Darren: On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m speaking with Adam Nassor, who is an autistic hypnotist, magician and business coach.
That is a very strange mix of skills, but I’m going to be talking to Adam about how he employs all of those skills within his business and his journey in BNI, which I am also in.
I’m also going to be talking to him quite intently about his time in school, when he was the victim of bullying, as I was when I delivered my TEDx talk. You may have seen that on another podcast. He used his hypnotist skills to disarm the bullies.
This is a fascinating story, so get ready for this one.
Adam, you describe yourself as an autistic hypnotist, magician and business coach, which is an eclectic mix, to say the least. Which one of those would you say takes priority in your branding?
Adam: Very good question. I would say definitely the hypnotist, because hypnosis is the basis of everything I do.
I learned magic and mentalism at the age of six, but hypnosis came to me at the age of 12, when I was bullied because of my autism. I was an outcast and was physically and, unfortunately, sexually assaulted because I was different.
The one thing that saved me was hypnosis, because it taught me how to read people. It taught me how to read between the lines, understand the unconscious mind and use other things, such as magic tricks, rhetoric and certain conversational techniques, to solve my problems.
Because that worked, I dedicated my life to studying the craft.
Darren: Sorry, what age did you say you learned hypnotism?
Adam: Age 12.
Darren: That’s early for hypnotism. Were you able to master the craft and actually use it at the age of 12?
Adam: Yes. I had some successes with it.
I was only using it for conversational purposes, such as defusing situations or making people less aggressive.
At the age of 18, I learned the show-hypnosis element. Usually, people go the other way around and learn show hypnosis first.
At 18, I was able to drop people into deep trances and things like that. Before then, it had been a very useful tool for getting the people who didn’t care onto my side and getting the bullies off my back.
Darren: I find this fascinating. Presumably, this was happening in a school environment?
Adam: Yes.
Darren: In school, you were confronted by bullies who were probably not very intelligent and were possibly older and bigger. Bullies have also often been bullied themselves, which is why they lash out at somebody they see as different. They’re afraid of somebody different.
What technique did you use to defuse it? Can you give me a scenario or an example of how it worked?
Adam: One of the things that worked tremendously well was learning a lot about body language and how to read people.
The best example involves somebody we’ll call “L”, because I don’t want to reveal his full name.
He was pretty much the school’s Nazi. I can’t explain it any other way.
He had a problem with me because of my skin colour. He had a problem with me because I didn’t speak with a perfect Bavarian accent and instead spoke High German. He didn’t like that either. My father is from Kenya, and he didn’t like that.
I realised that the principal of the school I attended was on his side, so you can imagine the ideology of that principal.
When two white children were beating each other up, it was, “Boys will be boys.” When he beat me up and I defended myself, the principal threatened disciplinary measures because I apparently couldn’t behave like that.
I had no support there, so I had to figure out which teacher L was truly afraid of.
I had learned how to get people to admit the truth and reach the point where their real emotions came out. A hypnotist’s power is to bring emotions up, direct attention and get people to act in accordance with what they truly feel.
I figured out which teacher he was afraid of and got that teacher onto my side. I also knew how to win people over. How to Win Friends and Influence People is a fantastic book that teaches that.
We had a conversation, and during it I got him to admit that he didn’t like me because of my skin colour and other things I couldn’t control.
That teacher folded him in half. He became so small after that.
From then on, he greeted me every morning with a bow, and I greeted him with a bow back. We went from, “Hey, [censored],” and “[censored] you,” to, “Good morning, Adam,” and, “Good morning, L.”
I would say that was pretty cool.
Darren: What was the timescale on this? How quickly did it take you to learn the techniques, and where did you learn them?
Adam: I learned the first few techniques from several books.
There was The Power of the Subconscious Mind by Dr Joseph Murphy, a pocket guide called NLP for Dummies, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Think and Grow Rich, and books on body language by Allan and Barbara Pease.
There was also another book on rhetoric. I don’t remember the author, but it was something my father had at home.
Later, when the internet became available, I researched hypnosis techniques online. Dr Bob Cassidy taught me a few things there.
I was mostly self-taught, with a lot of experience from trying things in real life.
I would say it took a few months before I was able to use it properly, and then I started going heavily into it. I had a slight advantage because I learn very quickly thanks to my autism, but I would still say it took a few months.
Darren: Is this something anyone listening who is being bullied could learn?
There are a lot of people who get bullied every day. Would those books be a good starting point for somebody to think, “I could read these, learn this for myself and potentially defuse situations with bullies at school”?
Adam: Yes. I would recommend that every child aged ten and above read those books, because they will help tremendously, especially if you have autism, ADHD or something similar.
In the end, if you’re getting bullied, it’s not because they know you; it’s because they don’t know you.
They have a story about you in their mind, and that story doesn’t reflect the truth. They hate a false version of you.
These techniques help you bring the truth out and allow people to get to know you for who you really are. Most of the time, that creates good friendships.
Darren: You bully somebody because you don’t know them and you fear what you don’t understand.
Adam: Exactly.
Darren: That’s one of the reasons we go to war. We fear what we don’t understand.
It’s also how a lot of right-wing politics thrives. You make the population fear what they don’t understand.
“There are immigrants coming over here. We don’t know what they’re like, so let’s fear them. Everybody vote for me, and I’ll stop them coming over here.”
Adam: Exactly, although I think all identity politics works in the same way.
“This person doesn’t agree with my opinion. They’re different from me. We need to cancel them, destroy them, dox them or kill them.”
It’s always the same thing.
That reminds me of a very interesting lecture I attended while studying psychology at university.
The psychobiology professor told us that racism and similar behaviours actually had roots in biology and our immune systems.
