Session #5: List Building 101

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Imagine building a more successful hypnosis business just in the next 10 days. To learn how please visit work smart hypnosis.com and take the 10 day Hypnosis business challenge yours free today. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success.

Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Welcome back. This is Work Smart Hypnosis. Jason Lynette here with session number. List Building 1 0 1. The strategies today are all about helping you to grow your business. The fact is that the more we’re all becoming successful, the more we’re all gonna become successful.

So as we really begin to focus our attention on growing our businesses, that tends to be that one thing that’s just gonna help us all advance this hypnosis profession really better than anything else. You know, you could have the most wonderful skills, you could have the most wonderful. Techniques and approaches and skills.

Yet, if your clients don’t know how to find you well, what good are those skills? So it’s important to run the business through that filter that we’re always working towards the best interest of our clients. We’re always working to get those best results pol possible and really help our clients to thrive.

Yet at the same time though, to ignore the business aspects of our well business. Then that’s where things begin to fall short. So list building 1 0 1. Uh, I’ll share some interesting concepts here. There are some people out there that would say that if you had a list of 10,000 people, that you could just market directly to that list and run a very, very profitable business for quite some time.

and I would definitely agree with that. And I tend to be someone that manages several lists all at once and will get more specific about what I mean about that as we roll into this program again here. Session number five, and they set it wouldn’t. Last list Building 1 0 1. The goal here is all about building niche specific lists for targeted market.

You know, perhaps you’ve already got some awareness with what we refer to as lead generation marketing, and the concept is basically this, and I’ll start from it from the opposite perspective. There are a number of hypnosis websites, or even websites for other services out there. It’s not just with the the hypnotism profession, but service based websites that have a phone number.

They have a call to action, which is wonderful. You should always have a call to action and their says, Call this number to book your session. Well, the concepts of lead generation approach the business from an entirely different perspective. Lead generation is all about getting people to raise their hands and say, I’m interested, and now you only spend your time marketing to those.

That have raised their hand and said, I’m interested. So rather than trying to sell to anybody and everybody out there, basically all of your content that’s out there, websites, business cards, whatever it else may be, the concept is all of that is beginning to bring people in. , the concept of a sales funnel is perhaps the best way to think of it, because we wanna widen that funnel to have more people coming in, raising their hand and saying, I’m interested.

And in the concepts of lead generation, what does that mean? I’m only ever selling the next step. So my website, for example, doesn’t attempt to sell. It’s only selling the next. Call this number for your free consultation. Uh, click on this form for a free report. Visit this video to learn more about hypnosis.

Watch this video to learn more about the upcoming class. So again, I’m never going directly for that sale. Immediately, I’m asking people to raise their hand and say, I’m interested. So the concept behind list building is all about what do we actually do with those people as they come into our sales funnel, as they come into our process?

And let’s chat for a few moments. First of all, about what types of lists can you manage with a hypnosis business? And I’ll mention it in terms of how I do mine. I have a specific list that’s targeted, that’s all about my potential. Stop smoking clients. I manage a list within my database systems of strictly weight loss clients.

I have a specific list of the clients who have contacted me about overcoming a fear, clients who have contacted me about overcoming, uh, you know, wanting stress relief. People who have contacted me for sports improvements as well as medical hypnosis clients. And of course there are other lists that I’m currently managing as well.

I have a list of all the local hypnotists. I have a list of people who have contacted me with interest about the hypnosis classes that I teach, people who have contacted me about their interest in products that I offer, or different services, as well as managing a list for other wellness professionals.

So be it doctors. Chiropractors, massage therapists, whatever they may be. Now, notice that so far I’ve only referenced people who have not yet done business with me. So could you imagine now that I also have lists that are running of contacts that I’m currently working with, here are my current stop smoking clients.

Here are my current weight loss clients. Here are my current fear clients. Here are my current students going through the program here. Here are referral sources that are actively sending me. , and perhaps you could already imagine too, that managing lists of those people for whom I’ve already done business, So again, those are my past to stop smoking clients.

