by Celeste Hackett
In This Article Read About:
- Crazy Lady Becomes a Fine Hypnotist
- Get Fired and Start A New Career
- How to Hypnotize Drunk People to Shut Up
- Pammy and the Strange Sickness
- Hypnotist and Psychoanalyst talk Freud
- His Name Was Warren and He Rode a Harley
- How Much Money I Really Made This Year
- A Free Script For You!
I have now been in business for one full year. Looking back it seems like a miracle. What causes someone to settle down, focus and just do it? I know that I tried many times to make money with hypnosis and all my efforts just kept seeming to fall flat. So how and why did THIS business finally work?
Crazy Person Becomes a Fine Hypnotist
I’ve been turning that question over in my mind for the last couple of weeks because I know there are a lot of you who feel frustrated or scared and just can’t seem to get started or to stay focused. So I thought it might be inspiring to see how this little business with a world of potential really began. To do that I guess I need to show you what it was like in the VERY early days before I was stable emotionally (Yes I was nuts) and before I had the good sense to gobble up the offerings of Jeri Kein and Cal and Maureen Banyan and go out on a limb and stick to it.
What I hope to show you is that before hitting my tiny vein of small business (and personal) happiness, I couldn’t seem to get it together at all. I was emotionally challenged with anger, fear, guilt, sadness, frustration and depression and I just didn’t want to work. So if I can do it, anyone can. But I want you to always remember 1) Do whatever it takes to heal yourself inside 2) It ain’t like baseball where it’s three strikes and you’re out. You always get a second chance. Keep trying and you will continue growing. 3) Trust the creator, when he puts an impossible dream in your heart, he means to help you fulfill it.
***************
Commercial Break: Please Rate my articles if you have read them. Or at least let me know that you do read them. Otherwise, why the HeY am I doin’ this? Even one little sentence would make me smile.
When I first started Family First Hypnosis out of my Apartment, my primary goals were to earn enough money doing hypnosis, so that I could pay my share of the bills which would mean that I could stop taking money out of my IRA (I had been living on savings for several years and was down to my last little nest egg, my IRA). I also wanted to never have to work for an employer ever again, especially a radio broadcasting company. Most of all, though, I wanted to really help people change their minds and lives.
Get Fired and Start A New Career
Very few of us start out as hypnotists. I began my work life as a radio announcer and had a very exciting and challenging career for 24 years. About nine years ago I was offered a midday slot at KIKK FM in Houston and something told me deep down inside that this particular radio gig would be my last. So I pulled out all the stops, took a lot of risks and I did the wildest and the most fun radio show I’d ever done. I really had a blast and was so grateful at the end of the day when I’d think, who else gets to laugh every day for a living?
It wasn’t long before the ratings were in my favor and since the station neglected to give me a contract, when another station offered me a job, I had leverage for negotiations. As a result I was able to do something I had never done before; I more than tripled my salary! That was a day I’ll never forget, I was flying high, but it was only four short years later that I was fired for the very first time in my life.
Any radio announcer will tell you that if you are fired only once in 24 years that you are extremely lucky and so it was, but I sure didn’t feel lucky. I half-heartedly sent air checks (audio recordings of my show) and resume’s to potential new employers at radio stations, but found whenever I’d think about being on the air again that I’d get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that seemed to just say flat out NO. NO. NO. At times like this I’d look up to the heavens and say, “If not radio, then WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?” I wasn’t too happy with the heavens though we conversed regularly.
This time of not knowing went on for a very uncomfortable long time. To make things worse, the relationship I was in was a constant rollercoaster of fighting and making up, but mostly fighting. I was living on my savings, working part time for an oldies station, reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and trying really hard to live in the moment, when I saw an ad for hypnosis training. I had always been interested in how the inner mind can help us to change our lives rapidly, and since I needed rapid change myself and I didn’t have much else to do, I signed up for the course.
Right after finishing the training, I worked part time at Positive Changes Hypnosis in Houston for a few months. Then I got restless and left and traveled around Peru. Yes, Peru. This crazy, funny, mischievous girl from the hypnosis class, named Pam, talked me into it and I must say we had a grand time. I saw the amazing Machu Picchu and sunbathed in the Amazon jungle, where just sprinkles of sun streamed through to patches of green feathery grass. We were all ladies giggling and talking, covered only in perfumed mud that some Shaman said was healing. I don’t know about that, but it was fun playing in the mud.
