Cal Banyan: Hello, everybody! Cal Banyan here. Cal Banyan's Hypnosis etc. Today we're going to talk about something that's vitally important to your practice. Something that can make your practice or break your practice. And this one's going to be about money. Money. Are you charging too much? Are you charging too little? Are you charging just right? I 'm going to talk about some important factors. Some of them may surprise you as to how to judge whether or not you're charging the right amount of money so that you can build your business and see all the clients that you want to see.
Once again, this is Cal Banyan. I am the developer of the 5-PATH® Hypnotherapy System. I'm the developer of 7th Path Self-Hypnosis®, the only "mind, body, spirit" self-hypnosis program. I am the author of a couple of books. And I am very happy to be both a regular hypnotherapist who sees clients every week and also one of my greatest joys is teaching, and I have my Week of Power Advanced Hypnotherapy Certification Course coming up in May. I also have our "Come Into the Profession" NGH Approved Banyan Hypnosis Certification Super Course, which is coming up in July and also in October.
And you know what? Let me get right into this. How much should you charge? And I'll tell you what. You might notice I'm cleaning my throat a little bit, I'm working, fighting through a cold because I want to get this hypnosis video out to you. So I'm a little bit off my game. I'm a little bit sniffly. People ask me, "Cal, why do you keep doing this?" I do this because I care. I care about you folks who really, in your heart, you want to be a hypnotist, you want to be a hypnotherapist. You want to be out there and help people through the use of hypnosis, hypnotherapy, self-hypnosis. I care about you, I care about the profession, so we just keep on going. I'm like the Timex watch of hypnosis, I take a lickin' and I keep on tickin'.
Let's get into how much money you should charge. I see this all the time and I've lightly talked about this topic once or twice on the podcast. But it just came up on one of our Yahoo! Groups, they're talking about it again. And one of the things we have to understand, that if you're doing this part-time, or you're doing this full-time, and we've had hypnotherapists at our center that are making $50,000 a year plus, part-time. We've also got graduates that are making even six figures in this profession. Now, if you're doing this high-quality work, if you're a confident, competent hypnotist, especially if you've gone through the trouble of going through advanced training, and you've been doing this for any significant period of time, if you're getting results, you deserve to make a good living. You should be making above average income. You should be making money that's on par with the other helping professionals, counselors, social workers, psychologists, even psychiatrists. I believe this from the very essence of my being. If you're being a professional, if you're helping people when everything else has failed, you see, that's our clientele.
Nobody, the first time they have a problem, goes to the hypnotist, unless their dad's a hypnotist or something like that. Most people, they've tried everything else. They've gone to the social worker, the counselor, the priest, the self-help book, the Tony Robbins program, whatever it is, the doctor, and if it didn't work, then they come and see the “witch†doctor. I mean, the hypnotherapist, right? We're never the first one, we are the last one that they want to see. So that when they do come see us, it's amazing that we get any results at all. And if you're a confident and competent hypnotist, you're a 5-PATHer, what's happening is you're getting results over and over and over again when everyone else has failed.
By golly, doesn't it make sense that you should make a good income? But, let's talk about money. The people in my profession, I love you. You are caring professionals. I'm a caring professional. You're a caring professional. You know, if all you cared about was money, I don't know, maybe you'd be a real estate agent or a lawyer or something else that you were thinking, "I could make a lot of money with it." But there was something in you that said, "I want to be a helping professional." And see, you folks, we're cut from the same cloth. The social worker, the counselor, we're not in it just for the money. And sometimes, we don't have a very good attitude about money.
One of my worst phrases, that I hate to hear is, people will say, "Oh, he was dirty, filthy rich." There's nothing that's so bad. The words you say in the privacy of your own mind are the most important and most powerful words you'll ever hear. You don't want to assign negativity to money. Money is not good and money is not bad. In and of itself, money, write this down, equals ability. Money equals ability. That's all it is. It's the ability to send your kids to college. It's the ability to go see the doctor when you need to. It's the ability to pay your rent or your house payment or your car payment. It's the ability to pay your bills. It's also the ability to give to political causes and spiritual causes or to invest and with other people, to do big things. Like to create books and all this kind of stuff, all right?
