Glasgow Hypnotherapy & Counselling Background

Glasgow Hypnotherapy And Counselling Is Born

I help people change their lives.  

To be honest I’ve always felt the desire to help people, and when I began to get results using these methods on myself, it never crossed my mind to work with others.  I never set out to be a therapist of Life Coach or Trainer – I was going to be a journalist!  But once you know how to change a food addiction, and your mate’s sister sitting next to you at dinner confides in you that she’s hooked on pizza, why wouldn’t you help?

That was always my core drive, and still is.  To help people.  Now I’m not a complete altruist, because it’s my business and I expect to be paid.  But that was my passion – Maybe you’ve seen “Star Wars”, when Obi Wan Kenobi told the Imperial Storm troopers “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” and they let them pass, instantly changing their minds.  “Wouldn’t it be really cool to be able to do that!” I thought.  I want someone to come to me with a problem like “I’m comfort eating cos I’m depressed”, and with a wave of my hand I tell them “Stop it!” and they stopped.  That would be magic!  Real magic.

Love helping people.  Always have.  Even in school my friends would come and ask for dating advice – even though I was single.  Like being the reliable one people come to for help.

I’m a messenger of hope. Eager to share the message that you can teach an old dog new tricks.  You CAN change if you want to.

Used these mind techniques to change my own levels of confidence, heal and ulcer and change my own self-image

Ordinary world – limited awareness of the problem

My earliest memory is waking up in Strathclyde hospital with pneumonia, aged 4.  I’m told I had been left outside in a pram and got sick.  I would catch pneumonia again in 1986 only six weeks into a new job. Another Christmas in hospital.  Somewhere in between I was told I had an allergy to house dust, so they took me into hospital and cut open one of my nostrils to make it wider.  How the **** does that work?

My family health record was atrocious.  My Mum had high blood pressure and would later develop all sorts of weird and wonderful ailments, many of them rooted in fear and psychosomatic illness – what the dictionary defines as a physical disease that is thought to be caused, or made worse, by mental factors.  Even my brother had hospital treatment when he was very young.

See, we grew up in a small cottage in the middle of nowhere, with dogs in the house, mice in the garden and my Dad’s racing pigeon lofts at the bottom of the garden.  We didn’t get out of bed until the coal fire was lit and the water was warm enough to wash with.  There was asbestos in the roof tiles and house dust that looked like tumbleweeds.  My mates at school would be running round in short sleeved shirts and I’d be dressed like a spaceman I had so many layers on – and guess who caught the cold!  No surprise that I got ill at least twice a year, especially in November.

Funnily enough, my Dad used to refer to it as “Black November”.  He told me that in his lifetime November was always cold and dark and wet, and he’d get ill every November.  And he installed that into me as well.  He’d developed testicular Cancer and as a kid I remember him going for radiation therapy.  He’d beaten it, but later that would play on my mind, especially when my brother got ill.  My Dad also had a hard time breathing – years of working with homing pigeons had given him a condition called “pigeon lung”.  Cruel that his bobby actually harmed his health.

Growing up in the 70’s we had a typical Scottish diet at the time – sugary cereal for breakfast before school, chip shop fritters and burgers for lunch, and a plate of stodge at night which invariably involved the deep fryer.  Add to the mix sweets and sugary drinks.  No wonder my dentist loved me.  No wonder I could barely stay awake in class.  I’d wake up knackered in the morning before I even started, and I’d collapse into bed at night.  In between I relied on coffee to keep me going – sometimes five mugs a day.  Can you relate to that?

At school I became terrified of reading aloud in class.  I’d get really scared, I’d break out in a sweat, I’d stutter and my chest would feel like it was going to burst and I couldn’t breathe… In fact I used to dodge English classes in case I’d have to read out loud.  Especially plays – where you can see your line coming closer as you go down the page and the closer it got the more nervous I became. 

I had a duodenal ulcer by the time I was sixteen because I was so nervous and timid with people.  Imagine that – I managed to burn a hole in my stomach with my brain.  What a crap superpower!  So at 20 years of age I’m on a drug called Tagamet which lines your intestines to prevent irritation.  I called it “an old man’s drug”.

I found it nearly impossible to say hello to people I knew!  I’d keep my head down, avoid eye contact, stay locked up tight and be shut down emotionally.  Can you relate to that at all?  You’ve probably heard the old cliché about FEAR – that it spells “False Evidence Appearing Real”, or as I prefer to say “F*** Everything and Run!”  Diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer in my teens.

My Dad had to go for frequent check-ups and the last time I saw him was when I drove him back from Stonehouse Hospital for his routine medical.  I left him at the fireside with a cup of tea and went back to work.  My Mum found him dead on the carpet that night.  And can you guess when he died?  [Black] November 1991.  How’s that for the power of suggestion.

Call to adventure – increased awareness

Now my brother had studied psychology, so I started to read all these thick, heavy books about Freud and Adler and traditional behavioural change.  But Freud said it would take 300 hours of therapy for the average person to change.  Mind you, Freud was a coke addict.  And if you prefer Carl Jung, well he based his psychological archetypes on the major arcana of the Tarot Cards.  So don’t preach to me about traditional routes.

So I started reading about personal development for my own benefit.  They say that people get into self-help books for one of two reasons – either inspiration, or desperation.  Well, I was pretty desperate!

I saw a classified ad in the local paper from the British Institute of Practical Psychology – it was a distance learning course over 4 months that taught me a lot about phantasms from the past and visualising a positive future.

Refusal of the call – reluctance to change

At the time I was working in the civil service, the only male amongst a department full of older women.  Boy that taught me to grow up fast.  But my friend and flatmate had done a runner owing lots of rent and utility bills and I felt betrayed and hurt, and I was under financial pressure to sort it all out.  That meant working 7 days a week and constant overtime to get out of the hole.

Added to that I found my girlfriend in the arms of another guy, so now I had betrayal issues.

All the positive thinking in the world and visualisation techniques I’d learned hadn’t stopped my best friend and my girlfriend from breaking my heart.  I hadn’t visualised either of those events, so I doubted the effectiveness of any of this “positive thinking malarkey”.

Meeting with the mentor – overcoming reluctance

One day I got a leaflet through my letterbox, offering a way to make some extra money through network marketing.  The guy who became my sponsor was an older man with a lot of life experience, and he introduced me to a whole library of American audiotapes by motivational speakers.  Foremost amongst them was Zig Ziglar – the perfect blend of sales man and motivational guru.  This looked like the answer – think positive and make more money.  Perfect combination!

Crossing the threshold – committing to change

So now I’m doing part time network marketing selling designer fragrances via party plan to mainly young women, and getting paid to do it!  Meanwhile I’m still doing the day job in the civil service while living on motivational tapes.  I entered a whole new world with a great bunch of motivated, upbeat people who all wanted success and achievement.

Tests, Allies and Enemies – experimenting with the first change

One day a friend of mine invited me along to a new martial arts class.  Whoah!  I’d grown up with “Enter The Dragon” and Marvel comics so I loved the idea, but I was the skinny specky asthmatic with zero coordination so what hope was there?  But despite my fears, I nervously went along, and met the Instructor – a tall skinny guy who was a world kickboxing champion.  64 of us enrolled that night.  7 years and 6 belts later I was the only one still training in Lau Gar Kung Fu.

Man I was fit.  We’d do 100 sit ups, 100 press ups, go running for 2 miles then come back and learn an hour’s syllabus 3 nights a week.  Looking back I didn’t really appreciate it at the time.  You don’t know what you’ve got, till it’s gone.

Now I’m not a psychiatrist or psychologist – but I have now spent two decades in personal development helping people transform their lives – I’ve learned and taught advanced techniques like NLP [Neuro Linguistic Programming] and Hypnosis. 

  For me it was always about making changes.  If you’re not happy with the results you’re creating, then change what you’re doing.  Whining and complaining won’t make it any better, and nobody’s going to come and rescue you.  The sooner you realise it’s up to you, the better.  It’s what you do that counts.  So initially I did private therapy to help people and earn some money, and then started doing workshops to try and share this mind-set with as many people as possible.

  Then in the late nineties I came across a magazine article on the blossoming field of Life Coaching which had just arrived from the USA, and I saw a natural extension to what I was already doing.  Scottish people love American stuff don’t they?  So many Scots sing with American accents – have you ever noticed that? 

So… NLP helped me to help my clients clear up the mental clutter and limitations that hold us all back.  Life Coaching looks at the external factors that make you who you are – your health and eating habits, your family relationships, your intimate relationships, your management of money, your environment, and your career. And the great thing about it was that it could all be done over the phone – a weekly in depth chat with your own confidant who would never judge you – only gently explore, guide and help you move in baby steps towards your life goals.   No embarrassment, no shaming.  Now I had ways of dramatically improving my own life, and the lives of others, on both the inside and the outside.