How to Hypnotize Drunk People to Shut Up
Hypnosis did come in very handy there when my new best friend and travel buddy, Pammy got drunk late one night drinking strawberry beer and after eating roasted Guinea pigs on a stick at a local festival. (They are a delicacy there.) She talked and ranted and cried and just couldn’t settle down and GO to sleep. She’d try. Her head would hit the pillow for about a second then she’d sit back up and start going on about how mad or sad about something she was again. I finally thought, “Score!” when she snored away after about a one minute induction. When drinking in Peru stick with the Inca Cola.
When we got back, I started a business called I Love Hypnosis. I worked with another hypnotist, named John and we got an office together. We mostly did house calls and hypnotized each client together. We’d haul in a huge sound system with speakers and headphones and microphones! It might have done well if I’d stuck it out, but right when things were just getting started, I broke up with my boyfriend.
He made me so mad and suddenly Houston just wasn’t big enough for the two of us. So, I decided to leave the United States and go live in Spain. Forever. I went. I meditated. I did self-hypnosis. I cried. I had a rather quick and shallow romantic adventure and told everyone I was getting married, then didn’t.
Now, I gotta tell ya, I liked Barcelona except for the dog poop on the sidewalks, the tons of graffiti and that everybody smokes like chimneys. I guess it was the dog poop, the graffiti and the smoke, but I got over both of the “what’s his names” pretty fast and happily left to come home again after 6 months. Number of people hypnotized in Barcelona? Two.
Pammy and the Strange Sickness
I came back and immediately began working on launching a new hypnosis business, Jobson and Matthews International, named for my radio name and my best travel buddy Pammy. We planned to travel all around the world and hypnotize people. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really agree on a lot of things plus Pammy got some kind of strange sickness. Jobson and Matthews International was terminated promptly and with no real data to prove otherwise, we decided Pammy could definitely get healing with a trip to Costa Rica.
Man, was that fun. Black sand beaches, showers that electrify you due to hot wires hanging IN the water to warm it, and watching surfers at sundown in Montezuma. I meditated. Pammy got better on native herbs.
During this whole time of traveling and starting and ending businesses, time passed. When I was in the US, I lived part time where ever I could. I think I moved about 15 times in those four years. None of the businesses really amounted to anything, and I mostly lived with friends in spare rooms, but I was getting tired and it occurred to me that I might be running from something. I was distracting from a feeling and I noticed something VERY disturbing, my money was running out.
I went to my momma’s trailer in the woods in Louisiana to live, once again, forever. Yes, Louisiana. To my surprise, it was as beautiful as the jungles I’d seen in all the exotic places I’d traveled, only no monkeys. I never noticed that before. I meditated. My Dad said I could live in the storage shed. I visualized cleaning it up and making it into a hypnosis center. Maybe I could add a tent and train another hypnotist. I was just about to embark on this new venture when the phone rang.
It was the very cool Shirley Blackwheeler, a psychoanalyst sister of a friend of mine. I had hypnotized her for alcohol. She was doing much better. She wanted to know if I would be her travel buddy for a sort of personal healing trip in her van all up the east coast then up to Canada then back down and across the US to New Mexico then back to Houston. “I can’t”, I thought, “I have GOT to start making some money”. Then she said she’d pay for everything if I’d come.
Hypnotist and Psychoanalyst talk Freud
Her van was a mess filled with papers and clothes and just STUFF. She smoked and blew it out a crack in the window and she drove with one bare foot on the dashboard. Freud peppered our conversations a lot. In fact, we met a whole bunch of her psychoanalyst friends who also loved him like a daddy. They were some very interesting thinking people. They told me things like that we really want to kill people we are mad at and we should just be honest about that. Excuse me Freud if you are reading and I got this wrong. This is just how I remember it. I hypnotized her and it seemed she psychoanalyzed me down and up all them roads
I don’t know if the hypnosis was working on her, but I must say I was feeling pretty good myself. I told her about my whole life all the way from when I was little. I just kept talking and we’d laugh and listen to songs she put together on a CD. One particular song I just had to listen to over and over. It was called When My Morning Comes Around and when I listened to it, I got a feeling inside like I wanted to burst open and fly right out of my bones. It went like this:
When my morning comes around
No one else will be there.
