Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Nick Kemp

I realise that Nick Kemp is not very well known, but StanNLP65 asked me to write about him and since I've met Nick several times while assisting on Bandler's training in London, I'm happy to give some feedback.

Nick is an NLP Trainer based in the North of England (Leeds or Manchester, not quite sure) and the only reason I know him is because both of us were assisting on the Bandler/McKenna-Breen courses in London. The last time I met him was during one of Derren Brown's TV specials where all sorts of NLP people were invited to come to London. Since then, we only had a few exchanges in online groups.

He has very good rapport skills and seems to be very good at PR, meaning he is good at getting people to think that he is an excellent trainer. According to StanNLP65 "Nick's Master Prac was mostly about Nick and what a great trainer he is. Training was okay, though!"

So, it seems that as a trainer he is certainly not one of the best, but probably not one of the worst.

He used to have a business partnership with Tina Taylor, an NLP "Master" Trainer, who is nice enough, but quite a lightweight when it comes to NLP training. She also was one of the perennial assistants at the McKenna-Breen courses in London. They had some kind of a bust-up, but I don't know any details.

Nick is also one of the few trainers (that I know of) who has been kicked out of the Society of NLP (SNLP), which should make him my hero (fight the machine!), but again, I don't know what really happened.

Nick is also very vocal on LinkedIn, where he has become a top contributor on several forums/groups by posting LOL and ME TOO in just about every thread, which I find highly annoying.

One thing that he deserves a lot of credit for, though, is his re-discovery of Frank Farelly, creator of Provocative Therapy and one of the forgotten (or at least rarely mentioned) therapists who were modeled by Bandler and Grinder when they started the whole NLP thing. Provocative therapy, if done by a master, is a wonder to behold, so kudos to Nick for introducing Frank to a wider audience.

Reviewing the NLP Assistants in London

After I had asked in an earlier post which NLP trainers you would like to hear about, I received several emails from people who wanted me to comment on certain assistants on Richard Bandler's and Paul McKenna's NLP courses in London.

They asked about

- the psychic vampire who everybody tried to avoid

- the top assistant who was thought to be so good at getting people into trance because his breath could stun a rhino

- the NLP Master Trainer who got her certificate because she sucked up to Richard

- Richard Bandler's "Apprentices" who ranged from highly impressive and skilled to total morons

I thought about commenting on those people, but really, none of them are household names in the field of NLP (maybe the "Master Trainer"), so any comments from me would just be mean and nasty and I would hope that I've got most of the nastiness out of my system.

I might actually mention one of them, but need to do a bit of research, so no names at this point:

As far as I know, Rhinobreath actually took somebody's gig to run an NLP course abroad, because he was not bothered about certain ethics, whereas the trainer who was first invited to run the course, was.

If I got the story right, then the foreign promoter wanted the original trainer to cut some corners, which he declined to do.

So the promoter kicked him out, and all of a sudden, Rhinobreath was announced as doing the course, and if my information is correct, ran at least 2 of those courses and finally stopped being invited back after he tried to push his "own" courses, which apparently were not very well received.

For now, I will focus on the more well-known NLP Trainers and the next one coming up will be Wyatt Woodsmall.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Joseph Riggio

Maybe you also agree with the statement that it is okay to be the smartest person in the room, but that it is not okay to let everybody know it.

Whenever Joseph is in the room, it is pretty obvious that he is the smartest person in it (even if I am in the same room....).

And that is the main problem I have with him: he comes across as an incredibly arrogant asshole.

But that is actually the only issue I have with him, and, honestly, this might be more of a problem with my own self-esteem than him being overbearingly confident.

He is a treasure trove of knowledge, his speech at the ANLP conference in 2007 (I think) was one of the best speeches I have ever heard. He was mixing NLP, Spiral Dynamics, and Mythology into a work of genius. I think this is what he calls the Mythoself Process, but I actually have no clue what it is about, because whenever I ask people who attended his seminars on it, they get a tranced-out look on their faces and say that it was fantastic, but they can't explain why.

No matter, Joseph is an exceptionally skilled hypnotist, NLP trainer, speaker, and coach.

Very highly recommended!

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Tad James

I had read books on personal development for years and had also already encountered NLP through the books of Anthony Robbins, but I had never attended a live seminar until I traveled to London to see Tad James deliver "The Secret of Creating Your Future".