Those are my past students. These are my, uh, people who have attended classes that I’ve hosted here in the Alexandria Virginia area, managing all these different lists. So this is how I divide them further, and I’ll share with you the categorizations that I use. I work in a mindset of active leads. These are people who have contacted me recently and haven’t yet taken.

I also have a list of passive leads. These are people who have contacted me maybe six to 12 months ago and they haven’t yet taken action. And as I’ve referenced, I have a list of working clients, working contacts. These are people that I’m currently working with as well as past clients. And again, that category tends to be rather self explan.

And I’ll share with you what this strategy does, and we’ll talk specifically in this program today, all about how I manage all this, because I tend to be the first one to tell you I don’t work hard. I actually work my best to keep things every, every so often, just as easy as possible. Uh, working smart, not hard.

Hey, that sounds like a good name for a podcast. Anyway, so as we’re looking at this concept of building a list, as I’m bringing people, Rather than getting into the sales conversation of a yes or a no, So do you want to do this? Yes or no? Instead, I live in a mindset of ready or not ready yet, and those who are not ready yet go onto a list.

Everybody who contacts me, everybody who calls me, gets sorted into a specific list. And through that ability to sort them into a specific list, the benefit is that. I control the conversation. I control the contact. I have some really, really beautiful business cards. I actually let a designer friend kind of go nuts with it and, uh, local, uh, printer that I really like.

It does great work. I mean, What they produced for me is just beautiful. The logo is what they call spot uv. If you tilt the card only the logo is glossy only. My name is glossy. You flip it over to the back, only the phone number is glossy rounded corners. Silk laminate. It’s a waterproof card as if we really need that though, I’d share that.

Um, I don’t tend to bring my business cards, places because I would rather collect your information that if you have my. , you’re the one to control that conversation and this conversation that began with, Oh, this is wonderful. I’d love to do this one day. You can now disappear and will never maintain contact.

So as I collect your information now, I’m in control of that conversation. And specifically in strategies, perhaps we’ll share for another podcast episode. So the concept is always collecting names, collecting names, collecting names and contact information. Maybe it’s phone numbers if you’re calling people, maybe it’s email addresses, maybe it’s uh, for some types of businesses, fax numbers would be perhaps the most appropriate.

Perhaps mailing addresses, if that’s your preferred mechanism for contact. My preferred technology is that of email. You know, we need an email address to do anything basically these days. And, uh, you know, if you’re gonna sign up for Facebook, you need an email address. If you’re gonna sign up for Twitter, if you’re gonna register for some coupons on a website, if you’re going to buy something online, you have to have an email address.

And yes, I know there are still people out there in 2014. still don’t have email addresses, but I would politely phrase it this way. The people who are more likely to come in and pay for your services are more likely to be those people with an email address. And even people who are not tech savvy at all will still have that email address.

So that tends to just be the easiest way to maintain contact. And email marketing tends to be my preferred route of working with. So these concepts though of building a list is something that is always my priority. So, Every base of contact is pointing towards collecting some data, and you’ll probably recognize this strategy already.

So looking at various websites, here’s a coupon offer, but you can’t get it until you fill in your email address and now you’re on that company’s list. We recently did with the AMC movie theaters. They have a Stubs reward card. And what we actually did with that is the benefit is you can now go online.

You can buy movie tickets in advance. We have a great movie theater near us that actually has reserve seating. Every seat is a recliner. It’s really nice. So you want to get in and reserve the seats that you want. So that’s what we did. But in order to get that again, Email address and now we’re on their contact list.

And I tend to be someone that actually will usually unsubscribe from, you know, big box marketing just as fast as possible. But the alphas they’ve actually been sending have been really good and the emails they’ve been sending have actually been kind of clever. So I’ve been happy to continue to receive their emails.

I would actually point to. An email system that’s coming from a retailer that we bought some furniture from, which I’ll leave the name out, and perhaps their method of maintaining contact with their clients is perhaps the worst that I’ve ever seen, because every two months or so without any contact, I get an email that says, We miss you, Jason, and it’s basically all focused on.

It’s all focused on, Hey, look what we have, look what we have, as opposed to something that’s gonna be a benefit to me. So benefit aggression will spend some time perhaps in a future session just on email marketing. So list building strategies. I’ll give you some options here. I’m giving a talk to a local business group.

