The conversation that struck up was someone asked, “How do you have all those recordings?” And his answer was beautiful. He replied, “Because I’ve recorded them, and you haven’t yet.” Take the same answer and apply it to my friend who’s written 15 or 20 or so books, this person who’s put out multiple albums of their music. So one of the very best things you can do in terms of your business, in terms of your own personal growth is to simply get out there and get started. You know your business can change people’s lives, but you don’t yet have the right words to inspire them to take action. Imagine the changes you will create in your business as you tap into the secrets of ethical influence and positive persuasion to not only better serve your clients but also to supercharge your financial freedom. I’m your host, Jason Linett. And welcome to the Hypnotic Language Hacks podcast. I help entrepreneurs and business owners just like you to close more premium sales.

[00:01:02]

And no, this isn’t about tricking or manipulating people, not at all. It’s about helping your prospects to appropriately sell themselves and be your products or services. Please hit subscribe and get all the episodes now at jasonlinett.com. It turns out that there’s no such thing as finding the time. Finding the time is a bit of a game that we, as people, have invented to basically trick ourselves into not doing things that perhaps we otherwise wouldn’t want to do. The one thing that truly exists is making the time. And as soon as you can step into that mindset that really you can make time, you can invent time, or as the theme of this week’s episode is, here are three ways to reclaim your time, my goal this week is to get a little bit more personal with you in terms of some of the mindset adjustments that I’ve made to become more productive over the years and, again, give you three ways to reclaim your time. This is Hypnotic Language Hacks Episode 28.

[00:02:01]

You can find the show notes over at jasonlinett.com/28. Here we go, three ways to reclaim your time. Before we get started today, if you want to easily grab people’s attention, naturally build authority, and organically have your prospects wanting more from you even before you’ve made an offer, I’ve created a step-by-step program to help you to do just that. It’s called Business Influence Systems, and this is your opportunity now to visit jasonlinett.com to get a free behind-the-scenes tour of the exact hypnotic persuasion strategies that you can ethically use to better start up or scale up your business. If you want a proven framework to boost your confidence, attract premium clients, and inspire more people to take action with you, get Business Influence Systems now at jasonlinett.com.

[00:02:58]

You know, before I get into the content this week, I want to start off with a simple message here. You’re not alone. And what I mean by that is that, so often, you know, many of you out there are in some sort of segment of your life where there’s some business goal that you’re going after. There’s something bigger and better that’s out there, and you’re going to be the one to make that happen. And if you’re anything like where I was about 12, 13 years ago, where here was this idea, here was this calling, this mission, and then the biggest challenge became, “When the hell am I going to make this thing happen?” And again, from the intro a few moments ago, the idea that the discovery of that making the time is only really what exists. And the simple truth is it’s not until we capture three of these themes I’m about to share with you that any of that can take off. But what I want you to know is that for anyone out there that you’d look up to, for anyone out there who you’d emulate or perhaps want to model in some way, chances are they were in a similar spot in their life along that journey too.

[00:04:00]

And here’s one of those little filters to have in the back of your mind perhaps, your specific story, your specific background is why people need to hear your message. People need to benefit from your specific product or service because there’s something about the way that you do it, and there’s something aligned with your brand, your business, and even with your story as to why this needs to become that ethical must that that message has to get out there. Which I share that, which I know, this is an episode all about time management, I share that because once you have that sort of rules of the universe beneath all that you do. Once you attach that, you know, now-classic message of “find your why and put that mission behind all that you do,” it makes it a whole lot easier, I hate the idea of hustle and grind, that it’s just kind of creates this sort of meme culture that’s just some sort of superficial post, but there’s something to be said about, you know, putting in the effort, putting in the work.

[00:04:59]

I was at a marketing convention a number of years ago, and I’m sitting at a table, and there’s a guy there that specifically does financial advice. He brings people into a financial consulting program and runs a community around it too. And the conversation broke out at the table, it was like lunchtime at the Traffic & Conversion Summit a number of years ago, and he mentions that he’s got 1,500 recordings, you know, these little quick digest 15, 20-minute audios, which even goes so far back, they kind of even predate podcasts. Nowadays, he could probably just repurpose those as podcast episodes. The conversation that struck up was someone asked, “How do you have all those recordings?” And his answer was beautiful. He replied, “Because I’ve recorded them, and you haven’t yet.” Take the same answer and apply it to my friend who’s written 15 or 20 or so books, this person who’s put out multiple albums of their music.

