Entrepreneurs Over 40 Episode 15 with John Moyer

[00:00:00] Greg Mills: Our guest today was an award-winning comic with 20 plus years of onstage experience who graduated from college with a BA in theater and film. By his own admission, he was barely getting by doing standup comedy for bar gigs and B and C list comedy clubs. It wasn't until he caught another act, featuring a stage hypnotist that things began to change for him.

[00:00:23] He taught himself self-hypnosis and gradually realized that his life began improving. He then retired from standup comedy, took a course in stage hypnosis and began thriving. He continued on with his training and he became certified with the National Guild Of Hypnotists. While pursuing this, he learned that hypnosis was more than just people using the power of the minds to be funny on stage.

[00:00:47] It was also a powerful tool for self-improvement as well. About that time he discovered that he could successfully post content on YouTube, and has amassed an audience of 189,000 subscribers. despite despite being 52 years old. Around the same time he met and married the woman of his dreams, a former miss Utah.

[00:01:07] I think it's safe to say that hypnosis has changed his life for the better. Without further ado, let's welcome, John Moyer.

[00:01:15] John Moyer: Thank you, Greg. I appreciate it very much. That's one of the things a lot of people have said to me. When they see my wife and they see me and they go, now we know hypnosis is real, cause there's no way that you got a woman like that who was wide awake and conscious.

[00:01:30] Greg Mills: Awesome. Can you take a few moments and fill in the gaps from that intro and bring us up to speed with what's going on in your world.

[00:01:38] John Moyer: Yeah. It was kind of a lot what you said in your intro. I went to school for theater and film with a screenwriting emphasis. And while I was in film school, I discovered standup comedy and it all seemed like it was in the same wheelhouse: entertainment and writing and being funny.

[00:01:56] I graduated from film school. I went on the road doing standup comedy and I did that for over 20 years. My whole thing was I never really cared about being super famous. I never cared about being super rich. I just wanted to be able to live my life being creatively and, you know, not have to answer to the proverbial man.

[00:02:16] I just kind of wanted to be in charge of my own time. And at the same time too, along the way, I had a couple of screenplays that were independently produced. Being on stage was kind of my first love my, my first passion. But one of the things about doing stand up comedy for me, and especially when it comes to the world of film is, you know, there's a saying that all drama is conflict or all conflict is drama. It's like when you watch Star Wars, there wouldn't be a Star Wars if there wasn't a Darth Vader, and if there wasn't a DeathStar and you had to go rescue the Princess. So my whole thing when it came to up comedy was Hey, if drama is conflict, then that's going to where that's where I draw from, for my material on stage.

[00:02:59] So the more dysfunctional my personal life was, I'm like, oh, here, here's a joke. I can do this and I can make fun of this. I was kind of an angry comedian on stage. But while I was able to go on and tell jokes on stage and make people laugh, what was going on behind the scenes with my life is that I wound up going through a divorce.

[00:03:18] I was a single parent. I was really unhappy with that situation. Of course I love my kids. Didn't mind being a single parent. Then there was this kind of this thing in the early two thousands where the model of standup comedy really changed from what it was when I started doing standup comedy in, the early to mid nineties. When I was doing standup comedy in the early to mid nineties, I would hear the headliners talk: the guys that girls that have been doing it for, 10, 15, 20 years, they talked about how the heyday for standup comedy for them was like the late seventies, the early eighties.

[00:03:57] They said, what killed standup comedy for them was cable television. Because people kind of wanted to stop going, why would they go out to a comedy club when they could sit at home and watch comedy on TV: Evening At The Improv, Comic Strip Live, that sort of thing. The thing that killed for my generation early on was the Internet. It's changed definitely since then. But what had happened was, when MySpace really took off and became a thing; Comics were flocking to MySpace to promote themselves, to promote their shows. What a lot of comics would do is when they were going to a particular town, they would search for people, in that town that were listed under MySpace.

[00:04:37] And they would go through and they would add all these friends and then they would promote their shows. So what wound up happening was that comedy became not necessarily not about who the funniest comedian was, but it was more like who was more famous relative to having followers on the internet and friends on MySpace.

[00:04:57] I've a really good friend of mine that he owned several comedy clubs and he said, look as a business owner, what am I going to do? I've got Comedian A, that is incredibly funny and Comedian B has only ever done five minutes in his parents' basement, but this kid's got 20,000 friends on MySpace and I know if I put them up on stage, they're going to come see him. So that really changed the model for a lot of what was happening in stand-up comedy. So in the late two thousands, you saw a lot of comedy clubs kind of closed down. There were a lot of bookers that would have a lot of one nighters that were strung out.