I’m invited to give a talk to a rotary group, a Kiwanis group, a Moose Lodge, whatever it may be, or even a. branch of a business group, like a Chamber of Commerce or a breakout networking meeting, whatever it might be, and could I stand up there and say, Well, here’s my website information. Here’s my phone number for those of you that are interested.

Please call me and then go back to my office and sit and stare at the phone and wait for it to. . Well, I could do that, and in my experience, I do get some results from that. But how much better is this? Let’s consider that in a presentation like that, I’m gonna want to give some type of demonstration, some type of experiential event, so there’s something tangible about what they’ve experienced in terms of learning about hypnosis from me and in that environment.

Now I can then turn to the audience. And say, Wouldn’t it be great if you could do something like that for yourself back in your homes, back in your offices every single day? Well, I tell you what I’ve put together just a brief 10 minute stress relief self hypnosis session. This is something I sell on my website.

It’s like $30, but as a thank you for inviting me here today. I’d love to give that to all of you. There’s some pieces of paper out around your tables. Fill that out. All I need is your email address, and I’ll send that to you by the end of the business day today, and that’s then going into an automated stream of how that email goes out.

Those people are now opting into my list and I can maintain meaningful contact with them and only provide. . I love the business model of give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, get. Rather than buy. Bye bye. You know, buy this thing now. Act now. This discount. This discount. You know, I’m someone that’s since.

you know, becoming a little well known in terms of talking about business strategies. People have subscribed me to their list in terms of what they’re currently doing to bring in clients. And here’s a local example that every single email is just a sales pitch as opposed to this one is providing some content.

Hey, check out this video, read this article. So when you’re hearing me talking about list building and marketing to those people, I’m only ever in the mindset of providing value. Providing an experience. And then when it’s congruent, that’s when people are going to raise their hand and say, I’m interested.

So my primary focus tends to be that on building that list and then on the follow up here comes value, and then here comes a specific offer. And in that format, business just tends to be very easy. The benefit of this, because I’ve been marketing to my list directly, my incoming phone call with a client tends to only be about five or six minutes long, and they’re confirming a series of sessions for a respectable fee, but it’s because I’ve already built that relationship with them prior to coming.

How else can we build a list, multiple streams of contact on your website? Fill out this form for a free consultation. Fill out this form to receive this report. Fill out this form to watch this series of videos. And the wonder of all this is that you set this stuff up once and it’s. But that’s gonna be, again, content for another program.

Let’s talk specifically though about how do you organize this information? Well, you could do. In a rather out of date way. But of course this would work extremely well. You know, think back to the Rolodex. You could have a little file card box filled with index cards and sort them by tabs, sort them by categories, and just keep track of your contacts like that.

And I’m sure even in 2014 there are people still doing that and still running very successful businesses. I think to my wife, she worked for a while for a nonprofit company. Was interesting because here they were working in the arts, working with donors, working with people who were giving money to that company, and they had this wonderful database system.

Yet the person who was in charge of that organization was very much a paper person, did not want to go near a computer. and really that person’s skill was that he could be in a room with all those donors, with all the members of the board, and he knew everybody. He knew their stories, he knew what they were going through.

He was that people person that just connected. And for him, it just wasn’t part of his learning systems to be connected with the computer, which is why he had three assistants who did that work for him, to, which I would say nothing wrong with that. Keep it up. It’s working for. . But as we’re building this stuff, it just becomes so much easier just to make use of the technology that’s at a disposal.

There are what we call CRMs, and you’ll see different acronyms for this, different definitions, customer relationship managers. So what is that? The software that I used to use and actually would still feel very comfortable endorsing is called. A c t. It’s made by a software company called Sage. Like the spice, like the herb, Sage, s a g e.

The service is called act, and what that is is just a database system that you can begin to create tags. You can begin to create custom fields and you can sort these people out. Now I’m just gonna. Be very, uh, straightforward and tell you that I have not used that software since 2007. So some of the things I’m saying may be a little out of date, but it’s worth doing some research.

