In conversation with Aaron Calvert. Aaron trained to be a Doctor but had already been practicing magic since the age of 8, and then quickly moved on to hypnosis.
He has a successful stage show and production company and has also worked with Channel 4. He is currently focused on helping as many employees and business owners as possible through the stresses and anxiety of the pandemic with his company prescriptionhypnosis.com
If you would like to get in touch with Aaron then visit his website https://www.prescriptionhypnosis.com/ for details of his latest seven day video series and https://www.aaroncalvert.com/ for further details of his stage show which will be back as soon as the pandemic allows.
In conversation with Aaron Calvert. Aaron trained to be a Doctor but had already been practicing magic since the age of 8, and then quickly moved on to hypnosis.
He has a successful stage show and production company and has also worked with Channel 4. He is currently focused on helping as many employees and business owners as possible through the stresses and anxiety of the pandemic with his company prescriptionhypnosis.com
If you would like to get in touch with Aaron then visit his website https://www.prescriptionhypnosis.com/ for details of his latest seven day video series and https://www.aaroncalvert.com/ for further details of his stage show which will be back as soon as the pandemic allows.
Hello and welcome to the action coach Bolton business extra podcast. I'm absolutely delighted to be joined today by Mr. Aaron Calvert. Aaron is not only a doctor, he's a hypnotist, a mind reader, and the owner of a production company and all around good guy. I've seen you on stage Aaron. So welcome today. It's great to have you with us. Thanks for having me on and what a welcome Aaron. It's great to have you. This is all about business in the northwest area where we're inviting a range of different business owners onto the programme. As I said before, I've seen you live on stage I will Lancashire there quite recently. You were absolutely phenomenal. loved watching you there. I'm sure all of our listeners will be really interested to know how does somebody get into being a stage hypnotist? Well,
Aaron Calvert :yeah, that is the kind of billion dollar question. I guess for me It started when I was quite sort of younger was originally into magic. That's where it all started for me. Look The whole element of being on stage of bringing people this amazing experience that you couldn't get anywhere else. And so it started with magic around about eight and around about 1112 I fell out of love with it. Just because I think the secrets behind it were always they always felt like a bit of a cheat. And so I felt let down by it and it's taken me a long time to realise that actually was the the secret that was there actually resulted in the end experience for someone else watching it. So although it wasn't the same for me, because I knew that secret, it was very much the same for the people I was performing it for. And that was the sort of the feeling and the experience I was bringing to them but that came much later in life when I was a little bit more educated. And but yeah, around about 1516 I found hypnosis, I sort of stage hypnotist and I realised that was much more kind of what I wanted to do. I'd always found magic a bit tricky because I didn't have particularly massive hands and so doing sleight of hand was quite tricky. So yeah, I definitely found hypnosis, the idea of being able to use your voice to be able to create this whole amazing experience both in the minds of participants and for the people out in the audience watching that, which is fascinating what you could do with your voice. And so I started to go down that kind of route of exploring mind reading and hypnosis is in the in the entertainment form at first. And of course, I think, you know, my parents were quite traditional. So that wasn't really a career choice. To me. They're like, Great, so what are you going to do? You know, being a magician or a performer, that that's not really a living that is just, you know, a hobby as a kid. So, I did the next best thing, which was medicine, obviously, and I was very academic in school, I was good with people and kind of if you were good at sciences, my school, which was around grammar in Manchester, you kind of went to do medicine or law and medicine strung out more to me. So that's what I went to do. I went to study medicine at the University of Nottingham. And whilst I was there, I decided to continue the pursuit of hypnosis and now I have an audience of 10,000 people that would want to come and see shows. So that's what I did. I started putting on shows for students.
Paul Limb :So what was it like the first time when you started learning hypnosis the first time that you realise that you'd actually hypnotise somebody and had some level of influence over?
