Eight Sessions. Twelve Weeks. Measured At Both Ends.

Your judgement, back where it was.

There was a point where you knew everything that was going on, because most of it went through your hands anyway. Then it grew, and you started handing things over, and some of it came back wrong or late or done in a way you would not have done it. So you put something in place to stop that happening again, and it half works, because a system built to catch what you would have caught is still your judgement written down.

Which means you check. Not everything and not obviously, but enough that people bring things to you before they commit to anything. So every decision comes back through one person again, and you are doing your own job and quietly supervising most of theirs.

That is where it starts costing you. You are not sleeping properly, because there is no point in the day where none of it is your problem. And the next person who brings you something on top of what you are already carrying gets a shorter answer than they deserved, and you know it before they have shut the door.

If any of that sounds like you, this is what it is for. Any decent adviser will tell you the same thing, that a business built around one person is worth less than one that runs without them. Whether you are selling in three years or twenty, the work is the same work, and it starts with the fact that everything still comes through you.

Why it is a programme rather than a handful of sessions is set out on the Executives and Owners page, along with what is actually going on and why advice on its own has not shifted it.

Executives and Owners

The first session is mostly me asking and you talking. There is no form to fill in and nothing to work through at a desk, because I want what you actually say rather than what you would write down if you had an afternoon to think about it. I do the writing.

What I am after is where the pressure is coming from, and I go at that from six directions. What is being asked of you. How much say you have in any of it. Who, if anyone, you can lean on. The relationships around you. Whether your own role is clear, which it very often is not once a business has grown. And how much has changed lately.

The reason for going at it that way is that pressure sitting in the job and pressure sitting in you want different work, and most people cannot tell which one they have got. They know it is heavy. They do not know where the weight is.

Then the decisions. Three you are avoiding, or that you have gone round for the fourth time and still not landed. I write those down in your words while you are saying them, because the version you give me in twelve weeks will have quietly changed shape and I want the one you started with.

Then sleep. Almost nobody comes to me about sleep. They come about the temper, or the decisions, or the fact that all of it is taking more out of them than it used to. Then we get to the sleep, and it turns out that went first, a good while back, and everything since has been running on top of it. Not every time, but often enough that I always ask.

After that, every session takes a number out of ten on whatever brought you, and at the end you get those drawn out as a graph.

One thing about the graph. It will not climb in a straight line and I would not expect it to, because it is measuring you in the middle of a life that carries on whether we are working on it or not. A bad fortnight will pull it down no matter what we did in the room.

I had a client who sat at six and a half for the whole twelve weeks, and all the way through he was telling me what people around him had started saying to him about the very thing we were working on, which had plainly changed. His number was about his week. What had shifted was somewhere he was not looking.

So I do not go on that number on its own. What tells you is what you are doing differently, what other people have started saying, and those three things put side by side at the beginning and at the end.

At session eight you get all of it back, in your own words from twelve weeks before, next to where you are now. What has moved, what has not, and what is most likely to come back first. You will not have to take my word for whether it was worth doing.

Every one of them runs the same way, and there is a reason for the order.

We start with what actually happened. Between sessions you keep a record, and it is the part of this that does the work when I am not there. Not a diary, and not homework for the sake of giving you something to do. What you set out to do, what you thought would come of it, what you actually did, and what happened.

Two minutes a week is enough, and if you do it in the car park before you drive home, that is fine. The point is that it is written at the time. Twelve weeks of that is the difference between us working on what happened and us working on what you remember of it, and those two are never the same.

We open it and read it as you wrote it at the time, rather than as you would tell me on the way in. If you said you would go and see three customers and saw none, that is not something to apologise for. It is the most useful thing in the whole fortnight and it is what we spend the session on.

Then we work out what was actually in the way, which is hardly ever what you assumed. You did not make those calls because going in front of that particular client means being judged by somebody whose opinion you rate, and that goes back years and has nothing whatever to do with sales.

Then the hypnotherapy. Every session, about an hour of it, and that is where the work is really done. You cannot advise your way out of a response that fires before you have had chance to think. This gets at it.

Then we set what happens next, written down by you, in your words, before you leave, along with what you think will come of it. Anything you work out in that room and do not write down has gone by Friday.

One thing about all of that. What I am doing is putting tools in your hands and showing you how to use them, and what you do with them between one session and the next is yours. If you have not done what you said you would, I am not going to be disappointed in you and I am not going to make you feel small about it, because that helps nobody and it is not what you are paying me for.

The only question I would ask, and I would ask it plainly, is why you started this if you did not want anything to change. That is a real question rather than a telling off. Sometimes the answer is that somebody else wanted you here, or that the timing is wrong, and either of those is worth knowing early rather than in week nine.

Weekly for the first four, fortnightly for the next three, then four weeks before the last one. The gaps are deliberate. Change that only holds while somebody is watching is not change at all, and the only way to find out is to stop watching.

