This transcript of an interview was made at one of Richard Bandler's exclusive Masterclasses. In it, a City-based futures broker talks about her attempts to warn HM Treasury of the impending Credit Crunch of 2008, and how she couldn't communicate the message she wanted to get across.
It's interesting to think that if she had had insight into communicating more effectively with NLP, history may have unfolded differently...
J: ...My biggest problem is that I have ideas before their time. And so...
RB: I know how you feel [laughing].
J: So for example... we took the notion that there was an impending banking crisis to the Treasury and the banks and so on. And a mixture of self-interest and not hearing properly meant that it was a very, very difficult sell, even though the writing was very clear... And so my first challenge is... I want to be able to reach people in a way where the ideas resonate with them and takes them out of their present entrenched thinking into my thinking. So I can go where they are and take them to where I can make a...
RB: It’s a big presupposition to what you’re saying, ‘cause see, what you want to accomplish is to get people to understand ideas that are ahead of their time... One of the things that reporters always ask me and a lot of professionals ask me, they go...'you must have encountered tremendous resistance'.
I mean, basically, I was a 23-year-old kid who announced to the field of psychology that everything they were doing was wrong. But I didn’t say it that way. That part of the reasons I didn’t encounter resistance is, I figured when...and you have to when dealing with bankers in general, and politicians, and people who are entrenched in ideas...you have to understand that your job is not to go to their model of the world, and slowly bring them to yours. Because then you’d have to be as stupid as they are, right, which means you’d go there and get stuck and stay forever.
What you need to do is to inoculate them against their fears along the way. And you kind of have to do that ahead of time. It’s very much a sales pitch basically. For example, when I was selling cars, I sold very expensive cars and it took a lot of gas in the middle of the gas crisis. I did it kind of as a hobby and a challenge. And part of the thing that I had to do was to get people to realise that this wasn’t gonna go on forever, and that there are bigger issues to consider than what their fears are.
Start out and go, 'you know what really stupid people would believe, is that nothing could ever collapse the banking system'. And then you start to make your presentation.
...If you know what objections you’re gonna get, you can pre-inoculate people with the worst fear than the one they’re bound to have. And I find that when you do that, ‘cause most of these people are always moving away from difficulty, not moving towards success. It’s the real difference between successful people and entrenched people, or government people as we like to call them.
You know, in my country the bureaucracy is growing at an ever-increasing rate, and no matter what you do you have to deal with bureaucracy. But when you go in, you know, these are people who don’t want to rock the boat, they don’t want to be the one that points out the obvious, you know, ‘cause everybody is gonna get upset and that even though banks should have prepared for this, they should have seen it coming, and in fact they created it in the United States. Because one of our lovely presidents deregulated the banks in such a way that they could bundle giant mortgages and sell them, so even when things fell apart it wouldn’t affect the person that did it. So people were borrowing houses with nothing down, and the concept was that the price of the house could never go down, you know. I mean, that’s what they told people, they said, you don’t have to worry ‘cause you can always refinance and your house will always be worth what you paid for it. In fact, it’s going to go up in value every year.
And when I started selling real estate that I had, everybody said, 'what are you doing?' And I said, 'It’s fine, you know', I said that the banks are all gonna start falling apart, I’m getting rid of real estate.
And people said to me, immediately they’re curious, and they said, 'Well that’s never happened'. And in fact, it’s happened lots of times. That simply isn’t true, you know, and the idea that corporations are too big to collapse, you know, I mean, if you think about the amount of money the United States spent saving giant corporations from disaster, you know, we spent, to stimulate our economy, a trillion dollars. That’s a load of money. That means they could have given every American, every single American, man, woman and child, three million dollars. They could have paid off their mortgages, bought a new car, and gone out to lunch four times a week, and taken a two week vacation, and the economy would have roared.
But instead of doing that, they were too busy fixing things rather than planning a future that would work. And nobody would listen to a proposal like that, well we should give every American three million dollars, have him pay off his mortgage, that way the banks will be fine, you know, have them buy new cars, the car companies will be fine. The amount when they go out to lunch four times a week and dinner twice a week, buy new clothes at least once a month, you know. And invest money in things like oil and the stock market...everything would have been fixed if we’d have just said, you have to spend the money and spend it quick, and you have to spend it on these things. But it’s inconceivable, so instead we went in and fixed GM, and when we sold our shares, the United States went three hundred million in the hole. And when the banks paid off theirs and stuff, we went another three hundred million in the hole.
