Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.
Depending on where you are in the world, if you go to Google and you type in a search for two simple Hypnosis training, the worksmarthypnosis.com website appears on the first page. That took a while. It took a while to get there. And part of it is, well, you are listening to podcast session number 449. In every one of these episodes, we’ve created a custom page, kind of like a blog post, to then share the notes and the resources of the episode. So there is a massive stockpile of content that is about training Hypnosis. In addition to that, there is also a blog on the Worksmart Hypnosis website.
And every bit of this, since day one, all the way back to June 2014, has been speaking to you, the person who wants to train to do Hypnosis for the first time or train to do it better. Hypnosis helps people take back control of their lives. But here’s the thing. Too many hypnotists struggle to get consistent results with their clients or grow their Hypnosis businesses. I’m Jason Linett, and after more than two decades of building a thriving Hypnosis practice, I created this podcast to help you do the same. Whether you’re just starting your Hypnosis journey or if you’re ready to scale your business to the next level, you’re exactly where you need to be. Welcome to Work Smart Hypnosis. If your Hypnosis clients cannot find you, they cannot book with you. And if these people can’t book with you, they can’t pay you.
So this is important for you to realize because so many people in our industry would often say, oh, I’m not a marketer, I’m not a business person, I’m not a salesperson. Yet. The reality is, what good are the techniques that you know if you don’t have actual paying clients there in front of you? And in this week’s episode of the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast, we’re gonna dive into why a nice Hypnosis website isn’t enough. Now, before we do that, though, let’s rewind my personal story back to around 2002. So at this more than 20 years ago, and at this point, I’m in college and I’m going to university for backstage theater production. Backstage theater management.
And at the time, though some of you might know this, and for others it might be a surprise, I was actually paying my way through college as a professional magician. So I was working at a theme park, I was working corporate events, private events, and it’s around this time, I kind of realized, oh, I need to have a website for this. And again, it’s 2002. It’s a different game than it is right now. So there I am, I’m backstage in one of the classroom areas and I’m building my first website to be positioned as a magician. And this one specific night, though, I was kind of on a roll. You know how sometimes you get swept into a project and you know you need to go to sleep, but you’re like, I’m on a roll right now. I got to keep at this.
And that’s. That’s where I was in this moment. It’s like 4am and I finally figured out how to just get the spacing right on the page. Now, again, 20 plus years ago, I was using a software that I don’t even know if Adobe still makes it. It was called Dreamweaver. Don’t write it down. You don’t need it. I was using that software. And then that wasn’t enough, though, because, like, still I would save things and it didn’t look right or it was in the wrong spot. And so I had, from the college library, this giant book. It might have even been one of those dummies books all about HTML code. So, like, I was combining this software along with, like, going into the code behind the scenes.
And by the time I was done, I’d say this now, the website sucked, but at least I had something. And then it became better over time. And then, of course, fast forward to now. I no longer do that Work. Everything I do now is adjacent to Hypnosis. But fast forward to now. And yes, there are much easier ways to do it than convoluted software and having to figure out code that no one can see, but they only can see the result of it. Now, here’s what’s gonna be interesting about this week’s Work Smart Hypnosis podcast episode. This episode is not gonna be about how. And part of that is twofold. One would be that the majority of you are gonna be listening to this podcast as audio only.
And it wouldn’t really be helpful if I opened up some sort of software or display and went, now click here, now click there. The other part of it, really diving into the principles that need to be there. This is the thing I can share with you right now. And here’s what’s going to be cool about this for some of you. You might be relatively early in your journey and you’re just beginning to see Hypnosis clients and the benefit of what I’m about to share with you is that, well, some of the things I’m about to walk you through are things that I’ve only figured out in the last like six or seven years. And as a result of that, I kind of look back and went, well, I wish I figured this thing out sooner.
So you’re going to avoid a lot of the mistakes that I made early on. For others of you might already have an existing website for your hypnotic services and it might not be performing to the way that you would want it to be. And the benefit of, again, what I’m about to share with you is that, well, you can put it through the filters of what I’m about to say and then see, oh, that’s what I need. That’s where the important thing is. Far too often, far too often I see getting caught up on the wrong things. And one of the five points I’m about to share with you specifically involves search engine optimization and why most people are approaching it entirely wrong. And instead something else needs to be the focus so that then the search engine optimization happens naturally.
And by the way, briefly, just as a quick mention here, rather than have to figure out all the complicated technology on your own and deal with the guessing and testing of building the thing that then doesn’t Work the way you want it to behind the scenes, I’ve actually inside of my companies, we’ve helped nearly 100 hypnotists around the world to launch or relaunch their websites for their Hypnosis practices and businesses. And you’ve likely bought trainings from some of the people that I’ve gone in and re engineered all of their systems. If you’re curious to know more about that as our service, head over to website.worksmarthypnosis.com now that I just said that out loud, that is a horrible link to share on a podcast episode because you’re listening to me audio right now and what I should say is go to the website.
Website.worksmarthypnosis.com yeah, that’s confusing. But now that I pointed it out, you’re gonna remember it, so I guess it worked. Website.worksmarthypnosis.com Here is the real reason behind this episode. Well, not just one, there’s several of them. First of all, I have to speak out on something that I’ve not yet mentioned on this podcast. I there’s people out there who are trying to push a narrative to you that’s absolutely wrong, that websites don’t Work and just if you ever see that, if you ever hear that, just see the big giant red flags waving immediately. Because what they’re really saying is that they are a person who doesn’t know how to make websites Work. A website is just a delivery mechanism. It’s just a platform, and it’s what you do with it that actually matters. And, oh, let me be careful on this one.