So let's talk about money. Money is ability. And assuming that you're a competent and confident hypnotist, you should be getting a reasonable amount of money for what you do. So what is that? Now, some people, they don't value what they do. When I first started in this profession, I charged $65 a session. And my sessions were about an hour and fifteen minutes, and my sessions are still an hour and fifteen minutes. But I charge a lot more than that now. I charge $375 per session, an hour and fifteen minutes. And the vast majority of my clients, when they come to visit me, they get double sessions. So it's two times $375. Double sessions, why? Because I can get twice as much stuff done. Now, I have another video that's on session management and how much time you should spend, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that. You can adjust your pay accordingly. If you do fifty-minute sessions, or one-hour sessions, or one and a half hour sessions.
How did I come to that $65 an hour price? I called around, found out what people were charging for sessions and I started there. But I didn't want to stay there. I knew that what I was doing was something very special. I was in the process of developing, and eventually, within the first year, year and a half of practice, developed 5-PATH® and I was getting these wonderful results. Better than anyone I knew in the profession. So I started teaching it to our hypnotherapists at the center, and eventually started teaching it to the world. So I wanted to start raising my prices. And you should start raising your prices if you're a confident and competent hypnosis professional.
Now men, I'm going to tell you something . If you're charging $65 a session, unless you live in a very very-- well, men and women, but I'm going to use an example I think that's going to get this through to men. Maybe to women, too. I'm not being sexist here, but I just have this example that I think is important, that for men, the light's just going to go on, okay? Maybe for women, too. And that is, about every six weeks or so, most ladies go to the beauty salon, or the hair cutting person, the hair parlor, whatever you call it, right? Guys, you know how much women pay every time they go? I mean, it's just a haircut, right? Maybe they get some dye, maybe they get some curls, but basically, they're maintaining their hair, right? I was amazed, depending on where they live, they're going to be paying $100 to $200 to even more, $300, every six weeks and it definitely doesn't last forever. Think about that. A $100, $200, maybe even $300 each trip to the beauty salon. Do you think what you're doing, that causes life-long change is worth $100, $200, maybe even $300 per visit? Of course it is! So let's start edging this up. We're not even counting nails and massage and pedicures and manicures and all that kind of stuff.
You've got to start thinking about how much people who provide personal services like this get. Let's say you're 40, 50, 60, 70 years old, you remember back to when stuff like that was cheap. And maybe back then, in the '60s and '70s you paid $10 or $20 for a haircut or a trip to the beauty salon. Or maybe $20 for a trip to the hypnotist. But things have changed. You, if you're a confident and competent hypnosis professional, you should be edging up. Don't you think what you do is equal to or greater value than a haircut? Or a perm? Or a hair color? Let's think about it. When we get a new hypnotist at our center, what we do is-- most of the people who take our courses are outside of the state, or outside of the country, they fly in. But when I'm teaching class, I'm always keeping an eye out to see if there's anyone local. Because when we have an opening at our center for a hypnotist, we hire our grads or we offer them a place at our center. And we actually have people go right out of our class, and the very next week start seeing clients. They're ready. They're confident, they're competent, after doing the course.
Now, what we do is, we don't start them as interns or beginners. They're confident and competent as soon as they get out of the course, and we will typically start them off at about $150, $160, $165 a session. And as they start building their clientele, then we start upping the price. Now, this pertains to you, because I ask you right now: whatever you're charging, how long have you been charging that? Maybe it's time to start raising the price.
Here's the deal. If your bookings, the hours you schedule for hypnosis, is 80% filled, you need to start raising your prices. If you're not $100 yet, you need to be $100. If you're not $150 yet, you need to do $150. Now, there's some other things that we need to take into consideration. If you're in New York City and you're renting an office, guess what? Y ou might start off at $300 a session. A nd that's going to be normal in New York City or Manhattan because the overhead is so high. But if you're in a more rural area of Texas or Arizona or Minnesota and you're working out of a nice professional office in your home, and you don't have the high overhead, then of course you're going to be able to charge less. But I'll tell you what. If I was in a small town in Minnesota or Mississippi or whatever, I'm going to still charge what I charge. Because if you do this work right, like I teach you every week in these podcasts, as I teach in my courses, people will fly past a hundred other hypnotists to get to you. Over and over, I teach you techniques on how to do that, how to be a confident, competent hypnotist that gets referrals. Once you work with someone, they tell their mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, boyfriend, girlfriend, and they will want to see you. So it's a balancing act, but the vast majority of hypnotists are not charging enough. You should be right up there, pushing the envelope of how much you charge.