It was a fabulous system when I used it because it was all software based and it was specific to my computer, and that became a bit of a challenge for me. So since then I’ve transitioned being using online based services for this, and this is where we start to talk. An autoresponder. An autoresponder is a service that sends emails out on a schedule or sends out broadcast, sends out campaigns or sequences that you program in and they send out as you want them to go out.

So specific services that I’ve used before and enjoyed using. Uh, AWeber is a great company. I’ve used them for a couple of years. MailChimp is a great company too. I like MailChimp cuz I actually can start off using them for free. Constant contact tends to be a popular version, and what this basically becomes is an email system that you can have people opt into your list or opt in by way of another means, whether it’s a form, whether it’s a phone call, whatever it may be, and then organize them into specific lists and then mark it to those people.

And all of this. I know perhaps for some of you is starting to sound a little bit too technical, but I guarantee you if you can send an email, you can do anything I’m talking about right now. It’s basically the process of you write the email as if it’s a template, and then you send it to a specific list.

It’s actually so much more efficient than sending out a bunch of emails at. . I have family members that run businesses and the time that is wasted sending these messages one by one by one, and to be fair, sending them from their email service providers is actually caused them to get flagged of sending the same duplicate message over and over.

Your email provider systems actually wants you to be using these autoresponder services rather than using their systems. Otherwise, you get flagged for using a non-commercial email. For commercial use. All of these companies, by the way, are shifting away from letting you make use of the free email services, whether it’s outlook.com, aol.com, gmail, yahoo, all those different variations.

So just a bit of a side note, as a business, I’d prefer to see you using something that’s gonna be a professional email address. Uh, my email address, and I’ll share it here, Jason Virginia hypnosis dot. That tends to be the one that I use. And the fun of it is of course, as other parts of my business begin to grow and morph and grow bigger, I’m still holding onto that one just cuz I don’t wanna be checking five others.

I still have two other email addresses, but there’s a reason I’m not sharing those now. I’m trying to use those less and less. Now. Just to back up for a moment, act is not an autoresponder. Now you can set. Keywords, you can set up reminders and then send the emails out, automatically send the emails out on a schedule by you going in and sending that template.

But that’s why I transitioned away the company that I tend to like to endorse the most right now. And full disclosure, I actually, uh, left them a couple of weeks ago just because there were some needs that I had that, uh, their service provider just didn’t, uh, include. So I had to transition, which I’ll mention who I use now, the company that I’m the most comfortable, endur.

For this type of service is C Pepper. Now they’re in the process of rebranding their bigger product, which used to be called Office Autopilot. They’re rebranding that as on report, and again, all levels of their service I’m happily able to endorse. And it’s what I used for I think about four years, uh, prior to the recent transition that I made.

What I like about. Is that there’s room for growth. There’s a $29 level, there’s a $79 level, a 1 29, a 2 97, and a 5 97. And actually for the last three and a half years, I was using the $297 a month service, which sounds like it’s a lot, but given what it was doing for me, given the marketing streams that it was generating for me, given the time it was saving.

Still really a solo practitioner. I often have a staff of other hypnotists working in my office here, but I don’t have someone else taking the calls. I don’t have someone else sending confirmations out to my clients. These types of services I’m referencing, they do that for me. I’ve programmed it. Ron Pope said it and forget it.

So I recently transitioned away from C Pepper in Antraport, just for the reason that there were specific e-commerce abilities, some, uh, integration that was lacking there. I still love the company, still would endorse them, but I switched over to Infusionsoft. Which they do not offer an entry level product, um, unless the business is going really strong and really profitable.

Unless you have a strong eCommerce part of your business, I would probably say they’re not the best match for you yet. Yet. So where does this all go though? We now know how to cultivate a list. We now know how to organize that list. Well, the ability now is I can send specific targeted marketing messages to my potential clients.

Think about this. You called me up for overcoming a fear flying, and all of a sudden I’m sending you emails about how wonderful it is to quit smoking and just as fast as you possibly. You’re gonna scroll down, find that little change, email options button, and then unsubscribe for my list just as past as possible.

