NOTE: This transcript has not yet been proofed read and may contain typos. It will be updated as soon as proof reading is complete.
Cal: Hello everybody. Cal Banyan here, Cal Banyan's Hypnosis, Etc., and I'm joined again with Erika Flint, and I tell you what, we should have heard about her before we connected today. She has just got all these ideas. She's so excited about the coming year. We're gonna cover some things in the next few episodes, like how do you really get this year off to a good start? And then, once you're rolling, how do you keep building in the profession? What's your career path look like? Teaching? We've just got a whole bunch of stuff lined up for you for the next 4 episodes. Now, this first one, we're going to be talking about really.. Wow, it's the new year. We've been talking about the new year. Now it is the new year. What few steps could you take right now to maximize this momentum into going into the new year? That's what we're going to be talking about. Sometimes we just go off in inspired directions from there.
Let me tell you about Erika Flint. Erika Flint has a practice in Bellingham, Washington. In fact, for a decade she was in the software industry. She was a professional problem solver. Then she decided she wanted to work on the greatest computer there is, the human mind. She went and got some local training. It didn't really give her everything she wanted to have but a truly successful business. She got a hold of my 5-PATH 2.0 video certification set, got that, got excited. Then she also went through live training, the Week of Power. Now, she's also a trainer and she's got an upcoming certification course. It's the exact same course I teach except she's going to be doing it there in Bellingham, Washington. If you're up there in that area, give her a call. How are you doing, Erika?
Erika: Hi, Cal! Thank you very much. I'm doing great. I'm really excited about the new certification class that starts this weekend actually, but before we get to our topic today, let me tell everybody about you, Cal. Cal Banyan is the hypnosis celebrity and not just because of all of these wonderful, free hypnosis training education videos. I think we're at 415 or something like that right now, but because he's won nearly every award in the hypnosis profession. He's written a book, one of my very favorite books, which is "The Secret Language of Feelings." He's also been on television. He's also been on radio talking about books, talking about hypnosis. He's still training. He's still teaching people. He's still doing these podcasts. He's trained some of the very best in the profession. I am very happy, Cal, that I found your 5-PATH 2.0 DVD set. It's changed the way that I work with clients. It's helped me feel confident seeing clients. I almost started almost two years ago but now I'm a trainer and it's just wonderful. I'm having the time of my life. I truly enjoy this work and I'm really happy to be here.
Cal: Awesome. As we were talking about before, you were certified and then you said, "I just don't really have what I need to really provide the service I wanted." Then you went through the training and I'm so grateful you did because you're brilliant. You're adding so much to this program. You're adding to ourhypnospace.com website (the network for professional hypnotists). Can you tell them like a 30 second blurb about your group on ourhypnospace.
Erika: Yeah, sure. So the group that I manage on ourhypnospace is called "Marketing Hypnosis." The whole point of the marketing hypnosis group is to bring in more hypnosis clients to your business. And we're sharing best practices. We're sharing what works. We are querying each other. It's just a very friendly, professional place for hypnotists to talk about how to bring in new hypnosis clients. It's just not about clients, it could be talking about new business in general.
Cal: There you go. For you folks, you guys also know Brenda. She's got the Hypnotist Lounge. I have a couple of groups. One is about speedy inductions. We have the Ask Cal group so you can send questions and topic ideas to be here on the show. Alright, let's get on with it. What do you have for me, Erika?
Erika: What I wanted to talk about is that it's the new year, and I've been thinking about what I'm doing this year. Everybody should do some planning. The topic of today is 2015, planning, yearly goals, trends of the year. One thing that I just wanted to kick this off with, just to get started, is that not everybody wants to do this type of work. I was thinking about it earlier today and I was like, 'You know, the way I actually sit down and make myself do this is I get excited about the end result.' We're all hypnotists here. We know how to do future progression. We know how to take ourself to the endpoint and say, "Okay, where do I want to be at the end of 2015?" What do I want to be sitting there saying, "I'm so glad I did this, and I grew in this way, and my bank account, and I saw this many clients" and all this sort of thing.
So if you're having any problems thinking about wanting to set goals for yourself or you're procrastinating, use your own hypnosis techniques to get yourself in the right state of mind to sit down and do this. It doesn't take long, but here's what I've come up with for myself. I think that a lot of this stuff is kind of general, so it can be helpful for you as well. The first thing that I have on my list of things to do is kind of more of a trend. We all have websites now, or at least you should. There's a couple of upcoming trends that you should be aware of. I am a very technical person. I was a software engineer for 10 years so this is something that kinda comes easy to me. I like it, I will be spending more and more time. I'm kind of on the edge here. You don't have to be on the edge of website trends here, just pay attention to some of the things that we'll be talking about here and you'll be just fine.
The first thing is mobile. There are more and more people connecting via their mobile device than ever before. As a matter of fact, Google predicts, Google search at least, there will be more traffic coming from the mobile device than ever before. So what does that mean? People are going to find you on their mobile device. So you need to make sure that your website is what's called responsive. That's kind of a key word there. Responsive design means your website looks good on a mobile device, looks good on a tablet, looks good on a desktop, and looks good on your laptop. That's the key word that you're looking for there. You also want to make sure that you're creating really good content.
Cal: Before you get into that next thing, I want to talk about that thing. We've got this mobile concept. Can you tell them, is yours set up for mobile?
Erika: Yes, mine is set up for mobile. My website is using a content management system called WordPress, you guys have probably heard of it. WordPress has a bunch of templates that are called responsive design. So as long as you are using a template with responsive design then you should be fine. But there's two really good things out there that you can check. One of them that I use, and we could probably add a link to this, is Google Webmaster Tools. There's a site called mobile-friendly. All you do is type your website address into this mobile-friendly thing from Google and it will tell you whether your site is mobile friendly or not. The other one is called Mobile Usability from Google. Same thing, you type it in there and it will give you a report basically of how friendly your website is on mobile devices.
Cal: I also want you to check out this website: Calbanyan.com on your phone and on your tablet. Also check out my big main website which is hypnosiscenter.com. Check it out on your phone. Check it out on your tablet. See how it changes. Get on your PC, or your Mac, or your laptop and change the size of the window or browser that you're looking at. Just make it narrower and narrower and you can watch it transform and see how the website changes when it's set up properly. And it is the hugest thing right now. I remember talking to a younger person. I said, "Email me," and she said, "Can't I just text you?" Because in the generation, these 25 and unders, or even 30s and unders, email is like writing a letter. It's very formal and it's almost passe. Now people are just sending these little chunks of information through texting and that kind of thing. We've got to change with the times. We can't just say, "Hey, I've got a PC," or "I've got my Mac, and I'm all set up." Excellent, continue.
Erika: Yeah, that's right, Cal. And that's kind of the point I wanted to make. You don't have to be a trendsetter. You don't have to be on the bleeding edge of everything but you do have to keep up with things or you're going to be left behind. When we're talking about viewing mobile websites on your mobile device, one other trend that you might have noticed already is that a lot of websites are creating really, really long webpages. Have you noticed that, Cal?
Cal: Oh sure.
Erika: The webpage never ends, it just keeps going.
Cal: Right. Just a one-page, like a landing page thing.
Erika: Right, just a one-page thing. Now the reason for that is because it is easier for mobile browsers to just scroll down than it is to click a link. When you think about a mobile device and somebody browsing your website on a mobile device, they'll click on a link and it takes them to a whole brand new page. It's a lot easier for them to just continue scrolling through it. When we're talking about creating really good content, some of these things where I think this comes into play is that as the IT industry and people that are helping build these templates and build this technology, as everybody else is moving toward mobile, if you don't move towards mobile everything is going to be designed for mobile. So you want to play catch up right now if you haven't done that by checking out those two sites that I told you to, to make sure your site looks good. Check out your own site and see what it looks like on a mobile device. I definitely highly recommend that as one of the things you should do this year for your website.
Cal: Awesome. I'm checking out all this stuff right here on my phone I've got it right here in front of me.
Erika: Alright, so the other thing I've got here on my list, Cal, is challenging yourself. Any time I am asked to do something, or I am aware of something, or I think, "oh that would be cool" and then it scares me a little bit, then I know that I need to do that, because I need to challenge myself and continue pushing myself. So that's something I do every year. I need to make sure that I am continuing to do that. If you stay still, there's a risk of standing still for too long because things are going to pass you by. You have to keep growing. You gotta keep pushing yourself. What do you think about that, Cal?
Cal: Absolutely. And as you're bringing up that excellent topic, I've got my Samsung Note 4 here and I'm checking out to see how our Hypnospace looks, and look at that! Man, it's all set up just right for mobile. You can go and scroll down through the recent messages and you can see the groups and stuff. It's just really cool so yeah, this mobile thing.
