Business building

Most professional hypnotherapists are small business people, and small business skills are just as important to a successful hypnotherapy business as trance skills and people skills.

However, while we've trained in the trance skills at school with teachers, the classes probably didn't include many hours of business skills. Business skills are simultaneously simple ("just do it") and complex (do what, when and why, and how much?)

There is a fabulous web site now available that will help any small business person figure out the big-picture plan with powerful strength of direction and specificity. It's called "Good Little Biz", at http://goodlittlebiz.com.

There you will find videos of Marsha Shenk, the site's creator and owner, explaining how to work though seven worksheets of questions to answer for yourself.

Hypnotherapists everywhere are discovering the extra business income available from selling MP3 hypnosis (recorded audio sessions) online. A few hypnotherapists are really making a lot of money this way.

I certainly recommend getting as many of your own MP3 audio sessions as possible up on the Internet for sale, and there dozens of ways to do that. You have all kinds of options, from services like Amazon that will take care of everything for you (and take 60% of the sale) to operating your own shopping cart (where you keep 100% of the revenue) and every combination in between.

Be sure to mention at the beginning of each session that the suggestions and imagery included in the MP3 sessions are generic, and that the advantages of seeing a hypnotherapist in person include personalized suggestions and world-model as well as customized imagery of your preference, and that these things do make a significant difference. This helps potential clients understand why they would want to call you and book an appointment.

Nathan Thomas is an impressive young man. A young New Zealand hypnotist, he is also a co-founder of the International Association for Teenage Hypnotists. Using the Internet to connect with other hypnosis fans and experts around the world is natural for Nathan, and he has a blog called "Key's to the Mind" where he has videos, articles and interviews about hypnosis and NLP - as well as several other web sites.

I've been watching Nathan's web sites and progress for a few months now, and I must say that he is one of the new hypnosis whiz kids. Not only is he smart, determined, and excited, but he is learning and improving an all fronts quickly. His interviewing skills, for example, have improved dramatically in the last few months. We could all learn something from Nathan's openess and excitement around learning and "going for it."

He's posted two new interviews this weekend, both are well worth the listen.

We have shifted from an Industrial economy to a Information economy. Of course, the remnants of the industrial age businesses are still struggling, some transforming successfully and some not. But the fact that the economy has shifted is, at this point, indisputable.

New skills, new knowledge, new tools, new opportunities all abound. You can drown in new information; as a species, we literally have ten times the knowledge than we had in 1999, across hundreds of different domains of knowledge and science. This does not mean you simply need to learn ten times more than your grandfather knew, but it does mean that you need to learn how to filter and manage information far differently than your grandfather did.

The 21st century is characteristically different than the 20th century, although there are many parallels in the effects and our reactions to the massive changes. Just as we shifted from an agricultural society to an industrial one around the turn of the 20th century, so we shift again.

In the book, "Nine Shift" by Julie Coats and William Draves (link below), they explain that we are going to be replacing commute time with learning time.

It isn't hard to figure: higher energy costs, unstable gas prices, reduced travel and expense budgets, and the need to make more happen in less time with fewer dollars. The cherry on top is that flying just isn't fun - or even really pleasant - anymore.

Put it all together, and it spells fewer in-person meetings, fewer conferences, and less travel. Yet, somehow, more contacts, more connections, more partner projects need to get done? The pressure is on for electronic meetings to become a normal and usual part of modern business. It's been trying to come into regular use for some 15 years, but now finally have both the technology and the demand for it to happen.