There’s someone who’s putting out a message to go, websites don’t Work. But then they’re asking you to buy from their website. And that’s just curious now, isn’t it? Or another who goes, websites don’t Work. And yet I consulted them years ago because they went, oh, I love your website. Help me out with this private project. And then they spent a lot of money with me because they liked what they saw on my website. So, yeah, websites don’t Work. Yeah, they do. Let’s just move on. It’s just a fact. So point number two here, the reason behind this episode, the statement that I’d often hear sometimes, especially with all things social media, I don’t think I need one. And again, if that’s being said, well, you’re entitled to test out your business any way that you choose.
However, the reality is, with market sophistication being what it is, our online audiences now are more likely to check up on you before they do anything with you, even before they might even fill out a form and share their email address to get more information, let alone book a call. That, you know, automatic trust is at a lower level these days. And because of this, well, if you go to older marketing books, they talk about a principle called the marketing rule of seven, that the idea would be people needed to see something about seven times before they actually paid attention. I’d put it to you, that number is at least three times higher now.
And this is something that I learned the hard way by making use of much more complicated technology at one point to be able to see organically or even by paid traffic, what were people doing before they landed on my website. And the reality was they would see an offer for something, they’d see a promo somewhere, then they would research me, they would look me up, they would check up on me. And as a result of that, then they saw the mountain of proof that I’m the person who did the things that I said I was doing. And because of that, then that’s why they selected me.
On the other hand, here’s something you need to realize, and before I tell you what it is, I’m going to jokingly pat myself on the back and tell you, this is the thing that I am really good at and this is the adjustment that I know how to make that’s completely transformed hypnotist businesses around the world. I’m saying this as I jokingly pat on myself on the back. People are also more likely looking for reasons to not do business with you. They’re looking for reasons to deselect you more than they’re looking for reasons to actually do business with you and troubleshooting that and problem solving that in advance. That’s the thing that I do exceptionally well because of the amount of testing and workshopping and collaborations I’ve done over the years.
Specifically in terms of, well, not just getting Hypnosis clients, but also for those of you that teach in some form, also getting Hypnosis students. So so far, the reasons of this episode Websites don’t Work. Yes they do. I don’t think I need one. Yeah, you do. And the third reason behind this episode is really the thing that I’ve heard more as a objection or concern than anything else lately, which is that I already have one. Well, here’s the thing. Just because you have one doesn’t mean it works. I mean, look at the title of this week’s Work Smart Hypnosis podcast episode, why a Nice Hypnosis Website Isn’t Enough. And it comes around to one simple question. Is it currently bringing you the quality and the quantity of business that you want? Which, if it is, awesome.
Keep listening to this episode because some of the nuances of these five points I’m about to share with you can then use one of them or all of them to then level up your success. For the overwhelming majority of you that I speak to that I hear, well, I’ve already got one. It’s instead that we see that it’s not quite performing and I get people sometimes going, well. Most of my business doesn’t come from my website. Well, you know what? Then it should be, and it can quite easily. So keep listening. I’ll share some insights towards that. The last point is probably the one that I’m the most guilty of at times, which is people who say I’m paying for this software, I have this software, and I’m going to call myself out on this here. First, I’m a nerd.
I study this stuff and the longevity of my business and the projects I’ve built over time or even for other people. It’s where I’ve really developed that knack for being able to Figure out what works and what doesn’t Work and how do we build the right psychological sales journey. So the software itself is really just the platform to deliver the pages. And some people would be distracted by a different term like funnel, which. A funnel is basically a web page or a series of web pages that doesn’t have that navigation bar at the top. So you only can go one direction at a time. You only can take one specific next step. So what is a funnel? It’s basically a version of a website. A funnel is just a platform to share a message that leads to a buying opportunity.
What I’ve really learned is that it’s not the software that’s going to be the magical thing. Though of course I can be biased and I’m only going to ever be biased for you in a way that I know is going to serve you. I mentioned this here. It’s a red flag that there are people who are trying to sell you software with the promise of growing amazing Hypnosis business. But when you look closer, it’s not the thing that they actually use. You know, they might even be training and they’re hosting their educational stuff on a completely different platform, sending their emails from another thing and they’re trying to sell you this third party thing because they get an affiliate kickback. I actually use the stuff that I teach from. I actually use the stuff that I consult on.
That way I can go, here’s what actually works that way for some of the custom projects that turns into, oh, you’re trying to do that. That’s just like this thing of mine. Let me just put mine in your account. This way, all you have to do is change the language, replace the graphics, and all of a sudden now you’ve launched this thing faster than ever before and it’s based upon something that actually works. So if you’re curious about that website.worksmarthypnosis.com the purpose of this episode is I’m about to walk you through five specific principles to point out specific things that either you need to create or you need to change so that now that website becomes a client generating machine. So let’s dive in right now. Here we go. This is session number 449. Why a nice Hypnosis Website is Not Enough.
There are five specific points I’m about to walk you through. And just as a preview, this is not going to be one of those things where I just give you like the surface level description of something. Instead we’re gonna go deep into some of it involving language. And strategy. And my job here is to point out those things that need to change these five essential elements. And again, if you want more, you know how to find me. So let’s dive in right away. The first point, people do business with people. Now this right here is something that surprisingly actually no, I don’t just see this on people’s websites who are brand new and just getting started.
