Kevin Hogan is very very deceptive, as shown in this thread.
Have read all his books, from the library. No one should ever buy a Kevin Hogan book, there is nothing new there at all. Zero.

He talks about only a few superficial techniques in his books, meanwhile his entire pitch is to upsell people to come to his own LGAT seminars to get the so-called "advanced" techniques.
Which, by the way is mainly bullshit.
Its just upselling.

The worst snakes in this influence field, are the ones who SAY they are teaching influence, but in fact are only teaching some old stuff, and mainly DOING covert influence on people, using the fig-leaf of "influence content".

Is there anyone out there, who is really teaching influence? No, why would they. They can make millions DOING it, not giving away their "secrets". One has to patch together what they are doing from various sources.
But the Kevin Hogan Influence LGAT seminars, are a nightmare. They are just going to bilk people of a fortune, all the while telling them they are teaching them how to bilk (uh..influence) others, like in their real estate or sales business.

The basics can also be learned in Advanced Sales, but again, more than half the "content" is upselling bullshit, every time.


The Cialdini books are a good start for the basics.

I've read two of Kevin Hogans books--they are badly pastiched chunks of info that he claims is formatted that way for a particular purpose. My opinion is that he is an idle author who has found a convenient excuse for a poor cut-and-paste job.
My overriding impression of his writings (including his website) is of a concerted attempt to position and sell himself as an expert with arcane knowledge, but with no real evidence of any special knowledge.

Cialdini covers the basics of persuasion and from an academic viewpoint-which at least is relatively free of constant upsells.
Most of what others have written on the subject is just personal elaboration on Cialdini's basic framework.

Gotta agree with that.
A good example is the subject of this thread, Dave Lakhani.

A guy out marketing himself as some type of "expert" in cult mind control tactics, yet making outrageous errors like referring people to a Scientology front-group.
So what is going on?
Its a business to make money. They have an angle they are selling.

Some other New Wage Gurus sell Enlightenment, Ending Suffering, Success, or whatever.
Some others sell the concept of "Influence", but in fact, most of their facts are wrong, or simply copied from others.

Meanwhile they are running the same covert manipulation as the LGAT leaders, but just calling their content "Influence".
They try to get people to go to Vegas to their LGAT's, to get burned for thousands, where they force them to sign documents and gag-orders.

Never sign anything from these guys, ever.
Don't let them film or record you, in person or on the phone.

They have no remorse for what they do, as in their mind, you are asking for it. After all, their LGAT courses are allegedly about teaching you how to manipulate others, to make more money.
So they figure you got it coming.

This is not an exaggeration. They look at SCAMMING YOU for tens of thousands as a "gift" to you, that you will never forget. Because after you get scammed and hoodwinked, you are supposed to learn how to do it to others, and get your money back from them.

Its a very ugly underbelly, in this area of the LGAT business, where they sell themselves as teaching "Influence".
Expect to see the flocks of wannabe sharks get gobbled up by the bigger sharks.

Anyone can see the aggressive manipulative, and bullying tactics of Dave Lakhani.

On Amazon, someone gave a very accurate moderate review of what is going on with the rigging of Amazon reviews, by these sleazy marketers trading 5 Start ratings.
14-16 people found the review helpful. (only Dave and 1 other person didn't)

But Dave Lakhani launches an attack on this Amazon reviewer, displaying Lakhani's arrogance, and poor judgment, again.
There are a lot of warning signs around this guy.
About 50 red flags all go up at once.


______________________________________________
QUOTE:
[www.amazon.com]
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars It's Overdone, May 29, 2009
By Reviewer

This review is from: Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want (Hardcover)
Dave's books are thin on content and usually artificially inflated.

[...]But these 2 books have very litte insightful content.

It looks like they have been written in a flurry,with a belief,that 'anyone' can write a book,even if they have very little of 'original insight' to share.

I am sure Dave has great insights to share.But they don't come out in either of his 2 books (Persuasion, Power of hour).I guess book writing requires much more time and effort.Its a long term project.And these books seem to have been written in a very short time.

Also it's hard to believe Reviews of Dave,because he always gives 5 star reviews to his fellow marketeers, who in turn return the favor.(Like Ken Hogan)This is something Dave Liebermann also does. Especially his recent books, are a lot of hype with very little real content.

As a recent trend,many marketeers in America have started doing 'artificial hype' of their books on Amazon. This gives a biased possitive view of the book.It may or maynot be justified.But what is missing is that the real readers voice (neutral and unincentivized) is getting buried.

I wish this trend can stop and the marketeers can trust the discretion of the readers and pay more attention in working on the quality of the book.

[...]

I am sure good authors would like to take a different approach.
________________unquote_____________

Is there anyone out there, who is really teaching influence? No, why would they. They can make millions DOING it, not giving away their "secrets". One has to patch together what they are doing from various sources.

Hogan is a two-bit poseur, I remember when he was trying to make a name for himself back in the mid nineties on alt.psychology-nlp. IIRC he was originally a carpet installer of all things!

That said, no, no one at least in the NLP "community" is actually teaching influence. Their "Trainer training" courses are a joke. Even if you go to Bandler, he won't teach his really good stuff in public. What aspiring predators like Ross Jeffries did when he realized no one was parting with the material that makes it all work, he started attending the seminars of peoples like Bandler, Sykes, La Valle and reverse engineering their strategies and langauge techniques, etc.

He'd sit in the far back and kept quiet. While everyone was happy getting mind blasted by Bandler or La Valle, he modeled what they did.