[00:05:29] You could work a Tuesday through Saturday or Tuesday through Sunday. A lot of those just kind of fell off and, for me, that's what I was going out and doing. I saw how that model was changing. It was drying up. So that was contributing to my professional frustration and the things that I wanted to do.

[00:05:48] I was at an event one time where I was performing. It was a fair event. So I'm doing standup comedy at like noon. In the middle of the afternoon, which is not the ideal time, to do up comedy, you think it should be at night.

[00:06:01] But it was a decent show. You know, where I was at, there was probably maybe two thirds filled up. Then after me, I didn't realize this, there was a hypnotist. So I had maybe two thirds of the venue filled. Well, when the hypnotist came on, it was like five people, deep standing room, only outside of the venue.

[00:06:23] I watched as the crowd was just totally into this. They were excited to see those participants on stage. After the show, the hypnotist was selling his CDs to stop smoking and lose weight, reduce stress, all of that stuff. I looked at that and I said, there's something to that and I need to reinvent myself . So I began to study stage hypnosis. And of course, if I'm going to do hypnosis and hypnotize other people, I should be aware of what the experience is like. So, as I was studying, I began to implement self-hypnosis and I began to realize how my thinking was changing, how my mindset was changing and of course, how I felt overall.

[00:07:03] Because my emotions were changing. my thinking was changing. Obviously my actions, my behaviors, and my results were then changing. They began to match my thoughts and my emotions on the inside. What it was really fortunate I was able to do is that I was able to then go back to the bookers and the agents and all the people that I worked with with standup comedy and said, look, I've got a completely different act here. I've got something new and all of a sudden it took off. I found myself being booked for more events. I wound up moving into the corporate world and I was doing a lot of corporate events. I was making considerably more money. I expanded my audience as well because it wasn't just these corporate events.

[00:07:43] It was high schools, it was colleges. And as a result of that, I also wound up getting in with Royal Caribbean cruise line. So I was paid to fly around the world to these incredibly beautiful exotic locations. And I was performing my show and getting paid to travel. So, everything really took a 180 and it was just an incredible experience for me to be able to see that change.

[00:08:10] Now, the big thing that also came out of that is, as I said, hypnotists would sell their merchandise after the show and they would have CDs and things like that. But of course, we're not really a CD oriented culture anymore. A lot of things became digital. And I would see a lot of these hypnotists on some of the forums and the places that I belong to, they were trying to figure out what can we do?

[00:08:33] People don't have CD players anymore. Then a lot of people were talking about having drives with MP3 players and, you could put into your computer and listen to as an MP3 and put it on your phone or whatever. So I began doing that and along the way I thought, Why offer my material just after the show? I've got a website. I could put digital files on my website which is what I did. But then I thought, Okay well, let's go to my YouTube channel. I could put this content on my YouTube channel and if people see it on YouTube, then maybe they'll be interested. They'll go want to buy the MP3 version.

[00:09:04] What didn't occur to me was that people would use YouTube as a standalone platform for any of the, hypnosis and meditation content that they wanted. As a result of that, my channel took off and I made my channel exclusively for hypnosis content. It wasn't for clips of my show or anything like that.

[00:09:24] It was now all content, specifically meditation and hypnosis based. The funny thing was, is I originally started my YouTube channel in like 2006 with like my stand-up comedy videos and, other goofy stuff like that. But when I started doing this in 2018 I had a few hundred subscribers, a few, less than a thousand I think what it was.

[00:09:47] And then as a result of that, my subscribers just went through the roof last December. So in about two years I reached a hundred thousand subscribers, got the YouTube silver play button for having a hundred thousand subscribers. And I'll actually hit 200,000 subscribers within the next month.

[00:10:05] And what really worked out so incredibly well for me is when the pandemic happened shows weren't happening anymore. Cruise ships were shut down. I have a lot of friends that were great entertainers on the cruise ships. But man, everything came to a screeching halt for them and you know, they had nothing.

[00:10:22] And fortunately for me, more people were staying home, more people were stressed out. So more people were online, more people were looking for the kind of content that I offer. So my YouTube channel completely just really took off in 2020. And I was very fortunate that I was able to have that opportunity to be there when nothing else was going on.

[00:10:40] So, consequently, I liked staying home. Like hanging out and making hypnosis and meditation content. Never leaving my house. Whether or not I'll actually go back to performing or not will, we'll see. But so that's how everything kind of turned around for me.