[00:05:58]

So one of the very best things you can do in terms of your business, in terms of your own personal growth is to simply get out there and get started. Now, my goal with this week’s episode of Hypnotic Language Hacks, as we often do, is to go inside of the strategies and unpack some of the hypnotic principles, some of the inner thinking that actually makes these things even more possible. So it’s where I wasn’t always as I could be nowadays, and there’s always room for growth and improvement inside of this. But to have that understanding that time is one of those things that, like money, we could spend it, we could invest it, we could squirrel it away, we could squander it, we can do all sorts of things that are either appropriate or inappropriate, helpful or not helpful. So my goal this week is to, again, give you specifics that you can do with your time. We’re going to start with some bigger picture themes here, and I’ll share some specifics along the way too. That being said, as is often my style, we completely outlined out this episode and came

[00:06:59]

up with three specific subject line headers to present all this information. And now that I’m standing here, there’s a fourth one, but you know what we’re going to do, get ready for the cliffhanger, that’ll be next week’s podcast episode. How about that? So let me give you the overview first, then we’re going to get into the specifics. Three ways to reclaim your time, you’re going to notice a theme here, book yourself, batch yourself, prioritize yourself. One more time, book yourself, batch yourself, prioritize yourself. Which the intro in the part one of this, booking yourself, would be simply time is one of those things that if you’re not tracking it, it easily gets away. Have you ever had that moment where you stepped onto a scale and suddenly the numbers surprised you? Have you ever had that moment where suddenly you looked at your bank account, having not looked at it in a couple of days, and suddenly it was a lot lower than you expected? Or maybe you played that look, don’t see game with your credit card, that finally, when the statement arrived, and maybe you let it sit on the table a couple of days

[00:08:00]

without opening it, or maybe you have it logged in, here’s the letter from the IRS or wherever, and you’re playing that game of “If I don’t look at it, it doesn’t exist,” Schrödinger’s tax bill, as it were. Time is one of those things that, in the same vein, that if we’re not really monitoring it, we’re not going to be able to really master it, is the simple mindset to adjust here. So this is where, you know, running some sort of calendar, and the beauty of nowadays would be the fact that there are so many different ways to do this. Hell, even your smartphone has a calendar app built into it, and the ability is to make it connect with other apps all around the internet. Now, as much as in recent years I’ve moved all of my stuff over to the Apple platforms, everything iOS in terms of my phone, my tablet, my desktop, and my laptop, the truth is I was still using Microsoft, what is it now called, Microsoft Office 365, which just for the benefit of it’s an exchange server and as soon as I update something on my phone,

[00:09:00]

it’s updated on my laptop, it’s updated on my desktop. It’s everywhere. It’s integrated into my Calendly system, so people can’t book that time, which just spending a little bit of time, which whether you use what I use or whether you use something else that fits you better, just to take those little steps to start to manage that time better. The same thing that you’ve heard the advice of setting aside some money every paycheck so that now we can invest over time and let the money grow. What’s the best time to plant a tree? Either right now or 30 years ago. Only one is an option today. So before we get into any of these details, especially talking about book yourself, find or create your own mechanism to control your own time. Now, when I say book yourself, this brings up an interesting story. A friend of mine, she was a massage therapist, and part of her business in the Washington, D.C. area was that she had one office in this city, one office in that city, and then she also went into Washington, D.C. and did services there.

[00:10:01]

Come to find out that, basically, at the end of every month, she had spent upwards of 50 or 60 hours in her car, which I’m smiling inside on this one because we’re in the process of moving from Northern Virginia, right around Washington, D.C. where the traffic is horrible, down to Florida, down to around Orlando area where we keep getting warnings, “There’s a lot of traffic here.” I’m like, “Yeah, try me.” So she realized that here was that conflict with time. So much time was being wasted. And so she made a simple change inside of what she did. She picked one location. And the premise became, if you want to work with her, you’ve got to go to her. Now, even from this distance right now, I can feel and I can sense the hairs on the back of your necks starting to stand up, because this is inciting fear in some of you. You could probably guess though the result as to why I’m telling you this story, because clearly, I wouldn’t tell you the story of, “Here’s what she did,” and it didn’t work.