And I’ll raise my hand here and tell you, I was guilty of this in the early stages of my business back when I was in Virginia and it was a different company that I was running in terms of working with clients. I’m now in Florida, so we sold that company in the name. But it’s in that time I was trying to do the nonsense of we can help you with this and here’s how you can contact us. And it was this facade of being a bigger thing. Now granted, at some point in that journey for that local business, I did have associate staff who was working with me. I had other practitioners and different offices. So at that point then, yes, indeed, it was a we Work on this and contact us. And here’s how to get started. Here’s what you needed to know.
There’s nothing wrong with being the solo practitioner in the solo business, working with clients one to one, nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with positioning yourself in a way that is disingenuous and not quite genuine and not exactly, well, not exactly the truth. And in our current era, I mean, just turn on a television, turn on, you know, any piece of media, look at videos on YouTube with commentary around, you know, market sophistication. There’s a lot of distrust around corporations right now. There’s a lot of people unhappy with the top 1% and what’s been accomplished by them and how things are very much imbalanced as a result of that. So do you really want to present yourself as this bigger corporate conglomerate looking thing versus they specifically want to do business with you.
So right away, drop the we, drop the us, get rid of the our website, our practice, and instead a website, a funnel, every bit of this, all of your communication, every piece of content you would ever create, social media, everything needs to be designed as if you are speaking to that one person that you know, needs to hear the message that you’re about to share with them. As it’s that one to one style of communication. That’s where people feel seen, that’s where people feel a sense of connection. This also amplifies the importance of elements such as Just human communication. You want a simple strategy for copywriting. Whatever you write out, read it out loud. The places where you stumble on your words, that’s the places where most likely you’re saying it in a way that’s not how you would actually say it.
So rewrite it. Put it actually in your words. This also amplifies and spotlights the importance of video. People do business with video. Now, there’s an older statement that I’ve said for years and I still tend to agree with it. A website is a mechanism to display specific videos and build rapport through the screen so that people are compelled to do business specifically with you. Two quick things on that here. One, I’ve talked enough about imposter syndrome. I actually did a keynote at hypnothoughts live 2017 on it and I could crack the joke. I was believing I was full of it before any of you were. I was talking imposter syndrome before it was popular. Go back. It was 2017. I talked about that. We’ll link in the show notes for this episode.
That actual presentation there though, it’s that the things that you might be the most sensitive about, the things that you might be the most self conscious or nervous about, those are likely the things that actually draw in the audience you want. So I’ve heard it said before that very often nervousness in public speaking, in presentations, it’s because of a sense of discomfort that we’re trying to be something that we’re probably not. And that’s one of those statements that sounds really good and probably is true in more cases than it’s not. I’m sure there’s more to it because also just doing video and, you know, writing content is a bit of a muscle. It’s a skill you’re going to build over time and just going to get better at as a result of it.
So you owe it to your audience to actually do business as yourself and communicate with them in that specific way. Because people do business with people. That’s what gets their attention, that’s what gets them to stick. So point number one, remember this, people do business with people. Now, the second point here is that just because you like it doesn’t mean you should keep it. Now, I’ve already talked about this one before in the introduction section of this episode, but let me begin to elaborate this a little bit further here. Because the ultimate test is just the moment of honesty to ask yourself, is this thing actually consistently generating business? And a couple of points towards that. You might have various what they Call lead magnets an opt in offer. Hey, get this thing. By putting your email address here.
You might have things like that or you might have and I’m getting ahead of myself here, but you’re going to see how these points begin to overlap with each other. You might have the opportunity for people to schedule a consult, whether it’s free, whether it’s paid. You might have things for them to engage with and like, with a decent website platform, you can actually measure how many visitors am I getting and how many people are then taking the next logical step. This is the biggest thing that shifted in my world dating back to 2019, which is the longer story I’ll abbreviate here and it’s. I’ll call myself out on this. This is one of those stories that would sound really good that someone would write and invent because it sounds beautiful and dramatic in my case.
Again, I’m a bit of a nerd and I did this from a data driven perspective. Rather than look at the things that I liked, rather than looked at the things that I was potentially proud of, I started to go through everything I had ever created and ask did it actually Work? Then I dove deeper and went, what was the volume of business this created? What were the emails that I sent out that got sales? What were the emails I sent out that then barely anyone even opened up or they read, but they didn’t click the links, what were the pages they went to? So I went on this deep dive obsessively into my own content and my own data.
And from that’s where I then pulled out the specific linguistics and principles and ethical sales persuasion methods that I now teach that are now the cor structure of what I do with people with websites or any sort of online sales project. So it’s from that perspective figuring out is it actually working? So if you don’t know your data, you can’t quite manipulate it. If you can’t manipulate it, you don’t know even what actually is working. So again, this is where the core lesson of this little journey that I went on was that I looked at everything through the filter of removing all of my personal emotional connection to it, and instead from a data driven perspective, the place to just step to the side and go, hey, that’s a winner. I need to do more things just like that.
Or the other place is to go, hey, that completely let me censor this here for polite language. Pooped the bed and didn’t Work and I need to never do that again. And the longer someone’s in business, the more these stories become awfully entertaining. If you ever talk to somebody who says, everything I’ve done in business has always worked, they’re a dirty stinking liar and get safe distance away because their pants are about to catch on fire. Anybody. In business, there’s failures, there’s wins, there’s successes, there’s the I just broke even on that one. So again, just because you like it doesn’t mean you should keep it. And I’ll be the first to tell you here, that is sometimes a bit more of an emotional journey than you would like it to be.
