Matt Hale
but today’s guest is the absolutely amazing uh Australian stage hypnotist uh hypnotherapist public speaker motivational speaker offer and sells out every year at the fringe and today we’ve got the amazing matte
hail
we’re back
so there we have that is matt hill’s sizzle reel there as you can see this guy has absolutely buckets and buckets of energy which for a stage performer is absolutely what you need so if you’re watching now please hammer your keyboard make some noise for the man the myth the legend that is matt hill
how good is this hey modern technology every week we have a technical issue this is the week where hopefully everything is going to go absolutely yeah exactly everything is going to go fine so um normally we have a lot of Americans on the show because hypnosis is massive in America what’s the market like in Australia uh you know what’s yeah how are things over there
it’s uh so pretty pre-covered um the market is it’s not it’s yeah it’s it’s nothing like the us um it’s it’s probably it’s probably similar to the uk i guess um with without so many many restrictions behind being able to just you know do your art but um yeah it’s not one of like the main forms of entertainment that people necessarily think of straight away you know it’s that there’s no kind of college circuit and the the kind of pre-prom and post problem and that kind of thing and the country fairs yes yes there is an element of that you know where we can get into those kinds of venues and events but it’s not it’s not typical so um for me when i started it was kind of interesting i you know i decided to become a stage hypnotist in what is actually quite often classed as one of the most remote cities in the world in perth western australia so there there wasn’t actually a market so it really was um it’s pros and cons there’s there was no one else really in what my market is now in my state although i you know travel most nationally and internationally but now but um but also that meant although it wasn’t anyone in there so that was opportunity but there also wasn’t a market for it so then it was kind of having to create the opportunity to perform of course yeah so yeah so what what got you into stage hypnosis what was what was the moment where you kind of went i’m not gonna do this anymore i want to do this are you from a performance background what what what brought you to the stage yeah kind of i i’ve kind of always been in some kind of performance throughout my life like when i was 15 i started djing and that was both um just kind of like mixing on decks and then also doing some community radio but actually my first like my first few years into my mid twenties was actually you know club dj once i hit 18 i was able to dj in clubs i then started i was i’m actually just to clarify for people here as well although yes i i am australian i have been for 20 years but before that 20 years i i’m from the uk originally so i’ve been over here in australia for about 20 years so yeah that’s where i spent um a lot more early work in life uh club djing around europe that kind of thing then i got into radio ended up working on breakfast radio shows and commercial radio moved over to australia and did more radio there but it wasn’t until about 10 years ago or so that i was just like man i’ve got a this this hypnosis itch i’ve got a scratch it now you know i i kind of was always in the back of my mind i’ve been i’ve been dabbling with hypnosis ever since i i took part in a show when i was 21 i actually i actually brought a stage hypnotist to my 21st party um which was unusual at the time but i just got intrigued took part in the show loved loved the experience wasn’t too keen on the description you know that it was very old style cliche oh this is the power i was born with and blah blah blah all that kind of thing um but you know by that point i was already um really interested in the mind so i was kind of like okay what’s the psychology behind this um it tied perfectly into like i love entertaining i love the mind let’s meld them together and although i dabbled a lot with just kind of one-on-one stuff just mucking around you know with friends and stuff over the years it wasn’t really until i just was like well if i’m gonna really scratch this properly i’ve got to quit an incredibly good job and just start again which is what i did but i think they’re they’re the the the principles that make a good stage hypnotist one you’re from an entertainment slash performance background anyway and so that that sets you up well two you’ve been hypnotized and enjoyed the experience the amount of amount of people that come to me about stage hypnosis that want to learn it and i’m like especially hypnotherapist and i’m like have you been to a stage atmosphere show have you volunteered and been hypnotized oh no and i might do that because that will give you such a better understanding of the process than any book or dvd um yeah and by the fact that you’ve come from a good career already so the principles of hard work and worth ethics kind of follow on into that so so we just got a couple of uh people saying hello uh jason nobby morgan says hey hey jason good to see jason there we corresponding jason will be blushing jason is the one he’s the inspiration that got me kind of uh when the cove had hit and everything went a bit dark jason’s the one that went stop being a girl get out there and do something and we’ve got eddie duncan as well that says good afternoon and good day so that’s eddie’s best australian accent
