Hypnosis & Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
In this conversation between Les Evans and Robbie Spier Miller, we explore how Neuro-Linguistic Programming can help people make decisions including weight loss and quitting smoking, as well as influence sales decision-making. If you are interested in learning more about NLP Training, be sure to see what upcoming courses are available and subscribe to the Hypnosis Training Canada Newsletter today. You can watch the above video (also available on our YouTube channel) or read the transcript below to learn more about hypnosis & NLP.
Les Evans: 0:01 This is such a noble, noble practice to me, because you’re literally helping people get out of their own way.
Robbie Spier Miller: 0:10 You want to transform yourself and improve your life. You want to help people. You wish to become healthier, happier, and more successful. This show is your opportunity to learn how to use hypnosis to make your life better. Each week, hypnotist Robbie Spier Miller interviews people who have already changed their lives in amazing ways with hypnosis. These models can help you discover your path to making the most of your life. If you want to learn how hypnosis can help you reach your goals. This show is for you.
Robbie Spier Miller: 0:46 Hello everybody, and welcome. I’m Robbie Spier Miller, the host of the hypnosis show podcast. And today, I’m really excited to welcome a guest who’s going to tell us about what neuroscience has taught us about how we can use hypnotic marketing strategies to help people and with what we do with hypnosis, sometimes we’re helping people make decisions to buy something. People use this for sales. We also use it to help people make decisions to lose weight or stop smoking or make other important life changes for themselves. And so these strategies work no matter what you’re using it for. And so I’m really excited to hear more about what neuroscience says and what our guest is using to make this work in a powerful way? Using neuro marketing strategies, aka hypnosis, our guest grew an alternative investment company to a trading volume of $100 million daily. He now trains some of the most famous and powerful people in the world in these strategies. Let’s welcome Les Evans. Hello.
Les Evans: 1:52 Thank you for having me, Robbie. Great to be here.
Robbie Spier Miller: 1:54 Yeah, it’s great to have you here. So first, I think it would be really interesting for people to know a little bit about your background. I know as you and I were talking earlier, you mentioned that, intuitively, you discovered some of these strategies just from trial and error and observing people, which is a lot of what we do. So talk a little bit about how you discovered these strategies intuitively in your career?
Les Evans: 2:20 Okay, well, I mean, that’s a terrific question. And I love this topic. I mean, this is a real passion of mine. So I’m really excited to share some of these goodies with your audience. So if I went to rewind back, way back, one of my first passions was music. And in fact, I became a professional musician. And as a singer and entertainer, you really have to pay attention to how you’re affecting your audience? Because it’s all about the audience reaction. So I think just, you’re kind of maybe born with that, intuitively, I don’t know, I would always be very mindful of the response I was getting for the audience. And then later on, as I got into business, and started to do sales presentations, and many of us have to do presentations of some kind or another. We’re all salespeople. At the end of the day, I don’t care if you’re trying to sell your kids to eating their vegetables. There’s some selling going on all the time. And so I just pay attention to what would work and what would not work, but I never could really figure out why? At the same time, I’d started building a list of tricks in my head, that would seem to work in different situations, I was always very mindful of that. And so when I started my investment company, I put together a sales presentation. And I figured out very quickly, I’d be more effective, if I’ve talked to like, 10 people at a time, or 50, or 100, at a time, giving the same 90 minute speech. I mean, it’s just much more efficient. So when they started to work with bigger audiences, I started to get very, very effective influence and persuasion, which is what we’re in the business of. I mean, if we want to move people to change, we have to move them from a position of more to less. And that’s a really complex process because some people want to fight you on that. They say they want to change, as you know, but sometimes they don’t. My real fascination was when the people would not take action. Why they weren’t buying into what I was proposing? And most sales and marketing training, for example, is all geared towards why people buy? I was more fascinated, why they didn’t? That was the real quit like, that was the real crux of it, why aren’t they taking action. And so fast forward many years later, about three years ago, I was doing a business training session in Sydney, Australia, and I ran into a young man, about 24 years old. And I’ve been speaking professionally all over the world for the past seven years in 24 countries and 78 cities. I mean, I’ve had a real blessed life in terms of getting out and meeting one lots of people. And so this young guy wanted to become a professional speaker like me. And I was fascinated by what he did. And I said, "What do you do?" And he goes, "Well, I’m a professor at the University of Melbourne, and I teach neuromarketing." I was like, "What’s that?" And so what I got introduced into was the science of neuromarketing. And it’s actually how our brain works in terms of decision making and assessing things? And so there was a whole science behind it. And when I first really got into it, he started teaching me this stuff, and I went hog wild, I think I’ve acquired a PhD in this stuff in the last three years. And if you want to understand why people do things, and why sometimes their decisions make no sense? You’ve come to the right place. Because what we’ve learned through neuroscience, and what neuroscience has changed is, up until about 15 years ago, most of what we knew about psychology was just based on guesswork, observation, because we couldn’t literally X-ray the brain, least not, when somebody was really living. And so thanks to the invention of an MRI machine Magnetic Resonance Imaging, we can now identify which parts of the brain are doing what precisely? And what we’ve discovered through neuroscience is that 95% of all decision making is made in the primal brain, subconsciously. So that’s a massive game changer. Because once you understand that, it’s like, unlocking the key to the mind. And everything. I always said, sometimes, if you ask people why they made a specific decision, you’re asking the wrong part of the brain, because this part of the brain, which is the logical brain, your rational brain, is only 5% of the decision making process. And you cannot reason with people to make change. It doesn’t work like that. In fact, the more you try and reason and use logic, this part of the brain will talk you out of the sale. This is like amazing, amazing insight. And so today, particularly when everybody’s online, and our brains are flooded with information. The question is, how do you have influence? How do you cut through all that noise and have impact? Because of our smartphones, a lot of people don’t know this. But today, we literally scroll the entire length of the Empire State Building every day. That’s how much information we’re taking it. And this brain pan here is smart as it is, is slow and it’s a real gas guzzler, it uses like tons of oxygen and glucose. And that’s why you’ll see people today just go into overwhelm almost immediately, because they’re just too overwhelmed with too much information. So if we can use the emotional side of the brain, the primal part of the brain, we can move people to action much more quickly and with a lot less friction, and we get a lot less and less. I want to think about it. So, there’s my opening statement thought it. I hope that makes sense.