What matters more, your personal opinion or the people whose lives you can impact? And sometimes divorcing ourselves of our old belief structures? And the Let me just say this also relates back to the software thing I mentioned in the introduction, the sunk cost fallacy that so many of us need to outgrow as fast as possible. If you don’t know what that is, that’s where like people would go, oh, but I’ve paid this much money to get this thing built. I have to make it Work. And it’s like the person who is losing money and gambling and then is trying to then gamble more to win back, and they end up in an even deeper hole than they were in the first place.
It was the wise philosopher, country music singing legend Kenny Rogers, who did once say, you got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run. So diving deep into does it actually Work? Is it actually performing? And I mean, this is one of those things that we’ve often helped people on. There’s a couple of people who recently were doing a project with them, and part of how their clients were coming into their world was by way of a questionnaire that then qualified people as to whether or not they could then book a call. So they had another decision factor in advance of the booked call. And one of them specifically at one point was looking and going, hey, I know we rebuilt this on another software. I don’t think it’s working as well.
Let’s go back to the other software. And not for any sense of pride on my part, I was able to go into their old system that I had access to and the one that we had helped them to rebuild, and we’re able to see here’s the number on the old system, here’s the number of people who visited it, and here’s the people who completed it, you know, the conversion, and then here’s our new system. Here’s the number of visits and then here’s the number of conversions. And by looking at it in terms of the ratio, the percentage, what percentage of people went to the thing and then followed through with the steps, the new one was actually outperforming it.
So that actually tells you that there’s something else in the journey of how those clients were coming into this person’s business that then needed to change. So they were trying to fix the wrong parameter. They were trying to fix the wrong variable. So again, let me just drill this in and I might be saying this sometimes for myself, just because you like it doesn’t mean you should keep it. The next point here, point number three, Search engine optimization. SEO is a strategy. SEO is a strategy. It is not a game. You can cheat at. You cannot game SEO. And I’m going to share this and it’s going to piggyback off of the last thing that I just talked about of, you know, just because you have a website doesn’t mean it’s working. Or just because you like it doesn’t mean you should keep it.
I can think back to a conversation I had at a conference as early as like 2011, 2012, where here was a person and they had a website for their Hypnosis practice that clearly was not working for them. And they were completely stuck on the idea that either one of two pathways. They either needed to pay for advertising, paid traffic to bring more people to this website, which again wasn’t working, or they needed to do search engine optimization to then build more organic mechanisms, free traffic to bring people to this website. And let’s just run the math real quick here. If you have a thing that is producing, let’s use an easy number. 0.
If you have a thing that’s producing zero quantity and quality of business and now you show that thing that’s producing zero to a bigger audience, what’s going to be the result? Yeah, zero times any number is then zero. So it’s. And listen carefully here, because I’ve been misquoted on this at one point. Yeah, Search engine optimization is valid. Search engine optimization is a thing you should keep in mind here. And I’m going to give you. Right now listen carefully. I’m going to give you the easiest strategy. To do it correctly, you need to create the right content that speaks to your audience. There you go. There’s the actual strategy. It’s the actual content that’s on the page that makes it climb up the search rankings. And I’ll Give you a slightly overwhelming but also really easy example of this.
Depending on where you are in the world, if you go to Google and you type in a search for two simple words, Hypnosis training. The worksmarthypnosis.com website appears on the first page. That took a while. It took a while to get there. And part of it is, well, you are listening to podcast session number 449. In every one of these episodes, we’ve created a custom page, kind of like a blog post, to then share the notes and the resources of the episode. So there is a massive stockpile of content that is about training Hypnosis. In addition to that, there is also a blog on the Worksmart Hypnosis website.
And every bit of this since day one, all the way back to June 2014, has been speaking to you, the person who wants to train to do Hypnosis for the first time or train to do it better, I am speaking directly to you in my audience. And as a result of that, I naturally climbed over time without much gaming of the strategy. So no, you don’t necessarily have to go off and record 449 podcast episodes. I mean, you could, you don’t have to write hundreds of blog posts and then use the right language along the way. Let me give you an easy way of thinking about this though, which is the things that you say to gather an audience doesn’t pass the 2am test.
And what I mean by that is that it’s two in the morning and they’re in a romantic long term relationship and your potential client can’t sleep. They’re tossing and they’re turning and that wakes up their partner. And their partner goes, honey, are you okay? And the other person then says, I just can’t seem to let go of that fight that I had with my dad. Or they say, I’m just so frustrated, I can’t just throw out the cigarettes and move on with my life. You know what they’re not saying at 2 in the morning? Honey, are you okay? I need a mindset expert. You know what they’re not saying at 2 in the morning? I need hypnotic age regression. You know what I need? I need Emotional Freedom Technique. Eft. Now, careful here. I’m not telling you double negative.
I’m not telling you to not mention those things. However, the things that you say to gather the audience, you need to be speaking in terms of their desires, their problems, their hopes, their goals, their dreams. You need to speak to your audience based on the things that they’re saying to themselves. And as you create content, video, written material, website pages, funnel pages, perhaps blog pages. Yeah, all this stuff works. As you’re creating content that actually speaks to that audience, the little social media and the different search engine algorithms is going to go, hey, this is quality content. We should show it to people who are looking for this type of thing. That’s how you do SEO. Now this is where to kind of shortcut this and make it easier for people. You know, we’ve established templates, we’ve established writing styles and formulas and frameworks.