And challenging yourself. I call it stepping up. Stepping up to that next level. You've got to get that adrenaline running and saying, "What do I need to do to maybe write? What do I need to do to maybe speak? What do I need to be maybe become a trainer?" Get out of these comfort zones. Get away from the progressive relaxation induction and get into rapid induction and instant induction. All that other stuff is so... not last century, it's like 19th century stuff. Let's get into doing this high-tech, very efficient, very effective kind of work. What do you think about that, Erika?
Erika: Absolutely. We need to be doing...like I said, you don't need to be on the bleeding edge but you need to have modern hypnosis techniques. You need to be as efficient as possible. You need to get rid of things that aren't working in your practice. And you need to, which brings us to our next topic, you need to clean up. I personally am planning on going to my office and I am going to clean some things up. If I haven't used something in my office--I do this in my closet, by the way too, a lot of you guys do. If I haven't worn this in a year, it goes to Goodwill. I'm doing this in my office. If I haven't used something in a year, something sitting there I thought, 'Oh, this would be nice to have there' I'm going to clean it up. I'm going to lighten everything up. That's the next thing on my list. Clean things up. Same thing that goes with what you were just talking about, Cal. If you're using an old technique and it's not working or you're using an old technique and you know there's a better one, you've got to switch. You've got to be doing the more modern stuff.
Cal: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, we were talking about ourhypnospace.com, our networking site, one of the things I did was we moved from the regular version of our site into the 2.0 that we've got going for this year. I just went in and cleaned out a bunch of groups that just weren't getting a lot of usage. Just goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Let's make room for new ideas, fresh ideas, and greater participation. So there you go, you're absolutely right.
Erika: That's right, because it tends to clutter things up. Even if you're not using it and you're like, "Oh, I don't know if I'm going to need that or not." I'm not saying you have to throw something away. Get it out of your office. Clean it up. If you don't need it, then you can make a choice to get rid of it later, but really lightening the load and cleaning things up feels really good and it will make you more efficient, too. Which brings me to one of the next things that I'm doing, Cal. Streamlining business processes. There's a lot of business processes and things to do to keep the business running, but you can streamline them. One of the things that's I'm doing is I'm kind of going digital. Are you guys making a move in that direction yet, Cal?
Cal: I'm not sure what you mean. I think of myself as always moving towards digital. Tell me what you mean.
Erika: Yeah, I guess I should have explained that a little better. I am taking paperwork from my clients and I am scanning it in. I am doing all of my session notes digitally so I'm not writing it down on paper. I'm trying to lighten up the amount of paper in my office.
Cal: Yeah, I really don't feel a need to do that yet. Actually I'm still a little bit hesitant about having client files and stuff like that that might be accessible online. But, you're an IT professional and you've got all that stuff together for security and stuff. We still use paper files, and maybe next time. Maybe next year.
Erika: Yeah that's a good point, Cal, because you do need to make sure if you have digital content on your laptop, on your computer in your office or anything, you need to have an encrypted drive. You do. And if you're storing it in the cloud you can still encrypt that data. These are some of the things that for me are easy to take care of, but, certainly are something to consider. The same thing goes when you're having clients contribute or submit documents to you online. You have to be very careful with client confidentiality, privacy information, personally identifiable information, and confidentiality. So definitely take care of those things. We'll see how it goes, I mean this is a process going into something more digital. I'd say I'm about 50% paperless now. I don't know if that will be 100 and that's okay, but, if I could get rid of 50% of the files or paperwork in my office, I'll be happy.
Cal: Here's a good question for you. When you go into that level of digitization, backing up is so important. What kind of back up service, or how are you doing that?
Erika: I do it a couple of ways. It kind of gets technical. I have a rated drive at home, so it has two discs. So if one fails it will go over to another one. It's the 99.99%, they call it the "five nines" in the IT industry. 99.99% nothing will happen unless something burns down or blows up, let's just say. The other thing that I do use for some things..I use the cloud. I use Dropbox. Dropbox does a lot of backing up for me so I don't have to worry about that. But it really depends on what the content is and whether you want to trust an online service to take care of that information for you.
Cal: Okay, how's this for paranoid? All of our training materials are digital, all our originals from videos like this are digital. We've got giga-giga-gigabytes of information and so we have our server and then we have that backed up to a rade like you. Then I've got it backed up on the cloud and then I have it backed up to physical hard drives that I bring into the office, have backed up, and then I take them home with me. How's that sound for paranoid?
Erika: That's awesome. When you bring them home, if you put them in a fireproof safe, I'd say that's the best you can do.
