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Adam Talks Hypnosis and Mental Health on the Superconscious University Podcast · The Hypnotist

• 0:05
  Welcome to the. Hypnotist, the show that gives
• 0:08
  you inside access to cutting edge hypnosis with real clients
• 0:12
  facing genuine issues. Brought to you by the
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  hypnotherapist. Demanded by celebrities, CEOs
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  and even royalty Adam Cox. These recordings took place live
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  from Evans Clinic. In London's world famous Harley
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  Street. So get yourself comfortable and
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  enjoy today's episode of the. Hypnotist Hi, it's Adam here.
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  And I was recently featured as a guest on the Super Conscious
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  University podcast hosted by a guy called Scott that I'd
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  recently met at the UK Hypnosis Conference.
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  And what I thought I would do is not only share you my copy of
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  the recording, but give you some of the links so that if you are
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  curious to learn more about Scott and his podcast, Super
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  Conscious University, then you can check out the links and his
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  YouTube channel and things like that.
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  So this is quite a long conversation, I think over 45
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  minutes of how I started in hypnosis, some of the blocks and
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  barriers that I had to overcome, what made the transition for me
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  from working NPR to actually becoming a no therapist, and
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  many other things as well. One of the more controversial
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  things is my approach to mental health and the medical metaphor
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  not always being empowering. So if you're interested in
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  hearing this conversation where rather than me being the host,
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  I'm the guest, then relax and just check this episode out.
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  Wonderful, Adam. So it's so good to finally have
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  you on. I've been aware of a lot of your
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  stuff for the last couple of years and I think we just almost
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  like caught each other like glances, eyes as we as we're
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  sort of moving past each other at the UK hypnosis conference.
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  So it's been lovely to be able to finally have a proper
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  conversation together. Yeah, looking forward to it.
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  Yeah, so the first thing that comes to mind, Adam, is
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  obviously sort of understanding about the work that you do.
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  How does a guy who refers to himself as a or, or used to
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  refer to himself as a socially anxious nerd end up becoming a
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  self millionaire at 27 and then goes on to become a
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  hypnotherapist for essentially the royal family?
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  That's, I'm sure a wonderful story.
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  And I know that you've you've touched on in some pieces and
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  other podcasts before, but it'd be great to be able to explore
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  that in a little bit more detail today if you're up for that.
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  Yeah, I mean, I, I would be surprised if the 1819 year old
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  version of me met who I am now. I think I, you know, it would be
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  because I'm very, very different.
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  Clearly I'm the same person, but you know, I'm very different now
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  than I was back then. So I was quite a shy,
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  introverted teenager. I consider myself smart but
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  equally terrified of failing. So I would always like do the
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  minimum level of kind of revision and, and kind of
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  coursework because in my mind, it was better to maintain this
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  identity or belief that I was smart than really study hard and
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  then get AB. It was better for me to kind of
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  do it at the last minute and, and do that.
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  So I had these kind of feelings of kind of fear of judgement,
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  fear of not being good enough. And there was a silver lining to
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  that because throughout my childhood, if you and I didn't
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  realize I had that belief, but you can kind of figure it out
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  retrospectively. But if you don't believe you're
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  good enough and you're not happy with that, you try and make
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  yourself better. So I did that through mainly
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  learning. I thought if I knew more than I
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  could kind of improve my ability.
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  I think I use the analogy that intelligence is like the
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  processor and what you learn is like apps.
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  So it kind of makes sense to kind of learn more things Then
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  you've got more, more capabilities.
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  So it came with that. And also I got quite into kind
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  of lifting weights when I was kind of like 1213 and, and that
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  kind of stuff. But at the core, I was still
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  this very insecure, very shy, introverted boy.
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  I went and studied psychology, left home at the age of 18 and
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  there was just a, a series of unfortunate events.
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  I chipped my tooth, which made me worry about people perceive
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  me in a certain way. The cold wind made my skin go
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  quite red, and I had kind of skin conditions and I didn't
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  want people to perceive me that way because that wasn't who I
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  thought I normally was. So I avoided people.
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  But if you avoid people in the first two or three months of
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  university, you don't really build the social networks.
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  So I became, you know, quite isolated, which heightened up my
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  social anxiety because I didn't really know people.
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  And then it kind of created this element of almost like a cycle
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  of kind of anxiety, despair, hopelessness until it reached
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  the point where I remember like go to the edge of, of, you know,
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  my, my kind of bedsit effectively had this window that
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  kind of went out onto a flat roof.
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  And I remember standing on that flat roof looking down at the
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  pavement, genuinely considering like diving head first into the
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  pavement because I couldn't see a viable future for me based on
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  how I was. And I think a lot of people
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  going through tough times fall into the trap of extrapolating
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  where they are now into their future and assuming that if
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  life's pretty shit now, it's going to be shit forever.
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  Without realizing that we've got the capacity to make changes and
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  we can change stuff in our present.
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  That absolutely alters the future.
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  And as hypnotherapist, we completely understand that.
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  That's why future pacing and pseudo orientation in time is so
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  important because if we do the right intervention, how they
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  think about their future changes.
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  I didn't know any of this stuff back then but the the thought
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  that popped into my head is what I genuinely considered ending it
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  all. It kind of became liberating
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  because I thought I've got nothing to lose now because
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  anything I try isn't going to be as as bad as not existing.
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  And and and there was two things.
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  One, creating two different timelines.
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  Timeline of the status quo. Like if I didn't change, life
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  would be pretty bleak. If you've got that level of
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  social anxiety and and kind of hopelessness and then this other
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  timeline of if I can get through this, then what else is possible
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  for me? So that was one element that
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  made the change. And the other thing was taking
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  full responsibility. Part of what was causing my
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  anxiety and kind of anger to some extent was having this list
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  going through my head of all the people that wronged me and all
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  the people that caused me to be in a shitty place.
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  But of course, blame takes the locus of control outside of you,
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  and there's not a lot that you can do.
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  So I had this kind of reckoning where I asked a really difficult
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  question and it was almost like this what you would call radical
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  personal responsibility. But what if I'm in a shitty
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  place because of how, how I think, what I believe, choices
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  that I've made, you know, things that I value and don't value.
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  What, what if I'm responsible for all of this?
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  It's almost like that scooby-doo meme where they, they take the
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  mask off. Like who's responsible for all
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  my problems? And it's, it's your own face.
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  So it was those two things and, and it liberated me to find a
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  solution. I didn't know what the solution
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  was, but I was studying psychology with severe social
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  anxiety. But luckily there was a 24 hour
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  library, so I was able to avoid people and still learn about
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  this. And what I was learning.
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  It was about all the therapeutic modalities, everything from kind
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  of behavioural psychology, psychoanalysis, you know it all.
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  But when I came across NLP and hypnosis, I became a Guinea pig
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  and I wanted to test what worked on me.
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  And, and I say this when I work with clients, like the evidence
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  of a good therapy session is not what happens in this session,
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  it's what happens in your real life.
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  So I started journaling and it's like, right, I want to work on
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  this thing and then see if it creates progress.
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  And, and it did in certain areas, like, OK, do the thing
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  that works the best. And I was able to go from a
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  suicidal, socially anxious recluse to the age of 19.
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  At 21. I, I just managed to get through
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  my degree at psychology, you know, you know, I didn't attend
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  the, the first year, but managed to get that with AA21, got a job
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  in a radio station selling. And I thought that actually, you
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  know, psychology I felt was a skill and I was interested in
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  the psychology of influence. So where do you best get to kind
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  of practice that skill of influence selling to other
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  people? So, you know, I got a job at a
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  radio station selling and then that led to a working in public
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  relations. At the age of 23, I set up a, my
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  own agency. By the age of 27, on paper, I
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  was a self-made millionaire. People that understand finance
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  will know that it's not as impressive as it sounds because
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  effectively what you have is total assets, less total
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  liabilities. I was a paper millionaire.
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  Didn't mean I had £1,000,000 in the bank or anything like that,
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  but my assets were, were worth that amount And, and for about,
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  I don't know, like 15 years, something like that.
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  Just focus on building that business.
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  The money I made from that business.
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  I, I bought properties and investments, but it was at the
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  age of 35 when I stumbled across this concept called Icky guy.
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  And I kind of thought, OK, I'm doing a right, you know, fairly
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  successful, you know, in, in certain areas, but not really
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  feeling that fulfilled. So at the age of 3435, I came
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  across this concept of, of icky guy and it was like the bit of
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  the four circle Venn diagram missing was fulfillment and
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  passion. And it was like, OK, what do I
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  think about even though I don't get paid for it and even if I
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  don't have to do it. And it was psychology and it was
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  hypnosis and it was, it was things about personal change.
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  And then literally the next day I signed up for a postgraduate
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  course in in clinical hypnotherapy.
