There are people who are inspired, and there are people who inspire us with what they have and what they wish to share. One among these people who add so much value to the world is Marshall Sylver, also known as the Fastest Hypnotist in the World (not what he prefers to be called though). He has been helping the people in his own way, and plans to continue doing so.
Here is an interview with Marshall, a tête-à-tête that brings us closer to this great guy who does much more than making startups grow, or make millionaires.
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Q: Tell us who you are and what you do.
Well, the media does call me the greatest hypnotist of all times, mostly because that’s what’s in my press kit (laughs). But well, I have been on stage since I was just 7 years of age. So, when I look back, I realize that I have been there for 47 unbelievable years now. It has been a remarkable journey. I started off as extremely poor in a family with 9 siblings. We’ve been without water and electricity back in Michigan; and twice homeless too. We’ve even lived in a house converted from a chicken coup. But luckily enough, there was water and electricity all the time – a blessing, as I call it.
From there, I have reached this point when I have a 120 feet private beach house in southern California and my main residence in Las Vegas jungle that is 17,000 sq ft home. Now, I spend the majority of my time flying in private jets helping people improve their quality of life, build their businesses by working on them inside out, helping them hacking their health, business, and life at large. I use the art of hypnosis to add value to people’s lives, to transform them into new people, to egg them on for new beginnings.
2.Tell us one weird fact about yourself most people don’t know.
I really don’t know if you may call it weird. I have three lovely children Sterling, my eldest boy, Maximus, the younger, Prosperity, my youngest, a pretty little girl. But that’s not the surprising part (chuckles). The surprising part is that none of my children were born at a hospital. They were born at our home, in our bath tub, without any doctors, any drugs; any pain either. And, I assisted my wife in labor through hypnosis. We even live streamed the birth of our last born, viewed by thousands of people, and it seems like she was asleep.
People go to the extent of suggesting that my children were even conceived through hypnosis. But well, I’m not sure if I would argue that.
And, I must tell you this thing that will surprise you again. Years ago, during a show of mine in Boston, where I was addressing thousands of people, I couldn’t help but notice this amazingly beautiful woman, who is now my wife. During all the time that I was imparting my learning, I was also, simultaneously, hypnotizing her to ask me out. So, I actually hypnotized my wife to date me. Though I would not advise you to do the same, if you would be interested in gaining more knowledge about hypnosis and learn it as a skill, you could look at courses available online (such as the ones found on websites like hypnosis-courses.com).
3. How did you first start out as a Hypnotist?
As I had mentioned at the start of the interview, I was on stage at the tender age of 7. I was doing magic then. But, it wasn’t until 16 years of age that I was introduced to it. It was when a hypnotist that was performing asked me to respond to his call by running to him, rolling my pants up, putting pants up, landing in his lap and saying “Sing it again, Daddy!” No matter how I tried to resist it, I couldn’t, and I did exactly what I was asked to do.
That was the moment of epiphany for me. I did instantaneously what the hypnotist had wanted me to. What if he had asked me to get off drugs (I was on marijuana and cocaine back then)? I would do that instantaneously too. And, as a matter of fact, I did it when I convinced myself to clean up my act, and be a new person. It is not like you must stop doing some things to be a successful entrepreneur; it is like believing in being one.
I realized that it had the power to make you go out there and take fearless, positive, powerful, action; I realized that hypnosis is the most powerful force on the face of the earth. It helps us create a change in the mind, which helps us create a change in the world.
But, I was still giving magic performances at a restaurant in my early 20’s. One fine day, one of my regular visitors, a lovely woman came with a black eye. She used to come to the restaurant regularly with her husband and enjoy my show. I asked her about her eye and discovered that she was a victim of domestic violence; her husband had punched her. There and then I decided that magic is not what I wanted to do. I wanted to change people’s lives.
So, I contacted the best hypnotist in the world, but the moment I sat down to study, I realized that whatever I had been studying for 5 years (each book, each article, each news) had self taught me. So, I shot up and booked my stage hypnotism show in San Diego.
4. How did you become so famous? Are there any specific things you did which lead to you becoming a hugely successful and famous Hypnotist?
