Maker Manager Money - Entrepreneur & Business Owner Inspiration
Hello there. Welcome to the Maker Manager Money podcast with Kyle Ariel Knowles. This podcast is about entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, founders, business owners, and business partnerships, from startups to stayups, to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going and future entrepreneurs to just start.
Maker Manager Money - Entrepreneur & Business Owner Inspiration
Unlocking Sales Success: The Power of NLP with Steven Ethridge
Steven Ethridge is the Chairman and CEO of Ethridge and Associates. With over 30 years of experience in strategic communication, coaching, and consulting, Steven brings a wealth of knowledge to the table, particularly in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and its application in sales training.
Here are three key takeaways from our conversation:
- The Power of Mindset in Sales: Steven emphasizes that a successful sales approach begins with the right mindset. His "Sales Mindset Transformation" training program focuses on helping salespeople identify and eliminate limiting beliefs, negative emotions, and self-doubt. By fostering a positive mindset, sales professionals can enhance their confidence and competence, leading to better performance and results.
- Understanding Your Audience: One of the most critical aspects of effective communication is using the audience's language. Steven shares a powerful example from his experience with a banking client, where a simple shift from "we pay more interest" to "you earn more interest" transformed their marketing message. This highlights the importance of listening to your audience and using their exact words to resonate with their needs and motivations.
- NLP Techniques for Sales Excellence: Steven's unique approach to sales training incorporates NLP techniques modeled by top performers in various industries. His five-step sales process—establishing rapport, asking the right questions, uncovering needs, presenting offers, and closing the sale—provides a structured framework for sales professionals. This method not only enhances their skills but also aligns their communication with their prospects' unconscious motivations.
Join us as Steven explains NLP, how it can help individuals and businesses achieve excellence, and the unique approach he takes in his sales training programs. He discusses the importance of mindset, effective communication, and understanding clients' unconscious motivations to drive sales success.
Discover Steven's journey into the world of NLP, its impact on his clients across various industries, and the common mistakes marketers make in their campaigns. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a sales professional, or simply curious about NLP, this episode is packed with valuable information and practical tips.
Don't forget to subscribe for more episodes focused on entrepreneurship, management, and financial success!
Key Topics:
- What is Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)?
- The importance of mindset in sales
- Common mistakes in marketing communication
- Steven's journey and experiences in NLP
- Overview of Steven's sales training program
LINKS
- Follow Steven on LinkedIn
- Steven's Website: Ethridge.com
- Follow Kyle on LinkedIn
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Hello there, welcome to the Maker-Manager Money podcast, a podcast for and about entrepreneurs. My name is Kyle Knowles and today's guest is Steven Ethridge. Steven is the chairman and CEO of Etheridge and Associates. With over 30 years of experience, Steven specializes in strategic communication, coaching, training, and consulting. Since 1993, Ethridge and Associates has served over 800 clients across diverse industries. Stephen is also a certified Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP trainer and coach trainer. His sales training program uniquely emphasizes mindset and NLP techniques. Stephen aims to help businesses grow through group training and plans to release a marketing book. Welcome to the show, Steven.
Steven Ethridge: Thank you, Kyle. I'm pleased to be here.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And where are you dialing in from today?
Steven Ethridge: So I'm in Memphis, Tennessee, actually a little suburb of Memphis called Cordova, Tennessee.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay. And you, you've been there for how long?
Steven Ethridge: I moved here in 1981. I'm originally from Northeast Georgia and I've lived here since then, except for about two and a half years, I moved away with my career. And I've been here, you know, I've been back here for, I don't know, a couple of three decades. It's been a long time since about 1989, I think is when I moved back here.
null: So.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, you must like it if you, if you came back.
Steven Ethridge: I do. I do like Memphis very much. And also my wife was born and raised here. So that's an important reason to move back here, but it's a great city. You know, like any city it's got its challenges, but it is a great city.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: That's awesome. So I know we, in my introduction, I talk a lot about NLP. Can you just explain for the audience what NLP is? Some people know what it is. Some people don't. Sure.
Steven Ethridge: So I'll give you a couple of definitions. So neuro-linguistic programming, the three words neuro is our mind body system. You know, our mind is not just in our brain. We have muscle memory, for example. And the linguistics is the language that we use to communicate with ourselves and our others. And the programming is what we do in our mind-body system to get the outcomes that we get. And when they're undesirable outcomes, an NLP coach can help a client reprogram their mind to get more desirable outcomes. One of my favorite definitions of NLP is that it's the study and modeling of excellence. And that's why the NLP training and sales is so powerful. We have studied excellent sales performers, top sales performers and trainers as a field. Since the early 70s, when we first when this field was first started, I personally got into modeling sales training in the early 80s. And now, as you mentioned, a trainer and a coach trainer of NLP. So it is really all about how do you achieve excellence? We look at people that are doing their excellent at what they do, and we model and figure out what's the essence, what's essential for what they're doing. We screen out anything that's, you know, extraneous and develop a set of techniques that we then can install in ourselves and get similar outcomes. And then we develop trainings and train others to get similar outcomes. So that's in a nutshell what NLP is.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And how did you get into this then?
