Creating Models using NLP Techniques
Following on from the last article The Real Secret to NLP Mastery where we discussed how some NLPer’s think that a big book of NLP Techniques is useful this article is about using NLP as it was intended to model and replicate success, results and excellence.
This article will focus on selecting people to model and what exactly it is that you are modelling. I recently went into London to meet an extraordinary young man and good friend Nathan Thomas. We will use him as an example of how to select the models you want to focus on.
If I want to be a multi millionaire should I model Richard Branson?
If your ultimate goal is to be a multi-millionaire then on face value it seems like modelling a multi-millionaire would be a good thing. For many of us though this would not be useful. Let me explain why.
We are dynamic creatures that are constantly evolving, changing and growing. At each stage of Richard Branson’s life he has changed to encompass the situation he is in. I don’t have his resources, I don’t deal with the sums of money that he does and I am not the head of a global empire. The Richard Branson that I would find useful to model is the young version that was starting out, bootstrapping and growing a small business into a larger affair.
Let me give you another example. If I want a slim, trim healthy figure modelling someone that has been like this all their life does not serve my purpose. I want to find someone that has made the change from being fat to becoming slim. I would want to model what they did and how they were thinking when they made the change and started to slim down. Once I have become slim modelling someone that has been slim all their life might be more useful.
In a nutshell if you want to start creating success you need to model a successful person at the point where there were making the change and had started to become successful.
Nathan Thomas an Internet Entrepreneur in the Making
To properly understand why I think Nathan is a great subject for practicing some NLP Modelling here are a few things that I know about him.
Nathan is almost eighteen and is the youngest professional hypnotist that I know. He has already delivered and managed hypnosis courses both on and off line. If you look at his Keys to the Mind blog you will see he has interviewed and is associated with some very well know figures in the hypnosis community. In short he has achieved much more than the vast majority of hypnotists that I know. But this is not the only reason why I think Nathan is a good NLP Model.
Nathan is making money online. He is making over $20 000 a year from the internet, has made over $2000 in a single day and is currently taking a year off travelling round the world on the proceeds of his business. And he has achieved all this in two years…basically since he was sixteen years old.
Okay this is not the huge amounts of money that the serious Internet Marketers make but they started somewhere and it is quite clear that Nathan is heading in that direction. If you want to start an internet business selling info products on line Nathan is a perfect person to model. Why? Simply because he is a little ahead of the game and obviously is doing something right.
Internal and External Modelling
To create the same level of success as Nathan you need to look at two things. One is how they are thinking and the other is what is it that they are doing. Without both parts of this model you cannot hope to create the same level of success.
Another area you will look at is the exact context your model is using their strategy. For example I noticed with Nathan that he thinks differently about his business when he is long term planning than when he is working on a specific project or area.
For example when talking about his overall business Nathan recognised and is happy to start looking at more structure as a way to grow his business. Yet when discussing a specific project he was, like most teenagers, resistant to having too much structure. Yet when thinking about a marketing plan for the project, an area he has lots of experience and skills with he has a solid structure to his planning. Three different modes of thinking for three different contexts. You would need to decide which are useful and which are idiosyncratic to Nathan.
In the middle of all of this to complete the model you need to look at what the guy actually does. So if you are looking at developing an internet business you might want to know some of these things from Nathan:
How to:
- Choose a market niche
- Choose and create a product
- Write sales copy that sells
- Drive targeted traffic to the site
There are people out there that probably do each bit of this far better than Nathan. But for most the issue is not about each component of the process, that is more easily refined when you have everything working for you.
The issue is how to get the whole thing moving and being profitable. If that is what you are after then Nathan is the right guy to model because you can get to understand how he is thinking as well as what he is doing as an overall process.
In Conclusion
NLP is all about modelling. There is an art in selecting the right people and processes to model. There is two key elements to modelling, how is the person thinking and what is the person doing to create their results.
As a reader of this blog you might already know that I am planning to run a course about internet marketing with Nathan. We will expand Nathans model for creating and selling info products on the internet. Details of this course will be released soon once we have bolted down some of the arrangements, but it is certainly 26/27 June in London.
Using this modelling approach I have created a number of products including:
The Advanced Persuasion Patterns Programme This programme gives you several models that have come from highly persuasive hypnotic communicators as well as ways to integrate those models in to your daily life.
NLP CV Writing and Interview Skills Have you noticed some people just get the job regardless of their skills and experience? This course is a distiliation of the processes I gained from modelling those people. It covers both ends of the model i.e. what they do inside their heads as well as what you need to write on your CV and say in interview to get the job.