I have been getting a lot of e-mails lately from Hypnotists asking me how business is going? Many Hypnotists are telling me that due to the financial situation here in the states business has been awful. They are telling me the number of clients are dropping and they are having to cut prices just to make it through these tough times. After I got a few e-mails like this I thought it might make for a interesting blog post.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell everyone that the financial situation going on in the world isn’t bad. Things have been rough and may continue to get worst. Luckily gas prices have been dropping, but I bet we’ll see a rise after the elections.

Everyone is feeling the hurt to some degree or another, but this doesn’t mean we can’t still make a living doing what we love to do. The truth of the matter is my business has actually been doing better than ever doing these tough times.

I think its because I see things in a different light. Maybe it’s because of my entrepreneur background, but when I see that times are rough I don’t think about slowing down I think about moving forward. Some of the most successful people are the ones who press forward during rough times. For example, real estate investors may have a hard time selling homes, but for investors buying homes and renting them long term this is a great time. Why? Because the housing market isn’t doing so well with all these foreclosures. Investors can come in and scoop them up for great below market rates. People who play the stock market right now can buy stocks they always wanted for cheap. My friend recently bought AIG when they almost bottomed out. He bought almost 3,500 shares and than sold them once they went up a few dollars. Now he won’t become a millionaire, but he just doubled or tripled his money.

My point is you can make money during bad times, but you have to know how to position yourself. This is one reason I always tell other hypnotists that they need to learn marketing. I’m not saying they need to go to college for it, but reading a few books on the subject can’t hurt either. Talk to other hypnotists who are doing well and you will pick up a thing or two. If you don’t know something seek out someone who does. Heck, we have the greatest database of knowledge available to us and it’s called the internet.

Hypnotism is just like any other profession in the sense that it takes marketing to make money. Some people call me a hypnotist, I call myself a full time marketer, part time hypnotist. I spend more time marketing my services and my consulting than I do in sessions. I believe in doing something called the 80/20 rule, which when learned can change your life and business FOREVER!

What is the 80/20 rule?

The principle was suggested by a guy named Joseph M. Juran and It was named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. He observed that 80% of income in Italy was received by 20% of the Italian population.

The cool think about the 80/20 rule is that you don’t have to be a economist or math wiz to understand this rule and it can be applied to almost any situation in life or business. The first time I read about this rule was when I picked up a copy of Living The 80/20 Way by Richard Kock. A management friend of mine recommended it to me so I picked it up.

Excellent book in my opinion and something I recommend all Hypnotists or marketer read. It basically discussed living life productively and to seek out the most satisfaction you can by focusing on whatever passions you may have. I can’t spend a whole lot of time on this rule, but the book I recommended is just one place to start.

So basically the rule can be broken down to mean that 20 percent of the things you do(activities) produce 80 percent of your outputs/results. There is more to this, but I want to keep this simple so I can stay on track here. For a quick example I use the 80/20 rule for many parts of my life. I usually apply it to my overall happiness and satisfication by making sure 20 percent of what I do leads to 80 percent of my happiness. Yes, you can apply this rule to your financial situation as well, but I like to focus on happiness because sometime money doesn’t bring this to you. Either way apply this rule to whatever parts of your life you deem fit. So let’s see how we can apply this to us as Hypnotists.

How Hypnotists tend to think

Most Hypnotist I know follow this rule, but they get it messed up. Many Hypnotist tend to spend 80% of their time to only get 20% of results and this just doesn’t make much sense to me. I like the idea of only spending 20% of my time which results in 80% of my outputs or outcomes. So if you want things to change you should start thinking of your marketing efforts in the manner of the 80/20 rule.

I promise you once you start thinking in this manner ideas and situations will start to present themselves in ways you never thought of. Just make sure whatever manner you choose to market only takes up 20% and you get back 80%. So I have to pose my early question how can we as hypnotist make money when times are hard? How can we use marketing to bring clients to us? Sp

Ways to Make Money when Times are Rough

One of the best forms of marketing ever is to combine your marketing with real life events. Let me repeat this so it gets into your brain. One of the best forms of marketing ever is to combine your marketing with real life events.