[00:11:01]

No, it worked wonderfully for her, because what happened instead, suddenly now, the people who were coming to her were the people who were the most excited to work with her, the people who were the most passionate, they were willing to drive that extra half an hour to work directly with her. Now, at that point in my story, I heard this, and it created a shift inside of my mindset, because back in those days, the primary focus of my business was seeing individual clients operating as a certified professional hypnotist, seeing clients one by one. And hey, wide open, when do you want to come in? I didn’t have kids yet, so it’d be the game of, “Oh, you want 6:30 in the evening? Sure, let’s book that.” But you could imagine there was a bit of a problem that came out of this. Maybe here was the day that I’m looking at my calendar, and because of the way that these two people scheduled, there just wasn’t time to put someone in between. So I made one simple shift here, which was that I mapped out my days to exactly how it was going to play out.

[00:11:59]

And this changed over the years, and it’s quite different nowadays, of course, too. But at that time, I was booking everybody as a 90-minute appointment. This is all one-to-one consulting/coaching, basically. And not every session was an hour and a half, and I put it into my paperwork that we schedule a full 90-minute so we’ve got the time if we need it. Though most times, the first time we meet, it takes the full hour and a half, and then sessions after that, perhaps an hour on average, anywhere between 45 to 75 minutes. This way, it was never building the expectation of dollars for hours. Quick side note to this, there was a time where I was doing an assembly program for high schools. Framing is everything. That’s a big thing we teach over in Business Influence Systems in that community. If I put on paper that the program that I offered was $1,200 for an hour, I was saying that to a school teacher who, to say it politely, was not earning $1,200 an hour. Then again, neither was I.

[00:12:58]

Here’s all the years of training and experience, here’s all the time and preparation, here was the travel down to Chattanooga, Tennessee to do the program at that specific school, here was the travel back. I learned at one point, if a school ever asked me, this is no longer a market that I’m in though, but if a school ever asked me, “Hey, can we do a half-an-hour program?” Almost like a mind-read I knew to respond, “The program fee is the same no matter the time frame.” You know, basically, it’s anywhere between half an hour to an hour and a half. Most schools find a one-hour program is ideal. In the words of, I think it was, B.B. King, “I do the show for free, you just have to pay me to set up.” So it was no longer the game of the hours. But if I said it was a one-hour program for $1,200, they’d go, “Wow, that’s a lot.” If we change the language around that, then it became the program itself as an investment of $1,200, and the length of the program is flexible to meet your needs. Anywhere between a half an hour to an hour and a half.

[00:13:58]

Some of you are smiling because you know that pattern, most schools find a one-hour program is ideal. So setting the time frame, I mentioned this first point of book yourself because what I began to do was I mapped out my day. I do a 9:30, I do an 11:00. I did a 1:00, I did a 3:00, I did a 4:30. And there was some variation over the years. So what would happen, again, will start to strike fear in some of you, the person would reach out, and they’d go, “Hey, could you do like a 3:15?” And I’d be able to respond, “I can do a 3:00 on Thursday.” What would they most often respond? “Great.” Or they’d say, “No, I can’t do that. Could you maybe do it at 3:15?” “Well, my 4:30 is open.” And again, they would find a way, oh, finding versus making, they would find a way to make that work. Now, in terms of booking yourself, as soon as you do this, as soon as you map out those specific hours, you’ve now created a sense of freedom, because in the midst of that time frame where, again, my business was entirely service-based rather than the