Frameworks equals freedom to then make it easier for people. Check out the details website.worksmarthypnosis.com Though set aside any old story about I need a person to do this. It’s what you do on the page that matters more than anything else. And let me just point a finger, I might get some hate mail on this one and I’m okay with it. If you were to go to a platform which involves different outsourced, you know, help such as Fiverr is one f I v e r r or upwork.com and then pay someone a relatively low fee to do some search engine Work for you, what they’re most likely doing, first of all, don’t do this. What they’re most likely doing is an out of date strategy based upon something called backlinking, where they would plant seeds of links of your website all around the web.
And here’s where that is going to hurt you. And I know this because it hurt me many years ago because I didn’t know better, then figured out, oh wait, it’s the content that’s driving my business. That’s what really matters. It’s that what they’re doing is they’re creating all these places around the web where people are in sites are pointing back at your stuff. But then when the different algorithms and robots that crawl your site from Google and Yahoo and all the other search engines, when it ends up on your page and there’s no quality content, they know you’ve tried to game the system. And it’s not going to be my story of how over all these years, finally, I am organically on page one for the Worksmart Hypnosis website. Insert APPLAUSE and cheering here.
It’s instead though that I got there over time by creating the content that actually validated that story. SEO search engine optimization is a strategy. It is not a game you should cheat at because you’re going to lose. And I’ve had moments where for certain projects I didn’t know better at the time. And I watched as where I showed up organically was dropping and then one website was completely removed from Google as a result of doing the wrong things. You can’t afford to do this stuff wrong. You can only afford to make the investment and do it the right way. Way. So let me sum up point number three that I know I’ve probably spent the most amount of time here on Content is king. And you need to speak to your audience in a way that’s actually how they’re already communicating.
Let me give you a magical sentence here. The ultimate sales conversation, the ultimate sales journey begins in the language of the consumer, your potential client, in their problem based language, the way that they talk to themselves. And the end of that journey is based upon the communication of you, the expert, speaking in the solution state. So the criteria that we are setting as important to our audiences needs to begin in their language. There’s implications of this throughout the entire journey of a Hypnosis website. This is where, as a quick little mention to this, I advise people if you Work on specific niche topics and it’s okay if you have more than one. By the way, if you have like a thing you do for stop smoking, you need a stop smoking page on your website.
If you’re working with people for fear of public speaking, you need a page specifically for that. And we provide templates to make it a whole lot easier. The navigation bar on your website, the list of things at the top of it that needs to be using that language as well. Stop using expert speak. Start speaking like your clients. That’s how you start getting paid. Can you tell I’m passionate about that one? Yeah. So now let’s move to point number four, which also is probably going to bring into it point number five. And now that I’m here saying this, and I’ve already said five, I think I’m going to do a bonus number six. So stay tuned. There’s more here though. Let mention something as a bit of a frame before I share points 4 and 5 here.
Part of what my passion has been in terms of helping hypnotists with their businesses is that I don’t want to be the person who can just tell you what used to Work. You know, I don’t want what I do to just be, hey, this business that I had when I was in Virginia and then I moved to Florida, here’s what I did back then and maybe it’ll still Work for you. You know, I teach the stuff that worked there and then through my own Projects and then consulting and being a part of other people’s collaborations over time. This is how I’m keeping my finger on. Exactly the button of this is what works and rejecting the things that don’t Work. So I don’t want to be just the person who can tell you what used to Work.
Although that’s not bad because there’s some people who have completely made up things that they’re trying to sell you involving Hypnosis and business and just Google’s your friend people just Google the person’s name. If you can’t find evidence that they’ve actually done the things that are trying to sell you, turn and run, block them, move on. That is dangerous and I’m sick of it. And that’s part of what reignited the passion of bringing back this Work Smart Hypnosis podcast. Rather than channel that into frustration and anger as it was becoming that people, my friends were getting ripped off, instead it was, okay, well do something about it and start to share the content differently on this podcast episode. It’s where the Make It Rain Monday came from.
So, okay, it’s okay if someone is sharing what they actually did, but if it’s someone who there’s a couple of people who are trying to sell the promise of here’s how you can sell high ticket. And when you look closer, you realize they didn’t have a high ticket offer to sell until they could try to convince you could have one as well. So you are their high ticket offer. And they’ve never actually done the thing that you want to model from them. So turn and run. That’s dangerous. Have I stressed that enough here? So I don’t want to just be the what used to Work.
And I also thought about it over time and I went, hey, I don’t want to just be the person who can tell you what’s working right now, though clearly that’s important because the world costs money to live in. So, yes, I’m going to focus on that. The bigger mission behind everything that I do is that I want to be that person who can also point out what is going to continue to Work in the future, even as our current mechanisms that we believe we absolutely have to have are replaced by other things. There was a point in time where having a Large following on MySpace was the most important thing you can have. And now that’s a platform that really doesn’t exist anymore. There was a time where going viral on YouTube with a video was a big deal.
And now there’s other video platforms that are out there, softwares get replaced. It’s why I’ll just call it out. The one that I recommend is one that’s been around for, at this point, about 12 years and it’s current iteration. So they’ve stood the test of time as a result of that. So this is a filter that I’m putting here on these final two points. So you might be thinking, I want you to get very specific here, yet listen for the formula, listen for the context, and you’re going to see how there’s variations that I’ll point out here, obviously, but there’s also ones that will evolve as technologies begin to shift here. So here we go. Point number four, you need to sell towards the short path and the long path in the website journey. Let me break that down with a simple example.