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  And then that's how it started. What really got me high level
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  clients is that because I had a background in business running
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  my own agency, I was able to almost like miss out a few of
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  the steps. A lot of people learn
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  hypnotherapy, but they don't have the business and marketing
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  skills, which means they don't quite get enough clients to make
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  it work. Whereas I thought, what is the
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  pinnacle of hypnotherapy perceptual perception wise and
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  it was being a Harley Street hypnotherapist.
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  It's like, right, I'm going to start there.
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  Having APR agency helped because I was able to offer free
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  sessions to kind of reality TV stars and, and kind of former
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  pop stars and those kind of stuff and then turn that into
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  more media coverage. So I was able to get featured in
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  kind of radio, TV, glossy magazines, you know, and, and
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  when you've got an impressive client base, you have
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  credibility by association. When you have an impressive
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  address, you have credibility by association.
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  Again, it's all these tools of prestige.
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  And basically my theory back then was you can learn about
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  hypnotherapy and I clearly was fascinated by learning about
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  hypnotherapy, but I have this belief that you can't learn to
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  swim by reading a book. You've you've got to jump in the
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  pool. So my approach was, if I'm going
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  to be a good hypnotherapist and I wanted to be a good
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  hypnotherapist, I'm going to see lots and lots of clients and,
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  and do it a lot. And I had the ability to
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  generate lots of clients and then that that led on to the
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  journey. So you know, when, when you hear
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  these kind of like, it's almost like a before and after picture
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  with weight loss, it's like if you just jump to the extremes,
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  it kind of seems almost like too impressive.
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  But actually it was about personal responsibility and,
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  and, and kind of re evaluating the risk reward ratio of, well,
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  if you don't try stuff, you're guaranteed to kind of fail.
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  You might as well try stuff, learn stuff, get better.
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  And, and it was a series of that over a long period of time that
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  kind of got to me, got me to where I am now.
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  And and even then, I don't consider myself, you know,
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  successful because it's all comparative, you know, compared
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  to certain people, I would say I'm a resounding failure.
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  And to other people, they would say, Oh, you're an incredibly
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  successful person. Depends what perspective you
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  look at. And, and I'm unhappy with where
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  I've got to. I've still got big goals where I
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  want to get to, but but that's the, that's the journey.
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  It was going from very high levels of insecurity and low
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  self worth to actually thinking you know what, I'm going to
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  start believing myself and and acting as if I've got the
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  capability to learn stuff and get better.
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  Which then became a self fulfilling prophecy.
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  I I love that. And when you started to say
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  about almost like your hit list, like the enemy list of people
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  who you wanted to prove wrong, I genuinely thought you were going
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  to say that was the fuel that then drove you later on down the
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  line. But it sounds like there was a
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  lot of self reflection that happened before your business
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  success took off because normally the classic
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  entrepreneurial story is use what you've got.
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  And normally when we feel like we don't have anything, it's
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  let's use that anxiety or fiend of not enough to drive an
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  external success that then gives us the time and space to maybe
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  reflect internally. But it sounds like a lot of that
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  happened almost out of the traditional sequence for you is
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  that is that? Right.
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  Yeah, there was an element of personal responsibility where
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  where it was like, no, I've done this and it and it kind of
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  dawned. I think I had, I was fortunate
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  to have two insights that that turned out to be quite helpful.
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  Being 19 with what anyone would describe as generalized anxiety
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  disorder and depression. You know, they'll say, right, go
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  to a doctor, go to AGPI know for a fact that they would have
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  medicated me, you know, they would have put me on an
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  antidepressant, maybe beta blockers, SSRIs, you know, it
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  would have been kind of things that didn't actually to figure
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  out what was causing all this, but just kind of treated the,
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  the symptoms. And at that age, I was just
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  determined. It's like, no, there's nothing,
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  there's nothing wrong with me. It's just I'm creating this at
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  at some level. And then the extension of that
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  was what if I'm creating all of it?
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  That kind of radical personal responsibility to the extent
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  where everything was kind of like down to me and and clearly
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  that wasn't true. There were certain environmental
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  factors, genetic factors, you know, situational factors.
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  But when you take the view that because if you, if you, if you
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  look at these kind of victimhood mentality, it's everyone else's
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  fault but my own. And then that radical self, you
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  know, kind of personal responsibility and self
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  acceptance is no, nothing that anyone else has done has
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  anything to do. I control all of it.
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  Neither of those beliefs are actually true.
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  It is somewhere in the middle, but it's better to have this
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  kind of element of that. But there was some elements of,
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  I think I was driven by a polarity response because I
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  remember my, my mom and she was very frustrated because I was,
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  you know, not doing, you know, a lot, you know, I kind of
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  returned home in my second year of uni because, you know, there
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  was no point kind of living where I was.
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  It was, it wasn't a good situation.
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  And I remember, you know, she worked in radio and, and I was
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  asking her about her job and, and, and she was like, why are
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  you asking? It's like, no, I'm just curious
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  what you did. And and straight away she she
• 15:31
  said you could never do what I do and big.
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  Mistake. It, it, it was the best thing
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  she could have said because if she had that that kind of, let's
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  say, more nurturing kind of approach of you can do anything
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  that you want, which is the the kind of what parents should be
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  saying to kind of children. Actually, that almost gets
• 15:51
  rejected of. Yeah, But you would say that
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  because you might the fact that she said like, you don't have
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  what it takes to do what I do. That was almost like a red rag
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  to a ball. And it was kind of like, I'll
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  prove you wrong. And, and I, I had no interest
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  in, in issue worked in a radio station.
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  I had no interest in working a radio station and that kind of
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  stuff. But the fact that she said I
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  couldn't do it suddenly made it really kind of appealing.
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  And, and, and what was helpful for that is I was able to look
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  at sales as a psychological game.
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  So I read every book on sales, but there was a particular book
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  written by Richard Bandler and John Laval called Persuasion
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  Engineering. And it was effectively the how
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  to utilize principles of NLP and, and what Bandler then
• 16:30
  called design human engineering into influence within, within a
• 16:34
  sales. So there I was working in the
• 16:36
  sales job and it was like, I get to practice this stuff.
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  So when people go to like 2 day workshops, they get to like
• 16:43
  practice language patterns and the, you know, for a couple of
• 16:47
  hours and then the training's done.
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  But if you turn your work into kind of constant training, your,
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  your learning curve becomes exponential and, and, and then
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  you get to learn better. I didn't really want to be a
• 16:59
  radio sales Rep, but I wanted to get very good at learning some
• 17:05
  of the language elements and the rapport building.
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  And it was a car crash to begin with.
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  I remember the, the pacing and mirroring that I tried to do
• 17:12
  when I first got there. And, and one of the older, you
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  know, kind of people there was just like he was laughing at, he
• 17:18
  knew that, you know, he was scratching your chin when he was
• 17:21
  scratching it. And it was just because I hadn't
• 17:23
  refined the element of sensory acuity and, and, and kind of
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  rapport is not mimicry. It's it's kind of feeling in
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  alignment with someone. So it, it wasn't an easy ride,
• 17:32
  very straight to the imagination.
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  And, and there was still an element of wanting to few, you
• 17:37
  know, prove a few people wrong. But fundamentally, I think you
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  always do better if you're acting from a place of kind of
• 17:45
  growth and and progression rather than, you know, that kind
• 17:49
  of fuck you approach of right, I'll make you eat, eat your
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  words like you. You're never going to have the
• 17:55
  same level of congruency if you do it to to kind of get back at
• 17:58
  someone. What, what sort of year was
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  that? Because I, I remember even if we
• 18:04
  go back 20 years ago, there would have been this huge,
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  actually, even if we go back further, sort of 90s and 80s
• 18:09
  that big surgeons of like mirroring on steroids and people
• 18:13
  starting to feel back, Dude, what are we doing right here?
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  I'm not speaking to a real person.
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  I'm speaking to someone who's like, really like badly timed
• 18:22
  anchoring techniques touching the shoulder.
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  Or the funky, it's clumsy and, and I think, you know, I think a
• 18:28
  lot of people when they learn about NLP, it, it feels like
• 18:33
  wizardry and it's kind of like, right, I'm going to learn these
• 18:35
  techniques and I'm going to do NLP on you.
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  And, and, and I think when you run into those people every now
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  and like less so now, but it been in the past.
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  And then there would be certain kind of like embedded commands,
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  like clunky. And it's kind of, I know what
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  you're doing, you know, and it, and it's, it's horribly awkward,
• 18:55
  but, but it is that element I think of sometimes you got to do
• 18:58
  something badly before you get good.
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  And if you think of that levels of learning where you don't know
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  how bad you are and then you're kind of conscious of your
• 19:06
  incompetence and you kind of need that.
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  And I and I, you know, thinking about it's like it's only a
• 19:11
  problem if you stay at that level of awkward nurse and, and,
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  and kind of clunky language patterns and you meta model
• 19:19
  everything. But if you get beyond that and
• 19:20
  you're like, well, I'm going to use it when the context is
• 19:23
  relevant and useful for what I want to do.