So I won’t have to worry
About what I’m supposed to say.
I alone will know
that I’ve climbed the great big mountain
and that’s all that will matter
when my morning comes around.
When my morning comes around.
I will look back on this valley.
On these sidewalks and alleys
Where I’ve lingered so long.
And this place where I now live
It’ll burn to ash an cinder
Like sun goes down on November
when my morning comes around.
When my morning comes around
From a new cup I’ll be drinkin
And for once I won’t be thinkin’
There’s something wrong with me.
I’ll wake up and find
That my faults have been forgiven
Oh and that’s when I’ll start living!
When my morning comes around.
I know my morning will come around.
I know my morning will come around.
His Name Was Warren and He Rode a Harley
It seems we were visiting all these places that had to do very profoundly with her issues and her past. We, at some very important point, ended up at her one-time lover’s house. He was a knarley-looking, merry-eyed, Harley ridin’ ex-boyfriend named Warren. Or still boyfriend? It was hard to say at the time. I slept upstairs in the back of the house kinda in my own suite. Again I meditated. And read my new book called Where There Is Light by Paramahansa Yogananda.
Warren’s house was a big old rambling wood house with several living suites. We were somewhere in Pennsylvania. Yankees were everywhere. In the daytime I helped her move some of her stuff that was still there to another part of the house where she planned to move, I cooked, hypnotized her, Wrote in my diary, went for walks, and read.
At night I was lonely. It got really dark there. The room I was in also had a big old wooden balcony and outside you could see all the stars very clearly at night. Standing out there one night, everything became very quiet and still. I had a feeling I had a lot when I was a kid. A feeling like something was desperately missing and I felt sad. It was a familiar ache from deep and far away. It was calling from way inside me back to before. I wanted to go home.
Something shifted and in that moment I knew what I wanted to do as clear as day. I walked into the house and I picked up the phone and I called and called numbers until I reached an old boy friend who I didn’t dare call for a long, long time. He said this is Christopher. I said it’s me. He said what do you want? I said I have some writings of yours. He said keep them I don’t want them and is there anything else? I said I just miss you and wonder if you could ever be my friend? He said no and for the last 6 years 7 months and 21 days I’ve done nothing but think of you and if you do not mean to marry me by this call then I will never speak to you again. I said, I ain’t doing nothin’, I’ll marry you. He said so what have you been up to?
Two weeks later I was back in Houston. Two days later I was married. Two years later I have been in Business for a full year. It all seems like two minutes ago.
As for my Christopher, he fussed at me tonight. He said would I please stop tick, tick ticking on the computer. Right now he’s sleeping. He looks like an angel and we have a dog that looks like he wears a tuxedo all the time. He’s black and white. And, I haven’t even thought about running away to any old jungle in two whole years. If I ever do, I’ll just go home to Louisiana.
By the way, Shirley has remained sober for about two years now and Pammy is well and planning her next getaway, probably to India.
Happy New Year Everybody!
(Names have been altered for privacy.)
How Much Money I Really Made This Year
In the past year, I’ve made approximately $34 thousand dollars, and I’ve averaged about $2750 per month. My lowest monthly gross was $1550 (January) and my highest monthly gross was $4613 (September). This has been more than enough to keep my hands out of my IRA and contribute to our personal budget in a significant way. When I first started the business I thought it was asking too much to make $2000.00 per month doing hypnosis out of an apartment, so I have been delighted.
Unfortunately, due to some unforeseen things that came up in our finances, I haven’t been able to put my money back in to the business to further grow it like I had hoped. In fact, I am now in debt by about $5000.00.
$1500 of the business debt, I am hoping is a good investment into the future. It’s for my husband’s NGH training which he starts this weekend. Christopher saw me referring out clients too many times and decided he wants to learn hypnosis and help out. This is a risk because he is not sure that he will like it, but I figure if it only makes it so he can answer the phone and book appointments for me then it’s worth it.
Also, this past November the apartment complex started doing renovations to the buildings. Hypnotizing out of my apartment became a problem with the mess and the noise. So with great luck I now, temporarily, lease an office out of a acupuncturists office for $300.00 a month.
