INTRODUCTION

 

Hanna Hasl-Kelchner: [00:00:00] Ethical influence in business negotiations, at first blush, sounds like an excuse to pull a fast one, but let’s not forget we’re talking about ethical influence. It’s a fancy phrase for persuasion. Now, today’s guest is a hypnotic influence expert. . . Wait a minute, who book this guy?

 

Announcer: [00:00:20] This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matters to your bottom line.

 

Hanna: [00:00:32] Welcome to Business Confidential Now, I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner. Today’s guest is Jason Linett, and yes, he’s a hypnotic influence expert who helps entrepreneurs and business owners close more premium sales.

 

Hanna: [00:00:46] As a certified professional hypnotist, Jason has dedicated nearly two decades to helping his clients harness the science of positive persuasion strategies to quickly and easily rewrite negative thought patterns. He reveals the secrets of hypnotic communication and shares his specific business influence systems to supercharge business growth. Now, that’s a mouthful. I’ll grant that.

 

Hanna: [00:01:11] Now, he says this isn’t about tricking or manipulating people. It’s about helping your prospects to ethically sell themselves into your products and services. Jason is the host of the Hypnotic Language Hack’s podcast. His TED Talk Rethinking Rapport is available on YouTube, and he’s the best-selling author of Work Smart Business Lessons Learned from Hypnotizing 250,000 People and Building a Million Dollar Brand. It’s a five-star rated book on Amazon’s top 1000 neuro linguistic programing list. Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Jason.

 

Jason Linett: [00:01:50] So good to be here. Thanks for having me.

 

Hanna: [00:01:52] Oh, this is going to be fun, Jason. Well, you know, we often think about hypnotists and hypnosis in the context of entertainers who put us in a trance and get us to do silly stuff that we can’t remember when we wake up. Or on a more serious note, we also associate them with medical situations where hypnosis could be used to recall a repressed memory, for example, to help patients. So that’s all good.

 

HOW IS ETHICAL INFLUENCE NOT TRICKERY OR MANIPULATION

 

Hanna: [00:02:22] But using hypnosis to close premium sales. Now, this is a really intriguing proposition, and I’m sure you get asked this all the time. How is this ethical influence and not  tricking or manipulating people?

 

Jason: [00:02:38] Well, thank you for that question. I love that intro to it, because the interesting thing is that’s part of my back story. I saw someone do a stage hypnosis show and something about it grabs my interest. And I just became ravenous to read as much as I could. And I soon found I was drawn to the more hypnotherapy side of things.

 

Jason: [00:02:58] The nature of any helping profession, whether it be a hypnotist, a counselor, a nutritionist; let’s go even further, an accountant or a plumber, any service business; it’s only as good as we can actually get our clients. And part of that is informing people. Here’s what I do. Here’s what I’m good at and here’s what results you can expect.

 

Jason: [00:03:20] So what I was discovering along the way was that the same journey; this is the interesting part, the same journey from stuck inside of a problem to now resolving it and living in the solution was nearly identical to the same mental hurdles that someone has to go through to then to go from curious shopper to satisfied buyer. And the whole mindset towards the ethical nature of this is that there’s always the goal of moving towards that common neutral outcome.

 

Jason: [00:03:51] So in all the different systems that I teach were basically: here’s a formula for closing sales and a sales call. Perhaps here is a method for putting out a video, writing for a website and using the patterns that previously I had been using to help the person to rapidly quit smoking to let go of the fear. It turns out at the end of the day; we’re helping a person to do something they’d already decided they want to do in the first place. But we’re not yet ready to do on their own, which right there is very similar to the business journey of someone hiring a coach, an accountant, a contractor, someone who can help them create a result faster and easier.

 

 

THE ROLE OF CALIBRATION IN BUILDING RAPPORT

 

Jason: [00:04:32] So by building systems of communication to better what we call calibrate with the person, identify what their needs are, and the whole honest side of it is to look at the fact we should build check points in our communication so that as something is a match, we’re deepening rapport, providing more value.

 

Jason: [00:04:53] And as I share, this way people are already making the decision. They want it. Before we even get to the point of going, here’s the offer. But the proper side is that of course, not any one thing is going to be a match for everyone out there. And as either the prospect or either myself as the business owner is seeing that, you know what they’re looking for something I don’t provide. There’s a respectful way to then exit the process. So it’s this mindset of rapport except the differences we’re moving towards that common mutual outcome that, you know, the improper or inappropriate thing would be the old phrase of anybody can sell something once.