Aaron Calvert :Yeah, so I would say it did feel like influence back that I think my view on it has definitely changed now, particularly if kind of with particularly the hypnotherapy work I do as opposed to the stage hypnosis, it's not so much influenced is a shared journey, and I'm sort of facilitating that kind of experience. But back then it definitely felt like this moment of influence. Like I was able to get these people to genuinely do anything I wanted. And I'll be absolutely honest, I've done a lot of work on it. And I tried and failed to hypnotise people a lot of times and generally that was friends and family, right? Yeah, go on then give it a go. And, you know, not really expected it to work in the first place, and It's actually in America in New York working on an arts camp. And some of the fellow counsellors, the family, fellow workers found out that I was into hypnosis. larkey do hypnosis like, yep, of course cam? Yeah, absolutely. Why? Why don't you put on a show? And I was like,
Paul Limb :yeah. Could you fake it till you make it?
Aaron Calvert :Yeah, that'd be brilliant. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I was like, yeah, you know what, either way, it's gonna be hilarious. It's gonna go completely wrong. And it'll be a funny story, or it'll go perfectly well, and it'll still be hilarious. So I got up on stage that night, to 35 people in the audience, and hypnotise five of them. And yeah, from that moment onwards, I just basically put into practice everything that I'd learned everything that I've researched everything I've been practising over that time into action and found that you know, it did work and, and proceeded to try and get more and more outrageous with the suggestions at that point, taking things from the audience, you know, and it was a real honour. eye opening moment for me because you could start with these really basic ones like, you know, you won't remember your name and you won't be able to count to six, and things like that. And very quickly, I was able to learn how to structure suggestions to produce much bigger effects. So, and, you know, I have people completely transforming from, you know, I had this six foot eight American football player, I had him believe that he was a woman, and they just found out he's pregnant. And yeah, his whole persona, his whole body language changed. He went from being very muscular and very strong as an individual to being quite, you know, he crossed his legs, he Katie sort of sat back very feminine. And, you know, when we got talking about his pregnancy, it was unexpected for him, apparently, so he burst into tears. You know, this is a giant man and suddenly have this genuine emotional impact on me, but that really highlighted the power to me. Yeah, that actually, you're not just sort of creating this whole scenario that is changing. Go altering someone's reality for that moment, it actually can have a massive impact on them. So at that point I kind of strayed away from things like that in the comedy sense where it was, you know, doing something for comedic value because it genuinely had an impact on people's lives. So was that the point where you decided that hypnotherapy was something that you could use to positive so that came a little later on that came actually partway through med school. So in my third year, I actually did hit clinical hypnotherapy. As part of my degree. It was an optional extra module that I took. And I was able to do basically study with a clinical hypnotherapist and pass exams to pass my sort of qualifications in that and then I started offering that out, but that was kind of like my third year. In my first couple of years though, from that sort of moment onwards, I started to transform how I performed hypnosis on stage. I didn't want to be that comedy, you know, classic hypnotist of, you know, our shake. Every time you shake my hand, you're going to have an orgasm, whatever that is, you know, that's just Just not my style, you know? And, but so instead what I want you to do is, is take this incredible skill and use it for something transformational, something powerful on stage. So, you know, I came along and taught people on stage how to read someone else's mind. So rather than me reading someone's mind on stage, it was all about them in that moment, how could they create this amazing moment for themselves and for the audience, and it always gets a bigger reaction in the show, the me really binds you know me really nice. That's great, all looks good. But when someone else does it, all of a sudden it elevates it and it becomes about the audience and I've had people on stage where I've taken away their fears and use that fear to instil a strength and have had them bend steel nails on stage with with with that strength. And so it became much more about empowering individuals as opposed to just embarrassing them on stage. And then obviously the hypnotherapy came in and very, although sort of stage hypnotist and clinical therapists are kind of very separate actually. Have the theory behind it is very similar. And so I kind of merge my my both both of my approaches from stage in clinical hypnotherapy to create hybrid I now do on stage and in clinical hypnotherapy as well. Now obviously, you're not bending nails in hypnotherapy, but that certainly the techniques we use to get to the state of concentration where that kind of effect is possible. It is the same.
Paul Limb :So you left University a little while ago with a degree as a doctor and as surgery as well. Is that right?