Robbie Spier Miller: 8:10 Well, it sure does. And the thing is that because the internet is such a big part of people’s lives these days, and in a big way, how we reach people, how do we implement that what we know works, which is getting people to connect emotionally, getting them to know why it really matters to them to change with digital media to do that And so because once we meet with them in person, then we have the intuitive hypnotic skills to help them. And how do we translate that to working with people online? It’s really an interesting question to do effectively.
Les Evans: 8:55 Yeah, well, I mean, here’s a couple of things you brought up. First of all, you mentioned about connecting emotionally, that is incredibly important. Because what they’ve discovered, in fact, the name of the fellow escapes me, but he was a brain scientist. And what he found out is that people who have brain impairments, that literally do not have emotions, because of brain damage, for example, cannot make decisions. So what this tells us is you must be emotionally engaged to make decisions. Now, our typical training as well make sure you have the facts and the pictures and you’re trying to reason with people and show them the logical way. And this makes sense. And you do need that it is a necessary component because the brain needs three different things to really get the message across. But having people emotionally engaged is absolutely critical. And the reason for that is we are human mirrors. We have something called mirror neurons, and what’s really interesting? And this was another thing that fascinated me. If you have doubts, inner doubts subconsciously about what you do, those neurons will reflect to the other person. And they will pick up your self doubt subconsciously, whether you like it or not. So the internal work, the inner work has to be there for us to move people forward, we literally have to walk our talk, because we ain’t fooling nobody.
Robbie Spier Miller: 10:28 That’s right. And that really raises the point that we really want to detail outcomes that if we’re doing marketing and sales, we want it to people who are deciding to buy services, it really needs to be in their interest to do it. And we need to be really clear in ourselves about that, and clear that we can deliver on what we’re saying we can do for them? And so being congruent about everything, people do pick up on all kinds of things without even realizing it.
Les Evans:11:03 Yeah, that is absolutely huge. And if I can impart one simple formula, everyone you meet, and we’re all wired the same. I mean, I’ve been all over the world, aside from cultural differences and things like that, we’re pretty much all the same when it comes to how the brain operates. So there’s like three parts, we have the logical part of our brain right here, this is the newest part of the brain, and that does all the heavy lifting, the calculus, and it can think in terms of present and past and future which is interesting, then we have the mammalian brain, which is very much our feeling emotional brain, that’s where your great artistry comes out, all of our emotions, and then the primal part of the brain, which is technically called the amygdala. It is interested in survival and status. And what it’s doing every single time, anytime we meet somebody, it’s immediately asking, subconsciously, are you a friend? Are you a foe? Are you a friend or foe? Because our primal brain is very, very afraid of losing resources. So resources are really simple to understand, their time, money, relationships, health, obviously, and that health can be physical health and mental health. And also, strategically, are you a strategic threat to my family or to my work? And so everyone we meet, the primitive brain is automatically going, what can you do for me? It’s very, very selfish. And also the primal primitive brain can only think in terms of present, it can’t think in terms of future or past. So this is why I was kind of laughing with my wife yesterday. I said, "When you tell somebody, don’t forget to do this," all the primal brain hears is forget. It only stands present commands, it can’t think in terms of future and it cannot think in terms of what not to do. It can only think in terms of what you can do. And I’m sure your audience probably knows this. But for those who don’t when it comes to selling, so I’m saying it’s, "Remember to get the carrots" or "Remember the carrots." And so, once you gain that understanding that you need to know, you have to engage all three parts of the brain to move somebody forward, things are really, really going to change. And the way I do that is really simple. Now, today, obviously, with all this going on in the world, I think people have perhaps two substantial worldviews. There are people that are very fearful worldview right now. And some would say that’s justified. And then the other other people have a very hopeful worldview, and then somewhere kind of in between in the middle. But you cannot get somebody to affect change when they’re stuck in a fearful worldview. And so the way we do that in neuro marketing is creating belief, likeability and trust. When people believe you, they become more hopeful to the future, so you can move them from this worldview to a bigger, better life, a better you, a better future. If they like you, they will listen. If they trust you, they will buy or buy into what you’re doing. And every one of those things can be created without talent, they’re all learnable. They’re learnable skills. You can create belief systematically, you can create likeability. A smile is, like a genuine smile is the fastest way to likeability, by the way, so much so that I’ve told business people in the past, fire anyone in your business that if they deal with customers, fire them if they don’t smile, because they’re costing you a fortune. And then of course, trust can be built a very scientifically too, there’s a lot of different techniques in that. But like BLT, Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato. That’s the way I remember it, so believe, likeability and trust.
Robbie Spier Miller: 15:11 Yeah, and one of the things that sometimes we see with clients is that they also need to trust themselves, they need to believe they can do it. Because sometimes, they might see, "Wow, all these other people who have lost weight or stop smoking or built a really successful business." But they don’t trust that they can do it. And it’s being able to get them out of that kind of self sabotage that can make a big difference too.
