The Incredible hypnotist Richard Barker, Celebrity Hypnotist talks funny bits with British hypnotist Grant Saunders. During the show, there was a slight tech issue with sound but managed to save it however audio is slightly off sync https://incrediblehypnotist.com
so please stamp your keyboard make some noise and welcome to Grant talks funny bits the incredible Richard barker.
All right all right all right thank you so much for having me and there you go oh thank you for being here it’s uh it’s it’s it’s nice to have somebody that’s that’s i say a half brit you’re you’re you’re a brit by all accounts but yeah um so how long how long have you been in the states what’s what’s your story that got you to where you are now not so much the stage stuff yeah tell me about it um so it’s around about 2002 i’m in England and um i’m a police uh lieutenant at the time which is an inspector you know in the uk and um i get sent over to uh on comment which is like being on loan to uh the nypd and i had just taken extensive nlp training with bandler over over in london and basically i had an opportunity to go to new york city to the john jay college of criminal justice studies and start to uh work with nlp over over in the u.s i had no intention of actually staying i just thought it would be uh it was a it was a six month sort of term that ended up being like 16 17 years in the end so uh i came over as a police officer practicing nlp doing sort of hypnosis from a from a law point of view you know interviewing suspects and witnesses and victims of crime and on the side i used to do you know hypnosis shows not really anything serious but um the contract got extended i ended up leaving the police service in the uk and i ended up staying in the us um getting a green card and then getting citizenship so uh it’s it’s kind of by accident really how i ended up here in in florida at the moment yeah a very nice part of the world so how long how long have you been in the states up until now so i moved i moved in 2003. so where are we 20 20 yeah so it’s been uh it’s been a while yeah so um i think one of our first interactions was a few years ago uh i was performing in munster uh was it is monster where you were born yeah in germany yep yeah yeah that was i yes i i always talk about like interesting shows um and the monster show was was was fascinating um some of the guys in question it was their mission apparently the comedy act they always try and make last 15 minutes before they make them walk off stage and that was the agent is telling me this just as my intro music starting so that was a that was a challenge so i was watching some of your youtube videos earlier as well i see you’ve er obviously performed for the american troops yeah have you performed for british troops and is there would you say there’s a difference between the two you know i haven’t actually performed for for uk troops so i’ve done i’ve done us navy and army uh but not had the opportunity to work with the brits because uh when i was actually a um a soldier myself it’s when i saw my first uh hypnosis show i was 18 and somebody came over from the uk to uh gibraltar and uh entertain the truth i’d love to know who it was because they were awesome and it basically uh pretty much changed my path in life to want to do hypnosis but no i never worked with the brits um but uh i’ve done the i’ve done the americans it’s a lot of fun as you know uh the troops are all up for it so it’s a good time yeah yeah do you think um do you think your englishness your britishness helps you being in america i know the couple of times i’ve been there there was this fascination with us as brits do you think that’s that’s helped your career path as such yes and no um because there are some people that uh you know really don’t like christopher columbus they don’t like they don’t really like the british empire and things like that so in the most part what i’ve learned is americans are very accommodating and they like different accents and you know they’re pretty uh they’re pretty receptive and you just have that little uniqueness so you stand out a little bit just because you’re obviously your accent’s not the same so i think it’s just like i do play on the fact that i’m english um just because it’s something slightly different and i think as a stage entertainer we all should find what it is about ourselves in fact or our journey so far that sets us apart otherwise we all just look like each other same shirts same style same clothes you know it just kind of all looks the same so i do play in it a little bit and i do think it helps people remember me specifically yeah speaking of shirts it would miss me not to say that i’m currently wearing a mind the mind spiral dot-com t-shirt that’s awesome yes uh from fellow british hypnotist caswell she set that up it’s absolutely amazing the other day i can’t remember what it was uh cousins put them out there and they’re absolutely great designs so um each guest i’ve had on i i’d like to think has got something that i think is fairly unique to them i in my in in my opinion one of the things that makes you stand out above everybody else is you