Achieve Success - Leading NLP Trainer Releases New YouTube Series

PPI Business NLP’s Lead Trainer and Coach Michael Beale has recently launched a series of videos on the website YouTube to help introduce people to Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP. The short video clips are aimed at people that are new to NLP or are interested in PPI’s particular perspective on using NLP for personal and professional success.

Michael Beale said, “We wanted to help people to understand in a concrete way what NLP was and thought that the simplest way to reach people these days was through some short videos on YouTube. Many people have heard of NLP, well this is a chance for them to find out more about it.”

Michael Beale has spent the last 10 years using NLP to help other people to achieve personal and professional success. PPI Business NLP works with many high level clients such as Oracle, BT and Astra-Zeneca, but also they work 1 on 1 with many individuals too.

Beale says, “Having worked with many high level clients and seen their staff take great benefits, I wanted to find a way to express the basics of NLP so that anyone, anywhere could listen and benefit from.”

Topics covered by PPI Business NLP’s Video Clips include:

What is NLP? - A Brief Exploration of NLP NLP Coaching – How NLP is used in Coaching and Mentoring What are the Key Skills of NLP? How to turn all States to your Benefit using NLP How to achieve Success through NLP Modelling NLP’s Application to Business Success

Beale added “We hope that these videos will spark people’s curiosity, and they’ll want read more about NLP, or they’ll want to get in touch with us at PPI Business NLP to find out more about learning to achieve success through NLP”.

The first in the series of short clips on NLP presented by Liam and Michael Beale are available at:

Free Video - What is NLP?

The full mini-course is available FREE on:

How to Achieve Success - NLP Mini-Course

NLP Podcast Extract : John La Valle on Motivation

John La Valle is a Licensed Master Trainer of NLP™ & DHE™, who has been in the training & development field for almost twenty-five years and who has brought NLP™ and DHE™ into the business arena for the past 20+ years.

"My name is John - last name La Valle, of course. And I work closely with Richard Bandler, co-wrote a book called Persuasion Engineering with him. And I guess I have been involved in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming for coming-close-to Twenty Five years now, mostly in business applications."

"I also run the Society of NLP, that's the certifying body."

"That's a big question I guess. Let's see. There are a lot of things that people want to do, and when we talk about motivation, what comes to my mind is "How much do they want to do what they think they want to do."

"If I think about it from a language point, if somebody wants to do a particular activity, how much, or to what degree is their want or their willingness to do that activity?"

"So its a thing where some people want to do certain things, but how bad do they really want to do those things? That's the way I look at it."

"There are a lot of things, and they all work in conjunction with each other. Motivation is an interesting thing - there are certain things, like, are you able to do certain things? Are you mentally capable? "

"I always look at the capability factor - are people able to do what they want to do? And if not they need to go off to learn that. And the second part of that is that they really have to believe that they can do that - but there are a couple of other sub-routines if they will. Its not just that they believe that they can do it, but lets say that they don't believe that they can do it to the extent that they want to do it, and they want to rearrange their beliefs, or enhance their beliefs - and build the belief that its possible for them to do it."

"Firstly they have to have a belief that they can change their beliefs, so they have to have a belief in themselves that they can change what they believe about themselves, or their own capabilities. So they have to have that first of all."

"And the second thing is, that there are these - linguistic structures, really - that people would call them their "Values" or "Their life criteria", basically the things that are important to them, lets say. So where those things are on a list, lets say, would determine how they do a particular activity. "

"I'll give you an example. Lets say that someone wants to be able to run their own business. I would be interested in what is important to them about that, or find out where those things are on their list of priorities, because that's really what motivation comes down to - a list of priorities - so the hierarchy of importance."

"I have a friend of mine who's probably around Fifty years old now, somewhere around there. And he's always wanted to become an astronaut. And lo and behold, the guy has had an absolutely phenomenal career, or should I say careers, collecting very expensive autographs, to marketing things, marketing campaigns."

"And lo and behold, at whatever age he's at now - he's probably about Fifty-ish - he has just passed the first leg of a test to become an astronaut."

"So, it's not like he didn't want to become an astronaut before - he did - but the hierarchy of what was important to him must have been, I'm not sure - If I was to say it was number five or number six on his long number of things that he always wanted to do - he's finally getting around to doing that after doing what he always wanted to do."

"I'm not sure how much that things that are on the outside can effect us. Because to me that is the environment and we can change how the environment will effect you. Obviously if you want to do X activity and it requires one million dollars to invest in, or half a millions pounds - I guess to some degree, you'd have to have access to that kind of money - but that's not the only way to achieve that activity, even if you had to make that investment, there are other ways of getting access to that type of money."

"So I don't know. I am sure that there are things that people perceive in the outside world that could stop them. To me the mind is the last bastion of freedom that we can have. So we could do lots and lots of things if we put our minds to it."

Read or listen to the full John La Valle transcript and podcast on Motivation.

Our index of Motivation podcasts

Liam Beale

Business Development Manager

PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Vicky Karambatsos-Kitson on Spread Betting and Trading

"My name is Vicky Karambatsos-Kitson. I'm a full-time trader, a independent financial markets trader, and I'm also a trader coach, so I trade, coach and teach and mentor traders to become profitable."

"That's a good question because that's something that people tend to get mixed up quite a lot with, and partly to do with the media. Spread bidding or spread trading is one product, if you like, that a trader can use to enter the market in trade. There are other products like CFDs - contracts for difference - you can by the shares themselves just so share trading, traditional share trading - you can trade in currencies, you can trade in options, in futures - the list is endless."

"So the traders size of account, their style of trading, their objectives and goals financially, will largely determine what's the best product to enter the market with. Spread bidding or spread trading becomes really popular - its still embryonic in the UK, but still very popular - because its brilliant with the people starting with a small account which could be as little as Five Hundred pounds with a broker, it's great for people who are in and out of a trade quite quickly, buying-selling, buying-selling, because the costs are so low per transaction, as compared to traditional shares."