He told us to imagine a world without natural country borders, but with germ borders.
When people live close to one another, their germs are similar enough that, when two people meet, their immune systems are generally compatible.
If there’s a much greater difference, such as between somebody from Russia and somebody from Kenya, their immune systems may be very different. An illness that causes only sniffles in one population could potentially wipe out another population.
That happened historically when populations encountered illnesses to which they had no immunity, such as during encounters involving the Aztecs.
He said that, subconsciously, our bodies respond to those differences. We instinctively distrust people who don’t look like us.
As cognitively evolved beings, the same can happen with our minds. When we think somebody is too culturally different, we reject them because we fear they’re a threat to our society or physical health.
That doesn’t excuse the behaviour, but it might help to explain it. Understanding it allows us to be wiser and take measures to fix the problem.
I think both left-wing and right-wing extremes are bad. It doesn’t matter what the extreme is. Extremes never lead anywhere good.
Darren: I’ve never thought about it like that.
I’ve always thought racism was something inherently taught and that you weren’t born with it. You don’t suddenly have a hatred of somebody who is different from you. You’re taught that belief by somebody else, usually a father, uncle or grandfather who passes it down.
If you’re not taught it, you’re not going to be racist.
You’re saying there could be a biological element that goes beyond being taught. That’s fascinating. It had never occurred to me that this could be the case.
Adam: Yes. I experienced it that way myself.
When I was growing up, I was the only child with brown skin in kindergarten. I can tell you that none of the parents were teaching their children to call me the child with “[censored] skin”.
None of the parents taught that to their children, but they called me it anyway.
It’s basic human behaviour. If something is too different, you don’t like it and you exclude it. It’s tribalism.
If you’re too different from the tribe, you’re considered a threat to survival.
The DNA of a species changes very slowly. Homo sapiens haven’t existed for that long. We’re still essentially the same cavemen, but with smartphones. Based on our DNA, it’s the same thing. We still think tribally.
That is why one of the biggest fears in the world is public speaking. It isn’t merely a fear of death. Public speaking creates the risk of rejection.
You don’t just risk yourself; you risk your reputation. That can affect your children and your bloodline. In primitive terms, if you fail in front of others, your whole gene pool could be wiped out.
This is all subconscious, but it’s why we’re so terribly afraid of these things. We have to keep that in mind when thinking about them.
Darren: It’s strange for me to think that people have a fear of public speaking, because there’s nothing I like more.
I love getting in front of an audience, having a microphone, controlling the audience and having them hang on what I say. It’s food to me. I love it.
I don’t understand how people can be afraid of it.
I’ve seen a public speaker give a talk about this. She’s a lady named Cat who has been on my podcast.
She explained that when you’re born, you have two inherent fears: falling and loud noises. Public speaking, according to that view, is something you’re taught to fear rather than something biological.
You’re saying there is a biological element to the fear of public speaking.
Adam: More or less.
I would say the fear of rejection is at its foundation.
I’ve never had a fear of public speaking either. I don’t know what stage fright feels like. I’ve never experienced it in my life.
That’s because I was rejected and outcast from kindergarten onwards. People had hated me since then, so there was nothing they could add to it.
When I got onto a stage and received attention, I welcomed it, because things couldn’t get any worse in the first place.
That was the taught aspect for me.
For other people, it was different. They were popular, so public speaking represented a risk. They could lose that popularity.
I had nothing to lose.
Darren: Nothing to lose, but everything to gain.
I had similar experiences in school, where I was bullied as well. I don’t think it was to the same extreme you’re talking about, but it made me want more attention.
I tried to make people laugh, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully.
I think that’s part of the reason I do what I do now. I want the attention and adoration that I wouldn’t have received in other ways.
Is that similar to how you feel about what you went through?
Adam: I would say it’s very similar, yes.
It makes us stronger. Adversity always makes us stronger.
We never grow from success. Why would we? There’s no need to.
I’m a very big fan of Dragon Ball Z and anime in general. In Dragon Ball Z, Goku, the main character, said:
“Power never responds to a want. It always comes from a need. You need to create that need.”
That’s something I took to heart.
Darren: That’s similar to a line in Gladiator.
Marcus Aurelius was trying to hand the emperor’s crown to Russell Crowe’s character rather than his son Commodus, because Commodus was a bad man and shouldn’t be emperor.
Russell Crowe’s character, Maximus, said something along the lines of, “I don’t want this. It shouldn’t be me. I’m just a soldier.”
Marcus Aurelius said, “That is why it must be you, because you don’t want it.”
Adam: Yes.
Darren: He didn’t crave it.
Adam: Exactly.
Darren: You dealt with the bullies using hypnosis.
There will be people imagining that you went out, waved your hand in front of them and made them do stupid things, but it’s much subtler than that. You were changing the way they perceived you.
How did you continue to use that skill for good as you got older?
Adam: The first thing I did was learn how to heal and help people with it.
I was obsessed with mastering the crafts of persuasion, reading people, understanding people and guiding emotions.
In the beginning, it was literally a self-defence mechanism.
I didn’t want to use violence.
I’m a martial artist and I like martial arts, but I prefer non-violent methods.
I became obsessed with questions such as: How does the mind work? How do emotions work? How do you turn an enemy into a friend, and why does that work so well?
I started using it for good by teaching other children who were being bullied how it worked.
We all know the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something, but it can take much less time when you teach it to others. Teaching helped me grow quickly.
When I later performed show hypnosis, I always gave the participants a little hypnotic gift.
I never made them do stupid things. I didn’t make people cluck like chickens. I found that disrespectful to the unconscious mind, and I respect the unconscious mind too much for that.