Here’s a page you have about quitting smoking. And the short path on that page might be one of these several options. It might be fill out this form and pay me for your sessions and then you can schedule. Or it might be fill out this form to book a call and have a consult with me. That is the short path that is going direct to the most important step of the journey. Either doing the consult that then leads to the actual sale or possibly the sale itself. Short path, that is the shortest distance there. When I say long path, it’s the fact that not everybody purchases the first time that they land on a site.
Here’s something that I pointed out as early as 2014, hypnotists around the world have on their websites, call this number to book your session, fill out this form, pay here to book your session. And I would put it to you that the majority of people who would land on your stuff, I’ll phrase it this way, are not yet qualified to make the decision that it’s the right thing for them. And it’s that your content journey, the stuff that you create, that’s what’s educating and informing them as to who is a fit to Work with you and who is potentially not yet a fit to Work with you. Let’s phrase it in a positive way there. So it’s that not everybody is going to be the person who books and pays right away. Not everybody.
And I’m seeing a drop off on this, by the way, more so on the training side than anything. The people who are willing to go to a page and then schedule a call. Now, yes, that clearly still works with the right parameters attached to it. However, in some more sophisticated, more skeptical markets, it’s where I’m doing something else to then position the call in another way. So short path and long path. What I mean by long path is something that’s going to gather their contact information and provide value and then nurture the relationship so that then they become qualified and confident and ready to then take the short path. So simple example, as I started before, here is a page specifically about quitting smoking. If you’re ready to quit smoking, click here now to schedule your stop smoking breakthrough session. Woo hoo.
They click there, it’s asking for a payment, it then schedules the appointment. Done. That’s short path or as helpful as everything that I’ve said can be. The thing that makes this process much more effective is when it’s customized to you. And that’s why Click here to grab a time to speak with me so we can build your stop smoking journey together. Did you know that there’s actually transcripts of every podcast session on the Worksmart Hypnosis website? Yeah, you don’t have to rewind back and write that down by hand. Worksmarthypnosis.com 449 scroll to the bottom. It’s one of those accordion things. When you click it expands. You can steal that exact language. That’s what works. That’s all short path though.
However, somewhere else either another page, maybe from a blog post, maybe from somewhere else on that piece of content there’s perhaps here is One of the biggest problems people run into when they’re trying to quit smoking is dealing with the cravings. And that’s why I’ve created this five minute Craving Buster which is going to teach you a method you can use to then address that craving and put yourself back in control. Now, for the sake of time here, I’ve got one more point I promised you, and a bonus one here. I can’t go deep into the psychology of what makes the opt in offer actually Work. I’ll give you the short version of it here though. The opt in offer, the lead magnet, the ethical bribe, needs to be a thing that solves the problem before the problem, but not the entire problem itself.
And some of you right now I just heard it from a distance, even though I’m recording this about two weeks before the episode comes out. I heard the hand to the forehead moment going oh crap. And now you’re realizing why things you’ve put out there as opt in offers didn’t Work because you were solving either a completely wrong problem or you were attempting to solve the entire problem with the free thing and you gave people a reason why they didn’t need the full thing. The opt in thing needs to solve the problem before the problem, but not the problem itself. Very simple formula. We’ve got examples that then break that down. So then it’s when you have that. And I just mentioned a quick anecdote here, and I’ll leave the name out for obvious friendly purposes.
There was a time that I was a guest speaker at someone else’s event and someone in the group raised his hand. And he’s someone who had gone through my material before and he goes, yeah, but if people get things for free, they won’t take it seriously. People don’t value things they get for free. And I went, we’ll call him John. That was not his name. I go, well, the best part is John and I have known each other for about five years. John was previously a guest on my Work Smart Hypnosis podcast. And John, I’m not going to share the screen, but I’m opening up your private records in my system. And let’s take a look. You listened to this podcast episode where you then downloaded the free resource.
You then attended this webinar where you then downloaded the resources and then you bought a $2,000 program. Then you went to my website and you got this thing that was free attached to another just opt in thing, an ebook. And then from that you signed up for another $2,000 program. And I’m looking at the collected numbers here. You have filled out at least 14 forms in my system and you’ve now, over the last couple of years, paid me more than $6,200. John, you’re exactly right. People don’t value free things and they don’t do business any further. Any questions on that? And then he goes, shut up. You’re right. I go, I know we’re friends. So again, these things do Work. The reasons why they might not Work is the sales psychology is entirely wrong.
You’ve got to sell towards the short path and the long path. Now, here is point number five, though. Stick around. I’ve got a bonus for you. It’s that you need to fix the leaky buckets in your business. Now, the thing I’m about to talk about is one that may be a bit more technical, but for right now, as you’re listening to me, I want you to understand the basic concept of it. The reason why people don’t take action, and that could be whether they are buying something online, paying for a service, scheduling a call. The reason why people exit the sales journey is not always because They’ve decided they don’t like you and they never want to see you again. The easiest example of this is actually something that I was buying this morning.
There was something that I have at home, a simple device in the kitchen that it broke, and then I wanted a new one. And so what did I do? I did a search on Amazon and I found it. And just out of a hunch, I then searched for the product from the company who actually makes it, and then I found, oh, wait, they sell the exact same thing cheaper on their website. Make sure you do that, by the way. Don’t always assume one place has the best price. And then I was ready to buy it. And then I was getting ready to put in my payment information, and then I remembered, oh, wait, I have a Bank of America Visa card that just got replaced.
And as a promo, not that I’m going to keep a balance on this credit card as a promo, as they switched over the configuration, I’ve got two years, no interest, so I’m going to put it on that card instead. But then I remembered, oh, wait, they just sent it to me. And I got the alert that it’s actually at my business mailbox, which is three miles from my house. And I then thought, hey, that’s where more important stuff goes. I then remembered, I’m going to go there later today. And so I bookmarked the order form and maybe I’ll go back to it later. I’m actually recording this episode right now, later than I planned in my afternoon, so I’ll do it tomorrow. Do you see that as an example? It’s that I was ready to buy something, but then I paused the process.
Or another example, here’s a podcast that I was supposed to be the guest on this week. We agreed sometime this week. And I went, hey, here’s the thing in my schedule that I need to figure out first. And so they sent me the link so I could put myself on his calendar. And then I’m still waiting to see when this scheduling thing of my life is going to happen. And so I haven’t taken action yet. Do you see how easy it would be in these scenarios to then forget and then go off and do something else? Or here’s one that me, as the marketing nerd, will often do. Hey, I want to buy this thing, but I bet it’s going to show me some other stuff after I buy it that I might want. You know how the Internet works now.
And because of that, I’m not going to buy it right now because I don’t have the time to watch the follow upsell pages. And there’s one thing specifically that I’m thinking of right now that I still haven’t bought. So do you see how there’s leaky buckets in your business where people could exit? And it’s again not because they don’t like you, it’s because they got distracted because as I would say, life got in the way. And you need to have mechanisms in your business, you need to have these mechanisms in your website built into it and the automations built around it as well.
So that easy example of this that I can just talk through out loud is before someone goes to a page to, let’s say book a call with you, where you’re going to ask them to put themselves on the calendar, give you their first name, their last name, their email address and their phone number and maybe if you’re doing it my way, answer at least at a minimum three very specific questions before you do that somewhere else. You need to get their email address so that then the next page is that calendar scheduling thing so that now you’re going to have two things running at the same time in the behind the scenes. Automation. And with the right platforms. This is the biggest thing that we’ve been helping people with in the last couple of years.
When they give just the email address, it waits a period of time and then if the action of booking the call has not yet occurred, it sends a friendly customer service based message to go. Hey, it looks like you started the process to schedule this call, however you didn’t quite complete it. No problem. Click here to go back and grab a time. I look forward to speaking and working with you soon. The same thing with a sales offer. Win the email address first, then it plops them on the page. And the thing is you need to have this set up and it’s easy with the right systems you need to have this set up so that then as soon as they take the desired action, this, what I call retention sequence automatically stops.
Which kind of leads me to the bonus number six, which is that some of you, in terms of websites, you have just put yourself into a corner because you’ve made it. This is not the word that’s on my notepad here. You’ve made it too flipping complicated. And that’s why you can’t do minor fixes yourself. You’re trying to Frankenstein all these disconnected complicated things to each other and or they’re not even talking to each other at all. And that puts you in the manual running of your business more than anything else. I have a person who I was supposed to be on a call with later today. Instead, we did it earlier today and the whole thing that was the delay was that her web person put the wrong version of the consult on her website.
And some of you are listening right now going, is he talking about me? It was two people this happened to on the same day. And I went, hey, that’s not as complicated as you would think. And here I’ll just do a quick little custom video to show you, here’s how it could be done instead. And they went, yep, that’s it, I need your help. So again, this leaky bucket retention, this thing right here is like the one thing that completely transformed my business. And this is one of the things that as we Work with people getting this dialed in and it’s not a big vanity, you know, glorious, pretty website project, it’s instead the behind the scenes mechanisms that make it so.
Well, again, would you rather bring more people to a thing that’s not working or make a thing Work and then focus on bringing the right audience in? And the bonus point is that really you need to make sure it’s not so complicated that you can’t figure it out yourself. So any journey of getting assistance or help with a website needs to begin as collaborative, but then transitions to a way that, you know, if you need ongoing support, that’s an option. But then for like simple things like, hey, I’m doing another one of these workshops, I need to create another version of that product and point the sales to this thing instead. That’s something very simple with the right systems that you could do yourself. If you’re curious to get our help with that, check out website.worksmarthypnosis.com Though let me recap the list here.
And by the way, keep listening because I’m going to share one more bonus in the afterthoughts of this episode. Point number one, people. Do business with people. Communicate to your audience directly. Be yourself. Point number two, just because you like it doesn’t mean you should keep it. Point number three, I said that search engine optimization is not a game you can cheat at. It’s instead you need to create the right content that speaks to your audience so you climb the rankings and get more sales. Point number four, sell towards the short path, Buy now, schedule a call, or the long path. Put your email address here to get this thing. Point number five, you need to fix the leaky buckets. The whole system of retention that I talked about. And point number six, stop making it complicated.
With the right systems, this all becomes crazy simple, highly profitable, and, dare I say, wonderfully fun. Hey there, it’s Jason. And this is the afterthought part of the podcast. And honestly, this is one of the parts of the episode, if you heard the one about two weeks ago with Tracy Barrett Adams. This is something that I wanted to change as I brought the podcast back to either share some personal insights or nuances if it was someone who I interviewed, or as it was this week, you know, we’re not just doing business things on the make it Rain Monday sessions. We’re also doing them in these longer form deep dive sessions as well. And it’s here I want to come on and take something that I said earlier.
And rather than just say you need to speak to your audience the way that they’re speaking to themselves, I want to give you something to get you started communicating with your audience in a much better way. And it’s something you can use today. And I’ll tell you right away, this is not the entire formula because this is going to make possibly the first two sentences or the first two lines of text on a website, a web page, funnel page, could even possibly be your email subject line. It’s going to take your communication and make it better. Now for the rest of that, reach out to me. That’s what we’ve been helping with lately. It’s my persuasive headline, sub headline formula. So there’s a very simple formula to this.
