To follow on from the last blog and positive thinking and being confident with what you do: I remember when I first started working with clients, I had all this knowledge and I followed what I had been taught and I now know how lucky I was with the training I received.  We were taught a formula to follow which was great and it works.  Relaxation, investigation and confidence, sounds simple and it is. Be confident with what you have been taught and you will find that your clients do benefit the more confident you are the higher your success rate will be.  Have a look at   http://youtu.be/z_CB-6u9sqk  our minds and beliefs are so powerful.

Our inner dialogue or self-talk is hugely powerful and influences us in a powerful way, moment to moment.  The WAY we are talking to ourselves has more impact than the words we are listening too. Pay attention to and notice how you are feeling.  Notice your own internal dialogue find your own internal confidence and let it grow.  Believe you will be successful and you will.  Hypnotherapy is life changing if you are not confident book a one to one session with your trainer.

Testimonials or success stories are also something that you will need to ask for.  The truth is we are given testimonials all the time from our clients.  Simply when we ask, “how have you been this week”, your client will tell you and if you ask “is it okay if I use this on my website?” your client can either say yes or no.  Get in the habit of asking for a testimonial, if someone does not want you to use their name on your website they will let you know.  Let people know about your success.

Writing out how many clients you would like to work with every week is a good starting place.  Work out how much your room, advertising and website will be costing you approximately each week.  Remember when you are working for yourself that everything you do for your business is time.  You need to be receptionist, accountant, PR advisor, and marketing specialist.  All of these jobs need to be done; if you are doing, them yourself then you need to take this into account when you are working out your charges for your therapy.

One very important thing determines your success as a hypnotherapist. Confidence in yourself and your abilities, if you do not have confidence it can destroy the client’s belief in the therapy and you.

Once the client is in hypnosis, there needs to be complete rapport with you.  The heightened sensitivity enables the client to read you more easily.  It is highly likely that the client will pick on any ‘baggage’ that maybe there.  Be sure that you are confident in your ability to facilitate your therapy.

Training is so important, my hypnotherapist when they first start their practice have complete access to me.  I expect to receive regular contact with them to ensure they are confident with the whole process.

Once you have your action plan, write it down somewhere you can see it on a regular basis.  Mine is at the front of my diary every year.  What is interesting is when I look back I can see how my goals change.  Keep your goals in mind and remind yourself of them everyday use your affirmation regularly.  Believe in yourself.  What the mind can believe it can achieve.

Think about what you really want and go for it…

Networking is something I came across a couple of years ago.  I joined 4N, have a look at their site www.4networking.biz they have over 200 breakfast clubs across the UK there will be one in your area.

I remember my first meeting well it started at 8am! I did not know that so many people are up and moving around in their cars at that time in the morning.  I arrived at the Spinnaker at Fareham about 7.55am.  Had no idea what to expect as I walked into the room I was greeted with a very warm welcome.  I was introduced to several people and handed a coffee.  Next came breakfast we all queued up helped ourselves to eggs, bacon etc. Then we sat down to eat breakfast.  The group leader Ian Shooter informed us of the format for the meeting.  I met some really interesting people and felt really positive it was a lovely way to start the day.

Through the great people I met at 4N my business began to grow.  Networking is about marketing it’s about people knowing that you are there.  Knowing what you do.  4N is as it says ‘MEET, KNOW, LIKE and TRUST’.  If you go along to a meeting with the attitude that you are going to walk away with a full diary, then you are going to be disappointed.  You will need to be committed to the meetings getting to know the people.  The appointments will come.  There will be a lot of good advice.

If you are serious about running a successful hypnotherapy practice, RUN IT AS A BUSINESS! Master the skills of business marketing.  Networking is one way of marketing and from marketing your business clients will come.

INVEST IN YOUR BUSINESS & MARKETING SKILLS.

Many people become hypnotherapists because it is a vocation and they are very good at helping people, but neglect other skills that are equally as important if they are to succeed.  Marketing skills are most definitely worth investing time and money in.