Aaron Calvert :Yeah, so it's a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor surgery. So that's the sort of classical degree. So we're actually not going to get two degrees while you're doing your medical degree. So I got biomedical science degree and my bachelor's in medicine, bachelor's and surgery, which is your kind of medicine degree, which you then go and work as a doctor, obviously. But But interestingly, my my dissertation I did to get my sort of second degree has been published quite a lot recently. It's all about infection prevention and control, which has become incredibly relevant. So yeah, I've seen And I've seen a resurgence of of that
Paul Limb :there's another alternative career for you, Aaron, if anything ever goes wrong
Aaron Calvert :Oh yeah, I couldn't think of anything worse than being stuck in a lab right now researching But
Paul Limb :no, I can imagine so was it an instant decision not to follow that traditional path into into hospital or general practice
Aaron Calvert :now this whole so you know, I graduated I began working and very quickly I was working two full time careers, the the entertainment side, particularly as rocketed because I set it up, I'd done a number of tours while I was at university, which which helped with the student budget and the student loan, pay off that that money very quickly vanished at university as it does with students. And but I created a business model where I was able to do events where I was able to tour a show. And so shuttle forward just got in touch as well and they'd started talking about project and so I suddenly had this moment where, you know, if I if I were working, and I had a gig at seven o'clock and I was until five, because a lot my cohort, you couldn't choose your days off, you can choose your time off, if you want to time off, you had to swap it with someone else, which meant that at some point they were going to recall that favour. And you know, it's really difficult, but it's all walked in at five o'clock with a heart attack. I couldn't be like, Oh, sorry, guys, I'm just gonna go and perform on stage. All right, God again, later, you know, just a bit, the two careers weren't compatible. So at that point, it was, what was it was 24 at that point, and 25. Yeah, roughly about that. 2425. And I was like, Well, I'm young enough now, to go and pursue this entertainment side of things to pursue this whole idea of TV, theatre, touring all of that. And if I want to, and all of that kind of doesn't work out, I can come back to medicine at this point. And I'm still young enough to have a good long life career in medicine as well. So it was kind of the perfect time for me to kind of step back when I had opportunities on the table and continue in escalate the sort of entertainment side as well. And that, you know, it's grown exponentially over the past five years. And you started a production company. Yes. So I actually worked with kind of my business partner at the time. Sam Fitton, who's a magician, and we used to write shows together, we produce the shows. And so when we started in the world of TV and talking to people, you needed to have a production company in order to be able to sort of get the conversations you kind of wanted to have, that we needed somewhere that could produce and hold the funds for theatre shows and TV and all of that jazz. So yeah, we created a production company. And yeah, with that, we ended up producing the Walter wall, which was part of Warner Brothers the channel for show. Sound was actually one of the writers and co co sort of contributors on that and I was there sort of talent and then the other co writer for it as well. So that was a programme where we kind of took a couple who were in a bit of a rut needed things shaken up, and I raised their memories of one another. And then we sent them on three dates to we've completely random strangers each and then one with each other. And the idea was that at the end of the show, they would choose who they'd like to go on a second date with, which sounds a bit mental.
Paul Limb :He could be a bit tricky, that could depend on the
Aaron Calvert :conversation about what would happen, you know, we had to have a show psychologist in and a council that was ready to give them all the support they needed, depending on what kind of option they chose, but the whole idea of it was it wasn't ever to break them up. And it wasn't ever to like poke holes in their relationship. You know, it was genuinely designed to give them the experience of a first date all over again, you know, that was the whole original contract. You want it to help them recapture that magic. But obviously with TV, you need a bit of jeopardy. So throw into other dates, but you also want to give them something to compare to, you know, you don't want to just send these two people back on a date. You know, it will be Pretty boring just listen to him talk about where are you from? And what do you like to eat? You know, that'd be pretty boring. So we want to try and throw a little bit of something else into to give them something to compare it to.
