Several people recommended I take a "Full NLP Practitioner Certification Training" course with Dr. Matt James of NLP.com (and hypnosis.com). Most Neuro-Linguistic Programming courses that I've seen offered cost between $2-5k so this appeared to be a steal at $97 for a 4-day training. I've been curious about NLP for awhile and was hoping to learn techniques to incorporate into my therapy and coaching practices.
It seemed too good to be true, so I did research online with mixed reviews. Some said they found some value, others said that Dr. Matt James was a scam artist with questionable ethics (apparently he's being sued by his own father for fraud? ouch).
Despite all the red flags, I decided to sign up, pay the $97, and take the course in order to make my own educated opinion about what it was all about. I cleared my schedule for the 4-day course, starting at 9am every morning and ending at 8pm every evening.
The NLP Practitioner Certification Training was held at the Embassy Suites by LAX. Everyone got a name tag, a binder full of handouts, and a Hawaiian chocolate candy. Strangely, we didn't get an itinerary or agenda of any sort, so we had no idea what to expect or what the timeline would be for things.
Dr. Matt James (in his signature Hawaiian shirt) took the stage and introduced himself. He took a long time trying to debunk all the negative talk about himself on the internet. He told a LOT of stories which were mildly entertaining, but not relevant to the material.
After a full day, we got about 30 minutes worth of instruction on actual content. The rest of the time was spent by Matt and his co-presenter telling long-winded stories and attempting to upsell programs that cost more than $97.
I decided to go back the second day, hoping for more content.
It got worse.
Matt and his co-presenter attempted to sell even more products and courses, ranging from "buy our $17,000 stop smoking product to make $100k+ a year!" to "sign up for the master practitioner course in order to get more instruction on these techniques! What you're experiencing right now is just a small sample!"
Oh dear.
In 11 full hours, we received, once again, about 30 minutes of actual useful content. The rest? Heavy sales pitches for multiple products and additional courses, thinly disguised as ways to help us become more financially abundant, spiritual, etc. It felt slimy and I was very disappointed.
I tried again. On the third day, during a break before what seemed like ANOTHER heavy sales pitch, I had to get a straight answer from someone. i went up to one of the coordinators, a blonde lady named Courtney. My friend and I spoke with her at 10am and the exchange went like this:
Me: I appreciate what you and Dr. Matt James and The Empowerment Partnership are trying to do, but I scheduled 4 days out of my incredibly busy schedule to be here. I'd really appreciate it if you could respect my time by telling me when we're going to get into actual content.
Courtney: Thank you for being here! The content is woven into different presentations throughout the day...
Me: Please be real with me and I'll be real with you. I know that your business model depends on upsell sales, and that's fine. But if today and tomorrow are going to be repeats of the first two days, which are heavy pitches for expensive products and skimpy on content, then I'd really appreciate your letting me know so I can spend my time in ways that are more valuable to me.
Courtney (who, to her credit, dropped the BS and got real with me): Okay. You can leave during this upcoming presentation (an upsell for a program about Huna). Come back after lunch, around 3 or 4pm, and we should be doing more content then. We don't really have a structured schedule so I can't guarantee anything, but...
Me: It's 10am. Are you telling me that there won't be any serious material for 5-6 hours, and that there might not be after that? Or tomorrow?
Courtney: There should be content later in the day tomorrow...
Me: Thank you for your honesty and for the information. I really appreciate it.
And then I left. Disappointed with NLP.com, Matt James, and the sleazy way they tried to pass off a 4-day, 44-hour heavy sales presentation as a "training" course for NLP. Legitimate? No. Authentic? No. Ethical? Absolutely not.
Do I think that someone might be able to benefit from this? Maybe. But I absolutely didn't and neither did my friend who also left. I'm sad that I wasted 2.5 days of my life and embarrassed that I spent $97 to be sold to. I felt duped, slimed, and just plain lame to have fallen for what is, in my opinion, an unethical scam.
Ultimately, I'm glad I went so that I could form my own opinion, which is that this "NLP training" is an unethical scam with 5% useful content and 95% heavy and irrelevant sales pitches.
Hopefully I can save others a little money and a lot of time with this review. Go at your own risk.
Summary: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. read more