all year long, not just at conferences. You can’t all rest on the one or two times a year that you travel and go to a conference. So we’re working because we don’t have the amazing resources of HTL archives, years of recordings. We’re custom building online programs, trying to make them diverse about everything from. We’ve built one so far on how to use AI tools to improve your business and the production value of your show, how to use things like chat, GPT, mid journey, and dolly video editors like Descript and munch to help yourself do better. We’re doing programs like demonstrational hypnosis, how to get out and do not a full blown show, because we do have some members that don’t have active stage careers yet.

They’re aspiring, and we’re trying to cover everybody. Right. So we’re looking at adding things like that. Risk management. We’re lucky to have Dale Whittock, who is an amazing insurance underwriter broker. He has probably last year I was.

The table right next to him.

Yeah, you met Dale. Dale has a designation. It’s like CPCU or something. He’s got a designation that’s like only 3% of people in the business have this designation of how knowledgeable he is about insurance. And he is on our advisory board and he’s helping us work on how do we help hypnotists mitigate their risk when they’re doing shows. There are a startling. Well, I shouldn’t say a startling number. That’s not accurate. It is startling to me that the majority of claims against stage hypnotists now are not for physical injury, they’re for emotional distress. I always used to be really focused on keeping my people physically safe on stage, and I still am, of course, but I think I got so focused on that and I work a really clean show, so I never even thought about the idea of keeping people emotionally safe.

But there are people filing for emotional distress claims against stage hypnotists, and they’re getting big claims. And what’s happening is the underwriters, when that’s happening, they’re like, okay, we don’t underwrite hypnotists anymore. And so we’re down to. I’m not joking, Jason. We’re down to two insurance companies now, and if we lose one of them, we’re kind of in trouble already because one of the two insurance companies will not insure anyone who does adult content, and they will not ensure. This part is what really stresses me out. They will not insure new stage hypnotists. Yeah. And so if we lose the other company, then how do new stage hypnotists get insurance and the ability to work? And the other company, they do ensure they charge a much higher premium, but they do insure adult entertainment hypnotists.

And I just don’t think that’s going to last because that’s where the claims are coming from. They’re coming from sexual content suggestions, hypnotic orgasm, stuff like that. And those claims are going to continue. And so that company is eventually going to go. They’re going to go, all right, we need to wash our hands of this. And then there’s going to be a bunch of hypnotists who will not be able to move to the other company, because if you did it before, you can’t say, well, I used to do it, but I won’t do it anymore. They’re like, no, if you did it before, you’ll do it again. That’s their philosophy. They’re like, someone’s going to offer you a big enough payday that you’ll go, okay, so they won’t take you.

Which, I mean, if there’s any dialogue. I flashback to a moment which we can leave the names out of this because they’re not here to share their sides of it. But I saw it was about 2016, I believe it was, where one of the organizations that would do one of the insurance companies suddenly put out a thing, going, we’re not going to cover this anymore. And then someone goes, what if there was a safety course and then there was this controversy in the industry because suddenly one person did the safety course, and at that point, then you had to go through that to stay insured, which it was actually a very reasonable price. Let’s leave out the fact that there were some lovely racial slurs in the content. Oh, man. You were dying to have some conversations after we stopped recording here.

But aside from, let’s say, quoting the wrong person in one specific section, I’m like, really? It was a moment, though, that was kind of the story of indirectly what happened when I was in Virginia and I became the chapter president for the local NGH chapter. It was because for three years, there was all these discussions around, well, will it be this person or should this person do it? Should we run it together? And this just kept going. And I just filled out the one page form, and that was my election. So that was that moment in 2015 or 2016, which was just, hey, someone finally did it. And this is where I can’t just say you’re the one finally doing it, because, first of all, it’s entertainment. Hypnotists, plural, because it’s not just one person.