Believe it or not, bit I hypnotized myself to be the best. I had to do it. I told myself that if I wanted to be great I had to do this. And then, I went on to reverse engineer it. I started from pondering over that if I was the best, what I would be doing, where I would be going, how I would be interacting with people. I did not ask myself how much money does one need to be a happy. I just believed myself to have become a multi-millionaire and then reverse engineered myself to be one.
In fact, I believe that it was a glorious day for the fools when modesty became a virtue. It may be shocking for most people to realize that the very first challenge that they will encounter in the path of making lives better is their parents. Even the most well-meaning parents can do that without even realizing it.
I’d give the example of my mother here. She was a kind and brave lady, an angel. She bore 10 kids, and raised them to be decent beings all by herself, working three jobs a day. But, she cursed me in a way that neither she nor I would realize. I realized it only once I became a hypnotist. She told me, “Work hard, get ahead!” The curse is that hard work only begets hard work. You work hard, only to keep working harder even if you merge passion and profession. A major part of my job is to help those people who keep putting in labor, but are not able to make much of it.
My task is to help them think. “How can I produce the highest possible results with the lowest possible efforts, so that I can duplicate?” The point is to find a way to create something that impacts, so that you can do it all over again and keep making that impact all over again. It is about creating value in the manner that works in your favor. When you give up the minimum wage jobs (cleaning, mowing and stuff like that) for your own self, you find ways to improve your work efficiency, thus doing minimum work that will fetch you maximum money.
What I enthuse people with when I hypnotize them, is the no.1 skill – the skill of irresistible influence. It simply means getting one to ask what you’re selling and have them believe it’s their idea. You structure communication in such a way as it inspires people to take action.
This is the interesting thing about hypnosis that the skills that are required to inspire someone to jump up and dance like Elvis, are the same skills that are sued for flourishing businesses, for selling automobiles, even for getting the addicts off drugs.
5. So, you say that there is essentially no difference between hypnosis and stage hypnosis. Can you tell us more about your approach?
Essentially, basically, primarily, or from any angle, all sorts of hypnosis are hypnosis. I get rather appalled how some practitioners who create fake stage presentations. I have never understood the reason why people do this. The only thing I know is that ultimately everything is hypnosis.
What is true for us is only what we believe to be true. Nothing else holds verity for us. Hypnosis, is thus, the ability to choose the most powerful meaning or frame of reference that we have attached to something. As a hypnotist, I change this frame of reference; I change the reason, so that people stop resisting everything that is happening in their lives. This makes everything easier to deal with. Instead of asking why it is happening to you, you start finding out what is great about the situation; how you can use it for your own and everyone else’s good. You start pondering how you can make it an advancement, rather than a retreat.
The brain functions on two levels – conscious and unconscious. The conscious mind is the critical actor; what you and I are using right now.
The sub-conscious mind, on the other hand is merely a computer. And, it is a blessing and a curse at the same time. A blessing – because it store things well and so makes the processing faster with the stored database; a curse – because even the faulty data that goes through is taken by it for real. So, people keep operating on these faulty data believing it to be true. So, the mind keeps running faulty programs. Even if they know that the programs are not effective, they still keep believing that they are.
My approach towards people is pragmatic. I do not judge them. I believe that they should live their live the way they want as long as not infringing upon the safety and liberty of others. The challenge, as I see it, arrives when people initiate programs that they’d like to change, but do not know how to.
So, the core of my teaching is that it is never enough to change; we need to become a new person. And, I like to quote my own example here. As a child, one of my ways of dealing with extreme poverty and harshness of life, was that I became a drug addict, especially to marijuana and cocaine. One fine morning when I was 23, I just woke up and said to myself that I’m done with being an addict. I told myself that I’m not a drug addict who’s trying to quit; that I am normal guy who did drugs for a while, and, right at that moment all desires for drugs left me. I didn’t even have to combat temptations because they had disappeared in the twinkle of an eye.