"And the final reason that it 's so popular is that it is completely and utterly tax free in the UK! "

"Yes - so lets compare it with traditional share dealing or share trading because that's what people are really familiar with. So in the share world, to do a typical transaction where you have five thousand shares, that kind of thing, you need something like - it depends on the price of the shares before - five, six, seven, eight hundred pounds just to get into the trade."

"So you need a large account. There are also lots of costs due to the government, its like buying an asset, buying a house - you've got to pay the broker substantial amounts, twenty pounds a go at least t buy and sell the shares for you, the stock exchange - and before you know it, a large chunk of what your profits."

"So traditional share tradings are excellent for people with very large accounts, and I'm talking about people with a hundred thousand and over, and for people who are buying to hold stock, I would say that they're perfect. But for anybody who's got a medium or even a large account, but is going to be trading constantly - buying or selling, three, four, five times a day, if you like - fifteen trades a week, if you like."

"And the costs of the share trade are much, much, lower - negligible in fact - and you've got a massive advantage, which is that you don't pay tax, which you do on the share-trading. "

"Well that's a brilliant question, because it comes to the heart of the matter in terms of whether you're trading as professional or not, and the heart of the matter is risk. Professional trading, if I had to say it in ten words or twelve words, to what is processional and profitable trading, it would be; the measurement, the management, and the utilization of risk, such that it works to your advantage every single time."

"So one of the disadvantages if you like, or one of the challenges, of spread trading, is that its a leveraged product. And what leveraged means, is just like a home loan, or mortgage" - you put in some money - the bank gives you the rest, maybe with a twenty, thirty, forty thousand pound deposit, you've got a one thousand, two thousand pound property that you've got access to much quicker than you otherwise would have been able to - that's leverage."

"Spread trading is also a leverage product - Now that means, you can make money ten times faster and ten times greater - absolutely without a shadow of a doubt - but you can also lose money ten times faster and ten times easier and ten times greater if you re not trained enough."

"OK, lets be really clear. If you were to do a share transaction, and a spread-trading transaction for an equivalent amount - an equivalent underlying share value - the amount that you'd lose on both is equal.

However, because you only need one tenth of the amount in your spread trading account, because it ' s leveraged. To do the trade it feels like you're doing more, it that makes sense - because you've only got a small amount in your account - you can actually lose more, if you're untrained - than what you have in your account."

"However, professional trading is all about, never, ever, ever being in that situation. We risk-manage, every single trade, to a tiny, 1% value of our account. "

"Yes, I would suggest that people start with, if not end with momentum or position trading. I love position trading, because it enables you to trade at the end of the day, outside market hours - you don't need the best PCs in the world or the best broadband connections, or anything like that - you're placing your orders or your trades outside of market hours - there's about five of them a night - and you can expect three or four of those to trigger the next day - you're looking at about fifteen trades a week."

"So it takes about forty-five minutes a night to do this. And what you need for this style of trading is - an OK PC, and I'm not talking about anything more than four-hundred pounds worth of equipment. You might have an analogue connection, it wont matter at all - I'm assuming that most people have broadband at home these days which might be slightly better."

"You need Skype, which is completely free, obviously, over the Internet, www.skype.com You need a broker account, now there's many, many great brokers out there. And I'll give anybody that's interested the contact details of the brokers out there - I need to ask some questions about what their needs are, but I could certainly sort them out with a broker - some are brilliant, some are not so good. You need a broker account."

"And you need at least five hundred pounds in your account, A good size trading account would be about five thousand pounds - about four or five thousand pounds - that you could start without a shadow of a doubt for as little as four or five hundred."

"And I would say, that you categorically need to train."

"Approximately - we tend to train throughout our careers, and it becomes self-funding obviously. I would say probably about two and a half thousand pounds."

Read or listen to the full Vicky Karambatsos-Kitson transcript and podcast on Trading.

Liam Beale

Business Development Manager

PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

Our index of Making Money podcasts

NLP Podcast Extract : Andrew Wilcox on Online Networking

Andrew runs 'Cabre' which helps other businesses to rapidly capture, organise and publish their knowledge. For example: recording and publishing events from team meetings to large conferences; creating mind maps for presentations, web sites and printed publications; structuring early stage projects and product developments by converting ideas into plans and requirements; training companies and individuals to exploit Mindjet’s MindManager software.

"My name's Andrew Wilcox and my business is called Cabre. It has two purposes, to service the MindManager community and to make use of MindManager in a variety of situations. MindManager is a very comprehensive Mind Mapping software which interfaces with the Microsoft Office world."

"So I retail, I train people on how to use it and then do jobs for people, such as produce Mindmaps that they can take in presentations when they're trying to partner up with new business's - to explain their business in terms of how the new combination would work. Through to taking Mind Mappers to conferences along with video people and audio people and recording the whole event and publishing it on a website."

"I've been connecting with people online for quite a long time. I was looking back on this yesterday - I started using email at work at the late 1980's. I certainly remember arranging to meet people at the pub using the office email system, and they were only next door to me. A similar thing to that, also in the early years I was with Compuserve in the early 90's, I had a modem on the back of my Amstrad portable PC, and found out interesting things like how - what the fingering was for a fife that I bought at a car boot sale, through that process of asking a question on compuserve, inside a music group somewhere."

"The one I have the major strength with at the moment is Ecademy, which I joined in 2004. I also do a little bit of work in LinkedIn and Xing and I'm on Facebook too, but I can't say that I'm very active on it."

"Directly for the business, I get attendees for my courses, and people buy software from me because they've met me on Ecademy, principally and see what I do. I get referrals from clients, I get associates that work for me with my clients. And Ive received lots and lots of advice on sales and marketing and internet marketing, building websites and so on."

"I think it's important, particularly for small business', because we need help! We're operating as individuals or small partnerships, inside those, the individuals and the partnerships, but between those, that experience is often in quite a narrow area - for example my background is in engineering, it's not in sales or marketing. So the more we help each other, the better we'll get and the more able we'll be to take on bigger and better business's with bigger and better clients."

