"Dude - best seminar you ever did.
You put David Gordon in front of a room again and I'm there." - Anthony Coyne

In 1975, two California researchers stun the therapeutic world by releasing a model of effective therapy.  Overnight, they teach people with no background at all in therapy how to accomplish breakthroughs in just a single session.  They show how to eliminate years of therapy and accomplish rapid personal change.

But they aren't finished...

In that same year, they release another model from the therapeutic world.  In this case, they have modeled the language, body movements, and tonal changes and shifts of the world's greatest hypno-therapist.  Within days people with no background in hypnosis were covertly inducing deep trance phenomena and assisting people make deep and lasting changes.

The ability to model or copy a behavior is a powerful technology that was at the heart of NLP.  By carefully studying the patterns of the exemplar you wanted to model, you could duplicate the behaviors and install them in yourself or someone else.

Bandler and Grinder were able to explain how they modeled the language of Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and Gregory Bateson.  They were able how they modeled with precision the language patterns of Milton Erickson.

But their partnership broke up before they could fully explain the key question, "How Do You Model Someone" and for nearly 20 years following their split, modeling was a lost skill except for a select few.

The Rebirth of Modeling

In 1997 David Gordon, one of the original core of students who helped formulate NLP, announced a new breakthrough.  He produced a simplified version of modeling that was easy to learn and deadly effective.

Gordon's version centered around a simple template called The Experiential Array.

With the template in your hand, the modeler was able to go deep inside the head of the exemplar and bypass the unconscious blocks to producing a model.  Please allow me to explain.  With few exceptions, when the exemplar is being modeled, they are not fully aware of all the steps they do.  There is significant unconscious activity.

Gordon's template allows you to produce a subconscious map of the unconscious process of the person being modeled.

Producing A Model That Works

Using Gordon's Experiential Array, I was able to produce a model called "Winning At Negotiations."  I was immediately able to use this model in salary negotiations and teach others to use it as well.

Like Prometheus discovering fire, I began modeling behaviors I wanted to copy.  It was almost too easy. 

I rapidly produced a model for being an effective fund raiser and taught it successfully at large seminars.

I was hired to produce a model for selling by telephone and was able to implement a complete training program at a time when I had zero background in sales.  (In fact, it's more than 20 years later and the company is still trying to hire me back!)

In my role as an educator, I produced a model of an effective teacher and presented it to a spell-bound audience at one of the largest teachers' conferences in the United States.

Having A Secret Advantage

Here's a secret I never shared.  When I began to enter the world of copywriting, the first thing I did was to seek out samples of legendary copywriters like Gary Halbert, Jim Rutz, Eugene Schwartz, and Mel Martin.  And as I studied each copywriter, I produced a model for each copywriter.

Within a year, I was meeting with the heads of Boardroom and Weiss discussing expanding their online presence.  (Remember, I was a rookie copywriter at the time).  It was my ability to model and produce deeply hypnotic copy that got me in the door.

But I never took my modeling skills public regarding copy until...

Modeling John Carlton

In front of a packed room, I modeled John Carlton's copywriting process.  John expected the regular questions about hooks and headlines.

Instead he faced a gamut of questions he had never been asked.  The room sat spell bound as John went deep inside thinking deeply about the internal processes of being a copywriter.

He went into profound silence and reflection when I asked him the final question, "How do you know when the copy is done..." John gave a simple answer, "When I can tell it is A-level copy."  

But my hypnotic eye could tell the question sent John deep inside himself.  And on the way to the airport, John shared the real answer to that question.  It was something he had never thought about and certainly something he had never shared...

Modeling David Deutsch

The first time I saw David Deutsch's copy, I was blown away.  The copy was so good I was convinced it was the work of another copywriting legend.

Then, I met David Deutsch and learned an entirely new perspective on copy.  David is not widely known but some people consider him one of today's top A-list copywriters .  And David was gracious enough to allow me to model him.

Talk about differences between Carlton and Deutsch - incredible. 

But when you talk about commonalities - there are plenty to be found.  David was fascinated by the questions and the process and decided to learn modeling himself.

And then I asked David the key question.  "How do you know the copy is done?" He gave me an answer that simply stunned me and offered a penetrating look into the mind of one of the hottest A-level copywriters.

Modeling Brian Keith Voiles

I wasn't expecting to model Brian Keith Voiles live but it was an amazing experience.  Some of us live our lives as adults.  Brian lives his life as a kid trapped inside an adult's body.

Brian's copy is disarmingly simple.  Yet he holds a number of powerful controls.  The modeling revealed a secret he uses to create great copy that surprised everyone in the audience.

Brian revealed completely unorthodox strategies for writing his sales letters and showed how he makes writing winning sales letters a non-stop game.

How can strategies so simple be so powerful - you'll have to try them out for yourself.

Modeling David Garfinkel

I recently sat down with David Garfinkel in a restaurant in San Francisco and pulled out a tape recorder.

Soon we were lost in time as David began to analyze his process of writing a sales letter.

As we were talking, David came to realize there is one thing he does at every step of the way which he used to do on purpose but now... it's on autopilot.

And it's probably the number one reason his copy is so effective.  You'll want to hear it and use it right away...

Called Back In From Retirement

It's no secret that reunion tours are the biggest thing on the concert circuit.  In past years, The Who, The Police, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd have all come out of retirement.  And even though these bands haven't played together in years,  their music came together and flowed.

Possibly the greatest teacher of NLP quietly retired from the scene  number of years ago.  His name is David Gordon and he produced some of the most important models in NLP.

David modeled Milton Erickson and produced "Therapeutic Metaphors".  I later did my own doctoral study based on David's work and showed that specially loaded stories could produce rapid change in a class room setting.

David went back to the drawing pad and came up with a new model of Erickson's therapeutic strategies in the book "Phoenix."  These strategies explicated some of Erickson's unconscious strategies in change work.

Using David's techniques, even someone with no background can produce transformational stories and employ strategies which produce rapid change.

David believes all experience has structure.  

If you can crack the code, you can reproduce the structure in someone else.

Achieving The Impossible

I coaxed David Gordon out of retirement to present at my "Modeling Effective Copywriters"  seminar took place in Las Vegas in February 2008.

This was a one time only seminar - and I can promise you another example of over delivering at a seminar.

Here's What Appears On The 13 DVDs: