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 etcetera on calbanyan.com. If you're watching this anywhere except calbanyan.com, go there right now because there's additional texts and links and graphics that make all these podcasts, like 400-plus podcasts, each with a nugget that can make your session better today, tomorrow, next week and improve your practice overall.
So, let's see, today we're going to talk about how do you stay successful in the long term? How do you stay successful when you get successful and stay successful, because right now, in March, I will have been in this profession for 19 years. So we talk about that, the beginning, the middle and maybe even some end play.
All right. Let me tell you about Erika. Erika's brilliant. One of the most brilliant things I did in the last year or so was to ask brilliant Erika to be on my podcast. She's got great topic ideas, she's a technical person by nature, very logical. I love that in a person. She comes from the world of software engineering problem solving. She just had that kind of technical background and then one day she goes, "You know what? I want to work on not just regular computers, I want to work on the greatest computer ever invented, the human mind."
So she went and got some local hypnosis training, it wasn't everything she needed, then she got her 5-PATH DVD set and things started happening for her. She had the confidence to work with clients, then she went to our live training and now she's actually become a trainer. By the time you watch this video, I think she's probably right in the middle of her first hypnosis certification course. How ya doing, Brenda? I mean not Brenda, Erika?
Erika: Hey, Cal, I'm doing great and you can confuse me with Brenda. Brenda's awesome so that's fine with me. That's a compliment.
Cal: You're both really brilliant.
Erika: I'm doing great, Cal. My class is coming up, I'm excited about it. Let me tell everybody about you. First of all, thanks for the great introduction. I just want to say that from my prospective for you to call me brilliant or say some of those those things, it just makes me feel great inside. Because you, Cal, you are my hypno hero. I look up to you. I've learned so much from you, so I just wanted to mention that. You're the real thing and that's what I really appreciate about you, Cal.
Now let me tell everybody who doesn't know as much about you. Cal is the hypnosis celebrity because of his fame in the profession and not just because of all of these great videos that he does week after week, around like 419 or something. He is the hypnosis celebrity and authority because he's achieved almost every single award in the profession.
He's also appeared on television and radio. He's authored of one of my very favorite books, "The Secret Language of Feelings," which I give to almost all my clients. And he's trained some of the best in the world. I really appreciate all of the great content that you put out, Cal. You put out wonderful, what I would consider high quality content all of the time. So when I get something from you, I know that I'm going to want to read it because I'm going to get something valuable out of it and that to me is very important. So thank you, Cal.
Cal: Awesome. Thank you, very much. You know the thing is, like myself and Erika, we could just sit and chat. In fact sometimes it takes us like 20 minutes of just chatting so we can settle down enough in excitement level to do these podcasts. Because we talk about the topics and we talk about what's going on in her practice or what I'm going to be doing and this stuff. I don't know how anyone could ever be bored if they're in this profession. There's never been a more exciting time than right now in the profession. Let's rock and roll, what you got for us?
Erika: Well, what I wanted to talk about, because I was looking at okay so it's the new year and let's talk about this January. What am I going to do this year and what things are my going to do. I opened a classroom last year and I created some materials, I created some products, okay, some CDs, what am I going to do this year and how can I stay successful year after year after year. Then I was thinking well Cal's been in the business for almost 18, 19 years. So I wanted to give a perspective from no matter what level or what stage of development you are at in this profession. There are things that you can do year after year to be successful. For me what does it take to be successful year after year? I have a lot of experience being in other professions as well. Okay, what does it take to set goals and reach them year after year and continue progressing in whatever profession that you're in.
One of the things that works for me really well, Cal, is I just have to continue to challenge myself and continue to grow. I can't ever just really be comfortable, right? That works really well for me. What is one your kind of leading principles I guess, Cal, in staying successful year after year after being 19 years in the business almost now?
Cal: Everything starts in the beginning, right? One of the things is you have to adopt kind of a successful personality and a growth hungry personality. I've talked about this in other podcasts. Gold in, gold out, garbage in garbage out. The whole world it seems like and particularly the business world, the world of marketing, Coca-Cola and McDonald's burgers whatever. They're out there, skin care treatments and hair shampoo, they're trying to distract you so that you'll pay attention to them, so you'll buy their stuff and they're really, really good at it. You can spend your time thinking about skin care and shampoo and hamburgers and Coca-Cola, or is Pepsi better or whatever or whatever this political person wants you to be thinking about, whatever news channel you listen to because they want viewers and they want consumers. Because it makes them money but the problem is, is it eats up your time and it also makes you feel insecure.
A lot of the marketing goes on out there is to make you feel insecure about yourself. May be your hair isn't the right color or may be your skin tone isn't even or whatever it is, so they create problems so that they can sell you solutions. There's a zillion different kinds of examples. Politicians and big business and even kids. There's two great books that I think really help shape my view point of self development and business. One was The E-Myth which really taught me about systems and why I developed 5-PATH and 7-PATH as systems of success for hypnotists. The other one is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The most important thing is that in that book it's discussed, this idea of these four quadrants and there are things that are important and things that are not important. There are things that are urgent and things that are not urgent. There's this magical box that people don't even seem to know about and that is not urgent but important. Not urgent but important.