[00:10:54] I went from, living in this tiny, 800 square foot, two bedroom condo after my divorce, wondering what I was going to do, wondering where, rent money was going to come from to, also meeting meeting my wife who shared a lot of the same similar ideas with me and consequently she's gone on and certified, doing hypnosis as well. So she works with clients one-on-one. We bought a new house last year in 2020. So, everything really did change in ways that I could have never even imagined.

[00:11:24] Greg Mills: You've definitely had good timing. I can't imagine being a comedian right now in this age with the cancel culture and political correctness. You're going to offend somebody.

[00:11:34] John Moyer: There's definitely a lot of that happening. I would still book hypnosis shows, but then I would still do some, stand up comedy shows, but I retired from standup comedy.

[00:11:44] I think my last stand up comedy show was about four years ago. Here was something that drove me my entire life. Something I was passionate about being able to be creative in this way and tell jokes, make people laugh. I didn't have any interest in that anymore. It didn't excite me.

[00:12:00] I was obviously still being able to make people laugh, doing stage hypnosis. But I realized that where my passions were about what I wanted to get out, there for the audience to inspire the audience, to make the audience feel good, was a completely different format now. That meant a lot more to me.

[00:12:18] When I would talk to people after the, after my hypnosis shows and they would tell me how they felt, they would tell me for being on stage, what the experience was like for them. One of the big things that I would do when I was had volunteers on stage is at the end, I would give them a, post-hypnotic suggestion.

[00:12:33] I would say, look, when you participate tonight, if there's a goal that you want to achieve something you want to have do, or B, we're going to put that in your mind tonight.

[00:12:41] So you can walk away from the show feeling better off being better off than when you came up on stage, you can achieve your goals. I remember one time being on the cruise ship and I had a woman that came up to me. Because when you're on the cruise ship, you don't just do the show and get off.

[00:12:55] I would do two shows in one night, but I was there for several days. Maybe the entire cruise. So you see these people and you interact with these people. And I had a woman come up to me. She said I had no interest in participating in your show until you said I'm going to give you a post-hypnotic suggestion that's going to allow you to achieve your goals. She said, my big thing is, I'm a chocoholic. I eat entirely too much chocolate and so my goal was to stop eating chocolate. So she goes, that's what brought me up to being on stage in your show. And she said, it's been three days and I have had absolutely no desire whatsoever to eat chocolate.

[00:13:35] And she's like, I can't believe it. My friends can't believe it.

[00:13:38] Greg Mills: I imagine that had to be pretty fulfilling and just great feeling.

[00:13:43] John Moyer: Yeah. You know, it really was and, you know, it was early on when I realized, the ability for people to be able to make changes for themselves relative to hypnosis, because I saw , what it did for me. So I didn't want to just keep it confined to the stage. I wanted to be able to do things for people outside of that.

[00:14:00] So especially when it comes to YouTube, I hear from people all over the world that, they have have told me, I've been struggling with this. This has been a challenge for me. And thank you for what you've put out because, it's changed my life. And so that's the one benefit for me is, the thing that I really enjoy is knowing that I've been able to help people I've taken the things that have personally worked for me and package them and put them in a way that can benefit other people.

[00:14:28] Greg Mills: You were doing that before, but it was probably more transitory in that somebody went and they saw your show and they enjoyed it. A few days later, or, even the next day, they're back to where they were.

[00:14:42] John Moyer: Yeah.

[00:14:42] One of the things that my wife, Michelle would say to me, when she would see me do stand up early on. She said she would love it if the audience heckled me, because the way that I was able to just go after audience members. I had an experience one time.

[00:14:56] This might be 15 years ago or so, but I was doing a show and there was a guy in the front row who looked like the actor, Paul Giamatti. So I kept referring to this guy as Paul Giamatti and the audience is laughing and I would talk to the guy and it was getting big laughs and. I felt in my mind it was a really successful show and it was, but then after the show, the guy came up to me and he goes, what are you doing to me here?

[00:15:20] I came here with my friends, my, my wife, to enjoy the show and you embarrassed me. I just kind of played it off , like, Hey, have some free merchandise. Here you go. You had a good time or whatever, but that really resonated with me because I'm here to make people feel good, but I made 199 people feel good at the expense of one person walking away and feeling really bad and, whatever negative experience that they had.

[00:15:48] That was a little bit of a turning point for me, relative to how I interact with people on stage. This is why I love being able to do what I do now, because , it's the antithesis of that. It's, it's being able to make, everyone, or offer everyone. One of the things that I do say, especially when it comes to hypnosis and mindset, is that somebody else can't make us feel anything.

[00:16:08] The way we choose to respond or the way we choose to feel it is a choice. It's up to us how we want to, or how we prefer to feel. So looking at it, that context. One of the things that I say that I do creatively is to create an experience for people that offers them the opportunity to choose into happiness or to choose into joy or choose into their best self.