are the marketing guy you know i think it’s fair to say that you’ve got a couple of a couple of really successful courses on marketing and and that’s kind of your one of the usbs that you push to sell to other hypnotists and other people like that and i think in this industry that’s one of the things that we are missing a little bit if you know there’s a lot of people that try and do the performance side of it without the market and the business side of it as well so is that is does that come from a marketing background or is that just stuff you picked up along the way you know i kind of picked it up along the way and um but i’m very interested in it because marketing’s the lifeblood of any business and you can be the best-stage hypnotist on the planet or the best juggler or fire eater or whatever but unless you’re actually out there to the masses then nobody’s ever heard of you so of course the bookings are a direct correlation to the marketing that you put in so i i think there’s only really three factors it’s how you interact with your bookers past you know present and future is how your marketing is aligned and put together and it’s how your show can stand on its own with testimonials and reviews and raving fans and if you have all three then that’s a winning combination but a lot of people kind of forgo the marketing side of life and we end up getting in this sort of trap of just talking about microphones and you know face masks and you know the type of do we tie our chairs together or don’t we and more more technique and i know hypnotherapists do this that they focus on technique and tools rather than the promotion of what they actually have and it’s it’s kind of something a lot of people are weak at so um i i think that we should concentrate actually more on marketing because it’s the engine behind the vehicle and the vehicle being the hypnosis show so yeah it’s one of my strong suits because it’s given me the advantage to put myself in in arenas you know that’s got national television coverage um local coverage and once that momentum starts moving which you know there’s no overnight success of course once it starts moving it’s easy to keep it moving in the right direction i think a friend of mine says it takes it takes it takes at least 15 years to become an overnight success yeah and it’s complimentary so some people they’ll do like you know they’ll do facebook ads or a little bit of marketing and after a week they’ll say well it didn’t work well yeah because you have to like you have to be prepared to like make at least a couple of thousand dollars worth of mistakes before you understand facebook pixels and retargeting and you know you’ve got it you’ve got to spend the money to make the money and a lot of people shy away from it and of course there’s a lot of bad advice out there yeah and that’s where people stand still they they they can’t promote because the advice from the person teaching the marketing is not actually relevant or current so uh there’s issues there too i think yeah especially i mean facebook facebook ads used to be you could just spend the money and it you would get the reach now the algorithm’s changed so much that you have to put out a quality ad to to kind of get that reach and it’s just i think just as you get it sussed facebook likes to tweak it and just to kind of get more money from you you know so yeah i’ve lost nothing else i think what i think one of the tips you know one of the tips i would give anybody is that if everybody’s doing facebook ads go ahead and do something different try instagram ads or do a bit of youtube pre-roll ads or you know always step ahead of the pack and if the pack is all doing um marketing on gig master or the bash or was it the biz now or the bash or whatever it’s called and some other online platforms change it and do direct mail because if you start changing it you start separating yourself and then when people start catching up with you and they all start doing direct mail by that time you’ve already spun into pre-roll facebook ads or youtube or podcasts or whatever’s next and i think that’s the key don’t get stuck in one particular arena and i keep moving your marketing along is the way to go i think physical medium now you know is so valuable because people are so used to getting an email i knew a guy who had a great great i mean cheesy as it is it was great and his flyer he used to send them squeeze screwed up in a little package and when you open it up and it says the only thing i would screw up