I’d say you want to change that phrase to actually start being a girl I’ve got some incredible big incredible females who actually just motivated me every step of the way yeah yeah so yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah and it’s it’s one of those things that um I mean I’m sure kovid hit you guys hard um we were talking briefly beforehand about the fringe uh you sell out uh the fringe very popular the reviews on your fringe act is absolutely amazing um but tell everyone about what happened with colvin kind of your last show uh yeah actually so yeah each year I generally do at least um Perth fringe and I will just kind of explain what that is fringe festival is uh grew out of um kind of
most major festivals are curated which means you know the the organizers pick the axe fringe festivals were out like hey anyone could put a show on and and that festival sits on the fringe of that main event normally but they in certain places they’ve overgrown their the actual main event the main festival and have become this big thing so in edinburgh number one in the world for size then it goes to adelaide then it goes to earth so i always do perth because it’s my home city i’ve been done doing that for the last six or seven years uh this year i actually added adelaide on there as well because it’s quite a big commitment um you know i do i do the full run i don’t just do four or five dates so i did 35 shows at perth uh fringe world then flew to adelaide to do 25 shows there uh that event so that’s fringe world festival finished on i think it was march 17 and i i had my last show on march 17 literally stepped off stage that was my final show uh i haven’t been back on stage since simply because um the day after that final show was when australia put their first set of rules of of closing um events down certain size but and then obviously that went to kind of nothing since then but um yeah i’m actually back on stage next month all being well though which is which is really nice so yeah that’s yeah i mean that’s that’s good i mean we don’t i have i have some shows booked in for uh every month i have agents and venues room it’s kind of go i think you know why i’m ringing you i’m like yeah of course it’s expected so it’s it’s september is looking like when i’m starting again uh but you know come september we’ll see where we’re at like that jason again says never mind the hypno get in the mix
um yeah must be your your
uh streaming set that you do is is really cool as well to be fair um i was watching that the other night and it’s yeah you’re a very good dj as well yeah well i mean i come from background but and if you want to talk later about something i do have a crossover hypnosis uh slash dj project which is actually called the clognosis experience so if we have some time i’ll delve into that because that that may inspire other people to kind of like what else can you entertain and mash and mix together which is not your average stage show if you if you want to talk about that later we can get into that absolutely yeah so yeah we’ve got another commentary saying love the banners guys both look fab cartoon versions of yourselves you’ll have to do a t-shirt swap so yeah i have to say as well that i’m wearing a uh the mine spiral uh t-shirt as well which was from uh from from caswelly the mindspiral.com i have to say that um but yeah they’re great speaking of your banners um one of the things that i think is really good about your show that not many other hypnotists have picked up on um is when you’re selling a show you’re selling a show all your shows are really well branded and each kind of season you kind of have a new show with a new name and that really sells the experience if you don’t mean there’s a lot of hypnotists and i’ve been guilty of this myself is you kind of go out as grant saunders hypnotist and if we all go out as the hypnotist then bookers and customers and and audiences can’t tell the difference between the two so you’ve got is it the feel-good factor um i feel the factory was last year’s main show although i i just still perform you know depending on you know i mean i impact my next my next show um next month or my first show back next month i i fly up the north of this state to do feel good factory uh but that was the main one i wrote for last year and then random acts of mindness was this year’s one which is the i love it yeah yeah fantastic so if you want a little bit of reasoning behind that is yeah i kind of if you see if you look at those like if if you’ve seen if you if you see that on posters tv uh on your facebook feed on your insta feed that you know constantly throughout when i’m trying to promote that show during the festivals when it comes around another year when i’m now pushing this one it’s a different show you know like it looks like it’s different show so of course it is a different show but rather than just saying hey come and see me this year again i’ve got new routines and you know that like i kind of want to spell out that fact like yeah that was like you know that was last year’s show this is the show you know it looks different even just from a marketing point of view you’re not going to go i saw that one last year so i won’t bother yeah it’s that is if there is one one little tip i always try and get some kind of tip for people that are watching if there is one thing that in itself is just so valuable for people that are trying to put on shows to sell tickets and and get more bookings at the end of the day because like you said it’s different to to differentiate a couple of things as well one of the things i love as well that you did was the chicken free hypnosis um