“Did You Do That on Purpose?” How Grant Murrell Learned to Read People– and Stopped Forcing Life to Work

The most persuasive people you will ever meet are rarely performing. Aleksandra King found that out on a training course, when Grant Murrell asked her a few questions, listened to the answers, and left her feeling he had known her all her life. On The BEYOND Podcast she asks him the question the whole episode hangs on: did you do that on purpose? His answer is no, and the reason why is the story of how he learned to read people.

Grant Murrell is an international speaker, NLP and hypnotherapy trainer, and founder of the coaching business Success Is A Formula. In this conversation with Aleksandra he explains how a teenager fascinated by success became someone who can read a room from the floor up, and why he believes success is about who you become rather than what you do. You can watch the full conversation with Grant Murrell here. His path runs through telephone sales, the networking circuit, investigation work and a hard lesson about ambition, and it ends somewhere most driven people never reach: doing the work he would do even if money did not exist.

Grant Murrell at a Glance

• Who he is: an international speaker, coach and NLP and hypnotherapy trainer, and the founder of Success Is A Formula (full guest profile).
• His background: telephone sales from 17, then 16 to 17 years teaching professional networking, including as a director of a networking organisation, plus earlier investigation and intelligence work.
• What he is known for: reading people, including the feet-and-hips cues that show where someone's attention really is.
• His core idea: success is about identity and purpose, which he sums up as becoming, not doing.

The Suit That Belongs on You

Grant's explanation for what Aleksandra felt on that course starts with a James Bond story. On the early films, he says, the director told the star not to take his Savile Row suit off, not to make a coffee, watch a film or go to the bathroom, because when he walked on and said "my name is Bond, James Bond", the suit had to look like it belonged on him. That is Grant's whole philosophy in one wardrobe note. "It's not about something you do," he says. "It's about something you become."

The same idea runs through his answer to what holds people back from earning more. Some people simply do not want it, and he has no quarrel with that. For everyone else it is identity: if you do not see yourself as that kind of person, you will not become one. "It's not a performance. It's who you really are." And getting there, in his experience, is less about learning new tricks than removing old ones: "quite often it's unlearning. It's taking layers off so that we get closer to the real you."

A Teenager on the Telephone

Grant has been studying success, in his words, "since I was 14 years of age". He played in a band, and he still describes himself as "nuts about music". But the education that shaped him came from sales. At 17 he was "the guy on the phone", booking appointments long before video calls existed, and it was there he learned to tell a serious professional from a time-waster. The serious ones did not talk over him. They listened to the whole pitch.

One of them, he remembers, turned him down and then made him an offer instead: "Grant, thank you very much. I'm not looking for what you're offering. But I really like your pitch, and I really like your style. Can I give you my number?" The lesson stayed with him for decades. The people with real power, he tells Aleksandra, "had nothing to prove". They were calm, and they were listening.

The Networking Years

That observation became a career. Grant taught professional networking "for 16, 17 years" and became a director of a networking organisation. He tells a story from those years about a colleague who had been with the organisation from day one. At one conference, every newcomer's workbook was crammed with notes, writing spilling onto the covers. When the veteran lost his workbook and Grant found it, there were about four lines in it. "His cup was already full," Grant says. The quietest man in the room was the one who needed the least.

He also spent time, "years ago", in investigation and intelligence work, and it sharpened the habit Aleksandra first noticed on that course: watching what people's bodies say while their faces say something else. The face, he explains, is where people look first and where fakery is easiest. The feet and hips are harder to fake. (The full field guide is in the episode, and it is worth the watch.)

The Ambition That Made Broken Things Work

The most revealing part of the conversation is where Grant turns the lens on himself. "I was extraordinarily ambitious, extraordinarily ambitious," he admits. "I would say it's not my God any longer." He was, he says, "very, very, very good at, through sheer determination, making things work that shouldn't have worked." The catch was that they tended to break again later, and the anguish of forcing them was his to carry.

These days he treats resistance as information. If he hits a couple of barriers, he assumes the thing is not for him and that "there's something better out there waiting for me and I'm not seeing it". He even has a protocol for days when nothing flows: he keeps the commitments already in his diary, and "outside of that, I'll do nothing". On days when everything clicks, the rule reverses. He describes one 48-hour spell in which he was asked onto two podcasts, into two films and to executive produce one, and closed two directorships, because he could feel the moment and refused to stop.

Work He Would Do for Free

Ask Grant what he would do if money did not exist and he does not need to think about it. "What I'm doing is pretty much what I'd be doing if there was no money. I love this. It is my purpose in life." That purpose now reaches well beyond boardrooms. He does advisory work on crime, and he supports an ex-offender's charity whose message is, in Grant's words, "don't screw up your life like he did". His instinct is not to condemn: "you can punish people for doing things, but I'd rather reward people for making better choices."

He credits part of his gift to his father, who could sit through a conversation "way beyond his pay grade", say very little, and then, on the way to the door, nail the whole thing in a couple of sentences. "I've inherited that kind of skill," Grant says. And he is clear about why he says yes to conversations like this one: "This is about legacy... So I don't care if I stutter, mess up a word, say something wrong, sneeze."

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Grant Murrell? Grant Murrell is an international speaker, NLP and hypnotherapy trainer and the founder of Success Is A Formula, a coaching business for entrepreneurs, creatives, musicians and athletes. He taught professional networking for 16 to 17 years before focusing on coaching.

How does Grant Murrell read people? He looks past the face, which he says people can fake, to the feet and hips. Feet pointing towards the door suggest someone wants to leave, and the direction a group's hips turn shows who really holds influence. He explains the method in full in his episode of The BEYOND Podcast.

What does Grant Murrell believe holds people back? Identity and fear. He argues people rarely outgrow the person they believe they are, that procrastination is usually fear, and that "ego is masked fear".

Actionable Takeaways for Ambitious Professionals

• Become it before you chase it. If you do not see yourself as the person who earns, leads or wins, no strategy will stick. Start with identity, then add tactics.
• Treat repeated resistance as a signal. If the same barrier keeps showing up, ask whether it is steering you towards something better before you force your way through.
• Listen like the veteran with four lines. In any room, the calmest person with the least to prove usually holds the most power. Aim to be that person.

Listen to the full conversation with Grant Murrell on the Aleksandra King YouTube Channel. For his playbook on trust and influence, read Grant Murrell's formula for selling only what you believe, and browse more episodes of The BEYOND Podcast in the episodes archive. Grant and Aleksandra also discuss a viewer who admitted to committing fraud after an earlier episode; for the expert view on how financial crime really works, hear Aleksandra's conversation with financial crime expert Jessica Cath.