#awinewith Heather Hansen
MEET Heather, Founder of Advocate To Win
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:05):
Heather, welcome to Spark tv. I'm so excited to have you here.
Heather Hansen (00:08):
I'm so excited to chat with you, Danielle. I love our chats.
Danielle Lewis (00:12):
I love our chats too. And you know why I'm especially excited because a lot of the guests that I have on Spark tv, it's the first time I'm talking to them, but we've talked so much. So we've done coaching. We've had our podcast interview on your amazing podcast, so I know a lot more about you than anyone else that I normally have on the show, and I have just loved our time together, so I'm so excited to ask you all the tough questions. Bring it on. Yes, yes. So good. So let's start out by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Heather Hansen (00:48):
So my name's Heather Hanson and I, what do I do? That's always a fraught question for me. I do so many things. I teach people how to build beliefs. So first, how to build their own beliefs in themselves, their value, their offers, their products, their services, their ideas. And then to build the beliefs of their clients, their customers, their investors, their teams, their patients, their students. And I do that in a myriad of ways. I've written some books. I have a membership. I do one-on-one coaching. I do keynoting all of this to teach people these skills so that they can go out and build beliefs on their own.
Danielle Lewis (01:25):
I love it. I think it's incredible because I feel like that is got to be. So I always tell everyone, sales is the number one skill you need as a business owner, but I think we can directly link sales to belief in every area.
Heather Hansen (01:42):
I think you can link everything to belief, right? No one buys unless they believe in the product or service. No one follows a leader unless they believe in that leader. A patient doesn't go into a doctor unless they believe that the doctor can do the surgery and treat them well. So I think that before you sell, before you lead, before you tend to someone else, you have got to first build your own belief and then build the other person's belief and then everything else just follows. One of my things I always say is nothing happens until someone believes. And so if you know how to build beliefs, you know how to make things happen.
Danielle Lewis (02:16):
This is so good. So let's dive straight in. Obviously our community is women in business, and as a woman in business, I think we have a little tough times believing in ourselves. Sometimes sales can be low. We talk about the economic crisis, women get less funding, all of these things. And then just getting out of bed in the morning, showing up for ourselves, showing up for our business. How does one actually start to foster some belief in oneself?
Heather Hansen (02:48):
So there's two tools that I want to talk about. My background is I used to be a trial attorney. I defended doctors in medical malpractice cases for 25 years. And so I have the conscious tools to build beliefs that is stories, evidence, and the energy of belief. And so we can talk about those, but then also I'm a hypnotist and there are subconscious tools that we use to build belief in hypnosis. But for the woman who's listening who gets up in the morning and is lacking in belief, let's start with the conscious. You have got to tell yourself a different story about what's going on in your world. So Danielle, you mentioned the economy is lousy and women only get a very small percentage of the funding. These are facts, yes, but that is not the story that we want to tell ourselves in order to build beliefs.
(03:39):
So
(03:39):
We tell ourselves a different story. You look around and say, women are getting more funding than ever. I know this woman who just got a big hunk of funding and this is how she got it. Whatever you have to do to shift the story into a story that you want to believe. So that's the story. And when I say stories, evidence and energy, it's the C technique. And then you collect and create evidence to support the new story. So you look for other women who have gotten funding, you go out and start to try to get funding, and you do all that you can to collect and create that evidence to support that belief. And in a day it might be something small, it might be on this day I asked someone to buy a product or for a favor or for something that I needed and I got it. And that shows that I can actually ask for things and get them. And that means I'm on my way to getting a big hunk of funding.
Danielle Lewis (04:35):
I love this so much because I have been shying away from this stance a little bit, but this is kind of getting me excited because one of the reasons why we started the Spark Women in Business grant program was because everybody talks about how women are underfunded. And I just had this moment of I've got to start contributing to the solution. And I really try not to on the Spark platform, talk about the patriarchy or create. I see so many of the viral reels that talk about the patriarchy, complain about our circumstances. And I think if I just posted them, maybe I'd get more reach. But you know what? I don't want to buy into that problem. I want to believe that women will excel, that women will succeed. So I just love how you framed that.
Heather Hansen (05:26):
Yeah, because if we focus too much on the problem, our subconscious only thinks about the problem, especially if the problem threatens our security and our safety, which a lack of funding can. And so I do think it's good in court. Some people got fired up by getting angry at the other side. That is not the way that I worked, but you have to know yourself a little bit if getting you out of bed is going to be getting you out of bed because you know, have the ability to beat the patriarchy. That's a thought than the patriarchy is keeping me down.