"I think that the first thing is being able to listen. It's not selling, it's listening. it's finding out what other people can do, what other people want. It's then connecting them with the resources that they want - and when you get the opportunity it's about being very clear about what it is you do. understand the message quickly and begin to ask you question about what you do rather than you trying to tell them what you do."

"I think I'd have to say almost any time. it's part of my working day. My network is part of my business, so it's very difficult to differentiate it at some times, and I don't think that I particularly want to. So most of the time I'm working from my home office, but I'm also networking in hotels, in the members lounge of the IoD where they're free wireless, at train stations, anywhere."

"I don't go 24-7, but it's not a 9 to 5. So I'm quite often working on it in the evenings, and have been periods that I've been working very early in the morning but not in the last year - I've managed to stop doing that addiction."

"I think they've got to create a strong profile first of all, because that's the first thing that people see of them online. They should then try and find people with similar interests, because that will be a cozy and comfortable group to start in, because we all have the same language and you'll start to understand the process's and tools that are involved whichever online networking site you're using."

"The next stage would be to start commenting on other peoples blogs, and then doing your own blogs, and then joining clubs, and then forming your own clubs. It's an iterative process, you don't have to do it all at once."

"I think profiles are very individual things. it's not like trying to replicate a CV, where you've seen one CV you've seen them all. Your profile should be different, it should be characteristic of you. So my belief is that you should write it and not get someone else to write it. You might want to take advice from people - and they should get a flavour of your attitudes, the business's you're involved with, your social interests, because someone may want to talk to you about that, and then lead to something else you never know."

"I think you have to be able to type. I was talking to someone only the other evening and he said 'I'm going to make a business now out of teaching people to type because you can see that people are very slow at interacting and that is the method of the keyboard - you can use ink, you can use voice-to-text, but predominantly it's typing. So if they're going to get going, just brush up on your typing skills."

"I think now there's a need to understand some html, and the other things that go towards making up a web page. because you're missing out on the richness that you can achieve. So if you don't understand how to embed your short youtube video onto one of the pages on your site, then you're going to fall behind. So it's important. "

"I don't think it's very difficult. I certainly think it's much easier than learning a new foreign language. Again, you can do it in stage, some people struggle to just add links to what they're writing, others struggle to add images - these are two straight forward things - and you just have to talk to someone that knows how to do it and let them explain it, and they're all out there willing to do that on these social networks."

"if they're talking to me about something, I'm giving them some of my knowledge, because it's pointless it all being locked inside my head - I would prefer it being out there and being used."

"That they're watching me, hopefully. Or listening to me. Or reading me. You have to believe that the rest of the world is actually looking at what you're doing, otherwise it's going to be a rather pointless activity."

Read or listen to the full Andrew Wilcox transcript and podcast on Networking.

Our index of Networking podcasts

Liam Beale

Business Development Manager

PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Nick Bush on Change Management

"My name is Nick Bush and I’m an independent consultant and I help organisations clarify and organise their strategies and their business transformation."

"I spent around about ten years in working in the area of change management - business reengineering, transforming IT departments, and various other functions - as a consultant, and then for the last nine years I’ve been putting into practice those techniques, whilst working for a large UK telecoms provider."

"I think that’s a very interesting distinction to make. I think we can define a change project as a project in which you’re changing an aspect of your business or organisation over time, and like any project it’s got a start and an end date, and some measures of success. But the distinction between that and a transformational change project is that a transformational change project is one where you’re changing your organisation so it is completely different from the one that you set out with."

"So, if for example, you’re a large telecoms company and you have a legacy of working primarily as a telephone services provider, and then over the years you make the transition to the world of internet and broadband, and then ultimately to IT and home entertainment services. As we can observe in the UK market today."

"I think that before you look at that, a really frank conversation is needed with the sponsor, to really understand if he or she is really up for this. If it’s a transformational change project then it’s immensely easy - and I’m just as guilty of this as anybody else - to underestimate the scale of the effort and investment required to make a major or radical change."

"And also, for the sponsors themselves, they’re very likely to have to go through a rather profound personal transformation because if you’re seeking a really radical way of changing the way that an organisation works, then it’s very likely that whatever’s brought them to this leadership and success that they have today, is probably inappropriate and insufficient to bring them into the new challenges that they’ll soon be facing."

"Yes, I’ve seen this quite recently in the work that I’ve done, the leaders of that change and the leaders of that organisation will talk a good game’, if you like - but it’s very hard for the other people in that organisation to really pick up that anything has fundamentally changed in the way that those organisational efforts are lead from the top. Therefore it doesn’t really filter down effectively to the people who are actually able to put into effect that change."

"I think that there are about five main reasons in total that change fails- I’m sure that if I thought about it some more I could come up with a lot more! But this issue of sponsor engagement is absolutely fundamental, as I said before. And in one project I was running, we did have the ’are you up for this?’ conversation about three months into the project. It was at the point where we had done enough analysis on the problem to articulate the degree of transformation required, and where the efforts really needed to be focused. At that point the sponsor, because of a number of things that were happening to them elsewhere, backed a way from it and took a path that was less radical and less aggressive, and obviously didn’t achieve the results that we thought that they could achieve."

"So that’s the key thing to get right - and then to ensure the sponsor then stays engaged all the way through the process. "

"And again it’s very easy to think that it’s enough to communicate in one way, with people who are effected by the change and not get and listen to their feedback, and indeed not get their ideas about how best the change can be effected within the organisation."

"Another area where things can go wrong is in the area of symbolic and tangible change. People need to see a change effort take effect quickly, or some effect so that even if the overall goals of the program aren’t achieved, then there will be some symbolic or tangible change in the way things are organised. So people say ‘ah yes, we’ve started!’ This is a different era that we’re now moving into."