[00:16:33] Greg Mills: Okay. Now backing up just a little bit. Why was making people laugh so important?

[00:16:41] John Moyer: That was something that I learned early on as a kid, that, if I could be funny, if I could make people laugh, that felt good for me. Years ago I worked with a comedian named Jack Mayberry, and I think he was one of the comics that, had a record number of appearances on The Tonight Show.

[00:16:58] He said to me, when you tell a joke, it's like giving somebody a gift. You're offering them something that, is going to be meaningful to them or feel good for them. That was something that, I learned early on. That if I could make people laugh, even sometimes even if it was at my own expense , I was creating a moment of joy or happiness for people.

[00:17:17] That was something that just early on in my mind, linked up into my mind as something that was meaningful. My father was an incredibly talented musician. He was in big band music. He loved, Glenn Miller and all of that. So he had his own orchestra. It was the George Moyer Orchestra.

[00:17:35] And the funny thing though, is as much as my father loved music and as talented as he was, my father never believed that he could actually make a living doing music. That was just a hobby. A real man works 40 hours a week. Real man has a regular job, a real man sacrifices and suffers doing something he doesn't love to do, but because he loves his family, he provides for his family that way.

[00:18:00] And I saw that conflict in my father. How much he loved music, but how much he hated working. He was working for the family business. He was working for his uncle. And my father was really, really unhappy. So I saw that struggle that my father had, and I realized that, well, I didn't want to be that way in my life.

[00:18:19] I wanted to be able to do something that I enjoy doing. And I wound up discovering his super eight millimeter movie camera. And I started making, these kind of these comedy movies, these little funny short movies. I still remember this. I think I was about 13 or 14 years old, but I, I said to my dad, I said, What do you think about me making movies?

[00:18:41] And my father said, I think it's another one of your stupid childish ideas. And man, that seared me, at the time. So I had these two things going for him. I'm like, I don't want to wind up like you and you just told me I couldn't do something. So screw you. I'm going to go out and do it.

[00:18:56] And that's what consistently drove me to want to be in the entertainment industry, because I was passionate about being creative. And I, wasn't gonna end up like my dad. And later on, as I graduated from college and I was out there performing, I would have these conversations with my dad. My dad said,

[00:19:15] you got to give a deadline for yourself. You've got to give yourself a point where if. Don't make it that you just go on and you do something else. And I said, you know what point that's going to be dad? I said, that's going to be the moment where they're turning that crank, and they're lowering my casket into the ground.

[00:19:32] And as things did kind of proceed, for me, I was at least out there making a living. And there were the times that I did have, more success than others. As I said, I had a couple of independent screenplays, produced as comedies back there on the wall. There was a little bit of it was unspoken, but there was some resentment, from my father that I was out doing these things and

[00:19:57] Greg Mills: Kind of like, why couldn't I do that?

[00:19:59] John Moyer: yeah, yeah.

[00:20:00] We worked all of that stuff out before he passed away. But that was really the driving force for me. It was that I found something creatively that I want to do. I want to be able somehow inspire people or make people feel good. And I want to be able to do it on my own terms, and I want to be able to, live my life and provide for my family. All of this is kind of the convergence of all these areas of my life relative from, being creative and video production, writing, has all kind of come together to align for me to be able to do what I'm doing now.

[00:20:29] Greg Mills: Now you hinted on this a little bit, but I'm going to go ahead and ask the question. Was there anyone in your family that was entrepreneurial? Did you come from any kind of entrepreneurial background? I know you mentioned a family business.

[00:20:42] John Moyer: My great grandfather established, a piping company. They would go in, they would lay pipe for, factories and that sort of thing.

[00:20:50] My great-grandfather- he built a very successful, company business , in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My great grandfather's, success doing what, you know, something that he was passionate about, his father was a welder back in we're going back to the late 18 hundreds.

[00:21:07] It was kind of an interesting thing that things that we didn't realize, but ancestry.com, I was able to dig a little further back and find some people. So my great grandfather built this business and the business paid for the house that he built, the property that he built, which was the house that my grandmother lived in with my father that my father was raised in and that I was raised in.

[00:21:28] So, the opportunities that I had growing up, where I lived, that was all a result. Even though my great-grandfather passed on I think 15 years or so before I was born, but I was reaping the benefits of him wanting to go out and be successful and do something that he was passionate about.

[00:21:49] Greg Mills: Okay. So what was your first job?