(06:00):
And
(06:00):
So you've really got to measure your words and how they feel when you tell yourself the story. But I agree with you. I personally like to focus on the positive and what can be gained instead of the pain and what can be lost.
Danielle Lewis (06:15):
I love it. Now you've mentioned your career in advocating in court, doing all these amazing things 25 years. Talk me through that. How did we actually get here?
Heather Hansen (06:29):
Oh my goodness. Okay. So I went straight from undergrad to law school, and while I was in law school, I started working at the firm where I was an associate and then a partner. And I worked there for all 25 years of my career, which is unusual. And that firm was a firm where we defended doctors in medical malpractice cases. I loved the work. I loved trying cases. I loved winning. I loved beating men. Less than 5% of trial attorneys in the US are women. And so I loved being underappreciated and perhaps underestimated and going in and winning, and I loved it. And then I was very good at it, and I started winning consistently. And this actually speaks to what we were just talking about. I started to play not to lose. People expected me to win. I was so stressed out by losing that it wasn't fun anymore.
(07:20):
I was just trying not to lose. And I was settling cases. Now, listen, never did I settle a case that I shouldn't have settled, but I was wanting to settle cases more often because I was afraid of losing. And it became less fun. And as it became less fun, it became more stressful and I was burning out and I had all kinds of physical manifestations of that. And so I thought I needed to do something else. I love to work and didn't want to retire. And so I got trained to be a mediator or someone who helps people resolve and negotiate settlements. And that was boring to me. And then I started, I hated sitting there knowing where we were going to end up and waiting for them to get there was I don't have a lot of patience. And then I started doing television and I was a TV host and I loved that, but I didn't like talking about rapes and murders all the time, and I was in true crime.
(08:09):
So that's what I was doing. And then I wrote my first book, which is called The Elegant Warrior, and that led to some coaching clients and it led to some speaking opportunities. And as that grew, I recognized that I had a message, a skill that I had learned in the courtroom that I could apply outside of the courtroom. And that skill was building beliefs. Juries in the courtroom tend to, they are all patients, none of them were ever doctors. And so they saw the world from a patient's perspective and they had a patient's beliefs. And my job was to make them believe something new. And I could do that with stories, evidence, and the energy of my belief and my witnesses beliefs. And so when I recognized that this tool could be applied to the women who are listening and to teachers, and I do a lot of work with Dress for Success here in the United States. It's a charity for women to return to the workforce. And I do work also with veterans wives and veterans who are returning to the workforce. And to see how this one skill applies to all of those people became what will be my legacy, which is teaching people how to believe in themselves because people tell you to do it all the time, but no one tells you how
(09:22):
And
(09:22):
Then how to build someone else's belief as well. So that's what I do now.
Danielle Lewis (09:26):
Oh, it's incredible. It is absolutely incredible. How was it taking the leap for you? So going from employed lawyer and a lawyer is a very highly important, highly paid industry career. And I feel like your identity would've been wrapped around that. What was it like then going into running your own business?
Heather Hansen (09:52):
It's the hardest thing I ever did. And I've run marathons, I've done triathlons. I lost a hundred pounds when I was 19 years old. I've done some hard things,
(10:00):
But my identity, Danielle, you said it perfectly, was so caught up in being a lawyer. I'm not married. I'm 51 years old. I don't have children. And it was everything to me. I had given it everything that I had. And I was very good lawyer and I was well known, very well known in my industry. And my parents, especially my father, that was very much, he was like, what are you doing? I only mean well. Yeah. Oh, totally. And it's a scary thing. It was scary for me to give up all that security. I will say that I didn't leap. I often say I didn't leap instead of a leap, I did a creep. So it was slowly, I was still lawyering, and then I was just doing less and less and taking on fewer and fewer clients and talking to my clients about working with my partners instead.
(10:54):
And so I tried to create this, and if you're listening, instead of watching me, this hand motion where one grows as the other gets smaller, it didn't work perfectly. And it's still the hardest thing I've ever done to this day because as an attorney, I always knew I'd have more cases, and I always knew I'd make more the next year because I always had more cases. And now as an entrepreneur, neither of those are a given for me. And so I appreciate every new person that comes into my ecosystem, every new client, every person who joins my membership. I so appreciate that because I'm still growing my belief and every new person is a piece of evidence that this is working.
Danielle Lewis (11:40):
You are spot on. So if there's anyone listening right now who is currently employed and has been dreaming of starting their own business, I loved how you said that it wasn't a leap. It wasn't a leap. It wasn't just burn the bridges, which I feel like we often hear in the startup hustle culture world, burn the bridges, just do it. But I actually love that you made the transition. Would you have any advice for someone who's staring down that idea, staring down that decision on how to make the transition in maybe a softer, kinder way than just burning the bridges?
Heather Hansen (12:18):
And I think there's power in both, but I do think the creep and there's research that supports that, doing it slowly as a side hustle, you are actually more likely to be successful in your business. And so the first thing I would say is use that as evidence that you can do both. But the second thing I'd say is that I think that I know that a lot of the women I coach, they believe that they have to have the perfect idea before they start acting. And that is so not the case. The better belief is that every idea brings you to the perfect idea.
(12:52):
So
(12:52):
My business did not start looking the way it did. It does now, it has had many iterations and it will continue to iterate, but they're less big. The first thing was I don't even need to go down that rabbit hole, but it was completely different. And then I got smaller and I got more focused and I got more attention on one thing, and I got more attention on one thing. And a lot of that was fed by the outside response. And you don't get that by just playing in your head. So you've got to make something. And the hardest thing is putting it out into the world for people to look at and to criticize and to have opinions about. But those opinions are what allows you to figure out what is the best thing. And by the time that you're there, you may then be ready to leap out of the creep.
Danielle Lewis (13:39):
Yeah, and look, it's interesting, the creep, I didn't know it was the word beforehand. That's exactly what my story was. So I was in sales 10 year corporate career and just found out about business and became absolutely obsessed with it. And it was that it was the going off in my lunch break and doing a little something for an hour and then getting home and doing something over dinner, and you're so right. The first thing I did is not what I'm doing today. And the same story. It's like those huge changes, the huge pivots. Oh, I thought that was the thing. Nope, let's try something completely different. And now it is the, okay, how can I do that better? Or how can I just tweak that a little bit? Because all of my members are saying X, Y, Z. So it evolves. You're never going to get it right straight out of the gate.
Heather Hansen (14:31):
That's exactly right. And when, see, the problem often is that when you don't get it right out of the gate, your belief is, I don't know how to do this. I did it wrong. It's not meant for me. I'm not meant for this. And we go down that rabbit hole. And so you've got to cross examine those thoughts, is the way I talk about it, like a cross, examine a witness and really go after them and build a better thought instead, because it's normal. Let Danielle and I be evidence for you. That is normal. It is completely the way it is meant to be, and everything is working perfectly. And I think that the more I believe that the more my energy changed and the more quickly things happened.
Danielle Lewis (15:13):
I love the way you just said cross examine that thought and build a new one, build a better one, because it's just so, just cognizant of the fact that we can actually create our own reality. We are in charge here.
Heather Hansen (15:29):
Yes, it so is Wayne Dyer used to say, there's two ways to have the biggest building in town. You can either build your own or knock down everyone. And I think when it comes to thoughts, you've got to do both. You've got to knock down those negative thoughts and you've got to be, this is one thing that we just coached on in the membership this week really strong. And I get aggressive about this because I think what often happens is we think we know something is a negative thought that doesn't serve us. So we pretend we're not thinking it.
(15:59):
We're like, oh, no, no, I know that's not true. So you don't even, but you don't because you're letting it impact your actions. That's how if you're feeling crappy, then you're believing that thought. If you're not acting or acting in a way that isn't serving your goal, you're believing that thought. So instead of saying, oh no, I don't believe it, get after it. Be a mercenary. Be merciless with that thought saying to it, this is why you're not true, and this is why you're not true, and this is why you're not true. And here's some evidence about that, and this is why that is ridiculous. And you've got to get after it with a sniper. And you've got to do that almost every day because those thoughts, your subconscious mind just wants to protect you. And sometimes those negative thoughts, you think they're protecting you. So you've got to get after them with that conscious mind.
Danielle Lewis (16:48):
Now, since we're talking about thoughts, I want to hear more about hypnotherapy. So earlier you said there are two sides. There's the physical things that we can do, and then there's the mental things we can do. Talk to me about that side of your world.
Heather Hansen (17:04):
So I have been doing hypnosis since I was 19. When I was 19, there was an ad in the paper for weight loss hypnosis in a big conference room in a hotel. And I went and I did the hypnosis in the room with all the other people, and I bought the cassette tapes that he sold. I have them here still
(17:22):
Love this.