Steven Ethridge: Well, it's interesting. In 1987, I worked for a little company called the Gallup Organization. You may have heard of Gallup Polls. They also are a human resources development company, selection and development company. And before they actually were as big as they are now, I was asked to manage a subcontractor company when I was employed there as an executive associate. I was managing a company called Communication Development Incorporated, which was headed by a guy named Dr. Charles Cleveland. And he was a world renowned linguist. And what he would do is he would interview people that were consumers or donors or voters or whatever the industry was. using psychological in-depth interviewing, he would transcript, excuse me, transcribe their interviews and submit them to computerized content analysis. And before I met him, I was told by the people at Gallup, this guy's amazing. What he does is he does this analysis and then he'll go to a marketing executive or ad agency and say, just change these one or two words in your marketing and watch your sales go through the roof. And I was very skeptical at first, But when I observed him operate, I recognized that there's some power here. And I'll just give you one quick example. We had a client that was in the banking industry, and I could give you many, many examples. But this particular one, the bank had come out with a new deposit product, and their message was, we pay more interest. And Dr. Charles Cleveland did some analysis where he discovered that the word pay at the unconscious mind level means, if I'm hearing that word, it means that I pay out of my pocket. And what they should be saying is you earn more interest. Now that's a really super oversimplified example, but that was really powerful. It turned the campaign around from not meeting the marketer's expectations to really exceeding their expectations. And so what he was actually doing was using neurolinguistic programming. I didn't realize this till many years later. I started my own business in 1993, Ethrogen Associates. And one of the first things I did was I contacted him and I said, Charles, I'd like to sell what you do. And he said, great, come to Des Moines, Iowa. Let me teach you more about what I do. Because I was fascinated by the power of it. And when he took me through his training, about the time he was ready to turn me loose to go Sell his services as an affiliate. He got really sick and unfortunately passed away. So here I was with all this training. And so, you know, I started using it. I did things like in marketing research at the time, which is my primary business then. I did things like help George Washington and Mount Vernon Estates break 150-year records in their fundraising, which is one example I can talk about publicly. There are many others. If you go to my website, Ethridge.com, download some case studies, you can see lots of case studies where I've helped clients as a marketing consultant really exceed their historical records in terms of their marketing return on investment. But after he passed away, after I had been doing what he taught me how to do, years later, I read an article in a business publication about these two guys, Bandler and Grindler, who were the founders of NLP. Charles used to talk about Bandler and Grindler as the source of his in-depth psychological interviewing and his neuro-linguistic program. I mean, his linguistics analysis. He wasn't using the term NLP. And I was reading this article and I was like, oh my goodness, this is what this guy's been using. I've been so fascinated about. And it mentioned there's several books that these founders of NLP had written. So I started reading everything I could about them. And at the back of the books, it would say, you know, call this number, write this address to get certified and learn more about it. So I said, this was like the mid 2000s or thereabouts. I said, if I ever get the time and money, I want to go get certified in this and learn more about it. So in 2013, I started the journey and got certified as a practitioner of NLP and a coach of NLP. and some related fields, one of which was timeline therapy, which is an advanced form of NLP, as well as hypnosis, because the field of NLP, being a field of communication, has studied all kinds of communication, one of which was sort of a tributary to the field was hypnotherapy. They studied a guy named Dr. Milton Erickson, medical doctor who was the 20th century's most renowned hypnotherapist. He helped people overcome all kinds of challenges, So I got certified in all four of those and then continued a journey through master practitioner level of all of those. And in 2015 became an NLP trainer. And then I think it was 2016 or 17 thereabouts became a coach trainer. So that was my journey into this. And my initial interest was in business communication, using it in marketing communication. And I've used it for all kinds of things. Once I realized that it helps people personally, I've helped people do other things like stop smoking, for example, and set goals. But what has really driven my business in the last few years has been sales training and coaching, because, as I mentioned before, we've studied and modeled excellence. Everybody's in sales, whether they realize it or not. You know, from the time someone first cried for their first bottle or their first diaper to be changed, everybody is in sales. So there's a huge, huge demand and need for it. And, you know, businesses are always wanting to grow. Sales has been challenging in the last several years, more so perhaps than in a long time before that because of COVID. You know, everybody was saying, oh, and nobody has any money. Everything's shut down. And then we've been in an inflationary economy since then. So a lot of salespeople have been experiencing more rejection than they had before then. And so what makes my training unique is that I use NLP, first of all, to help salespeople get their mindset right to sell. I help them frame how do they become successful? Who's responsible for success? It's them, right? They're not a victim to other events going on, but they have to be at cause for their results. And then I help them elicit their own values for sales and help them understand