The original plan was to bring the business back once the construction ended or get a house and do the business out of it. To be honest I have no idea WHAT we are going to do now. The space I’m renting is supposed to be temporary so I am hoping that I won’t be kicked out of there unexpectedly. I don’t want a lease because I may HAVE to move back to the apartment for the sake of finances. And now there is the new twist of Christopher becoming a hypnotist. He will need an office if he is serious.
We have looked at several houses, but the ones in our price range are not nice enough to bring clients to. We did find one that would work and put an offer in, but at the last minute the guy decided not to sell and took it off of the market!
I keep asking God for guidance. If you read this far, say a little prayer for us, will ya?
Goals to grow the business in 2007 are:
–Get Christopher hypnotizing clients as soon as possible? (I hope he will eventually want to learn 5-PATH).
–Take up to 4 clients per day at $125 per session. $499 for 5 is the package deal I sell. (Prices have gone up from $110 per session and $475 for 5).
–Become a C-PHI so I can begin training classes-I already have a potential student waiting.
–Create and sell products on-line.
I could have made more money, in 2006, if I had started out the first few months taking as many clients as I did towards the end of 2006. At first I took less than one per day then moved up to two per day then three and sometimes 4 per day. I just couldn’t handle more than one or two at first, because I was also learning a new hypnosis process (5-PATH) WHILE I was seeing clients.
5-PATH is a 5-Phase process of hypnotizing clients that takes effort and practice to master, but the results are worth it. In between sessions you have to study and evaluate what you did in your last session and what you will do in the next. I just got so excited when I first saw 5-PATH and instantly knew I was meant to learn to do it. So, this past year was not only about making a living but also about going to school, learning on the job.
I also think if I had learned 5-PATH way earlier in my career, I would’ve been more serious and had a successful business sooner. I don’t kick myself too much though, because life is a journey and I had a lot of fun going a bit crazy with all the traveling and playing around.
This past year I’ve helped about 85 clients overcome problems with hypnosis. It’s been a jaw dropping, amazing, heart wrenching, and profoundly spiritual honor to be a part of these people’s healing. Sometimes I think, what must I have done right to be allowed to do this? It’s so personal. It’s so beautiful. It’s so near God.
A Free Script for you!
Life Changes – Turning
You want change in your life. You have wanted things to be different for a long time. You have tried to make these changes before but haven’t had success or maybe haven’t had success permanently. So you’ve come here for the best way. The ultimate way, the only true way to ever change permanently and forever by simply changing the inside, inside your own mind. You’ve changed your mind many times before permanently so you are remembering how to do it again.
Changing your mind is easy because it is like turning. You’ve turned many times before. When you were a baby you learned how to turn. You turned over to have another view or to relieve discomfort in your body…or simply because you could…or because it was time. Turning is something you have always done. It comes naturally. Since you were an infant you’ve learned how to turn in lots of ways and you have gotten very good at it.
You have turned a corner while driving. You know how to turn. It comes natural to you. You have also turned while walking. Maybe you were going one way and you decided you didn’t want to go there so you just turned around and walked away. Maybe you’ve turned while dancing. When you did you saw new things form a new angle in a new way and you liked it. You are realizing how easy it is to turn, turning away from some things putting them behind you, and turning towards better things keeping them in front of you. Now you can turn over a new leaf.
I wonder if you can remember a time when you changed something… maybe something difficult or something significant. You didn’t like how things were going so you stopped…or maybe you started. You were resolute. You wanted results and you got them. You charged forward. You wouldn’t look back. You were determined and the old way of being was finished. You said. “No more”. You did that with your own mind and you are doing it again. You made up your mind. You have decided to change.
So you put something down. And you pick something much better up. You flip one switch on and you turn another off. You delete one program and you add another. You push something back and away. You pull something wonderful, exciting and new forward. You step across the line…the line separating the past from now. You step forward into a new day across the line into a whole new way and a better way.
You are deciding to turn in a new and beneficial way. Instead of closing off you turn and accept new information that is helpful to your goals. You open up and take them ALL the way in… fully. You take in new ideas; new ways of being and doing things that are for your best and highest benefit. So, you are open and willing to see things differently. You are way more open to positive influences. You are open to positive influences and they cause you to get up and move your life into freedom, success, into a new way of being, into change, into your new reality. Your new reality is your creation, your goal. And you meet your goal your own way.