And of course what did we mortgage for that...the future labour of our children, you know. And when you went to the banks they didn’t understand that their grandchildren’s labour is being mortgaged against their stupidity. And you can’t even get them to look that far down the road, they’re too busy at looking at avoiding things. So you have to say, 'look most people in your position are too stupid to understand certain things. I came to you because I respect you.'
Anything you say after that you’ll get a totally different response. You can fill in the blanks what you want to say to them, but really part of pacing people is understanding who they are, and how limited their vision is. And if you want them to turn around...I didn’t go in and say to therapists, 'look, you know... you should be able to fix your clients overnight'. I went in and said... I understood why they couldn’t ‘cause they went to school and learned about statistics. It was the fault of their teachers, it’s no fault of their own.
...I understood how resistant they were, you know, they claimed to be open to new ideas, especially in the field of psychotherapy, but they really weren’t. Even the psychiatrists that brought me patients, you know, and volunteered, they liked the experience of bringing in a patient and me hypnotising them, and me doing things and them getting better, and then them getting credit for it. But when it came to doing the hard work to learn the skills, they were very resistant to do it.
So when I started teaching, I packaged in my teaching to give them something to move away from, to not want to be one of those people who saw their clients all the time and took their money. You know, that thing, ‘cause I literally had a shrink and said, 'what happens if I wipe out my private practice', and I said, oh yeah we’re gonna run out of crazy people, that’s gonna happen!
[Laughing].
We said, every psychiatrist out there, from the seminar, they all cure their patients, there aren’t gonna be any more crazy people. So I mean, to me, this is the way you have to think about it. You have to think about who you’re really talking to, and how to build a more objectionable place to be than listening to you. And once you do that it’s very easy for them to listen. You go, 'you can be a smart person or you can be a real, dumb, idiotic stupid shit. And I think you’re this person, so you’ll listen to this.' And you know, when you format it that way, then it becomes a lot easier to them. I mean, especially the more humorous you make it, who they really are and telling them they’re not that person. That ability to chide people is very important, when you’re trying to persuade them on things. Does that answer your question?
J: Yes it does. I’m going to have difficulty seeing myself going to the CEO and this agency and...
RB: Well I got news for you, they’re all just fucking people, they pee and shit and put on their shoes. You got to remember, the same guy you’re talking to is gonna be wiping his ass, just like you, you know. And it’s that thing, when I was young, and I have to admit, I’m not good looking, I get paid to be smart not to be pretty. And when I would go out with all these beautiful women, guys would come up to me and go, 'how did you get a date with them?' And I would go,' well I asked them.' And he would go, 'you just walked up to them and asked them!' And I would go, 'yeah, no one else does. That makes it easy. I’m more likely to get a date than almost anyone else, ‘cause nobody ever asks them.' And I never walked up and did the stupid thing and said, 'do you want to go out with me...' I said, 'would you like to go to a rock concert,' you know, and they would say 'yes,' and I would say, 'I’ll pick you up at seven.' And then lo and behold, they were on a date with me before they knew what happened!
[Laughing]
And even these guys who are clever CEOs, because to me, people running big corporations, especially from the ground up, I always thought would have made good presidents, but most of them couldn’t afford the pay cut. But I really think to run a country you should have some previous experience. And obviously in our country that’s not a standard. We have a guy running the country now who was never in the military, never had a job, never ran a company. And even the one job he had as senator, he didn’t finish. And when he was a state assembly person, you know, every time he voted, I think he voted undecided. And so he had no bad record, and people went, well he hasn’t done anything bad, we’ll elect him president, you know. And everybody thought that would be a safe bet. And then you put him up against a well adjusted man like Mr Putin, and you know, and you got trouble, you got a sociopath on one side, and a guy who can’t seem to make a decision and isn’t sure about anything and has never been in a fist fight on the other.
[Laughing].
You know, this is not a formula for world peace! And these CEOs are decision-makers, and they’ll understand when you’re teasing them. That’s why you don’t act as if people are stupid, you act as if they can see the point of this.