whether their rank order of values is supporting their desire to achieve higher sales. And then I help them eliminate If they have any, help them identify and eliminate any limiting beliefs. Like, I don't know if I can, I don't know if I'm good enough. They may lack confidence or competence after experiencing so much rejection in an inflationary economy. Help them get rid of any negative emotions they may have, and then help them set goals. So that's module one of my sales training. I call it the sales training. Sales Mindset Transformation in Module 1 is Sales Mindset Self-Mastery. It's all about getting your mind in the right place to be most successful in sales. And then Module 2 is the NLP Sales Skills Mastery. And there are five steps in this NLP sales training process. The first one of which is to establish rapport, a genuine unconscious rapport, which is a process of responsiveness The idea being that people who are like each other, like each other. And so I teach people how to read the other person's micro facial expressions and body language and listen to their language and being able to match and mirror. and respond to them in a way that they very, very quickly get into close, unconscious rapport. That's step one, which is by the way, I think the most important part of sales. If you don't have rapport, you don't have much going for you. And then step two is to ask questions. Most salespeople think that the reason to ask questions is simply to uncover needs or problems of the prospect. And indeed that is, the most important thing. However, from an NLP perspective, I also teach them how to ask questions to uncover the other person's unconscious motivations and what language to use to connect with them in that way. And there's four categories of those. One is what kinds of representational system or kind of representation system does this person prefer? Are they a visual person, a kinesthetic person, an auditory person, or some combination? So someone who is visual, you would communicate to them by saying, let me show you my proposal so you can see the value of it. Someone who's auditory, you would say, let me tell you. So you use their language. And then the second type of unconscious motivation I ask questions about is, what are their values? How important are certain values? What's the rank order of their values in the context of this buying decision? So that you can communicate back to them your offer and their values. Third is, what are their decision-making strategies, which is the sequence of steps they go through mentally when they're getting motivated to buy, and when they're making a buying decision, and when they're becoming convinced that it's the right decision, and when they're re-insured that it was the right decision, so that they don't have buyer's remorse. And then finally, there are meta-programs, which are content-free, unconscious filters. There's about 60, over 60 of these, actually. But I'll give you a couple of examples. Some people are big picture thinkers. Some people are detail thinkers. Some people want the big picture first, followed by the details. Other people are just the opposite. So if you communicate something to a big picture person with too much detail or vice versa, it's going to fall flat. There's other ones like the direction filter. Some people are motivated toward what they want. Some people are motivated away from what they don't want. So the second module in training, the steps are establish rapport, ask questions, uncover a need as well as these unconscious motivations, and then you present your offer your product or service in a way that links with their needs and communicates in their language from the standpoint of rep system, values, strategies, and metaprograms. And then the final step is closing the sale. And of course, if you're in rapport with the person, and you've actually uncovered their needs and you're presenting an offer that meets their needs, objections are usually pretty minimal if you're dealing with a qualified prospect. And if you're not, then you thank them for their time and maybe ask for referrals if the report is strong enough and move on to the next prospect because we want to sell things with integrity, right? The way I look at it is sales as service. So I never want to sell something to someone that they don't need or don't want. It's really more about serving the other person and helping them fulfill their needs. OK, so that's an overview of the sales training that I that I offer. So it's like two modules then. Two modules. The title of the whole program is Sales Mindset Transformation. The first module is Sales Mindset Self-Mastery. That's the mindset part under framing how you can be empowered and be at cause for what you do. And there's some other frames, but that's one of the big ones. Then understanding their values and aligning their values with their goals. uncovering and eliminating any negative emotions and or limiting beliefs and then helping them set goals in a way that they can achieve them. Helping them write them linguistically so that they're well formed and then using NLP techniques to put those goals in their unconscious mind so that the unconscious mind supports them in achieving them. That's module one. Then the second one is the NLP sales skills mastery, and that's the five-step sales process. Rapport, asking questions, uncovering the need when you ask the questions, uncovering those unconscious motivations and their language, and then presenting your product or service in a way that links to their needs and communicates in their language, and then finally closing the sale. So I think it's very unique from the standpoint that we use the mindset techniques up front to help someone really get their mind in the right place to be as successful as possible in sales and particularly overcoming any negative emotions or limiting beliefs they've experienced from sales rejection, for example, or any other factor in life for that matter. And then the NLP Five-step sales process is developed based on modeling top sales performers. So it's what absolutely works in the marketplace. Yeah.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay. And then how long does the course take and how is it delivered?
Steven Ethridge: Great question. So the course is actually 24 hours. Half of that is all the mindset work. And the other half is the sales skills part. And I deliver it three ways. I deliver it online on group training sessions, two hours every week. I had multiple sessions, but two hours per session over a period of 12 weeks. So that's the 24 hours. And the second way is I deliver it live. And usually when I deliver it live, it's more condensed over about a four day period. That can be either over a long weekend or for example, just last week, I finished up a training where we had four weeks in a row with a group of people and that's live. And when we do it live, people can also connect on Zoom. And then the third way, which is the most expensive investment for someone is to have me work with them one-on-one as a coach and take them all the way through that. I am in the process of developing a digital version of this training. I have all the manuals and the written digital. part of it is already completed. And I'm taking the video from the training that I did over the last four weeks, and I'm going to be editing clips out of that to go along with the written digital portion. That'll take me approximately a month. So about a month from now, I'm going to have this available as a digital product. And along with that, When someone is at certain stages of that self-paced training, if they want to reach out to me for coaching, for example, for some of the mindset work or getting feedback on what's working for them or how to do something a little different and better, then I'll be available to them as well. But I'm working very, very quickly toward getting it available as a digital product so that I can serve more people at less cost than doing it live.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: So tell me, Steven, you've done so many different things, right? Think about your background over the past 30 plus years, right? And you've worked with so many different clients. I mean, you're approaching a thousand clients and then your companies that you've worked with. And then you've worked with like over a hundred industries. NLP techniques are going to help them no matter what they're selling, no matter what industry they're in, correct?
Steven Ethridge: Yes, that's absolutely right. And I really appreciate you bringing that up because some people think that, oh, you don't know my industry, so you can't, you know, you can't help me. But these are processes that can be used in any industry with any person. It's all about how the mind works, number one. Number two, I would say that it's actually as beneficial or more beneficial to work with somebody who doesn't have experience in a particular industry, who has a lot of experience across a wide range of industries for a couple of reasons. One, people inside an industry will oftentimes have what I call blinders on. They don't have the perspective of anything other than, you know, their little tunnel that they've been in. And the second reason is that having worked across industries, I can bring ideas from other industries into particular industries that they may not have considered. So that's a very, very important issue to bring up. I face that as an objection from time to time. People say, oh, you don't know my industry, but Yeah, it really doesn't matter because these processes work for any and every industry. And moreover, I am a researcher by background. So I'm a very quick study on an industry that if I haven't worked in an industry before, which would be pretty rare because, but incidentally, the way that I got to work with so many industries over the years is I worked with a lot of ad agencies, you know, as a marketing communication consultant. And so ad agencies, many of them will have multiple types of industries as their clients. And so when you do that for, you know, over three decades, very quickly, you get to work with a lot of different industries, you know, and then you get referrals and so forth. I'm pretty unique in that regard. I think there are other people perhaps that have worked in a lot of industries like that, but I don't know very many myself who have.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Right now with Ethridge and Associates, is your primary source of income the coaching or are you still doing marketing research as well?
Steven Ethridge: So I do both. Marketing research is really, you know, NLP because it's the study modeling of excellence is founded in research because we've studied people that are excellent at what they do. And so research is the foundation of everything I do. Whether it's sales training, it's researching what works and developing training around that and training people on what what works. If it's marketing communication development for advertising, copywriting or media buying, it's researching what works and training that. So, you know, if you were to put an umbrella over what I do, however, I wouldn't call it research so much as I would call it communication. because that's my lens glass. Whether it's doing the research or developing the success models or training people in those success models, it's all about successful communication. Successful communication, first of all, with yourself to get your mindset right, so you're not having negative self-talk, and then communication with your audience, whether that's one-on-one as a sales prospect or with an audience as a speaker or with a mass audience through marketing communication. So I do both. My primary income is really it's communication, consulting, coaching, and training. And sales is just the area that for the last year or so and for the foreseeable future is my primary interest and focus.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And so what are some of the biggest mistakes marketing people make when you're talking about communication, say an advertising campaign, a social media campaign? What are some of the biggest mistakes they make in maybe word choice?