Did This Help You? Any thoughts or questions?  If so, I would greatly appreciate if you commented below and shared on Facebook


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Glasgow Counselling Communication Challenges

  Every individual has their own personal model of the world, made up of their own beliefs, values, attitudes, thinking patterns and filters.  These filters will invariably “contaminate” the interpretation of a communication.  The information comes in through the five senses, at something like two million pieces of information per second.  That’s a lot of stuff!!  Now there’s no way we could process all of that information consciously, so one of the great things your unconscious mind does for you is to filter out a lot of the content.  It does that initially through the automatic processes of deletion, distortion and generalisation:

  Deletion                    - we delete a heck of a lot of information at any one time.  Right now, become aware of your left big toe.  Now where was it until I mentioned it?  That’s deletion.

  Distortion                 -  We bend reality to fit – we read between the lines and hear what we think we hear, or make it the way we want it.  Daydreaming is distortion, seeing faces in clouds. 

  Generalisation                      - We group things together and say “This is like that”.  Cushions, stools and sofas are all places to sit, so if you came into my house and I said “please sit down” you’d know what to do.  You compare new data to what you already know, which is the basis of all learning.  Every morning when you swing your legs out of bed, they always go down to the floor.  They never go up.  You’ve learned that now.

  Whatever gets through those initial processes, gets further filtered by a number of unconscious “files in the filing cabinet” which sift through the data and codify it, make meaning out of what we’ve just perceived.  These include:

  Language – the words and labels we use to describe our experiences

  Memories – our past history and the events that have shaped us.

  Decisions - Behind every belief that something is true, is a decision that you made to make it so.  If you believe you’re a confident person, it’s because at some time in the past you decided that you were. 

  Thinking patterns - For example: are you someone who moves towards what you want, or away from what you don’t want?  Are you interested in learning, achieving, gaining, progressing, acquiring?  Or are you into security, minimising the risk, being cautious, and avoiding hassle.  That one thinking habit shapes everything you do.  That’s only one.

  Your values - Are the positive & negative emotional states that your nervous system pursues or avoids. They are your compulsions & revulsions, they are your strongest feelings about what is right or wrong for you, they dictate how you spend your time & they judge all your actions - in short they govern your entire lifestyle.

Beliefs - A belief is a feeling of certainty that something is true.  If you believe the floor is blue, then you feel very certain that it is.  And unless I get you to question it, you’ll keep that belief.

  Now apart from all of the above, most people are poor communicators, rarely truly “letting someone in”, or genuinely listening to another person without immediately launching into one’s own “stuff”.  Most people have a short attention span thanks to television, internet and Xbox.  And when they do listen, it is often grudgingly, waiting either for a chance to upstage the speaker with their own concerns, or simply counting the seconds till they can terminate the discussion.

  Lack of quality interaction leaves us feeling emotionally distanced, lonely and isolated.  We withdraw into ourselves, begging to be heard but bound and gagged by fear or resentment.  Family gatherings become endurance events, marriages become convenient flatmates, and our very sense of identity is eroded. 

  Human beings all have a need for connection, and significance.  Poor communications makes us feel detached and invisible.  Effective communication can create  miraculous change.  Verbal magic!

So what about you?  How's your communication?  And how does it affect your life now?

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Do The Law Of Attraction, The Secret & Self Help Actually Work?

Hi there,

 How you doing?

 It's a blowy Saturday morning and I'm sitting outside the school where Luke's at his usual violin lesson. Every week he goes to class, gets instruction from an experience teacher who's good at what she does, and he learns and improves his skills and he's really coming on. Which is kind of what I want to talk to you about.

 See I've been into personal development and self help for 25 years - I started with a wee correspondence course on confident psychology, then started reading positive mental attitude books before going onto audio tapes by Zig Ziglar, then NLP, Tony Robbins - all the usual gurus. I've studied and been certified with 3 different NLP training companies at practitioner, master practitioner and even nlp trainer. I went to Hawaii 5 times to study Huna and western high magic. I've used goal setting, law of attraction, time management, visualisation, you name it. And I've earned a good living as a master hypnotherapist and NLP trainer, running courses and working with over 2000 private clients.

 But here's the thing - I've met loads of people who have read all the books, listened to all the CDs, they say they applied all the principles, and it hasn't made a blind bit of difference. They're still ill, or broke, or divorced, or scared, or phobics, and they say personal development is nonsense.

 See if there are the 4 levels of life - the spiritual the mental the emotional and the physical, my theory is that everyone wants change in the physical world - money, lovers, houses, cars, things. Mental is nice, spiritual can be profound, emotional makes you feel better but my belief is that people want tangible 3d proof.

 So I'd like to hear from you in particular - if you're a fan of personal development, if you're a seminar junkie like me, has it made a difference? Did it work? Did the law of attraction being you what you wanted? Did the money and wealth courses make you money? Were there real, tangible improvements in the world of physical? Or did it just give you a warm fuzzy feeling?

 Leave your comments below and I'll reposed to the personally.

And if you haven't read my report called "If NLP and coaching are so hot where's my range rover?"  yet,the link is RIGHT HERE

Make 2018 Your Best Year Yet

This is probably bonkers, but I've got my reasons. :) More on that in a second...

Here's the deal: For the next 4 days ONLY, I'm offering my comprehensive Published Author & Done For You Platform programme, The Guru Factory, for 66% off the retail price.

I can only leave this open until Friday at midnight, so you'll need to act quickly to take advantage of this crazy deal...

The Guru Factory is a 9-step coaching programme where I help entrepreneurial women build a 6 figure guru business so they can impact thousands of people without having to figure it all out by themselves. 

Together, we uncover what your passion is then map out a proven plan to earn six figures in the next 12 months, including creating your own content, a signature talk, a published book on Amazon kindle and paperback, your own product, your own online course and a 12 month financial freedom calendar so you know exactly what to do to build your tribe and achieve the time freedom you've been longing for - and we handle all the techy stuff!

I'll help you create the products that will open up to six new streams of income for you, freeing up your time to do more of what you love.

You can reserve your place here—before this deep discount expires on Friday:

If you go to http://thegurufactory.co.uk you'll see the normal investment is £4997.  For the next 4 days you can join The Guru Factory for 66% off - that's £1,698. Expires Friday at midnight.

Why would I make you such a crazy offer?

It's simple: I want to motivate you. :)

2017 is almost done. It's time for you to decide what the next year will hold for you. Let's make 2018 the year that you finally create a product and get it sold - the year you become a published author - the year you turn your passion into profit.

The Guru Factory can do that for you—and I'll be with you every step of the way.

It's been twenty years since I started my own business, and it just wouldn't be the same without the income streams I get from my 17 products, online courses, 6 books, coaching clients and seminars.

Imagine what YOUR business could be like if you had a product you could sell to people around the world? What could your LIFE be like with that new stream of income?

Right now, for the next four days, the door is open.

AND, with my payment plan, you can get started with The Guru Factory for just £567

But you have to act now.

options

1 payment £1,698.00 GBP 3 payments £567.00 GBP

To bigger and better businesses in 2018!

Warmly,
Jonathan

If NLP And Coaching Are So Hot, Where's My Range Rover?

Welcome to the “If NLP And Coaching Are So Hot, Where's My Range Rover?" post. If you haven’t already got a copy of the Special Report, that’s the place to start – if you don’t already have it, you can find it here: 


https://instantedge.lpages.co/wheres-my-range-rover/

In the days & weeks ahead, I’ll be adding valuable new material to the blog to help you make a great living doing what you love (& to create the life you desire).

By the way – once you’ve checked out the Special Report, please post your comments below.

Enjoy :-)

That Was A Big One, Wasn't It?

Back in 2005, I attended Tony Robbins’ Unleash The Power Within Firewalk Seminar in Birmingham. That would be the first of 5 UPWs that I would do over the next few years. As usual it was awesome, but a bonus weekend of training that came as part of the bundle deal that I signed up for is what would change my direction…

Skills of Power was presented by Bob Bays [ex-husband of Brandon Bays, author of The Journey, an emotional release method for clearing up issues from your past] and it was mind blowing, but it was what happened at the end that I want to talk about here…

For people who’d done the Robbins events there was a monthly meeting called the Your Excellence Succeeds Group, or YES Group for short. They met in London every month and were growing steadily. A great way to keep up the momentum and revisit the NLP skills you’d learned – a step so often missing from personal growth seminars.

The YES Group was for Tony Robbins fans and people who’d done his seminars. That night they were looking for volunteers to start similar groups all over the UK, and bizarrely I ended up being volunteered to host one in Scotland. Coincidence? Could be…

So I’m now in charge of the YES Group in Scotland, which I launched in 1995 in Glasgow. Our first speaker was Brandon Bays and we had 70 guests in the room. But as the months went by the numbers dwindled and it was starting to falter…

So I decided to travel down to London to model the YES Group there, because they were always full and had over 50 members attending every month.  NLP teaches to model what works, right? So I went to the London Group and carefully noted EVERYTHING they were doing. But here’s where it gets really interesting…

The guest speaker was an NLP Master Trainer, and he did a live demo of a technique that I hadn’t come across yet – called Time Line Therapy®. The idea is that your brain stores memories in spatial locations, so that when someone says “put it behind you” or “one day you’ll look back on this and laugh”, they really mean their past memories are BEHIND them.

Think about that – every day you hear people say “I can’t see past it” or they point in one direction when they talk about the past, and lean in another direction when they talk about the future. Think about your dialogue – where is your past, when you talk about it? And where’s your future? Do you “look forward” to things?

On the course the Trainer did a live demo – a woman from the audience had some past hurts from the past, and it was blocking her from being who she wanted to be. I remember that he used a weird shamanistic music track to help the trance induction, and best of all the woman had a massive shift and came out of it CHANGED! She told him he’d added YEARS to her life right there. And it took minutes! And I thought – I have to learn how to do that!

So in 1997 I was attending my 3rd NLP Practitioner course as a student. This time it was a training that incorporated not only NLP, but also Hypnosis and Time Line Therapy®. And it was run by the same Trainer that I’d experienced at the YES Group in London. I HAD to learn this Time Line stuff!
The Trainer again offered to do a live demo, as all good trainers should be able to do, and asked if anyone suffered from a recurring negative emotion – like anger, sadness, fear or guilt? Anxiety had always been my thing, and so I volunteered. Scared and not that happy to be sitting in the front of the room with all eyes upon me, I wanted the fear gone, so up I went…

He asked me “What is the root cause of anxiety – the very first event – which when disconnected, will cause all of the fear to disappear, easily and effortlessly?”  “Two minutes after birth” I heard myself say. Dunno where that came from, but that’s what I heard myself say.So he started the tinkly music, and I closed my eyes, and I imagined floating all the way back to 2 minutes after my birth. And suddenly I’m visualising a delivery room, my mother with her feet up in stirrups, and I’m looking though my own eyes – watching her through what seems like a crash helmet – green plastic surrounding a clear plastic visor.

The nurses and doctors had just walked out, I’ve been wheeled to the other side of the room from her and the fear is HER’S! As soon as I realised that the emotions were coming from her, I juddered, because that’s how I release emotions. There’s an involuntary spasm almost, and it’s gone. I love that – I can actually tell if I’ve let something go or not. No judder, no release. So I opened my eyes, felt a wave of exhaustion, and the Trainer said to me,

“That was a big one, wasn’t it?” and everybody laughed.

So I walked woozily back to my chair, and the seminar continued. The Fear had gone. And I couldn’t wait to phone home…

Picture the scene – from a telephone box in Edgeware in London I called my mother. What would you say if it was you?  I cautiously broached the subject with “What happened after I was just born – what do you remember?” and she asked “Why do you ask?” “Oh it’s just me doing one of my wacky seminars. You know me.” She then told me that I popped out, the nurse wrapped me in blankets and put me into this small trolley, and wheeled me to the other side of the room. They then proceeded to leave the delivery room, where she was all alone, in a pool of her own juices, and her newborn baby crying from the trolley on the far side of the room.“I was scared, I didn’t know where they’d gone and why you were so far away from me. All I could hear was you crying – and I remember it vividly – you were over there… in that plastic trolley, It was green plastic, with clear plastic walls…“

I shuddered for a second time.

“I’ve never told anyone that before – why do you ask?”

That was it. I was sold.

And that was my first personal experience of Time Line Therapy®… and what inspired me to do NLP Practitioner, Master Practitioner, and NLP Trainers Training with Drs. Tad & Adriana James and NLPCoaching.com.

What's Your Earliest Memory?

Few adults can remember anything that happened to them before the age of 3. Now, a new study has documented that it's about age 7 when our earliest memories begin to fade, a phenomenon known as “childhood amnesia.”

I don't spend that much time dwelling on the past.  One of the reasons why is because I don't seem to retain a lot of it.  Sure I know its in there, but there are large chunks that I just don't recall.  And I'm really not bothered!

We know from the study of memory that emotion is the glue to making something easy to remember.  If you tied your shoelaces on Sept 11th 2005 then you probably have zero recollection of it.  But if it was 2001 and you were kneeling beside the twin towers in New York City at the time then its forever etched in your filing cabinet.

We remember the events that have the most emotion attached.  The rest drops out of short term memory and disappears.