Now at this time, I know that some of you are cringing. So inhumane. What if there are people out there that need help and can't afford your services? You can always discount on a case by case basis. Never do sessions for free if you can help it, because it's the worst thing you can do to the client. Clients only value what they put time, money and effort into. You always want to charge something. But it's a balancing act. Most people are not charging enough. You can always discount. For example, I don't do any discounting, but I would if I saw someone and I was very interested in their case. I go, "Wow, that's an interesting case. I really want to help that person." And they can't pay my full rate. I would discount. I would discount to whatever made sense for that individual to come see me and me knowing that they're invested enough in the process so that they value it and will do their homework and that kind of thing. So you can always, always discount.
One of the common discounts that we teach in class is selling packages. I won't go into a lot of detail about this, but one of the things we will do is, we will say, let's say, just for even numbers, that it was $100 a session, we tell people, "On average, most people it's five or six sessions to work through this issue that you have. What we'll do is, if you purchase a five-session package, we're going to give you 20% off of those packages. We're going to give you five sessions for the price of four." That usually seals the deal. I don't do that. I used to do that, I don't have to now. I have enough people willing to pay my full price and if they can't, I can discount. Or more likely, what I'm going to do is I'm going to refer them to one of our confident and competent hypnotists at our center. I've probably discounted one time for one person in the last seven years. How's that? And that was someone who was a military vet and I really wanted to help them, and so I had a discount.
Let's see if there's anything else on this list. Let's say your price is $200 a session and you want to discount for someone and you say, "You know, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to see you for $150 a session." Doesn't that put them in a state of gratitude and don't you think that as you start showing them results and you're doing it at a discounted price, that that gratitude is going to serve them well and serve you well as you continue to work with them and build your practice? For example, asking for, "Hey, do you mind giving me a testimonial about how well things have turned out for you?" You've given them the discount, you've given them great results and one day I'm going to do a podcast just on testimonials and how to do that because it is very, very important . A great way to continue to build your practice.
Okay. Let me wrap this up. You're probably not charging enough. You should probably increase. If you don't know if you're charging enough, start edging it up. Just start edging it up. If you're 80% full, start edging it up. Because there's this weird thing that can happen. As you increase your price, sometimes that will make you look better to your community, and potential clients than being the cheapest guy.
There are certain people out there, they go to a restaurant, they open the menu, and they just always order whatever the most expensive thing is. There are some people, they've got to have the most expensive car. They've got to have the most expensive camera. Whatever it is that's in the catalog or on the website, they just want the best. And one of the ways that they judge what's the best, is price. So sometimes increasing your price can actually cause you to become busier and to have more clientele. So start edging it up. Maybe it's just $10 a week or $20 a week. See what happens to your client load. Does it go up? Does it go down? Does it stay the same? What if you charge $50 more a session and it didn't affect your client load at all? What would that do for you? What if you charge $50 a session and your clientele increased? What would that do for your practice? And you know what, if you charged $50 a session and your practice went down a little bit, no problem. You can always go back to the original price and you can call that a "weekly special" or "discount" or do it on a case-by-case basis, as I said.
So don't get stuck in a rut, you deserve to get paid. You deserve to get paid well if you're a confident and competent hypnotist. And if you're not a confident and competent hypnotist, and you love this profession, and you love hypnosis, do what you need to do. Do your research. Of course, I recommend our Week of Power class. That's coming up on May 4, 2014. If you're watching this video at a different time, on calbanyan.com, we always have our schedule of upcoming classes. And then we have our NGH Approved Banyan Hypnosis Hypnotherapy Certification Course. This is for people who are just coming into the profession. It's a 10-day course, Monday through Friday, weekend off, and then Monday through Friday again. It's a very intense, very complete hypnosis course. When you get done, you're not done, you become part of our group, you become a 5-PATHer and we will have ongoing unsurpassed support after graduation.
And by the way, if you can't make it all the way to our center, you could look here on our website. We have information about taking the course online. Now if you like this program and you have friends or colleagues that are in this profession, please "like" and share us on Facebook. Twitter us and also Google+ us, or whatever the latest thing is in getting information out and sharing to your peeps. "Peeps", isn't that like something they said in 1990? That's it. Cal Banyan, signing off.
Copyright 2014 Calvin D. Banyan . All rights reserved.