It was from reading his first book, Unlimited Power that I first got into studying NLP. Sure I had heard of Hypnosis before but I had never heard of individuals such as Milton Erickson. So with that in mind I credit him with much. I will say this though the Tony Robbins of the 1980's and 1990's I never really much cared for. The Tony of present day... I like him a lot. He just seems more real to me. That's just my preference.
Just real quick before I end this post I would like to draw your attention to Tony's use of language for state elicitation in this clip.