let me give you viewers something because um there is a there is a course on youtube right now it used to cost like five thousand dollars and it’s currently free i don’t know why it’s free maybe somebody ripped it and put it on youtube but um uh the the gentleman’s name is dan e kennedy it’s a little bit old but it’s dan e kennedy and the the training is called mailbox millions and it teaches and it’s free and it teaches you direct mail and like what you just said sending the crumpled up piece of paper in the mail or you know what i’ve done is i’ve sent something in the mail and they open it and it springs out it’s like it’s called the red letter box and it springs out into a cube and you know you’re spending a couple of dollars on it but they will never forget it yeah so it’s the power of the mailbox has no spam filter and then they say that you know 6 000 emails is the equivalent to one greeting card yeah on an emotional level and and in such a digital world we’re living that getting something through the post means so much more now my my cruise agent always gets a a handmade card with a little note every year because it’s the value is worth the effort so yeah right we’re going to show your your your sizzle reel now and the people that are watching if anyone that doesn’t know who you are they’re going to see this sister wheel and know that you really do kind of you know you definitely kind of walk the talk
i um know what’s going to happen in the next nine minutes on television but it could be fascinating
well thank you so much richard this has been fascinating this has been an incredible experience and i wanted to understand imagine that was five minutes what would happen in an hour he’s been featured on stage and television around the world including the today show let’s give a big welcome to richard barker
here to help us get through that is richard barker this guy’s amazing uh check him out
oh there we go and that was uh richard’s absolutely amazing scissor reel so um is it vern troyer how was how was he to hypnotize because he’s quite a um he’s quite an on guy oh sorry i’ve just i’ve muted your mic she had a bit of echo then yeah how was vern trying to to hypnotize uh you know pretty straightforward actually you know he has passed away so you know rest in peace yeah passed away a couple of years ago but um such a nice you know the first thing that struck me when i met vern is literally how small he he was he literally is way smaller than i ever imagined him to be in real life and he he basically dropped into a trance so easily and he’s a hot and i don’t know if you know the story about this but but over here you know college football is huge and that’s like american football and uh he’s a die-hard michigan wolverines fan and they’re and arch rivals if you will or ohio state and in his living room at the time he’s collected all these different like nfl sorry these uh football helmets you know american football helmets so it was a big deal to have him say that he’s an ohio state fan with a mythical show on and then he had to send out a tweet to all his fans apologizing
that he said he was an ohio fan which of course he’s not i i got a kick out of that such a nice guy yeah i always think it’s it’s weirdly it’s probably one of the most powerful demonstrations of hypnosis when you’re kind of working with someone’s sports team because like uk soccer you know if you if you’re a fan of that team then you are not going to fake being a fan of a different team and it was up in scotland with a celtic rangers thing and uh it just it gets such a great reaction from that so yeah big one to have that rivalry just kind of knocked down like using hypnosis it converted a lot of people into believers yeah for sure i mean how did how did it affect your your your your business as such your career doing the the the the tv that you’ve done the james card and the the tonight show you know i know there was a couple a couple of years where it was just like i’m constantly seeing like bum richard barker on on this tv bug and bum richard barker another how how did that uh you know i saw you got a blue tick um which is all the great thing for kind of that social proof um after that initial kind of be you know it just went nuts because uh you know i i was doing small local you know i started off basically i started off on podcast then i went to local press then it went to national press then it went to like local television lunchtime shows on the news and then obviously evening news and i just put myself out there as much as i could and the more i put myself out there the more offers i was getting picked up by other people and then the first break was the today show you know on nbc it’s a big deal and uh i go over there and um it’s funny because they were gonna give me a five minutes uh slot and then when i started they realized how good this was and in fact the viewership was so high they they basically have all these different signals you know behind the camera like keep rolling keep going and i wasn’t supposed to like go through an induction on tv at all or anything like that so yeah i just thought i was going there to be interviewed next minute of course it turned into a whole different segment and then it went on for about 20 22 minutes and the poor people that came in from the for the cooking show got cancelled i’m like ah you know but then they invited me back two years later but what it does is it just opens up the door to so many different opportunities and high profile clients that it just snowballs and it’s so worth doing if you can persist at the media and get that break it’s going to change the career completely definitely um one of the things uh obviously remiss to not mention it for those who are watching on the replay we’re in the