The old way is over. You make a solid decision. You decide you are not turning back. The old way is done. It is not you anymore. It is finished and you are resolute. You build a wall inside you, and when you look back you see nothing but a wall keeping what you don’t want away from you. Those things you don’t want may be thoughts, ideas, beliefs, memories, imprints or anything that was NOT helping you. These things will always be in your past, a part of your history, of who you are but you sealing them off, so they can not control or affect you in any way anymore.
Now you are creating a new reality, and you look happily toward the future. You feel very determined, and your determination grows. You are looking forward and moving forward. You feel you are in control and you are in control. You know you are.
Your ways of understanding are growing keener than ever. You have an eagle eye and now more than ever you see what needs to be done. You see what needs to happen next. You know what to do, and you make it happen. You are able to see yourself and your thoughts and actions in new ways. Ways that are so clear, and everything is obvious and clear and you can see you can feel you can hear what needs to be done and you do it. You feel, see and know the changes you need to make. You understand and you have new wisdom, new Clarity, and new vision. Everything is obvious.
The answers are so easy and the changes so simple. You are thrilled and excited that you can do it now. Before you didn’t know what to do or how or where to turn or when but now things are different. You know exactly what to do and how to proceed and you see your goal. It is like a veil has been lifted. You now see the prize, the goal, so clearly and seeing so clearly causes you to want it badly. See your goal now… What do you want to be or have or do? See it. Feel it. Feel how good it is to have things exactly as you dreamed! Feel the excitement that you did it, that you created it and made it happen!
Your hands are firmly on the steering wheel and you are driving. You are making it happen just as you dreamed. You go where you want to go in body, in mind, in spirit. You are the one. You are it. You make it happen. It’s all about you. NO one else can do it for you. You make the change. You turn over a new leaf. You just do it. Because you know it must be you who does it. You just do it. Every day in every way you make things happen. You are it. It’s you and you alone and you are doing it. There is no one else. You must do it. You are the only one to do it.
You feel empowered and powerful. Your own power pours into your consciousness from within now you can feel it and access it in a new way. You are powerful because you decide to be. Your mind is made up…It is firmly made up. And with your power you are changing in a very positive way. Moving forward and it feels so good. You are so excited because you KNOW this is the time you will make your dreams come true. You KNOW you are doing it! You are using your mind and body together. Your body and mind are at your command. You are in command, and you have the power. You are at the controls. Everything is your decision and you are so powerful and your power is growing stronger every day. You say stop and you say go. You say subtract and you say add. You say no more there. You say more here. You create. You build. You just do it. You know you can do it, so you do!
And knowing you can do it causes you to feel very excited. You are feeling very ready. You are like a race horse ready to charge. You are ready. You feel everything inside wanting your goal.
You are determined and filled with will power. You feel like you could run a marathon, climb the tallest mountain, and bicycle around the world. You feel your desire building powerfully inside you. You self control and your will power are growing so strong and you are changing your life. You know you have what it takes. You believe it., and you deserve it. You see your goal. You taste it. You feel it. You are ready, and you are biting at the bit to go forward and do what ever it takes.
You are like an athlete with all systems on go. When you awaken from hypnosis you will spring forth and do what you need to do. The power is constantly building inside you. The power inside you is incredible. When you awaken from hypnosis all you know about your goal and how to attain it will come together and you will use right actions and words to win. You are a winner and you are winning your prize the goal.
So you are doing what is needed, what is necessary. You DO what you have always wanted. It is your time. The time has come, and it’s about you. You see the prize, and your eyes are fixed firmly on the prize, your goal. You are focused and you want it. You deserve it. You want to win, and you are ready to see results. You want results. You see successful results. You are able and strong. You can do it. You deserve it. You are a winner. You are powerful and you can do what needs to be done to change your life. You fix it. You change it. You are in control. You are it. You are the driver. You make it happen. You are the one. There is no one else. You are the one. You are the one with the key. The key is your inner power and it is gushing forth. Use it! Tap into the power you have ALWAYS had and CHANGE YOUR LIFE. You are a winner.