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  Actually, it is really useful. And I think a lot of people look
• 19:29
  down at some of the early NLP, you know, kind of approaches,
• 19:32
  but structurally, you know, meta model clarity, you know, Milton
• 19:37
  model influence, you know, these are powerful principles and if
• 19:40
  you can utilize them well, they are like a superpower.
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  But I think a lot of people, they learn them badly.
• 19:46
  They don't ever get to unconscious competence in those
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  areas. And therefore they kind of
• 19:51
  crowbar them in almost like hand grenades.
• 19:53
  They kind of throw them into a a communication setting and they
• 19:56
  and they don't work out well. I think that there's.
• 20:01
  I don't know if it's a similar pattern for everyone, but there
• 20:04
  are certainly and you've touched on this really beautifully as
• 20:07
  well about there being no secret.
• 20:09
  It's just reps, right? And I and, and the way you're
• 20:12
  telling me about the kind of people who do it in a very
• 20:14
  clunky way, that's probably like I'd say before the 500 reps
• 20:20
  range where they're still so in their heads that we haven't
• 20:24
  allowed just to start feeling our way through it at that
• 20:27
  point. I still remember one of the
• 20:29
  best, best job. It was a horrendous job.
• 20:32
  One of the most powerful jobs ever had would have been Tele
• 20:34
  sales doing 400 connects a day and you'd go through the
• 20:38
  training and they did some really basic NLP and we're
• 20:41
  talking, it must be about 16-17 years ago.
• 20:45
  And I remember getting ready for that first call.
• 20:48
  OK, I'm going to do this. OK, I know the NRP things that
• 20:51
  they've been speaking about this before.
• 20:52
  I trained with band a couple of years after that and I got ready
• 20:55
  for that first call and the guy picked up, I said hello, is that
• 20:57
  Mister Wilson? And just straight away, oh fuck
• 21:01
  off mate. And suddenly, oh, sort of he
• 21:03
  broke my patterns and I said would you?
• 21:06
  And he said, listen, mate, if you call me again, stab you in
• 21:08
  the face. And I thought that I hadn't had
• 21:11
  a call like that ever since that in any context.
• 21:14
  But it was the ultimate pattern breaker where it was like, OK, I
• 21:16
  need to have like lots and lots of different reps before I
• 21:20
  should even think that I should have the right, like to assume
• 21:24
  that this could go well. But have I not done that?
• 21:27
  The 400 calls over and over again, even just something
• 21:30
  simple like rapport never would have made it onto the radar at
• 21:33
  an unconscious level, right? And dunno, we really appreciate
• 21:37
  you sharing the idea behind the reps there.
• 21:39
  And so we did some of those pieces.
• 21:42
  We then signed up to the hypnosis course because we
• 21:44
  started to realize this is what I would do even if frankly, I
• 21:47
  wasn't getting paid for it. And then you mentioned something
• 21:50
  else I really loved, which is about the importance of
• 21:52
  marketing. I feel like if you were to break
• 21:55
  hypnosis down into sub skills, hypnosis isn't 1 skill, right?
• 21:58
  It could be inductions, metaphors, deepeners, nested
• 22:02
  loops, you, you name it, we're going to pop it in there and
• 22:04
  suddenly you've got the illusion of hypnosis.
• 22:06
  But there's almost like 1/4 macro nutrient that most
• 22:09
  hypnotherapy schools, I don't think they teach very well,
• 22:11
  which is the marketing side. Because if we can't get a client
• 22:15
  in front of us in the 1st place, then we cannot get those reps to
• 22:18
  actually be a good hypnotherapist, no matter what
• 22:20
  training school we go to or no matter what certification.
• 22:24
  I'm wondering, was there anything specifically along the
• 22:26
  jet, along the hypnosis journey where you learned more about
• 22:29
  marketing? Or were you really just using
• 22:31
  the stuff that allowed you to become successful in the past
• 22:34
  and you leverage that to just take off?
• 22:37
  Yeah, I, I think my, my first thought when you said that was,
• 22:41
  it was a flashback of the final day of my postgraduate diploma.
• 22:46
  And at this point, I've done three years of studying clinical
• 22:49
  hypnotherapy and they said something like, you know, only
• 22:52
  3% of you in this room are going to be actually regularly working
• 22:57
  with, with clients. And they said part of that is
• 23:01
  that, you know, you won't be able to, to generate enough
• 23:05
  clients to make you sustain it. And I remember thinking, if they
• 23:10
  know that, and that's a real stat, why are they not selling a
• 23:14
  marketing course of, of how to get clients for hypnotherapists?
• 23:17
  They're just, people have invested like all that time, all
• 23:20
  that effort, they've done these dissertations, they've got the
• 23:22
  grade and they're like, yeah, you're not going to make it.
• 23:25
  And like that's coming from the, the people leading the course.
• 23:27
  There is a, a clear element of authority and a post hypnotic
• 23:32
  suggestion linked there. Like you're not going to make
• 23:33
  this. And I don't think it was
• 23:35
  designed as a polarity response either to kind of like fire them
• 23:38
  up to kind of do it. I think.
• 23:39
  I think you could just like see the, the, the, the optimism like
• 23:42
  dimmed down in the eyes of, of all these people.
• 23:46
  So one, I, I think the, the training courses should take
• 23:49
  more responsibility at managing expectation.
• 23:52
  I think there's some bait and switch sometimes where they're
• 23:55
  like, you can make 6 figures a year as a hypnotherapist and,
• 23:59
  you know, quit your job and just help people, right?
• 24:01
  That, that's quite attractive to people.
• 24:02
  But if you find out after that, yeah, you can do that and you
• 24:07
  and you can get, you know, 2, three, £400 and hours of
• 24:10
  hypnotherapist. But only once you've got a
• 24:13
  certain level of credibility, once you've got a certain
• 24:15
  reputation, once you've got a client base, once you've got
• 24:17
  some way of generating clients on a consistent basis.
• 24:21
  They don't tell you that. They say you can make this much
• 24:23
  money as a hypnotherapist. That is true, but it's not the
• 24:26
  full truth. My first experience of doing any
• 24:31
  kind of marketing for hypnotherapist.
• 24:33
  I I lived in a town called Luton.
• 24:36
  Horrible place. Hope.
• 24:37
  I hope no one from Luton's listening to this.
• 24:40
  What about? You said instead of me.
• 24:42
  Well, I lived there for seven years.
• 24:43
  I, I, I could, I could say it with authority, but I, I was, I
• 24:49
  had this little self-employed business where I was teaching
• 24:51
  people like people have satellite TV, but they couldn't
• 24:54
  get access all the channels. So I wrote this little guide,
• 24:56
  secrets of satellite TV and I was posting it through every
• 24:59
  letterbox of, of someone that had a satellite dish.
• 25:01
  And then this, this short stocky guy started running down the
• 25:05
  street in like a like a bath towel around his waist.
• 25:09
  What the fuck is happening here? Like this is odd.
• 25:11
  And it was a hypnotherapist based in Luton.
• 25:14
  And he was like, can you, can you deliver this?
• 25:17
  Can you show me his, his kind of flyer?
• 25:19
  And it's like, well, I'm, I'm putting stuff through
• 25:21
  letterboxes anyway. Yeah, of course I can.
• 25:24
  So I called him up and I said, like, I don't want money.
• 25:26
  I just want to shadow your hypnosis sessions.
• 25:29
  So, you know, there I was maybe the age like 2021 and it must
• 25:34
  have seen about 20 hypnosis sessions.
• 25:36
  And, and this guy at the time was quite, quite well regarded
• 25:40
  in a very kind of authoritative kind of style.
• 25:45
  But I saw some techniques there and, and it was useful.
• 25:48
  But I remember thinking like how he did it is, is an advert in
• 25:51
  the Yellow Pages, the occasional local newspaper ad and and he
• 25:55
  had these flies through the, the letter boxes.
• 25:58
  So that gave me a taste that, OK, you can generate clients
• 26:01
  just by doing that. And I, and I, and I thought of
• 26:05
  that and I remember printing off, you know, at the age of
• 26:08
  like 22 doing that. And then I changed direction and
• 26:12
  it's kind of like I had this idea of I need more life
• 26:15
  experience before I become this. And I just kind of really went
• 26:18
  into the, my own PR agency and start taking on staff and those
• 26:22
  kind of things. But when I came back to it,
• 26:25
  originally I was using Google ads and, and I, and I made a
• 26:29
  horrible mistake. I had weight loss clients and I
• 26:32
  was buying keywords on things like liposuction, bariatric
• 26:37
  surgery and I wasted like honestly 20,000 LB on, on just
• 26:40
  irrelevant keywords. They call it a stupidity tax and
• 26:44
  it, and it was like that you, you learn from that.
• 26:47
  And I started buying very specific keywords like hypnosis
• 26:51
  to lose weight, weight loss, hypnotherapy.
• 26:54
  And when they become targeted, I had a conversion rate.
• 26:57
  And then I, I rented out, I think it was a six hour block
• 27:01
  every Sunday morning in, in Harley Street.
• 27:04
  And it's like, well, I had that on a contract, so I didn't want
• 27:07
  to have it empty if I'm paying for it.
• 27:09
  So my goal was I need to get 4 clients every Sunday, every
• 27:13
  Sunday, like starting at 8, finishing at, I think it was 2
• 27:16
  that I was finishing at. And that gave me like a mini
• 27:19
  thing. So I did enough Google ads to
• 27:21
  get enough consultation calls, convert enough of those to
• 27:24
  clients. And, and, and that's where you
• 27:26
  get the reps when you've actually got the client in front
• 27:27
  of you. And I think for any
• 27:30
  hypnotherapist that's just starting, find a very, very
• 27:34
  specific niche, get very, very good at that.
• 27:36
  I chose weight loss to begin with.
• 27:38
  Every client was similar in the sense that they wanted to lose
• 27:42
  weight, they tried certain things they couldn't.
• 27:44
  They had beliefs of like learned helplessness.
• 27:47
  And then if you just specialize in a particular area, you almost
• 27:51
  come across a psychic to the person that is in front of you
• 27:54
  because you've seen enough people like them that you can
• 27:56
  kind of, you can say what they're thinking before they
• 27:59
  even say it. And then they're like, wow, this
• 28:01
  person, this person knows where I'm at, you know, and, and, and
• 28:04
  that element really helps to kind of establish credibility,
• 28:08
  build your confidence. And, and now the kind of
• 28:10
  hypnotherapy I do is very varied.
• 28:13
  It's almost like the beginning. Do you remember the, the TV
• 28:15
  show, a team where at the beginning they'd have some kind
• 28:19
  of mission? When I, when I do a consultation
• 28:21
  call now, because it comes from the podcast, it's, it's kind of
• 28:24
  like I've got this problem and it can go off in all different
• 28:27
  directions. It's like, OK, this is, this is
• 28:29
  the thing. And now it's incredibly varied.
• 28:31
  But for a while it was weight loss and it was phobias and the
• 28:34
  occasional kind of addiction. And, and, and what I found is
• 28:39
  initially paid for ads was my approach, plus PRPRS great for
• 28:43
  credibility and not so great for acquiring clients.
• 28:46
  The big change for me was when COVID came along, I, I decided
• 28:50
  to stop all my Google ads I get out of Harley Street and I
• 28:54
  started a podcast called The Hypnotist.
• 28:56
  And, and my approach was I want to have an outlet for my
• 29:01
  hypnosis. And I had no, no way of knowing
• 29:06
  that that little podcast that I started in March, when was that?
• 29:11
  20? What was COVID?
• 29:13
  2020-2021, 2020, yeah. 2020, yeah.
• 29:17
  And you know, I think it's approaching like 17,000,000
• 29:21
  streams and downloads now. But when I started that with
• 29:23
  just like me sharing my hypnosis, I had no idea that it
• 29:26
  would do that. So people will have their ideas.
• 29:31
  Like podcasting has worked for me, YouTube has worked for me.
• 29:34
  I know a couple of people. Howard Cooper uses Instagram and
• 29:40
  and TikTok. Lester Fu over in the States
• 29:44
  uses TikTok as a primary way of doing it.
• 29:47
  Everyone's got their opinions. You just got to find a way of
• 29:50
  generating awareness of you, what you do and a way of
• 29:54
  onboarding either clarity calls, consultation calls, and then
• 29:57
  they become clients. You just got to find something
• 30:00
  that works. You don't have to know
• 30:01
  everything. Just find one way of of kind of
• 30:04
  turning strangers into clients and and that's enough.
• 30:07
  Yeah, because I, I imagine that because you've moved more and
• 30:11
  correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like you've moved
• 30:13
  much more to a generalist hypnotherapist because frankly,
• 30:16
  you've built a platform where you can afford to do that.
• 30:18
  And say, if someone generally wants to get to their first five
• 30:20
  to 10K per month, very, very challenging to do as a general
• 30:24
  hypnotherapist starting off right, which is completely in
• 30:26
  line with the find a niche, create a great offer and make
• 30:29
  sure that messaging is, is, is like a perfect match.
• 30:33
  And so I understand that the way that you now get clients is
• 30:36
  going to be very, very unique and much more difficult to be
• 30:39
  able to mirror for other people going forward.
• 30:43
  Yeah, I mean, effectively now if someone, if someone did my
• 30:46
  approach, they would be inadvertently sending traffic to
• 30:50
  me because what what they would do is some let's I've I've got
• 30:54
  1900 episodes. So if someone did a hypnosis
• 30:57
  episode on Spotify, you would the the person listening would
• 31:01
  hear that one and then it would recommend my episodes next.
• 31:04
  But I've got more of a back catalog, so it would just
• 31:06
  generate. So I would say these windows
• 31:09
  open and they close like I was too late for YouTube.
• 31:13
  There are, I think some average hypnotherapist and they've got 2
• 31:18
  million subscribers and they've got like millions of views every
• 31:21
  time. And it's kind of like why first
• 31:24
  mover advantage? They, they, they built a
• 31:26
  presence on YouTube. I feel like I've got that on, on
• 31:29
  the, on the podcast. I don't have that on YouTube.
• 31:32
  Exactly the same content goes on YouTube and it gets a fraction
• 31:36
  of the, of the listeners on Spotify.
• 31:39
  Because there was quite a few hypnosis channels on YouTube and
• 31:43
  there wasn't like a, like a, like a really consistent
• 31:47
  actually doing hypnosis. Lots of training ones and kind
• 31:50
  of hypnotherapist interviewing other hypnotherapist, but there
• 31:53
  wasn't consistently like you can experience the hypnosis.
• 31:56
  So I got, I got lucky, I think, but part of getting lucky is
• 32:00
  trying stuff, trying stuff. And, and then every now and then
• 32:04
  you, you hit, you know, this kind of need that people don't
• 32:09
  know that they need in the way that they, that they, that they
• 32:12
  want it. And then you can, you can get
• 32:14
  lucky and, and I would say, you know, those people that were
• 32:19
  quick to move on TikTok, you know, 4-5 years ago, you know,
• 32:23
  some of them have got like half a million, million, you know,
• 32:25
  kind of followers. Great.
• 32:28
  And the good thing is, is there's always going to be new
• 32:29
  stuff. Like there was a time where, you
• 32:32
  know, Facebook, you could make a video would go viral.
• 32:35
  You can't do that now. It's almost impossible to get a
• 32:37
  viral video on, on Facebook. So I, I think again, it comes
• 32:41
  back to sensory acuity, you know, try stuff, see what works.
• 32:44
  And then once you find that thing that works, double down on
• 32:47
  that. It's still possible to do it
• 32:49
  with paid ads. You could definitely do it, but
• 32:53
  you, you have to make sure that the numbers work.
• 32:55
  If, if you're spending, you know, 100 lbs on, on an advert
• 33:00
  to get one client and then you charge £100 per session, the
• 33:03
  numbers don't make sense. You've got to, you've got to
• 33:05
  reverse engineer it and say, right, is the game even
• 33:09
  winnable? And then if it is, keep doing
• 33:11
  it. And when you get, you know, my,
• 33:14
  my approach to kind of pricing is you get these business
• 33:17
  coaches and they're like triple your prices.
• 33:19
  It's like with supply and demand, like if you triple your
• 33:22
  prices and you've got no clients, that's a bad idea.
• 33:24
  My approach is whenever I get to a certain level of busyness,
• 33:29
  increase my prices. And then what tends to happen is
• 33:31
  that the number of clients I work with dips temporarily, but
• 33:36
  the income remains the same. But I've now freed up more time
• 33:40
  to create more courses or do do more organic content and those
• 33:44
  kind of things. So my advice is don't just
• 33:47
  increase your prices, increase your prices at the point when
• 33:50
  you don't mind if you if they drop off a little, you know that
• 33:53
  that's the sweet spot, yeah. I think to jump on the back of
• 33:57
  that as well, what you've proven to everyone as well is
• 34:01
  consistency, right? 1900 episodes is just no joke.
• 34:04
  So to be able to find an outlet where you can like where you
• 34:07
  could consistently do that, because I'm guessing that you
• 34:10
  probably didn't see too much traction for the 1st 30 to 50
• 34:12
  episodes. Hardly any.
• 34:15
  And that was that was why it was important that that wasn't my
• 34:17
  motive. My motive to begin with was, you
• 34:21
  know, almost like when, when you hear stories of like, you know,
• 34:24
  Van Gogh, like he was trying to sell paintings he he needed to
• 34:28
  paint. And, and when I set up that
• 34:30
  podcast, like everyone had too much time on their hands, early
• 34:33
  days of COVID, because all the things you would normally do,
• 34:36
  like my, my gym was shut and there was all these things you
• 34:38
  just couldn't do. So it was an element of I wanted
• 34:41
  an outlet and I had a very low bar.