[00:15:02]

product-based format that I’ve now become over the years, it’s where in that time frame I knew this is when I would return phone calls. This is when I would block out time. Oh, there’s a hint. This is where I would block out time to produce videos, to work on my website. And it’s where if it was outside of that workday time zone, especially once I had kids, it didn’t happen. So this is where there is a moment where I had someone who briefly worked with me, and he quickly learned this, that you don’t just walk into Jason’s office and sit in the chair and just strike up a conversation. That this time set of “This is the time that I’m here. This is the time that I’m working,” so as soon as I leave, I get to turn it off. And I say that as I’ve had family members over the years that I’ve watched sort of results in their lives where they were on all the time. Let’s create some balance. So as soon as you have that willingness to book yourself, which is a side note to those of you who may

[00:16:00]

do events, whether they’re perhaps in-person soon as things are beginning to open back up, or the same applies to doing an online training, you know? If I ran the business model of, “Hey, once we have five or six people, then I’ll check with you and we will schedule something.” But if instead I decide, “Hey, guess what, next event kicks off April 13th, spaces are already filling up, this is how many are left,” I would sell that event out faster. We’d be bringing more people in because I booked myself, which this is just some playful language around this, it created an artificially full schedule. Now, artificial is perhaps not the right word, because my schedule is full, because I wasn’t doing anything else the week of the training, as I was at that time. But it’s where now I had the ability to say to my clients, “Well, my schedule is full the week of April 13th. However, the week beginning whatever it will be, April 19th, I have Monday open that day. What’s best for you?” So just that willingness to put things on the calendar, and as a preview, point number three is how we really

[00:17:02]

reclaim that time. So look at your time, start to prioritize it out the same way that even a lawyer would book by 10-minute increments sometimes, schedule that time out, decide exactly when you’re going to do things. If you don’t claim the time, the time will not claim you. That metaphor somehow works. The second point in terms of reclaiming your time is to batch yourself, to batch your specific time in terms of what you do. Now, this is something, to give some credit where it’s due, this is something that I modeled from reading Tim Ferris 4-Hour Work Week, and in terms of batching by mode. So for example, here’s the date last week where I knew here’s a new webinar sequence we had designed out for a segment of my business, and basically, it was going to be repurposing an older campaign and just updating it with newer content, newer headlines, linking to the existing webinar that we’re now promoting in that segment of the business. And the whole idea was, “Let me now schedule out time,” which is just

[00:18:01]

about writing, think about that for a moment, where the only mode of that time frame that I booked in my own calendar, the only mode that was there was writing. I wasn’t answering my phone, I wasn’t producing videos, I wasn’t even responding to emails, and in fact, I turned all those things off. For those of you that are watching me right now over on the Jason Linett website or maybe on YouTube, I have an Apple Watch on, which is set to that fancy theater mode, which means it doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t send me alerts, it doesn’t do the little haptic tap thing, it doesn’t buzz or vibrate. The time where I’m working in that, I turned off those distractions, and I let that be that sole focus of what I’m doing in that specific time. So by going into that mode of batching, this is one of two podcasts that I host. And when it comes time to record, I’m batching that time, because think about this, for any of you who have done any kind of content creation, your biggest time suck is often setting

[00:19:02]

up and taking down. So once the lighting is up… and I’m right now filming this in a funny time frame, I’m filming this in February, this will probably release late February, early March, and I’m standing in an office that I’m leaving behind in Virginia. And in fact, just to kind of paint the picture for you, even if you’re watching me right now or listening on a podcast player, all of the stuff in the walls has now been packed away. In two weeks’ time, there’s a group of counselors who have signed the lease, and they’re renting out this office that I purchased for, at minimum, the next three years. And because there’s less furniture in the room, I didn’t want to bring my sound buffering stuff. Never ever put hardwood floors in an office. Let’s just get that out of the way. I don’t regret having them because they’re gorgeous here. They’re actually luxury vinyl plank, even more durable it turns out. But the sound echo, I have a rug piled up in a floor on top of me. To my right, there’s a ladder with a blanket over it, and that’s how we’re not being drowned