Everything you put into the record is yours as a document you own. The live version closes when the work does, because the tool is part of the work rather than something you rent from me, but nothing you wrote is taken off you.

The one-page plan from session seven, in your words rather than mine.

A written summary at the end comparing where you started with where you finished.

And the thing from session six, which is really the point of all of it. Nothing here is done to you. What you get is something you can use on your own, practised enough times that you can do it next year without me in the room.

If you are looking for guarantees, this is not for you. Nobody can give you them for this sort of work, and anybody who says otherwise is telling you what you want to hear.

Think of somebody teaching you to drive. They know what they are doing, the method works, and a great many people have come out the other side of it able to drive. What they cannot do is drive for you, and no amount of instruction makes any difference if you never take the car out.

That is this. I bring over twenty years of running a business, the clinical training, and eight sessions built around what is actually going on with you rather than something off a shelf. You bring the willingness to use it between one session and the next. Do that and the business gains you back. Do not, and nothing much changes, and I would rather say that now than take your money and let you find out in week nine.

This is not open-ended therapy. Twelve weeks and then it stops, which is deliberate. If something else would be more use to you afterwards, whether that is a piece of work on the pressure across your whole workforce or getting the way the business runs written down properly, that is a separate conversation on a separate day.

And if you tell me there is something medical going on, I will say plainly whether I think it wants a word with your GP first. That is you deciding what to do with your own health, not me deciding for you.

This runs in person, and there is a reason for that beyond preference.

A great deal of what I need never comes up in what you tell me. The place itself, the people in it, who knocks and who waits, and what the week actually looks like while you are in the middle of it rather than describing it to me afterwards. You cannot see any of that down a screen.

I have rooms in Mayfair and in Plympton, and I will come to you.

If you would rather run some of it online, that is available and plenty of people do. Travel within ninety minutes of Plymouth is included. All other areas will incur costs, which will be communicated before you commit to anything.

That is the question I would ask you on the phone, and the answer usually tells us which of these it is.

The Protocol is the main piece of work and it is the one that goes deepest, but it is not the only way in and it is not always the right place to start.

If it is something specific with an end date on it, an acquisition, a restructure, a first year in a new post, or a trading period the whole year rests on, then a retainer suits that better. Two or three sessions a month for as long as it lasts and no longer, from £1,500 a month. The Retainer

If there is one thing you want to get at properly and you do not want a programme around it, a full day, one to one, will do more than people expect. £2,500.

And if you just want to think something through out loud with somebody who has run a business, that is ninety minutes and £300, and it obliges you to nothing at all.

If you are not sure which of those it is, ring me and we will work it out on the phone. That is what the first conversation is for, and it will cost you nothing more than your time.

£4,500

That buys sixteen hours in the room over twelve weeks, and everything around them.

Before every session I read what you have written since the last one and build that session around what is in it, so you are not getting something I could have delivered to anybody. I write the summary at the end. And for those twelve weeks yours is one of a small number of cases I am actually thinking about, so when something occurs to me on a Sunday it is there in the file for the next time we meet.

Payment is up front, before any work is done. I do it that way because I want you thinking about what we are working on, not about whether accounts have paid me and whether that is going to make the next session awkward.

It is quoted as a whole rather than by the hour, so the work never gets shaped by what it is costing.

See all fees

Why twelve weeks rather than as long as it takes?

Because as long as it takes has a way of becoming forever, and open-ended work suits the practitioner more than the client. Twelve weeks is long enough for something to actually shift and short enough that both of us have to be straight about whether it is. At session eight it ends, and if more work makes sense that is a separate conversation on a separate day.

Why is it payable up front?

So that you are thinking about the work rather than about whether accounts have paid me. I have no interest in chasing an invoice halfway through something like this.

What happens if I have to cancel a session?

We move it. Twenty-four hours’ notice and there is no charge, and if something has genuinely gone wrong in your week, tell me and we will sort it out. The programme runs over twelve weeks with deliberate gaps, so there is room in it.

What if I do not do what I said I would between sessions?

Then that is the session. The gap between what you said you would do and what you actually did is the most useful thing in the whole fortnight, and it is where the work is. I am not going to be disappointed in you about it.

Is the hypnotherapy every session?

Yes, about an hour of every two-hour session, including the first one. You do not go under, you do not lose control, and you will remember all of it.

Can I do it online?

Some of it, and plenty of people do. It runs in person by default because a good deal of what I need is in the place rather than in what you tell me. If travel is the obstacle, say so on the first call and we will work out what is practical.

What do I actually come away with?

Your record as a document you own, a one-page plan in your own words, a written summary comparing where you started with where you finished, and a response you have practised enough times to use without me in the room. That last one is the point of the whole thing.

The first conversation is forty-five minutes on the phone. It will cost you nothing more than your time, and it could be the best investment you make this year. If it is not right for you, I will say so and tell you what would be.