I might make somebody temporarily unable to see a friend, for example, so they were surprised that their friend had become invisible. But afterwards, I would give them something powerful, such as a better memory.
A lot of people achieved straight As after I worked with them because I hypnotised them to have a better memory.
That’s something I appeared on Austrian national television for. I created my own system that can give even people without naturally good memories an almost photographic memory.
I also taught people how to read others more effectively, so they knew who they were dealing with.
I had a lot of female friends who tended to make very poor choices in men. I would say I had almost 90% accuracy in predicting who those men were before I had even met them.
I could look at a picture and know what kind of person somebody was. My friends would say, “How do you know him?”
I taught them how to read people so they wouldn’t fall for the wrong ones.
Darren: It sounds as though you shouldn’t just be classed as a business coach. You should be helping people with life.
You should be teaching children how to deal with bullies, helping them get through school and achieve straight As, and teaching people dating skills.
There are so many things you could be doing.
Do you ever feel you don’t have enough time to do everything your abilities could allow you to do?
Adam: Yes. I definitely need more hours in the day.
I used to have a hypnosis practice where I did exactly that. I helped people with their lives, and I still do it today.
I don’t advertise it anymore. I only work through referrals, and I take the very heavy cases that nobody else can help. Usually, those cases come to me anyway.
It’s the same in business. It’s a question of how you use your time.
I’m a very faithful man. I’m a Christian and strongly believe in God and Jesus.
I believe He will send me the people who need my help most.
I don’t turn down people who need my help when I can see that they genuinely want it.
If I can see that they don’t want it, I don’t force it on them, because you can’t force anybody to be happy.
I have all these skills for a reason. All the skills I’ve learned are related to persuasion and helping people make good choices in life: hypnosis, copywriting, high-ticket sales and understanding social-media algorithms, including how to go viral regularly.
All of these skill sets are about getting people to take certain actions or motivating them to follow certain emotions.
My mentor, Igor Ledochowski, is one of the greatest human beings on this planet, in my opinion. I love this man. He changed my life forever and taught me almost everything I know about hypnosis. He taught me the morals of it as well.
He said, “Persuasion and influence are only about getting people into a state of mind where they can make the best choices for themselves, even if the choice goes against you.”
I wholeheartedly believe that.
Darren: I can see that.
I’ve interviewed hypnotists before on the podcast, and I’ve also interviewed a lot of sales trainers.
Sales trainers often use NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming. There’s a big crossover between sales, NLP and hypnotism.
If you’re good at sales and do it ethically and properly, you’re helping people make the choice that’s best for them.
You shouldn’t try to sell somebody something they don’t need or want, because that isn’t good for them. In the end, it isn’t good for you either.
How much has hypnotism helped you with sales? I think I know the answer already, but I’d like you to express it in words.
Adam: Infinitely.
When I first learned high-ticket closing, I learned it from Dan Lok. It was great training and I really enjoyed it. It changed my life in more ways than one.
He taught me how to sell ethically and powerfully without being a nuisance or behaving like a stereotypical used-car salesperson.
He taught me how to sell at a high level, where you genuinely help people.
When I sell to people, they always say thank you at the end. I never get the feeling that they regret it. It’s always a genuine thank you, which is how you know you’ve done it correctly.
Hypnosis helps me guide people through their problems during sales calls.
If you’re making a major decision or a large investment, it’s uncomfortable. You feel afraid and uncertain.
Most of the time, people don’t buy because they don’t trust themselves to succeed.
Being able to give people self-confidence and guide them through their pain is extremely helpful.
You can’t sell without pain, but causing pain purely for the sake of selling is evil manipulation.
You have to show people the pain they already have so they can realise they need to do something. You then guide them through it, allowing them to make a good decision about whether they truly want what you offer.
That is where hypnosis has helped me most.
Darren: I know a lot of people in sales roles who aren’t really salespeople and aren’t good at it.
I also know a lot of business owners who can’t sell themselves. They might be fantastic and genuinely passionate about what they do.
Often, they’re engineers, so they get deeply involved in the hows and whys of what they do, but they can’t communicate it to other people in a way that sells it. They’re bad at growing their businesses and bad at explaining them.
Do you think anybody, including the most introverted engineer, could learn hypnosis and become better at selling their business?
Adam: It depends.
I think it’s a craft anybody can learn, but not everybody should.
It can help you, but if you only want to learn hypnosis to change people and make them do what you want, you should not learn it. You have no business learning that technique. You will fail.
If you’re introverted and want to improve your conversational skills, genuinely want to help people, but constantly get in your own way because your conscious mind sabotages you, then it can help.
If you focus heavily on facts, facts, facts and logic, which never sells, and you want to communicate in a more human and profound way and build genuine relationships with customers, then yes, absolutely.
Darren: What you’re saying is that if you’re a salesperson who wants to go out, sell, sell, sell and smash every target possible for your business, you have no business learning hypnosis. Stay away from it.
Adam: Exactly.
Darren: It might actually help you, but don’t do it.
Adam: Exactly, because…
Hypnosis is too sacred to be a tool for manipulators.
That’s one of my biggest pet peeves. I see people talking about “dark persuasion” and “dark hypnosis”, but most of the time it’s nonsense. It’s common sense that has been rebranded.
For example, I saw a dark-persuasion video that said, “If you give people food and care for them when they’re sick, they will love you. Make sure you cook for them so you can manipulate them.”
Oh, no! If you cook for people, they like you. I never thought of that!
That’s why the leaders of our world are cooks and nurses, right?
Another one is: “Always tell people the truth, so that one time when you lie, they’ll believe you.”