• 34:43
  My bar was, if I can positively impact one person as a result of
• 34:48
  what I put out there, then it's worth it.
• 34:51
  Client acquisition wasn't a thing.
• 34:53
  Rising numbers wasn't a thing. It was just just do it.
• 34:57
  And, and, and I do think when you do something publicly,
• 35:00
  you're holding yourself to a higher standard.
• 35:02
  If you, if I was just recording hypnosis sessions to myself in A
• 35:05
  room and playing them back, I don't think I would have
• 35:08
  unleashed the same level of resources of thinking no other
• 35:11
  hypnotherapists are going to hear my stuff right.
• 35:15
  And then that held me to a higher level.
• 35:18
  That definitely helped. But I remember on a recent talk
• 35:21
  I did about podcasting for therapists, I look back at the
• 35:25
  historical data and there was a day.
• 35:27
  So I, I launched it in March and there was a day in May.
• 35:30
  There was 0 downloads that day. And, and if I would have been,
• 35:34
  you know, driven by the numbers and the metrics, that would have
• 35:38
  been the day that I threw the towel in.
• 35:39
  And it's like, I can't, I can't justify this time to, to not
• 35:42
  have anyone listening. You know, why am I doing this?
• 35:45
  But because I didn't even pay attention to begin with.
• 35:48
  I just did it. And then I got lucky because I,
• 35:51
  I accidentally found a way of training the algorithm.
• 35:54
  So I did a hypnosis session based on the movie Limitless.
• 35:58
  And I did a Facebook post and I said, you know, if anyone's seen
• 36:01
  the movie Limitless, I've just created hypnosis session
• 36:03
  inspired by the movie. You know, if you, if you want to
• 36:06
  have a listen to the recording, let me know and I'll send it
• 36:08
  over. And what they thought they were
• 36:10
  getting was an MP3. What I was actually sending them
• 36:12
  is the link to the the podcast. And in doing so, I was training
• 36:16
  the algorithm. So then it's like, oh, people
• 36:19
  are watching this, I'm going to put this in front of more
• 36:21
  people. I had no idea I was doing that,
• 36:23
  but that's what was happening. And then that gets you this kind
• 36:27
  of launch velocity and then it takes on a life of its own.
• 36:30
  But most podcasts never get out of, of orbit and then they're
• 36:35
  stuck around this kind of 10/15/20 kind of views or
• 36:38
  downloads. And it's just, and then it gets
• 36:41
  to a point where it's like, what am I doing this for?
• 36:43
  People don't want it. But what they haven't figured
• 36:45
  out is they just needed the right catalyst to to get to that
• 36:49
  point where it becomes self-sustaining and, and, and
• 36:52
  most podcasts never get to that. I I think I heard something must
• 36:56
  be about a year ago, so I don't know if the stats still remains
• 36:59
  that to get into the top echelon of podcasts.
• 37:02
  Can you guess? I'd be curious to know.
• 37:03
  Can you guess how many episodes someone needs to do to become
• 37:07
  like the minority? Like within the 1% of podcasts,
• 37:10
  can you guess how many episodes what?
• 37:11
  Yeah, I've heard of that, that 80% of people quit before they
• 37:15
  get to episode 10. I think to get to the top 1%,
• 37:18
  I'd probably say it's low like 100 or 150 something like that
• 37:21
  it. Was episode 28 Wow, yeah.
• 37:26
  So so you're at the majority quit at 10 and then like the
• 37:29
  last stragglers get to like maybe episode 28, not seen that
• 37:33
  traction and and they stop there and then.
• 37:36
  But I would also say because there is there is this element
• 37:38
  of consistency, which I think is true, but there's also that that
• 37:42
  misattributed Einstein quote of the definition of insanity is
• 37:46
  doing the same thing and expecting different results.
• 37:48
  And and I think, yeah, it's stupid to give up after 9
• 37:51
  episodes. And it's also stupid to be doing
• 37:54
  1000 episodes if you haven't reached that launch velocity and
• 37:57
  you've actually got an ever increasing audience base.
• 38:00
  Like you want to have a stop loss.
• 38:02
  So you say, right, well, I've tried this thing based on one of
• 38:06
  my favorite phrase phrases is, is the juice worth the squeeze?
• 38:09
  Is the amount of effort I put in worth what comes out?
• 38:12
  And at that point, you know, maybe those people that quit at
• 38:17
  25 or 26 and never get to 28 and then the top 1% is because it
• 38:21
  just isn't the best use of their time.
• 38:23
  It and it isn't for everyone. And I think again, that's where,
• 38:28
  you know, people talk about motivation, all these kind of
• 38:30
  like, you know, kind of personal development.
• 38:32
  You need motivation, you need passion, but you also need
• 38:34
  things like discernment and self reflection and good decision
• 38:39
  making. And, and when you've got those
• 38:41
  resources, it's, you know, a great question to figure out and
• 38:45
  avoid the sunk cost fallacy is knowing what I now know, would I
• 38:48
  actually make this decision now? And if you've done 500 episodes
• 38:52
  and you're still getting like 30 people listening, you'd be like,
• 38:55
  well, know what I now know? Was it worth it to get to this
• 38:59
  point? Probably not.
• 38:59
  In which case, cut your losses and deploy the same energy in
• 39:03
  motion and and and time into something that could give you a
• 39:06
  better return on that, on that, on that energy.
• 39:10
  That makes sense. And I guess it all comes down to
• 39:12
  again, what, what problem are you trying to solve?
• 39:14
  Right. So with this podcast, for
• 39:16
  example, there is no way I'm going to make money from it
• 39:18
  because hypnotherapists as a niche, just speaking frankly
• 39:22
  isn't a very profitable niche. But because I've got a platform
• 39:25
  where it can get views, it just allows me to have really great
• 39:28
  conversations with people that I really want to have
• 39:29
  conversations with. So it's a wonderful way to
• 39:32
  network and have fun and I suppose have a feeling of
• 39:36
  community and growth from an industry that can feel quite
• 39:39
  lonely at times. It's a solitary, it's very
• 39:42
  solitary because you're, you're in a room either with someone,
• 39:47
  you know, kind of, you know, that that's going through some
• 39:49
  stuff or, you know, as I do it. And I don't know if you do it
• 39:53
  mainly on Zoom, but you know, someone on a on a screen.
• 39:56
  And I think that's why the conferences are so popular
• 39:58
  because you can actually kind of connect with other people that
• 40:00
  are just as crazy as we are. You know, they're spending a lot
• 40:02
  of time dealing with with people in.
• 40:06
  Dealing with difficult things, depending what the niche is, you
• 40:08
  know, it might be real severe trauma or anxiety or some pretty
• 40:11
  dark habits. And, you know, I'm, I'm sure
• 40:14
  you've worked with some clients that have gone through some
• 40:16
  really, really dark shit. And, and, you know, you need a
• 40:19
  certain element of, you know, feeling like, Oh, I'm not the
• 40:23
  only one doing this, you know, so that, that helps.
• 40:26
  My first podcast wasn't a hypnotist.
• 40:28
  It was a podcast called modern Mindset.
• 40:30
  And, and, and I kind of, I looked at it as, as you've just
• 40:36
  described it, it's an excellent reason to have conversations
• 40:41
  with really interesting people. Because when I framed it as like
• 40:44
  a, you know, A or B, like if I went up to someone, let's say an
• 40:50
  author of a book or someone you know, good in a particular area,
• 40:54
  and I said, you know, you seem like a really interesting
• 40:57
  person. Can I have a chat to you for,
• 41:00
  for half an hour? You'd be like, that's a bit
• 41:02
  weird, OK, but if you say I've got a podcast, I think you'd
• 41:06
  make an excellent guest. What's actually happening is
• 41:09
  you're having this half an hour, 45 minute conversation, but one
• 41:14
  gives you that kind of ability to to do that.
• 41:16
  And, and you know, what you're doing is you're playing to kind
• 41:19
  of an element of ego. You're playing to this element
• 41:22
  of collective community, you know, and I was lucky because
• 41:25
  before the podcast, I had a radio show for two years.
• 41:29
  So when people come into this kind of like studio environment,
• 41:33
  it kind of, it feels that. So that gave me a lot of
• 41:36
  confidence actually having conversations with very high up
• 41:40
  kind of people. It's like people are just people
• 41:43
  that you're just having a chat with another, another human.
• 41:46
  But I didn't really have that before.
• 41:50
  Yeah, it, it is fascinating. I think you've got to, you've
• 41:52
  just got to have a reason to do it.
• 41:55
  You know, if you're going to have a podcast, if you're going
• 41:57
  to have a YouTube channel, if you're going to have a TikTok
• 41:59
  channel, have a reason where it becomes a double bind.
• 42:02
  So whatever happens, you're winning.
• 42:04
  And, and what you've found is, is that kind of Buddha quote,
• 42:07
  which is, you know, if you enjoy your, if you, if you love what
• 42:11
  you do, you don't have to work a day in your life.
