NLP Liverpool

George Cunningham - Director

I was born and bred in Liverpool, not that you’d know from my accent, and I’ve been using NLP in business applications since 1998. My career has been wide and varied and has taken many twists and turns along the way. At 18, my love of the outdoors saw me begin my working life in Agriculture – initially as a shepherd on a lowland farm at Anthorn, in Cumbria (below) - check out the view from the front door further down this page, and yes I’m a keen photographer too.

After graduating from Harper Adams Agricultural College, I joined Oldacres Animal Feeds as a Management Trainee and enjoyed working in various parts of the south of England, most of all Dorset. But, the lure of the mountains and a desire to be a little closer to my Liverpool home saw me return to Cumbria to work as a sales representative for KW Agriculture.

1990 saw me swap farming for pharmaceuticals (if you spell them phonetically, they’re very similar) joining APS/BERK as a sales rep in Lancashire, turning around an ailing, unprofitable territory into one with a good turnover and high profit margin.

1992 was when I joined Bayer plc as a Medical Sales Rep for Wirral and Cheshire and started a territory partnership with Terry Francis and Barbara Harvey, now both enjoying a well deserved retirement. In the summer of 1998, I was offered the opportunity of a secondment to a Head Office position, project managing the roll out of new computers and systems for the UK and Ireland field force (some 300 users), a position I developed and turned into my own. It was during this time that I was first introduced to NLP and began using these techniques in a business environment for training, communications, mentoring, coaching and presentations. At the end of 1998, the secondment was made a permanent position which saw me become involved with projects at a global level, acting as a consultant both within the business group and throughout the company. I also attained my PRINCE2 qualification and accreditation at this time and found the methodology to be very helpful in managing projects effectively.

Alas, in 2001, Bayer’s business was dramatically affected by a product withdrawal and expiry of product patents, leading to a massive down sizing of the company’s structure. This gave me the opportunity to return to Liverpool and launch my first business venture with Julie - ForwardPlan-IT Ltd. As a pharmaceutical CRM and Information Management consultancy, we helped our clients increase their return on investment in sales management systems. We helped one particular client save over £90K per year in just one afternoon.

For another client, we reduced the number of activity reports a manager needed from 23 to 1, which led to a 3 fold increase in call volume. Over the next 3 months sales increased significantly and managers were able to manage, rather than run countless reports and analyse data.

Also, at around this time, a group of friends and I decided to start an informal NLP practice group which I enjoyed so much, I decided to take my NLP learning further and progressed first to Master Practitioner of NLP and then to certified Licensed Trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Over the years that followed, we found that we were devoting more of our time to NLP with both corporate and private clients, dealing with everything from weight loss to food phobias, insomnia to chronic fatigue, addictions such as smoking, drugs and alcohol and a quite amazing array of phobias. I also run a coaching and mentoring service for private clients, and deliver high quality bespoke training courses to corporate clients.

One of the most personally rewarding problems to deal with is dyslexia, and I’ve had some fantastic feedback from parents. Many have said that after I’ve taught their child the NLP spelling strategy (something we will teach you on the NLP Practitioner course), it’s almost as if I’ve turned the key to unlock their child’s learning potential and the attitude towards learning changes almost completely, see our testimonial page for more information.

In 2004 I decided that what I really wanted to do was to bring quality, certified NLP training to Liverpool and bring the benefits of NLP to as many people as possible. I started this journey by setting up the NLP Liverpool website in early 2005. We formally changed the business name to NLP Liverpool Ltd in April 2006 to fully reflect the change in business focus.

Like you, I had done a great deal of research into NLP before undertaking any training courses and had come across a confusing array of governing bodies and training institutes offering certification under their own banner. We wanted to make sure that the training we received was delivered by an institute that offered an internationally recognised certification in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Richard Bandler and John Grinder, co-creators of NLP, founded The Society of Neuro--Linguistic Programming in 1978 and it is the first and largest NLP certification, training, validation and quality control organisation in the world. Richard personally trains, assesses and certifies all Society of NLP Trainers (myself included), and it is for this reason that I decided to ensure that my training courses are certified by The Society of NLP. In fact, Richard signs all our certificates personally and I regularly assist him, John La Valle and Kathleen La Valle and Paul McKenna at their international trainings in London.

We are proud to be the first NLP training institute in Liverpool to offer NLP training certified by Richard Bandler and The Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and our display of the society’s logos is your guarantee of the quality of our training.

For more information about how I can help you, simply call me on 0151 931 5184.

Be well, George