No way! That’s the darkest manipulation secret imaginable.
I hate these people.
Darren: Trump could do with that.
Adam: He is a very good persuader, though. I have to tell you that. His technique is spot on.
Darren: He flips it the other way. Always tell a lie, so that when you tell the truth, nobody will know.
Here’s a question.
I consider myself quite good at selling. I’ve never learned hypnosis, and I don’t know whether I should, but I feel I’m good at selling because it’s about leading people towards the right decisions.
I find, therefore, that I’m very easy to sell to.
When somebody confronts me with a product or service they want to sell, and it makes sense in my mind, I make an instant decision. I don’t need to think about it. I’ll buy it.
I bought a sofa last year, and the salesperson had clearly received excellent training.
He sold me the aftercare package for the sofa, which meant that if I spilled something on it, somebody would come out and fix it.
He explained all the benefits before mentioning that it cost extra.
He sold it so perfectly that I thought, “Clearly, this is what I’m getting. This is what I want.”
Then he said, “By the way, that’s an extra £3 a month.”
I thought I’d be a fool not to have it. I even complimented him on how he had sold it, and then said I’d take it.
Are you easy to sell to because you understand the selling process yourself?
Adam: Yes, I’m extremely easy to sell to. Sometimes, I’m a little too easy to sell to.
My mentor taught me that if you want to be influential, you need to enjoy being influenced. If you want to be able to sell, you need to love being sold to.
Otherwise, there’s a mismatch.
It’s the same as a coach who wants you to invest £10,000 in their coaching but would never pay for coaching themselves. How is that going to work?
Darren: I love that answer.
I’ve met quite a few business coaches—or, again, people who call themselves business coaches—who don’t have business coaches themselves and won’t invest in coaching.
I remember one person saying, “I don’t need business coaching because I’ve done it all.”
That tells you everything you need to know about them, doesn’t it?
Adam: It absolutely told me everything I needed to know about them.
Darren: They were in BNI.
Adam: Sad. I would say the membership committee should have done a slightly deeper check.
Darren: Certain people don’t really work well within it.
Let’s talk about magic.
There’s obviously a crossover between hypnotism and magic because you’re putting on a performance.
You’re leading people towards a conclusion that may or may not be correct. In magic, they think one thing is happening when something else is actually happening.
What first got you interested in magic?
Adam: That was at the age of six. My father performed magic tricks at my birthday party.
Darren: Was he skilled at magic, or did he learn the tricks especially for your birthday?
Adam: He was very skilled.
I’m not sure whether he originally learned them for my birthday, but he always brought me magic tricks.
He travelled a lot, back when we still had a good relationship, and he always brought me gifts. They were usually magic tricks.
I was always obsessed with superpowers. He told me great stories about superpowers and magical heroes, and I always wanted to be able to perform magic.
Once I learned the tricks, I loved it.
I realised that even if people didn’t like me, once I showed them some magic, they experienced a sense of wonder and became more open.
It was like a door into a magical world where the rejection disappeared for a while. Sometimes, it could even be turned around completely.
Once I started learning hypnosis and NLP, I realised that the same principles that make mentalism and magic work are also used in hypnosis.
I was always obsessed with being efficient. I didn’t want to learn a thousand techniques. I wanted one technique that would always work.
That’s what I didn’t like about body language, and why I created my own system for reading people.
If somebody crosses their arms, it could mean they don’t believe you, they don’t like you or they’re cold. It could mean that a woman has a larger chest and is using her arms for support. You don’t know.
There’s too much interpretation. I needed things that were more reliable.
I then realised that mentalism—the performance of being able to read people, predict the future and so on—contains skills that can be transferred into real life.
If I can vanish a coin, that’s cool, but it isn’t a life skill.
If I’m able to read people, that helps me everywhere.
Darren: What was the first magic trick you learned?
Adam: That’s a very good question.
I think it was a vanishing or teleporting coin trick.
You had something that looked like a stack of coins, which you put inside a small box. Somebody put their hand on it, you performed the move, and suddenly the stack of coins appeared somewhere else, even though the person had been holding it in their own hand.
They saw it vanish in their hands. It was a pretty cool trick.
I also had a few card tricks, but my favourites were always self-working mind-reading and prediction tricks.
At any given moment, I always have a magic trick ready. There’s never a time when somebody can ask me to show them something and I can’t.
Darren: I go to Liverpool football matches because I have hospitality tickets.
Quite often, there will be a magician in one of the lounges. Usually, two or three magicians alternate.
I’ve been shown the same trick about a dozen times over the last couple of years.
The magician picks six or seven people in a row and shows each of them a card. He goes down the line, one at a time.
Sometimes, the cards are in his pocket. Sometimes, they’re on the floor. Sometimes, they’re already in your hand.
I have no idea how he does it. Not a clue.
I know he’s going to perform the same trick, so I watch him like a hawk, and I still can’t fathom how he does it.
How does he do it?
Adam: A magician never tells—and we don’t reveal other magicians’ tricks either.
I do know how he does it, though. I’ve performed the trick myself.
Darren: You know how he does it? Son of a gun.
Does that mean you’re in the Magic Circle?
Adam: I’m not part of it now, but I used to be a member of a magic circle in Linz when I lived there.
Now that I’m in Vienna, I’m not currently part of a magic circle.
Darren: And you’re not allowed to tell anybody?
Adam: Exactly.
Darren: Fine.
In terms of famous magicians, I’ve seen Penn & Teller in Las Vegas.
Adam: I love them. I met them in person. They were great.
Darren: I’ve also seen David Copperfield in Las Vegas.
Adam: You’re a lucky man.
Darren: The lights went out and he materialised a spaceship in the theatre.