• 42:12
  Like if you, if you enjoy the podcast, then any upside is just
• 42:16
  icing on the cake. And a lot of people don't do
• 42:19
  that. They have strings attached.
• 42:21
  And it's more like if I don't get clients, if I don't get
• 42:24
  this, then I'm not going to do it.
• 42:26
  You take that energy to it. You know, it's going to be, it's
• 42:28
  going to be very difficult because people can kind of pick
• 42:30
  that up. When you do it, if you do it
• 42:32
  from a place of, you know, real fascination or curiosity or you
• 42:36
  know or whatever it is, people also pick up on that.
• 42:39
  Yeah, there's, there's, there's something that I heard literally
• 42:42
  this morning at the gym and I thought, OK, if for some reason
• 42:45
  the conversation goes near here, I've got to share.
• 42:47
  I've got to share it with someone because it was just
• 42:48
  wonderful where they spoke about when growing your business,
• 42:52
  growing a hip with every practice or growing anything.
• 42:55
  And people talk about North Star and this particular person says,
• 42:58
  I think it might be bullshit. I don't think we need One North
• 43:01
  Star. I think maybe we need 2 because
• 43:03
  if the North Star is getting clients, then naturally
• 43:07
  everything you're going to do is going to veer more towards, OK,
• 43:10
  buy my ship, buy my ship constantly, constantly.
• 43:12
  And at some point your followers are going to go down to 0,
• 43:16
  right? But if the metric or the North
• 43:17
  Star is I just need to grow my audience, well, the downstream
• 43:21
  effect of that is poverty, right?
• 43:22
  Because no one's actually going to start buying your stuff.
• 43:24
  You're just going to have an audience that grows.
• 43:27
  So they painted this wonderful metaphor of like a rowing boat
• 43:32
  that's got 2 oars. And it's really great to have
• 43:35
  two different oars, one that's maybe a quantitative like North
• 43:39
  Star for your practice or your business, and one's a
• 43:41
  qualitative 1. And as long as you just keep
• 43:44
  rowing on both of those, then you're going to get somewhere.
• 43:46
  It's going to feel like this as you're doing it.
• 43:48
  It's sort of moving from side to side.
• 43:49
  But I just thought that was a wonderful metaphor that I hadn't
• 43:51
  heard before, because I'd always heard the metric of the North
• 43:54
  Star, as opposed to two North Stars that allow you to get
• 43:57
  really the the most juice out of the lemon.
• 44:01
  Yeah, and I and I guess there's a couple of ways of looking at
• 44:03
  that one. One is kind of like, you know,
• 44:05
  it's the yin and the Yang. You need balance and, and, and
• 44:08
  that element. And the second is, but what if
• 44:10
  you make the North Star something that encapsulates
• 44:14
  building an audience and generating clients?
• 44:16
  To use your example, you know, if you call it, you know, I'm
• 44:20
  going to make X amount of money, that's one.
• 44:22
  And if it's this amount of reach, it's another.
• 44:24
  But what is, what if it's a phrase like impact, you know,
• 44:27
  I'm going to impact, you know, and I, and I, that was, that was
• 44:30
  one of my goals is that I wanted, you know, to impact a
• 44:34
  million people through my hypnosis.
• 44:36
  That could be clients that see me face to face.
• 44:39
  That could be people listen to my podcasts, my YouTube channel.
• 44:42
  And then it, it kind of felt like it encapsulated lots of
• 44:45
  different things. So I think one, it's about
• 44:48
  defining what you want to do and, and also does that thing
• 44:51
  genuinely make you feel excited about the idea?
• 44:56
  You know, for some people, the financial side is the thing, but
• 44:59
  I but I think if the primary goal is to extract value, people
• 45:04
  get a sense of that. And equally people don't like
• 45:07
  martyrs. It's like I do everything for
• 45:09
  everyone else and and I don't get anything for myself Equally
• 45:12
  that that that's quite an icky kind of thing as well.
• 45:14
  I think what most people like is this kind of win, win outcome
• 45:18
  where it's kind of like, I believe that if I do a really
• 45:21
  good job for my clients, I also benefit from that because I feel
• 45:24
  good and proud about what I do. The side effect, if in fact I'm
• 45:29
  really well for the client in front of me and then the
• 45:31
  hypnosis I record for that I publish and a few 1000 people
• 45:34
  hear that and one person really resonates with that.
• 45:38
  But then there's another thing. And I think when you look at how
• 45:40
  much value can you create in this kind of ripple effect,
• 45:43
  Well, that's helpful. My belief when it comes because
• 45:47
  I have a whole course called hypnotic wealth.
• 45:49
  My beliefs on wealth is that generally wealth is a, as a by
• 45:54
  product of either the value you create for the world or your
• 45:58
  ability to take good quality risks.
• 46:03
  And, and if you do both of those things, you become very, very
• 46:06
  wealthy. I think the mindset of a lot of
• 46:09
  people is the opposite of giving value is extracting value.
• 46:13
  What can I get? What's in it for me?
• 46:16
  And, and people pick up on that. And a lot of people don't take
• 46:19
  any risks. So if you don't take any risks
• 46:22
  and you're all about extracting value, very difficult to be
• 46:25
  successful in a business or successful in life because
• 46:28
  effectively, why would someone want to work with someone that's
• 46:30
  all taken, no give. But equally, if it's all give
• 46:34
  and you don't benefit from that, that also doesn't quite make
• 46:37
  sense as well. Like there's people that create
• 46:39
  value for the world and don't have any kind of tools to
• 46:41
  monetize or get some value. And it and it's a good, it's a
• 46:45
  balance. It really is a balance.
• 46:46
  You want, you want to make it good for the world and good for
• 46:49
  yourself. And then who loses?
• 46:51
  Like there's, and there's a lot of people afraid of success
• 46:54
  because it's like, I don't want to be greedy and I don't want to
• 46:56
  have too much. And there's poor people in the
• 46:58
  world. It's like you can't help poor
• 47:00
  people in the world if you're also poor, you know, But if you,
• 47:02
  if you become wealthy, you could be a philanthropist, you know,
• 47:05
  why not help other people? But you can't, you can't pour
• 47:09
  from an empty cup. You have to.
• 47:11
  You have to have it before you can give it.
• 47:13
  There's an element of like a game theory one O 1 there,
• 47:16
  doesn't there? Absolutely.
• 47:18
  And so if you can have a conversation with a room full
• 47:21
  of, let's say, hypnotherapists, and then we could throw coaches
• 47:23
  into the equation as well. And there was one big domino
• 47:29
  thing that you could say knowing you wouldn't hurt anyone's
• 47:33
  feelings. No one could be offended, but
• 47:35
  you just knew, gosh, it's the truth.
• 47:36
  And gosh, I hope this lands with them.
• 47:38
  What do you think that would be? I think we know what that thing
• 47:42
  is because when you see billionaires being interviewed,
• 47:47
  you know, there there's APR consequence from them ruffling
• 47:50
  feathers. So generally the, the thing that
• 47:52
  doesn't ruffle feathers and is quite positive and feels quite
• 47:57
  profound is follow your passion, follow your dreams.
• 48:00
  You know, generally that that's the thing.
• 48:03
  But I would say, and there is truth to that, like do the thing
• 48:07
  that is kind of important, but equally I, I don't think
• 48:12
  necessarily the goal is to, to not ruffle the feathers, you
• 48:17
  know, that wouldn't offend anyone.
• 48:19
  I think the key leverage point really is, you know, if I was to
• 48:23
  say something that definitely would ruffle a few feathers,
• 48:25
  which would be actually more useful than just like follow
• 48:28
  your dreams is, you know, break a few rules.
• 48:33
  Do, do things, do things differently, take some oversized
• 48:37
  risks that, you know, you, you could, you could end up losing
• 48:40
  everything, but you're going to learn a hell of a lot that I
• 48:44
  think would be more useful for the average person And just
• 48:46
  follow, follow your dreams because they've heard that
• 48:48
  before. People don't normally say, you
• 48:51
  know, it could go horribly wrong, but risk it anyway, you
• 48:54
  know, or break some rules. There's a lot of people.
• 48:57
  Oh, play it. And I remember this, this lady
• 48:59
  in my, my class in clinically hypnotherapy on I, I, I made a
• 49:04
  website and, and it said psychologist Adam Cox.
• 49:07
  And she said, you can't call yourself a psychologist because
• 49:12
  I've got a psychology degree. I know a lot about psychology.
• 49:14
  Why not? She's like, but you haven't gone
• 49:16
  through the British Psychological Association,
• 49:21
  British Psychological Society pathway.
• 49:23
  And you need to do this to call yourself a psychologist.
• 49:26
  And, and I remember thinking this is a rule follower and she
• 49:29
  is not going to do very well. And I remember thinking, you
• 49:33
  know, and, and I said to her, so if they've got a problem with
• 49:35
  it, they can, they can ask me to change it, But, but you can't,
• 49:38
  you're not allowed. It's like, all right, they,
• 49:40
  they, they can, they can, they can say, they can say I can't.