on on a lot of your banners which again is such you know it’s such a cliche with hypnosis is the whole yeah chicken thing yeah but i thought it was brilliant that you did that so yeah i saw your opponents about when you were in the uk yeah that’s right actually that was that yeah that was the 100 chicken free tour so uh up until that point i i i had been um always i had a little logo with a chicken with a side like a stop sign but with the chicken um or no entry sign and so i’d always had that because again right from when i started um i i you know i wanted to kind of get away from the kind of cliche stuff because that also is a barrier to you my eye was on corporate market as well so my i just wanted to kind of come out and just go i i mean look you you know from talking to me a little bit and from the scenic things you’ve seen you know i’m not i could i couldn’t pull the big mysterious character off anyway even if i tried right so um so i played to play to my strengths so i kind of started going like this is like this is modern this is french fresh you know you always get asked all your hypnotists you know don’t turn into a chicken so i just put that thing on there and it was really funny and a lot of people um still you know mention that to me and uh you’ll see i i don’t tend to use the logo too much now uh but i pretty much in every show description i’ll always say you know this you know this show is still 100 uh chicken-free guaranteed yeah well again brilliant marketing because i saw it a few years ago but then it’s still there at the forefront of my mind exactly what to do with marketing yeah i see uh talking about your your dj set as well i do actually see you’ve got your pioneer dj stuff behind you there i have well spotted yeah yeah this is the studio where i actually do my uh live streaming from as well so yeah yeah this is my molten yeah multi-purpose studio yeah so uh so yeah how does how does the concept work when you when you said about mixing the dj stuff with the hypnosis stuff that is that does sound really interesting actually yeah so coming from the dj background and then you know transitioning into uh hypnosis yeah many years later i i always kind of saw a commonality which was you know and so it’s also in the words that people use when they’re describing their experience when they’re on the dance floor you know i i would look out on the dance floor and see people you know really lose themselves in the music you know people saying that you know i can get lost in the music you know i’m you know yeah we’re trance that although you know i don’t play actual trance music you know more kind of um uh standard house but you know the the reason trance music is called trance music is because yeah you’re listening and it kind of puts you into trance right so all these things fall into you know what we do on stage as a hypnotist as well so i had this concept in my mind and and pretty much like i kind of do and i suggest people should take this kind of approach as well is that get ideas out your head the only way to try them is to try them or the only way to see if they work is to try them so uh yeah i um yeah i i i have this the way i describe it the club notices experience is a couple of ways it’s kind of a 60 minute kind of guided visualization to house music so you have me guiding along but i’ve carefully so i actually now i originally i used a different dj while i concentrate on just the suggestions but now i actually um i actually mix it live but i have the headset on so i can do that as well and yeah i i tie in all different kind of triggers to people who are listening so when when when i sold it as a show it wasn’t essentially the shows and experience um initially some people kind of came along expected to watch something but you know this is if you’re watching it’s literally a dj set where there’s some kind of crazy guy just talking but if you actually you know close your eyes when i tell you and you know think of this direct your mind here you know put this trigger which we put together you know all this so it’s really really interesting concept and people started saying wow it’s like a whole night of clubbing in in an hour so yeah that’s been a side project and a bit of a passion project so that’s um and actually we’ll be doing um a couple live online for the first time soon as well i haven’t actually put the dates out but that will happen online yeah if anyone wants to have a look at that yeah we’ll give that a share as well because yeah that’s that sounds like a really cool project so yeah getting back to the hypnosis um so yeah um we’ve got a a short clip uh to play for michelle which she sent over which is one of the things i love about it and it’s i’ve been looking enough to get on some real real kind of top level people onto these these podcast type things and everybody agrees with the same thing it’s not the skit it’s it’s the little bit in between the natural elements that the audience thinks the scene something and it’s this clip is a phenomenal example of that so i’m going to just play that now and then we can chat about it in a second
shot at you
there we go
well