Paul Limb :And did anybody choose the wrong person? Ah so
Aaron Calvert :so it was only it was a one off special. So yeah, you can still go watch out for od. It's called Hello stranger. And they chose each other. And I think you'll actually hear that we can't hear their final programme but certainly in the Edit I watching here the cameraman go off, thankfully. I'm really sorry if you have to be out. That's That's exactly what I could hear behind my head. But no, that was great. But actually, when we were we had to film a proof of concept. I don't know if you know much about TV. But just in a nutshell, you basically go to a channel with an idea, the channel want to know that it's going to work particularly something like hypnosis where they probably don't have any past experience of it. So we had to prove that we got a couple lovely couple and it was a slightly different format back then. But we had that three day And yeah, at the end of it, it was like they were married, and which added another line of Jeopardy to it. So yeah, we said to him, you know, who would you like to go on and he picked his wife straight off. And we said to her, and she was stuck between a husband, which he didn't know was a husband, and another guy. And it took her a good three or four minutes. And at this point, it was super early on in the kind of process are we had no conversations about what we would do if they didn't choose each other? So? Yeah, it was definitely a terrifying moment. But luckily, they chose each other. And in that version, they actually watched the dates back together. It was paid style. Oh, but yeah, that never made it to the final format. But that's TV for you.
Paul Limb :Sounds perfect for channel. Oh, yeah. Perfect for Channel Four. So let's hope the recommission it again in the listen. Right, right. Yeah, right now, Aaron. It's not the best time for live entertainment, not obvious reasons. And I know you've got other sides to your business with prescription In hypnosis, so can you talk a little bit about how you've pivoted away from doing live entertainment and what you're doing instead now?
Aaron Calvert :Yes. So I mean, I've been doing hypnotherapy since you know, I basically qualified with it in medical school. And that has always been there at the sort of backburner, but the entertainment has definitely taken priority just because that's been quite busy. The the prescription hypnosis has always kind of, it's not been, it's never been left behind. I always have between one and two clients a week, which is enough because of what I was doing elsewhere. But that has generally over the years continue to increase. Obviously, as I've got more exposure with the TV stuff and some of the national campaigns that I've done, those inquiries have gradually crept up and I'd now say on sort of a pre COVID-19 sort of business model that was kind of 5050 you know, I was seeing 50% of my business from the hypnotherapy and 50 from the entertainment side, which was a nice balance, obviously with the COVID-19 50% My business collapsed overnight, actually, while I was on honeymoon. And so
Paul Limb :yeah, that was that was a thrilling that Congratulations. Thank
Aaron Calvert :you. Yeah, we were really lucky. You know, I'm so happy that I've managed to get my wedding in, and I got part of the honeymoon. And we did cut it short. But, you know, very happy that we managed to do that. I know a lot of the couples I've got booked in for weddings this year, I've had to postpone and push back and my heart goes out to them, because I know how gutted, I would have felt if my wife and I would have had to do that as well. And but yeah, so overnight, kind of 50% of my business collapsed. And so I turned to the prescription hypnosis because that is something that can still continue to run sort of during this time. So there's a couple of sides of that. So there's the obvious side, which is the hypnotherapy. So that is people who are looking to lose weight or stop smoking, to deal with stress and anxiety and fear of flying. Probably not as relevant right this minute, but we'll be in the future when everything kind of resumes. So there are things that people Want to obviously change and adapt in their life. And that is kind of the direct sort of front of prescription hypnosis, as it were, there are other sides to it as well. So I've just released seven days to help you beat stress, which is a series of videos for seven days, designed to help you beat the stress of lockdown. So covering what stresses, seven tips to relax, we've got all about anxiety and more importantly irrelevant to this one how to minimise your stress whilst working from home as well. So those those are all on the website, prescription hypnosis, comm forward slash stress, you can check out those seven days to help you basically be stressed and that's, you know, I come from a very sort of an NHS belief that sort of help and support and healthcare should be free and you should be entitled to that. And so I wanted to try and do my bit at this time when everyone's kind of feeling it to put out some good quality content that's easily accessible to help people kind of de stress in The things that are causing them trouble right now. So yeah, so I put server goes those videos and and that's part of a sort of bigger plan that will kind of roll out. And then the other side of it is the business side. So I can solve a lot for mental health and anxiety within the Office looking at generally how you can streamline your business to help support your staff. And I think that's something that's becoming so much more increasingly important within this day and age. And there are many reasons for that we can go into them if you like. But I you know, I've definitely seen a surge in anxiety, particularly and anxiety is one of those words that lots of people throw around. But you know, we all have this little definition in our head as to what that is, but it affects more of us than we can ever realise. The difference is what it starts to affect in our everyday life as a and how we deal with it as opposed to just kind of be in a panic attack, which is what many people associate with anxiety in general