...I once made a presentation for the chairman of the board, I was probably 25, I had hair down to my shoulders, and they picked me up, they sent an airplane for me and flew me into their private airport in South Carolina at Ashlyn Oil. And had me go to talk to the board of directors about they were buying a programme I had, you know, to put in their sales training department. And when I walked in, the youngest person in the room, next to me in age, was probably 75! And I was pretty sure a few of them had been taxidermied.
[Laughing].
And when I got there I looked around the room, and these guys were looking at me like, 'you bring us children, what the hell is this!' And one of them even said, 'where’s Dr Bandler?' And I said, 'he’s hiding inside of me.' And the guy, you know, he giggled. And I said, 'look I know I’m younger than you, but everybody is younger than you.' And I said, 'when you’re looking for fresh ideas, you’re not gonna find them with 70 year old men.' I said, 'when you guys started out, you know, everybody said you couldn’t form this oil company and do what you people did.' And I said, 'now you want to do something new,' I said, 'if you want to bring in a 65 year old guy to look for fresh ideas, you know, they’re not gonna be that fresh.
It’s just that simple,' I said, 'if you’re really looking for something,' I said, 'your business has to become more competitive, if you want to be competitive, then you’ve got to get ahead of the curve, and you can’t get more ahead of the curve than me.'
When you say that to people, they go like this, and the one guy goes, he goes, 'why is your hair so long?' And I said, 'because I work so hard I don’t have time to cut it.' And he looked at me and he goes, 'that sounds like bullshit,' and I said, 'it is.' And I said, 'why do you care about it, it sounds like bullshit to me!' I said, 'I’m not the one that’s gonna be on the posters for your oil company,' I said 'I’m gonna be making pamphlets for Christ's sake, for you people to read, to close deals. I’m not gonna put my picture on the cover. If I do, I’ll get a haircut, how does that sound?'
...You know, a lot of times, the most powerful thing in the world is to blatantly tell the truth, with a sense of humour. Because when you blatantly tell the truth with a sense of humour, it undermines. You see, you can say anything with words, you can say no and mean yes, you know. People go, 'would you like to invest in this', and you go, 'oh certainly'. And you know, it doesn’t mean yes, it means no. So it’s all about how you present yourself non-verbally.
And when you go into these places with CEOs of companies, and you’re trying to warn them about the future coming, they’re trying to get success to be built up slowly, that’s the model of a CEO. You know, somebody running a bank is thinking about chipping their way into the future. Banks make their money a sliver at a time, they’re not like an investor who wants a big chunk and then get the fuck out of the way. They’re dealing with quarters of a cent, fractions of a cent that pile up in accounts every time transactions are made. Their mindset isn’t like the world can fall apart.
And when you go in and go, 'you know, all this investment stuff is gonna collapse', their brain is going, 'well that’s highly unlikely because it’s never happened'. But you cannot predict the future off of the past, you have to predict the future off the facts. And the facts will speak for themselves, and so will the stupidity, you know, the people who don’t see it coming are the ones in the trenches. Of course, oddly enough, the guy running the biggest bank who lost the most money in the US, that was head of that, had to leave the company and now runs the Fed in the US. So I don’t know how Mr Obama picked him, but fortunately he’s gone and they replaced him with somebody else, equally as unprepared for the job.
So if people think there’s no reason to worry about the financial future, if you look at the quality of the people in charge of the world's finances, I’d be scared to death. I know I’m buying gold, you know, it doesn’t get smaller. It’s one thing, you know, there’s a certain amount of gold on the planet, like right now there’s probably enough gold to fill two Olympic sized swimming pools, and that’s it. So that’s about the only safe investment and it’s not gonna go up, it’s just gonna stay the same, and money is gonna become worthless. And anybody who thinks money isn’t gonna become worthless should think back 50 years or 100 years. I mean, when I was a kid, you know, you could buy a lot of stuff from a small amount of money.
It takes a lot more money...I mean, gas was 18 cents when I was a kid, you could buy a quart of milk for a nickel or a loaf of bread. Now you make a whole lot more money but you still buy the same amount of stuff. And they call it inflation, they can call it whatever they want, but it isn’t gonna stop. And anybody that says the banks don’t fail, hasn’t looked at history very closely. Say numbers like 1929, and it’ll pop right into your mind...Lloyds of London went under for heaven’s sake, you know, anything can happen.