The same is true of businessmen. The biggest challenge that I see there is that they ask if, not when. I say that the desires should come from a place that asks “When will I become a millionaire?”, and not “If I become a millionaire”. It is the certain belief that one is a multi millionaire already, even if that money hasn’t arrived in your account. This self-belief leads to alleviation of stress and lets you know what you are destined for, so that you can head your way to be that.
6. Tell us about your book, Passion, Profit & Power
Sure, I have authored a few books and Passion, Profit and Power is one of them. Back in the late 90’s when we were teaching course and was enjoying phenomenal success with our students. What I thought then is why people do not see such success with other course from other instructors or hypnotists? The answer that I found was that you’ve got to program people at a subconscious level; it is just not enough to teach them. The idea is to make them embody the thing that you’ve taught, not just to make them act out what they have been taught.
The reason why the book is called so, is because of my belief that all life boils down to these three areas – Passion: the relationships, whether intimate, friends or business; Profit: money, and what we do for a business; and Power: emotions, physical, mental and even spiritual well-being.
So, when I teach, I not only focus on the actions that they need to take, but I also use the language patterns to program them to make these actions their own.
7. You have a radio show called “Get Rich Radio”. Are you teaching people how to get rich in that show? Tell us more about your show.
Well, getting rich is the idea but you must not think of it in purely monetary terms. My first job on air was when I was 17, and since then, till date, all our programs have followed the same message – richness or prosperity of life is not just monetary. Making money is certainly useful though, and rich people do have substantially more choices for making more money than those who are struggling.
I again quote my example. I have the most amazing wife; I feel blessed for having her. But I have had other relationships in my life that did not work out. It is only when you realize how rich you are in your relationship, it is then that the relationships thrive. The same is true about things as dissimilar as money or health. It is not the richer that get more; it the grateful that get more.
8. How did you get the title “The World’s Fastest Hypnotist”?
Well, David Letterman is one of the first people who called me so, and continues still. I, however, do not put much credence into it. I’d rather be called the Greatest Hypnotist of All Times, only because speed has little to do with impact.
I do teach instantaneous inductions and rapid programming techniques, but I have come to believe that I’d rather take more time and do something impactful rather than be the fastest at anything.
May be my wife slowed me down a little bit
9. In 2010, you starred in the movie, “Tranced” which was the first movie intended to hypnotize the audience. Tell me more about that movie. Did it actually hypnotize the audience?
Yes, I not only starred in the movie, I also wrote it and executive produced it. It had a budget of $2 million, and was released independently. It did very well and we sure had a great time with it.
And yes, it did exactly what it was intended to do. While you watch the movie and allow yourself to experience what the main character is experiencing in the movie, you feel it like she does. But, if you decide not to get hypnotized, you watch the movie, and you watch the audience around you get hypnotized while they watch the movie.
10.What does the future look like for Marshall Sylver?
This may sound bold, and I am sure anybody reading this would think who do I think I am. I want to be nominated and I want to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics. I would like to receive it for single-handedly turning the economy of the United States, and then, with that example, worldwide.
It is not a herculean task; it doesn’t take a genius to figure what is going to turn the economy of a nation around. The thing that will turn it around is helping more and more people be personally responsible for their own economy.
My job is to teach people how to be wealthy. When people realize the amount of effort that they put in to barely get by, or to live a mediocre life, they will also realize that they can put in much lesser effort and live an abundant, prosperous life of a millionaire or a billionaire; then they will stop fleecing the system. Then, they will think why should I do that I can do right here, make a ton of money and live luxuriously. Most people I know would choose B.
I want to leave a legacy, that I have made hundreds of millions of dollars in my career, and I thank you very much God for that. And, I realized that I could spread this wealth by doing two things – One, teaching people how to do what I’ve done, and doing that in a huge way; and two – greatly rewarding people who spread that message that I was teaching to people.
So, this has caused a restructuring of our business. Now we do what we have been doing for decades – make millionaires; and the second part, we dedicate up to 75% of our revenue right back to the referred people in the form of commissions. It is ultimately about fetching good for yourself and others as well, so I see this engaging of partners and rewarding them ad very important in order to spread the wealth.
So that was the amazing and inspiring Marshall Sylver for you. You can reach Marshall at http://www.sylver.com/.