It happened over thirty years ago. I was a teenager fascinated by powers of mind. I read about spirituality, psychic phenomena, UFO's, past lives, present problems, magic of believing, and yes, even hypnosis.

And that helps explain why I had my best friend, Billy, in a deep trance in basement of my parent's home in Ohio. I had regressed him from age of 16 back to age of four or five. I had no business doing it. But I was curious and Billy was game. It was a remarkable morning until something truly terrifying happened.

I snapped my fingers---the prearranged command to wake Billy up---but he stayed in chair, smiling, eyes closed, and laughing loud and hard.

"How old are you?" I asked, wanting to check his age level.

"Seventy-two, how old are you?!" he replied, laughing like a wild, untamed, truly obnoxious child.

You can't imagine my fear.

"When I slap my hands together, you will awaken," I commanded.

Billy laughed long and loud.

I slapped my hands together.

Billy laughed louder and longer.

I'm panicking now. I'm barely sixteen years old. I have my best friend in a trance, regressed to a young age, and I can't bring him out of it. I could see my parent's rage. I could see Billy's parent's rage. I could see myself locked up, still a teenager, all because I practiced hypnosis like other kids played baseball or monopoly.

I waited. I held my breath. I snapped my fingers. I slapped my hands. I perspired. Billy wasn't coming out of his trance. He was locked into another time period. And I was responsible.

Some kids borrow neighbor's car and wreck it. I borrowed my best friend's mind and put it in park.

What was I going to do?

I don't recall how much time went by before I decided to call for help. I remember going to phone book and desperately searching for a hypnotist to call for help. I found one in Cleveland, Ohio, a hundred miles from my home. I called him, got him on phone, and acted as cool as I could.

"Doctor, my name is Joe, and, well, I've been learning about hypnosis. I was just wondering, what would happen if you put someone in a trance and they, well, er, ah, you know, never came out of it?"

There was silence on line.

Then I remember voice bellowing at me.

"Are you practicing hypnosis there?!"

"Oh, no," I lied. "I was just curious what would happen if, you know, you put your best friend under, regressed him, and he wouldn't come out of it. Is that a bad thing?"

"Is your best friend there now?"

The hypnotist was on to me.

"Well...yes."

"Will he come to phone?"

"He won't do ANYTHING I ask," I said. My voice was cracking now. I was scared and it showed.

"Don't worry about it," hypnotist advised me. "He'll either naturally awaken shortly, or he'll fall asleep and then wake up."

"But he thinks he's five years old," I added.

"YOU KIDS HAVE TO STOP PLAYING AROUND!" he roared.

"But I want to be a hypnotist someday," I explained.

"GET TRAINING FIRST!" he blurted.

"Okay, okay, I will," I said. "But what do I do about Billy?"

"Put him on phone."

I went to Billy, somehow got him to get on phone, and hypnotist said something which helped Billy awaken. To this day I don't know what he said. And since I haven't seen Billy in nearly twenty years, I have no idea how old Billy really thinks he is. I understand he's now a State Trooper in Ohio, so I imagine he's stable and well. Still, I'm staying in Texas.

I learned something profound that day in my parent's basement when my life stopped for an afternoon.

I learned that trances are powerful. They are real. And we are all in them.

That's right. You're in a trance. Yes, right now. So am I. We may not think we're five years old, but we think we are writers, or marketers, or salespeople, or some other "trance." As long as we believe trance we are in, we will play it out perfectly. When we wake up, we'll just be in another trance. Even "I'm now awake" trance is just another trance.

Stay with me here. Whether you disagree or not, there's a valuable lesson here---one that can help you increase your sales and your profits.

In short, your prospects are all in trances. If you merge with their trance, you can then lead them out of it and into "buying trance" you want them to be in.

I'll repeat that:

You can create mental movies when people read your ad copy. Mental movies can change people's emotions and some of their physical actions. You can alter their emotions and physical actions with words alone. Your words need to explain and describe what they see, hear, feel, smell and taste so it triggers their imagination.