We cannot predict the future, but we can prepare for it, and that’s always the best choice...
Book your NLP Training HERE to improve your communication skills
It's interesting to think that if she had had insight into communicating more effectively with NLP, history may have unfolded differently...
J: ...My biggest problem is that I have ideas before their time. And so...
RB: I know how you feel [laughing].
J: So for example... we took the notion that there was an impending banking crisis to the Treasury and the banks and so on. And a mixture of self-interest and not hearing properly meant that it was a very, very difficult sell, even though the writing was very clear... And so my first challenge is... I want to be able to reach people in a way where the ideas resonate with them and takes them out of their present entrenched thinking into my thinking. So I can go where they are and take them to where I can make a...
RB: It’s a big presupposition to what you’re saying, ‘cause see, what you want to accomplish is to get people to understand ideas that are ahead of their time... One of the things that reporters always ask me and a lot of professionals ask me, they go...'you must have encountered tremendous resistance'.
I mean, basically, I was a 23-year-old kid who announced to the field of psychology that everything they were doing was wrong. But I didn’t say it that way. That part of the reasons I didn’t encounter resistance is, I figured when...and you have to when dealing with bankers in general, and politicians, and people who are entrenched in ideas...you have to understand that your job is not to go to their model of the world, and slowly bring them to yours. Because then you’d have to be as stupid as they are, right, which means you’d go there and get stuck and stay forever.
What you need to do is to inoculate them against their fears along the way. And you kind of have to do that ahead of time. It’s very much a sales pitch basically. For example, when I was selling cars, I sold very expensive cars and it took a lot of gas in the middle of the gas crisis. I did it kind of as a hobby and a challenge. And part of the thing that I had to do was to get people to realise that this wasn’t gonna go on forever, and that there are bigger issues to consider than what their fears are.
Start out and go, 'you know what really stupid people would believe, is that nothing could ever collapse the banking system'. And then you start to make your presentation.
...If you know what objections you’re gonna get, you can pre-inoculate people with the worst fear than the one they’re bound to have. And I find that when you do that, ‘cause most of these people are always moving away from difficulty, not moving towards success. It’s the real difference between successful people and entrenched people, or government people as we like to call them.
You know, in my country the bureaucracy is growing at an ever-increasing rate, and no matter what you do you have to deal with bureaucracy. But when you go in, you know, these are people who don’t want to rock the boat, they don’t want to be the one that points out the obvious, you know, ‘cause everybody is gonna get upset and that even though banks should have prepared for this, they should have seen it coming, and in fact they created it in the United States. Because one of our lovely presidents deregulated the banks in such a way that they could bundle giant mortgages and sell them, so even when things fell apart it wouldn’t affect the person that did it. So people were borrowing houses with nothing down, and the concept was that the price of the house could never go down, you know. I mean, that’s what they told people, they said, you don’t have to worry ‘cause you can always refinance and your house will always be worth what you paid for it. In fact, it’s going to go up in value every year.
And when I started selling real estate that I had, everybody said, 'what are you doing?' And I said, 'It’s fine, you know', I said that the banks are all gonna start falling apart, I’m getting rid of real estate.
And people said to me, immediately they’re curious, and they said, 'Well that’s never happened'. And in fact, it’s happened lots of times. That simply isn’t true, you know, and the idea that corporations are too big to collapse, you know, I mean, if you think about the amount of money the United States spent saving giant corporations from disaster, you know, we spent, to stimulate our economy, a trillion dollars. That’s a load of money. That means they could have given every American, every single American, man, woman and child, three million dollars. They could have paid off their mortgages, bought a new car, and gone out to lunch four times a week, and taken a two week vacation, and the economy would have roared.
But instead of doing that, they were too busy fixing things rather than planning a future that would work. And nobody would listen to a proposal like that, well we should give every American three million dollars, have him pay off his mortgage, that way the banks will be fine, you know, have them buy new cars, the car companies will be fine. The amount when they go out to lunch four times a week and dinner twice a week, buy new clothes at least once a month, you know. And invest money in things like oil and the stock market...everything would have been fixed if we’d have just said, you have to spend the money and spend it quick, and you have to spend it on these things. But it’s inconceivable, so instead we went in and fixed GM, and when we sold our shares, the United States went three hundred million in the hole. And when the banks paid off theirs and stuff, we went another three hundred million in the hole.