• 49:44
  Like, I would rather take a risk, you know, break a rule and
• 49:49
  then rein it in, then never do that.
• 49:52
  Because otherwise you're assuming you know what the
• 49:54
  boundaries of your capabilities and your limitations are.
• 49:57
  So in order to do that, you have to take oversized risks and you
• 50:01
  have to break a few rules. Otherwise, what if you're living
• 50:04
  in this simulation where you've assessed it wrong and your
• 50:07
  beliefs become the boundary of what you're doing rather than
• 50:10
  your capabilities? Because you've never, you've
• 50:12
  never taken that shot. So that that that is, I would
• 50:16
  say something that a lot of people like.
• 50:18
  I know it's totally wrong there, but I think I'm right.
• 50:21
  Yeah, and that's OK, right? It reminds me of Elon Musk.
• 50:26
  I think some students went to sort of go around the Tesla
• 50:28
  factory with him and they said, right, if you've got anything to
• 50:31
  to say to the future engineers, Elon, of people who want to be
• 50:34
  motivated to do this, he said, yeah, sure.
• 50:36
  And if you need motivation to do this, don't do it.
• 50:39
  And it's just this lovely thing where all these people thought
• 50:42
  they were going to hear these wonderful wise words.
• 50:43
  Same as someone like Seth Godin who's just people say, what
• 50:46
  would you do if you couldn't fail?
• 50:47
  He's like, that's a horrendous question.
• 50:49
  What would you do if you still knew you were going to fail and
• 50:52
  it completely just spun on its head?
• 50:53
  And I feel like there's the synergy with what you're saying
• 50:56
  there about just like, take some risks.
• 50:58
  So ask for forgiveness instead of permission to some extent.
• 51:01
  Oh, totally. Yeah.
• 51:03
  And and and don't be reckless. But equally, you know, I think
• 51:07
  good, good risks, you've weighed it up and the risk return ratio
• 51:12
  and, and the reason I became self-employed at at 23 is
• 51:15
  because if it goes horribly wrong at 23, I can get a job.
• 51:19
  But if it goes right, you know, then you can accumulate wealth
• 51:22
  and freedom very early on. And that gives you so much more
• 51:25
  flexibility as to what you do, the time to take risks when
• 51:28
  you've got less to lose. But it's counter intuitive.
• 51:31
  Most people don't quit their job and set up a business at the age
• 51:34
  of 23. That's the best time to do it.
• 51:37
  It's probably not the best time to do it when you've got no
• 51:39
  business experience, You're in your 40s, you've got big
• 51:43
  mortgage and, and kids. And it's like, right, I'm going
• 51:46
  to, I'm going to follow my dreams now.
• 51:48
  It's like, well, that could go horribly wrong and and affect
• 51:50
  more than just you. So it's like definitely take the
• 51:53
  risks, but you know, kind of mitigate the risks by making
• 51:57
  that kind of risk reward ratio kind of decisions where you want
• 52:00
  the big upside. And if it goes wrong, yeah, your
• 52:02
  ego's bruised a little bit, but you're probably wiser for it.
• 52:05
  Yeah, and better stories to tell, right?
• 52:07
  Of course. OK.
• 52:09
  And so just a very aware every time I want to make sure again,
• 52:11
  we squeeze as much juice from the lemon.
• 52:13
  And what do you think at the moment?
• 52:15
  Maybe in today's society, are the biggest mistakes that people
• 52:18
  are making with hypnosis or in therapy generally.
• 52:21
  If we park business to the side, Let's talk just about the
• 52:24
  therapeutic intervention itself. I would say that the there is
• 52:29
  this whole misconception like hypnosis is control.
• 52:31
  I think the most disempowering belief that people have about
• 52:33
  hypnosis is there is something that happens to them rather than
• 52:36
  with them. And, and, and I think with
• 52:39
  therapy, there is this kind of premise.
• 52:43
  Even now the people are broken or they need healing.
• 52:47
  There is this, there is this unconscious medical metaphor
• 52:52
  underlying therapy. It's like, you know, we need to
• 52:55
  talk about mental health. It's kind of like, well, what if
• 52:58
  health is the wrong model? What is the wrong paradigm for
• 53:02
  it? And I, and I really liked the
• 53:04
  early NLP days where it's like, OK, you're not broken.
• 53:07
  You've just learned a strategy that isn't useful what you're
• 53:10
  trying to do. I think learning as a metaphor
• 53:12
  and competency and strategies is a much more useful framework
• 53:17
  than health because it's like, well, I don't have good mental
• 53:21
  health. Like that's such a weird
• 53:23
  statement to even even say like it.
• 53:25
  It doesn't make sense. I have anxiety as if it's a
• 53:28
  physical object and you experience anxiety.
• 53:32
  So I think there's there's a paradigm that's very unhealthy
• 53:35
  and it's propagated by social media of influential people
• 53:39
  trying to get, you know, social credit and, and kind of
• 53:43
  posturing by, you know, I'm really depressed, but I'm going
• 53:46
  through it's like that's not helpful.
• 53:48
  You know what you know, and, and a lot of time it isn't true.
• 53:51
  So I think, you know, mainly the key thing is like, are we
• 53:55
  operating from the right paradigm and, and, and the right
• 53:58
  metaphor of, of what therapies for?
• 54:01
  And I think not, you know, I, I, I talk a lot about
• 54:05
  neuroplasticity with clients. It's like we put this neural
• 54:08
  pathway where you feel a certain way and you do this certain
• 54:10
  thing, but luckily there's trillions of neurons in your
• 54:13
  brain and we can create a new neural pathway that's way more
• 54:16
  empowering. How does that sound?
• 54:18
  Also, I don't have to talk about traumatic childhood.
• 54:20
  No, it's probably not best to even, you know, let's let's just
• 54:23
  focus on what we actually do want.
• 54:25
  Yeah. Fantastic.
• 54:27
  And do you think that many hypnotherapists are somehow
• 54:30
  bringing that into their practice as well?
• 54:32
  You can't not do that. I think whatever the belief
• 54:35
  system you have, you take with you.
• 54:40
  You know, belief systems are like the lens that you see the
• 54:42
  world. If you believe that and, and
• 54:45
  some of it is going to come down to motives, you know, if, if you
• 54:48
  are the archetype of a healer and you're, you're trying to
• 54:52
  kind of heal the sick, you're going to be using things like
• 54:55
  healing, you know, as, as the metaphor, you're going to see
• 54:58
  your clients as broken and sick. And that will come across in
• 55:03
  body language, facial expressions, tonality.
• 55:06
  You know, if, if you were to visiting a sick person, there's
• 55:09
  that kind of that facial expression, that posture, you
• 55:11
  know, I'm sure there's some therapists that look at their
• 55:13
  clients like that. And, and I don't, I don't look
• 55:16
  at a client, even if they've got, you know, deep addictions,
• 55:19
  even if horrible stuff, they're not broken, you know, they're
• 55:22
  not, they're not messed up, They're not, they're not sick.
• 55:26
  You know, it's just they, they're trying to cope with a
• 55:30
  situation that was unfavorable in the best way that they can.
• 55:33
  And what if they're not utilizing the best strategy to
• 55:36
  do that? In which case is there a
• 55:39
  different area of their life that they operate things in a
• 55:42
  different way? Maybe we can activate that
• 55:43
  normal pathway, map it across to this new context condition that
• 55:48
  in so it becomes the default. Maybe that's more helpful.
• 55:51
  But I don't look at my clients and, and sometimes want that.
• 55:54
  They want to feel that they're broken and actually what they
• 55:57
  want is sympathy and they want empathy.
• 55:59
  I'm not the right kind of therapist for those.
• 56:01
  I love it when they say I do this thing and I don't want to
• 56:04
  do this thing. Can you help?
• 56:05
  It's like, what do you want the new thing to be?
• 56:08
  You know, that's, that's great. But you know, I, I would be a
• 56:11
  frustrating therapist for the, for some of these clients that,
• 56:14
  that want sympathy and they want that kind of, you know, would
• 56:17
  you want a tissue like I don't, I don't have time for that.
• 56:20
  Like it's, you know, what changed should we make and and
• 56:23
  what's the best way of making it?
• 56:26
  Were were you ever like that? Because I think for the first
• 56:29
  three to four years, maybe maybe three years, I found myself, I
• 56:33
  think a, a lot of hypnotherapists find this when
• 56:35
  they first start that I was working with people trying to
• 56:38
  get them from zero to 1. And then I found out that it
• 56:40
  seemed to take just as much mental energy to take someone
• 56:43
  from 1 to 20 as it did from zero to 1.
• 56:45
  So did you ever like like go, go down that path and maybe make
• 56:50
  that mistake? Or did you, did you inherently
• 56:53
  always know, this is the style that I'm going to have.
• 56:55
  This is what I'm going to double down on when I'm working.