I know it was probably because entertainmenthypnotists.com wasn’t available, but entertainmenthypnotists.com is the proper place to go because it’s a community movement as opposed to something that, I mean, I mentioned that moment back where it was wrongly said that, oh, this person just wanted to own the monopoly on it. But maybe from the entertainment aspect, the stage aspect, it’s a little bit more natural, the way that things have been before, where it’s everybody pointing back to the one performer, and that’s the philosophy versus. This is something that I know others are involved in the build out and the growth of this.

Yeah, we have eight founding members. It’s wonderful. We have William Mitchell Salis, Joanne Nadine, Manuel Grant Saunders from the UK, Michael Deshalet and Terry Stokes. We’re so blessed to have Terry, 55 years in the business. He’s sort of our professor emeritus, and he’s just so giving and so kind. And then we have Dale, who runs our advisory board and sort of gives us that outside. Beautiful.

Beautiful. So I’m on the site right now taking a look at what’s. What’s the next step. For those that are interested to get.

Involved, what we ask everyone to do is to start with an association membership. Our philosophy was, we wanted to start with, you pay for one level of membership. And we don’t ask you to ever upgrade or upsell to any other level of membership, but we do have higher level of membership. So what we’re trying to do is we’re really trying to break away from the common professional model in our profession of like if you want more, you got to pay me for more, right? You can take this first training with me, but if you want to learn more, you got to take the second. And it’s like value ladders, right? Jason? We don’t want to do value ladders.

I’d say not for that. Makes sense to say that. Not for an association, right.

I feel like it’s hard to build trust that way. Right. So what we’re trying to do is say, listen, you pay one membership dues and then from there on it’s really built around how much time and energy are you willing to spend getting better? So association membership, $150 a year. You get access to the online learning archive, our monthly member meetings where we bring in experts and do kind of like ask me anythings and interviews and stuff. We just launched a new additional member benefit. We have a discord server now so that members can stay connected with each other in real time whenever they want. We have a live event at Heartland Hypnosis, and members get a 50% discount if they want to go to that. We’re trying to do a bunch of different things.

We’re trying to over deliver on value, but the association membership is what you start with. Once you have that, if you want, you can qualify for a professional membership if you have proof of formal training and hypnotism, liability insurance, and you’re willing to do a background check. And if you do that, we’ll give your own unique listing page on the website, your headshot, your bio. You can give us a link to a sizzle reel. We’ll put a link to your website so that we’re backlinked to your website, and we’ll even do like an email, a direct email button. We’re trying to do things that help get more eyes on our members, get them more attention. So that’s professional membership. We’re probably going to unveil another level, maybe at the end of the year, more likely early 2025.

But the idea again is we’re trying to keep, we want to be community oriented first. We want to have people working together. If we’re going to push this profession forward, it’s going to be by collaborating, not by doing the old school thing of stay away from me, don’t steal my stuff. Get out of my fate like all that old again. Well, I guess he’s dead, but you hear stories of the rivalries, right, between Gilboyne. And I don’t think he ever had a rivalry with Orman, but I guess he had, like, a rivalry with Tom Silver at one point.

I forget who it was, and it was a moment where everybody stole this bit from me. Everybody stole that routine. I was the first to do shoe phone. And I go, didn’t you get that, though, from smart?

Yeah.

And everyone else. And he moves off to another tangent, which, well, I go back to how there was a. Of course, now we have to talk about marvelous Mrs. Maisel, because. Did you watch that?

I started to watch it, and I didn’t stick with, oh, maybe I’ll go back to it. You got to, because you got me with the air.

So, yeah, the first episode. You’re welcome. The first episode is kind of brilliant, though. And just to point something out, and the disclaimer to this was just that it was a different time, and that’s how it used to be done. And this story is not meant to put down someone that we, as hypnotists now, put up on a massive pedestal. Yet the opening episode of that tv show was that the wife goes to the coffee shop and the husband’s doing an open mic comedy act, and he’s killing. I mean, he’s this incredible comedian. And then suddenly she hears on the radio the recording of Bob Newhart doing that exact same act, which is this, like, extreme Easter egg.