And of course what did we mortgage for that...the future labour of our children, you know. And when you went to the banks they didn’t understand that their grandchildren’s labour is being mortgaged against their stupidity. And you can’t even get them to look that far down the road, they’re too busy at looking at avoiding things. So you have to say, 'look most people in your position are too stupid to understand certain things. I came to you because I respect you.'
Anything you say after that you’ll get a totally different response. You can fill in the blanks what you want to say to them, but really part of pacing people is understanding who they are, and how limited their vision is. And if you want them to turn around...I didn’t go in and say to therapists, 'look, you know... you should be able to fix your clients overnight'. I went in and said... I understood why they couldn’t ‘cause they went to school and learned about statistics. It was the fault of their teachers, it’s no fault of their own.
...I understood how resistant they were, you know, they claimed to be open to new ideas, especially in the field of psychotherapy, but they really weren’t. Even the psychiatrists that brought me patients, you know, and volunteered, they liked the experience of bringing in a patient and me hypnotising them, and me doing things and them getting better, and then them getting credit for it. But when it came to doing the hard work to learn the skills, they were very resistant to do it.
So when I started teaching, I packaged in my teaching to give them something to move away from, to not want to be one of those people who saw their clients all the time and took their money. You know, that thing, ‘cause I literally had a shrink and said, 'what happens if I wipe out my private practice', and I said, oh yeah we’re gonna run out of crazy people, that’s gonna happen!
[Laughing].
We said, every psychiatrist out there, from the seminar, they all cure their patients, there aren’t gonna be any more crazy people. So I mean, to me, this is the way you have to think about it. You have to think about who you’re really talking to, and how to build a more objectionable place to be than listening to you. And once you do that it’s very easy for them to listen. You go, 'you can be a smart person or you can be a real, dumb, idiotic stupid shit. And I think you’re this person, so you’ll listen to this.' And you know, when you format it that way, then it becomes a lot easier to them. I mean, especially the more humorous you make it, who they really are and telling them they’re not that person. That ability to chide people is very important, when you’re trying to persuade them on things. Does that answer your question?
J: Yes it does. I’m going to have difficulty seeing myself going to the CEO and this agency and...
RB: Well I got news for you, they’re all just fucking people, they pee and shit and put on their shoes. You got to remember, the same guy you’re talking to is gonna be wiping his ass, just like you, you know. And it’s that thing, when I was young, and I have to admit, I’m not good looking, I get paid to be smart not to be pretty. And when I would go out with all these beautiful women, guys would come up to me and go, 'how did you get a date with them?' And I would go,' well I asked them.' And he would go, 'you just walked up to them and asked them!' And I would go, 'yeah, no one else does. That makes it easy. I’m more likely to get a date than almost anyone else, ‘cause nobody ever asks them.' And I never walked up and did the stupid thing and said, 'do you want to go out with me...' I said, 'would you like to go to a rock concert,' you know, and they would say 'yes,' and I would say, 'I’ll pick you up at seven.' And then lo and behold, they were on a date with me before they knew what happened!
[Laughing]
And even these guys who are clever CEOs, because to me, people running big corporations, especially from the ground up, I always thought would have made good presidents, but most of them couldn’t afford the pay cut. But I really think to run a country you should have some previous experience. And obviously in our country that’s not a standard. We have a guy running the country now who was never in the military, never had a job, never ran a company. And even the one job he had as senator, he didn’t finish. And when he was a state assembly person, you know, every time he voted, I think he voted undecided. And so he had no bad record, and people went, well he hasn’t done anything bad, we’ll elect him president, you know. And everybody thought that would be a safe bet. And then you put him up against a well adjusted man like Mr Putin, and you know, and you got trouble, you got a sociopath on one side, and a guy who can’t seem to make a decision and isn’t sure about anything and has never been in a fist fight on the other.
[Laughing].
You know, this is not a formula for world peace! And these CEOs are decision-makers, and they’ll understand when you’re teasing them. That’s why you don’t act as if people are stupid, you act as if they can see the point of this.