Read or listen to the full Nick Bush transcript and podcast on Managing Change

Our index of Managing Change podcasts

Nick can be contacted at Open Chord Ltd

Liam Beale

Business Development Manager

PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Richard Sanders on the Benefits of NLP

"I had a fairly odd introduction to NLP and a fairly rapid one"
"I had been working as a consultant for three or four years and was looking for a way to channel my development, my influencing skills, listening skills, and came across NLP there, really from scratch. So I did the practitioner course as quickly as I could. "

"Having done the first session I realised that I had a number of the skills I needed, in part, already - and then built on that with the practitioner course, and then started to use that directly in my consulting career, and since then in my corporate career as well."

"I think it’s across the whole spectrum of NLP, certainly in language and the observation part that goes with that. I'm definitely aware of the reference system and the language that people use with me and mirroring back. Body language is another area that I'm very aware of, and again using very basic techniques to mirror"

"Some other techniques that come in there are actually around the written use of NLP. Writing reports, writing emails certainly. There's as much of an application there to get people to do what you need them to do, as anywhere else. On some levels you call that common sense for language, but actually a lot of it is picked up from the framework of NLP"

"I certainly don't see it as manipulation. I think in the workplace there are so many barriers in terms of making logical decisions - history and politics, and personal preconceptions about a situation - Maybe you've tried a project before that's failed"

"The way I see NLP is unlocking some of that baggage, or at least understanding it - which can then help people get to the right answers - the logical answers"

"Definitely. I was just thinking about the pictures that I have in my head. I definitely consider myself to be breaking down this big granite block, and the answer's in there somewhere, it's always been there - it's not that you have to create it from fresh, it’s that you’re chipping away at what other people or history has put in place that prevents the solution from being obvious"
"There are lots of examples. Depending on which time period we talk about, you have different projects. So again I'd go into my consulting proofs for some more obvious, less sensitive answers. There are some recently, but they're a bit more sensitive"

"In my history, those projects where you're dealing with highly sensitive issues, where the organisation structure changes, changing of ownership of business's - what NLP has allowed me to do is to get past these individuals who have these big preconceptions about a situation, to help me understand where they're coming from and also the reference system that would work particularly well to articulate to them a different view of the future - or at least to make sense of what they're articulating to me, and kind of play that back"

"So it’s given me the framework to break down some of the less tangible issues, as some people would see them - I actually see them as pretty tangible - and put them into an approach, and work with that approach to get a decision made"

Read or listen to the full Richard Sanders transcript and podcast on NLP Benefits.

Our index of NLP Benefits podcasts

Liam Beale

Business Development Manager

PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Rory Woolridge on Sales

"And the sales experience really started at about the age of Eleven. I particularly remember an episode of borrowing some plums from a field, and then selling them some hundred yards away from a fruit and veg guy, just under their prices. So that was good fun."

"So I guess Ive been selling for a long time. I'm Fifty Three at the moment. My current joy is to deal with accountants and that's with insurance from tax investigations. So that's a very exciting subject - but there is a need there and I help people fulfil that need."

"Well I think really the key steps, and the first thing of all, I'm sure people have heard of "the blink of an eye" approach, where people will make an assumption about what is in front of them or who is in front of them - so I tend to make sure that in the first instance that I'm fully prepared - I know before I meet my prospect that I understand who they are, where they are - understand a little bit about the company - so that I can be positive from the moment that I walk in through the door."

"So really I think that the first step start prior to my meeting of meeting the prospect, and making sure - dressed appropriately - why I say that is because at one stage I did appliance leasing. Now, had I got onto the farm in a suit, I probably would have been shot, because they probably thought that I had come from the inland revenue. I had to buy some tweed jackets and all that kind of stuff so that I fitted in to the environment that I was actually working in."
So my first step was I said "We'll start with myself and how I'm presenting myself and also the knowledge I have about the company, and probably of the individual."

"I think what then comes next - you have to assume that the deal comes to me - so they feel that they have a need for the product that we are providing in the marketplace. It may be that they have an existing product and they're looking at maybe moving away from that supplier. It may be that they have not had this product before even though its been available for twenty-two years and perhaps they have some questions or some reservations about the product."
"So the next step really is going to be qualification. What is it that they're actually looking for, or what is it that they have at the moment? What is it that they have? What is it that they think is good about what they have? And what are they not so pleased about?"

"Then maybe I can look at my approach from that point."

"It depends on the meeting. Obviously everybody's different, they all need a different approach. The main thing really is information that you can gather - and quite often sales people will forget that they only have one mouth, but they do have two ears - and most sales people will go in on their own agenda to sell what they think is right before actually listening to the prospect and what it is that they actually need."

"I think you then have to agree on the process, you have to agree what the client actually needs - once you've established that and I tend to write things down because I think it tend to make things more powerful - especially for the person opposite you - if you write something down, they will watch you write that - that then becomes important."

"So if there is a specific need I think "Oh good, we can make a good start with that," because that's something that they could really need - and its something that you could then go to later to reinforce, why they should buy."

"So I think really the next thing is getting a full agreement on what it is that they require"

Read or listen to the full Rory Woolridge transcript and podcast on Sales.

Our index of Sales podcasts

Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Brian Mahoney on Hypnosis

Brian Mahoney is a certified hypnotherapist and master hypnotist who runs Boston Hypnosis. He has trained with many of the worlds leading NLP and hypnosis trainers and practitioners.
"I am Brian Mahoney, I run Boston hypnosis in Boston Massachusetts, over in the US, I do therapeutic hypnosis on a really wide area of issues, mainly behavioural, emotional, although there are some physical issues as well."

"Well, you've got the textbook definition 'a state of highly focused attention - for the purpose of selective thinking' and there's others as well. For my purposes, hypnosis is a state, it's a state for people to get some work done so people can get some things solved for themselves."

"Well, it's kind of interesting. I think with a lot of people in the NLP community my door was Tony Robbins. I did a lot of his stuff through the nineties, as I was in a more traditional business career, and at the tail end of that I began to do some coaching work with some guys that I was managing."