Paul Limb :at the moment with the pandemic. The worrying anxiety levels and stress levels are up everywhere. Absolutely in the general public. But being in business, even at the best of times as a business owner, being in business can be very challenging. Yeah, as a business owner, it's quite a lonely place because you've got nobody else to hold you accountable. And quite often, you've got members of staff that you're accountable for you absolutely got enough money to pay their salary and your own family, of course. So I can imagine that, you know, anxiety levels and stress levels amongst the business community and business owners in particular, are a lot higher at the moment. One of the things that we've done as a business is we have a partnership with a counsellor and therapist and all of our client was get the opportunity to go and see her or make an appointment to see them for an initial consultation free of charge. Yeah. To see if it's something that they they would find useful and we've had a number of people No, take all that offer. So it's really interesting to hear about what you're doing with prescription hypnosis. for business owners and people in business,
Aaron Calvert :yeah, and I think it's something that, you know, classically, you know, you go back to, you know, 90s 2000, even, and even the early 2010 people, it wasn't it was on the radar. But it was never something that business owners really took seriously. You know, it was something as a population that we are still incredibly bad at talking about, and being open about. And for business owners, particularly, particularly, if you're running a small company, you know, I'm not big companies, there are totally different stresses, you know, there are stresses there, but you've normally got a team around you to support you. But it comes a lot with the kind of big decisions that you're making. That's where a lot of the anxiety comes from. When you're talking about sort of small to medium sized businesses, you do get a lot of added pressure, because you're getting the pressure of feeling the impact that your decisions have directly on your employees, which is something in a large company, you don't tend to think about you think about the company as a whole. Whereas when you are working in a team of 10 or you are working in a team of 30 the decisions that you make that factual profit for the year affects the employees as well. And it can be incredibly tough. So having something like yourself where you're offering out these opportunities to speak to a counsellor and speak to someone in the know that can help you understand and process those feelings and process your stresses your anxieties is absolutely crucial. And that's at one level, you know, you've got small business owners where they're feeling the pressure, the feeling the stress. And one way I described stress and anxiety, stress and anxiety are very much linked. If you're stressed, your levels of anxiety are higher. So if you can bring down your stress, you'll help to bring down your anxiety as well. And if you think about kind of your energy as a battery, as you get stressed that stress starts to drain your battery and this happens daily and it's not just through things that you'd expect for stress. So it isn't just work and it isn't just, you know the big decisions you have to make the stress of your everything you do during the day stresses you out eating causes stress to your body because it has to process that food it eats up some of that energy, exercising hot showers, they all cause stress to the body that generally eat away that batteries. Obviously though, Things don't cause as much of a drain, as you know, a critical business decision that will drain you massively. And each day you need to be able to recharge that battery. And that's something we're not particularly good at, particularly now when we've got phones around, we've got all of these distractions, we take our emails home with us, particularly as a small business owner, you never ever switch off because there's a fear that you're going to miss out on something or there's a fear that you're going to miss an important email, you know, this, this sort of onus that you want to reply immediately in this kind of, sort of world where everything is on demand, you know, if you can order anything now on Amazon, it arrives that day or the next day. So there is that pressure. And, and so it's more important now that we do take time out of an evening, overnight time and during the day to actually help recharge that battery. So we're functioning at 100%. And not just kind of oscillating around the 30% mark, where, you know, we feel like we're on top of our stress, but actually we could actually get a lot more out of ourselves if we were functioning a lot higher. So part of With business owners is is about that is about sort of helping them deal with their stress and their anxiety and how to process and taking out time to relax. And then the other side of it is looking after the staff in general teaching them and teaching the workplace how to adapt to help, conversations with mental health to help the work team that the workforce de stress to deal with their emotions and their anxieties. And I think, you know, pre COVID-19 that was a that was a big point. Because, you know, if you look at kind of a happy workplace versus productivity, if you were in a happy workplace, your productivity increases. So I think there was a study and on average, it was three times more revenue, if your workplace was happy, but less than 40% of workplaces, their workforce say that they are overall happy with their work. You know, for many of us, it is the biggest cause of stress in our life. You know, this is pre COVID-19 right now, that's even more so. I think the business is going forwards in the future. Now one of the consulting that I'm doing at the moment. It's like looking at what's going to be happening in the coming months in the return to work that's the important part. How are you going to tackle your team? Your workforces, anxieties, for that return to work? How are you supporting now to help when inevitably we have to step back into that office?