 

Jason: [00:05:34] Instead, we want that person to emerge the hero of their story, celebrating that result and become that raving fan of what we do. And simply put, by putting the right words at the right order in the right time, we can get there a whole lot faster.

 

Hanna: [00:05:50] So if I hear you correctly, you do not need to be a certified professional hypnotist to discuss your ethical influence techniques, is that right?

 

Jason: [00:05:59] No. And as someone who’s actually trained and certified hundreds, if not a couple of thousand people around the world to actually work as a hypnotist, even to this day, I actually helped organize the program that qualifies practitioners to become instructors; you know, we’re not going after that hypno-therapeutic change. We’re helping the person look at the nature of any business, any purchase. We are moving from a problem into a solution.

 

USING ETHICAL INFLUENCE TO PROBLEM SOLVE

 

Jason: [00:06:26] So, for example, when I tried to do my bookkeeping myself many years ago, I would get relatively angry, threatening letters from the IRS, which was a nice little cue to go, hey, you probably need to hire an accountant, someone who knows how to do it, because that was not my skill. So I had a problem.

 

Jason: [00:06:43] And then to reach out to the professional who understood that world, you know, and convey what benefits, what features they would provide for me, that’s what navigated that process. So, no, we’re not going after the hypnotherapy change. It’s about stacking the right influential triggers in the right order. So we are again, deepening rapport, advancing the relationship and helping people to satisfy their own objections.

 

Jason: [00:07:11] Can you think of a time, for example, where maybe you were in your head quite a bit about a specific purchase that you maybe had gone back and forth about? Should I? Shouldn’t I? And chances are at the end of that, one part of you was maybe thinking, “man, I should have done this a lot sooner.”

 

Jason: [00:07:27] You know, I think about the easy example of when we’ve got a car that we’re playing the game of, “oh, I can get that repaired; I can get that repaired; and it might end up costing more than it needed to when as soon as I bought the better one, it solved all the problems I was having of the things shutting down intersections, which is not good for a car.

 

Jason: [00:07:48] So to get to the specifics of listening to the person’s needs and feeding back to them in an appropriate way so that we’re helping them make that decision, that is why they’re reaching out to us in the first place.

 

ALIGNING INFLUENCE TRIGGERS TO ACHIEVE ETHICAL PERSUASION

 

Hanna: [00:08:01] Ok, this is very nice and theoretical and I appreciate the explanation. But let’s dig a little deeper dive into specific ethical influenced tips that overworked entrepreneurs can use because you say you’ve got this business influence system. I read about some of your stuff. What exactly is that and what are some tips that you could give? Like I said, an overworked entrepreneur who maybe doesn’t realize they have a problem in being ethically persuasive with their sales pitch to align those influential triggers in the right order.

 

Jason: [00:08:40] Yeah, so business influence systems, it’s a four-part training program, an online community that I run that’s available over at JasonLinett.com. What I’ll share with everyone here, though, is one of my favorite language patterns. There’s a couple of things embedded inside of this. As the buyer, we love to be in that position of when we find ourselves in the under promise over deliver side of the equation. We hired a product, we hired a service, we purchased a product. And what we ended up really receiving was so much better than what we were expecting.

 

THE ETHICAL INFLUENCE FORMULA FOR UNDER PROMISING AND OVER DELIVERING

 

Jason: [00:09:17] Well, it turns out there’s actually a very simple formula to do that. If you can meet these criteria that if you can sell people what they want and in the process of, yes, delivering what they want also, then give them what they need. Right there is the formula for under promise over deliver.

 

Jason: [00:09:37] So let’s set that off to the side, because that’s one of the building blocks of this language pattern about to share with you, which may sound like a bit of a mathematical equation, but after you’ve heard me give a few examples of this, it’s very easy.

 

Jason: [00:09:50] So the pattern is this. What this solves the problem of is when you’re in a service or product industry where, unfortunately, someone could look at you as a commodity that solves a similar problem that someone else can resolve. So how do we stand out in the crowded marketplace? How do we position what we do as being better if it truly is here? Here’s the sequence.

 

Jason: [00:10:12] It’s not about X, though, we’re definitely going to X. It’s also about Y so that you can Z. So it’s not about X, though you are going to do X, it’s also about Y so that you can Z.

