CEO Insights Magazine

In today's business landscape, mindset is the core aspect that separates the 'best' individuals from the rest. However, developing the right mindset requires individuals to stay motivated and work towards fulfilling their personal as well as professional objectives. Thus, businesses are increasingly investing in training programs to help their workforce develop a positive mindset and imbibe the necessary skills to excel in the current challenging times. While this has spurred the demand for corporate trainers and motivational speakers, one individual that stands-out is Dr Billy Kueek.

Holding a degree in Organizational Psychology, an MBA and a Doctorate in Business Administration, Dr Billy is a seasoned Master Trainer, coach and keynote speaker with over 26 years of experience under his belt. Well-renowned as the ‘Trainer of Master Trainers, Speakers & Master Coaches’ within the business fraternity, he is not only a Master Trainer in Hypnotherapy and Time Line Therapy, but is also the world’s first NLP Master Trainer to be certified by both ABNLP and NLPU. Having transformed over a million lives across 50+ countries worldwide, many successful trainers and Certified Speakers worldwide are all graduates of Billy’s MasterClass Train-TheTrainer, Trainer/Speaker Mentoring Programs and certification training. 

In a recent interaction with CEO Insights Asia, Billy shared more information about his career journey so far, his company’s key practice areas and many other interesting aspects. Below are a few excerpts from the exclusive interview.  

Tell us about your company and the different training programs you offer there.

Initially known as BiK & Associates and then rechristened as Billy Kueek International in 2008, we offer programs mainly under two broad categories, namely Corporate Training & Keynotes and Public Certification Programs, where we train and mentor trainers, speakers, master trainers and master coaches. As my primary forte, the major programs that I provide under corporate training that include a variety of Leadership & Teambuilding, Influencing & Persuasion skills, Conversational Motivation, Sales, Negotiation, Presentation, Personal Empowerment & Effectiveness, Strategic Communication, Creative Thinking and other custom-designed soft skills training, including recruitment seminars for insurance companies in Asia.

These programs are available as full training programs, mini-workshops, keynotes or even licensed. For almost 20 years, one of the world’s major airlines consistently ranked No.1 in the world licensed two of my custom-designed leadership training programs, with two other senior leadership training personally delivered by me for their mandatory Cabin Crew promotional training. Under the Public Certification Programs umbrella, I along with my team certify in NLP, Time Line Therapy, NLP Coaching and Hypnotherapy, from ‘Practitioners’ to ‘Master Practitioners’, and then from ‘Trainers’ to ‘Master Trainers’.

As a successful keynote speaker, trainer and coach, what has been your secret recipe to success?

We take PRIDE in our approaches and bring Professionalism, Resourcefulness, Innovation, Dedication and Excellence along with unique blend of training methodologies in all our keynote speeches and train ing programs. Leading my team of trainers by example, I demonstrate skillful use of NLP to teach both NLP and Corporate Training. To ensure that every session is engaging, empowering and entertaining, I use clever sprinkling of metaphors, humor, strategic questions, and NLP installation strategies, along with sharing applications in the participants’ daily lives to instill learning deep into the unconscious level.

Not all problems of an organization can be solved by training, but clearly defining the objectives of training is a must-do and best guided by a skillful and experienced trainer with a lot to offer. Thus, PRIDE and customization is at the heart of all training programs and keynote speeches that I provide, wherein I start engaging with the client’s teams even prior to commencement of the program to understand their challenges and accordingly formulate a tailored training and coaching plan. This encourages participants to attend the training not because they have to but because they love to, since the training program is designed along with them to greatly enhance their involvement and commitment. Additionally, we also internally evaluate our programs and deliveries with Cold-Eye Reviews to ensure that we are the best trainers and speakers for every program and speech we take on.

Share a few brief success stories of how your training impacted your client organization.

The CEO of a software giant asked for 1-to-1 personal coaching after his team attended my negotiation skills training and he found himself easily persuaded by them. Another MNC CEO asked if he could ‘buy me out’ so that I will not train for his competitors. Most recently, a Pharmaceutical MNC’s Managing Director who’d engaged me 10 years ago got me back to train her new sales team after years of increased market shares, revenues and profits. These are achievements and results we treasure and are fanatical about.

What is your piece of advice to business leaders and individuals aspiring to be future coaches or keynote speakers?

Firstly, business leaders must always invest big in learning, for yourselves and in your people. It is more expensive to not train your people and keep them than it is to train your people and losing them. Business leaders are already trainers and coaches to their team informally and this is more apparent in aspiring trainers/speakers. It is crucial to discover your Passion (what you like), Profit (ROI and market demand) and Power (the thing you do best).

Delivering training is real hard work. There is a lot of preparation before the training, including interviewing, engaging with your participants, researching, customizing, writing training workbooks, designing lesson plans, developing slides before the training or speech goes ‘live’. If you do not invest time to prepare, you will waste time to repair!

Dr Billy Kueek, International Speaker & Master Trainer, Billy Kueek International

Key Achievements: 

• First Certified NLP Master Trainer in the world to be certified by The American Board of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (ABNLP) and NLP University (University of California).

• First Hypnotherapy Master Trainer in Southeast Asia to be certified by The American Board of Hypnotherapy

• Listed in the ‘Global Gurus Top 30’ in the field of NLP every year from 2020 to 2025.

•Favorite Hobbies: Listening to music, reading and a recently retired multiplechampion drag racer
•Favorite Book: ‘Hypnotherapy’ by Dave Elman
•Favorite Cuisine: My mother-in-law’s Peranakan food