The internet is a large part of promotion.  Believe it or not, some people do not have computers! Newspapers can be a good place to advertise.  You should check it out; see if you can have some editorial with your advert. Success stories are very popular, and a prospective client may be reading one of your success stories which can lead to them picking up the phone and calling you.  This leads me onto the next requirement, make sure you put your phone number clearly in the advert; I think a landline number is good if you have one.  Mobile numbers can put people off because of the cost of the call.  0845 numbers are not usually included in phone contracts. You would need to place more than one or two ads in the same paper.  It takes repetition and commitment for people to get used to you and feel confident.  Building brand awareness takes time and investment – it is a shame to pull out too early and not give advertising a chance.

From my experience sometimes I will have a lot of calls from my advert and another week none.  I regularly advertise with our local paper the, ‘News’ which is a very well read local paper.  I have had some clients who have cut out my advert six months previously and have kept it in their purse or wallet, meaning total.  It is a big step for some people to make an appointment with a hypnotherapist.  Be patient, it will come.

Be careful where you place your ads.  It is no use advertising in the classified section.  Go for the women’s page, editorial really helps.

Finally be aware of advertising in magazines or on TV at doctor surgeries.  I have not found any magazines to be too successful unless it includes a well written feature about your therapy.

Another thing you will need is a business card. www.vistaprint.co.uk does them for free! Really they do.  All you pay is postage.  When I first started I ordered my business cards via vista print and hey presto they turned up.  Eventually I upgraded them and I have now had my cards printed with a local printer.  Jolly Jim he calls me lovely Lorraine (I think Jim is being sarcastic).  Jim artyzan print

What is a business card?

• For your client to contact you.
• Hopefully to be kept in a safe place.
• To be given to prospective clients.

Keep it simple is my advice and Jims’.

• Make sure your name and contact number is clear.

That is it.  Hopefully you will now have a website, therapy room and business cards.

Now you will need a full diary.  You are running a business and your hypnotherapy business is no different to any other business its needs marketing, it needs time and effort next I am going to write about advertising.

There are several reasons why people train to become hypnotherapists: some to help friends and family, some to help themselves, others to work occasionally or on a part-time basis, and those who intend to make it their full-time career.

However, if you want make hypnotherapy your main business, then you MUST take it seriously with a business and mindset for success.  You must learn to market your business.

If you do not have either the time or patience to create, your web site and decide to employ a web designer to build one for you. This again can be a minefield as Pete and I found out we had a wonderful phone call from vertigo site solutions (who I am glad to report are no longer in business) promising us that they would build us a wonderful site and SEO it we would have an accounts manager regular phone calls etc….. None of this happened. Matt Milns however, I met through networking and liked him he built the site www.hampshirehypnotherapist.co.uk that we both still like. Matt is a genuine honest guy and whenever we need advice he is there for us he really seems to know his stuff www.websitesdesigned.co.uk and value for money.

We now have a second site built for us by Herb www.bobbingwide.co.uk the address is www.hsoh.co.uk again Herb has taken the time to get to know our business and what we need and I love the fact that he has kept the theme going. I decided to have two sites one is for our hypnotherapy and the other for the Hampshire School of Hypnotherapy.
From experience, you do not need to be top of Google. As hypnotherapists, you need your website to be top in your area, as people will need to travel to you. Listed below are some of the other things I feel are important:
• Talk to your website designer if you can meet with him. Build a rapport meet, know like and trust.
• Check about SEO this is important.
• Put pictures of yourself on your website.
• Telephone number should be clear and if possible a landline number.
• Be careful of using a 0845 number this will cost your client to call you.
• Have access to your website yourself to make changes.

When we first started as hypnotherapists’ I must admit the internet was something I had not really used. I knew that I had to have a website and I had no idea of how to go about it. I started asking friends for advice particularly the friends that were very into computers and IT. The confusing thing is that everyone’s advice was different and still is. In my opinion, the best thing to do is take everyone’s ideas keep the ideas you like and ignore the rest then DO SOMETHING. It does not matter what just do something. Fortunately, Pete likes doing things on the computer so for us it was simple. Pete would shut himself in the computer room and type away about all the wonderful things we learnt and all the wonderful techniques we know to help clients with giving up smoking, losing weight, fears phobias, anxiety, depression and as you know as hypnotherapists the list goes on. Now we needed some help in getting the website online a friend of a friend offered to do it for us at a small cost and so the first website www.hypnotherapyandtrainingthenaturalway.co.uk was born (WOW what a long name) we still have that name today along with others. The first website I think was good it did quite well for us and Pete was proud of our logo he designed it.