Steven Ethridge: Well, I would say the first one is that With all due respect to ad agencies and marketers, I've got a lot of friends and clients, and they're not all making the mistakes that I'm about to describe. There's actually two big ones, I would say. One is they may not do research, or if they do, they'll understand what the market's needs are, and then they'll use their own language, them being the advertising people, the marketers for advertising, they'll use their own language, their own paraphrase to communicate those ideas. And most people, if you ask them, have you ever said something to somebody, maybe it's your spouse or a child or a friend or coworker or whatever, and they heard something completely different than what you said, that's a pretty common experience, right? So it's very, very important to communicate the audience's ideas in their exact words. And going back to Dr. Charles Cleveland, that's what he would do with his linguistics analysis. When he would interview people, he would understand what motivated them. He would ask questions to understand what motivated them and he would look for common words and phrases that people who weren't in the same room together, they were interviewed separately, independently, one-on-one over the phone, typically, all across the nation, the same words, the same phrases, the same metaphors, the same descriptions would pop out. And where you've got a high frequency of the same words and phrases, et cetera, that's what you must play back to the audience. You have to use their exact words. And when we're talking about sales, that's one of the ways we establish rapport, is we listen to what is the person's predicates, and we play back their exact predicates. By that I mean the representational system, whether it's visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc. So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say is a lot of times Businesses, marketers make assumptions based on their own perspectives, based on their own values. And they want to make decisions based on the way they think the world works. And it could be totally, totally wrong. I'll give you one example. This is a marketing research, but it's also sales. I had a hospital client one time in a fairly rural area, and they were a nonprofit hospital. but there was a for-profit hospital that was going to, a bigger, more of a regional hospital that was going to buy another hospital in the area. And the managers of the hospital thought, well, we're not-for-profit. We've been here since before the Civil War serving the community. So we need to communicate that we're not-for-profit and that we're a local hospital, and that'll defend ourselves against this for-profit big chain that's coming in. And I told him before I did the research, because I've done so much research, I said, I don't think that's the right thing, because I suspect that for the market, for-profit will mean you've got higher quality equipment, higher paid doctors and nursing staff, better quality healthcare. Non-profit would be perceived as just the opposite. And I did interviews with open-ended questions, like I was taught to do by Dr. Cleveland doing this, you know, linguistics analysis. And indeed, it came back that not-for-profit means lower quality health care. And they went ahead and did, you know, they did the campaign based on the way they originally conceived it. And my follow-up research showed that it actually harmed their reputation. It harmed their their perceived quality as a hospital. So that would be an example of how it's very important to understand the way the market thinks and feels and to use their exact words if you want to succeed. Because at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do. We're communicating with people. Communication is a symbiotic relationship. You know, you got somebody sending a message, somebody receiving a message. Are they understanding that the same way, right? So those are two big examples of not using the other person's, you know, the audience's words, and then making campaigns based on your own assumptions, your own values, rather than really getting into the mind and heart of the audience.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: I liked your example at the beginning of our conversation, too, where the bank was saying, we pay more interest. Yeah. You're focused on the pay word. Right. They also switched it or you also switch it to you. Yeah. So I think a lot of times as marketers, We want to beat our chest and say, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we all over ourselves. And instead of using the word you and making it about them, the person you're going to do business with.
Steven Ethridge: The audience doesn't care about your business. I mean, they might like your business. They might have a favorable predisposition or even a preference for your brand over others. But at the end of the day, they care about their needs, their problems. How are you going to solve them? my problem. What does your product do? What does it do for me? And then what impact does that have on my life and the world and the community? Those are things that people consider these days.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: I have a couple more questions for you about NLP. So can people Is there an NLP institute or something that is still training people like they trained you in becoming certified in NLP?
Steven Ethridge: Yeah, there are several. And the one that is known as the global standard is the American Board of Neurolinguistic Programming. And my training, because I'm trained under them, certified under them, my training is approved by the American Board of Neurolinguistic Programming. And for the coaching certification, It's NLP coaching. It's the coaching division of the American Board of Neurolinguistic Programming. So when someone comes to my trainings, I actually can certify them under the American Board of Neurolinguistic Programming as a practitioner up to the master level, and under the American Board of Neurolinguistic Programming coaching division, if they do the coaching certification, which the coaching certification has as a prerequisite, the practitioner certification, because that's one of the things that makes our coaching most powerful. Going back to the idea that NLP is the study and modeling of excellence, We as a field have gone out and studied and modeled all the other major coaching certifying institutions around the world and we've included in our training the NLP practitioner skills as well as the coaching skills. So it truly is, the American Board of Linguistic Program and Coaching Certification has the highest coaching certification standards on the planet because we've taken the NLP and the coaching A lot of coaching without the NLP is all about content. It's about teaching, telling people, you know, what they can do and how to do things and modeling things. But what makes NLP different is we have not only content, but change work, very quick, rapid change. We help people make rapid changes in their mind to get better outcomes. And that's, you know, it's one thing to tell people what they should do or give them advice or coaching what they should do. which incidentally, a good coach doesn't give advice. A good coach draws the solutions out of the other person. But it's one thing to give that kind of content and that kind of coaching. It's entirely another more powerful thing to help somebody really get rid of limiting beliefs and get rid of negative emotions and set goals in their unconscious mind in a way that they can achieve them. A lot of what we do is about reprogramming with the other person, it's not a due to process. We can't just change or fix somebody, but with the other person's cooperation, helping them reprogram their habits in their unconscious mind and therefore their behavior. So yeah, but the American Board of Neurodiversity Programming is the one that I'm affiliated with. And anybody that comes and gets certified under me has an affiliation through that institution.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: So not only do you do sales training, do you also do NLP training?