 

Jason: [00:10:27] Let me put this into the context where about two weeks ago suddenly I had three people in the same industry call me at the same time. There must have been something in the news. They were all credit repair specialists. These are people that if you have some missed payment on your credit report, which is damaging your score, these are the people that negotiate on your behalf to get that cleared away on the credit report.

 

Jason: [00:10:50] So all three of them independently noticed the same problem in their business, which might sound like a good problem because their clients kept coming back to them. But what that really meant was they weren’t really helping these people. They maybe put a Band-Aid on the one mistake the person made, but the person made the problem again. So really, they needed a bigger solution. So here is that formula, as I talked through with three of them.

 

Jason: [00:11:15] Here it is: So it’s not about credit repair, though, very clearly we’re going to help you repair your credit. It’s also about changing your emotional relationship with money so that you never need a service like mine again. Makes sense. So what we’re doing there is we’re setting the expectation of that under promise, over deliver and inside of it the beauty of the last transition so that I meet too many people in business that throw out on a website or a brochure or a sales page the big list of all the features. As the buyer, you need to step into the mindset almost from a respectfully cynical place to ask for every feature.

 

Jason: [00:12:02] Well, so what? And the easy way to solve that is the pattern of language so if a person is hopping for credit report and they suddenly see the listing of “change your emotional relationship with money,” like that’s not what I’m looking for. But in that sales process, we land this phrase, knowing it’s not about credit repair, though. Really, we are going to help you repair your credit. What the process is really about is changing that emotional relationship with money so that you never need to hire the service again.

 

Jason: [00:12:34] The moment we have delivered something of that nature, everyone else is selling a commodity. Everyone else is offering a service. You are providing a solution which chances are might have been what you were actually doing in the first place. The difference is now we’ve presented it in such a way that now we stand out in a crowded marketplace. We break through the overwhelm.

 

Jason: [00:12:57] So a few other examples, of not just about fixing your bookkeeping, though clearly I am going to fix your bookkeeping; it’s also about tracking your money better so that there’s no surprises from the IRS at the end of the year. It’s not just about giving you some clever language patterns, though. I’m going to give you some clever language patterns. It’s also about understanding the emotional mind connection of the buyer so that you can speak their language in such a way that they’re ready to take action with you. There’re a few examples of that pattern.

 

Hanna: [00:13:30] Those are wonderful examples, I think. I’m just curious, though, about how do you really know what’s going on in the head of your prospect?

 

HOW ETHICAL BUSINESS INFLUENCE STARTS WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

 

Jason: [00:13:42] Well, this is where one of the big things that I teach. And if I can break down business influence systems, it’s the four-part process that it is. The stuff we’ve been talking about is actually not what’s there until part three. We have to begin, first of all, with emotional intelligence. This is how we carry ourselves. This is our own emotional landscape. This is, let’s call it that resiliency that we’re not showing fear. We’re not showing hunger, if that’s part of what’s possibly driving our business, maybe even, especially in the early days.

 

Jason: [00:14:15] Once we’ve built that foundation, which for that section, I give it the catchphrase where  . . . you know what, Hanna? Have you had those days where by accident you felt really good? What if you could do that on purpose and on demand? That’s what we teach inside of emotional intelligence.

 

THE ROLE OF COLLABORATION IN ETHICAL INFLUENCE: CHUNKING UP

 

Jason: [00:14:29] The next phase is really the answer to your question there, because the next phase is all about collaboration, which is about one part of it being the classic principles of rapport, but updating the thinking that it’s not about tricking you to like me, it’s about getting in sync with your model of the world so I can move to a place where I can now better understand how you’re making your decisions.

 

Jason: [00:14:52] A big part of that is the power of asking the right questions at the right time, which I’ll give a strategy for. This is the sharing here. You can ask questions that either go into specifics or can go into value-based ideals. So let’s give an example of this. If it’s personal coaching, let’s say it’s a personal trainer, you could ask a person, you know, what would you like to do to get healthier? And they might respond. I want to exercise more.

 

Jason: [00:15:21] As of right now, none of us know what that means until we ask a follow up question. What would that be for you? And they might respond with a little bit more specifics. I’d like to walk more frequently. We can ask further questions. This is called chunking down. When you say walking more frequently, like what would that be for you? And I’ll share the most specific answer I’ve ever received. I’d like to walk in the morning on my treadmill in my basement and watch two episodes of Gilmore Girls on Netflix, which is about as specific as I think you could get. And having a wife who loves that show, I know exactly what you’re talking about. So right now, that’s just nuts and bolts.

