NLPTimes Platinum Audio News Club Review

I first trained with Michael Breen in 1997 on McKenna Breen's notorious NLP practitioner course. At the time Michael presented the more conscious segments of the trainings such as the meta-model, leaving Paul McKenna to work on the hypnotic segments and Richard Bandler to weave his magic. I remember being impressed by the energy and excitement Michael brought to the subjects he covered. Since the breakup of McKenna Breen, Michael has been providing his own trainings such as the Society of NLP's Business Practitioner.

Now before I review the product I'd like to make it clear that I am an affiliate for NLPTimes products. I have to finance this website somehow and promoting products and trainers that I personally believe in seems a reasonable way. If you find my review helpful and decide to purchase NLPTimes products then I would be grateful if you could do so through the links on this page. I will do my utmost to ensure that my review is honest and hopefully helpful to you.

In case you're unaware of NLPTimes and their Platinum Audio News Club (PANC), checkout their marketing page.

What is the Platinum Audio News Club(PANC) and who is it for?

Firstly PANC is not for people new to NLP. It was developed to (in Michael's words) fill in the gaps in peoples training. In some ways I would say this understates the contents of the course. PANC is really for those people who have been to an NLP training and wonder why it is that they still aren't as good as Richard Bandler and want to know the skills that make the difference between an average NLP master practitioner and a true master of the subject.

The course is delivered as a series of MP3 recordings one a month. During your membership you will also be offered several free online trainings. In most cases these will be later converted to individual products and sold on the website, while you will get the same product for free. Alongside each months recording, which usually lasts between one and two hours, there is a PDF transcript and a PDF of assignments. You also receive access to absolutely loads of videos of Michael discussing various NLP subjects, answering questions etc.

What subjects are covered?

Starting off with TOTES ( a much under used element of NLP I now realize) the course moves quickly into presuppositions, embedded commands, covert communication, causal language, meta-model, strategy installation, conversational submodalities, rapid client work, time-lines, and nested loops. You may be thinking that you've covered most of this before but this is almost certainly not how you have learnt NLP before. Below I go into more detail about why.

Does the Platinum Audio News Club overlap any other NLPTimes products?

There is some overlap with the Language Guru – Mastering The Meta Model product. I would also suggest that the four Advanced NLP Skills Series products are not overly valuable if you sign up to PANC - though once you've got hooked on the PANC content you'll probably want them for completeness.

How much effort do I need to make?

Getting a single recording once a month seems quite slow early in the course, but the assignments can be quite complex. One of the hardest parts of working through the course is finding people or clients to perform the assignments on. If you already see clients then it may be possible to use them for your 'experiments', otherwise either an understanding friend or someone else who is working the the PANC in parallel may be invaluable.

If you are interested in working with others on the PANC course then get in touch. I may setup a forum here if there is enough interest as NLPTimes don't have one.

So is it any good?

Before the good stuff, there are a couple of negatives I need to cover:

Firstly, prior to purchasing the PANC product I listened to one of the 4 NLP Advanced Skills recordings and was quite disappointed. I wasn't sure whether there was any real content in the training or whether I just wasn't getting it. Once I started on the PANC material I realized that the material Michael is delivering is far denser and goes far deeper than any other NLP I had experienced. If you're not willing to work at it and to do the assignments then there is nothing for you here.

Secondly, the quality of the presentation of the product does not match the quality of the material. The sound quality on some products (less so on PANC) is not very good, and also there are quite a number of spelling mistakes in the PDFs, on the website, and even in the text on the online advertising videos. This is a bit poor and probably affects NLPTimes sales a little.

So now onto the good stuff:

One of the things I've always disliked about NLP is how disconnected its elements seem. It sometimes feels as if you're learning a bunch of unrelated skills that have no common ground rather than something cohesive. During the PANC episodes Michael does a great job of integrating the elements together into something that makes much more sense while dropping NLP elements that add little value. For me, this was one of the key elements. Reading through NLP forums such as the now dead NLPConnections, and the NLP forums on LinkedIn, its clear that the goal of many in the NLP community is to add more and more complexity (and often nonsense) to NLP. Michael's goal seems more akin to going for greater depth and clarity with less width and we don't seem to loss anything of value in the process.

I mentioned earlier that you may think you've covered all the elements I listed as part of the PANC course; This is an invalid assumption simply because to do so you must assume that you've learnt that subject completely and correctly. Once you get a few episodes into the PANC recordings you'll probably realize that when you left your NLP practitioner or NLP master practitioner training the trainer forgot to take your training wheels off. Most people have learnt NLP as they learnt science at school. You're given enough information to get by, but not what's really going on. In other words, you can't progress to the next level without throwing away most of what you've learnt before.

In fact, one of the biggest problems I had integrating the new information and thinking that Michael provides is that it takes quite a bit of unlearning. There will be some confusion, and that isn't a bad thing. For instance, taking the meta-model. You can't call yourself an NLP practitioner if you haven't annoyed your friends with it, but how many of us stopped and asked "Why does Richard Bandler ask the wrong question?" Listening to PANC is dangerous to your understanding of the meta-model and Michael doesn't take any prisoners.

And the meta-model isn't the only thing to take a bit of a beating. Metaprograms, Unconscious/Conscious Learning, the list goes on, but I think we're all better off for it in the end.

Conclusions

I don't believe that anyone else is providing such advanced NLP in a purchasable product today.

If you're new to NLP, then the Platinum Audio News Club is not for you - not yet - you need to do at least a NLP practitioner course first and get some practice. Spending more time with NLP will probably lead to you asking more questions.

On the other hand, if you're frustrated that your skills don't match what you think you should be able to do or you want to become one of the most highly skilled NLP practitioners on the planet then give the Platinum Audio News Club a go.