Paul Limb :Yeah, that's really important. You know, a certain amount of pressure can be a good thing you know, pressure quite often helps people to perform better Absolutely. Somebody want somebody wants said you know, that you've you've made a good decision when it fills you with either fear or excitement. And, you know, so we know that a certain amount of perturbation can can help people to push through a move forwards. You mentioned that word fear earlier and, and fear for Rosie is one of the things that holds a lot of business owners back from doing things in business, you know, yeah, fear for rules always stands for false expectations appearing real. It's, you know, fear is just your minds way of saying be aware, be cautious, be aware. It's not telling you not to do something but quite often it's stopped People from doing thing. Yeah. So being able to work through that with the services that you provide is is fantastic.
Aaron Calvert :Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, you did touch on something that is absolutely true stress is natural body responses designed to help get you ready for action is designed to help you get you ready to make the decisions you need to make to stand up and deliver a talk to play that perfect sports game. It is a natural way to get our bodies and our brains ready to perform whatever that is ready to make those decisions. But when you get to a level of chronic stress, where that stress never quite goes away, you never get back on top of it. And it's there in the background chronically for a long period of time. That's when we start to see problems. You know, it's not just sort of problems with increased anxiety and problems with mental health and mood and depression. You know, you can start you increase your risk of having a heart attack of having a stroke, your brain actually shrinks. Your ability to learn and retain information decreases as well. You know, chronic stress actually has a physiological impact on your body as well as a mental one.
Paul Limb :What's the website that people need to look out.
Aaron Calvert :Yes. So entertainment wise is Aaron Calvert calm that hosts all the corporate events stuff that I do all the training that I do on body language that's helping you form relationships and looking at how you can master your own body language and read and interpret other people's. That's Aaron Calvin calm. The prescription hypnosis website is prescription hypnosis calm that is looking at the mental health so it's the hypnotherapy side but also looking at supporting your workforce dealing with stress and anxiety. And of course, you can catch the seven days of free videos to help you beat stress in lockdown and prescription hypnosis comm forward slash beat four
Paul Limb :dash stress, brilliant, we'll make sure that all that goes into the description beneath the podcast as well. So if you're listening to this and you want to get those details, just have a look at the description. There'll be links there for you to click on. So what's next for you? Aaron? You know, we've talked about what other business owners are doing to prepare for the next stage and exit in lockdown and get their employees back to work. What's next for Aaron Calvert,
Aaron Calvert :what's next? For me? That is a good question at the moment. I mean, I've got a board. That's right on the right hand side, I mean, it's full of a to do list. And I currently work my way through. But my biggest focus right now is supporting that workforce on the return to work. So I'm just in the process of creating some content for business owners to watch, but also to distribute out to their employees to help them with that sort of transition back to work, to help beat those anxieties and also, how you sort of deal with, you know, genuine concerns of the workforce not wanting to come back to the office through fear, obviously, of an infection. And the practical side, obviously, I mentioned my kind of infection control background, I'm looking at how to prepare the office for that as well. So that's a big chunk of my time that's taken up at the moment. And and then going on from that, and, you know, I'm excited, ready and waiting for the entertainment industry to sort of bounce back and I can get back on stage and do my thing there as well. But right now, I'm I'm just creating a lot of content that is free for people to access because I think right now as a population, we all kind of need to come together to make the best of what's to come. Absolutely.
Paul Limb :Well, I'm really looking forward to seeing you on stage. Again, Aaron, it was absolutely superb last time. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time today. It's been it's been really interesting speaking to you. Just again, that's Aaron calvert.com and prescription hypnosis calm if you want to have a look at Aaron's websites. Aaron, thank you very much for your time. Good luck. Thanks for having me on. You know, you're more than welcome. We look forward to speaking to you again in the near future. Take care. Great. Speak to you soon. Take care. Thank you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai