The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Brigitta Hoeferle, CEO of The Center of NLP

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

Brigitta Hoeferle, CEO of The Center of NLP Centerofnlp.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks it's voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast who knew we'd do another we just keep making them i don't know it seems like we had something to do with

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Brigitte Herferle is on the show with us today. And she is a German female business owner that lives the American dream. Owner and founder of two educational institutions, one for children, MontessoriCleveland.com, and one for adults, CenterofNLP.com. Two opposite educational facilities. Yes, because children are innocent by nature. It's the adults around them that shape the growth and potential in each child. As a powerfully engaging and professional international speaker, she is also known as the fast-track female trainer and retired lead coach of one of the largest self-development companies

in the world. She is the leading mentor, business coach, and author that is invited to speak on stages around the world, and she's with us today. Welcome to the show. How are you? Hey, Chris. Thank you for having me. This is exciting. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate you being on the show. Give us your dot coms one more time so we can check out at you and maybe other people can follow you on the interim. Absolutely. CenterofNLP.com. CenterofNLP.com. All one word. There you go. There you go. So tell us a little bit about you, kind of your origin story. You say you're living the American dream. Give us some history on yourself so we can get an idea of who you are.

Yeah. Thank you, Chris. Well, I was born and raised in Germany and lived in a, born and raised in a very small community, 600 people village. Couldn't wait to get the heck out of there. You know, anyone, any American that would go there, Chris would go, Oh, it's gorgeous. You know, vineyards all around. It's absolutely beautiful. It's a place where you want to go and taste wines and lay in the vineyards and eat grapes directly from the vine. But I couldn't wait to get the heck out of there because it was very narrow-minded. And always, ever since I was a little girl, I had this big vision of being, and my sisters told me about this, being on stage when I was a grown up. I can't remember that. But my children, my sisters always told me that. But, you know, growing up in a small village in Germany to incredible parents that always poured into myself and not just financially, but mentally and always told me, you know, you're a tool for humanity.

You can do this. Chris, I remember one time sitting in front of the TV. We had a black and white TV that was kind of, you know, sitting on the ground. It was very small. And I watched a commercial where I saw children with bloated bellies and flies all over their, you know, naked bodies or mostly naked bodies. And I cried. I must have been six, maybe five. And I cried and I looked to my mom and I said, they need help. And my mom's like, oh, that's an advertisement, right? But what did I know? And I said, I want to help. And she says, okay, so what are you going to do? And I said, hmm, what am I going to do?

I have all of these toys that I no longer play with, that I no longer need. And so do my friends. So let me drum up all my friends in little river in the backyard over to the big meadow that we always trampled the grass down. And the farmers was really upset with us. But anyway, so I gathered my friends and we brought all of our toys together. We gathered on a Saturday, we draw poster boards of, hey, come on Saturday to the bread house is where all of the women would bake their pies and breads on Saturday. In front of the bread house, we're going to have a yard sale and we're going to sell our stuff. And we did. And we raised a hundred and I think it was 160 Deutschmarks back

then, which probably translates to, I don't know, 150 US dollars today. And we donated it to what turns out to be Brit for the World. We donated it. We got a letter back like months and months later. I already forgot about it. Got a letter back that said, hey, thank you for making a difference. And that even today, you know, raises a lot of emotions within me because I think that was the start of me really owning to be a tool for humanity. Well, that's awesome. That's a beautiful journey and something like early on you tapped into that. Yeah. And if it weren't for my parents, I don't think I could have tapped into that.