Cal: Actually, I ride my motorcycle most of the time but once every 10 days or so I'll drive my truck. My truck has a case, like one of those Pelican cases with all the drives in it, and it stays in my truck. So even if my house burns down, I'm fine. If my truck burns down, I still have the server, the rade, and then the cloud, so I think I'm pretty safe.
Erika: That's right. Something catastrophic to the entire planet could potentially happen but it's not gonna matter anyway. You can only do so much but I like to have at least three places where it's backed up.
Cal: I've just thought of something. I've got to get rid of that Pelican case and I've got to put..I don't know, will an EMP ruin a hard drive?
Erika: Say that again? I didn't quite understand that.
Cal: An electromagnetic pulse that fries all the products.
Erika: Probably. I don't know how to answer that, Cal. You can try it out.
Cal: My offsite backup system used to be in a plastic case. I should put it in a metal case and then have it grounded, which is a Faraday cage, and then I am totally prepped. I will be the totally prepped hypnotist.
Erika: That's right. And it feels good, doesn't it, when you don't have to worry about that stuff anymore. It's backed up. And then of course you need to set your automatic backup schedule. Don't do this stuff by hand. Don't give yourself more work. You've got to automate some of these things there's great tools out there to help you back stuff up.
Cal: Cool. We're running out of time, you got anything else for this topic?
Erika: Yes, there is one other thing I want to talk about, which is just basically taking your goals you set up and putting them on your calendar. Some people call this timeboxing. I don't know if I like the word, but I do like the idea. I do this myself. I'll take my yearly goals that I've planned out and I'll say, "okay, in January here's what I'm going to do in January," and then I break it down further and I say, "ok, this week on Friday, I'm going to put on my calendar.... That's what time boxing means, you block it off on your calendar you don't just say a to-do list. 'Oh sometime this week I'm going to get this done.' No. You actually put it on your calendar and say, 'Okay, this Friday at 11 AM this is exactly what I'm doing. I'm writing a blog article, it's going to be posted on Tuesday.'
I recommend taking your goals, putting them on the calendar, doing timeboxing, giving yourself the time that you need in order to accomplish those goals. What do you think about that?
Cal: Awesome. I use my phone. I have a reminder system. Let me see if I can grab it real quick, I don't know if it has the name handy, scheduled reminders. I don't know, it's an app. Also, I use outlook everyday for my email and for my contacts and my calendar. They have a checklist function on there so I can schedule stuff. Before that I was using Infusionsoft and now I'm using the Outlook thing which is nice. It's got its limitations too because the description isn't as good as I want but I schedule it in my calendar. I use my tasks on Outlook and then I use the reminder thing. Nagging has it's function in life. I can do some self-nagging. The more I self-nag, the less Maureen has to nag me. I prefer self-nagging to Maureen-nagging.
Erika:That's good. It feels good to cross those things off your list, too. Having a digital to-do list it kind of flows over over the next day, if you don't get it done it's automatically there the next day. That is very nice and I have something like that as well.
Cal: Cool. So, what I want you to do is I want you to wrap it up. I want you to give them a little tiny teaser of what we're going to talk about in the next episode.
Erika: My name is Erika Flint and you can find me at cascadehypnosiscenter.com. You can find me at erikaflint.com. Next time, we're going to talk about the value of being a hypnosis educator in your community. It is not just about bringing in new students or new clients. There's a lot of value to you personally, as a professional hypnotist, to taking that step into being an educator in your community. I hope you see you online. I hope to see you at Ourhypnospace.com and Marketing hypnosis group, and Happy New Year, everybody.
Cal: Happy New Year, Erika. Hey, everybody, I want to tell you that we've got a training coming up and this week is going to be the last week for early registration. Nothing can beat our hypnosis training. 10 days of eat, sleep and poop hypnosis.
It's like a whole immersion program and it's not just hypnosis. It's about 5-PATH® and 7-PATH. Our schedule is always available on Calbanyan.com. If you're watching this 6 months later or a year later or 10 years later. This next one is February 23rd through March 6th with the weekend in the middle off. For you folks that are already certified, please come to our Week of Power May 3rd-May 9th. It's the same exact course but, it's squished down into 7 days because I have to spend a lot of time on the basics like I have to do in the 10-day course because our certification courses, be it the 10-day or the 7-day, are basic to advanced. The complete schameele, we don't hold anything back. Schameele is that a real word? I don't know. Anyway, that's it. I'll see you. I'm Cal Banyan, keep tuned in, let your friends know about it. Cal Banyan, signing off.