yeah really really really funny bit that yeah most of it it always kind of yeah it just it just it tickles me and it’s it’s weird as a hypnotist you kind of see lots and lots of skits and other people’s stuff but that really it yeah it made me laugh this morning so um yeah do you think it was i mean that was it i mean i’m assuming he was scottish not just putting on a scottish accent it did sound very nice yeah he was punished yeah yeah and it just it was so much funnier because of that i think uh but yeah and that was that from a fringe show uh yeah i think that must have been that was last year’s from last year’s one from last year yeah yeah so it’s um yeah i i just i i love i love that kind of um the sense of chaos yes you know obviously mainly that actually i mean i’m very controlled in how i uh you know how my show is in in so many areas but i do like to have the air of chaos on stage sometimes yes and but that’s that’s kind of what it is you know like it’s all kind of organized yeah yeah yeah organized spontaneity and stuff so and that’s i think that’s that’s that’s the important thing for me what makes a successful show is when it looks like anything could happen it looks crazy there’s chaos going on but the reality is is is you know exactly what’s going to happen you know how it’s going to play out but it’s portraying that to the audience that they think that that is it’s just happened that one time and it’s it’s it’s something their experience that’s unique between you and them so yeah it’s really good yeah yeah yeah and and yeah and also i mean i do explain this to the public as well is that that you know i can do i can do you know when i do a fringe run you know like when i go into my kind of corporate season you know we may only be doing a handful of shows every month but when i do my fringe run i’m literally doing the same show every night for for you know six nights a week or sometimes twice a day if we do you know matinees so 35 shows in a row it’s essentially the same show well it is the same show but it’s still different every day but every show is different because you know because of the people you use in these things and though and you that that sense of life that me laughing up there is not me like oh i’m gonna laugh to try and make it look good you know that it is genuinely giving me joy laughter because this guy was different from the person who was doing it last night
it’s always yeah it’s always fun just seeing what’s gonna what’s gonna happen within this kind of you know cocoon of where i kind of want it to go yeah yeah it’s it’s it’s within the boundaries of what you know is this you know it can be chaos within this safe parameters here but yes that’s it and it’s it’s one of the things as well uh i mean i do a couple of festivals over here in the uk and when you are performing back to back it really does polish your show um and yeah you know it’s it’s one of the best things you can do really yeah and that’s the thing my show actually by the end of it is it it’s it’s not crazily different but all those edges are smoothed off right you know but it’s the thing at the beginning the only you know the audience are not getting a rough deal at the beginning it’s just by the time we get to the end it’s like oh you know i loved it when this happened during this show um which i didn’t think of so how do i now make this happen every night you know so i can tweet a suggestion because i love the response that someone gave yeah so now i’m gonna you know engineer that to happen yeah yeah and that’s and that’s that’s the beauty about what we do it’s a beauty about performing hypnosis is you do get that feedback instantly from the audience and from the volunteers where you can kind of go oh i didn’t expect that and but that’s that is genius in and of itself and like you said now you can engineer that to happen um yeah i mean uh we’ll talk to only about uh your uk tour and how it can be a bit of a nightmare when it comes to the um the regulations here in the uk um yeah but yeah i mean what what are audiences what’s the difference between an australian audience and a uk audience all right do you know what i i kind of i kind of get asked this a lot about like you know right from you know what a sydney audience is like as opposed to perth what’s uh you know what are the cruise ship audiences as opposed to land when you’ve got a mix of people what are this but to be quiet i don’t really find much difference in audiences unless they unless they have a hard time you know understanding what i’m saying yeah um if you’re working with a mixed uh mixed language audience it becomes a bit trickier but um generally you know i always say to you know how i do it from time to time run training courses and when i do you know i always say those first few minutes that that pre-talk or whatever you want to determine when you first bounce on the stage even the way you walk on the stage is setting down the marker of of rapport with those that audience and it also kind of sets down the tone of the show and uh you know is that person on stage right now or who’s on his own up there right now or you know are they someone i want to spend some time on the stage with later so i i think it comes down to how you present that to any audience really as opposed to differences in that i mean there may be certain differences in some places around the world but i i certainly don’t don’t see it between you know uk and australia yeah yeah i once did a a cruise ship where 80 percent of the audience were retired germans and uh the director oh yeah i know the cruise directors come to me two days beforehand and gone do you speak any other languages gone and i’m like no and he’s gone could you speak slowly then and i’m like oh dear me that was that was a tough gig so yeah i mean when you come out on stage you are like like full of energy and like i said there’s a lot of guys that kind of go for that dark mysterious look and you come out there like a like a rocket um yeah yeah and there’s there’s there’s no right or wrong