Of course you have to take care of the stuff that's urgent and important, but you don't want to spend all your time there and you certainly don't want to spend time in not urgent not important or urgent not important. You want to be doing important things, the stuff that's urgent and important but of course you always do them because they are urgent and important. But the winning square, the difference between the people who live a life of growth and success and continuing to remain challenged and at the edge of the profession is the ones that are in that box that's labelled not urgent but important.
My prime example was I was just a regular hypnotist in this profession until the day I published a book. That book is well known in the profession now, Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy: Basic to Advanced Techniques for the Professional, co-authored with Jerry Kein. No one was saying Cal you've got to write a book, Cal you've got to write a book, Cal you've got to write a book. Nobody was doing that, didn't have a publisher doing that, my wife wasn't telling me that, nobody was telling me that. But I knew in my heart of hearts that that was an important thing for me to do and it had to be a good book. So I wrote that book and it put me into international and worldwide knowing. People started to know me along with my website, working with the National Guild of Hypnotists and it led to me writing the column that I've written, The National Guild of Hypnotists, since about 2001, so 13,14 years I've been writing that column.
So what is it in your life that's important that will make a big difference? What can you do today? What can you do this week? What can you do this month? That will have a maximum effect on your life and your business in a positive way, because if you don't look for it, you wouldn't know what's there. You know what all these other things in your life, these urgent and important and urgent and unimportant and not urgent and not important stuff will suck up your time and a year goes by and you're no further ahead than you were before. What do you think about that, Erika?
Erika: I love that, I love that book. I read that book many years ago, I've applied the principles time in time again. I can't tell you how important it is for me to prioritize what I need to get done. When you are doing things that are important and whether they're urgent or not but you're doing them because you know you need to, then you're building yourself. You are learning, you are growing and you are doing the things that you know you need to do. One of the things from my perspective because I wouldn't call myself a new professional in any sense of the terms so I know how to be in the professional sense writing e-mails and how to be successful, how to do stuff because of my previous experience. But I don't know two years in the business I look to people like you, Cal or Celeste, or other people in the business who have been doing this for a while and which brings me to another way that I talk about being successful and doing it year after year is you can model it.
If you are newer and you're not exactly sure, should I write a book, should I do a blog. Whatever you're thinking about maybe doing, if you don't really know exactly what to do, you find somebody who is successful, who you admire, who you look up to and you model their success and then that can get you excited about the work and that can help you learn and understand what you should be doing. What do you think about that, Cal?
Cal: I think that is such an example in my life. When I first got in I looked at who are the successful people? What are they doing? They were teaching, they were creating training materials, they were doing things like having groups on Yahoo and now I think Yahoo is becoming passe their group system. And we've created our own networking site, ourhypnospace.com that you heard about talked about many many times. No sense especially when you're just getting started of reinventing the wheel, because you just don't have the experience base to create something new from scratch with no input from anyone else. Find the models and then use what they're doing to help you do it. It makes sense that if you do what they're doing, you'll get what they're getting, so absolutely right, Erika.
Erika: Yeah, good. The other thing that I wrote down that I figured out that something that I kind of want to have this so you have this successful, you adopt successful kind of attitude. One kind of attitude that I've adopted is this idea of continuous improvement okay? I don't always have time to sit down with anything and say, "Okay, let's take a really close look at this and see how I can improve it." That would be nice but what works better for me is in the moment, as I'm doing something. For example, when I teach a class I'm always asking for feedback. But not just feedback from the students that are in the class. If I'm talking in the class and I realize you know that's not really how I want to say it or I thought of a better way that I can say that. I'm continuously improving the content and so that's an attitude of mine where I can constantly get better.
Everyday can be better than the next day, the content, me as a hypnotist I can get better, my skills can get better, my understanding can get deeper, the way that I communicate things can get better so I am on the look out for constantly improving. How about that?
Cal: Yeah, as you were talking about that, there's the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen which is this constant ongoing self improvement. Absolutely and where does that come from? One is from feedback, another is just pure inspiration. I'm a very spiritual person myself and just these idea sometimes come from I don't know how you guys each individual thinks about where inspiration comes from. It'll come from inside, it'll come from the subconscious mind, come from the superconscious mind, come from God him or herself. Because when you're doing good work and you have positive intent and you want to help people, you will be inspired in new ways of thinking and behaving and new opportunities will come to you to step up and grow. Right?
Erika: Absolutely. I like to think and when I learn this I realize if you get excited about something you have got to go for it because that excitement, that creative energy inside of you is golden, right. It's so valuable it's like pure energy. You've got to follow that. So any time you get excited about something, follow that and make sure that you are following up. It doesn't matter what it is, because as you were talking about earlier, Cal, there are so many ways to be a hypnotist. There are so many things that you can do. You can write a book, you can create educational content, you can model what other people are already doing to be successful and then once you feel good doing that you can do your own thing. So there's no limits, there's no rules, you can do basically whatever you want. So if get excited about something, you've got to follow it because that pure creative energy is just amazing.