• 56:57
  I think. I think because I was so
• 57:00
  influenced by early Bandler and Grinder and, and that element of
• 57:06
  rejecting the medical model for, for me, that was my belief
• 57:10
  system. And so again, I act like that
• 57:12
  belief system is true. Now to someone else, they'd be
• 57:14
  horrified. And then but it is mental health
• 57:17
  and people are really struggling.
• 57:18
  It's like, yeah, they're struggling, but what if they're
• 57:20
  struggling because they've got an unconscious strategy that
• 57:22
  isn't conducive to the life they want to live?
• 57:25
  Doesn't mean that they're broken, doesn't mean that
• 57:27
  they're sick. You know, and I think, you know,
• 57:29
  a lot of this paradigm has been propagated by the Pharmaceutical
• 57:33
  industry because if someone is mentally ill, well then tablets
• 57:37
  is what you would do for a mental illness.
• 57:39
  Kind of makes sense. And there's a lot of money
• 57:41
  involved in that. It's not helpful for the
• 57:44
  Pharmaceutical industry to say that depression is just a
• 57:48
  particular thinking strategy, you know, that that gets them in
• 57:52
  a particular emotional state consistently because
• 57:55
  antidepressant probably wouldn't be the right way of dealing with
• 57:58
  that particular thing. And I'm not saying that there
• 58:00
  aren't certain things like I don't think hypnotherapy is the
• 58:04
  right thing to deal with schizophrenia, for example.
• 58:07
  Like there's certain things that you would find in the DSM 5
• 58:10
  that, you know, probably is more within the realm of, let's say,
• 58:16
  GPS and, and kind of, let's say psychiatrists.
• 58:21
  But equally, I wouldn't say a phobia is that I wouldn't say
• 58:24
  that feeling anxious in social situations is that I would, I
• 58:28
  would say like this is where we should be working with clients
• 58:32
  to, to kind of say, right. Where where did this come from?
• 58:35
  What would you prefer? And, and, and to do it in a more
• 58:38
  pragmatic way. Yeah.
• 58:41
  When it comes to things like anxiety, I'm sure you've seen
• 58:44
  hundreds of people who fall into that category, even generalize
• 58:47
  anxiety disorder. And do you talk to them about
• 58:51
  any physical aspects that can be contributing?
• 58:54
  Because I feel like there's more research coming out nowadays.
• 58:56
  There's so many environmental factors that can cause anxiety
• 58:59
  versus just very specific social situations.
• 59:02
  Sometimes it can be mercury poisoning from fillings that
• 59:06
  they had so amalgam filling. Sometimes it's just severe gut
• 59:08
  inflammation. Is that something that ever
• 59:10
  creeps its way into the sessions at all?
• 59:13
  I mean it, it can be because sometimes it's nutrition, you
• 59:16
  know, sometimes it's lack of lack of exercise.
• 59:18
  So you've, you've got to, you're going to be playing detective
• 59:20
  and, and figuring out like, because it isn't always a
• 59:23
  thought, it's not always a belief system or a coping
• 59:25
  strategy or a, or a thinking thing.
• 59:28
  You know, sometimes it might be behavioral.
• 59:31
  But again, I think a good therapist is asking the right
• 59:33
  questions to say like what would naturally have to happen for
• 59:37
  this to be happening in the way that it's happening.
• 59:43
  And then and then challenging that, you know, it's, it's, it's
• 59:45
  kind of looking at that. So quite often I'll, I'll have
• 59:48
  behavioral approaches, I'll say right between now and the next
• 59:51
  session, I need you to do these things.
• 59:53
  Because sometimes, you know, if it's, if it's all thinking about
• 59:57
  stuff, well, that's not the same as experiential.
• 1:00:00
  So you want the, the behavioral stuff in there as well.
• 1:00:02
  Yeah. And just before we begin
• 1:00:04
  wrapping up, Adam, I'm always curious.
• 1:00:06
  You mentioned something I might have been in a previous podcast.
• 1:00:08
  I mean, in my opinion, I think you share this, the perfect
• 1:00:11
  hypnosis experience is something like a spider phobia where at
• 1:00:15
  the end, you can give them a tarantula to hold.
• 1:00:17
  And suddenly you've closed that loop and there is some sort of
• 1:00:21
  genuine experience that allows them to cement the subconscious
• 1:00:24
  changes that have been made. What are the tips and tools
• 1:00:27
  would you recommend for people to be able to try and take that
• 1:00:30
  approach to their practice? Meaning when it comes to
• 1:00:32
  something like anxiety, that's much harder to test.
• 1:00:35
  Yes, someone can feel wonderful at the end of the session, but
• 1:00:38
  you could do that with any simple technique.
• 1:00:40
  What sort of things do you try to put in place in between
• 1:00:43
  sessions to allow them to ensure that the external reality
• 1:00:47
  matches the new internal reality?
• 1:00:49
  What when you've got to pace the experience of the clients, What
• 1:00:51
  would I say to clients is the, the evidence of good therapy
• 1:00:55
  sessions? What happens in your life?
• 1:00:57
  We're going to treat the time in between sessions as
• 1:00:59
  reconnaissance operating from that tenet of NLP that there's
• 1:01:03
  no failure or any feedback. You either win or you learn.
• 1:01:06
  We either figure out, yeah, we found the thing that's improved
• 1:01:09
  it or we've got really useful feedback to figure out what's
• 1:01:14
  the key area that we need to to work on.
• 1:01:17
  And, and, and sometimes I will, I'll give them little kind of
• 1:01:21
  challenges or, or kind of homework to do that.
• 1:01:25
  So if you've got, and, and I think too many hypnotherapists
• 1:01:27
  are scared of, of encouraging the client to test the work in,
• 1:01:32
  in case they, they fail. And there's, oh, it didn't work,
• 1:01:35
  you know, but, but a lot of what makes hypnotherapy work is the
• 1:01:38
  confidence. If you say, right, you know,
• 1:01:42
  we've done this, I want you to hang around the three or four
• 1:01:45
  people that would offer you cocaine and knowing that they
• 1:01:48
  will and feeling absolutely empowered that you're not going
• 1:01:51
  to take it. I want you to do that now, if
• 1:01:55
  they're like, well, I'm going to stay away from those people
• 1:01:57
  because if they do like that's already disempowering.
• 1:02:00
  So you can kind of you can give them the, the almost post
• 1:02:04
  hypnotic suggestions. And once they've done that once
• 1:02:06
  and they've they've turned that thing down or they've gone to a
• 1:02:08
  cake shop and they've walked out without buying it or whatever
• 1:02:11
  The thing is that kind of tests it, then they've got evidence,
• 1:02:15
  they've got a reference point for new belief that something
• 1:02:17
  has changed. So I would say therapists should
• 1:02:20
  actively encourage the clients to test it.
• 1:02:22
  And you can do that in the mind with future pacing, but why not
• 1:02:24
  do it in reality? Because if they do it and they
• 1:02:27
  set the intention, they're going to do that thing and they have
• 1:02:29
  the result, well, that's going to make them feel much more
• 1:02:32
  confident the next time they're in that situation.
• 1:02:35
  Adam, this has been so fun being able to talk today.
• 1:02:37
  Where can people find you? So the main way I would say, you
• 1:02:42
  know, as I've alluded to, I have this podcast called the
• 1:02:44
  hypnotist. It's on Amazon, Apple, Spotify,
• 1:02:48
  YouTube. So if you look for the hypnotist
• 1:02:51
  or Adam Cox the hypnotist, you'll find that I have a
• 1:02:54
  website, adamcox.co.uk and lots of free resources on there.
• 1:02:58
  But also the main thing is, is check out the podcast.
• 1:03:01
  You'll you'll hear more about what I do and there's loads of
• 1:03:03
  free stuff on every episode of the podcast.
• 1:03:05
  If you look in the description, there's like things like a free
• 1:03:07
  course, free downloads, things that people might find useful
• 1:03:11
  completely free so they can check that out.
• 1:03:13
  Perfect. And we can pop plenty of those
• 1:03:15
  links below here as well. So thank you, Adam, ever so much
• 1:03:18
  for coming off. Thank you so much for joining me
• 1:03:22
  on today's episode of The Hypnotist.
• 1:03:25
  If you've enjoyed this episode or got some value from it,
• 1:03:29
  please give it a five star rating and review.
• 1:03:32
  And maybe you know someone that would also benefit from this
• 1:03:36
  particular episode, in which case share the episode with them
• 1:03:40
  so they can also get the benefit too.
• 1:03:43
  And if you would like to listen to this episode where it's just
• 1:03:47
  the hypnosis, so no intro, no outro, no explanation, just the
• 1:03:52
  hypnosis and completely ad free, there will be a link in the
• 1:03:56
  description where you can subscribe at a very low cost and
• 1:04:00
  only get access to the hypnosis O if that's of interest, please
• 1:04:04
  check that out. Thank you again for being a
• 1:04:08
  regular listener of The Hypnotist and I'll see you again
• 1:04:11
  soon for more.