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Run the starting today test. I just called it that as of today. And this is similar, yet slightly different. It’s another question you ask yourself. If I was starting from zero today, would I choose the same actions all over again? 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. Your past investments do not justify future stupidity. Yeah, you heard me. Your past investments do not justify future stupidity. And wow.
Okay, that’s a really great way of opening up this week’s podcast with that little burst of positivity. Though, this week on the Make It Rain Monday edition of the podcast, I’m going to be talking about the sunk cost fallacy. And by the way, fallacy spelled with an F, if you spell it with a ph, it means something very different. And let me do the standard thing here and pull out the Oxford Dictionary definition of this. The sunk cost fallacy is the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they’ve invested heavily in it, even when it’s clear that abandonment would be more beneficial. Basically, for you and I, this comes down to money that’s already been spent, time that’s already been invested, as well as years that have already been committed.
To put it simply, the sunk cost fallacy is the psychological trap of continuing something only because you’ve already paid for it, whether it’s time, whether it’s money, whether it’s energy. And this is important to our community because I have found that hypnotists do this constantly with business models, with niche markets, with certifications, with websites, with software, with strategies, with all these things that they cling to that clearly are not working. The reality is, as people, we are wired to avoid loss. So when we’ve invested time and money, or even careful here, part of our identity into something, walking away feels like you’re losing just as much, if not even more. I’m here to tell you that this is not just a financial problem.
This is actually an emotional problem, because the mind plays this game of telling us that I’ve already spent this much I can’t quit now. And doesn’t that sound like the same pattern that the person with an issue with gambling would have? That, oh, eventually I’m going to try to win everything back. And unfortunately, it usually doesn’t play out that way. So here’s what you need to know. Here’s what you need to know even before we officially dive into the content for this week’s episode. Quitting the wrong strategy is not losing what it really is. When you quit the wrong strategy, instead you are stopping the bleeding. So this week on this make it Rain Monday edition of the podcast, I’m not just going to point out the problem and say, hey, stop it.
Instead, I’m also going to give you practical steps to stop this sunk cost fallacy before it even appears. And also for those of you that are catching yourselves inside of these moments, what to do to climb out of it. Yes, we’re going to be talking about software. Yes, we’re going to be talking about websites. And as a quick little preview, we’ve got a cool assessment, the profitable hypnotist assessment. You can check it out by going over to website.worksmarthypnosis.com this is session number 454. You can find the show notes for this episode by heading over to worksmarthypnosis.com 454 and with that, let’s dive directly in. This is session number 454. Stop paying for old decisions. Let’s take this whole sunk cost fallacy out of the strategy side of things and instead talk about it in terms of emotions and specifically confidence. Confidence comes from decisiveness.
It comes from decisiveness, not loyalty to old mistakes. Some people would put confidence into the category of sticking it out where in business it would show up. That, you know, in confidence means you’re willing to course correct quickly. The most successful hypnotist I know are not the ones who pop up and try to boast the claim that they’ve never made mistakes. No, the most successful ones that I know have incredible stories about times where they did something in a session and it didn’t go right. And here’s what they learned and that’s why they now work the way that they do.
Here’s the people who well, here one of my stories, a time where I spent a whole retirement ridiculous amount of money on a website that was absolutely gorgeous by the time it was done, spent a lot of money on it and at the end of it, about a year later, it had still produced zero sales. The website itself. So rather Than, you know, fall into this whole sunk cost fallacy. It finally reached this place of going, well, that doesn’t work. Let’s kill it and let’s replace it with something better. And then as soon as I did that, then the sales started rolling in. Back to our hypnosis community. The people who I meet, the people who are the most successful in what they do, they are the ones who stopped defending bad decisions.
This is a podcast that goes out to hypnotists, though, as we often do, let’s bring in some other historical references. We got to talk about Kenny Rogers. Go listen to the song the Gambler. Seriously, you got to know when to hold him, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, no wind to run. Listen to the rest of the song. Great story. So the solution here, because I don’t want this just to be an episode where I talk about a thing like the sunk cost fallacy and say, well, stop this. Instead, let me give you some practical advice in terms of what to do. One part of this is a simple linguistic structure, which is something that I refer to as a criteria shift. Here’s a classic example of this. To set the context of it at the beginning here.
A bunch of years ago, an older hypnosis organization very explicitly asked me to, in their words, be the poster child, be the fresh face of the message that online training is bad and online sessions were unethical. And clearly I refused to be the megaphone of that message. And there were two simple reasons why. In that moment, I told them no. Reason number one, it was wrong. And reason number two, it was a decision that they came to because, based upon the wrong criteria. This is what I’m talking about in terms of a criteria shift, where they were having a conversation about why is online not as good? Why is online perhaps not as effective?
The conversation that I was wanting to have was instead, what are the things we can do in an online format to make it just as good, if not perhaps even better? Let’s bring this now back to the topic at hand, the sunk cost fallacy. Stop asking, how do I make this work? Stop asking that when you’re in too deep. Instead, ask yourself this one question. If I was starting today, would I make the same decisions right now? If I was starting this project today, would I choose the same actions all over again? The moment you look at it that way, this single question, it collapses. The whole sunk cost bias, the whole sunk cost fallacy that just dissolves away instantly. And what this does for you is it shifts you out of the model of defending the past to instead evaluate the future.
Though one little quick side note to this, and I’ll tell a quick little story here without the intention of patting myself on the back, it’s that yes, be grateful of the experiences of your past. And I say this next statement not to hype up my work Smart Hypnosis Live and Online training. This is not meant to be a promotion. For that, though, you should head over to live.worksmarthypnosis.com and check out the video and check out the details of that event. Though it’s the student who had been trained elsewhere who then said to me at the end of the program, I wish I had found this program first. The way that I had simplified the linguistics of hypnosis, the way that I had systematized the change process in a way that it’s always customized to the person in front of us.