middle of the covid situation um you’re one of the few that have been out there and actually got a couple of shows under your belt under the new normal as such um how how has that been how has you know how has that affected the shows people’s suggestibility you know is it is it the same what challenges are we facing yeah i really i really sort of um so so i had a couple of shows that i was able to rescue um i did one show where they refused to wear face masks gloves didn’t want me wearing a mask and everything else so you know you got it you got to go with what the client wants but you also have to be aware of what what the guidelines are and your safety as well as theirs the first one i did i literally did it with no mask no gloves no nothing and just did a regular show nobody really said anything and then on the second show everybody’s having their temperature checked you know everyone’s wearing masks and what i found was it’s first of all the show is very different because you don’t see anybody’s expressions because they’re all wearing face masks so you just don’t see those hypnotic looks you know it’s only their eyes so that was kind of tough and um and then everyone sounds muffled me them my mask was getting sucked into my mouth and i could barely speak so it’s kind of tricky and then i change the show where nobody’s leaving their seats which my show everybody’s out of their seats it’s just the way i do my show so to have everybody sitting down i had to change all the routines to sitting down kind of style routines so it’s tricky it’s a big on bigger shows having those visuals of people up and dancing and shouting and screaming it’s a big part of it so yes it’s how are the audiences you know is it you know are you can you still get this
yeah because i don’t think they know any different and the good news is you know doing the uh the schools and colleges they only know what they know in that moment you know it’s almost like a dog you know it doesn’t know what it did five minutes before so they almost don’t have any reference to a hypnosis show from last year or the year before they only know what you’re delivering them so what i what i’ve learned in entertainment in general is as long as you don’t identify the problems to them they don’t know that they exist you know as long as you don’t identify the technical errors to meet someone they don’t know that you have tech errors either so i kind of delivered the show as if this is just the normal way we do things and so consequently the audience loved it because yeah that’s that’s how i do this show every week i always have a tech issue and every week it’s always something different last week we started off doing simulcasting so we’re going to two places at the same time that brought issues this week we’ve had some more tech issues but it’s it’s one it’s it’s the nature of what we do that you know when you go on stage and the lights come on you perform if you know what i mean
because a lot of people a lot of people don’t experiment so they don’t further it so even in your show here you’re experimenting i mean i i’m using these new lights and realizing i’m one big like blob of a pink guy so i probably need to like tone these lights down but but they knew that the little kind of like see these little spotlights the chauvet spotlights they’re awesome and the magnetic but of course they’re so bright i look like i’ve got a shine on the top of my head but i’m i’m still going to play around with it for when i’m doing you know yeah virtual reactions with clients and things like that so it’s yeah i agree with it it’s continuous learning well and that’s that’s i mean especially in the zoom culture we’ve got at the moment as a stage performer you know it’s about bringing that to it i always have i have hashtag be the show and it’s about it doesn’t matter what you’re doing if you’re on stage or if you’re seeing a therapy client it’s about bring the razzle dazzle bring the lights bring the music be the show and see you’re absolutely spot on and it is for me this was a we have a well-shipped assist here in the uk jason um and when this all happened and i went in a bit of a dark place jason’s like you know get a new stage go online do some stuff and that’s and that’s what this has become if you know what i mean and it’s nice to me
i’ve no i’ve noticed that there’s a lot of hypnotistic stage shipments that have actually banned it together which is really impressive uh you know myself and michael mesmer being one and there’s a bunch of people that are like just together and helped each other out because i mean it ain’t easy i mean there’s people sitting out there that are used to doing 300 shows a year and all of a sudden they’ve been reduced to zero and it’s emotionally tough because you’re used to getting that audience feedback on you and you don’t get nothing on ponzu and it’s like it’s not just the financials it’s the it’s the adrenaline in the rush that you get from performing you know and you’re doing that all the time and all of a sudden you take that out that is a very difficult drug to give up um