It was amazing. You just think, “How did that get in here?” It’s the most ridiculous thing possible.
In terms of famous stage magicians, who is your favourite, and what is your favourite trick you’ve seen?
Adam: David Copperfield, when he started to fly and took somebody from the audience with him through the room.
I always wanted to fly. It was one of my biggest dreams, and when I saw that, I was absolutely captivated. I still think about it.
My first big hero and idol was Peter Pan.
I loved that David Copperfield had a childlike curiosity and sense of wonder about his magic. He wasn’t just there to impress people.
That’s why I don’t like Criss Angel. Criss Angel is just a poser. He even pays people to react to his tricks.
That isn’t magic. Magic is the whole show.
If you eliminate the performance and the wonder, you’re merely repeating a mechanism. That’s ridiculous.
He perverted magic and turned it into a narcissism festival of, “Look how cool I am.”
With David Copperfield, you could see his love for what he was doing.
What I learned from watching him is that, when I perform a magic trick, I convince myself that I’m doing actual magic.
I’m genuinely surprised by the trick when I watch myself perform it.
I love it every time.
Whenever I can give people that childlike wonder and put that spark in their eyes, it’s the best feeling.
Darren: You mentioned flying and wanting to be Peter Pan, and earlier you mentioned superpowers.
I was going to ask which superpower you would choose. I suspected it would be flying.
Adam: Not anymore. It used to be flying, but there are so many different superpowers that would be great.
I used to invent my own superpowers.
One of the most amazing superpowers I can imagine is stopping time and having more time to do things.
The superpower I imagined wasn’t just stopping time. While time was stopped, I could experiment with everything.
For example, time would stop and I could experiment with what would happen if I said something. I’d see the reaction, and when I resumed time, it would be as though nothing had happened.
I would know in advance what would happen. I could experiment with and experience many different possibilities at the same time.
The power to heal would also be fantastic. That’s something else I’d really like.
I wouldn’t ask for the power to read minds, because I can already do something close to that. I can read people very well. It isn’t the same as true mind reading, of course.
I’d like powers that genuinely improve life but still require you to master them.
I would never wish for omnipotence.
A lot of people say, “Omnipotence is the best superpower. I could do whatever I want.”
No. I want something with severe limitations. I want something that forces me to be creative, stay grounded and avoid abusing it.
I don’t want a superpower that makes me feel like God, because that would be blasphemy.
I want something versatile that can be used in many different ways.
Imagine I could stop time and experiment with things.
I could ask, “If this person told me the truth about how they feel, what would they say? What are they really struggling with? What would genuinely help them?”
I could then resume time and give them life-changing advice.
That would be great.
Darren: That’s like a cross between Hiro Nakamura from Heroes, who could stop time, and Doctor Strange, who could see multiple timelines.
You could stop time, see the possible timelines, identify the best one and then take that action.
Adam: That’s a very good example. Yes, exactly.
Darren: Those are two very powerful superpowers combined into one.
I think you’re cheating slightly, but I’ll let you get away with it.
Adam: A little bit.
The downside is that nothing I do while time is stopped would happen in real life.
Even if I punched somebody while time was stopped, it would never have happened once time resumed.
Darren: A safe zone. A sandbox effect.
Let’s talk about business coaching. That’s primarily what you do, I believe.
Adam: Yes.
Darren: What kind of people do you work with? What sorts of businesses?
Adam: Most of the time, I work with solopreneurs, such as coaches, trainers and therapists.
These people are usually so good at their jobs that, as you said about engineers, they can no longer explain them.
Their brains are so technically focused on their crafts that they lose the ability to explain them simply. They’re afraid of not being precise or technical enough, but technical detail doesn’t convince anybody.
This is called the curse of knowledge. They’ve forgotten what it’s like not to possess all the knowledge they have.
If I started talking about intricate details of hypnosis, when you’ve never studied hypnosis, you would be completely confused halfway through.
I could say, “We could do a Doctor Unconscious process on somebody after a Days of Wonder regression. It’s life-changing, but only if you’ve implemented a sanctuary first. Usually, the Dave Elman induction is a good start, although I don’t use it anymore because I have a different opener and deepener that work better.”
What am I talking about? Nobody knows, and nobody cares how I do it.
If I told you I could perform a rain dance around you, turn my head three times and make you £1 million, and you genuinely made £1 million, you wouldn’t care whether I’d used hypnosis, mentalism, copywriting or another technique.
It doesn’t matter.
The only thing that matters is whether the client knows you understand them.
You also need to overdeliver.
I ask every client, “What is the maximum you can give your clients without robbing yourself? What is the maximum you can provide while remaining profitable?”
I absolutely despise businesses that provide the bare minimum for extreme amounts of money.
There are coaches who charge £10,000 but don’t give a guarantee, bonuses or personal assistance. They’re simply selling knowledge for £10,000 at a time when even ChatGPT, although it isn’t as good an AI as it once was, can provide much of that knowledge.
It’s a scam.
My big vision as a business coach is to flood the market with powerful experts who are great at what they do and care about their clients.
Right now, the charlatans have good marketing and a loud voice.
I want to be the great equaliser.
Once things are equalised and the good people have the same quality of marketing, they will win through scale.
The charlatans won’t be able to live up to the standards the public will come to expect.
Darren: I was literally talking about that problem in a one-to-one about two hours ago.
Some businesses and individuals aren’t very good at what they do, but they have great marketing. They dominate and saturate their industries.
Companies like Budweiser, for example. In my opinion, it’s terrible beer, but its marketing is phenomenal, so it became the biggest beer in America.