Steven Ethridge: I do NLP certification trainings. Um, in fact, I do, um, I mentioned before I went to the practitioner level and got four certifications. I started out as a first forward NLP practitioner, then NLP coach, timeline therapy practitioner, and hypnotherapist. That's the practitioner level, four different certifications. They're all related fields. Then. So I certify people in those and then I certify people at the master practitioner level, master practitioner of NLP, master NLP coach, master hypnotist, master trauma therapy practitioner. And then, of course, they could go on to become a trainer. And so I'm certified as a trainer of NLP, trainer of NLP coaching, a hypnosis instructor and a master trainer. of Timeline Therapy, which is an advanced form of NLP. So the Master Trainer of Timeline Therapy is the highest training certification you can get in that particular field. So yes, I do train people. I've certified other coaches in a wide range of coaching fields. Because again, it's the process that matters. I don't have to be a content expert on, for example, particular kinds of coaching like relationship coaching, for example, because we've studied modeling excellence and relationship coaching is part of our repertoire when we're training people how to be a coach. And it's the same with health coaching. I'm not offering a health coach certification, nor do I need to be a health coach, because that's part of the NLP certification. I've trained people in a wide range of other coaching disciplines. I've trained naturopathic doctors. I've trained nurse practitioners. I've trained people that are in a wide range of other industries, salespeople, sales managers, people that want to get into this and understand how to apply it in their work world. A lot of people who go to the practitioner level actually are coming to get their own change work. They want to understand the skills, but they're more there for their own change work. But once they go on to the master practitioner level, they're somehow incorporating it into their field. Real estate agents, for example, brokers. I mean, this NLP is applied to any human endeavor, can be applied to any human endeavor. It started out, Bandler and Grindler that founded the field, started out studying excellent therapists. people that were getting extraordinary results. And so they first modeled a lady named Virginia Satir, who was a family therapist. And they basically went to her and said, hey, can we observe what you're doing and see if we can model it and get similar results? And that's exactly what they did. And there was Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy was another one. And then they went to talk to model Dr. Milton Erickson, who I mentioned was an MD, 20th century's most renowned, world renowned hypnotherapist. And then from there, the field has gone out and modeled all kinds of other fields, education, business, whether it's recruiting or supervision or advertising or sales, therapy, health, relationship coaching, and it's even used in Olympic athlete training as well as professional golf. I know a guy who is involved in coaching professional basketball players that are using NLP. So it's really a tool that can be used in any human endeavor. It's all about how the mind works, how someone communicates with themselves and with other people to achieve the most success that they can. So that's what makes it so fascinating to me is that it's just, it's one system that can be applied to anything to help achieve the most success possible in that field. I myself have coached people in the fields of education, relationship, health, as well as business advertising, copywriting, research, and sales. But the thing, as I said before, that I'm most focused on now and have been for a while and expect to be for the future is the sales training and coaching because there's such a demand for that. And I frankly think with all due respect to other sales trainers, I have something very unique in that I help people get their mind right. And I train a system that's very simple, just five steps. The magic, of course, so to speak, for lack of a better word, is what you do within each step. But the five simple steps allows you to know always exactly where you are in the process toward closing sales. So it's got such a big need. that that's where my focus is. And occasionally I'll have people that I'm working with in the sales coaching or training arena that they'll come to me and say they've got some other challenge going on in their life, whether it's health or relationships or whatever. So it allows me to help people in a variety of ways, even if I'm focused on one, even when I'm focused on one thing like sales training.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay, this is a fascinating discussion. And I know we're running out of time here. But I wanted to get to just a couple other questions. And then I have a lightning round of questions. So as far as NLP goes, what's the single biggest benefit you personally have received from your NLP training?