[00:21:53] John Moyer: I worked at a place called the Orange Bowl in the mall. I learned quickly that I didn't like that. I think I only lasted there a few days. I wound up going over to the Gap for the Christmas season and I hated that. I bounced around some of the shops in the mall folding clothes, you're ringing people up.

[00:22:12] One of the things that surprised my mom is that, was a gas station right down the street from our house. And I was getting gas there one day, the family had known the owner of a gas station and he said he was looking for somebody to work the swing shift, come in late afternoon, pump gas and clean up after the mechanics.

[00:22:30] And. That was something completely different than I'd ever done. But I was like, Hey, I can go do this. And my mom was surprised that I was really into this manual labor. She couldn't believe that I enjoyed doing this manual labor, but actually I had a blast doing it because I could take my car in there.

[00:22:47] Once all the mechanics left I had access to all the tools and I was able to, rip the, intake manifold off of my car. I put on a four banger carburetor. I was putting on headers. I was doing all this stuff, you know, which kind of was creative. I was doing something for me. That was an inclination I really enjoyed being able to do something creative that way. Even though it was cleaning up after mechanics and doing all this stuff, all the mechanics and everybody else had left. So I was the only one there. So I was kind of in charge of myself. I liked that very much. I had a really interesting experience in college.

[00:23:20] One semester, Orson Scott Card came to speak to us. He's the famous science fiction writer. He had spoken to a lot of the students in a group setting.

[00:23:30] Then we were able to schedule like five minute one-on-one sessions with Orson Scott Card to get some advice. So I sat down with him and, and the huge takeaway from that: he said, you're either going to cheat your writing, or you're going to cheat your boss.

[00:23:46] And it's up to you to determine who you want to cheat. As I graduated, I was still performing in comedy and doing on the road, but there were times when I kinda had to get a regular job during the day. My whole philosophy was is that I looked at it as my art. My standup comedy, that became my primary, goal.

[00:24:05] So if there was a reason that I had to call in sick to go do a show or something, that was it. That was always what I did. I wasn't going to cheat what I was passionate about because I had an obligation to the man.

[00:24:19] I wound up moving from Utah, I moved back home to New Jersey. I wound up living in California, back in Utah now, but in those times I wanted to make sure that if I had to have a quote unquote regular job, it was always something that I could always easily dismiss, or I could always get out of to be able to go, on the road or perform.

[00:24:42] So I didn't want to get in one of these situations and I saw this happen with a lot of really great comics, people that I knew. They would get married, you know, the wife and the kids and stuff. And, they've got this big mortgage or whatever the case may be.

[00:24:55] So it was like, I can't do what I'm passionate about because I've, I've got to go work for somebody else. I have to go into the insurance office and, do all that stuff. So I always kind of made sure that if I was ever in a situation where I needed money or something had to come up, I pushed myself to make sure that I could get that from what I was passionate about.

[00:25:16] Years ago in the nineties I remember watching Chris Rock on the Oprah show and Oprah was interviewing Chris Rock. And she said, we know that you've been in a few movies here and there. You were on Saturday night live, but it just seems that recently you came out of nowhere, you just really exploded onto the scene and became a really popular comedian, a movie star.

[00:25:35] She goes, what happened? And Chris Rock said, I bought a house that I couldn't afford. So I had to come up with money. So I had to push myself harder to do more, to be able to compensate for, the money that I needed. So if there was a time in my life when something had to come up, I'm like, man, I need more money for this or whatever the case may be. Instead of going well, I guess I can just go out and look at the help wanted ads.

[00:25:58] I said, no, how can I pull this off being creative? And that's kind of how my mindset drove me my entire life.

[00:26:07] Greg Mills: I truly believe that certain themes are kind of repeated passed down from generation to generation. And it sounds like working with your hands, passed down to you.

[00:26:18] John Moyer: Yeah. I'd like to think that I got the entrepreneurial spirit from my great-grandfather and I got the entertainment DNA from my father.

[00:26:28] Greg Mills: So, do you remember your first comedy gig?

[00:26:32] John Moyer: Oh yeah.

[00:26:32] Greg Mills: and how you did?

[00:26:34] John Moyer: Well, there was a local comedy club in Provo, Utah, where I was going to school and they would have an open mic night. And they did things a little bit differently. A lot of comedy clubs, the way they do it is they have a Tuesday night set aside for open mic where it's just like the open miker sand their friends and their families.

[00:26:50] But what this comedy club did was, they were open Thursday through Saturday and on Thursday night they had one show at eight o'clock. It was still regular headliner that was booked. But what they did before the regular headliners, they set aside 20 or 30 minutes for the open mikers to come up.