Every supermarket seemed to have an entire aisle dedicated to Bud Light, even though I think it tastes terrible. Yet it achieved that level of saturation.
There’s also a company advertised on television here in the UK that provides video phone systems.
Adam: I’ve never heard of them.
Darren: In the UK, they’re all over television.
Compared with the alternatives, I don’t think the service is good, yet they’re the company everybody knows because they have the saturation, branding and advertising.
If a business needs a phone system, somebody will think, “I’ve heard of those.”
It’s disappointing for businesses that are genuinely good at what they do when weaker brands have great marketing.
People like us and marketing agencies like ours contribute to this problem, which is why we want to work with people who are good at what they do.
As you said, it’s about finding people who are genuinely good and giving them the voice and power they need.
That’s what you should be doing as a marketer, business coach or hypnotist: using your abilities for good and helping the right people get their voices heard, rather than helping bad companies saturate the market.
I’ve just had a bit of a rant. I’m not sure why. Sorry about that.
Adam: No, I loved what you said. I couldn’t agree more.
I also love your Bud Light example because they experienced an enormous downfall. They were no longer even among America’s top four beers.
It was a dramatic fall from grace because they brought in new marketing leadership who launched a campaign involving the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Bud Light’s main target audience included more conservative consumers. The campaign appeared to disregard that existing audience and focus on a very small part of the market that didn’t traditionally buy the beer.
Bud Light fell so heavily that some supermarkets were turning away representatives because the product wasn’t selling.
If I’m correct—and this could be fact-checked—it still isn’t in the top four.
That happened because the marketing alienated the company’s own audience.
Everybody can believe whatever they want ideologically, but if you’re part of a multibillion-dollar company, don’t know your audience and think your own small bubble of opinions is more powerful than the millions of people who give the company billions of dollars, you’re delusional.
You need to focus first on the people you serve.
If you don’t serve people correctly, you will fall.
We no longer live in a time when a company can be too big to fail.
A lot of power is back in the hands of the people through social-media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.
TikTok is one of the most heavily used platforms and achieves enormous engagement. It can even shape elections.
Don’t underestimate people. Consumers aren’t stupid, and they don’t take things lightly anymore.
We live in a time when people care more about who you are than what you offer.
Boycotts can happen easily. Say one wrong thing, somebody tries to cancel you online and your career may be over.
Darren: They cost themselves the conservative dollar.
Adam: Exactly, and that was worth billions.
The marketing lead involved is no longer there.
What made it worse was that the CEO attempted a public apology that felt like a narcissistic, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” rather than an actual apology.
That made things worse. The controversy continued for months, and Dylan Mulvaney left the country for a period because the backlash became so severe.
That’s why you must do your research first.
That’s also what I do for my clients.
I start with deep research: between ten and 30 pages of psychographic analysis.
It doesn’t matter what you sell if you don’t understand the psychological makeup of your audience.
I use something called reverse-engineered research.
I first examine the offer and the problem it solves. There’s a buyer for almost everything.
I then work backwards from the product and identify the psychology of the people who would buy it.
That usually gives me extremely high accuracy when defining the customer avatar. I say 80% should be considered the average, but my results have never fallen below that.
When you understand your target audience and are genuinely obsessed with serving them properly, you’re doing your job correctly.
That’s also why I overhaul my clients’ offers.
If you only sell time for money, you don’t have an offer.
“I sell an hour of my time for £100” isn’t an offer. Anybody can sell time.
“I help people transform their lives” is also meaningless. You know what it means, but nobody else does.
Be specific.
I could say, “I help trainers, coaches and therapists make more money,” but everybody says that.
Instead, I say, “I do exactly four things for trainers, coaches and therapists.
“First, I change your offer and make it irresistible. That means that when the right audience sees it, they say, ‘I need you.’
“I do this through my proprietary processes, such as my Sherlock Research system, although nobody actually cares about the process. Going into that would be too technical.
“Second, I make sure you get in front of the right people. I have a specific process for reaching your target audience on TikTok, even if they aren’t already using the platform in the way you expect. TikTok is the only platform where that is possible at this scale.
“I give you the visibility you need.
“Third, I help you sell your offer properly. I train you to sell in a way that is ethical, non-sleazy and builds genuine trust.
“Fourth, I make sure people come back to you.
“I take you through all four steps.
“I write the scripts for you, so you don’t have to worry about that yourself. The only thing you need to do is record what I give you and use the language I provide in your pitches.
“You can focus on your core business. All the words you need come from me.”
I have the best words. I have all the words. I’ve studied the words. I give the most persuasive words.
Darren: I need to edit the title of this podcast and add “impressionist” as well.
That’s really interesting.
A lot of business coaches I speak to don’t like using the term “business coach” because they think it pigeonholes them.
They also find it very difficult to explain what they do and how they help people.
Certainly within BNI, a lot of members don’t know how to help the business coach. They don’t know how to introduce or refer them because they don’t understand what they do or how they help clients.
It sounds as though that’s what you help coaches with: giving them the clarity they need to communicate their value.
Adam: Yes.
Darren: How easy is it to get a business coach to buy into that when, as we’ve already established, some coaches think they know everything anyway?
Adam: That’s a very good question.
I would say it’s very easy if you know your target audience well.
My motto is: If you can tell people their problem and what they’ve already tried before they tell you, there will be zero resistance.
I tested this.
I spoke to around 50 or 60 business coaches over several weeks because another BNI member helped me reach out to them.
I said, “I’ll give you a review of your business in exchange for an honest LinkedIn recommendation if you’re happy with what I tell you.”
I started every conversation by saying, “Let me guess. You love what you do. You’re passionate and very good at it. But, for some reason, no matter what you try with marketing, it doesn’t work.”
