The Key To Business Excellence

Right after you've learned how to balance your life and work, it's time for you to learn how to level up your mindset and business.

Quick Question: Have you ever heard business people talk about Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and wondered what they were all about? If it's yes, then this article is for you!

In this article, I sat down and spoke with the highly respected and sought-after Master Coach and Trainer, Sebastien Leblond. We managed to deep dive into these 3 key subject matters:

1) The No.1 Cause of Preventing You From Reaching Your Entrepreneurial Goals

2) The Top 5 Benefits of NLP

3) How NLP Can Help You & Your Company Thrive 

Here are some takeaways which I find will be helpful to you:

1) You Learn About Business through Running a Real Business

Sebastien shared that the 1 thing he wished he knew before starting his own business was BUSINESS. "I mean I started my 1st company, an investment company and I started NLP Top Coach as well. Without knowing anything about business. It was a passion. I knew what I wanted to do. I was excited. I was passionate. I had zero knowledge about business. So, I wish I knew about HR for example. HR has been a big challenge for running the business. I wish I knew about the financial statements, balance sheets, and how to grow the business. Not just through intuition and how I feel but to grow NLP Top Coach through numbers". Simply said, you learn more by doing, not just by reading and listening.

2) Ask Yourself this Question: "What is my Outcome?"

"The result you are going to achieve in your business comes from the quality of the question that you ask yourself. So, it's very important to ask yourself questions that will be result-driven. That will help you to focus. That will allow you to come closer to what you want to achieve and what you want to get". This should be an obvious first question in any endeavor. So obvious we usually forget to ask it—we skip ahead to questions like "What actions must I take" and "Will this work?". Then, we end up wondering why we’re spinning our wheels. Before you can move forward, you must have a vision of what you want: without a vision, you'll have no direction. Without direction, you'll have no purpose. 

3) Do Incantations

An incantation is a phrase that you repeat again and again to put yourself into a peak state". When you are saying an incantation, you engage your entire nervous system with the full force of your focus, emotion and body. The power of an incantation far surpasses any other belief that you once had before. Empowering incantations have incredible power to create the certainty and emotional intensity that you desire to have an extraordinary quality of life.

Examples of incantations:

I) “I am energetic and full of life! I can change my state and create energy in my body in an instant.”

II) "Life is a gift and I enjoy each day fully".

III) "I am charismatic and completely confident".

4) Have a Clear Map of What you Want to Do

There's a series of things that Sebastien believes new entrepreneurs have to do before they jump into their business full time. They are:

I) You need to know about your products and services.

II) You need to test your products and services with someone else.

III) You need to have a logo and company name.

IV) You need to register the company.

V) You need to have a business plan.

By doing these, then you will be ready to leave your full-time job and start your own business. Ps: Make some money before you leave as well!

5) The Manual to You

"Everything that we buy comes with a manual on how to operate it. Except the most important thing in our lives: our children".

NLP helps you in having the right mindset, behaviour, beliefs and values. According to Sebastien, NLP is a set of tools, techniques and tips on how somebody can be their best version of themselves. He added that it's not external like how to grow your followers on social media. It's internal whereby it deals with the mindset, reprogramming our beliefs, behaviours and values to be empowering.

6) The 5 Human Clouds

I) Negative Thinking

When you see something negative, you'll start to focus on it. Once you've focused on it and then more things become negative, you'll start to attract them into your life.

II) Negative Emotions: Sadness, Fear, Guilt

When your emotions go up, your intelligence will go down. A Low EQ can make an intelligent person make a wrong decision.

III) Limiting Beliefs

A limiting belief is when you have an opinion about yourself or someone else or the environment that's holding you back in the unconscious level.

The #1 Limiting Belief: "I'm not good enough".

The #2 Limiting Belief: "I'm not confident".

IV) Inner Conflict

As stated by Sebastien, this relates to our values- which are most important to us. He shared that 1 of the biggest challenges is when a person has conflicting values. For example, 1 part of you wants to be a successful entrepreneur but the other part of you wants to have a family and spend more time with them. Because of this, you are torn away between the 2 and therefore, you are never truly successful and you'll never make your spouse happy. "The reason is that it goes in a different direction. You are spreading your energy".

V) Bad Behaviour

Examples are like taking illicit drugs, procrastinating, and watching Netflix too much. Sebastien then added that some people can have a mixture of these obstacles like I, II & III.

7) NLP Can Help you Empower your Team

"Actually, NLP doesn't help the business, it helps the people inside the business. The more the team performs, the more value that they add to the company, the more the company grows". Since the personal performance of each employee is the bedrock of business productivity and success, when applied correctly, NLP can improve staff confidence and morale. This, in turn, increases team performance and productivity which then improves customer satisfaction. This is especially helpful if you have a sales team and need to embolden employees before a big sales call. Better yet; host a company-wide NLP training so that each of your employees can utilize those skills in communications with your company’s customers and prospective customers. NLP can be self-taught with the right programs and provides the blueprint for better, more effective communication across your business - so that you can better market and serve customers, and help your employees do the same.