 

Jason: [00:15:58] But to now change the structure of the question to be doing that, what’s that going to give you? This is what we call chunking up. Now, we’re likely going to be moving more towards value-based statements. And I’ll give you sort of a transcript of one time that I did. And this was somebody, it was back as a hypnotist, helping the man to stop smoking. Well, what’s that going to give you to be free of these cigarettes?, I asked. He responded: better health. Well, to have that better health, what’s that going to give you? “Oh, just peace of mind.” And right now this doesn’t quite mean anything. And I asked  when you say peace of mind, what does that mean for you?

 

THE ROLE OF COLLABORATION IN ETHICAL INFLUENCE: CHUNKING DOWN

 

Jason: [00:16:36] And suddenly he dropped out of that logic decision brain into emotion and suddenly revealed the story of how his father passed away when he was a young kid. His son is now 12 years old and he goes, when I was 12, I didn’t have a dad. And I want to be there for all these life events. I want to be there for all of these occasions. And I want to actually be present. I don’t want to be hooked to an oxygen tank. And suddenly I’m getting the real reasons why he had called me in the first place.

 

Jason: [00:17:08] So to go the old school approach of telling him, oh, the cigarettes are going to smell bad. Now, that’s not why he was making the change. So I heard the emotional place that it brought him and the simple transition. This is a strategy. It was just to simply pause and go. “That’s why you called me today, isn’t it?” And his eyes lit up and he goes, Yeah. And now it was no longer about the problem he had to let go of, it was now about the better life he was going to create without the conflict of that old issue.

 

Jason: [00:17:44] So the process was no longer the, you know, old school, how dare you do this bad thing. It was instead the celebration of taking better care of himself. So by helping him make that emotional epiphany much earlier, that’s where I don’t think any technique would have been effective until we hit those strings. And it was a very respectful way of just simply asking those questions where, you know, it’s not just the words and patterns that we can say. The strongest influence we could ever make use of are the words, the belief systems, the emotions of the person in front of us.

 

Jason: [00:18:18] So really, at the end of the day, all of this comes back around to effective communication, the right questions at the right time fed back in such a way to help people make their own decisions faster and easier.

 

ELEMENTS OF JASON’S BUSINESS INFLUENCE SYSTEM

 

Hanna: [00:18:32] That’s great. I really appreciate your explaining that and providing examples. I think the examples really make it come to life because it’s one thing to talk about these things in theory and it sounds like, oh yeah, that’s something out of a book, but the examples make it real. Now, you said there’s four parts to your system here. We talked about the emotional intelligence piece. This is the calibration. What are three and four?

 

Jason: [00:19:00] Three and four is where we began the words and patterns. So there is about two dozen or so specific hypnotic language patterns that we’ve kind of discovered over time by tracking people who were effective at what they did. The so/that function that I shared a little while ago, that’s the benefit of creating cause and effect relationships in our minds.

 

Jason: [00:19:23] You know, we talked about the pattern of building expectancy and curiosity. That’s another one. We hinted at the fact that we don’t want to necessarily try to mind read our people yet if we speak in a place of assumption and ambiguity and then ask a follow up question, this is where we’re getting the model of the world from that person.

 

Jason: [00:19:43] So phase three are the words and patterns. Phase four is where we have often the most fun, because exactly what you just said, Hanna, that what good are these techniques without the real-world examples? Phase four is getting into very specific business applications.

 

Jason: [00:20:00] So I meet so many people who, you know, know the fact that it’d be good to write things for their website, for different pages, write blog posts, put out videos, and they end up with the blank screen in front of them and they don’t know what to write. They turn on the camera. And it’s not just that they might be a little afraid of being on screen, but they also don’t yet know what to say.

 

Jason: [00:20:24] So, for example, I teach a writing system of stacking the right influential words and patterns in the right order so that people are now building that rapport with you even by reading your words. Here’s a method of being on the phone call with a potential client and how do we navigate them through that sales process in a very respectful, polite way that never feels as if they’re being forced in the sale. It’s very laid back and conversational, and it’s the natural sequencing to it that lets the influence rise to the surface. Inside of that, there’s a section on, again, doing videos.