They said, “Yes.”
I continued, “Let me guess. You spend two or three hours creating a social-media post for Instagram. It receives three likes, one of which is from your mother.”
They’d ask, “Have you been stalking me?”
I’d say, “You also hate doing it. You know you need marketing, but you don’t have the money for a large marketing agency.
“You want to do it yourself because you think nobody understands it as well as you, but you also don’t want to do it because you have better things to do.”
They said, “Yes.”
I’d continue, “Let me guess. You’ve also taken courses, joined masterminds and bought programmes that promised you the world.
“In the end, you were left alone and still had to implement everything yourself, so you didn’t do it.”
They said, “Yes.”
Then I said, “Great. Let me fix that.”
That’s a completely different angle.
Darren: Wow. I love that.
I also love it when I’m recording these podcasts, hear something and immediately think, “That’s going into a clip.”
Adam: Thank you.
Darren: That’s definitely going into a clip.
For those who are listening rather than watching the video, I can see a collection of BNI certificates on the wall behind you.
I take it BNI is working well for your business.
Adam: I love BNI. Joining the network was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
BNI is by far the best way to make friends and have money as a side effect.
BNI is all about building relationships.
You cannot do business without relationships, especially now.
The connections, advice and genuine help I’ve received through BNI when I needed it are things I couldn’t have obtained elsewhere.
I could talk about this for hours.
I love having the network.
For example, I’m currently working with a client on sales. One of their clients was scammed by a former boss out of £21,000.
She wanted to invest in a programme but couldn’t because she was missing that money.
I was able to refer her to a lawyer in her area who could help.
That’s amazing.
Darren: That’s a big part of BNI: being able to help people because you have the connections.
People often come directly to me and ask whether I can recommend somebody who does a particular thing.
They know I’m the person who can make that recommendation.
You feel great because you’re helping them, and you’re also passing a referral to somebody else and helping their business.
You receive the dopamine effect of helping two different people. You also get a referral and points on the traffic lights, which is quite nice.
It’s a win-win.
How long have you been in BNI?
Adam: In total, I’m approaching my fourth year.
I was a member from 2018 to 2020 as a hypnotherapist, and I rejoined in 2024 as a business coach.
Officially, my profession in BNI is now copywriter because much of what I do involves writing scripts for my clients.
Unlike other copywriters, I also provide all the research and coach my clients on how to use the scripts.
That’s why my clients usually achieve around four times the results.
One of my clients is exploding on TikTok now.
I told him, “Within approximately three months, you’ll start receiving leads from TikTok and will go viral.” It has never taken longer than that.
He is now in exactly that timeframe and is exploding, receiving hundreds of thousands of views. People are reaching out to him, which is pretty cool.
Darren: We only have a few minutes left. It’s gone quickly, hasn’t it?
You touched on this earlier in the podcast. You mentioned being able to go viral consistently.
Adam: A magician never gives away his tricks.
No, I’m joking. This isn’t magic, and I will explain how I do it. It’s actually very simple.
I can also give you a link to a YouTube video where I explain it. I’m very willing to give that information away.
Darren: We can share that in the description so people can click through to your YouTube video. That’s fantastic. We’ll definitely do that.
Adam: Perfect.
I lean on something Jeff Bezos said: “Don’t worry about what will change. Focus on what will not change.”
What will a social-media platform always want?
Will it ever want fewer users? No.
Will it ever want less watch time? No.
Will it ever want fewer shares? No.
It wants as many people on the platform as possible, for as long as possible, so it can show them as many adverts as possible and make as much money as possible.
You always need to optimise for watch time and shareability.
How do you do that?
One of the things I use is what I call the multi-hook technique.
I use four different types of hooks to capture attention.
The first is a written hook, usually inside a white box in the upper third of the screen. I call it the white hook. It gives viewers a general idea of what the video is about.
The second hook is in the caption or description beneath the video. It directly references something you say later in the video.
It should never say, “Watch until the end.” That’s horrible.
It also shouldn’t merely repeat the first hook.
The third is the verbal hook. It should feel as though the viewer has entered the middle of a conversation with a friend. It should feel as though they’ve stumbled into a FaceTime call.
The fourth is the visual hook: some movement or something else that captures attention, such as a fancy jacket.
Those four hooks capture attention and buy you three or four seconds.
You then need to provide relevance and good content.
One of three things must happen.
First, you give viewers something they can implement immediately. Me giving you this formula is immediately useful. People can immediately check whether their hooks are good.
Second, you give them a mindset shift that changes the way they think about the problem.
Free content isn’t meant to provide a complete education. You can’t change somebody’s life in 15 seconds. You can’t teach them everything you know in that amount of time.
You can, however, make them feel that their problem can be solved. You can make them feel enriched or slightly more competent.
Third, you give them an emotional boost, whether that comes from nostalgia, fun or happiness.
If you allow me to share my screen, I can show you what I mean using examples from my TikTok channel.
I’m a very big fan of proving what I say. Anybody can talk, but proving it is more difficult.
Darren: It can be, yes.
Adam: Thank you.
I’ll show you several accounts where I’ve used this.
Let’s start with my own account, which I began a year ago. You can see it on the screen.
Darren: Yes.
Adam: This video has almost 600,000 views. One I made recently has 227,000 views.
The effort required for that video was 15 seconds. I made it while I was on a call with one of my clients because I was trying to prove a point.
I told her it didn’t matter what she said. She needed to have these elements in place, and then results like this became possible.
Look at the screen. It says, “Seriously, tell me, how is this possible, guys?”
What does that tell you about the video?
When you read that with the emoji, what do you expect?