"And I was just wowed by the quality of results that these guys got for themselves, with this pretty basic stuff that I was teaching them from Tony Robins, Dale Carnagy, Steven Covey, so I decided that I liked coaching. and when I left the company I was with I began to do some coaching work and I pretty quickly realised that the type of tools that I had didn't really have the horce power I needed to really help people sort some things out within themselves."
"And I knew that Tony came out of NLP so I decided 'well, I should learn this stuff.' so I went to see John Grinder in London in 2003, and from then it was just a whirlwind of training, with who I think really are the best minds in NLP, and hypnosis. And in 2004 I opened the doors at Boston hypnosis."

"Well from the career standpoint it's enormously rewarding, it's rewarding in the way that every day I get to see people solving major life problems for themselves, or almost every day anyway, and there's a lot of satisfaction to be found in there."

Read or listen to the full Brian Mahoney transcript and podcast on Hypnosis

Our index of Hypnosis podcasts

Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Stuart Pedley-Smith on the Benefits of NLP

"My name is Stuart Pedley-Smith. I work for a company called Kaplan Financial. And what we do is prepare people to sit their final level accountancy exams. And also, more recently look for methods for preparing people for CPD, the continued professional development element of becoming an accountant."

"The qualification in the exam is only one sort of element of training, all professional bodies have become keen to ensure that their membership remain up to date. So all qualified accountants now are required to undertake a degree of continued professional development to keep up to date with their subject."

"I’ve been involved in NLP for the best part of ten years now. And I came to do it by being particularly interested in how you can put words and language together to influence people, also as a professional presenter, with a view to influence so not only would they listen to what I would say, but also they would take action."

"In my job, and in a certain extent in my career, it’s helped me with a framework. It’s provided - the old cliché I suppose is that we’re doing most of these things anyway. It’s provided me with a framework to identify instinctively what works. You get good at knowing what works by watching people’s reaction. But that’s just called experience. What NLP has done for me is that it’s provided me with an analytical structure to make sense of my experience."

"When I did my NLP, I probably sat there- (the course that you do is modular- which was one of the reasons I was keen to do it). I probably sat there for two modules over a period of six months and I probably sat there looking around the room thinking - this isn’t working for me, I’m not sure I’m getting this, I’m not even sure I should be in the room here. But having persevered and stuck with it and then got back for another module, listened to what people said it really came together. "

"I was very pleased that I went through the exercises almost without questioning them first, because I think if I questioned them first, with the way I think about things I would have analysed them to death. So go along, do the exercises, give yourself a break in between. Think about how it could be applied and how it does work in the real world. Go back, and you know, do it over a slightly longer period."

"I think sometimes if it’s rushed you’ll just go out the other end and go, "Oh, I just finished that" and you’ve never really finished. I’ve certainly not finished……. "

Read or listen to the full Stuart Pedley-Smith transcript and podcast on NLP.

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Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : James Prior on Benefits on NLP

"My name’s James Prior. I work for AstraZeneca, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. I’m the Organisational Development Partner. My role is really looking after leadership development; it’s also looking after the culture within the business considering where we’re headed as a successful organisation, and looking at the business skills offerings we have. "
"Yes, it’s quite a big role. And obviously I don’t do all that on my own. I have a team of two people as well who help support me in those areas."

"Over the years quite a bit, working up to my Master Practitioner qualification in coaching, leadership development and change management."

"I think it allowed me to really focus on building rapport and relationships with people. And NLP has both allowed me to pick on audio clues and visual clues. To really get a sense of peoples core values and identity. So that we can shape the offerings we have, so that we know that they’re aimed at the right areas that people want to improve."

"I think it’s helped me in expanding my career in allowing me to take on new opportunities. I think in the sense that it’s allowed me to build relationships far quicker than if I didn’t have the skills. But it is also about understanding people. It’s allowed me to specialise in the area that I’m very passionate about - leadership. It has big implications for improvement in leadership in many areas. In building relationships and enabling people to see the benefit of communicating really well."

"My drive and ambition is a big motivator for me. As well as taking responsibility for my own development. I come from a philosophy that things don’t come to you, you have to go looking for them. I work very hard on my own personal development programme. Working hard with external supplies like yourself, and working very closely with the company putting core business cases together. This enables me to broaden my career, broaden my experience and allows me to move on through AstraZeneca.!

"The biggest area for me is listening to people, really listening, in order to understand people on a number of different levels. This includes body language, tone of voice, use of language and beliefs. This has enabled me to be really challenging in some areas. I think people find me challenging sometimes but in the end they see a huge benefit because it allows them to challenge some of their own behaviours and beliefs."

"I’m going to be really honest. I think the first thing I’d advise is just have a go! "
I think from a corporate point of view NLP has sometimes some quite bad press. People don’t really understand what it’s about and they fill in the blanks without ever really trying it themselves.

"So my advice to people is to actually have a go but also speak to some practitioners who really understand it and use it and have been successful. And then go to some taster evenings, like you do yourself, and really explore for yourself what it’s about."

Read or listen to the James Prior transcript and podcast on NLP.

Our index of NLP podcasts

Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Stephen Gilligan on Hypnosis

Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D., is a licensed Psychologist practicing in Encinitas, CA. Stephen was among the group of students that gathered around the founders of NLP during its formation at U.C. Santa Cruz from 1974-1977. Milton Erickson and Gregory Bateson became his teachers and mentors.

"I'm a psychologist. I live in San Diego, California. And professionally speaking, for the last thirty two-thirty three years, I've been doing a variety of therapeutic work, coaching work related to hypnotic work. I started out in the late seventies as a student of UC Santa Cruz and I was a student of Bandler and Grinder, I actually met them when they first got together - I was a student of Grinders. And about a year into that they went out and met Milton Erickson and I was just thoroughly taken by what they had brought back, and the next time they went I went with them and met Erickson in 1974 and became a student of his for the next six years until he died in 1980. So a lot of my work has that as a core - Ericksonian hypnotic trance, and a number of other things have become integrated into that over the years, including a lot of stuff from Aikido and Buddhism, and some from other aspects of psychology."

