Anthony Robbins did Blackhat

This comes from Eric Robbie (whose signature is at the bottom) which parts of this confirmed by Jonathan Altfeld, John Grinder and others:


1. One of Tony Robbins's first jobs, at the age of 19, was to go out as an advance man for a motivational speaker called Jim Rohn, who traveled around the US, doing tent shows. One of Rohn's big things was to make his entrance by running dynamically down the aisle and leaping energetically up on to the stage while his staff led the clapping and the whooping and the hollering. Rohn did this to show that he was, well, dynamic.

When Tony Robbins started doing his shows in 1983-84, he not only copied the business model of sending out a bunch of advance men six weeks ahead - to fill the show or else (or else they didn't eat, 'cos they were working 100 per cent on commission) - he also made his entrance by running dynamically down the aisle to leap up on stage while his staff led the clapping and the whooping and the hollering - to show that he, too, was ... dynamic.

2. The year Tony Robbins did his Practitioner track - which was 1983, with Grinder, DeLozier, and Associates - he also went along to a seminar called "Spiritual Reality Training" given by an ex-stage magician turned new age speaker called Tolly Burkan. The big component of the seminar was that you wrote out your most limiting beliefs on a piece of paper, and then you went outside and threw it on a blazing log fire.

A few hours later, when the logs had settled down to glowing embers, and after you'd been given some exercises and words of preparation, you would go out again and walk across the hot coals, to prove that, if you could do that, you could do anything.

Within weeks, Tony Robbins was offering "Fear Into Power: the Firewalk Experience", where on a Friday night, and to the accompaniment of much loud music, dancing in their seats, and rah-rah, people wrote out a list of their biggest fears, and then went outside to throw it on the fire.

A few hours later, after (1) anchoring a memory of success to a clenched fist punched into the air, (2) being told to keep your eyes looking up (to notionally stay in visual and out of kinesthetic), and (3) chanting "cool moss, cool moss" (to jam up any scary, "I can't" internal dialog), participants went outside - to walk across the hot coals and prove that, if they could do that, why, "I can do anything!"

(Throughout the event there was also very heavy selling for the two-day class beginning the next morning, which class taught basic nlp and rapport, but was entitled "the Mind Revolution".)

3. When Tony Robbins decided he wanted a book out with his name on it, he gave US $5,000 to each of five leading nlp trainers of the mid-80s so that they would each write two or three chapters. Amongst those contributing were Wyatt Woodsmall, Tad James, and Cathy Modrial.

The resulting manuscript was then edited into unified shape, with the jargon smoothed out and the writing improved not by Tony Robbins, but by two desk editors - Peter Applebome and Henry Golden - with further editing by Jan Miller and Bob Asahina at Simon and Schuster. The title of the book is Unlimited Power (1986).

4. In 1987, Tony Robbins told Bruce Rowe, a writer working for the winter issue of the US magazine, Rapporter, of how he'd used nlp modeling to improve US Army training in pistol shooting, and how he, Robbins, "was able to qualify 100 per cent of the shooters in one day, and triple those qualifying at expert level."

In fact, as posted elsewhere on this forum, the people who did the bulk of the modeling of pistol shooting were LTC Robert Klaus, Wyatt Woodsmall, Richard Graves, Paul Tyler, John Alexander, and Dave Wilson. Tony Robbins was very much the junior, the intern.

It was Wyatt Woodsmall, who has made it a habit over the years to encourage young talent and to be generous to those in whom he sees promise - including both Marvin Oka and myself - who invited Robbins along, and he did so because he, Wyatt, admired Tony's chutzpah, or self-confidence. But on the day, Tony was not the one running the show, or making the key distinctions. What he was useful for was confidently instructing trainees, once he was given the pattern.

And as for those "in one day" statistics, the actual figures are that:

"The basic qualification at that time was ‘Marksman', with ‘Sharpshooter' and then 'Expert' coming above that - a Marksman being able to get 30 hits on target out of 45 rounds fired. Two groups of soldiers were taught side by side - one group getting the nlp-based training, the other group - the ‘control group'- getting the standard army training.

"The control group took 27 hours to get 73 per cent of the soldiers to Marksman level, with only 10 per cent of the group making Expert. The nlp-based group took 12 hours to get 100 per cent of the soldiers to Marksman level, with 25 per cent making Expert."

which means the figures given to Bruce Rowe were glossed up a bit, ad-man style, as well as the impression given that the project was all done by Tony.

5. As far as I know, Tony Robbins has never attended a Master Practitioner track as a student, nor has he ever done a formal Trainer Training. He did, however, send 15 of his people to take the Master track that I had the privilege of co-teaching with Richard Bandler, in August, 1989 - with the clear intention that they'd "bring back the latest".

(In those days, staff from the Robbins organization were sent round to other trainings - not to sit in the class and take the training, but just to pay a "courtesy" visit - and then ask if they could have a copy of all the hand-outs. On this occasion, however, those 15 were paid for, and took the whole course.)

Most of what I taught as part of that 12-day training - about language, about the effect of presuppositions, about solving the "problem of criteria" by separating them into both rules and values - appeared in the book, Awake the Giant Within, but without any crediting, while the five-stage chain I offered from values through rules and complex equivalents to reference experiences became "a Date with Destiny" - also without any crediting.

And it wasn't just my stuff which got purloined. Material by Leslie Cameron-Bandler and David Gordon on "the virtual question" and material by Charles Faulkner on metaphor also appeared in AtGW without any crediting. As did the whole bit about "associate massive pain with where you are, and associate massive pleasure with where you're going" which was a hardly-bothering-to-disguise-it steal of Richard Bandler's propulsion systems.