Because the thing that made Bob Newhart first known, I think it was going on the Ed Sullivan show and doing an act where he sat on a bar stool, pretended to have a phone in his hand, and did the one side of the conversation. And that was his big break. And that wasn’t his act.

No. Really?

I didn’t know that. That was just how it used to be done. And nowadays, the only extreme would be where we have to say Carlos Mencia, but where it became known that you don’t just take someone’s bit, you don’t just take someone’s material. But there used to be more of the negotiation. And this is kind of where comedy had a boom in the kind of leveled out in the 90s, which is a very similar arc to what we’ve been talking about, where it would be, hey, I’m opening act. Hey, I’m doing airline food. Is that okay? The headliner goes, oh, I’m doing airline food, but I’m not doing anything about Reagan. Oh, I’ll take. And like, it was the negotiation around the different topics.

Interesting.

And it’s where if you ever go to a magic competition, they usually have a rule, only one person can do the snowstorm thing because it’s a lot of vacuuming. No, but it’s where we find ourselves in that turning moment. And I’d say from my perspective, yes, we’re getting to a great place where now this has become and is becoming an issue. And the fact that now something of this nature is forming specific to it right now, I can’t think of more perfect timing, which this is. Episode number. Hang on, 433. So the links that we’ve been talking about, if you go to worksmarthypnosis.com/433. We’ll just make that point over with all the details for entertainmenthypnotists plural.com. Paul, I’d ask you a question to kind of bring this all together. And it’s not really a question, more of a fill in the blank.

And I’m kind of bringing this up from the angle that, let’s put it out there. There is a segment of the audience, and I know this after doing roughly 432 of these up until now. Good to have you here for 433 would be that there’s a segment of the audience that probably didn’t listen this far, because simply put, it was about stage hypnosis. So from your perspective, when I first got involved with hypnosis, I thought stage hypnosis was fill that one in. And then after these years, I now realize, how would you fill in those gaps for us?

When I first got into hypnosis, I thought stage hypnosis was awesome. But as time went on, I came to realize there are very good reasons for why many of my colleagues don’t think so. And again, that’s why I believe the work that we’re doing at Isha is really important. We have to do better. We have to represent ourselves better. And I think if there are entertainment hypnotists listening to this, and that sort of pushes your button to hear me say that, I would ask you to sit with yourself and go, why do I feel icky about that? If you know you’re doing quality work, what I said shouldn’t bother you at all.

But I’m telling you, there’s a lot of work and a lot of improvement to be made in our profession, and we want to help that, not simply stand over our peers and go, you suck. That’s not what we’re looking to do at all. We want to get people in the room together, whether that’s literally or digitally. And we want to say, how can we really start helping each other? And I think to go back to what you said a moment ago, Jason, I think the timing is perfect. I think there are more good hearted hypnotists in the business now than there have ever been. I think there are more people who have their egos in check and understand that they can be completely successful while helping other hypnotists be completely successful.

And so I’m tremendously optimistic about the potential for us to bring the art form forward, and in doing so, help the rest of the profession look better as we move away from the old kitschy stuff and inappropriate stuff that happens sometimes, and get the art form to move to a place that’s really highly entertaining and at times inspiring to other human beings.

Hey, it’s Jason Linett once again. And as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, for reaching out to our incredible guests as we have them on this program. Reach out. Say hi to Paul. He is awesome. And so good as the title is that Paul Ramsay didn’t die. This has been session number 433. If you go over to worksmarthypnosis.com/433. What that will do is bring you directly over to the show notes of this week’s episode, where you can find the links, the resources, all the references that we’ve made. And while you’re there, too, head over to hypnoticworkers.com. Confidence, creativity and flex ability. How do you go into your process and customize to your client in real time? Easily. Hypnotic workers will show you the way. Check that out at hypnoticworkers.com.

Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast at worksmarthypnosis.com.