My parents definitely were the cheerleader of a can-do mentality. There you go. There you go. So what took you on your journey from there? Then I went, you know, the normal route, went to school, hated school, was not a good student, I'll be really honest with you. Didn't like to read, you know. I was always a good student. I'll be really honest with you. I didn't like to read. I was always a loud kid. And often I would hear, oh my gosh, what's wrong with you? And later on, I realized, well, there's not a whole lot of wrong with me. Why are more people not asking what's right with you? And leaving German high school and going into university, I became a teacher. I never did anything with it. Just kind of held a teaching

degree because, you know, you got to do something after school. So I was like, okay, I'll be a teacher. Okay. And then out of that, I went to several different other, you know, corporate jobs, climbed the corporate ladder, got another degree, got a marketing degree. And out of that, then became a parent. And out of that, I remember as I was pregnant, I remember my teaching degree times of the Montessori method. And the Montessori method is all about seeing the individual child and wanting to pour, not into the individual child, but allow the child for everything that's already great within them to let that come out. And as I'm, you know, holding this baby within me, I'm thinking, I want my child to be in a Montessori school. And we lived in Munich at the time, had a great corporate job and,

you know, was a marketing manager for Murdoch holding was, you know, everything was fine and dandy. And turns out the Montessori school that I wanted my daughter, who wasn't born yet to go to had a three-year wait list. And I'm like, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait. I knew an opportunity when I see one. I have a teaching degree. Let me add my Montessori degree on top of that and let me start a Montessori school. Well, that all sounds very easy. Fast forward, it wasn't all that easy. But one of the creeds that I live by is there is no failure on your feedback. Chris, I got a lot of feedback in my life.

I got a lot of feedback. Most of mine is like four-letter words that people throw at me. We won't name them. Yeah. They're mostly my mom and my dad, mostly. So, you know, they love me. I think I'm not sure. You know what's the worst four-letter word?

And it's a word that we can actually say on radio. It's can't. C-A-N-T. There you go. That's self-limiting. Yeah, a lot of people hear can't and then believe it, that they can't. You just used the word can't twice. Anyway.

Yeah, I know. Just to make a point there you go because i can we got it yeah so okay so i can't come up with any more jokes on that though no okay uh i came uh to the u.s to build a montessori school did that over the pandemic we grew to 125 students but out of that i was you you know, we were still teaching children and I'm coaching down the road. You know, the school's been around now for 18 years. I've been coaching parents because they come back to me and they go, Brigitte, how come you have a different child at school than we have at home? And I'm like, well, that's not on you. That's not on me. That's

just, you know, the boundaries that we set in each facility, in each environment. And they're like, yeah, teach me, right? So I taught them and I coached them. And out of that, I realized what you read earlier, that children are innocent by nature. It's the adults around them that screw them up. I'm innocent. No, I'm not. I don't know if you have kids or if you're innocent or not. No, I skipped the whole kid thing. I have two dogs.

I got engaged twice, but I couldn't afford the divorces, so I didn't ever get fully married. I'm not rich. What can I say? But no, I understand the premise. Kids look at things in a very innocent world. They ask a lot of questions, too. I was just listening to, I think it's Robert Greene's book, 40 Laws of Power, I think.

I'm not sure I got the first name right. But, you know, he talks about how when kids are young, they ask questions. And they have a kind of, they have a questioning mind. Like, why is it done this way? You know, because everything's foreign to them. They're like, I don't understand your social construct. And then we lose all that when we become adults, like you say. Either we lose that curiosity or we have such limiting beliefs of the people around us that tell us what we can or cannot do. Or, you know, they pass, you know, as parents, we only do the best that we can with the resources that we have. And sometimes

we pass on our own stuff to our kids, and they just soak it up. Maria Montessori wrote many books, and one of them is called The Absorbent Mind. So our kids, the idea is that, you know, the brain of a child is a sponge and it just soaks it up. There's no judgment. It just is what is. So out of that, I poured, well, let me back up here real quick. So I build the business, right? As this cocky young German woman coming into a small town in Tennessee to build a Montessori school. Just picture that, okay? Yeah, I can picture that. They thought, you know, for the first three years, I think they thought they brought the devil into the city. I think that's pretty much what they think of everything in Tennessee, right?

I don't know. They're with the Tennessee crowd. Sorry. Yeah. So I had to do a whole lot of explaining for a long time. And that actually brought me on the seat of the Chamber of Commerce. And I sat around a boardroom table with a bunch of, I'm just going to call it as it is, a bunch of old white men.

Here I am. See? No way. I know. What a shock, right? Didn't see that coming. 25 years younger, at least, and a different gender, still same skin color. And a German, too.

And a German. Yeah, that was intense. I'm German. I'm Voss, so I can pull that joke. Voss. Oh, of course. Yeah. So that was interesting.

And I didn't give up, though. Remember, no failures, only feedback? Yeah, I got a lot of feedback. And I also mentioned the cockiness of Brigitte. That doesn't work with old white men. That actually didn't work with the teachers that I hired. That didn't work with the parents that came to my school to pay really good tuition money.

Yeah. That didn't work on a lot of levels. So I had to, I had to, well, first I was like, they're all idiots, right?

So what do we do as humans? We first point fingers at everyone else they're all idiots no well you can if it takes you where you want to go okay as long as it works for me i guess i don't i i it didn't work for me because i had a huge turnaround and um that didn't work so well for me and i lost teachers and through the huge turnaround and revolving door in teachers, the parents are like, oh, my gosh, what's wrong with her? She can't even run a business and keep, you know, a dedicated staff. And then they would pull their children.

And then 2008 came, you know, real estate bubble. A lot of realtors at my school that paid tuition for their kids. That was a problem. So I was like, okay, okay, okay, I get it. I get it. It's not, they're not the dummies. It's actually, there's only one dummy in this whole equation. And that was a lot of humble pie that I chose to eat. And I poured more of learnings into myself. That's always nice. Yeah. But remember when I said earlier that in school I wasn't the best student? So it was hard, right? I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It was hard.

It was worth it. And that's when I found the methodology of neurolinguistic programming to use, first of all, in my own conversations to myself. Am I really having the conversations with myself that are uplifting and that are powerful and supportive? Or am I constantly putting myself down? And, you know, the only quality in conversations that you have with yourself are then the ones that you have going outwards as well. It starts with you. So I had to take inventory for a while and started learning and really adapting and continuing to learn and then start, you know, doing business development around that and staff development around that. And it just

started to really become stronger and more supportive and, and yeah, and helpful, not just for me, but then also for my teachers and the business itself. So that's how I came to then, long story short, to purchase the business, the center of NLP that's been around since 1986. I don't know. Do you remember 1986? I do, actually. That was the year I graduated school. Yeah.

Yeah, it was a good time. The 80s were good times. They were the best times. I don't actually. That was the year I graduated school. Yeah. Yeah, it was a good time. The 80s were good times. They were the best times. I don't know. Right? Doesn't everyone say that about their high school years, though? I don't know. Well, remember school?

I was glad when it was over. Yeah. The music was the best part of the 80s. I agree. Yeah. I totally agree. So, yeah. So, that was a good omen that, you know, 1986 was built. I'm a kid of the 80s and I love 80s music. So that was absolute perfect fit. Of course, there was so much more. And I acquired the business, although I wasn't looking at getting another, buying another brick and mortar. And I'm glad I did. I'm glad I did for my own sake.

And I'm glad I did for my family and my staff and the people around me. Awesome. So tell us about the Center of NLP then, what it does, how you guys do it, how people can, you know, they're interested in working with you, can reach out to you, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. You know, for the ones that some people might recognize NLP and what it means, I'm going to decipher it really quick. NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. What does that mean? And I'm going to start with the programming part because most people kind of get confused by what does that mean? Programming? ourselves, hear other people say about ourselves, pour the things that we pour into our brain.

TV programming. Hello. Radio programs, video programs, social media programs. All of that has an influence in our behavior. And that's really what the programming is. So how can we have a better influence on our behavior inward to ourselves and outward to other people to really build lasting relationships? Because at the end of the day, people ask me all the time, Brigitte, how do you build those businesses? How do you have the success that you have? How do you even cross cultures? Well, it starts out with having the right mindset and having an impact on people. And if you don't have an impact on people, then that just says a little bit more about your own behavior that you have towards yourself. Yeah. I first heard about NLP through Tony Robbins, and I think it was actually in 1989 when I

first met Tony Robbins. And in fact, he's got a new book coming out. But we invited him on the show. So tell us more about how do clients reach out to you, people that are interested reach out to you, and then are interested reach out to you, and then what sort of different services or courses you provide? Yeah, Tony Robbins is a fellow NLP Grandmaster. So, trainings. We have all sorts of trainings for individuals, corporate trainers, corporate trainings, and they start out with knowing what you want, where do you want to be in life and

what's holding you back. So the neuro part is the thought, the linguistic part is the communication, the programming part is the behavior. So through our trainings, may they be introductions to NLP, may they be practitioner courses of NLP, may they be master courses of NLP, we offer them. And there are a lot of different programs on NLP out there. A lot are on YouTube, university, and if you don't see me, you see me do some air quotation marks right now. Of course, I'm being sarcastic. NLP is the meta program of our language. And if you are not, if you cannot intentionally communicate and form sentences, if you will, then you cannot intentionally communicate. So if NLP is our

META program and you don't know how to use it, that's a problem. So you learn that within the center of NLP and you learn that within the trainings that we do. We do them hybrid, you know, in person. We're building a big center right now. And also, you know, during the pandemic, we had to switch to live online, which we did that. Although I was kicking and screaming, Chris, I did not want to do that. That was one thing I was like, we're not going to do that because I want to bring value, value, value to people. Yeah, it's taken a while to get used to this whole Zoom thing. Yeah, yeah. And now we're kind of addicted to it right but uh we've done a great job in in creating hybrid courses where we have people in the room and people in the zoom room and they're interacting with each

other with different cameras um the biggest you asked me how people can find us center of nlp.com all of our courses and all the information is on that website where people can find us, centerofnlp.com. All of our courses and all of the information is on that website, or people can just email me real quick, Brigitta at centerofnlp.com, Brigitta at centerofnlp.com. Brigitta, just like you sounded out, really easy, B-R-I-G-I-T-T-A, at centerofnlp.com. But people, you know, again, I want to go back to the programming, Chris. People get programming mixed up with manipulation.

And I want to speak to that really quick because, first of all, no one can be manipulated against their values. Like you mentioned Tony Robbins earlier. He's an incredible master at the pattern interrupt, really having great breakthroughs for people. He never goes against people's, their own values because people will take themselves out if you go against their values. He's just really good at reading people's values and he's a master at it. And NLP helps you with that. And so the difference between manipulation and having an influence on people is the intention behind it.

And that's it. I'm going to say that again, because it's most, it's most important that people really understand that the difference between manipulation and influence is the intention behind it. And that's it. And, and when you realize that, you can go to communicate with others to build relationships, not just on a win-win relationship, because a one win is only manipulation, right? A win-win is a win for you and a win for me.

But we really look at win, win, win, a win for you, a win for you and a win for me. But we really look at win-win-win. A win for you, a win for me, and a win for the community, the greater good, your network, my network, the family, the company, whatever the third win may be. So looking at that third win is most important. There you go. There you go. So you have a lot of different things, pro courses that are on your thing. You've got NLP coaching, certification, group coaching, mastery, corporate training is on your website as well. Do you want to touch on a few of those?

Yeah, absolutely. I want to touch on, let's touch on coaching first because over the pandemic with everyone having a zoom room and a green screen and a ring light and maybe even an external microphone they think oh i you know what i have um experience one year two years in x area let me be a coach. Let me speak to that. People often ask, you know, oh, you know, XYZ is a life coach or XYZ may be an abundant coach. Well, I hardly know any life coaches that truly have a life. And even worse, abundance coaches that are abundant. So if you hear those two words, I would say run for the hills. It's a red flag. But coaching has real value when you have coaches that actually bring real value and know how to ask questions.

A coach is never someone that gives you advice. A coach is someone that asks you great quality questions so you can come to your own conclusions. So we have coaching certifications. I serve on the International Coaching Federation Board here in Atlanta, Georgia, the ICF Board. So we take coaching. I personally take coaching very seriously because if you do it wrong, you can really, you know, have people get into not so good situation. So the person that that's coaching you, I sure hope knows what they're doing. OK, so vet your coaches, folks. Then we have the train the leader, lead the trainer program or the train the trainer program. That is for the NLP masters that already have the mastery level of advanced language patterns. And they are selling either from stage or they want to speak in front of an audience, may it be online or offline.

We have the practitioner course. That's, of course, to have the foundational pieces of neurolinguistic programming. And there are many strategies within those success laws of NLP. Oh, and by the way, I brought a gift. Are we good to distributing a gift? Yes, please. I'm going to find it here. And do we have a chat in here where I can post it?

Okay. It's a private chat. Okay, fantastic. I'll send it to you. It is called the Success Loss Checklist. And it is an incredible reminder to anyone that is looking for either, you know, some call them affirmations, or some call them reminders of which direction do I want to go to? What do I want to do with my life? And one of the things that I shared with you earlier, you know, there's no failure only feedback. That's one of the success laws. There are many

other success laws. I'm going to put it in here. There are many other success laws like there are no unresourceful people. There are only unresourceful state of minds. People are only as good as their mindset or their communication is only as good as their mindset, which brings you back to the resources. If you don't like what you're getting, go back to your mindset and see what you can adjust in that. One of the success laws is change one modality, change them all. So modality is either seeing, hearing, or feeling.

So if you're thinking something, you can get up, go for a walk with a dog, and through that motion, get into a different mindset. So change one modality, change them all. So there are many success laws within that checklist. That's my gift to the listeners and viewers. Oh, that's awesome. And let me give the link to it because they won't be able to see the chat. CenterofNLP.com, 4Chess product, NLP-success-laws-checklist.

If you search for the success laws checklist NLP on her website, centerofNLP.com, you should be able to find it. So, yeah, pretty darn awesome. Anything else that we should need to cover on what you do and how you do it? Oh, boy. I mean, I can talk all day. If you haven't noticed that yet, I will talk your ear off all day, and I will talk about, you know, God and the world and everything in between. If you want to do that.

There you go. And I think we, I have that up on the screen now, that website. So those of you who are watching on YouTube can see that on the screen. And then, uh, also we'll have it on the,

uh, post on the Chris Walsh show.com. So you'll be able to get it there. Um, yeah. Anything more you want to touch on before we go out on, on who, on,

you know, what you guys do, how you do it? One of the best ways people can reach out to you guys and get to know you better. Yes. First of all, like I said, I can talk to anyone and everyone all day. I love talking. I love meeting new people.

So if there's any questions that anyone has, Chris, the easiest and best way is to reach out to me and I'm going to post this here as well. Maybe you can post it is Brigitte at centerofnlp.com and reach out to me, schedule a time to talk to me, ask questions, come to one of our introductions of NLP if you want to learn more. We have people from all around the world. And thank God for the pandemic because it was February 2020 that I said to my staff, we will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever go live online. We will always do our trainings in person because of the value and the exercises and the experiences that we have for the people. And we know the difference it makes in people, right?

Well, you know how the saying goes, man makes plan and God laughs. Yeah, pretty much. I think God had a pretty good laugh on me. That definitely does. Well, as we go out, anything more you want to touch on? No. Reach out to me. Get your success loss checklist.

Would love to continue the conversation. And thanks for having me. There you go. Thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. And give us your plugs again so we can find you on the interwebs. CenterofNLP.com or you can simply look for my first and last name and Google it.

I am the only, and I don't say this lightly, but I'm the only Brigitte Höfele out there. Brigitte Höfele, H-O-E-F-E-R-L-E. When you Google me, Brigitte Höfele, on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube, I'm right there. That's the only one out there. You can't miss me. You already see me by the hair if you can see me. You know, there's really not a whole lot to miss,

but if you don't, if you don't see me, you will miss out. You will miss out. So don't miss, uh, we certainly appreciate you being on the show. Thanks for tuning in.

Be sure to go to good reason.com for just Chris Voss. See the video version of this on youtube.com. You can see, uh, her email so that you can take and, uh, click the links and all that good stuff uh they'll be on the chris fosh show as well so if you miss them you can grab them there but subscribe to the youtube anyway go to all groups facebook linkedin twitter and all

that good stuff be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time