Content from “Can You Be A Hypnotist?” by Erika Flint

Set strict boundaries for your clients with high expectations. The boundaries and expectations keep our clients accountable and get better results.

Set strict boundaries and high expectations for your clients. The boundaries will help your clients be accountable. 

Don’t make adjustments to your calendar for your clients. Have them meet your availability. If you give in to their demands, they are now running the show, and everything you do with them will be harder. Remember, they’re coming to you for help. 

Help them first by setting expectations of when and where to meet and have strict appointment policies to keep them accountable. Having your clients show up to a session is a critical part of getting them the relief and results they desire.

STEVE’ S STORY: FROM TECH EXECUTIVE TO PROFESSIONAL HYPNOTIST WITH A THRIVING PRACTICE 

Steve had always been interested in healing, the mind, and alternative medicine. Eighteen years ago, while studying acupuncture and herbal medicine, he got lured away by the internet boom. He spent the better part of the last two decades building a great career in tech – but it wasn’t enough.

His  heart  needed  the  satisfaction  of  helping  people  in  a tangible way. After finding personal help with hypnosis, he  knew what he had to do. He took a leap of faith, got training and certification, and hasn’t looked back.

Steve followed a systematic approach in getting excellent training and certification to launch his hypnosis practice, and that’s the foundation of what made his business successful right away.

Within two weeks of graduating from the class, Steve had his entire business set up.

He rented an office, moved in the furniture he needed, bought a recliner, and had a website set up. The biggest puzzle piece for Steve was getting new clients. As soon as he figured that out and had people coming to his website, he started getting booked for consultations.

Steve said, “There’s nothing like having your first consultation scheduled for a Monday morning to motivate you over the weekend to finish getting your office set up. As soon as I had that first consult and signed that person as a client, I knew that everything was going to work. My training had prepared me to see real clients—and now I had proved to myself that they would come. I have never looked back!”

His mission is to help other people who are at that precipice of change in their own lives to realize that not only is it safe to jump – but that they can fly!

 LETTING CLIENTS RUN THEIR SESSIONS 

Don’t let your clients run the session. If our clients knew how to solve their own problems, they wouldn’t come to see us. So, it’s critical that you are in charge of your client session.

What does this really mean?

• Don’t allow your client to tell you what techniques they want you to use, or what to work on for that day.

• Don’t change your regular appointment time to accommodate their schedule.

• Don’t allow them to reschedule sessions outside a strict appointment policy (at least five business days). It’s not feasible for you to run a business where clients are rescheduling with less than a week to fill an appointment slot. As a rule, you will not be overfilling your appointment calendar similar to a typical doctor’s office. Don’t make your clients wait. Instead, each client should get your full attention for a full amount of time – at least 90 minutes. This gets our clients fantastic results! And to do that, their part is to show up at the scheduled time.

Don’t allow your client to tell you what to focus on for that day, or what technique to use in session. You are in charge. With a systematic approach, you will have a plan for the day. And depending on what your client reports in the pre-hypnosis interview, your plans may change. But they are your plans. Allowing your clients to depict what to focus on and what techniques to use is a big mistake that does not get our clients results. Keep in mind that our clients will often request to work on elements that may seem entirely valid. Yet what you’ll learn as you gain more experience, is that we’ll often desire to work on something that is not our primary issue, to protect ourselves. Don’t allow this to happen in your practice.

A common way this shows up in session is when clients ask to shift appointment times or reschedule their sessions. I highly recommend that you have a strict appointment policy and have set times and days that you work. If you adjust your schedule to meet your client’s needs, it does not help them.

For example, when I was a new hypnotist, I had a client who wanted to come in at eleven-thirty instead of my regular eleven a.m. appointment. Not realizing why it was essential to have them stick with my timeframe, I allowed this client to make adjustments to my schedule. I compromised and said it would be alright if they came in at eleven-thirty instead of eleven. When the day of the appointment arrived, the client showed up at twelve instead, and we only completed a partial session. On top of that, I didn’t get to work with a one p.m. client either, because I had agreed to adjust my schedule. In the end, instead of two full hypnosis sessions, I was only able to complete one partial session.

DAVID’ S STORY: AN EXECUTIVE COACH INCORPORATES HYPNOSIS FOR EVEN BETTER RESULTS 

David is an executive level coach – he coaches CEOs of major corporations. He’s excellent at what he does, and part of his process is always incorporating new methods to get even better results for his clients.

Once David incorporated hypnosis into his coaching practice, he realized he had the ability to show clients how to set high expectations and boundaries with themselves on purpose in order to reveal any lingering subconscious limiting beliefs. Here’s what he had to say about hypnosis:

“I’ve been an executive coach working with CEOs, C-level Executives, and Entrepreneurs for over fifteen years. A big part of effective coaching is helping the client identify and reframe limiting beliefs and blindspots. I also have observed a consistent pattern where intellectual solutions to problems do not always work. In those cases, the client creates an action plan, but then does not execute on it and sometimes works directly against it. Some call that self-sabotage, but I call it self-protection. I incorporated hypnosis into my practice for one simple reason -- efficiency and time to results. Conventional coaching often would take a very long time to surface the limiting beliefs and self-protective behaviors, and then the methods to change them were cognitive. I now use hypnosis as part of an integrated approach to ensure that the client’s internal subconscious mindset is very clear and that the change is enduring.”