(17:24):
Isn't that crazy? And I lost a hundred pounds, and I've kept that weight off for it's like 30 years or whatever. But I did those cassette tapes every day, twice a day for years. Then defending doctors in medical malpractice cases made me anxious about health things. I would see all the times when things didn't go right with someone's health. And then my mentor had a heart attack in the courtroom, and some years later my fiance had a heart attack at the beach and all of that combined to give me some pretty significant health anxiety,
(17:59):
And I used hypnosis to overcome that. And so I love it, and I knew that it worked. And so I found a very strong certification program, a very intense, it's over three months with tons of practice hours, tons of books, lots of videos, and I'll be done with that at the end of September. But the reason I'm doing that is we can cross examinee our thoughts all day. We can write down the thoughts that we want to think all day, but if our subconscious believes it's protecting us, and it always is a protection, our subconscious loves us, then it's very difficult to persuade it with the conscious mind. So if I can get in there and talk to a woman about imposter syndrome or the things, and we often under hypnosis have a conversation together with the part of her or him that is holding us back and to see what that part thinks and then to change that belief it all of a sudden things just take off and that creep off and become the leap after that.
Danielle Lewis (19:04):
So I've never been hypnotized, so I would love to know because I feel like, so people have given me hypnosis like meditations before where you'll listen to it before bed. That's probably the extent of my experience, I guess. Then the other side of that is you see the kind of comedy shows where someone makes you act like a chicken. So where are we on this spectrum and what could somebody expect? Because I absolutely love the idea. I know as someone who's been in business for 12 years, I totally get it when you say, we can try and tell ourselves the belief we want, but some days I just don't believe it.
Heather Hansen (19:42):
No, and that is human, right? It is
Danielle Lewis (19:45):
Human, yes. Yes.
Heather Hansen (19:46):
So hypnosis, my teacher, her name is Grace Smith, and she calls it meditation with a goal. And that is true. There are different ways to do it. You mentioned the meditation or the hypnosis. Part of what I'm going to offer is hypnosis that you just listened to about overcoming imposter syndrome, overcoming overwhelm, overcoming procrastination, and those types of things.
(20:10):
Cool.
(20:10):
That is one type and it can work, but it takes time and a lot of repetition for those to work. One-on-one hypnotherapy. It's actually, well, there's a couple of things. People think you're asleep when you're hypnotized. You're not, in fact, with one-on-one hypnotherapy, you talk back, we have a conversation.
Danielle Lewis (20:29):
Well, that's what intrigued me when you said that. I was like, oh, okay. I didn't know that it was interactive.
Heather Hansen (20:35):
Well, and some people aren't so sure about that, but it is simply that the way that I like to think about it is we are letting your conscious mind relax and go away. And so under hypnosis, your brain gets into theta brainwave, because I induce you into hypnosis, which just means I relax your conscious mind. You're still aware, you're still itching your nose, you're still hearing noises outside. If someone knocked on the door, you would get up and answer it. And I've done all those things under hypnosis, but I'm having a conversation with the part of you that doesn't often get to speak. So I'll give you one example. And with someone I did this past weekend that was really impactful, we spoke to her physical body, her emotional body, her spiritual body, and then her wisest self. And so each one of those parts of her had something different to say and something different that they wanted from the other parts of her. And then the wisest self sort of said, I've got this. This is how we're going to do it. But I am not answering any of those questions. I am asking the client those questions, and I ask her or him to ask themselves out loud, and then they get the answer and they repeat it back to me out loud, and then I'm able to repeat it in a way that it becomes a suggestion in their subconscious brain. So it's interactive. You are not out of it. You are not under someone else's control. And the one thing I will say about stage hypnosis is the people who do that raise their hands.
(22:07):
They know what they're going to be doing. I've talked to people who have been under that kind of hypnosis, and unless they want to forget, they don't forget what they've done. Usually at the end of a stage hypnosis, the hypnotist will say, if you want to forget this, you have complete forget. You'll not remember anything that happened, and then they won't remember. But most of the people that I've talked to that have been up there, they say that they just didn't feel any inhibitions, but they didn't want to, which is why they raised their hand.
Danielle Lewis (22:34):
Exactly, yes. Don't
Heather Hansen (22:35):
Do anything you don't want to do under hypnosis. And I think that's something everyone needs to understand. Otherwise it would be terrible and scary. And also, I'd be a millionaire. I'd be like, yes, new courage change. I'd be running for president. I'd be all kinds of things. So yeah, you can't make people do what they don't want to do.