Okay, what do I mean when I say combine with real world events? As we all know right now the financial situation of our country is not the greatest right now. People are hurting for money, people are losing hope and the overall moral of most people has got down the toilet. Do you see where I’m going with this? Okay, let me explain if it’s not clear. Hypnotists are motivators, we are consultants, we help people get motivated, change habits, reach goals and help people with everyday problems.

Lets think about something we all learned in school, Supply and Demand. This is one of the key principals our system of economics is based on. The demand is that people need help during these rough times with things such as money habits, motivation, stress, sleep improvement, confidence and more. Who can supply the need for that demand. WE CAN!!

For example, right now I’m focusing on marketing for how to use self hypnosis/hypnosis to help and improve your financial situation. Now of course when they call me I explain what I mean by increasing financial situation. You can read my post about how hypnosis can help you with your financial situation if you want more information on how hypnosis can reach these results. Many people think I can magically wave a pocket watch over their face and make things better. You know, I wish I could because I could change the lives of a lot more people, but that isn’t how hypnosis works?

I explain to people how Hypnosis can help alter a persons financial habits. One of the biggest reasons for financial death is simply people have bad money habits. They learned it from someone and thus it became their reality. So I let people know how much would it be worth for you to learn how to mange money wisely. When gas is the price it is and things are the way they are people are jumping on the chance to learn how to improve their financial situation through hypnosis. Better financial habits means more money in the overall scheme of things.

You have to let people know you can help them or how will they know to see you? When you use events going on in the world you are connecting with your clients in a special way. You are positioning yourself as the person to go to if you need help with this problem.  You are the go to person. Have you ever noticed how certain TV shows like Law and Order and CSI take events right out of the newspaper and make stories out of them? Why do they do that? Because these stories seem familar to us, they strike a cord with us and we tend to watch those shows with a feeling of connection. So when you do your marketing strike a emotional connection with the people you are trying to reach.

A great example are TV ads for beer. If you think about it, most beer ads never even show you beer. Most of the time the ad has to deal with a pretty woman in a little bikini hanging all over the guy with beer in his hand. The beer companies are not selling you beer, they are selling you sex and sex strikes a emotional cord with people. Don’t believe me? I want you to go out and start up a conversation with someone you know and in the middle of the conversation find a way to bring up sex and watch their eyes. Just the mention of sex will cause most people’s eyes to dilate. Sex has been hardwired into our brains. Now, I’m not saying you should sell sex, but I wanted to get a point across. Find the emotion you need to connect with for your potential clients.

The great thing about combining real world events and situations with your hypnosis marketing is you can break it down to sub niches. These are catagories within the main one that you can market as well. Here are some examples:

• Stress Management (people are very stressed out right now)

• Weight Loss or Management (when people get stressed, people tend to eat to feel better)

• Motivation (we need motivation to move forward. We tend to lose track when things aren’t going our way.)

• Confidence, goals and the list goes on

What else can you do?

These are just some examples of how to use real life events to increase or market your business. Another thing to do is hold your services out as Consultants and offer stress management programs for companies.Think about this for a moment. A workshop will usually take anywhere from 30 min to 1 hour and at the end of that hour I receive upwards of $500 to $1000 depending on the company, the type of presentation and etc. I may only spend a hour of my time working on the material for that event. Now, lets say you charge $100 a session with a client and the typically session is a hour. It would take you seeing 5 or more clients and over 5 or 6 hours to make the amount of money you made for one event. T

his is a prime example of using the 80/20 rule. I have found that companies are dying for people like us to come in and motivate their employees. The key is just be creative and I promise you can find new ways to make money as hypnotists.

When I hear people say money can’t be made when times are rough I know they are coming from a limited mindset. As Hypnotists we should know that our potential is unlimited. Once again these are just a few ideas and a few thoughts, but I KNOW you can think of many ways to start bringing business in again.

Please make sure to also keep the 80/20 rule in mind when you do any type of marketing. It doesn’t matter if it’s word of mouth, business cards, flyers or whatever but make sure that rule applies. I hope this article has sparked something inside of you and would love to hear feedback from other hypnotist as well as how they are doing. Just remember when your not seeing clients start marketing. The best tool ever designed for marketing is your brain. Spent some time, think about it and the answers will come to you.

Joshua Houghton

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