So what's your earliest memory?  Mine is the "crash helmet" scene that I wrote about in a previous blog post HERE.

The next one I remember is waking up in Strathclyde hospital aged four scared and alone and ill.  I had viral pneumonia because my baby sitter apparently left me outdoors in a pram in the rain.  Who knows - I'm going by one of those family tales that gets cast up every Christmas.  That probably explains why I value health and why I have a strong dislike for hospitals.

I remember looking up over the railings around my bed, the blue gown I was wearing and lots of other kids crying.  There's a fuzzy picture in my mind's eye and I can hear the children.  Then the feelings of fear and loneliness vaguely come up.

So it's weird to think that I was on this planet for about four years and yet I don't remember any of it!  Sure I could go exploring through Hypnotic Age Regression, Primal Scream, Time Line Therapy and any number of any therapies, but I don't need to.  It's not an issue.

Over the years as an NLP Trainer and Mater Hypnotherapist I've helped clients uncover traumas, significant emotional events and all manner of horrors that were buried at the bottom of the ocean in a lead lined casket 100 feet under the seabed on a "You don't need to know" basis by their unconscious.  It amazes me to this day that folks are walking around with deep rooted subroutines and programs running their choices, behaviours and habits that THEY DIDN'T CHOOSE.  Yet they think they're being so smart and in control, and yet the REAL reason they're an Accountant or a coward or a wife beater [or sometimes all three] is because someone stole their Tonka truck when they were three.

So what about you?  What's your earliest memory?  And how does it affect your life now years later?

Did This Help You? Any thoughts or questions?  If so, I would greatly appreciate if you commented below and shared on Facebook

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Glasgow Networking Group Led To New Business

Everyone thought I'd gone out of business...

It was 2010.  For years I'd been on the speaking circuit - doing lunchtime talks, weekend seminars, long training courses, teleseminars.  But that had all stopped.

We'd had a son in 2006 and I kitted out a home office so I could work from home, take my son to nursery, pick him up later, even have lunch with him sometimes.  I wanted him to know what his Daddy looked like.  Previously I'd been living in a Vauxhall Vectra doing 3000 miles a month and I wasn't going to go back there again.

On one hand that was great for my family life, but there was a side effect I hadn't considered - it KILLED my visibility.  Lots of people asked "Are you still in business?" and I was shocked.  I had 28 websites, was all over Facebook and Twitter, but apparently in the offline world I'd turned invisible.  Not good.  So practising what I preach, I decided to go back to something I knew had worked before when I first went self-employed.

So I went online and typed "Glasgow networking groups".  The nearest group met for breakfast on a Wednesday morning, 7 minutes drive from my house.  It was hellishly early in the morning, but I needed to make money and get out there.  Sorted.

In I went to a bustling group of local business owners.  Now I'm an introvert, and I didn't enjoy walking into a room full of strangers.  I'd learned how to put on a face and act confident, but inside I felt awkward and didn't really know what to say to strike up a conversation.  Maybe you can relate to that?  Lots of awkward small talk about the football and the condition of the lorne sausages as you shovel eggs and bacon onto your plate, trying to juggle your tea, shake hands and look dignified at the same time.  A small morsel of my scrambled egg left my mouth and landed on the lapel of the solicitor I was talking to and I didn't break eye contact for fear that he'd notice.  He didn't - he was too busy trying to sell me his services.

The chairman of the group opened the meeting and quite frankly I found him intimidating.  He was older than me, sounded wiser than me and was certainly making more money than me.  I was beginning to think I was out of my depth...

Not a very friendly bunch, but everyone got a chance to stand up and tell the group who we were, what kind of clients we were looking for.  No one had warned me about that bit, so I bumbled some gibberish about being a one man band and social media marketing and wanting to talk to new start businesses or something.

Then one of the members gave a presentation where he forced us to endure "death by PowerPoint" - you know, where he reads EVERY word as it is on the screen.

Then I heard my name being mentioned - the builder passed me a lead to talk to a computer guy in Edinburgh.  Holy shit!  I've got a hot lead!  As it would turn out that referral led to an 11 deep chain of referrals which led to me starting a weight loss business in 2013 which made me a lot of money.

And that was my introduction to networking in business.  

Seven years later and I'm writing a book with a colleague of mine, and we need your help.  If any of this resonates with you, or you've had similar experiences, we'd love to hear about it.  Please take our quick survey to help us come up with the book title and tell us more about YOUR adventures in networking.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/R8MP5MQ

Thanks in advance :-)