And again, check out the show notes worksmarthypnosis.com 449 but that’s where you’ll see just a little visual graphic of this. Here’s the thing you need to know before I share it though, this is where I always start. This is where I always start in terms of configuring the headline and the sub headline of a website page, a funnel page, or even email subject line. This is where I start. It’s not always where I finish. However, frameworks equals freedom. As soon as I have a very clear place where I’m going to begin my journey, it’s going to give me a workable headline and sub headline that’s going to grab the attention of my audience and then inspire them to keep engaging further, you know, actually then seeing what the call to action would be. So it happens in two parts.
The first part is the official headline. This is where I start. It’s not always where I finish. It’s done in three simple words. One of them Is a. Insert your stuff here. How to outcome, how to quit smoking. How to speak with confidence. How to let go of pre surgery fears. How to overcome test anxieties. So you see the very simple formula. Refer to it the way your audience refers to it themselves. It’s at this point I have to share the quick anecdote. The time in Virginia, I got the phone call, yeah, I want to come in for the smoking sensation. Smoking sensation. Now at that point that was not legal yet in Virginia. So what do our people actually say? I want to quit smoking, I want to stop smoking.
Which by the way, fun fact, I’ve done the research and data for you. Quit smoking and stop smoking get nearly equal search rankings. So find a place to use them both. So how to outcome. There’s the first part of this persuasive headline sub headline formula. Now for the sub headline, the thing that reinforces it underneath it, I’m going to give you two formulas. Sometimes I only use one, sometimes I use the other. And sometimes if I’m really fancy, I’m going to figure out how to use them both. Now, there’s two formulas, there’s two buckets that the sub headline part fits inside of. One of them is about objections. The other one is about avoidances and I’d say they’re equally effective and it’s kind of more your style and your approach and who your audience is how you would decide which one to use.
So the two buckets that the sub headline can satisfy would be objections or avoidances. Let’s Work with the objection example first. The language of this is how to outcome as we’ve already covered, followed by even if you common objection. So let’s go off of the smoking one from before. How to quit smoking, even if you’ve struggled to quit for years. How to quit smoking even if you’ve stopped many times, yet always went crawling back to those cigarettes. How to quit smoking even if you don’t believe you can. Ooh, isn’t that one magical here? And do you feel how some of you leaned in as I gave you these? Because it’s making a promise and it’s also then establishing curiosity. As I said here before we started this little afterthought section, this is going to get you started for the rest of it.
You know how to find me. Now here’s the other formula though, which one was the one about avoidances? So with this one, it’s how to outcome without having to thing you want to avoid. How to quit smoking without having to gain weight as a result of quitting. How to quit smoking without having to avoid social situations where other people are smoking. How to quit smoking without having to make use of dangerous nicotine replacements. How to quit smoking without having to use chemical additives. Now, the key is you want to make sure whatever these objections or concerns are, these avoidances, these need to be things that actually are important to the audience.
I had to correct someone’s writing recently, which was that I had to go, okay, so there’s somebody who is relatively new in their journey as a hypnotist, and they were using the objection pathway of even if you’re afraid you might get addicted to nicotine supplements. And I had to go, I’ve seen at least 1200 people to quit smoking since I first started doing Hypnosis. And I can tell you just from that experience, am I saying there’s no one out there with that concern? No, I’m not saying that. I am saying that’s one that I’ve never heard. So there’s likely very clearly other, better objections to begin to address here. Now let me actually pull out of this training, of this little headline, sub headline formula and point out what we’ve really been doing in this afterthought part of the session.
The first, I’m realizing I should have reserved this headline, sub headline thing for its own make it Rain Monday episode. That’s what we do on Mondays. This could have been its own session. It’s that good. But then again, hey, everybody, write this down. Never assume that everybody has seen everything that you’ve ever done. So those of you that listen to this part, you can be smug and smile in a couple of weeks or months when suddenly there’s a make it rain Monday about how to start writing to grab attention. And we’ll repurpose this and I’ll present it in a slightly different way, though here’s the real value of what we just did together. The biggest block, the biggest conflict, the biggest hurdle that’s holding so many of you back that I’ve spoken with is I don’t even know where to get started.
And do you see how we just solve that problem together? You at least know how to begin your writing to win the attention of your audience, begin to gain their trust so that now they keep paying attention to you, so that then they actually eventually buy from you. So we’ve accomplished that in this short amount of time together. These are the things that, quite simply, these frameworks and principles and these strategies, I figured them out for myself because I needed them to increase my productivity as well as help to continue to grow things and stop being the bottleneck of my own company. And it’s a bit of an afterthought that I then realized, oh wait, this is what all of you need as well.
So if you want help with, you know, the automations and building out the site so they actually now capture your audience, retain them, and then let’s use a Napoleon Hill word on this one, transmute into paying clients. Check out website.worksmarthypnosis.com thanks for listening. Thanks for sticking through this longer deep dive episode. It can be a whole lot easier to run your business as a hypnotist than you’ve ever thought possible. Thank you for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Linett. The more we’re all successful, the more we’re all successful. I’ve made that statement for years. It’s why I do this show. And here is one thing that you can do today to help do your part. Go to worksmarthypnosis.com podcast. Go there and make sure you’re subscribed on your favorite podcast platform.
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