...I once made a presentation for the chairman of the board, I was probably 25, I had hair down to my shoulders, and they picked me up, they sent an airplane for me and flew me into their private airport in South Carolina at Ashlyn Oil. And had me go to talk to the board of directors about they were buying a programme I had, you know, to put in their sales training department. And when I walked in, the youngest person in the room, next to me in age, was probably 75! And I was pretty sure a few of them had been taxidermied.
[Laughing].
And when I got there I looked around the room, and these guys were looking at me like, 'you bring us children, what the hell is this!' And one of them even said, 'where’s Dr Bandler?' And I said, 'he’s hiding inside of me.' And the guy, you know, he giggled. And I said, 'look I know I’m younger than you, but everybody is younger than you.' And I said, 'when you’re looking for fresh ideas, you’re not gonna find them with 70 year old men.' I said, 'when you guys started out, you know, everybody said you couldn’t form this oil company and do what you people did.' And I said, 'now you want to do something new,' I said, 'if you want to bring in a 65 year old guy to look for fresh ideas, you know, they’re not gonna be that fresh.
It’s just that simple,' I said, 'if you’re really looking for something,' I said, 'your business has to become more competitive, if you want to be competitive, then you’ve got to get ahead of the curve, and you can’t get more ahead of the curve than me.'
When you say that to people, they go like this, and the one guy goes, he goes, 'why is your hair so long?' And I said, 'because I work so hard I don’t have time to cut it.' And he looked at me and he goes, 'that sounds like bullshit,' and I said, 'it is.' And I said, 'why do you care about it, it sounds like bullshit to me!' I said, 'I’m not the one that’s gonna be on the posters for your oil company,' I said 'I’m gonna be making pamphlets for Christ's sake, for you people to read, to close deals. I’m not gonna put my picture on the cover. If I do, I’ll get a haircut, how does that sound?'
...You know, a lot of times, the most powerful thing in the world is to blatantly tell the truth, with a sense of humour. Because when you blatantly tell the truth with a sense of humour, it undermines. You see, you can say anything with words, you can say no and mean yes, you know. People go, 'would you like to invest in this', and you go, 'oh certainly'. And you know, it doesn’t mean yes, it means no. So it’s all about how you present yourself non-verbally.
And when you go into these places with CEOs of companies, and you’re trying to warn them about the future coming, they’re trying to get success to be built up slowly, that’s the model of a CEO. You know, somebody running a bank is thinking about chipping their way into the future. Banks make their money a sliver at a time, they’re not like an investor who wants a big chunk and then get the fuck out of the way. They’re dealing with quarters of a cent, fractions of a cent that pile up in accounts every time transactions are made. Their mindset isn’t like the world can fall apart.
And when you go in and go, 'you know, all this investment stuff is gonna collapse', their brain is going, 'well that’s highly unlikely because it’s never happened'. But you cannot predict the future off of the past, you have to predict the future off the facts. And the facts will speak for themselves, and so will the stupidity, you know, the people who don’t see it coming are the ones in the trenches. Of course, oddly enough, the guy running the biggest bank who lost the most money in the US, that was head of that, had to leave the company and now runs the Fed in the US. So I don’t know how Mr Obama picked him, but fortunately he’s gone and they replaced him with somebody else, equally as unprepared for the job.
So if people think there’s no reason to worry about the financial future, if you look at the quality of the people in charge of the world's finances, I’d be scared to death. I know I’m buying gold, you know, it doesn’t get smaller. It’s one thing, you know, there’s a certain amount of gold on the planet, like right now there’s probably enough gold to fill two Olympic sized swimming pools, and that’s it. So that’s about the only safe investment and it’s not gonna go up, it’s just gonna stay the same, and money is gonna become worthless. And anybody who thinks money isn’t gonna become worthless should think back 50 years or 100 years. I mean, when I was a kid, you know, you could buy a lot of stuff from a small amount of money.
It takes a lot more money...I mean, gas was 18 cents when I was a kid, you could buy a quart of milk for a nickel or a loaf of bread. Now you make a whole lot more money but you still buy the same amount of stuff. And they call it inflation, they can call it whatever they want, but it isn’t gonna stop. And anybody that says the banks don’t fail, hasn’t looked at history very closely. Say numbers like 1929, and it’ll pop right into your mind...Lloyds of London went under for heaven’s sake, you know, anything can happen.
We cannot predict the future, but we can prepare for it, and that’s always the best choice...
Book your NLP Training HERE to improve your communication skills