"Well I think it's important to distinguish between hypnosis and trance, most people don't, and it leads to a lot of misunderstanding. So in order to define hypnosis I would first have to define trance. One of the most important aspects of Erickson's legacy was emphasising trance, not as artificial, but as naturalistic, and that is it doesn't come from hypnotic suggestion, it comes from consciousness itself - that it's a natural part of peoples learning states and of their consciousness. I think we could say in the most succinct way that trance is the way that occurs any time that identity is disrupted."

"And of course identity might be disrupted in a number of ways, you might get traumatised, you might be at the end of an identity cycle or a learning cycle in your life. I was just working with somebody for example, that was going through retirement - that you might call the end of a identity cycle for that person. Your identity might get disrupted because of things that happen in the world, you might get married, divorced, you might have a child, your child leaves home, a parent dies, you get ill, you get a new job, you change your residence. Those would be what we call events at the identity level, and it creates a break in the identity box, if you will, that you've been walking around in. "

"So because you need to create new identity patterns at those pivotal points, nature has supplied consciousness with this learning state that we call trance - so trance is natural. And like it or not you're going to go into a trance at least periodically in your path."

"Now the thing about trance I would say, is that it's incomplete. It needs a human context. And so the social ritual is able to absorb it, to give it a container, connect it with some traditions or some patterns that allow something that is that coming up in trance, be made artistically into something that has human value. So another way of saying that is what your unconscious gives you in trance is not complete, it's only half human. so you need someway to be able to absorb it in order to be able to shift it into something that has full human value. And that's why I say hypnosis is one of those ritual processes if you will. If a way that you can safely create a container, and receive the unconscious and at full throttle be able to open to the more primitive, primordial consciousness. and that has some set of tools that you can gracefully, I hope, effectively guide it, into a thing that has a full human form and full human expression. "
"So trance is the experience, hypnosis is the social ritual to guide the experience. "

Read or listen to the Stephen Gilligan transcript and podcast on Hypnosis.

Our index of Hypnosis podcasts

Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : David Sales on Leadership

David is an energetic practitioner, coach and speaker on effective leadership. His approach is based firmly in his experiences of leading teams through challenging situations. He honed his skills and values in the changing world of UK telecommunications, as the industry moved from a monopoly environment to the competitive battleground of today.

"It's a very personal thing I think, and different people like to use different words, but for me really the essence of it is really around three things, in terms of the person. I think it's all about bravery, I think it's about excitement, and I think it's about determination - all focused around creating change in an organisation, and obviously that change can vary greatly depending on what's needed and what's appropriate."

"But for me the change has to have meaning, to the organisation and to the world, and it has to be sustainable - so leadership is about the kind of energies and skills that you bring to create change."

"I think the one that would be most useful, because it was certain one of my most impactful, informative experience is when I was the CEO of BT conferencing. Which was a stand-alone business, a global business running all of the telecoms scene with video-conferencing technology that BT provided to its costumers."

"There were several, and my role their changed over time for five or six years - so when I first joined, the big issue, that hit me in the face straight away was the organisation, that had grown fairly rapidly, but had grown in a process way so that customers had been forgotten."

"The purpose of the business was to run an efficient process and give the customers a satisfying experience."

"So the first issue was to remind people that customers were top of the pile - that if they were going to have a successful business, that is where the focus would be, not internally."

"And during the time, as we began to expand on that business ethic, we had to change the business from one that was really trying to serving equipment, like business conferencing terminals, to a service business when we were really running telecoms, audio-conferencing, and video-conferencing services. So that was a big system change, a big change internally. "

"In parallel with all of that, we were expanding globally - originally it was an English business, and by the time I left we were operating in twelve countries and the US, currently the biggest market, was coming up the rails as it were to chase the UK in terms of sales. "

"The key aspects of leadership for me there were, number one, that we were doing in a good direction, for everybody in the company - and there are different aspects of that - but overall you must have the handle of where you're aiming to take the organisation, in both the short term and the long term in explaining that to people and you must be consistent, every day of every week of every month. "

"Now over a year or so, of course the market changes, and things might change, but it's your responsibility to maintain the direction of the business."

"The next thing is to champion customers as I've mentioned before, in any reasonably sized organisation, the work that we're doing now would suggest that an organisation of less than twenty people is very good at focusing on customers, but when you start getting bigger than that, the company and the internal processes - sometimes people forget that the customers are the reason that we exist."

"So being the customers champion in an organisation of seven hundred people was important for a leader today. There are a couple of internal things, I think, for a leader to do. One of those is to remember that its your role to help people through the changes that you're instigating - and that at the end of the day change does not stick in an organisation unless the people are behind it, with it, and happy about it."

"And that's much more difficult than just announcing a reorganisation, you need to understand the psychology of the people within the organisation as well as how to make them feel comfortable with the ongoing changes."

"And then finally, and this is specific to the fact that we were an organisation within a bigger organisation - was to provide air cover. So the politics, and the pressures that exist within a bigger company, that constantly try and distract a small organisation from it's task - if a leader can deflect those, with an efficient use of the time, and not seven hundred people trying to deflect them."

" There are lots of resources, but the more that I thought about it at the time - and I have to say, the more that I look back at it - only one resource really matters, and that's the people."


Read or listen to the full David Sales transcript and podcast on Leadership.



Our index of Leadership podcasts

Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Peta Stapleton on Health

Dr Peta Stapleton has 14 years experience as a registered Psychologist in the State of Queensland, Australia and has completed a Bachelor of Arts, Postgraduate Diploma of Professional Psychology and Doctor of Philosophy. She divides her time between lecturing for the School of Health, Griffith University, coordinating psychological research trials into new therapies, and private practice, specialising in addictions and eating disorders.