Steven Ethridge: Well, I would have to say it's the marketing communication, really helping clients really achieve, whether it's in sales or advertising. I have helped a wide range of clients. break unprecedented records in their market and return on investment because we got the message right. I've worked for political candidates that went up against well-entrenched incumbents. We were outspent three to one, and we won the election because we got the message right. I mean, shocking situations where we just shocked everybody. Nobody expected us to win, but we used NLP techniques in how we ask questions, how we understood the voting audience and how we messaged. And I've helped, for example, one thing I can talk about is the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development. I helped them in six months. They reduced their marketing expenditure by about 20 percent and increased their marketing return on investment by 276 percent. And every single marketing metric that they had increased substantially for one reason. We get the message right. and I didn't change anything about the media other than they lowered, their budgets got cut. It wasn't that I cut the budget, but their budget got cut. And yet, because we got the message right, it really worked. Now for me personally, because NLP can be used for personal things, at one time I was quite heavier in weight than I am now because I was eating some particular things that had a lot of sugar in them. And so I did this in training. I went to this training where we practiced techniques on one another under the supervision of a trainer. That's why we're called practitioners when we're certified. And it's a technique called the like to dislike technique. And I was eating these little things called buddy bars there. I don't know if you're familiar with them, but they come in packs of two little chocolate bars. And I was eating a couple of those, you know, after dinner every night as a snack. And it's a little mindset where you do, you take something you'd like, in this case, buddy bars, and you associate it with something you dislike that you would never, for example, want to put in your mouth in the case of something you eat. I associated it with cat turds because I've got a cat with cat litter and it's amazing how it works. I also was putting sugar in my coffee, two teaspoons of sugar in my coffee every morning. And I did the like to dislike technique, had someone do it with me and immediately stopped drinking sugar with my coffee. And I came home from the training, I told my wife that I'm not gonna put sugar in my coffee, but sometimes she would prepare it for me. And about three months later, she brought me a cup of coffee and she forgot and put sugar in it. I'm waking up, you know, in my bed, took a sip of the coffee and I unconsciously spewed it out because I had associated white sugar in coffee with battery acid, what I would imagine that to be like. And that's when I kind of realized, oh my goodness, this stuff really works, not just short term, but it works long term. So I've helped people lose weight. I've helped people stop drinking. I've helped people get off narcotics. Again, the sales training is my focus, but this is extremely powerful. And those are some ways I'm benefiting from it.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And I know you're a lifelong learner. I believe you have a PhD, you have a master's degree or two, is that correct?
Steven Ethridge: Yeah, two master's degrees, yeah.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, so what's the book that you recommend the most to people?
Steven Ethridge: Wow, you know, there's so many. I would have to put it in the context of something specific, but from an NLP perspective, I would say if someone's really interested in NLP, for example, and they wanted a quick, overview, the most simple overview of NLP. It would be the magic of NLP demystified. And that's a very good introductory book that will tell anybody about the basics, particularly at the practitioner level of what NLP is about. So I would start there.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay. Does that talk about timeline therapy? Because I wanted to ask you what, in a nutshell, what timeline therapy is.
Steven Ethridge: Well, no, that doesn't talk about timeline therapy, but the founder of the Registered Trademark method of timeline therapy that I'm trained under, a guy named Dr. Tad James, has written a book called Timeline Therapy and the Basis of Personality. Incidentally, he passed away a few years ago. His wife, Adriana, still runs the Tad James Company. They're one of the top training companies on the planet in these fields. But timeline therapy is a process of active imagination that allows you to identify the root cause in your life of a negative emotion or trauma or limiting belief and go back and examine that in what we call a disassociated way and get learnings from that that you can bring into your life now as positive resources or I like to say as wisdom so that you can let go of the emotions and keep the learnings. Right? So we don't like to look back. A lot of therapists will go back and they want to stay in the past, talking about the past and what were the calls. We find the one root cause, figure out what the learnings are and let go of, it's kind of like pulling a weed up by the root. You know, we'd let go of that. And then it's also used for goal setting. So it's about the past and the future. So let me give you an example of how it works. Have you ever had a dream? and at the time you felt like it was real when you were dreaming it, and you woke up and you realized it wasn't real, that's because that memory wasn't stored on your timeline. Psychologists going back to antiquity have realized that humans store memories according to some kind of timeline, some kind of calendar. And when they think about something in the future, they have some sort of an unconscious projection about where that is out there. Is it tomorrow? Is it three months? Is it three years out there? And so we help people elicit the direction of their timeline. Does it run forward or back or left to right or right to left? There's no right or wrong answer, but for each individual, it's different. And then we help them identify what it is that is holding them back. It could be a negative emotion like anger, sadness, fear, hurt, or guilt are the major ones. It could be a limiting belief like, I don't know if I can, or I don't know if I'm good enough, or there's all kinds of different limiting beliefs. And we help them identify what the root cause of that was and help them let go of it. I'll give you a quick example. I had a client who her and her husband were involved in sales for doTERRA essential oils. They were consultants for this multi-level marketing business, and he was very successful in sales. She had been through all the training, but not my training, but the doTERRA's training, and she didn't feel like she could sell. She wasn't succeeding. Come to find out, it stemmed all the way back to when she was in the second grade. She walked into class one day with glasses on. All the kids laughed at her because she had glasses. And from that moment on, she decided that she wasn't good enough. She lacked self-esteem and she lacked confidence. So I helped her identify that as the root cause and helped her let that go and then anchored her into states of confidence and competence. and being cool, calm, and collective in front of a prospective client. And then, of course, gave her some additional sales training. And then off she went to success. So the definition of Timeline Therapy is it's a process of active imagination that allows you to let go of negative emotions, limiting beliefs, and set goals in your unconscious mind in a way that don't happen. Of course, we evaluate those goals to make sure that they meet certain criteria so that they are realistic and can happen. Um, which I can talk more about if you want, but that's basically what it does.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. That's it. Thanks for the explanation. I was always wondering what that was since you mentioned it earlier. So yeah, I like that. That's a, it's a, in my mind, it's a great concept to, uh, to do time like that for sure. So you can move ahead and not just be focused on the past.