[00:27:07] So the open mikers were performing on a real show in front of a real audience. It wasn't just people that they had to try to come get to see them. And I went up and I did five minutes. I was absolutely terrified. But the manager of the club came up to me and said, Hey, that was really good.

[00:27:23] Would you like to come and open up on the weekend or do some time on the weekends? So I went back over the weekend and did five minutes and I couldn't believe it. , I was, wow, this is a real comedy show and I'm doing, my five minutes. But I had gotten used to doing that club and it was in Provo, Utah.

[00:27:37] I went to BYU. It was a family friendly comedy club. It was a clean comedy club. You were drinking Sprite and root beer, I was doing one of the shows and then there was a woman that had come up to me after one of the shows that I had done.

[00:27:50] This was probably several weeks later, a month later or whatever it was. And she said, Hey, I have a comedy night up in Salt Lake at this location. She goes, can you do you know, 10 or 15 minutes? Of course I had five minutes, but I'm like, absolutely I can do 10 to 15 minutes.

[00:28:08] She goes, great. I want to book you for, this comedy night that I do. I drive up to this place and it was a bar. Now here I was, I guess I was like 23 years old, you know, living in Provo, Utah. I was just trying to be this good little Mormon. I had never set foot in a bar in my entire life.

[00:28:24] It was a completely foreign concept for me. And I walk into this bar and I'm looking at these people in this bar that didn't look like the family-friendly faces that I had seen at the comedy club where I was at before. And I was absolutely terrified. So incredibly terrified that I I was sincerely considering just leaving and just not saying anything. I was just going to leave.

[00:28:52] That's how scared I was. But for some reason, I was able to push through that. I got through it. I remember getting up on stage and getting that first laugh. Right. And then I was more at ease. I felt more comfortable. I was remembering my jokes and then came, the second laugh and the third laugh.

[00:29:11] But that really was such a crucial point for me because I was faced with a decision and I wanted to give into my fear and leave. And had I left would I had never have gone back on stage again? This woman certainly wouldn't have ever booked me again and this woman did continue to book me. I was able to continue to build my resume, working and building my material and things through, her.

[00:29:32] But it was that one minute of decision where I could've caved to my fear or I could have pushed past my fear and move forward. I had a similar experience like that first time I was going to do a public hypnosis show. What we did, it was a buddy of mine. We, we booked a local venue and he was going to promote it.

[00:29:51] We rented it out for the night and man, I was terrified. It was one thing to be on stage for me when it was all me for, 45 minutes or an hour or whatever the case may be. But I'm doing something really that I've never done before. I'm going to bring up audience members and I have to hypnotize them.

[00:30:06] They have to get hypnotized and I have to be on point and this show's got to move along. And I remember, there was one point thinking, man, do we, maybe we don't have enough people. Maybe we should just cancel the show and maybe we shouldn't do it. But I was like, Nope, okay, we're going to do this.

[00:30:22] We're going to fly or we're going to crash and burn, but I'm going to do it.

[00:30:28] Greg Mills: Yeah.

[00:30:28] I applaud you for pushing through that first comedy gig. I think I probably would have had a heart attack.

[00:30:36] John Moyer: Yeah. It's funny because, you talk to so many people now that, people had tell me they'd be terrified to be on stage or whatever the case. It comes natural for me. The thing where I probably get the most uncomfortable or nervous is when I have to go to a party with my wife and it's like, oh, I have to talk to somebody one-on-one.

[00:30:50] But you know, it goes back to what they say, you know, fear is false evidence appearing real, one of the things that I know now about the mind is man, the mind can amplify things. The mind can create a perspective and have us see through a prism that really is a false reality.

[00:31:07] We start feeding ourselves false ideas and we're just going to build on it, build on and build it. One of the things about hypnosis is when you experience hypnosis ,the mind can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not under hypnosis. It's like when you have a dream no matter how bizarre the dream seems, no matter how bizarre the dream is, in the dream, you're accepting that as reality.

[00:31:29] So you go through a similar situation when you experience hypnosis. If the mind is believing that something is real, then the mind is going to pick up and run with that idea and act upon that idea as if it is something that's real. So, when we tell ourselves something, even if it's negative self-talk or whatever it is that we might try to discourage ourself or look at all the reasons why we shouldn't do something if the mind believes that's the case, if the mind believe that's real, then the mind is going to pick it up and roll with it and that's going to be our outcome.

[00:32:00] Greg Mills: Okay. So what do you think is going on in the mind of somebody that's being hypnotized?

[00:32:06] Is there a formal process ?