[00:20:01]

out by echo right now. There’s a little bit but not as much as there could be. What I’m getting at here is the whole idea of, again, the setup and the takedown. I know the cameras are balanced, I know the microphone has fresh batteries, and now that allows me to just turn the camera on and just produce. So I do the same thing if it’s time to record audio. I do the same thing if it’s time to film a course. I do the same thing if it’s recording a podcast episode. How many key things can I do of a similar style in one sitting? Now, here’s the unknown sort of surprise benefit of this. Your drafting, as it is, here’s a webinar that we’ve produced that has a follow-up sequence over the course of about 10 days. The benefit now, there’s a through-line of communication that’s familiar in the 10-email sequence that follows it up. It doesn’t feel like it’s all scattered because I wrote it at different times, because I didn’t write it at all different times. This is one of those things that, again, we can claim something as a strength of ours,

[00:21:02]

that ability to batch our time and do things because this is the mode in which that I’m working. This is the mode of… And think about it in terms of what we call representational systems inside of hypnotic language patterns, when I’m moving, when I’m listening, when I’m watching, when I’m writing, when I’m typing, when I’m editing, and I’m going to put that stuff together. And back to point number one, I’m going to book myself, because this is the time that I do it. I mean, to walk through the rest of today, I know I’m filming one more episode to have it ready in the can before we travel down south, I’m recording two episodes of the other podcast, but I’ve put those two episodes to record like sandwiched around a Zoom meeting that I’ve got with people that I work with for an ongoing project. So that’s the time that I’m going to be in Zoom mode in front of the computer with the headphones on recording just simply audio or doing a meeting in that context. So look at the question of what is this event like, and organize your day,

[00:22:01]

batch those things together so it’s not the get up, get down, set up, take it down nonsense. So, so far, we’ve covered book yourself, batch yourself. The third part, it’s one of my favorite, in addition to the bonus number four, which will be next week’s episode, listen carefully, point number three, prioritize yourself. The biggest conference in the hypnosis industry is called HypnoThoughts Live, and actually, previous guest on the program, Scott Sandland, I believe Episode 20, was the one who created hypnothoughts.com as an online forum, and over time, that morphed into a public community, which is now that annual convention that happens in Las Vegas. 2017, I had the great honor to give the keynote there. I bring this up because there’s a moment I was giving a presentation at that conference. So there’s 100 people in the room, and I start talking about the theme I’m now introducing to you. And a hand goes up in the air in the back of the room, and I tell you, you could hear the fear in her voice

[00:23:02]

that she was a therapist. And the whole story was, “I see so many people, I don’t have the time to produce videos. I’d love to do a podcast, but I don’t have time to record it. What should I do?” And the answer was this third point, prioritize yourself. So here’s what’s different about prioritizing yourself versus booking yourself. So we may have those moments where something is booked and we make a small adjustment. You know, for years in my business, and yes, this is a bit of reframing as we call it, I’ve never had a cancellation fee. No. I’ve had a rescheduling policy. It’s the same thing, but the ear hears it a very different way. I also have, in addition to a rescheduling policy, a “don’t be a dick” policy. So here’s my person I was working with last week who the kid was sick and her husband may have been exposed to coronavirus. And she goes, “I know we can be spaced out.”

[00:24:00]

We were meeting in person. “I know we can be spaced out. Should I come in?” I go, “No, let’s just reschedule.” You know, she’d done the test, “Let’s wait three days to see what the results come back. My schedule is mostly open at the moment because I’m not taking new people in person anymore. So let’s make this adjustment.” “Oh, what about the rescheduling fee?” I go, “I know the guy who enforces it who can also ignore it.” And she laughed at that, and we simply moved on. So we can adjust things on our calendar. That being said, I know, just to map through my time frame here, I know Monday in two weeks from the time I’m recording this, that’s the time that my wife and I are going to the settlement office to sign the papers on the closing of the house. We’re moving. I know Tuesday, here’s the time frame that the buyers and the sellers don’t have to be in the same room, and especially, they’re being more cautious around that, you know, in the midst of a pandemic, and that’s the time frame that even though we don’t have to be there, I’ve kind of gone in and prioritized myself.