This was sometime in the early 90s and since I had not heard of Tad James before and just went because I liked the title of the seminar, I had no idea what to expect.

Here is my review in a nutshell:

Seminar: excellent
Trainer: patronising

The seminar was really good and I learned a lot of tools, some of which I still use.

It went like this:

find out about your time line
clear past blocks/limiting decisions
clear past negative feelings
align your values
put good stuff into your future time line

Looking back at the seminar with my current knowledge, the biggest complaint would be that it was a 3-day seminar. I normally teach all those things in maybe half a day, including different applications and methods of using your time line.

My biggest complaint back then was that I and other delegates felt quite unsupported when we had questions or challenges.

And I really hated that the whole course seemed to be a setup for selling us other seminars, books, and tape sets (remember audio tapes? Yes, I am that old!).

As I was so inexperienced, I fell for it and bought some tapes, books and also  attended an intro day on Huna, which was just not very good. I trained with several other people in Huna and they would eat Tad James for breakfast.

Oh yes, Tad James, let's see: Back then I did not know better, so thought he must be quite good, but listening to his tapes now and having seen him since, I must say that he is the most patronising NLP/Personal Development trainer I have ever encountered! 

He talks down to you. He does not answer questions properly. He is obviously so happy when he uses "clever" language patterns. He is constantly trying to upsell stuff (not as badly as his disciple David Shephard, but it still gets pretty annoying).

I met his son Matthew once at an NLP conference and while he had good rapport skills, he came across as a lightweight.  

One last thing about Tad: in 2000 he (well, Matthew actually did it) bought the web domains www.richardbandler.com and www.johngrinder.com and had them forwarded to his own web page. However, he did not know that Grinder and Bandler had their names trademarked and so they had him hand over the  sites pretty quickly. 

Still, quite a despicable and unethical act, methinks.

Make good decisions!


Update: Here is a very interesting comment by Gerrith Wil Lassen on a LinkedIn Group about Time Line Therapy:

"I think there is some confusion here. Interesting to read the story of Tad and his wife from a Wyatt Woodsmall perspective. He brought Timeline to Hawaii 3 years after the discovery in a Workshop about Metaprograms and Beliefesystems in 1982 with Leslie Cameron in Illinois. There was two students: Anne Linden and Frank Stass who did discover the timeline whilst exploring their Metaprograms In-Time and Trough-Time. They asked all the other students, how they experience time. A idea was born. A year later it was demonstrated by Steve Andreas on the 2th NANLP conference and at the same time Robert Dilts was also working with exploring the timeline on the west coast. They did not know from each other. No Bandler involved at all! In fact Timeline was discussed already intensively in the 20s and 30s by Huserl and Heidegger in Europe.

 About 3 years after the workshop in Illinois, Woodsmall started a practitioner group on Hawaii and Tad James and his wife Ardie did participate as students. Tad was immediately fascinated and did explore the Timeline with Marvin Oka and Richard Diehl in a little group, together with Wyatt Woodsmall. Before Internet, nobody had a clue about whats happen in Santa Cruz, in Boulder Colorado or Illinois and Tad seems he was very clever when going to the patent office on Hawaii 5 years after he heart about it and protecting the Timeline on Hawaii. It was never his in first place.

 The guy in the office hasn't heart about NLP at all and nothing about what the other groups have explored the last 8 years already. So Tad James got the patent on Hawaii - and only there! It was a lousy chess move by an Practitioner, who did not understand the rules in our field. Ego wins over the Soul from time to time. NLP belongs to those who carefully learn it and using it and comply with the ethical rules and prepositions."

Just another interesting tidbit about Tad's ethics (and excellent business sense!).

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Paul McKenna

I went on the first large-scale NLP Practitioner course that Richard Bandler conducted in the UK and he was promoted by Paul McKenna and Michael Breen. This was in 1996 or so and there must have been something like 350 participants on the course and the three trainers took turns in being on stage.

Paul was the odd one out. He was obviously the most famous one to the audience (Paul used to be a radio DJ and TV personality), but as a trainer he was just not very good. 

He was given the easiest techniques to demonstrate, but even there he often fell into the trap of picking someone from the audience who was his "type" (blonde, long legs) and who had deer-in-headlight-syndrome. 

I remember one time where he tried to get this girl relaxed on stage and every time she was about to close her eyes, she looked at the audience, started giggling and exclaimed how excited she was to be on stage...