(Photo Dr Peta Stapleton and Terri Sheldon)

"I guess my official title is Dr Peta Stapleton, I'm a registered and qualified psychologist here in Australia, and have been for about fifteen years. My official job is as one of the lecturers in medicine at Griffith University which is one of the universities here in Queensland."

"My specialty areas I guess, as far as health goes, is that for fifteen years I've worked in the areas of eating disorders, addiction, obesity - and in line with being a psychologist, I'm a certified practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Time-line Therapy and EFT, or the Emotional Freedom Technique."

"And I'm also a member of The Health College of the Australian Psychological Society, which I guess sums up that most of my work clinically is in the health area."

"I guess for me, because I'm in the area of particularly physical health, with eating issues and obesity, health for me is all encompassing - it's not just about health as in physical health, so how you eat, you eating habits, your physical exercise. "

"But to me it's also your connection with your mind, so it's very much about how healthy things are in between your ears - how your looking after yourself in many ways. Listening to your own body and your own needs is very high up on my list of importance - and my understanding and definition of what health is. "

"So it might be that it's not only resting when you need to rest eating what your body wants to eat, drinking good water. but for me health extends into lifestyle things like finding happiness in life, or in your job or your career - it might be meditation or relaxation, it might be spending time with your family or any daily activity that suits you."

"So health for me goes well beyond what we might do physically, with our bodies and what we feed ourselves, but also stretching into that area of emotionally how sound we are as well."
"For me it would encompass some of those ideas that you'd have somebody that listens to their own body physically. So they would obviously look after their nutritional needs, drink good water and make sure that those needs are being met."

"But also finding some physical activity that suits them - it might not be that they join a gym to get their activity everyday, but it might be that they're into yoga, or love walking down the beach with kids in the pram, that kind of thing."

Read or listen to the full Dr Peta Stapleton transcript

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Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Dexter Moscow on Presentation

"A really good presentation is really like any good story. It should have a beginning a middle and an end. It should be impactful and I suppose open with a really strong message. "

"And a strong indication of who that person is, and to end with a call to action if that’s what’s required."

"The first thing that I would do – because we’re led to believe that public speaking is one of the most fearful things that we will do in our lives. So I would lend from your experience, and I would ask people to visualise the positive outcome of this presentation and see people in their mind applauding and congratulating them on a fantastic presentation, and saying ‘what a wonderful message! We need to go and do something!” So not just about presenting, but really making it impactful, making people take action – so that’s the first thing I would do, if fear is an issue."

"Then I would suggest that they really plan, and rehearse – begin to think about what they need to say and the message that they need to convey. "

"Well, it’s a bit of self advertising here, but because of my years of experience working in television and also pitching people business as well I’ve developed what I call the ‘seven keys to perfect communication’ and the perfect element is an acronym that when you have those seven keys you will be successful, and I can explain that a little bit more if you wish to.

"Perfect, as I say is an acronym that stands for the key elements that I believe a presentation should contain. I’ll just run through them very briefly for you. "

"P stands for Personal Impact, so that means what will we look like and how we sound when we first stand up."

"The second element, the first E, if you like, is Emotional Connection, when we make an emotional connection with people, we show who we are, we tell stories about ourselves – then that really creates a connection with you and your audience, whoever that audience might be."

"Then the R is the Right to Talk, really what we’ve done in our lives – will give us a right to talk in our subjects, or to motivate, or to explain to somebody that what we do is what we believe is right. "

"The F stands for Facts. Because after initially we’ve made that connection with somebody, we have to give them the facts, we have to tell them what we’ve succeeded at, the bottom line figures if you like. If we’re in a business environment, what we’ve achieved in terms of percentage, various elements like that."

"The next E is an Encapsulation of what we do. We live in a sound-byte society, so people don’t want lots of information thrust at them. They want it packaged. So if you can encapsulate what you do in key phrases, we see it all the time, Nike has ‘Just do It’, ‘Finger Licking Good’ we see it all the time – Or Coke ‘The Real Thing’ when we encapsulate a message, and if we can make an emotional connection with that message as well, then that can be really effective."

"The next element of perfect is C, standing for Credibility. That could be testimonials, that could again be relating facts, but in a much more personal way. So our own personal credibility."

"And the last element of perfect T, which is The Company, our company, what we’ve achieved, and the companies that we’ve worked with, and the people that we’ve worked with."

Read of listen to the full Dexter Moscow transcript and podcast on Presenting.

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Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast extract ; Richard La Ruina on Seduction

"I'm currently a fulltime trainer, I train men in how to be better with women, and we do this in a different way to life coaches and other people, we actually train guys in practical, usable techniques."

"We demonstrate for them on women and we actually take them out and hone their skills until they're able to do the things that they come to be able to learn - for example getting dates, getting numbers, being more attractive, we'll give them a guide to fashion, we'll work on them in every way."

"And as well as doing that I run the business, I've just written a book the book that you're talking about 'The Natural Art of Seduction'. My background is that I was actually very bad with women myself, and I had to learn all of this stuff from scratch. I was someone that was bad socially, I was painfully shy, I was an introvert, and I was kind of stuck in a rut - I didn't have the ability to make friends, and I didn't have the ability to socialise, and of course I didn't have the ability to meet women, get them attracted to me, get dates, to be interesting on dates, and all these things that are very important in having a happy love life."

"I think a lot of guys have heard of Ross Jefferies, and I did actually see his materials a while back, he does NLP for seduction basically - and I was studying NLP, the old Bandler and Grinder books and those sorts of things, but I didn't actually take it seriously, that wasn't the turning point for me."

"The turning point for me when I met an American seduction-guru by chance in Leister Square, and he recommended some books and websites, and that started my journey. At first it was just six months of just staying in my house and reading books and watching videos and listening to audio, and after that it was applying that in the real world in London."