entertainment is a is a high it’s a rush and and this fight took me years to understand why the comics turn to cocaine and drugs and everything else yeah else it’s because they they want to fulfill and continue that rush you know obviously that’s not a good thing but it is adrenaline and it is a russian it is a drug and love being on stage and uh now we’re in you know covid it’s it’s hard on people i know it is yeah you know yeah speaking of highs and lows um i i watched with almost tears in my eyes to see your lovely car um did it catch on fire
i woke up early in the morning and decided i’d go for a drive and so i i go for a drive around to saint petersburg so beautiful city early in the morning so there’s no one around and i actually was pulling it back into my garage which is currently under a town home so it’s actually ins it’s kind of the house is on top of the garage it’s a weird sort of layout and i i could i could smell a smell and then i could hear the sound of a what sounded like a bonfire and i was like that’s weird what’s that and i turn around this flame’s pouring out the engine i’m like oh my god yeah we had to pull the uh you know the fire service and everything it was rough and i watched it just go up in place yeah and it’s it it was such a beautiful looking car as well yeah one of the things we do when guests come on if you always ask them a uh a tip you know not something that’s generally out there but for either hypnotherapists that are thinking of doing performance to help their business or stay hypnotist at whatever level that they’re at one nugget that you think that is something that will help them
um i would say what’s helped me out is persistency and consistency is key so if you’re gonna if you’re gonna be a stage hypnotist then you have to be persistent and consistent there’s no point in taking a weekend training class and then and then six months later going and doing a show and hoping that it goes you know everything goes all right it’s the same as a hypnotherapist if the last weight loss session you did was like four months ago and all of a sudden you have a client tomorrow it’s very difficult to get back in that back in so you almost have to rehearse and practice on a daily basis which is like what comedians do therapists do anybody any athlete would do you know tennis player would and we tend to forget that we are you know what we do is an art form it really is an art form to to hone the craft you actually have to sort of constantly do it so so on one level i’d say consistency and persistency don’t don’t just like do it once and then rely on another class coming up just do a little bit every day and then with marketing a lot of people are thinking to themselves right now i’m not going to do any marketing because it’s actually you should probably do a bit more um because now is the time where your dollar goes further with your marketing and actually now is the time to get all that marketing in place and together because you’re gonna get you’re gonna get rewarded six months down the line so just keep doing it every day you’re not going to get quick results quick hits it’s going to it’s going to come you’re going to get it later on down the line when you’re not expecting it and i think i think that’s right with a lot of a lot of stuff when it comes to hypnosis is you’re constantly investing in yourself for how you’re going to be in three years time you know in three years time you’ll look back and go oh this is this is this is how i am this is i am um speaking of investing in yourself i always ask guests guests for two book recommendations um but as it’s you richard and your fellow brit i will allow you to give four book recommendations because i know you have four incredible books which if you’re watching this on the replay on youtube there will be a link in the comment section to it but uh tell us about your books richard yeah so i’ve got four i’ve got um secrets of the stage revealed the guide to hypnosis and state hypnotism it’s a pretty it’s a pretty basic uh stage hypnosis book but it has like an a to z or an a to z of um you know routines it has the induction in the back the element induction i think it’s pretty solid i have selling hypnotically the art of suggestion which is more to do with sales and persuasion and influence um they like goals planner which is a goal setting book and um how to get from passion to success which is my personal favorite uh which which is um just how to find your self-discovery and your and your groove because you know people go on a stage hypnosis class for instance but it might not be for you you might actually find out this is not what you should be doing and there’s no harm no foul by saying this isn’t for me but just find what your purpose actually is one of my favorite books is um 10x by grant cardone um i just like the way he thinks yeah and we also like robert kiyosaki the cash flow quadrant because it just makes complete sense there was a great uh podcast with jordan belfort and grant cardone and they both they’re both polar opposites of how you should attack marketing and success but together it was brilliant to have two people with different belief systems but really work together