Les Evans: 15:36 Well, you just hit a really important point that I was going to get to. And I’m so glad you brought that up. A lot of business people don’t know this. So if you’re in a sales or marketing situation, for example, the number one reason you’re losing sales or the one that got away or they didn’t take action is because they have a limiting either a false assumption or a false belief or limiting belief. And those fall under many, many categories, but the one you’re talking about is an identity belief, "Yeah, that’ll work for you. But I don’t know if it’s gonna work for me." That’s what you just said. So the interesting thing, and I found this out, it was actually my neuroscientists friend who pointed it out to me because we were doing a stage presentation together. And he said, "What’s that thing you’re doing there?" And I said, "What do you mean that thing?" He goes, "Well, you’re always saying, now you guys might be thinking, or I know what you’re thinking. Or you may be thinking, I know what you’re thinking." And I said, "I don’t know. It’s just a technique I came up." He goes, "Do you realize you’re bringing up every limiting belief that they have, and you’re just obliterating it?" And I went, "Well, no, I never thought of that." He goes, "Here’s what we learn from neuroscience: what we’ve learned is that one of the greatest fears of the primitive brain is to be embarrassed. That’s why people don’t like public speaking. Because if you make a fool of yourself, your status goes down in society and nobody wants to hang around you and you’re not loved and you’re shunned. So we’re always trying to preserve status. And that’s when you ask people, "Hey, you got any questions?" Nobody wants to raise the question, because the primal brain is afraid of losing status. So what happens is, if you’re in a room, for example, people may have questions, or they may have subconscious doubts and fears. And if they have them, but you don’t raise them, you’ve lost the sale." So contrary to most sales, people do most sales training is always saying, "Don’t say anything negative. Don’t bring up objections." That’s completely wrong. You want to bring up the elephant in the room. So they go, "Yeah, okay. Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking." So I would always say to the audience, "Now, you may be thinking, oh, that’s great. laughs that’ll work for you. But how do I know that’s gonna work for me." And everybody in the audience is like, "This guy is like a mind reader." So I found a way that when I work with any clients, in any business, we make a list of all the subconscious and false beliefs, and most businesses have about 25 of them and we address them. When you see amazing change once that happens. Incredible. That’s a powerful, powerful tool. If you’re in any kind of business, where you’re running into these things, sit down and make a list of all... Even if you think it’s silly, it’s not silly to the other person. Because it’s a real concern. And they nine times out of 10, some people will be brave enough to raise their objections. But objections are usually resources like time, money relationship, "I am too busy, too skinny, too fat, not fat enough," whatever. But the real the subconscious stuff, the self doubt stuff, it’s up to you to raise those points. And if you do, your conversion rate, your success rate will increase generally by about 33%. It makes a tremendous difference working with people, this is such a noble, noble practice to me, because you’re literally helping people get out of their own way, which is a large part of what you do and so from the scientific sense, I’m telling you why that works and why it’s so important.
Robbie Spier Miller: 19:31 Yeah, awesome. So what I would love to know more about is what kind of tips you have for engaging with people online and getting them to go through this process of feeling confident in their decision without even having interaction with you. So what kind of tips do you have to help people with that?
Les Evans: 19:54 Well, I mean, like you said, the number one thing, particularly if you’re online is and I cannot emphasize this enough, is having a big, beautiful, natural smile. And there’s an actual word for that. It’s called a Duchaine Smile. And that’s what your eyes crinkle up. I know everybody doesn’t want the crow’s feet. But crow’s feet are a very good thing. Smiles, this is fascinating because I saw some of the work done by Professor Amy Cuddy at Harvard Business School. And what we find is when we smile, we have all sorts of amazing hormonal things going on, like our dopamine goes up, the oxytocin goes up, testosterone goes up for men, estrogen goes up for women, seratonin increases. So we have all these amazing, feel good hormones, but the most amazing thing is because we are human mirrors. When I smile with a natural smile, I actually increase your hormones. So when you project this natural smile, the first thing it does is it lowers threat, it lowers threat, because remember, the primitive primal brain is always looking for threat. And I see this all the time at the grocery store. Of course now we don’t, people in and out of masks, of course, but when you see people on the street, they’re generally just kind of looking at you, "Well, is this a friend or foe?" There’s always that reticence, that hesitation. But the minute you crack a smile, they’re like, "Oh, okay, he’s okay. He’s not a psychopath." And it’s incredibly powerful, because I’ve actually gone into businesses like restaurants, for example, and taught their staff to smile and here’s how to do the proper smile. If it hurts, you’re doing it correctly. You’ve heard that expression, "Smile till it hurts." Like if it really hurts the jaw, then you’re doing it correctly. That’s a great big Hollywood smile, the million dollar smile. And as mentioning, I went into a restaurant friend of mine, his restaurant, we taught all the servers and staff to smile on purpose. We kind of rigged the game, we said, "We’re gonna give all of you $100 bonus this week, cash if you do this silly experiment." Because the restaurant guy, he is a good friend of mine. He said, "Are you sure this is gonna work?" I said, "Yes, I’ll bet real money on it." And here’s what happened. Literally, within the first week, their sales increased 33%. And the tips doubled for the servers. And within eight weeks, they doubled the amount of regulars and the tips tripled. That’s how powerful a smile is. Because it does all this stuffs, when people feel good, a lot of change happens. So you’re moving people into a much more, you’re lowering the risk of threat, you could connect instantly with an audience. I’ve been in crowds as big as 3000 people because I train myself, the very first thing I do walk on stages is massive. "Oh my god, I am so overjoyed to see you," when you approach people with that kind of joy. Their subconscious kicks into gear the same way, if you have like a pet dog. Dogs literally just jump out of their skins when they see their owners. And I know this sounds like really simple, but it is made a profound effect on the way people interact with you. If you fall in love with your audience, they will fall in love with you. And that includes being one on one. I love, I purposely get engaged and fascinated with other people. And when people find out that you’re fascinated by them, a whole world of possibility opens up because you’re connecting on a very, very deep, not only emotional level, but a subconscious level. And when people have that level of trust, something that simple little thing, I tell people, like there is a reason entertainers are coached to smile is because there’s millions of dollars on line and when you create that deep relationship, then you can do that work and move people forward from less to more. So that’s very simple, but I cannot underscore that enough. It is so powerful. And when people do it, my friend is a hairstylist, she said, "I don’t believe that." I said, "Phil, try it for one day and see what happens." He goes, "Oh my God, my tips tripled today," I said, "Told you." Yeah, powerful stuff.
Robbie Spier Miller: 24:42 Yeah. And it really also shows how, you know with the work that we do, we need to sometimes help people grow and hold them accountable. And so we need to feel that sense of security and groundedness and confidence in ourselves and loving the person, no matter what they’re going through, no matter what’s happening, they need to feel that from us so that they can get the message of where we’re going with things. So, the smile is a start to that. But it’s really being externally aware and truly caring about people. And there are a lot of people that care about people, but they’re too self conscious, then they’re too unsure of themselves to be able to express that because we’re self conscious, it’s kind of hard to fall in love with other people or pay attention to them.
Les Evans: 25:34 Well, you brought up a really interesting point, I actually have started teaching these strategies to entrepreneurs, basically, anyone who wants to learn, and I said, "Likeability. As I mentioned, when people like you, they will listen, if they trust you, they will buy into what you’re doing." And so I teach people seven steps on how to become likeable, for example. And one of those things, which is really simple, because you’re probably familiar with the term Confirmation Bias. I’m sure you’ve heard of that before, we have all these biases, because our brains are just too lazy, basically, because there’s too much information. But Confirmation Bias is simple for anyone to understand. It’s basically whatever your beliefs are, you will always find evidence to support those beliefs. So if you believe the world is a mean and nasty place, you’re going to find plenty of evidence to support that. But if you believe that it’s a good place, you’re going to find lots of evidence to support that, too. So one of the things I’ve taught people in terms of a likability strategy is when you’re working with the client, yeah, they may not be your favorite cup of tea. But if you on purpose, look for something good, some redeeming quality that appeals to you, personally, on a very deep, tangible, honest, authentic way, you will start to peel back stuff. And you’ll start to kind of fall in love with that aspect of that person, which really opens up that communication network. Most people are very superficial. If you’ve got nice blue eyes, they’ll say, "Wow, I love your eyes." "Thanks. I’ve never heard that before." But if you find something that is particularly fascinating to you, that you truly appreciate, wow. Because then you’re noticing the distinct, something unique that most people don’t see because they’re too self interested. So neuro marketing is really using the word "You", putting the focus on "You", using the word "You" and that is really critical in communication. I got a message on LinkedIn the other day, some gentleman, I didn’t know. He wrote me five paragraph message. And I went through there and I did a word audit. And what I found is he used the word, "Me, I, my," two and a half times more than he said the words "You" in the first four paragraphs said nothing about me whatsoever. And then the last fifth paragraph, he finally said, "I’d really appreciate it if you give me 15 minutes of your time." So it was not a personal criticism. But most of the time, our communication is very what I call ego centric. It’s all about how great we are and our credentials and our achievements. People don’t care about that. The primal brain is saying, "What can you do for me in terms of a result?" So whether you’re in your practice in what you’re doing or working, selling what you do, it really has to be focused on the word You. What does this mean to you? So if you sell homes, don’t tell people well, "I sell. What do you do?" "I sell houses." No. You have to be specific and say, what will be the message I can say, "I sell you your dream house," is going to go a lot further than just a blanket statement like "Well, you know, I sell cars," or something like that.
Robbie Spier Miller: 29:06 Yeah. We talked a lot about that, so a lot of this sounds very familiar.
Les Evans:29:11 Yeah. This is where you’re gonna see a lot of that kind of cross pollination.
Robbie Spier Miller: 29:15 For sure, yeah. So another thing that I think would be really interesting to explore is we talked about how what motivates people to change isn’t because they’re comfy. They either are going through a sense of pain right there. They’re afraid of losing something. Or they want more in their life. So we talked about people are either motive by guilt, pain or loss or greed, exclusivity or gained. So talk more about how you address that in terms of neuro marketing?
Les Evans: 29:47 Well, again, another great question. I used to say that, particularly because I’ve worked with so many business people. But the interesting thing is, I’d always say, "If you show me a business problem, I’ll show a people problem. If you fix the people problem, you’ll fix the business problem." So I asked the business person, I’d say, "Are you stuck, good? Or are you stuck bad?" And they go, "Well, what does that mean?" I said, "Well, if you’re stuck bad, it means things are really going wrong. And if you don’t change something, you’re going to be in a world of hurt, that’s stuck bad. Stuck good is, "I’m doing well, but I’m stuck because I want more and I don’t know how to get there." And so again, fear of embarrassment, fear of loss, of course, is a huge thing to the primal brain. And the way we use that is, and I’m sure it’s probably the same thing, it’s consequential thinking, because the primal brain can’t think in terms of consequences. So we have to make that connection and say, "Listen, if you don’t change this, what is going to happen?" So we have to kind of poke the primal brain, the pain center, and say, "Look, you’re doing these behaviors now, if you continue on this course, what is going to happen?" Now, we don’t want to make the statement. I don’t want to say, "If you continue to do this, here’s what’s going to happen to you. Because when you make a statement to the primal brain, the primal brain is going to say, "Yes," "No," "Maybe." It’ll start fighting you. When you ask a question. And this is the phenomenal thing. And I’m sure you’ve discovered this. Questions lead, of course. Because when you answer a question, you’re answering, in your own truth, you can dispute my truth, if I make a statement, but if I asked you a question, "If you continue to do this, what will be the outcome?" Bla bla, bla, bla bla, that’s your truth. That’s in your conscious mind shifting from the primal brain now to the logical brain and going, "Oh, my God," will alert, here’s the alarm, "I need to take action." And that’s incredibly powerful. And I, again, discovered that working with some business clients. One client, he’s like, "Here’s my business problems." I said, "Okay, do this, do this, do this, and that’ll solve your problem." We were at a big high level executive retreat in Thailand, like $15,000, a person for this thing. And he’s a big, big, huge six foot five South African men, very strong, South African accent. And on the third day, he came to me and he said, "Listen, I need to talk to you. I am very unsatisfied with the progress we’re making here," my mimicry. And I was so exhausted. So I just told him to sit down, and I literally yelled at him. But instead of telling him what to do, I said, "Let me ask you a question. If you continue to do this, and this and this in this, what do you think is going to happen?" And he went. And that was the other interesting thing. I found that my sister, for example, is a psychologist, a therapist, and I thought to change people you have to go about it in a very clinical way, very professional, etc. What I discovered was the exact opposite, when I got really up into people’s faces, if it was appropriate, because you have to be emotion appropriate. But it wasn’t until I got fully engaged emotionally, and then brought out high powered penetrating questions that we got real results, because that’s what pokes that part of the brain, we got to trigger the fight or flight response to get them moving. And in fact, to answer your question, Robbie, I actually created an entire brain chart, which shows what the primitive brain wants and what it does not want? It is about 30 different items. I don’t think anybody’s written one before like this. So I’ll have to send it to you. I think you’ll really enjoy it. You could go in there. And you can immediately see, "What the heck’s wrong?" "Oh, so that’s why they’re not."