Steven Ethridge: That's right. You learn from the past and you move on. That's the way it is.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: All right. Well, thanks for your time today, Steven. I've got a lightning round of questions and just a final question after the lightning round. So these are very easy. What's your favorite candy bar? I know you're not going to say buddy bar. What's your favorite candy bar? Maybe there isn't one now.
Steven Ethridge: I'd have to say payday. Maybe I really don't eat many candy bars after what I went through. Okay.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: That's fair enough. What about your favorite music artist?
Steven Ethridge: Um, You know, being in Memphis and growing up and living in the South, I love the blues music. And so, people like Muddy Waters, B.B. King, you know, that's where the roots of a lot of rock and roll comes from. I like and I know a lot of people, you know, even, I don't listen to a lot of this now because I try to be mindful of not, you know, being a Christian, I try to be mindful of putting wholesome, healthy things in my mind. But from a pure music style, I love things like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and any of that like 60s and 70s rock and roll and blues, the rock and roll that's rooted in the blues. That's kind of, you know, where I grew up. My parents are musicians. My dad's 93, my mom's 91, so they don't do much anymore. They played a lot of gospel and bluegrass and country, which is very, in some ways, related to blues. So, that's kind of my root is the, you know, the blues and gospel, kind of like Elvis. You know, Elvis was raised in the gospels and blues, and that's kind of the foundation of his music likings. And so, mine are very similar in that regard.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Favorite cereal?
Steven Ethridge: I don't eat much cereal either, but I'd probably have to say Cheerios. You know, it's pretty simple and basic.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Mac or PC?
Steven Ethridge: If it's an iPhone, I would like Apple products, but I use PC products. I have, you know, for years. Yeah, there was a time when I think Macs were better at things like graphics, but I think that's probably not necessarily true these days. So yeah, I'm a PC guy.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Google or Microsoft? Google. Dogs or cats?
Steven Ethridge: Both. You know, I grew up part of my life on a farm, so I love animals. When I was in college, I lived in a little efficiency apartment where I couldn't have a dog. It was too big. So I had a cat from the time I was in my sophomore year of college until I was out of college and in my career married. That cat lived 18 years. And now my wife and I, we have two cats and we have two dogs. We love them both.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Phantom or Les Mis?
Steven Ethridge: Oh, wow. That's a really tough one. Probably Les Mis. That's a really tough one.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay, and last question. It's a two-part question. What's the worst thing about being an entrepreneur and what's the best thing?
Steven Ethridge: So the worst thing about being an entrepreneur, in my opinion, in my experience, is the pressure that it all, the buck stops with you. You know, at one time I had, I owned a 3,500 square foot building and had 10 full-time employees and 40 part-timers helping me with market research, data collection and processing. And I was, you know, the buck stopped with me. I had to do the sales. I had to make sure everybody's payroll was met. And even like now, I work on my own as an entrepreneur. You have to make sure you're out there doing the selling. It all depends on you. And that's the worst thing is you don't have an easy paycheck no matter what you do. You've got to be the one that does it. The best thing is the freedom and the flexibility. I like to have a lot of freedom and independence and being able to be creative and sort of do my own thing. So that's the best part of it.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: I love it. I love those answers. So Steven, thank you so much for being generous with your time today. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I've learned a lot about NLP and timeline therapy and I know a lot of salespeople are in my network and I would highly recommend them taking the courses from you. So thank you so much for sharing what you do and I really enjoyed the conversation.
Steven Ethridge: Likewise. I appreciate you allowing me on your podcast and I appreciate the time.