"The basic idea is based on the type of customer I get and just the problems that I normally encounter when I'm teaching someone. These are normally guys that are interesting, they're nice guys that would make a good boyfriend, and they're unable to demonstrate that to a girl in the first few minutes - they start the conversation in a boring way, they ask lots of boring questions, and they're very low energy - and it makes them very hard to get started, to get the good first impression."

Read of listen to the full Richard La Ruina transcript and podcast on Seduction.

Our index of Seduction podcasts


Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : John La Valle on Hypnosis

John La Valle is a Licensed Master Trainer of NLP™ & DHE™, who has been in the training & development field for almost twenty-five years and who has brought NLP™ and DHE™ into the business arena for the past 20+ years.

"I have to tell you – years and years and years ago, oh gosh, I must have been twelve, or even thirteen – something like that – I was fascinated by the idea of hypnosis, and I remember seeing those little ads at the backs of comic books and things like that, and the guy with the darts coming out of his eyes and the hypnotron wheel, and I remember seeing those and thinking ‘whoa, this stuff looks really cool!’, and so I learned hypnosis and all of these things. Of course I was only young at the time so didn’t really get into it, but it really peeked my interest, that far back. "

"And then a friend of mine, I forget how old I was, I might have been maybe in my twenties, early twenties – maybe I was twenty years old or so – and I’m happily talking to a friend of mine, and happened to mention that I was interested in some hypnosis, and learning hypnosis and what it was about, and he told me that he was actually doing hypnosis, which I really didn’t have any idea that he was. And he sent me one of these self-hypnosis cassette tapes. "

"So I immediately plugged it in. And I was fascinated. I went into an altered state and was able to program myself based on the instructions on the tape where it said ‘at the end of this tape if you want to stay in this nice relaxed state’ or whatever it was ‘or if you want to relax for another ten minutes past that, or to tell yourself that’ whatever, and it happened, and I was really really amazed that I could give myself a set of instructions in a deep altered state and it would work."

"I’ve been able to relax better with it, I’ve been able to reprogram myself better with it, I’ve been able to do all kinds of things, I guess. I’ve learned a lot of things over the last twenty years or so. One of them being that just about anything is possible in trance, and so if there’s something that people want to try out, is that they ought to try it in an altered state and the altered state by the way, is really a chemical state change that we produce in our brain – now I do think it’s about exquisite communication, I believe hypnosis is going on all the time. That’s how people change beliefs, they could be watching TV and watching the news, getting hit with so many things of the same topic, and also they’ll be hit with something that they then realise is true. "

"So I really believe that it’s going on, I believe that it’s going on all of the time. So for me it’s been a way for me to go in and reprogram some things that I’ve needed to reprogram for myself, even to learn some things, and more than anything else to learn to relax when I want to."

"Well, you know Michael, when I look at it, there are a couple of things – I said earlier that I really believe that hypnosis is exquisite communication which is really going on all the time, I think that the main use that most people think that it’s for is for therapeutic or coaching types of activities, things where they want to change personal behaviour. But the fact is, I believe that it’s really going on and being used in the mainstream by media, by politicians and things like that, whether they know it or not – so the only other question is – if they don’t know it, than they ought to, and if they do know it there’s more than that many uses for it."

"So I hear lots of people making distinctions where they want to know the difference between the conscious and the unconscious mind, which of course don’t really exist in an abstract sense, but to me they do exist in terms of how much activity is going on. So conscious is what we’re aware of and unconscious it what we’re not aware of. But everything is really going on, so my thought is, if they’re consciously aware of what’s going on then they know, and if they’re not, it doesn’t mean that these process’s are no longer occurring."

Read of listen to the full John La Valle transcript and podcast on Hypnosis.

Our index of Hypnosis podcasts


Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Andy Preston on Cold Calling

Andy is an International Expert in Cold Call Techniques, Objection Handling, Getting Past Gatekeepers, Making More Appointments, and Sales Motivation.

"Cold Calling, to me, is where you have to make an either telephone call, or face-to-face visit, to people that you don't necessarily have any contact with in the past - that aren't likely to remember you, that aren't likely to have had any contact with you, that might not have any idea who you are - and it's a very cold introduction, IE, there's no warmness to it, there's no prior contact, and I'm expecting there to be some resistance in having them engage in conversation with you."

"Well, it's an interesting question Michael because I know a number of my clients, because of my background and success in sales, they come to me because I help to differentiate themselves from the competition. So a lot of the work that I find myself doing these days is in companies having a similar product or service to other companies, be able to differentiate themselves between those companies and therefore get the business."

"So I've become quite a big fan of doing something different, and if every single person is doing things one way, I like to be a little bit contrary and do things a little bit differently. While, certainly when I started my sales career fifteen years ago Cold Calling over the phone, Cold Calling face to face, dropping in on people - was commonplace - it's become less popular, or less cool to do it, particularly with the advent of the Internet, or Internet marketing by sending emails."

"So I think that it's not quite a lost art yet, but a lot less people are doing it. So therefore all of the people that are still doing it are getting very good results."

"Well I actually started off life, quite bizarrely as a professional buyer, which I think gives me a very good insight into why people buy, why buyers almost beat up salespeople and business owners, because it gives me a lot of advantages in the psychological negotiation side"

"I then started off at cold calling over the phone and the top appointment maker for every company I ever worked for, I then did cold calling face to face, in one situation for commission only, which is very hardcore. And then became not only top salesperson in my company but also top person in the industry in what I did. Then as companies do is duly promote the best salespeople to sales manager and sales director"

"So I lost my data range, got very bored of the frustration managing paperwork and moved into sales training, cold calling training, particularly because most of the people that were hiring to train my team were not experienced in sales, some had never been in sales, some had never picked a phone up in their life."

"How on Earth can I bring you in on thousands of pounds per day on teaching my team how to sell, when you've never sold yourself?'' It was very, very strange - and I find generally, that there is not many people who are good at cold calling, there are not many people who are good at training people how to cold call, and there are certainly very few people who are good at both.

Read or listen to the full Andy Preston transcript and podcast on Cold Calling.

Our index of Sales podcasts


Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training