 

Jason: [00:21:00] And I’ll give a quick preview of this one that I teach a system with seven steps. And the whole mindset to these applications would be that frameworks equal freedom. If we’re about to turn on the camera, if we’re about to go out and give a presentation, go on Facebook live, or start writing, to have a framework ahead of time. It gives us a bit of a roadmap to get started. It gives us a massive boost of constant confidence to get started.

 

Jason: [00:21:29] But then again, once we understand the how and the why of the sequence, it gives us a greater permission to then make variations when we’ve got a good reason to do so. So if you look at most videos online, many people would just kind of turn the camera on and go, Hey, I’m Jason. And I teach people how to use hypnotic language patterns for their business. And again, remember the filter I shared earlier: So what?

 

Jason: [00:21:53] Well, let’s invite the audience to care before we ever ask them to listen. So this is a method of using what we call a pattern interrupt, some sort of hook, as you did expertly at the beginning of this podcast episode, to grab people’s attention and give them a reason to keep listening. And for the next step of the process, phase two of what I call the video influence system, which is part of the business influence system program, is to change your offer.

 

Jason: [00:22:23] And the mindset to this is that everyone else is selling something. Instead be the person inviting someone into a movement and there’s a very simple strategy to do this. It would be using the language pattern of either I believe that or I’m on a mission, too.

 

Jason: [00:22:42] So I believe that people are spending way too much money to renovate their homes. What if they knew how to purchase the right appliances and the right cabinets from the right places? They’d have more money for other projects in their home.

 

Jason: [00:22:55] So by putting it out there as the “I believe,” now you’re inviting someone into a movement. You’re inviting something in. And only after this, only after this do I say then introduce yourself. So once you piqued their fear, their curiosity and their fascination, only now: “Hi, here’s my name. Here’s what I do.” And there’s more steps to this.

 

Jason: [00:23:17] But I’ll give you a preview, which is one that you already called out of what we’ve been doing here: teach something, but then tell a story that illustrates the efficacy of what you’ve taught. So here’s a student of mine that was terrified of going on camera and she held back from doing video. And as soon as she put this video influence process to use, she started to do two or three videos a week. She has a massive YouTube channel. Now she does Facebook live and twenty nineteen hit her first six figure business year twenty sixteen. All of our businesses had to rapidly change as so much of the work went online and a global pandemic. And as she said, because she had built an online following, she only had about a week where everyone was kind of going what’s going on? But then suddenly all of her clients moved online and invited her to now work with a global community even faster. And she goes without much effort on doing the same things in businesses coming in even stronger now with less effort and the video influence.

 

Jason: [00:24:23] This process I’m sharing is part of that system. So looking at how we can build that confidence, we can break through that overwhelm with a few proven frameworks to get out there even faster, even easier, and have the effect of strategies to convey the value of what you have to offer.

 

Hanna: [00:24:39] I love these frameworks and the strategies underlying them, and I’m really delighted that they are actually grounded in some science . . .

 

Jason: [00:24:49] Yes.

 

Hanna: [00:24:50] . . . You know, it really just makes it that much more compelling. So thank you. Of course, we’re going to have a link to your podcast, Hypnotic Language Hacks. For any listeners who want to follow up and learn more about what you do. We’re also going to have a link to your book Work Smart Business: Lessons Learned from Hypnotizing 250,000 People and Building a Million Dollar Brand; and of course, other ways to contact you and connect with you on the episode page over at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com. Thank you so much for your time, Jason. This would be fun to continue over a glass of wine, and this has been great.

 

[00:25:29] Thank you for having me. And as I tend to say, “change your words, change your business, change your life.”

 

Hanna: [00:25:34] Excellent. Thank you. That’s our show for today. But don’t go anywhere. I have a really easy ask for you.

 

Hanna: [00:25:41] Would you please open your podcast app and give us a five-star review and leave a comment about what you love most about the show? I do read them all and it’ll take you less than a minute. And while you’re at it, share this episode, tell someone about it, because the best way to grow our audience is by word of mouth. And if you want the detailed show notes, links to connect with my guest or stuff that we talked about, even if you want to ask a question, have a show idea. Come on over to BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.

 

Hanna: [00:26:08] I’ll catch you on the next episode. And in the meantime, have a great day and even better tomorrow.