NLPhilia Blog

OK, so it isn’t NLP-related, but I know there are those of us who run trainings and who manage practice groups and such, and there are times when it’s useful to have professional-looking name tags for the folks in the room. So I’d like to draw your attention to FreeNameTags.net. They have more than 60 ready-to-use printable name tags that you can download and print for free. (They take Avery 5395 or compatible adhesive labels, or plain paper.)

The Employee name tags might be great for associate trainers or other helpers you’ve got, and the Hello tags for your participants. Unless you’ve got an interesting sense of humor, of course.

Incidentally, the folks who run that site have lots of other free printable stuff for your business, too.

(Thanks, Lifehacker!)

Are you always on the lookout for relaxing sounds to play in the background of your hypnosis sessions?

A recent Lifehacker.com post points (or, rather-re-points, as it had covered them before) to a very simple and very cool Web app that generates a wide variety of relaxing sounds and lets you mix them to your personal taste. Choose from drums, flutes, or “vibes”, add up to four choices of sound (birdsong, ocean waves, crickets, etc.), set the volume for each, and let it play.

Go check out Sound Sleeping. (Requires Flash.)

By the way, you can also download MP3 tracks of pre-mixed relaxation for a nominal price.

I received this back in April, but just found it, neglected, among some other e-mail.

Doug O’Brien and Nick Kemp composed and recorded original music for their 2006 collaboration, “How Deep the Rabbit Hole.” While they were at it, they decided to create some music that anyone could use in their trance inductions. The “license” is as follows:

The music is 15 minutes in length. You are free to use it however you choose. We only ask, if you use it for a distributed recording, please give us a music credit. Thanks.

It sounds really cool. Go get it. If you like, let ’em know; maybe they’ll give you some more.

If you own a small business, as many NLPers do, you might find The Ultimate Small Business Owner’s Resource Guide to be quite a useful tool.

How much time does it take you to find a virtual phone company, a web designer, or another business or service professional to help you with your small business?

No doubt you spend precious hours trying to find just the right person, which are hours that would much better be spent growing your business.

The Ultimate Small Business Owner’s Resource Guide lists over 100 businesses that can help you be more successful in running your web-based small business.

The result is that you will be saving tremendous amounts of both time & money!

You can order the print version from the link above, or download a PDF of the book for free, with many thanks to Lifehacker.com!

I don’t know how I missed this site up until now. Expert Village offers a multitude of free instructional videos on a wide variety of topics, all from credentialed experts in their respective fields.

The Internet is filling up with content. But the challenge in the information age is no longer finding information, but figuring out which information to believe. Our philosophy is to film and interview leading experts who teach you what they know. We go a step further by providing you the credentials of the expert we consulted so that you can judge the credibility of the information you receive.

Let me know how you like Expert Village: Free video clips, how to videos, and video instruction

Just in time for Christmas, BoingBoing shows us a beautiful map of the human brain:

If you go to New Zealand’s Unit Seven Web site, you can get free desktop wallpaper images and can purchase high-quality prints. The perfect gift for the brain lover!

Nick Kemp reports that he’s done a major redesign of his NLPMP3 site:

www.nlpmp3.com has just been redesigned and to date has free unedited interviews with many trainers including Richard Bandler, Frank Farrelly, Doug O Brien, Nick Kemp, Sue Knight, Michael Breen, Paul McKenna, Michael Neill, Steve Andreas and many more!

We are looking for new interview subjects for 2008 and all suggestions are most welcome. The subjects don’t need to be NLP trainers, but need to have something interesting to say from or on an NLP perspective!

Visit www.nlpmp3.com

Nick Kemp tells me he’s Jamie Smart has set up a new NLP resources site:

“You’re About To Discover Secrets That Most People including most NLP Practitioners Don’t Know About NLP” – www.myNLPresources.com

Looks to me like tons of free stuff and some purchasable stuff as well.

I’m a major fan of The Teaching Company. They’re an amazing business which takes the cream of the crop of University professors and records their best lectures on audio and/or video:

The Teaching Company brings engaging professors into your home or car through courses on DVD, audio CD, and other formats. Since 1990, great teachers from the Ivy League, Stanford, Georgetown, and other leading colleges and universities have crafted over 200 courses for lifelong learners. We provide the adventure of learning, without the homework or exams.

I’ve bought several courses from them and have listened to a few more from my local public library. I’ve been consistently impressed.

On occasion, they give away a lecture or two, usually to celebrate a holiday. I just received an e-mail from them with links to two free lectures on the history of Christmas:

Season’s greetings! To thank you for being our customer, we have specially commissioned two holiday lectures by Professor Patrick N. Allitt. Our free gifts to you, “Christmas in Victorian Britain” and “Christmas in 19th-century America” are available for download or streaming right now.

Included in the e-mail was an invitation to forward it to friends. I figured this was the best way to get the word out. 🙂

In “Christmas in Victorian Britain,” Professor Allitt explores the celebration of Christmas as we know it today, with decorations, music, and lavish gift exchanges, and where it began–Victorian Britain. While the holiday had older traditions such as those that celebrated the winter solstice, the Victorians enhanced and clarified the religious elements of Christmas and at the same time commercialized it.

After familiarizing yourself with the origins of modern-day Christmas, explore “Christmas in 19th-century America.” How did different ethnic groups in America celebrate Christmas in the early 19th century? Why did New Englanders often want to avoid all forms of celebration while Pennsylvania Germans dressed up, visited each other, and drank heavily? After the Civil War, Christmas celebrations began to be standardized throughout the nation under the influence of the new department stores, which ran the Christmas-oriented marketing campaigns we are familiar with today.

About the professor:

Professor Patrick N. Allitt is Professor of History at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He was born and raised in central England and received his B.A. in British and European History from Oxford University. He earned his Ph.D. in American History from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Allitt has served as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Divinity School and at the Princeton University Center for the Study of American Religion.

Please download and enjoy these sample lectures. I’m sure you’ll be sending a hunk of your income to The Teaching Company as soon as you get hooked. 🙂

Incidentally, the links on this page are lifted directly from the e-mail, complete with what appears to be referral information specific to the e-mail campaign. I do not get referral fees from The Teaching Company.

Here’s a great rule for sales and marketing, taken from David Meerman Scott’s ChangeThis article, The Gobbledygook Manifesto: “When you write, start with your buyers, not with your product”.

David Scott, the author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, says it best in introducing his manifesto: “Oh jeez, not another flexible, scalable, groundbreaking, industry-standard, cutting-edge product from a market-leading, well positioned company! Ugh. I think I’m gonna puke!” In every company description, on websites, in press releases, in corporate pamphlets, the same adjectives get used over and over until they are meaningless. Scott analyzed thousands of these offerings and presents a collection of the most over-used and under-meaningful phrases…and strategies for making the most of these communication opportunities.

His ideas don’t just apply to business, of course. Clear and interesting comunication is useful in all areas of one’s life.

Read the Manifesto (272k, PDF) or Visit the ChangeThis page for this Manifesto or Visit David Scott’s blog