Darren: That you’re going to tell us something we don’t think can be done. It’s something I need to know.
Adam: Exactly.
Now you read that alongside the word “dancing”. What do you think?
Darren: The video is probably going to involve some sort of dancing as well.
Adam: Maybe.
Now look at my facial expression. What does that expression say?
Darren: You look confused or in disbelief about what you’re about to tell us.
Adam: Exactly.
It also says, “What is wrong with Kenyans?”
Those are the four things you see immediately.
There’s also a man wearing a bonnet, which is unusual because most of the time it’s women in Kenya who wear bonnets.
You see a lot of unusual things.
Now let’s see what happens in the video.
[Video plays.]
It was simply a video praising Kenyans because they are my audience.
I love them. I love my audience deeply.
It was a genuine thought. I was saying, “You people are amazing. You have peaceful coexistence between religions. You don’t have Muslims and Christians fighting one another in the same way. My own Kenyan girlfriend is amazing.”
I simply wanted to give them appreciation.
The video went hyper-viral.
Here’s another one. It has 100,000 views, and I made it only a few days ago.
The written hook says, “Kenya, what is going on here? This is seriously baffling.”
It uses the same principles.
[Another video plays.]
People love commenting on it. That is the power of the whole thing.
It’s about relatability.
They see themselves in the content, so they want to engage.
I never say, “Follow me,” “Please comment,” or “Subscribe.” I don’t say any of that.
It isn’t necessary.
When people see themselves in your content, they will come by themselves.
That requires deep research.
I’ve done deep research, and I’m fortunate that my girlfriend is Kenyan, so she tells me how people feel.
I want to give my audience a good experience. I want them to feel happy and uplifted when they see my content, because I genuinely love my audience.
Darren: Is the same principle applicable to long-form content?
We’re almost out of time, but is that something you do?
Adam: Yes. I don’t create long-form content myself, but the principles are the same.
Long-form content requires much more work.
For long-form YouTube content, you need to focus intensely on the first 30 seconds, because those 30 seconds decide everything.
Within the first 30 seconds, you may need a visual change every 1.4 seconds.
You need to establish the stakes, build excitement and create a very strong thumbnail.
I feel that the effort required for long-form content demands either a full team or the equivalent of a full-time job.
By contrast, I can achieve results on TikTok that exceed the views some successful YouTubers receive across their channels.
Some of those people have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers, yet I receive more views on an individual video after investing only ten seconds of effort.
I’m not saying this to show how great I am. I’m trying to make people see that TikTok is the place to be.
It gives everybody an opportunity, regardless of how large or small they are.
Even Instagram doesn’t do that.
Instagram cares about the size of your following and can suppress your reach.
You can do everything correctly and still be suppressed.
One of my clients has a video with 100,000 views on TikTok that received only 2,000 views on Instagram.
It’s the same video and the same audience.
You can do everything correctly and still get suppressed. It’s nonsense.
Go to TikTok. Use its power to reach the people you care about and serve them properly.
Here’s a magic tip for TikTok: it doesn’t care about the specific content as much as it cares about the idea.
When you see somebody doing something effective, you can adapt the idea.
Dr Julie, for example, uses fantastic visual metaphors. You can apply the concept of visual metaphors to your own business.
It will work because TikTok cares about whether people are uplifted, happy and entertained in the right way.
As an expert, it also teaches you to communicate your point in 15 seconds rather than rambling for 30 minutes while nobody understands what you do.
It’s great.
Darren: I love it.
TikTok wants people to remain on the platform, moving from video to video.
Its algorithm is phenomenal. It quickly learns what you want and what you watch, and then gives you more of it.
Adam: Yes. It’s fantastic. It’s the best platform ever.
Darren: We’re out of time now, Adam.
Anybody listening to this may be thinking, “You’re a fascinating person. I need to learn more about you, speak to you, work with you or have a BNI one-to-one with you.”
What is the best way for them to reach out?
Adam: The best way is to contact me on LinkedIn.
I’m not currently very active there, but I do check it.
I used to post every day, but I’m so busy now that I’m not posting regularly.
LinkedIn is still a great place to reach me because people can see some of my opinions and ideas there.
I have a lot of valuable content on my profile.
I made sure my LinkedIn articles were timeless so people could obtain value from them and immediately implement what they learned.
Even if I’m too busy to provide proper help or can’t arrange a call at that moment, they can at least obtain value from the content.
I always try to make time where I can.
At the moment, I’m working from seven in the morning—sometimes five in the morning—until eleven at night, often back-to-back.
Even so, I’ll always try to make time to provide at least a review or two or three minutes of voice-message feedback on somebody’s content or website.
I will always try to help.
Darren: Fantastic.
I’ll put a link to your LinkedIn profile in the podcast show notes and in the description of the YouTube video.
Anybody who wants to connect with you on LinkedIn will be able to click through directly.
Adam, thank you very much for being a guest on the podcast.
Adam: Thank you for having me, Darren. It was a pleasure.
About the guest:
Adam Nassor is a hypnotist, magician, copywriter and business coach who helps coaches, trainers, therapists and other experts communicate their value, develop stronger offers and market their businesses more effectively. After discovering hypnosis at the age of 12 as a means of understanding people and defusing bullying, Adam dedicated himself to studying ethical persuasion, human behaviour and the unconscious mind. He now combines hypnosis, copywriting, sales training, audience research and social-media strategy to help clients build trust, reach the right people and grow their businesses without relying on manipulative or sleazy sales techniques. You can connect with Adam here:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adamnassorpeak/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adam_nassor_official/
LinkedIn: https://at.linkedin.com/in/adamnassor/en
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeqXwPBIkAE
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@adamdating
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