Now with the web so much more advanced it is much cheaper and easier to put up a web site, but of course, you will have all that advice to get through. All the should and should not’s. My advice is just do it; you can do it free. Whilst at a hypnosis conference this year I attended a talk by Jo Dodd’s www.jododdssocialmedia.com and there is lots of free advice on how to build your own web site. Jo specialises in social media and her site has lots of useful information. Go on have ago, one of the things is to start no one will read it, it takes time for your site to be recognised by Google You can make mistakes move things around see what you like and before you know it, you are on the net how cool. Then will come your first inquiry and that feels good an email from a prospective client.

Once you have your diploma, it does not guarantee success. I have now been working as a hypnotherapist for 8 years. I now train hypnotherapist one of the things that I learnt is that marketing is a skill and most of you lovely kind caring therapist are not particularly good at selling your therapy. Therefore, I am going to blog about how I advertise and let people know what I do how to find me, hypnotherapy can help people with so many things. I hope that this will be useful and help some of you to get going.
Back in 2004, I had my diploma and I was lucky enough to have a coffee shop the Magick Bean in Albert Road. We built a little room in the corner bought a comfortable chair and put a sign up in the window that I was doing hypnotherapy. As I had not worked with anyone except friends and family, I was, very careful at wording the sign I said it was an introductory offer, which I think is good because I was introducing myself into the area I charged £25 per session and every six months increased my price by £5. It was great I had many clients and got lots of practice, which is what I really needed. When you are first starting out the key is practice and if you price yourself accordingly the client will come. My advice would be look around in your area and see how much hypnotherapist are charging the average price when I started was £40. When you first start, you will also take more sessions as you are new at this so charging less for your services is fair to you and your client.
You will of course need somewhere to work from when first starting out in my opinion there is no need to go the expense of renting a room you can make a therapy room in your home very professional and welcoming. This will allow you to spend your money on advertising. Being a hypnotherapist is a business and as with every business, you need to spend money marketing yourself. You have heard the saying money goes to money, well you need to invest in your own business, people need to know that you are there and you can help them. Just putting up a website will not guarantee clients; they need to find your website. So once you have your room and your price where do you go from there?

Part 1 Training as a Hypnotherapist

Hypnotherapy training is so confusing.  All institutes feel that their training for hypnotherapist is the best.  The difficulty is knowing which really is the right training for us?

• How do you know what you want?

• What laws are there governing hypnotherapy?

• What are all these letters after peoples names? Dip… psy…int……?

• What is Clincal Hypnosis? CPD? NLP? IMR? and the list goes on

When starting out on your training it might be an idea to work out what you want, how far do you want to travel?  How small is the class.  It is important to have small numbers as training is usually very intense and you need to have the time with your tutor to ask questions.  I would also advise anyone who is considering training to:

• Meet the tutor before training to discuss the following.

• Find out whether you are obliged to do CPD (continual professional devolopment) with their institute (which will limit you in the future as to where you go as a hypnotherapist) and if you are obliged to do the CPD with them how much will this cost you each year?  Training days usually cost about £100 per day this can vary.  Take into account that you will have to find this money on top of your training.  What would happen if you did CPD elsewhere?

• Find out what  back up do you have from the school and how long for?

• Find out whether there is an exam?

• Find out if  there is  both theory and practical on the course?

• Find out what  experience your tutor has?

It is a great job and I really enjoy my work.

I was asked if the Hypno-Band was just  for women. Well No… it is for men too.

One of my colleaues  worked with this guy in  Stoke -on-Trent.  With his permission I have posted it here.

As you can see  there are also other benefits of using this method to lose weight….

Not only has Steve lost weight but he has managed to improve his health and reduced his blood pressure, reduced his cholesterol,and his diabetes is now under control with my help.

Diabetes medication stopped Blood readings have come down from average
8s to 10s now 4.5 average
Heart burn and acid build up medication stopped
Blood pressure as come down from 145/85 to 119/76 from
Cholesterol was 4.5 and is now 3.1

his before and after pics are just amazing and he is so happy

Posted with kind permission of Dez Sellars                                          www.dezsellars.com

http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/news

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