On a personal level, Paul is very friendly. You can talk to him about lots of different things, the only problem is that he has absolutely no attention span. But that might just come with the territory when you are a celebrity...

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Jamie Smart

Jamie Smart is excellent at marketing. His company, Salad Ltd, has put out lots of products and he has marketed them very well.

I haven't been on any of his courses, so can't review Jamie Smart's seminars, only his products.

Do I like them? Not really. Maybe it is because I am actually quite experienced in NLP, but I think that everything he has put out (alright, I have not seen all his stuff, just bought some of the "advanced" things) is basically for beginners. Since there are more beginners than experts, it's probably another proof that Jamie is great at marketing.

I guess I would say that he is okay. He knows his stuff and seems to be a good teacher and a caring guy. You could do much worse.

On a personal level, he is a very nice guy, as we had a few beers together at different conferences.

One thing I don't quite understand is his silly little feud with Eric Robbie about submodality eye accessing cues. There are several blogs out there where they are engaging in one-upmanship which is very annoying, as the three of us had several drinks together and it always seemed to me that they got along quite well.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Overdurf and Silverthorn

I always liked "Training Trances", "Beyond Words", and "Dreaming Realities" and was always intrigued about how Julie Silverthorn and John Overdurf would be on stage, because I had heard reviews that they come across unbearably sweet and cuddly.

Well, they did come across as the Ken and Barbie of the NLP world, but they were aware of it and made it fun to watch their interaction. This was probably the best team presentation I have ever witnessed, because they were amazing at switching between each other, thereby utilising quite an interesting level of nested loops.

The seminar was on coaching and it was fun. They are very good teachers, covered not only basics, but also quite advanced stuff and went from everyday applications to spiritual implications, which I really enjoyed.

Not sure if their work is so different that it warrants a new name: "Humanistic Neuro Linguistic Programming" but I guess differentiation is important.

Biggest negative about the course: it was a four day event and I really think it could and should have been a two day event.

Biggest personal shock: I met a lady on the course who charged (then) fifteen times my rate for a personal sessions, which really rattled my mindset about my self-worth, especially since I thought that she was utterly useless as a therapist or coach...

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Rintu Basu

With all the rapport skills in the world, and all the tools to change your state, you sometimes meet people you just don't like. I met Rintu Basu four or five times and never got along with him.

He always came across as very secretive and having his own agenda, which I guess was the case, because he actually audiotaped several seminars and used some of the things he learned for his own book. Nothing wrong with that, but one thing I really don't like is that he does not acknowledge any of his teachers/sources.

His "Black Book of Persuasion" is good, but if you have ever attended a (good) NLP Practitioner course, you will know this stuff.

I do have to admit, though, that I appreciate his little chapter on the ethical use of language patterns.

I can't review or rank him as a trainer, because I have not attended any of his seminars, but there are some videos of his on youtube, so you can make up your own mind about his skills as a trainer.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Ross Jeffries

Honestly, I hate the whole idea of using NLP, etc for seduction purposes. I think if you are willing to use NLP to get laid, I would only trust you as far as I could throw you. Yes, I know, I'm boring and prude. On the other hand, I have a wonderful girlfriend and got her to like me by just being myself...

I have never attended any of his courses, so I can't review Ross Jeffries' seminars, but I met him twice, once at a Richard Bandler seminar, and then at a John La Tourrette seminar.

Ross Jeffries is a very interesting and intelligent guy. When you get the chance to talk to him away from his hangers-on and disciples, he is great to talk to. Widely read and interested in many different things outside of NLP, he would be an excellent dinner guest.

I used to have two of his audio programmes on tape (yep, long time ago) and had a chance to watch some of his new stuff recently at a colleague's place and despite my reservations about the aim of his products, I must admit that he is fantastic at what he does. Excellent language patterns, good understanding of human motivation, innovative techniques and a good teaching style.

As good an opinion I have of Ross, as bad has been my experience with his students. Just about all the people I have met who only studied with Ross (or other seduction gurus) were, in general, total idiots. Vastly inflated sense of self-importance and feeling incredibly clever about their limited knowledge of NLP/Hypnosis/Magick, etc.

Suggestion: Once you have a good grounding in NLP, try out some of Ross' stuff, if only to see how good he is at teaching and using NLP. And he is very good!