with that but i again i i always say to anyone who’s starting this is that there’s there’s no point trying to be a completely different character to who you are you know just be a bigger version of what you already are and you’re not really playing a character you’re essentially being yourself but you obviously just have to amplify a bit for for for a bigger audience you know yeah that my my biggest bug bear is uh sometimes when people make that transition from being a hypnotherapist into being a stage hypnotist or performance hypnotist if they don’t they don’t bring the stage presence with them um and so you do get a and that and it affects their their ability to get volunteers and the quality of the show when you get someone that is talking like a hypnotherapist and being very monotone and you know the audience needs your energy to feed off them to some extent but like i said it’s it’s about being you and being the show so yeah yeah i think there’s um i i think yeah there’s probably a case to say that it’s probably easier to pin hypnosis skills on someone who’s already got good entertainment skills yeah as opposed to um pinning entertainment skills on someone who’s got good hypnosis skills um but that that is not to say you know it’s you know it can’t be done without some good work and and there he obviously has a lot of great stage images come from hypnotherapy backgrounds originally but i think you know you it does have that transition and i think you’re correct that transition um has to be quite great sometimes depending on how you are you know obviously you know i’m probably not going to be what happened in an office with someone but yeah yeah you’re right i think it’s it’s we are entertainers first that use hypnosis to add to the entertainment whereas hypnosis uh to be entertaining doesn’t necessarily work as well but like you said you know there’s always exceptions to those rules um on a slightly different note um talking off therapy uh in the uk if i’m seen and i try not to see so many clients these days but like fear of spiders in the uk you know there’s always that thing of spiders are just a harmless creature um you live in a country where spiders kill you one how do you how do you sleep on a night time and two does that affect how you kind of deal with that as a phobia uh well okay there’s a two-part question there how do i sleep um you know it’s one of those things you know sometimes if you’ve not been to australia and you know you you think of all the cliche things which are dangerous here you know almost the expectancy is like i don’t know how you live you know obviously you know you get up in the morning there’s a massive spider that’s going to kill you walking around the kitchen then you go out your front door door and there’s probably a kangaroo sat there waiting to punch you then you go down the water there’s a shark as you dip your toe you know of course you know yeah you first of all you’d be you’ve got to be pretty unlucky to even see any of those um things that are going to harm you and then you know you then most of the time you’ve got to go out your way to actually be bitten or yeah you know get anywhere near it most of the time you’re going to scare something like that off anyway so that kind of thing as in living with all that kind of around you it’s not really around you so much really that’s a relief yeah yeah so you’re fine when you come to visit you you’ll be fine all right but yeah if you’re dealing with um people who are sponophobic though it’s still it’s still the you know letting that person assess whether it’s dangerous or not you know it’s obviously you know the the the person who’s uh arachnophobe is it’s generally got that blanket response because at one point you know someone shouted or they screamed or whatever happened and you know so then their mind went okay every spider even a photo of a spider even a drawing of a spider you know set up that you know protective mechanism and um you know with with any time i do any work with phobias it’s all to do with basically you know allowing your mind to have a more reasoned approach you know like is it you know is a photo of a spider you’re gonna have the same sting as actually a real spider and is that an actual spider that’s gonna you know so you’re not basically just saying hey just be chill with every spider it’s basically just assess logically like everybody else does in the world brilliant now i always ask guests for uh two things one a a absolute nugget of a tip for any hypnotherapist that’s looking at doing performance hypnosis or finished staging businesses out there a couple of years a few shows under the belt a tip that would really that you think is a nugget that gets missed and i always ask for two book recommendations now i know that you have a best-selling book uh so i’ll let you talk about that as well and i’ll put up a link to the an amazon link to that as well um first of all your your tip to anybody in performance hypnotist uh yeah i mean i i think definitely especially if you knew what i said earlier about actually just being a bigger version of yourself is going to be key because yes there’s going to be people who who do sue that more kind of logical methodical um approaching you know more you know intellectually they they look they dress they sound much more intellectual in in general conversation every day and that may suit they’re coming out and say you know good evening tonight we’re going to explore what you can do with your mind um so but you know obviously for me i just found it easier to be myself and a bigger bigger version that’s how i always think that’s easy you know and also forget about the cliches you know like you don’t you don’t need to be a certain look you don’t need to be a certain uh voice you don’t need to be