A tad off topic:

Dilts had another approach, he just bored his participants into a stupor. At first when I listened to him lecture, I thought the guy was a total dud and made paint drying look exciting. But then after I noticed I couldn't recall a thing the guy said, it wasn't hard to connect the dots that the guy was using Erickson's old techniques.

About six years ago, I went to an Andrew Cohen lecture and had that same reaction--I was confused.

At the same time, Cohen behaved in such an angry and restless manner that I had a very strange combination of emotions--I felt anxious and bored shitless at the same time.

And by bored, I mean so bored that I felt as though my brain was turning into liquid and oozing out my ears.

I knew something was off, and so I split my attention into two fields. I pretended to take listen and take notes in a docile manner, but used most of my attention to monitor the nonverbals. And whenever I felt myself zoning out, I would concentrate on my breathing, my body and my feet on the floor.

I was so exhausted at the end of the 90 minute talk that I refused to stay for Q&A and got out. Just didnt have the energy for any more twaddle.

I figured the stuff Cohen talked about was just confusion material, and that anything else would have done equally well.

Never thought it possible to feel painfully bored and anxious at the same time.

Its absolutely true that Kevin Hogan would be laughed out of the actual NLP hypnosis field. (unless they though they could make some money letting him do the marketing).
So the Kevin Hogan's move to fleecing the general public, who know nothing about it.

Ross Jeffries has chimed in on the James Ray situation, on the Guruphiliac blog.
There are some mentions in these forums too. [forum.culteducation.com]

James Ray also studied the NLP influence material in Hawaii through the Tad James NLP connection.
James Arthur Ray -NLP, Robert Dilts, Wyatt Woodsmall [forum.culteducation.com]


And inducing BOREDOM is a technique in hypnosis, like inducing confusion.
Many of them have talked how in conventional church through repetition of material, people go into a Trance. Same with many rituals.
So boring the shit out of you, is a way to put you into a suggestible state of "hypnosis" which just means you are more open to accept their Suggestions.
Then they give suggestions to have AMNESIA for what happened, so you don't remember most of what happened consciously.
That is exactly what Robert Dilts was doing, as stated above.
Inducing trance-hypnosis using boredom, to get at people indirectly, and then suggesting amnesia to people consciously forget the post-hypnotic suggestions.


As well, many guys like Richard Bandler simply confuse people, then suggest they are running complex patterns beyond mere human comprehension, when they are NOT. That just creates a mystical feeling of power towards the hypnotist, like he is a god. (he's not, just a very flawed man).

Read this page from an Erickson book, where it lists USE BOREDOM and SURPRISE.
Its a shame the general public knows nothing about any of this.
Read as much of this book as you can from the online source.


QUOTE from Milton Erickson book:
Use Boredom or Surprise:
..."anyone who has surveyed the faces of an audience forced to listen to an incredibly boring speech has seen the blank stare characteristic of hypnotic inner absorption"

The Wisdom of Milton H. Erickson: Hypnosis and hypnotherapy
By Milton H. Erickson, Ronald A. Havens

[books.google.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2010 02:58AM by The Anticult.

QUOTE:
[books.google.com]

"Boredom narrows your vision and restricts the freedom of your mind to think" (Erickson and Rossi, 1979, p 340)

"Often with highly sophisticated subjects you resort to uninteresting detail to bore the hell out of them" (Erickson, Rossi & Rossi, 1976, p 240)

Anticult wrote;

"So boring the shit out of you, is a way to put you into a suggestible state of "hypnosis" which just means you are more open to accept their Suggestions. "


At the Cohen lecture, he was using material from Ken Wilber and his own 'Evolutionary Spirituality'. Previous to linking up with Wilber, Cohen used nondual twaddle picked up from his time in India with HWL Poonja.

Caution: Metaphor Alert

Anything can be used as confusion inducing material. This can be taken from any number of reputable and ancient belief systems, or philosophies, or it can be just a flea market of crud thrown together from any number of sources.

Perhaps the confusion inducing material is, metaphorically speaking, like like the wadded up newspaper or styrofoam peanuts or moulded styrofoam units that are used as packing material for the actual item in the shipping box.

The kick is to get the audience convinced that the confusion inducing 'packing material' is the Real Deal but the active ingredients are kept well out of view.

Such as:

Having folks sign that all-important paperwork that shifts responsiblity away from the operator and onto the subjects

Selecting the audience so as to screen out or quickly eject anyone who shows signs of being rebellious

Controlling the room environment (Search this message board for all the references to Drew Kopp's descriptions of the Landmark Education room set up--go to the RR.com message board search button, type Drew Kopp or Kopp into the search slot and 'all dates' and get what comes up. We had lots of visits from trolls to that thread..always a promising sign.)

Keeping people up past their bedtimes so as to disrupt their sleep patterns

Use of the methods Anticult has described. Do a message board search for induction and Erickson or Ericksonian.

Handshake induction and yes set will give results too. Always pick the all dates option.

You wrote:

Quote
The Anticult
No one should ever buy a Kevin Hogan book, there is nothing new there at all. Zero.

and

Quote
The Anticult
The Cialdini books are a good start for the basics.

I've never read a Kevin Hogan book so I can't judge but the "nothing new there at all" thing is irrelevant.

Cialdini says nothing new either. He merely took various techniques that salespeople and influencers have been using (some since the 1800's) and created experiments to to "study" those techniques. That's not new or ground breaking. What is good about Cialdini's book is that his stories illustrate the principles in a way that people understand and he labels the concepts in a memorable way. But take even a brief look at classics in Marketing and Advertising from the 1950's on back and you'll see the ideas are not only NOT new but they have been explained in detail and then proven in a lab more powerful than any university lab - direct marketing and direct sales.

Just because people label things with new names doesn't make them new.

Just sayin'.