As to writing style and clarity, again, most of that is down to the desk editors, Jan Miller, Dick Snyder, Bob Asahina, and Sarah Bayliss at Simon and Schuster.

It's not that Mr Robbins could be more pretentious, and yet he isn't, it's that he already is pretending - pretending that he originated most of the ideas in those first two books, as well as pretending that their easy style is his, and not that of his ghost writers and editors.

ER

 

good read. im not that surprised i mean he does mention that he get his ideas from learning from others. but it seems like most successful people are blackhatting in their own ways.

 

Yeah me too learn from here.. hehe

 

why recreate the wheel?

 

He would make a great politician with all that BS.

 

master blackhatter.. guy's worth a few hundred $M

 

Interesting Anthony Robbins story - when I was a young programmer working at a discount brokerage in the mid nineties, my office was in the same building as his. Sometimes I'd go in late at night to get stuff done (the only way to remote at the time was PC anywhere, and since I only lived a mile or so away, I'd make the trip). It would be past midnight, and you always know when he was there because in front of the building (visitor's parking) would be one of his cars - 911, Bentley, and a few others that I don't remember (an H1 Hummer, I think). He'd be there burning the midnight oil. -e-

 

The winner and luckiest of all BH goes to Mark Zuckerberg's


Facebook paid up to $65m to founder Mark Zuckerberg's ex-classmates
Comments (33)

Facebook paid up to $65m - $20m cash and a 1.25m shares - to end a lawsuit in which Mark Zuckerberg, now its chief executive, was accused of stealing the idea for the social networking site from a company called ConnectU.

The case, brought against Zuckerberg by three former classmates, Divya Narendra and the brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, had threatened to derail Facebook.

But though both sides had promised to keep the details of the settlement secret, the law firm representing ConnectU proclaimed the amount in a newsletter it sent out in January. The detail was picked up by the Recorder, a San Francisco-based legal publication.

Until yesterday, the details of the outcome had been kept secret. Lawyers on both sides went as far as asking the judge to clear the courtroom of reporters. But the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges then trumpeted "WON $65 million settlement against Facebook" in its newsletter. ConnectU fired the law firm last year, and the two sides are now disputing fees payable: Quinn is seeking $13m as part of a "no win, no fee" arrangement.

The case came to court in July, and it seemed that the court judge would dismiss the case by ConnectU. Its owners alleged that Zuckerberg, who helped set up Facebook, stole the idea, technology, design and business plan while they were students at Harvard.

Facebook launched in February 2004; ConnectU, three months later. But it has struggled, and now has fewer than 100,000 members, while Facebook boasts more than 150 million. ConnectU launched its lawsuit in 2004.

The basis of the settlement was Facebook's notional value following an investment by Microsoft, which paid $240m for a 1.6% stake in October 2007, narrowly beating Yahoo and Google.

That valued the site at around $15bn - but the documents used in the court suggest that internally, Facebook has never regarded itself as worth that much - and instead uses the much lower figure of $3.7bn, equivalent to $8.80 per share. Microsoft's investment would imply a value of $35.90 per share - and it was the Microsoft valuation that was used in the settlement of the case. Under their settlement, Facebook agreed to pay ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock. The stock was worth $45 million, based on the Microsoft valuation, but only $11 million under Facebook's own appraisal.

Chris Scott Graham, an intellectual property litigator based in Mountain View, California, told the Recorder: "$65m is a significant sum — it's certainly more than the cost of the defence."

He added: "It's a very small percentage of [Facebook's] valuation and therefore could be argued by Facebook to be a payment based on considerations other than the merits of the claims."

 

great article.. now i actually have more respect for tony robbins. lesson learned: speed of implementation and outsourcing is key.

 

Robbins and Obama seem a lot alike dont they? Obama and FDR, Lincoln.. etc

 

not surpised...but hats off

 

Congratulations ricaum. That's the largest group of words I've read on one web page in one sitting in the last 5 years. Good stuff

 

I'm now bumping up this over three years old thread 'cause I do consider it to be an excellent read - more than that I now understand much better, WHY Facebook did NOT take part in the protest actions against SOPA yesterday, like many of the most reputable websites worldwide did.

I've been also able to verify by now the complete information as stated by Eric Robbie (ER) in the OP's text and I'm outraged by the deeds of Mr. Zuckerberg & Co.

More infos on the ConnectU versus Facebook can be found here:

Code:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConnectU

Folks, compared with Mr. Robbins' and Mr. Zuckerberg's ethics we here are - I do assume - all WHITE HAT fellows ...

Should someone here consider my bumbing up of this (old) thread inappropriate, so please give my the advantage of being r-e-a-l-l-y outraged right now :ballchain

 

Tony reminds me of the Chicken Soup for The Soul dude. Never read the books+ but I was told in theory it was a bestselling empire before it was "written" because of the research and the fact that author (or whoever he hired) merely interviewed cutting edge motivational trainers and collected their best mini stories into books. The author of the Secret did it. Even Napoleon Hill did it with Think and Grow Rich. I think Napoleon Hill was much more transparent about it with the first Mega Bestselling book (but he "wrote" many).

One thing for sure, I'm doing the Personal Power II program and to quote another reviewer "its motivational dynamite" and so much more than the superficial rah rah that Robbins conveys. Its psychological, spiritual, magical, miraculous and it puts steroids into your Life Gameplan. Your personal Masterplan.

Bandler and Grinder are social Magicians! They turned Ross Jeffries and Neil Strauss into wealthy Casanovas. Think about that.

 

Bump much?

 

Not too much I hope.

 

holy crap 3 and a half year bump ..

 

yea i just read it thinking it was new, i was going to make a comment and then WTFFFF I ALREADY DID, I WAS THE FIRST TO COMMENT 3 YEARS AGO LOL

 

Tony Robbins is awesome.