Again, I’m sending you non congruent messages by doing that. However, you’ve called me for a fear of flying, and now a couple of weeks later, you get a wonderful message from me with a great news story about people overcoming their fear of flying, and that just reminds you that, Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to do that.

And then you pick up the phone, call me and book your appoint. Fantastic, and the ability is to maintain contact simply at the click of a button. Really the value of a list, it’s the most important asset of any successful business. As you cultivate a list, keep them happy, you’re doing business with them.

It’s so much easier to do business with people who already know, like, and trust you than it is to work with people that are brand new. Those cold leads. . So to send a campaign out, to send an offer out to my past clients to market an upcoming hypnosis class to my past students, it’s the easiest conversion I can possibly do.

And again, there are some out there that say if you had a list of 10,000 people who are genuinely interested in your product or service and actually are now looking forward to your marketing messages, you could live off that for many, many years. Now, of course, as I reference different technologies, These are a good thing to trust, but again, back it up.

It’s the most valuable part of your business. Back it up, back it up, back it up. You get the point. So let’s set the stage for where this all can go. A client calls you because they have a specific fear, as we’ve referenced so far, and perhaps they’re not quite ready yet to engage in your service. okay with me.

And a few months later, here comes this movie star that’s in the news, talking about overcoming that same specific fear, maybe on the Tonight Show, the interview’s on YouTube. And she actually now talks about the fact that she went to a hypnotist to overcome that fear. And now you grab a link to that video, you broadcast to that list of people who have expressed an interest in using hypnosis to overcome a fear.

And then she calls you back and books you right away. What’s the alternative? She thought, she said no. And you never hear from that client ever again. And let’s look at it from her perspective, and now she’s going through life. She still has that fear. She hasn’t made the change yet that she absolutely can create.

So again, this is all very easy stuff. It sounds technical, but it’s actually quite simple. If you can open a website, if you can send an email, you can do everything that I’m talking about here. So let me give you some action steps for the next couple of days. . Hey, even the next couple of weeks, take a look at your content that you have right now, and perhaps there might be some things on your website that are up there, and maybe they could be on demand access items as opposed to, here’s this article, or here’s this video.

You know, a good example of this is on my training website, I offer a video test drive. Fill out this form and you can actually see some clips from the class. Now I can market specifically to those people who’ve expressed an interest in learning hypnosis. Wonderful. There are a bunch of videos on that page as there should be, but the really good stuff is the stuff that comes by email once they’ve opted into my list.

So again, I could have just put everything up there, but by people raising their hand metaphorically, of course, and saying, I’m interested sharing that email address. We’ve entered into a transaction, give me permission to send you content, and I’m gonna give you the value you’re looking for. And if you have any preconceived notions about, Oh, I get so much junk mail, I get so much spam, I’m never gonna do that to people.

I’m always sending value. I’m always sending content. And indeed, in my current systems, most of the emails I’m sending these days don’t even have an. And there, it’s just maintaining that relationship. Again, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, Get to tend to be a wonderful business. So look at the talks you’re giving.

Look at the way you’re interacting with your clients. Look at the way that perhaps you go out into the community and talk about hypnosis. How can you shift that goal towards building that list and then sharing valuable content with that list rather than call this number and pay me for the service.

That may work for you, but I’d share. I don’t work hard at all and this is the reason why, and I love to crack the jokes sometimes for a client and I’ll be very open about some of this stuff. Oh, I loved that video you sent me all about you doing hypnosis with your baby. And I’ll just smile and say, Yeah, I wrote that email four years ago, or with Thata three years ago.

Um, whatever that was. So set it and forget. It just tends to be just a wonderful business model. Thanks so much for joining me here on this program. Again, work smart hypnosis.com. Go over to that site, check it out. There’s some interesting offers that are there. So this is a 10 day business, uh, hip, 10 day hypnosis business challenge.

A wonderful opportunity to kind of. Revitalize and grow your business in 10 simple days, as well as just tips and tricks, tools and techniques. Hey, doesn’t that sound like a wonderful list building strategy? Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com. Please visit the work Smartt Hypnosis Podcast, listing on iTunes and share your positive feedback.