yeah so some people think they have to live into okay I’m going to be a hypnotist so you know I have to swing a watch or i have to you know make a chicken skit or whatever it is so yeah i definitely think don’t let any of that be a barrier to actually giving it a go and I mean also that’s probably the next biggest nugget is just give it a go because you just never know until you do it and I think anyone who ends up even doing one show is just so far ahead of so many people the more biggest percentage of people who would love to do a show and just can’t get over the barrier of like or either book a room uh you know sell tickets you know that’s before you’ve even actually got on stage and thought how does this thing even work
it’s one of those it’s you know it’s it’s such that that first couple of shows is such an exhilarating feeling anyway and some people realize at that moment that they go never want to do this again but i’m glad i tried it and some people go to you know what i never want to do anything else so yeah it’s it’s it’s fantastic yeah yeah so tell me what’s interesting when we intersect with uh you know some magicians in entertainment you know as most hypnotists most stage images will it may even have some kind of magic background or but at least no various magicians and what i’ve found quite often is you know when i talk to magicians they’re like like i don’t know how you can do what you do because you know if you if you’re a singer if you’re a magician as long as you practice well enough and you know obviously the orders are too tricky you know as long as you do your things things should be okay but you know our props are our we don’t even know who our props are exactly yeah look until they join us on stage and there’s so many variables to like does this work with this or not and then you know so yeah it’s an interesting thing to delve in so yeah you have to be kind of you have to be very flexible on stage as well you have to be you have to be very comfortable deviating from any set script you’re going to be using as you go along brilliant brilliant yeah and your two books
such a terrible person to ask about anything hypnosis related but you know even if it’s a it doesn’t have to be a hypnosis book uh but it’s one that kind of you think will bring people further along their journey so it could be a business book a motivational book
it sounds terrible I have such a small bookshelf I tend to kind of look at people go oh how’d you do that okay let’s figure out how we can do that um so let me think quickly two books that love and inspire me
um oh god this is so so tricky well do you know what i think um i’ll give you one book that was absolutely key in my interest in the mind uh and that was actually when i was very young i read a book by dominic o’brien he’s a memory champion from the uk basically i saw him do a memory trick on tv thought that guy’s got some kind of crazy memory and at the end of it he’s basically like and of course i don’t have some kind of crazy memory it’s a technique and you can learn it in my book and when i read that book that was just that that actually really really started a fascination with the mind and also i i tell you another book that was really instrumental in just actually kind of uh oh no i don’t know i’m gonna i’m gonna mention two things here one way back when was paul mckenna’s book yeah i don’t even know you know like it was the first thing after i’d seen it it’s a show when i bought something it was his book for the general public so there’s not really technique in there that was very fascinating um but uh uh anthony jack wins reality is plastic yeah uh absolutely i mean ann’s become a good friend of mine over the years and i still recommend that one pretty much to anyone and i get a lot of inquiries but you know if i’m not doing any training anything that i’ll say like the quickest way you can get started in just sharpening your hypnosis skills and just trying it just doing it we’re not talking about stage but just hypnotizing people i think what and as has just boiled down in there is just it’s just pure gold and you literally do this do this do this do this do this okay go and do it cool yeah yeah and and your book as well which is available from amazon uh it’s an amazing best drill and i’ll make sure we have you got a copy of it there we have it here we go
I’ll make sure there are links to that as well in the description later on as well yeah that’s just it’s kind of it’s more self-hypnosis book that one um focusing on happiness yeah yeah brilliant well ma it’s been an absolute pleasure thank you very much for joining us today and uh yeah you enjoy the rest of your sunshine um whilst we’ll enjoy the grey rain that is the British summer actually
and reaching out and it’s been really really nice to chat with you this is the first time we’ve actually um chatted for real so I’ve really really enjoyed my time here and I’ll also put this out to anyone who’s watching if you want to know more and at the moment, of course, i do have way more time to be able to answer people’s questions always feel free to connect with me on social media and you know I do try and help anyone who wants to get into this business I’m not one someone who shields the stuff i want to help people I want to see people be brilliant and fantastic and entertaining so always brilliant all right cheers thank you very much matt