And yes, I was appreciative of their compliment that oh, this was great. I wish I found this one first. What I was then pointing out was to go, well, hang on. Two things. One, thank you for that, though. Also two, you’re feeling that way because of a comparison to what you learned before and not but. And you can now filter back through the things you’ve already done and now make better decisions in the future as a result of this experience. So do not dismiss the entire past. There’s something to be gained by it. But again, that big criteria shifting question if I was starting today, would I choose the same actions all over again? If no, it’s time to change something now, isn’t it? Here’s another strategy. Run the starting today test. I just called it that as of today.
And this is similar, yet slightly different. It’s another question you ask yourself, if I was starting from zero today, would I choose the same actions all over again? Once again, if the answer is no, stop fighting to keep something that isn’t working. If the answer is probably not, get off the fence. Make a decision. Because chances are, the reason you’re listening to this episode right now is the fact that you’re hearing that, okay, here are some places where I’m guilty of doing this, and it’s time now to begin to absolutely change it. So if you ask yourself, if I was starting from zero today, would I do things the exact same way? Again, if the answer is no, that’s not failure, that’s feedback. Okay, doesn’t that sound familiar? One of the classic presuppositions of nlp.
You know, the whole there’s no failure, only feedback thing. It’s the ability to pivot over time. That’s where the best success often comes from. Here’s another strategy. Calculate the cost of staying. What would it look like in terms of money, energy and effort if you kept trying to do the exact same thing? That clearly isn’t working the way that it should be. Most people I found obsess over what they’ve already spent. However, they also obsess over other elements of this, not just the money that they’ve put out. Calculate these things. What is the revenue? What is the income that you haven’t yet earned? Who are the clients that you haven’t yet helped? What is the story of who you are, the identity that you are creating more and more of by the work that you do?
What is the confidence that you haven’t yet built? And what are those eventually goals? What are those opportunities that you have just delayed further and further away because you’ve put yourself in a scenario where you’ve put yourself stuck trying to fix the things that are in front of you right now? The real loss is not the money that you’ve already spent. The real loss instead is in the future, not in the past. And then let’s go somewhere else with this here, because again, it’s not just about strategies. It’s also about emotions. Sometimes to disconnect, to dissociate out of the situation. And look at it from this other, more emotional hook perspective. Are you continuing the old strategies? Are you defending the old models? Are you trying to keep the same things running because of any one of a number of things?
Maybe it’s pride, maybe it’s potential embarrassment. And I understand that one, because sometimes you do have to have that moment of looking back and going, you know, okay, here’s what I did. Here’s perhaps in some way why I thought it was a good idea. But. But then do you see how that potential embarrassment, even if it’s not embarrassment to others, but more, let’s call it internalized embarrassment, is there more of that by still trying to keep in it, Is it perhaps a fear of admitting you were wrong? Or is it perhaps a fear of starting over? A quick little bit of marketer insight here. There’s a person in the copywriting space by the name of Dan Kennedy, and one of the things that he is most often credited for, but this is a principle that goes back even further in time than him.
There’s two different types of sales offers you can make. One would be that you can give somebody an improvement offer. Here’s a better way to do something. And there’s a psychological problem inside of an improvement, which is it’s driving people to acknowledge that they weren’t doing something correct. So Dan Kennedy would talk about instead, if you can position what you’re selling as a new opportunity. So now the reason why they haven’t yet been successful isn’t because they weren’t doing it right. It was instead because they didn’t have the right thing. All of you should be smiling and nodding right now because hypnosis is always positioned as that new opportunity. This is why selling your services is actually a whole lot easier than you’ve ever thought it to be.
And it’s time to abandon some of the things that you’ve been doing that haven’t been working and instead move forward in bigger, better ways. And a classic principle out of all things psychological intervention, life coaching, self improvement. The moment you label something, it doesn’t have the same power that it had before. So instead now, by labeling the emotion such as oh, I was holding on to pride, I was holding on to embarrassment, I was holding on to any one of a number of specific fears. Now that you’ve labeled it is now something that’s no longer inside of you and it’s a thing you can now truly let go of. My My main purpose for making this the Make It Rain Monday edition of the podcast this week is just to really land one simple statement. The most expensive decision is staying.
Staying put with the things that you’re already doing, sticking around, crossing your fingers, hoping it’s going to change when instead there are real actions you can take. Right now, the real cost is not what you’ve already paid. The real cost is what you are losing by not pivoting the clients you’re not serving the income you’re not generating the authority you’re not building the confidence that you’re not developing. Staying stuck is often more expensive than starting over. And finally, this is what many of you need to hear. That business training that has a really friendly community that makes you feel welcome and everybody is so nice and sharing. However, it doesn’t give you real step by step methods. It doesn’t give you real time, real world feedback. And it seems to keep everybody stuck talking about ideas rather than truly taking action. Stop it.
Move on. That software that you’ve already paid for, that software that will let you build dozens of sites, dozens of different websites and funnels with no extra fees. But you haven’t built those dozens of websites yet. And the ones that you’ve actually built and put out there. They’re not performing the way that you want. People aren’t finding them. People aren’t paying for your services through them. Stop it. It’s time to move on. That website that maybe you did pay a designer thousands of dollars to make absolutely gorgeous, or you’ve spent a ton of time trying to make it work, but again, the clients are not yet finding you and not booking you through it. Stop it. It’s time to move on. 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 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. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you’d leave a review. Your feedback helps other hypnosis professionals find the show. Subscribe and share your thoughts [email protected] podcast.