[00:32:08] John Moyer: Yeah, there is a formal process. Basically what you're doing is you're quieting the conscious mind. Typically throughout most of the day, when we're conscious, like right now, we're in, what's called a beta brainwave state. That's our active, conscious moving brainwave state throughout the day.

[00:32:22] When you dip down into hypnosis, what you're doing is you're lowering the brainwave state. You're slowing the brainwave states down from a beta down into an alpha, and then down into a theta brainwave state and the alpha and the theta brainwave state. Or it's kind of when we're in that dreamlike state, it's when we're in a hypnotic state and there's multiple things that are happening there.

[00:32:41] One of the things is you want to be able to get the brainwave down into that. You want to distract the conscious mind from, paying attention to everything all the time. So you can get into the subconscious mind. And the analogy that I use is what happens between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

[00:32:57] There's a thing called the critical faculty. It's kind of like a firewall that guards, the subconscious mind. And I like it at unto the bouncer at the club with a velvet rope who determines who gets in and who doesn't get in.

[00:33:11] Greg Mills: I used to hate that guy.

[00:33:12] John Moyer: Yeah, exactly. So what happens is when you're presenting an idea, the conscious mind is going to kind of analyze it and that critical faculty is going to go, no, I don't think the subconscious mind is going to like that idea.

[00:33:24] We're very programmed. We don't like change. We don't want anything to be different. We're not making that happen. So what you do with hypnosis is you're essentially distracting the bouncer with a red velvet rope. So it's not paying attention. And then you get into the subconscious mind. Once you get into that subconscious mind, you can tell the subconscious mind, whatever the situation is or whatever the case is.

[00:33:47] And then the subconscious mind is going to start to just act upon that. So that's, what's going on in, in hypnosis. So people they're quieting their conscious mind, their brainwave states are lowering down. Another interesting thing that does happen in hypnosis is that there's a part of the brain that regulates self-awareness and that actually quiets down under hypnosis.

[00:34:07] So you've got this part of the brain that normally is self-conscious if you will, for lack of a better term or self-aware. Well, that gets dialed down. So when people get on stage and then our hypnotic state, they feel uninhibited. So now they feel more comfortable doing something in front of a group of people or participating in, in an experience like that.

[00:34:27] So, for all the things that I do on stage with people, when you use that with somebody in a one-on-one session, or just for, hypnosis, you're getting into the subconscious mind and you're allowing those changes to be able to take place for people.

[00:34:41] Greg Mills: Would you say almost anyone can be hypnotized or is there specific people that are more apt?

[00:34:47] John Moyer: Well, the reality of it is, that we all experience hypnosis every single day. It's a built in part of the way that our brain operates. Like with my kids, they're staring at their phone screen, they have no idea what's going on outside of them, around them, or somebody is watching a movie, you're reading a book.

[00:35:03] They are so engrossed in that they pay so much attention to they're so focused on that. that's actually a form of hypnosis. The other analogy is, how many times have you driven home and you get in the car and it's like you just kinda zone out. Right? And then all of a sudden, a few minutes later you're home and you don't even remember that drive.

[00:35:20] That's a form of hypnosis. So that's, what's going on there. We actually pass through hypnosis every single night when we go. So we all have that ability. Now it varies in different degrees because, when you're getting somebody to come up on stage, that might be a very different environment for them.

[00:35:39] And they might put up some more roadblocks or some more caution signs for themselves on stage versus just being at home and maybe, listening to a program. One of the interesting things about hypnosis, people tend to think that, the lower somebody's IQ is the the easier it is for them to be susceptible to hypnosis.

[00:36:00] The reality of it is anyone with an average to above average IQ can tap into hypnosis. So it's kind of funny, , guys will come up to me and go, oh yeah, I can't be hypnotized. I'm like, well, thank you for admitting that you have a low IQ.

[00:36:14] I appreciate your honesty. So everybody does have the ability to do it, and I never thought that I could ever be hypnotized until it actually happened to me. It's kind of a practice process, you know, as you start to begin the experience and you start to kind of practice at it, your mind develops that ability to be able to just get there.

[00:36:32] So for me, when I meditate every day, or if I'm doing a self hypnosis session, my body knows is that, as soon as an in that position, I do a lot of meditating in the Lotus position. So my body knows as soon as I'm sitting down and my legs are crossed and my thumbs are touching my index finger and the resting down on my knees.

[00:36:50] That's, a condition thing for me, my buddy. Then the mind goes, all right, now we're there. So it could be something that people can build up to and be able to practice that and become very proficient at it.

[00:37:01] Greg Mills: Okay. Yeah. I can see the inner faculty that you referred to being very suspicious of being called on stage and being given suggestions.

[00:37:12] John Moyer: yeah. There are some exceptions to that rule, but one of the things that I would tell people when I was doing my stage show, is that, we're looking for people that come up here that have a genuine willingness to participate. If you want to come up here to prove a point that you can't be hypnotized, you're going to win.

[00:37:27] That's not going to be the case. So leave the seat open and available for somebody that does want to come up. Now sometimes there's some exceptions to that rule. I remember one in particular, I was performing for a county sheriffs Christmas party. And, we got 200 cops in this venue.

[00:37:47] When I called for people to come up on stage, inevitably, especially when you're doing a venue where everybody knows each other. You're going to get people going, Bob, you need to go up there, come on, Bob!

[00:37:57] Bob, you need to go up there. And so everybody was kind of pushing this one woman. She was the head of their county jail. Okay.

[00:38:05] So here's a cop who was a head of the county jail. She was kind of a tough woman, so she's like, Okay. I'm going to go up there. So she comes. And, and it was interesting cause I, I did have a little bit of a challenge trying to get some people that happens every once in a while.

[00:38:23] I've never had people not volunteer. But sometimes it can be a little harder getting some people up just given the situation or the setting than others. So I was willing to take anybody that was going to come up from this group. So I had this county jailer come up with this attitude, like, this is ridiculous.

[00:38:38] This is BS and this is not going to work on me. She sits down in the chair, the show begins. And an hour later she opened her eyes and had absolutely no idea what just transpired over the last hour. And all of her colleagues they're showing her the video they all recorded on the phone.

[00:38:56] And this woman was completely dumbfounded. She had no recollection and she saw herself on stage. She was dancing or singing or participating -all these fun, active things that I do on stage. And I had all these cops coming up to me going, man. Now we know this is real. This is totally legitimate because there was no way that she would ever have done that.

[00:39:16] We've never seen her like that. And of course, obviously the woman was like, holy cow, I don't remember any of this. I go, well, how do you feel now when she goes, I feel great. I've got energy. I I'm, in a really good mood, which Has all the benefits, cause there's a lot of physical benefits from hypnosis.

[00:39:33] So that was kind of an example of somebody who was in resistance. Not somebody I normally would have brought up on stage or allowed on stage, but given that circumstance, it was a little bit difficult to get volunteers. I let her come up on stage and she wound up becoming the star of the show.

[00:39:46] Greg Mills: Okay. Has there ever been someone that you brought up or that you hypnotized in a group setting, that it just did not go like you had planned at all?

[00:39:57] John Moyer: One of the things that I learned early on when calling for volunteers on stage is to never judge anybody.

[00:40:05] I got a 25 year old kid on stage. I've got an 18 year old kid. They're going to be fantastic. Oh, I've got a. 70 year old person on stage.

[00:40:12] They're probably not going to be any good. I had an experience one time when I was starting early on, I was booked to do, I think it was a Fraternal Order Of The Eagles Lodge, right? So I go into this, there's probably 300 people in their venue and not one of them was under the age of 65.

[00:40:32] They were an older group and they were a rowdy group. They were pounding back the booze hard. So I was like, oh man, this is going to be a nightmare. But then I kind of remember going back to, the things that I'm learning in my train, don't judge an audience, don't judge volunteers.

[00:40:49] Man. They were an incredible group of volunteers. In fact, I have one guy on the stage, a guy in his seventies who actually didn't volunteer, but he went out as I call it. He went out in the audience, he hypnotized in the audience. I brought him upstage. So an hour later here's a guy that was sitting on his table with his wife.

[00:41:09] The next thing he knows, he opens up his eyes and he's on stage and has no idea what happened. So I have always learned to never judge, because when you go, oh, this person's going to be great. And then, maybe they don't go under, maybe they're not a great participant on stage because you can have people that'll be hypnotized, but for whatever reason, they just don't really stand out in the show.

[00:41:27] So we'll, I've never had any quote unquote disasters or anything like that. There have been people that come up that you think they're going to be great. You dismiss them from the show. There's other people that you come up and you think they're not going to be any good and they turn out to be the stars of the show.

[00:41:41] Greg Mills: Okay. What's the best way for people to check you out and get in touch with

[00:41:46] John Moyer: They can check me out on my website, John moyer.com. I'm on Twitter at John Moyer. And, of course on YouTube, just look me up, John Moyer Hypnosis. You. can find me right there on YouTube

[00:41:58] Greg Mills: Okay. That's a wrap. Thank you, John Moyer for being a guest on entrepreneurs over 40.

[00:42:03] John Moyer: Greg. I appreciate it very much.