How the heck did we get here?
Here at Mike Mandel Hypnosis, we’ve just wrapped up a massive overhaul of just about everything connected to our business. This has been in the works for months, behind the scenes, and it has touched every corner of what we do. Our CEO, Chris, finally made the call and pulled the trigger on a simpler, cleaner, and much more effective way of operating.
And the results speak for themselves.
We now find ourselves with the largest and most comprehensive hypnosis training program on the planet, both online and classroom. We’re talking about hundreds of professional training videos, an entire podcast library, and contributions from some incredible guest trainers from around the world. This isn’t just a course. It’s a full ecosystem for learning hypnosis and NLP at a level that simply didn’t exist before.
It’s taken twelve years to get here. And when I pause to really look back, it’s honestly a little surreal how this whole thing came together. What started as a rough idea and a couple of wild dreams somehow turned into the gold standard of hypnosis training.
Back around the spring of 2013, the entire concept was still just a spark. Chris had the vision. He saw something that didn’t exist yet. I, on the other hand, was a bit skeptical. Not dismissive, but cautious. Even so, I believed in his determination, and I knew that if anyone could pull it off, it was him.
And believe it or not, it all began with CDs.
We mailed out physical CDs to customers. That was the very start of what became our training. It was humble, basic, and entirely physical. We hadn’t even shot our first hypnosis video yet. But we had an idea, and we had the willingness to act on it.
Then came the Brain Software Podcast.
This was Chris’s idea too. He wanted to give everything away. And I mean everything. Everything I knew about hypnosis and NLP. All of it. Week after week. For free.
At the time, I thought he was nuts (to use the medical term).
I said, if we give away the goods, what’s left to sell? It felt like a terrible business decision.
But here’s the thing. It worked.
People began listening to the podcast and getting real value from it. Not fluff, not vague inspiration, but actionable ideas and techniques they could use immediately. And eventually, they realized something important. What we were offering wasn’t just good. It was world-class. And when you give away that kind of value, people don’t just take it and leave. They want more. They want the full experience, packaged and structured so they can learn faster and go deeper.
That was the birth of the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy.
We didn’t wait until everything was perfect. We didn’t even wait until the curriculum was finished. We started drip-feeding our early videos to subscribers while we built the rest as we went. Our only rule was to stay a few weeks ahead of our students.
And somehow, that was enough.
We kept creating. Bit by bit. Video by video. Audio by audio. Sometimes it was just a few new minutes of content. But the Academy started to grow. And over time, those small steps began to compound into something much bigger than we’d imagined.
At first, it was exciting just to be creating something new. We were building a school from scratch. But we had no idea how far it would go. No clue how many lives it would impact.
And honestly, if I’d known at the beginning just how big this would become, I might have felt too overwhelmed to even start. It would have looked impossible from that vantage point.
But that’s the beauty of starting small.
What seemed daunting in the abstract became manageable when broken into pieces. We didn’t launch an empire overnight. We sent out CDs in envelopes. We filmed short videos. We refined a little here and a little there.
And that approach changed everything.
Slow, steady progress became our secret weapon.
One day, two psychiatrists from Singapore flew to Toronto just to train with us. That was a moment that hit us hard. These were serious professionals crossing oceans because they believed in what we were doing.
Then came the psychologists. Dentists. Medical doctors. Educators. Coaches.
And a whole lot of everyday people too. People who simply wanted to learn powerful tools to improve their own lives or help others.
The more people we served, the better we became. The better we became, the more people came to study. And that cycle just kept feeding itself.
It reminded us of the Japanese principle of Kaizen. That means continuous improvement. Not flashy, not huge, but steady forward motion. Little steps that build on one another over time.
By keeping our changes small — maybe just three percent at a time — we avoided burnout and overwhelm. But the momentum we built was unstoppable. And the results were huge.
So why am I telling you all this?
Is it just a chance to pat ourselves on the back?
Not even close.
I’m sharing this because the same principle that built the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy can apply to just about anything in your life.
It’s the old saying: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
If there’s something big you want to build, change, or create — a dream you’ve been sitting on — this is your reminder that you don’t have to do it all at once. In fact, you probably shouldn’t do it all at once.
Start small. I mean really small. So small that it feels almost silly.
Then do it again tomorrow.
And again next week.
Stick with it.
If you do that, if you keep taking those small consistent steps, you’ll look up in a few months or a few years and barely recognize where you started.
And you’ll wonder, just like we do sometimes…
How the heck did we get here?
- Mike Mandel
P.S. We did a Video Podcast talking about how we started working together. And we published this YouTube vid explaining exactly what's new in our Academy
BIG Changes to Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy
Everything has changed!
The Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy is now your one-stop membership to get access to all of our digital courses/programs.