Cal: Beautiful. Hey, as you're talking about this I'm also thinking about this gold in gold out idea and getting excited. What you need to do, the part where some people fall down is they're up and down, up and down, up and down. They get excited then they go look for stuff on the Internet or they get excited and they read an article or they get excited and they go buy a book whatever it is. Then they go into a lull afterwards. Gold in gold out. Do you want the gold to be coming in happenstance in varieties of periods of time now and then or constant?
One of the things that I've done through the last however long there's been podcasts, is I've found intelligent programs and I subscribe to them. This is totally important that you subscribe to them, you want them to show up in your e-mail box, you want them to show up on your phone, you want them to show up on your iPad or iPod or whatever you are doing so that you don't have to get excited and remember to go look for it. You want that goal to come all the time that's why we have these podcasts, both the video and the audio version of these videos also called podcasts, set up so that you can subscribe. I've said it many times, if you'd like to get a reminder that these podcasts are available each week, then all you've got to do is the send a blank e-mail to videos@calbanyan.com, videos@calbanyan.com or click on the link on this page to subscribe and it's easy to unsubscribe. Every announcement has a link to unsubscribe. But then you don't have to let your fortune be controlled by your mood of the day or whether or not you got destructed that day.
Every week this program can wind up on your e-mail box. And then also go to places like iTunes. Do a search for podcasts. The other thing that really keeps me going is I subscribe to these podcasts and when I'm exercising or doing other things, I can listen to these podcasts. I can do it when I'm getting ready in the morning or when I'm going on a drive. Not just this podcast, I mean podcasts in general, and I can learn about marketing, I can learn about leadership, I can learn about web design and these kinds of things. And listening to things that are not hypnosis, hypnosis, hypnosis allows us to find out what's going on in other professions. Those will inspire us to behave in a new more successful way in our profession. What do you think of that, Erika?
Erika: I love it that's great and it reminded me of the one last thing I wanted to mention before we end here is you've got to take action, right? Being successful isn't just about learning. I know a lot of people who if they could just take half the time that they spent learning new things and actually do something with it like taking a chance, taking the risk, turning it into something, they'd be a lot more successful. It's like the college student that never finishes college, they just stay at school the whole time. You've got to take what you learn, you've got to take some action, take a risk, do something with it and see how it pans out. What do you think about that, Cal?
Cal: Perfect you've got to take action. As we were talking about this, I have a secret to ensure that I take action and I teach at my classes, I mention it in my classes, I mention it on our support groups and that is accountability partners. I had a built-in accountability partner, her name is Maureen Banyan my wife. I would tell her what I'm going to do and then she would not let me forget that I said I was going to do that thing. In my mind that she's not the boss of me, an accountability are not the boss of you but there's something about human beings that we say, on such and such a date I'm going to do this or by such and such a date, I'm going to have this done and you can pick an accountability partner. They could be in this profession or they could just be a friend, or they could be a spouse, but it's really good if they're in the same profession and this is why.
Accountability partnering can do some fabulous stuff. Just real quick you set up like once a week or bimonthly or something like. You get together and say here's the challenges in my growth in the profession and this what I'm thinking about doing. And you guys can brainstorm ideas, and then you say okay, good, I'm going to do this and by such and such a date. Then at the next call, here's the magic, as that call gets closer, you feel the pressure to actually engage and do something. So you're much more likely to actually do it within a preplanned time frame. Then because this other accountability partner is in the profession, they're doing things too and then what you do is you share with each other what you learned about implementing and what you learned as you implemented and what you learned because you implemented and what your next logical step is. So this accountability partnering is huge.
The other thing I want to mention is you've got to go to the National Guild of Hypnotists convention. You've got to go because it will give you new ideas, it will keep you plugged in, Brenda's doing a talk, Erika, you may be doing more than one talk, I'm doing an hour long, a two hour long and then a two day long talk at the convention. Maureen is doing one also. So you get to meet these people and you find out they're just people like you. Doesn't matter if they're making $30,000 a year with hypnosis or $300,000 a year with hypnosis or half a million dollars a year with hypnosis. You rub shoulders with them and you figure out they're just human beings like you and it inspires you that you can do it too. There you go.
Erika: Thank you, Cal. I am inspired by some of the things that I learned from you today as usual, so thank you for those nuggets of information. That's it from me. Anything else that you wanted to add, Cal?
Cal: That's it.
Erika: All right. I'm Erika Flint thank you for joining me here today. You can find me at ericakflint.com or cascadehypnosiscenter.com or you can find me on our new ourhypnospace.com where I'm leading the marketing hypnosis group so I hope to see you there. Thanks for joining.
Cal: Thank you so much, Erika. You folks out there, we do it for you. Come to ourhypnospace.com, keep coming back to calbanyan.com, and I want to see you at the convention in August and most important of all, I want to see you in class. Got my class coming up February 23 to the 26th, weekend off. That's a 10-day certification course. It's the right thing to do for both people wanting to come into the profession and people wanting to step up in the profession. For you folks already in the profession, two weeks is too long and if you can until May, I have the week of power which is May 3 to the 19th. You'll get certified also in 5-PATH and 7-PATH in both classes. All right. That's it. Cal Banyan signing off.