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Friday 16 April 2010

This man puts me where I belong: at the end of the intellectual line


Someone once said to Churchill that his socialist opponent, Attlee, was a very modest man.

"He has much to be modest about", growled the old man.

That is rather how I feel when contemplating my latest client, Tony Buzan, who literally taught the world a better way to think.

I thought I had an impressive client list... I get brilliant testimonials. People tell me I'm a good speaker. But I'm a pygmy compared to this man.

  • Tony invented and popularised Mind Maps.
  • 250 million people use them, including several Nobel Prize winners.
  • He really is extraordinary. In 1994 Forbes magazine named him one of five top international lecturers with Mikhail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger and Margaret Thatcher.
Some years ago the President of Mexico called on him when he was trying to transform that dizzyngly complex country with its manifold intractable problems.

And - something entirely different - he even helped the late Michael Jackson to be more creative.

Walt Disney, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, BBC, Intel, Boeing, Friends of the Earth, Proctor and Gamble, to name just a few, have turned to him for help.

I think anybody who wants to succeed should meet him if they get the chance. And if you live in the US, you can next month because he will be on tour there for the first time in over a decade (just check www.thinkbuzan.com/us/services/training/thinkbuzansystem for details)

Forbes magazine says he "shows corporate executives how to hotwire their creative energies".

People who attended his workshops commented: "
Mesmerising", "extraordinary", "the audience was spellbound".

I think you get the idea... (but you can get an even better one if you go here)

I've asked him to come and speak to me and my agency as soon as he's back in the UK (I can't ship them all to the US, which is where I'm stranded).

Stephen C Lundin, who wrote the five-million-copy book FISH! said
"in a few hours he communicated to a business audience the practical portion of what I had spent four years studying."

Nicky Oppenheimer, Chairman of De Beers, who sell the odd diamond, said:
"Mind Maps are indispensable in the business world."

The line about him that I really like is,
"Tony didn't invent the brain. But he did write the operating instructions."

This is why I am doing something I have very rarely done before - make a suggestion of a commercial nature here (although, in my defense, whether or not you attend, I won't make a penny).

But this is my advice to you: if you can, go and see Tony Buzan. It will change the way you think. Spending a day with him is like "putting your brain on steroids". The only side effects are: extra brain power, extra productivity, more creativity.

How can you say no to that?

Just go to www.thinkbuzan.com/us/services/training/thinkbuzansystem. Then tell me what you think.

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