Robbie Spier Miller: 33:57 Yeah. So that example is great. And it shows, in hypnosis, if we want people to go into a certain state of mind, we need to go there first. So if we want them to actually feel the pain of their problem, we need to feel it first. And then ask the question. And the way that you use your voice and your body language is and how you are feeling is what helps him experience.
Les Evans: 34:25 Yeah, and again, the science behind that is the mirror neurons. And I’ve learned that as a performer again, just observing, and I went, because you get frustrated when you’re a performer and you’re learning your way up and you’re going, the old joke would always be, "Oh, I wonder if it’s gonna be a good audience today or bad audience?" And what I learned was, there’s no such thing, there’s only a good or bad performer. If the performer puts themselves in state, then the audience will get in state. It’s not the audience’s job to get in state, you, of course, you know what I mean by state? Of course, your emotions, your physiology, all those different things. But it was up to me to get into state first. And it’s like saying to some, you can’t have somebody fall in love with you, unless you’re in love. What am I going to say to my wife of 30 years? Jihan I really like you. That’s gonna fall completely flat. So yeah, you have to really go there. And I don’t think sometimes people give themselves permission because we live in a very conformity. This is the strangest thing. We need conformity for society to exist. At the same time, the people who change the world are not conformists. And so we’re a lot of times very afraid to be emotional. I get that with business people especially like, "Well, what you don’t understand, I’m a doctor, and I have to be professional." I go, "No, you’re still a human being." And I’ve railed the way doctors make a million dollars a year and just given them hell. "We’re not used to being taught like that." And I go, "That’s why you never change anything." So giving yourself that permission to let go and really connect and again, you lose your fear when you focus on the other person. Like public speaking, the reason people get afraid is because of being selfish, you’re focused internally, instead of focused on, how can I help you. I’m here to save your life. If there’s a car accident out front, I’m not going to worry about lights, camera, action, it’s my job to help save your life. We’ll worry about the makeup and the hair afterwards for the interview. Should be a little sillier. But I like to tell stories like that just to illustrate.
Robbie Spier Miller: 36:40 Yeah, that’s great. And so self consciousness is being selfish, not on purpose. It’s coming from fear. But the more we can get people to be curious about other people and focused on and passionate about helping them get what they need, the better.
Les Evans: 36:59 Yeah and I keep rediscovering this for myself. Because all of us, I think, is particularly last year and a half, have gone through periods of fears and doubts and don’t know what’s going on and get miserable because our businesses have been really effective, for people who run businesses. And but the fastest way out of that depression is to help somebody else. I mean, the minute you start helping somebody else, everything changes. And you get the focus off the internal, "What is me?" And all this stuff. But the minute you help somebody else, all of that stuff changes. And again, such a simple little thing, but it’s powerful. It’s really powerful. Yeah, that’s exciting stuff.
Robbie Spier Miller: 37:37 Awesome. All right. Well, what other tips do you have for us?
Les Evans: 37:42 Well, the interesting thing is, and again, I kind of go from a business standpoint, but it’s all communication wise. And so one of the things we’ve learned is, the primal brain loves pictures and stories, of course. And it can process pictures and stories 60,000 times faster than text. In fact, the primal brain cannot read text, it can’t. So what’s really interesting is, I’m starting to see really, really big companies are really into neuro marketing these days, because they know they have just seconds to catch your attention. Now, I don’t watch TV, I watch YouTube channel on my TV sometimes. And you’ll see these quick little, like, literally five second ads, and you’re thinking, "Who can even absorb that." But the thing is, the primal brain has already absorbed it before you understand it. And that was another thing I learned from my neuroscientist friend. We would flash images, when you do a PowerPoint presentation, for example. And we’d flash images as we’re talking, and there’d be no text. And the audience would say, "Well, wait, go back to that slide. I missed it." I go, "No you didn’t. It’s already been delivered. We did that on purpose." So anytime you can use visuals rather than text is incredibly powerful. Particularly if you using disruptive visuals that are very different. I’m just again talking from a marketing standpoint, because if you’re in the business of hypnotherapy, I guarantee you, you’ve got the market and so it’s much more powerful if you can have images that show what you do verses tell people what you do. Show and tell is best. But again, here’s a really simple example. I worked with a couple of fellows here that run a contracting company, they do home renovations, that’s what they do. And we’ve worked on a number of stuff to help build their business but one of the things I did was I said, "Do you guys have a sign? Do you put a sign out when you’re doing construction like ABC contract factor when you’re remodeling a kitchen?" And they said, "Yeah, we do," and it was just a typical builder sign. Now at the time they were not well known in this area I live in Guelph Canada here, Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, they were in Cambridge. They weren’t well known. I said, "What we’re gonna do is something incredibly disruptive. So that we get you guys noticed." So I had them build a nine foot like three meter handsaw sign, look like a huge handsaw, like you’d see in a kid’s playground. And it had their company name on it, it said caliber contracting, no phone number. And I said, "Put this outside when you’re doing your next contracting job." Because this is what happens when people are driving by, they don’t have the time to process your name and phone number and all that stuff. The sign tells them immediately, subconsciously, what you do, everybody knows what a sign for. So what happened is people started pulling over to take pictures of the sign. Because there was no phone number, which forced them to go on the internet, to go into Google and to drove up their ratings to Google. And within literally a month and a half, they became really, really well known. In fact, today, they are the number one contractor in this area, bar none.
Robbie Spier Miller: 41:18 They created a kind of cliffhanger because they didn’t give their phone number, email or their web, right?
Les Evans: 41:24 Because,again, the primal brain loves curiosity. I think you said that a few minutes ago. So curiosity. I even have a curiosity script that I use for opening up talks, I say to people, "Have you ever wondered why this?" And it’ll be something that people, it’s like, "Have you ever wondered why the toilet paper is always on the wrong way." So silly little thing like that, that people can identify with. But the main point was to create visuals as much as possible in our communications or paint pictures with our words, because our brain thinks in pictures and then speaks in words. And we tend to do the opposite. If we paint pictures and tell stories, that’s why stories are so incredibly powerful. Stories have been around before cave paintings. And I think it’s important to remember that, that stories connect us and we all hear that. But I tell people becoming a masterful storyteller is an incredibly potent tool, because somebody can relate to where you are, you can take them back and say, from an empathetic standpoint, empathy is incredibly powerful. We don’t have to beat people up in pain all the time, we can say, "Listen, I’ve been there, I get it, I have been there, trust me. And here’s where you want to go. So here’s what I did. Here’s the bridge, let’s you and I walk across this bridge together. Because I’ve been. I’m here now, but I’ve been there." So I think that’s an empathetic storytelling standpoint, is people are here, but they want to go here. If we can put ourselves back in an empathy place, and carry them over the bridge with us, we immediately create that trust and believability and the likability. And then there’s that emotional bond, because people, they have to believe you, they have to believe in you, they have to believe that you can actually do this thing, then they have to believe that that thing will work for them. And then they have to believe that they can do it. So there’s like five levels of belief that we have to be mindful of when you’re working with any client, whether you’re working in a sales process or whether you’re actually working with them as a client, to move them from less to more whether it’s losing weight or whatever their challenge is. So those are five levels of belief, they have to believe you, they have to believe in you, they have to believe that you can do the thing, they have to believe that your thing will work. And they have to believe that it will work for them. And then I can do this stuff. So there’s like five or six of those in there, like a little checkbox. And if you do that, if you bear that stuff in mind, you’re going to be way more effective. Building belief is so important. Belief, trust, likability, people don’t like you, they won’t take action. Just that simple. They don’t always have to like you, sometimes you can push them, but there still has to be that framework there.
Robbie Spier Miller: 44:21 Yeah. So if we look at something like people’s presence online, it’s so important to keep all of this in mind, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people in business, who waste the prime real estate of their web presence on some beautiful stock photo that really has nothing to do with their business. They have that split second to get somebody’s attention and get them curious enough to learn more.
Les Evans: 44:47 Stock photos by the way, the primal brain just tunes them right out. Same with stock video footage, because I’ve seen that before. Doing your own kind of nitty gritty stuff is the best stuff and your own personal photos. If you are going to use sort of a stock photo, what I tell people is get a professional photoshop artist and make it disruptive some way. I’ll give you a really quick example, I was talking with the CEO of an investment firm, they do research. And I went to their web page, and I was like, "Oh, this is just completely ego centric." It’s all about, "Here’s the awards, we’ve won." And it doesn’t tell you anything about how they do what they do. And they have big clients. And so I sent them over, I took a stock photo of a man walking off a cliff blindfolded. And it said, "Or choose XYZ company." That’s it. That’s the message, "Or choose us." That’s it because the message is instantaneous. Either you walk off a cliff blind or you hire us. And he was like, "What!? How did you do that!?" I came up with five more images like that. I had one with a lady with a crystal ball, "Or choose us?" Because guessing is not research.
Robbie Spier Miller: 46:07 So you’re bringing them to the decision and you’re making the emotion of it intense like, one direction or the other.
Les Evans: 46:16 That’s right. And part of what appeals to the primal brain is not only stuff that’s memorable and disruptive, which is why I use the saw sign. Anything unusual, is memorable. It’s, "Whoa! What’s with that? That’s really strange." Or also something that is really obvious. You make it really, really obvious. Using an image like that is really disturbing. But it makes it very obvious. And that’s what differentiates, because if we look sound and smell like everybody else, you’re gonna get lumped into that group, and so there’s a lot of different things like that.
Robbie Spier Miller: 46:57 So give us some examples of what you mean by making it really obvious?
Les Evans:47:02 Well, particularly, like I said, in imagery, when I’m talking about neuro marketing, I’ll use some pretty shocking images. I had one. I had an image that I posted, and it has a medieval Knight, standing there with a sword, in the old tin can of the armor. And it says, "Traditional marketing is made evil," that’s being really disruptive.
Robbie Spier Miller: 47:31 So you’re making a strong statement and with the visuals.
Les Evans: 47:36 Yes, correct. You see, in the internet today, as you know, the YouTube is filled with, "How-to" videos are they’re all content, but are people content with your content? So there’s a lot of "How-to" stuff out there. What is infinitely more valuable and you, I don’t know, probably in your study of NLP. Were you taught the sleight of mouth patterns? Are you familiar with them?
Robbie Spier Miller: 48:05 Yeah.
Les Evans: 48:05 Okay, that stuff is so cool. So what is sleight of mouth? Sleight of mouth is what is there’s like 14 or 15 different ways of shifting a perspective. And that, I would argue that shifting someone’s perspective is far more valuable than a how-to. So if you are in your field, rather than just saying, "Well, here’s how to lose weight," you change, you shift somebody’s perspective. Now sleight of mouth, what that’s powerful stuff. Because you 180 somebody’s belief system instantly. And beliefs are very tricky, as you know, because beliefs aren’t necessarily facts. They’re just assumptions that we presume are facts. And people don’t like having their facts challenged. But with sleight of mouth, and this is what I’m really doing here. I want to be a bit controversial, I want to get raise your ire, I want you to get, "Whoa, what!?" And when you challenge and I’m doing that from a sense of values, these are my values. I really do believe this. This is a game changer in communications, and a marketing and sales because we help people get what they want faster, with less friction. And so I’m gonna say, "Your stuff is obsolete." Pardon my language pissed off more than a few marketing guys saying that, but their bosses were listening. Because it was, "Whoa, I’ve never heard anybody talk like that before." So I kind of built my reputation. Listen, I’m a super friendly, approachable, nice guy. But I’m very opinionated. And it’s those opinions that got me to the stage in 24 countries. Because I was saying things differently. Using some sleight of mouth. I’m still haven’t mastered those. I love that stuff though. That’s incredibly powerful technology. So if I could say one thing is, make your message, give a viewpoint, put a viewpoint. And when I post things on social media, I’m quite often giving a viewpoint, I’ll get people, "I don’t agree with you." I don’t care if you don’t agree, I’m not here to gain agreement, I’m here to go show you a different perspective. Because I’m only looking business terms of clients. And I’m sure you’d agree with this. We only are looking for people who are looking for us. We’re only looking for the people who are looking for us. So I want my message to be very clear. I’m not trying to attract everybody. I’m just trying to attract somebody who’s looking for this type of viewpoint, if that makes any.
Robbie Spier Miller: 50:46 If you want to catch the right kind of fish, you got to use the right kind of bait.
Les Evans: 50:51 Yeah and you can’t be afraid of offending somebody, it means we live in an era, canceled culture here today. But people who have strong opinions are valuable, because they force us to look at things a different way. And two people think the same way. One of them’s not necessary, as the adage goes, so there’s so many parallels between what we do, I’m kind of just giving people the science behind it. And like I said, I’ve created an entire framework of utilizing this stuff. One of the things I’ve just finishing working on now is it’s a tool for building websites or presentations or pitch decks. And all it is, is a list of the what you need to be neuro marketing friendly, brain friendly? And then the neuro part is really how to deliver it? So here’s what the brain needs to make decisions. And here’s how it needs to be served up on the platter so that it gets into the old brain. So I think that’s going to be a very, very powerful tool, because I’ve basically systemized and codified what has worked for me for years. And that brought me in over 1000 clients to my investment company that I brought in personally. So I know it works. That’s exciting stuff.
Robbie Spier Miller: 52:13 Yeah, that is amazing. Yeah. All right. Great. So is there anything else you think would be beneficial for people to know about him?
Les Evans: 52:23 Well, I think, again, just some of those key points is to remember that the decisions are made subconsciously. So yes, we need facts and figures. But we also have to remember to be emotionally engaged. And we do have to understand the subconscious underpinnings of its friend versus foe. I mean, neuroscience can get incredibly complicated, but at the end of the day, it’s just, how can we deliver this? And how do we help people get out of their own way? BecausE most of the sales resistance or just friction or resistance we get period is because people have fears. And the most important thing I could tell you is people will rarely raise those fears to you. They may not even be consciously aware of them, quite often they’re not, you have to be consciously aware of you’re the person trying to help them move from less to more. That’s incredibly important. That was the greatest discovery I had made was once I started raising these limiting beliefs or false beliefs or false, like here’s an example in hypnosis, for example, a false assumption is that, "Oh, that’s all woowoo. Yeah, I don’t believe in that stuff." Even though there’s years and piles of research, to support it. But if somebody has that false assumption, and you don’t deal with it, you’ve lost the game, you can’t move forward. So, one of the things I would say is like, "Now, I know, you may be thinking," hypnosis, that’s all that whoowoo. David... Well, David Copperfield is not a hypnotist. But it’s like, that’s all that whoo stuff where they make funny people do on stage. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to make a jackass out of myself in front of people. Because that’s the showbiz perception. And if you don’t deal with that, if you’re in hypnosis, you have to get that elephant out of the way. Or they may have a fear like, "Well, now you may be thinking, well, if you’re in hypnosis, I’m going to say something that I don’t want to say. It’s buried in there for a reason. I don’t want that to come out by accident." That would be a fear of mine. What if I have something buried in there that I don’t want to talk? What can you make? Is this is like... Yes, we going to answer some questions here, is that type of thing. So if you don’t address those fears, you will have a breakdown in communication obviously or you’ll lose the client and you won’t know why? Because it’s like, "I thought they were convinced." But it’s like one niggling thing. A limiting belief, a false belief, a false assumption if you don’t deal with it. So the greatest thing I could tell you as a tool, think back to all your clients and really pay attention to what those fears or objections may have been, make a list for yourself. And you have to deal with them. Some are external, false beliefs. Like I said, that’s a false assumption about your industry, that could be a stereotype. So think in terms of stereotypes, false assumptions, limiting beliefs, false beliefs. And if you can make a list of there and one by one, systematically deal with them by brick. And some people may say, "Well, no, actually, that wasn’t a concern of mine." "Okay, great," but that is the most powerful revelation, I can tell you, that makes a massive difference. For me in business, and anyone I’ve taught that technique to, has seen an immediate gain in clients and engagement and the progress and the results they get, because those are most of the stumbling blocks. And then you can get in there and you can use your reframing, you can use things like sleight of mouth or future pacing, whatever techniques you’re using, for example, but you got to get that clutter, that subconscious clutter out of the way, because that is the primal brain putting on the spreed baked. That’s why people are afraid of salespeople, if they don’t want to be sold, because, "You’re going to cost me time, it cost me money. My wife get mad at me. I might emotionally or physically healthy. This might screw me up strategically." So it’s always a fear of resources, you really have to be worth it. It’s like the primal brain is going, "Well, I don’t know if you’re worth it or not," like you really got to be worth it.
Robbie Spier Miller: 56:57 So we can all have a genuine smile. And then there also has to be real value there. And the client has to know intuitively and subconsciously about that value.
Les Evans: 57:09 Yeah, you really have to paint that bright future picture. That is really important. Because this is true, Robbie, if somebody doesn’t want thing, anything, there’s nothing you can do. They’re like, "Forget it, it’s not worth it." But if they want something badly enough, they’ll crawl over broken last. But it’s up to you to be able to paint that belief and that aspirational future.
Robbie Spier Miller: 57:37 They’re not going to crawl across broken glass if they don’t think it’s going to get them anywhere. But if they believe it well, and it’s what they really want, then it’s a different story. So yeah, we call this vaccinating against sabotage, where we’re bringing up where could they sabotage themselves and address that. So yeah, it’s really interesting to hear it from your angle.
Les Evans: 58:01 Well now you know the science behind it. And again, self sabotage, usually, there may be some kind of cognitive bias causing that because we have, human beings are terribly flawed thinkers. I mean, there’s something like 100, I think there’s 188, cognitive biases, I work with probably about six, half dozen, eight of them in business. Like, for example, here’s a really simple one. And this may be useful to you. It’s called curse of knowledge. Which means that because I know something, I assume everybody knows what I know. And that’s a big problem for us as business people. Because we get frustrated, like, "Well, why didn’t they buy from me? It’s obvious. Who the obvious choice is!?" Well, it is to you, but it’s not to them. That’s called curse of knowledge. So that’s what I say on your website, you really have to say, "Here’s what I can do for you," very specifically, and very in your face and very obvious as fast as possible. because like you said, you got two seconds. "What can you do for me?" "This." I said it to the investment CEO, I said, "Let me ask you a question. What is one sale worth to you? I don’t know what? Let’s say it’s called $20,000. Because you’re a big company. How much does it cost? If you lose one sale? How much is it going to cost you?" "20 grand." I said, "Okay, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to help you stop losing that 20,000 but not just one of them, all of them." And he’s like, "Where do I sign?"
Robbie Spier Miller: 59:40 [Inaudible 00:59:40] on right there.
Les Evans: 59:43 Yeah, because it’s consequential. I did both sides of spectrum. What’s the gain? Well, what’s the loss if you don’t act? So heaven and hell. Very simple. So in terms of consequences, that’s for your audience. Great way to cut through, don’t talk about features and benefits, don’t talk about all your degrees and certificate, they don’t care, they will afterwards, they care afterwards. Because that authority and credibility is important to trust. But we don’t start with that. It’s like, "Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re here for a reason, you’ve got this problem. Now, if you do this, here’s gonna be your bright, beautiful picture. But let me ask you this, if you don’t do this, what’s hell’s going to look like? Because it’s coming." Yeah, that’s the right there, that technique right there, is the fastest way through. When I talk to business people. I just say, "How much money do you want to keep losing?" And they like, "What!?" I said, "This isn’t about making more sales. It’s about plugging your leaky bucket. You got a leaking bucket, right now I’m here to plug it." They are like, "Whoa, wow. Okay, tell me more." So I’ve given them a strong visual, because I am like, "See all that money going with pouring into the bucket, that’s draining out the bottom." Because if you’re losing sales, penny saved, penny earned, in fact, the last sale iss more expensive, because it costs a lot of money to acquire customers. So, things like that, deal with their belief systems, give them a very clear visual of heaven and hell, make sure they can understand how you can take them over and that they can make it, deal with those five beliefs. Belief in you believe you believe that they can do it, believe it will work for them, believe that they can do it, etc, etc. So those are powerful tips. You really don’t need that many of these. Just a little handful will make a tremendous difference.
Robbie Spier Miller: 1:01:42 Yeah. Awesome. Great. Well, thanks so much Les, this was a lot of fun. And it was really interesting to see your take on this. I definitely learned some cool things. And I would love to see that list you put together.
Les Evans: 1:01:55 The brain chart. Yeah, I’ll send it to you.
Robbie Spier Miller: 1:01:57 Yeah, I would love to see that. And if it’s alright with you, we could share it with our audience. So people can apply that and so thank you so much. If people want to learn more about you and what you can do for them, how do they reach you?
Les Evans: 1:02:11 Well, I haven’t had a website up for a while because I basically was so in demand, I never needed one. It’s like, I guess I did most of my work by referral. But you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m on Facebook at Les Evans official, same thing at Instagram, at I am Les Evans official, you can contact me or any of those, or you can just email me directly, which is just Lesis@icloud.com, L-E-S-I-S, it’s a really simple. And if you want a consultation, I used to give people a free consultation for 20 to 30 minutes, if they just want to have an exploration or find out more or if this can be helpful, but certainly anybody who applies, even just a little bit of this stuff, it will make a tremendous difference in the reaction you get from people and your conversions and your sales. Like I said, you’ll get more sales, no question. Neuro marketing is kind of like what detergent is the water. Detergent makes water wetter and neuro marketing makes marketing better.
Robbie Spier Miller: 1:03:18 I like that. That’s very memorable.
Les Evans: 1:03:20 Yeah, I try.
Robbie Spier Miller: 1:03:24 Good. And if anybody wants to learn more about how hypnosis and NLP training can help you with marketing, advertising, sales or just helping people change with hypnosis, which really is the same kind of communication, you can go to HypnosisTrainingCanada.com, we have some free giveaways there to help you learn more. And then we do also offer a free consultation to see if this is a good fit for you. So you can go to HypnosisTrainingCanada.com.
Les Evans: 1:03:52 I’d highly recommend that, by the way, because I use a lot of that stuff personally.
Robbie Spier Miller: 1:03:57 Yeah, well, yes, I know. And so does it do a lot of marketers and advertisers because they know it works. Yeah, it’s our natural superpower ability that we’re all learning how to use better and better. Yeah, great. So it was great to have you here. Thanks so much Les. If you are feeling stress, fear and worry or debating yourself in your head, tune into next week’s podcast, a professional musician and hypnotist will be joining us to share how music and hypnosis helped him escape this trap and be more relaxed and confident everywhere in his life. And if you’re wanting to discover more about how hypnosis training can help you, go to HypnosisTrainingCanada.com and schedule your free consultation. Remember to click the button Subscribe, share this podcast with their friends, and please leave us a review so you can help others to benefit from the podcast too. Until next week.
Robbie Spier Miller: 1:04:57 You’ve been listening to the hypnosis show with Robbie Spier Miller. Tune in next time to learn more about how you can change your life with hypnosis. And if you are interested in learning more about training opportunities, go to HypnosisTrainingCanada.com and schedule a free consultation.