Danielle Lewis (22:56):
Oh my God, this is incredible. I just didn't realize. So just when you said you spoke to the physical body, the mental body, the highest self, the wisest self, I think what just got there for me, does this work over Zoom because I need this in my life?
Heather Hansen (23:11):
It does. We do most of it over Zoom. I would love to work with you. I would love to work with you. We could talk about it, but we do it all over zoom, really. Now, there are occasions, so Grace, my teacher, she will fly to, she's a very, very high price point, and she will fly to some people who want to do something in person and in person. The difference with in person, if you're comfortable with the client, you can touch the person. And sometimes there are types of touch that help you to get into hypnosis more quickly. Nothing weird, but just taps on the shoulder or sort of moving a person's side to side. But over zoom, there are things that I'm taught to look for to see whether you are under hypnosis. And I think also it's important for people to know there are times when I'm being hypnotized that I'm like, I'm not hypnotized. And even when I'm answering questions, I'm like, this is my conscious mind answering this question. But it'll be a few days later that something will hit me and I'll be like, oh, I actually must have been hypnotized changing the way I believe about this thing. It's very, very powerful and in all kinds of places it's powerful with pain control, anxiety, sports performance, cognitive performance, sales performance. I mean, it really hits the gamut of things it can work on.
Danielle Lewis (24:32):
And it's just interesting. So something that I'm playing with at the moment is, so this concept called quantum jumping, and it's essentially where you connect with the version of yourself that has already achieved all of the dreams, all of the things that you want, all of those goals, all the milestones, and have a conversation with them and find out the skills, find out the how, all of that stuff. And it's just as soon as you said that you were speaking to the wiser self or the higher self, I was like, oh, that is exactly the track I'm on at the moment. It's just incredible to reframe all of the crushing things that are on you in the day and speak to that person and connect with that person. I just think there's so much power in that.
Heather Hansen (25:15):
I agree wholeheartedly, and it is definitely something that we do under hypnosis. And for me, it's really powerful. I am rereading a book called A Happy Pocket Full of Money, and it's phenomenal. And I see all those books behind you, Danielle. Yeah, I'm like, I need to write this down. Good. But he talks a lot about how all, and this is the quantum stuff, all things are happening at the same time, and so that version of you actually exists. And so we do talk to that version of you and that version of you is usually saying things like, this is no big deal. Of course this is happening. It's all fun. You're going to look back on this and miss these days
(25:56):
Because
(25:57):
It's the fun part and it's beautiful to have someone hear that from themselves. Again, I'm not answering any of these questions. I'm just asking the questions so that you can ask the questions of your subconscious and get the answers, and then I'm helping you remember the answers by turning them into suggestions.
Danielle Lewis (26:15):
I actually have a feeling that you were the catalyst for this exploration that I'm want at the moment. In our podcast, I made a comment like, oh, it's a huge leap to get to that thing that I want. And you like, what if it wasn't wasn't Huge Leap? I was like, what if it wasn't?
Heather Hansen (26:35):
Well, and I probably was in the middle of that book. You have to read that book
Danielle Lewis (26:39):
Literally just posted. Noted it.
Heather Hansen (26:42):
Yeah. It's a great listeners. It is great because he talks about how he doesn't even love goals in the typical form, and he talks because we often say at the end of the year, and then we're telling our subconscious to wait until the end of the year when we could get that million dollar deal tomorrow. And so to limit ourselves sometimes isn't the best thing. So it's a great book, and hypnosis is a great way to talk to that future self and also to your inner child, your past self,
(27:13):
Who
(27:13):
May be the one that's afraid and holding things back a little bit. It's a phenomenal tool.
Danielle Lewis (27:19):
Oh, I love it. So incredible. Heather, I could talk to you all day, however, I know you've got to go to bed. I've got to start my day. We're at different times of the day, so good. Now, I always love to leave our podcast listeners with one last piece of advice. So reflecting on your time in business, what would be one piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her business journey?
Heather Hansen (27:47):
I would repeat what I said a little earlier. Nothing happens until someone believes Your job is to build your belief. It's three parts. You've got to believe in yourself. You've got to believe yourself, and you've got to believe that you have your own back, and you build that with evidence and with repetition and with the tools that we've talked about. But with that belief, anything is possible.
Danielle Lewis (28:10):
You are incredible. Heather, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with the Spark community. I appreciate you so much.
Heather Hansen (28:18):
Thank you so much for having me, Danielle, and all the work that you do for women, it's amazing.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