[00:24:57]

I have blocked out the entire morning from 9:00 in the morning until 1:00 in the afternoon, just in case, you know, “We need a copy of your passport,” just in case, “We need this document.” For whatever reason, you know, just to be available, just in case. Same thing, I have a slightly newer car. This is not…you’ve heard me enough on this podcast, make fun of, you know, people who do the fancy photos with sports cars. I got the plug-in Prius because there was a tax credit, yeah. But I’ve got that one last service, which was included with the purchase of my car, oil change, rotate the tires, and it’s sweet, “Let’s do that before I head south.” And that’s Thursday morning that week. That’s time that I’ve scheduled in. And here’s the kind of somewhat let’s call it birthday giant “get together,” our going away thing we’re doing with our kids and some of their friends, well, it’s going to be in an outdoor space and, you know, all of the distancing and all of that. And that’s now in the calendar, which means, here’s the catch, this goes back to the story of the

[00:25:58]

woman at that conference, someone calls me up and says, “Jason, I really need to work with you. Could you do Saturday morning?” The answer is, “No, I’m booked at that time,” or I’m just brutally direct and say, “No, that’s time I’m with my family.” Or there was a moment where here’s a live training that I’ve done for five or six years that we then turned on the cameras, shut off the entire calendar for a brief span of time, and packaged into an online training, an online community now. Remember the story of the guy going, “I have these recordings because I’ve created them and you haven’t yet?” The most important word there is the word “yet.” So just as someone could go into my calendar, they can head over, they can watch the accelerator video over at jasonlinett.com, and they could pay time to work with me directly. They get access to my calendar. And I’ll tell you right now, this is the reason that I started using calendar software in my computer, in my business, because the difference would be, if I saw it on the calendar, I go, “Oil change is so cheap.

[00:27:01]

I can just do that once we’re down in Florida and cancel out that appointment.” You know, just to use a silly example here. I can make that judgment. But if I’ve blocked that time out and then I’m sending you my calendar, here’s what’s different, you can’t book that time, because I’ve prioritized it. So here’s a time frame where I said a little joke around artificially filling up your calendar, here’s where I was filming an online course, something I’ve been teaching live for a bunch of years, and the clients were seeing there’s a three-week wait to even get on a phone call with me. Why? Because if I put in those hours, I can reach you, I can reach a bigger audience, I can create something even bigger and better. So think about these three goals, and I’d encourage you, let’s do this. If you head over the show notes at jasonlinett.com, jasonlinett.com/28, that’ll bring you over to the show notes of this episode, and you’ve already heard it, but we’ll get fancy with this, I’ll have my designers…oh, there’s a hint of prioritize your time, number four,

[00:28:00]

I’ll have my designers make this pretty and make this something you can just print out and put somewhere visible in your workspace, because I’ll tell you, these are the three things that I keep looking at at times even though I’ve got a countdown in terms of when I’m out of this office and the next crew of people move in, and it’s theirs for at least the next three years. So head over there, you can get this as a resource, and I’d say just print it out. Put it as the desktop on your computer. Let this become that reminder that time is one of those things that, as soon as you harness it, as soon as you claim it for yourself, you’ve got greater control over it. Now, I’ve hinted here that as soon as I began, I realize this was slightly incomplete, because the three points, book yourself, batch yourself, prioritize yourself, well, bonus point number four is one that I’ve hinted at here back on the How I 30x-ed My Income. But I’ll tell you what, next week’s episode of Hypnotic Language Hacks, we’ll do a deep dive into strategies of how to not just book yourself, not just batch yourself,

[00:29:00]

not just prioritize yourself, but also, now, to duplicate yourself. Next week’s episode is going to be all about outsourcing. Now, outsourcing is one of those things that many people say, “I can’t afford to do that,” and let me follow the hack response by telling you, “You can’t afford not to do that.” So as a preview for next week, I’m going to break outsourcing down into six simple steps so you know how to navigate the conversation, so you know when and where to hire, when and where to fire or move on, and also how to treat those people kindly because they are the assets you need to really scale a business around the world. So this has been three ways to reclaim your time. Get out there and make some time for yourself. You have been listening to the Hypnotic Language Hacks podcast, with Jason Linett. Please stop everything and start exploring jasonlinett.com for even more business influence and persuasion resources. Make it a priority, right now, to subscribe to this program and listen

[00:30:00]

to every episode, because the next one may reveal that one hypnotic influence secret to massively scale your success. Change your words, change your business, change your life. Get even more at jasonlinett.com.