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There's an idea I've been banging around in my head for a while - something I haven't seen in the self-development field so far, and which might make a nice business niche (at the time, I'm mainly looking for the possibilities of implementing it on the Polish market) - and I wanted to ask you about any suggestions you might have about it.

When you go to the gym, you can often use the help of a personal trainer -if they're good, they'll be able to choose the very best exercises for you, help you in motivating yourself during trainings (and for some, motivating yourself to actually do the trainings), help you with picking your diet, and they can generally significantly improve the effectiveness with which people train.

What I'm looking for is such a solution for the Self-Growth field, a Personal Trainer in Self-Development. I've met numerous people who've gotten little more than a few weeks post-training glow from rather expensive courses, and a few who are actually addicted to going to trainings - without actually doing anything with their lives. Similar things can be said about reading self-help materials, blogs, etc. - a lot of people are putting in time, money and effort and getting far less then they could out of it. Hence, the idea of a personal guide assisting in the training, making personal exercise regimes for when people have finished their Practicioner course or any other training, motivating and guiding their clients through such exercises, etc. And hence - my questions, mentioned above:
- would you be interested in buying a service like this,
- what would it need to offer to make you interested in buying it,
- how much would it be worth to you (both as a private user, and as a trainer buying the service for your course participants)/how much would you be willing to pay for it,
- what form would be the best for you (e-mail? phone? personal work?)
- as well as any other ideas which might come to your head.

And, of course, if the idea isn't new by any chance and someone had already thought it up and implemented it - I'd be very grateful for a link to them.

Cheers for all your help with this

A great idea - I would recomend contacting Fitness First and speak with their Personal Trainers.
You can then do a partnership with them where the client pays for the total package.
This is an open market so do not restrict yourself to the Polish market
Good luck

Hi Artur

Great post, I like the idea and possibly the equivilant to a personal trainer would be an NLP life coach. I am not sure if there is such a thing. I know of life coaches that use NLP but not of any that specifically coach NLP.

I have heard a few of the trainers mention their mentors and the benefits of having spent the time studying under the mentor. So I guess an other possibilty is trying to find an NLP mentor.

Or in this case rent a mentor.

Have a great day.

Frederic

Hi All,

In the UK, life coaches and particularly NLP life coaches are a thriving market. And some of them will also coach, train or mentor in NLP on a one-to-one basis. I do a fair bit of that meself!

Although I'll say as a work of warning that a client coming to you for coaching will often want to know what you've done that proves you're worth listening to...

So in the same way no one wants the fitness trainer with the pot belly and circles under his eyes, make sure you've got some experiences to meet the same sorts of success criteria that you propose to help people to reach.

And sometimes making your own dreams come true first will have it's own benefits...

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Hi Artur,

I am in the UK and run a personal training company and our trainers are at least NLP practitioners as well as highly qualified personal trainers.

We find that generally when someone wants a personal trainer it is because they want to get fit, lose weight etc but it is only once you start speaking to them you realise the reasons behind them being overweight in the first place and this is where we find NLP useful. However, if we were to ask that client before they joined if they would pay more (or seperately) for this service, I cannot be sure they would - it is all about their perceived value and once they have experienced it they stay but using it as a point to sign clients up isn't the most successful.

I hope this makes some sense and if you want any more info or have any questions I can help with, feel free to message me.

Hi everyone and thank you for your comments

One thing which I think I might not have explained clearly enough - what I'm looking for is not to enhance 'normal' personal trainers with nlp skills (although, as Nic described, this is a very good idea as well), but rather to create the equivalent of personal trainers for the self development field - seeing at how many praciticioners I've seen who've gone to the training, spending 1000 quid or more on it... and came out with little more than some good feelings, as they haven't actually started to apply what they've learned to the real world.

Where I see this as different from the standard life-coaching or mentoring approach is that here the potential customers will usually already have learned the necessary skills, or will be learning them independently, where they need help with is actually implementing them in their lives or increasing the effectiveness of said implementation.

I'm not saying that people are unable to make such use of trainings on their own - they can, usually, just like most people can use the gym on their own, with occasional help from the gym's local trainers or form the net. The service would be directed both to these who find that insufficient for them to actually act (just like people not coming to the gym if they don't have an appointment with the trainer) and to these who have a limited amount of time and want to make the most of what they're doing.

I hope I've now explained the idea clearly enough

hi Artur, the...only...thing...missing...from...the...thrivi ng...market...in...
coaching...is...a...very...simple...understanding. ..that...i...see...lacking...in...
the...biggest...majority...of...them(including Michael)...is...what...i...term...the...magic...2% ...
...that...resides...between...49%...and...51%...as ...a...coach...that...is...all...
you...can...hope...to...do!..

peace&love...vern

Hi Vern,

Yeah, that's so true... I remember when you sat in on some coaching sessions I did, observed my work and then told me you didn't experience the magic that...

Oh wait, that never happened and you've never had a reference experience of my work, except for reading some posts or maybe listening to a podcast or an interview, all of which aren't coaching or even close to what I do in that environment.

Sorry, I forget these things sometime!

But you're probably right anyway. Carry on!

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Hi Artur,

Real quick-like, 'cause I'm past due on some work...

Thanks for your clarification.

Actually, I pretty much understood what you were driving at the first time around, but it's always nice to have additional information from which to calibrate.

And my advice still stands. If you want to help anyone to be excellent at anything, make sure that you can provide evidence that suggests that you're an exemplar of excellence in that area.

I have a friend of mine who is an athlete and who is one of the best in the world at what he does. He coaches some of the current world champions and how they do his sport. And the reason that calibre of athlete wants him to coach them is because of what he's done in that category of experience.

As far as providing exercises go, I'd have to say that I do a lot less of that and a lot more tasking, or setting homework, to use some different terminology.

Although athletes will do exercises for general fitness, the most important exercise that they can do for their sport is to actually practice it. Most artificial exercises turn out to be not terribly applicable to real world function.

In a similar way, NLP is all about the study of subjective human experience. And being that we are all subjective humans and that we all have experiences all the time, we have a fully equipped training facility sitting in that little spongy bit right between our ears! It's just a matter of specific application.

Therefore, a lot of what I task people to do is to give specific attention to specific principles over the course of time, notably the time between sessions. Then, they provide me with feedback from their own experience which then allows me to give them even more specific coaching or training to help them to do 'one more rep' and increase their Neurolinguistic VO2 Max...

I work with clients in person, I work with them on the telephone or over Internet telephony using programs like Skype, I work with them via instant messaging and I work with them via e-mail. What's appropriate for a given client really depends on what they are trying to achieve.

So, for example, I wouldn't try to teach someone excellent tonality using instant messaging... The right tool for the right job.

I hope this is a little bit more along the lines of the sort of answer you were expecting. And, of course, if you have any other specific questions, I'll answer them as best I can.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

hi Michael, you...know...it...mate!..just...a...little...wind-up!..coz...i...found...
your...post...so...of...the...mark...i...could...n ot...let...that...level...of...B.S...
pass...without...a...comment...or...2!..So!..you.. .believe...that...to...provide...
another...with...that...little...edge!..that...mag ic...2%...requires...that...you...must
...1st...have...the...totally...silly...idea...tha t...you...already...have...the...
impossible...100%...to...start...with!...

peace&love...vern

Oops sorry Artur - missed the point completely! Thanks for clarifying!

Hi Vern, I would agree with you that these ideas about people needing to be 100% of something (not sure what) before they can provide someone else with some little edge (of something) is pretty silly.

It also has absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote.

To rephrase for greater clarity and to make sure that no one else misunderstood me, in order to convince someone else that you can be of help to them, it is often useful to be prepared to meet their criteria for proof that you can do what you say you can do.

If you want to say 'I don't really know much about what you want to do but let me be your coach anyway', you might well get some takers. But I'm guessing that's going to be a limited market.

Also note that I said exemplar of excellence. To be clear, an exemplar of excellence in the context of NLP is just someone who does something relatively well. It does not mean someone who is, knows or does 100% of anything.

An exemplar of excellence is merely someone who does what he does well by comparison.

For example, I'd be perfectly happy for someone to teach me how to fly even if all they could do was barely levitate and wobble a few feet off the ground at 3 or 4 miles an hour. That's still a lot better than I can do right now, so by comparison, they are an exemplar of excellence.

And, if that flying person knew someone else who could zip along hundreds of feet in the air at hundreds of miles an hour and land on a dime, then they would consider them an exemplar of excellence too, by comparison to their own abilities and skills.

Now it is possible that someone would want to hire someone who knew less about something than they did as a coach in that context. And I'm also going to say that most people want somebody who knows more about it than they do.

Again, it's just about being excellent by comparison.

I'll admit I read 'Atlas Shrugged' back in college, but you're probably safe in assuming that I'm never talking about absolutes unless I go out of my way to specify that I am.

And yes, that's an absolute, relatively speaking.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

hi Michael, so...if...i`ve...got...you...right...the...fact... that...Fergie...at...Man United...was...a...not...a...very...good...footbal ler...has...no...reflection...
on...his...coaching...ability?..seldom...if...ever ...do...Great...Footballers...
make...a...Great...coach!...ever...wondered...why?

peace&love...vern

Hi Vern,

Yes, you've not got me right.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Hi Vern,

I'll take one last stab at this.

Sir Alex Ferguson at Man United is an exemplar of excellence in his field. His excellence came in the context of management, originally as a player and then later as a manager.

And if he would have turned up at Man U without his building up of experience at East Stirlingshire, St Mirren and then Aberdeen and then lead Aberdeen to three Scottish titles, four Scottish cups, one League Cup and one European Cup Winners’ Cup, I don't things would have turned out the way they did.

And maybe I'm wrong, but I deeply suspect that without his increasingly exceptional track record, it's not bloody likely they would have taken him on as a manager at a club of Man U's calibre. Maybe so, but I don't think so.

He started out as a manager at a small club, and this club was willing to take him on because he was a player with a proven talent for managing. His skills increased and he moved to better and better clubs as his skills increased relative to the clubs that were hiring him until he went from being a newbie manager with a small club to being the dominant manager in Scottish football.

And Man U used all of that as criteria for selecting him, I hallucinate.

So, no absolutes in there at all, it's all relative.

And excellence doesn't have to be in the exact same category to be convincing to potential clients, but the more relevant it appears to be, the more one can likely meet many clients' criteria for selection.

Vern, I'm sure there somehow might be some way in which crap NLPers who know or can do very little would make excellent NLP personal trainers/coaches in Artur's meaning of the function. Anything's possible.

And I think that even if this is true, they'd be doing themselves a favour if they had some means of convincing someone that they could function in that capacity. Somehow. Because otherwise, they're not going to get hired for the job.

And that's about as far as I'm willing to go for clarity there, Vern. If it still doesn't make sense to you, I'll respect your choices in deciding I must mean whatever you might choose to think I mean.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

hi Michael, its...a...little...better!..but...still...a...litt le...long...winded...and...
nieve...to...the...extreme!

peace&love...vern

Hi Vern,

Thanks for the feedback, I'll take that into consideration.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

hi Michael, i...hope...you...do!..1...day...you...may...well.. .make...a...good...coach!..if...
you...learn...how...to...stop!..being...such...an. ..NLP...zombie!

peace&love...vern

Vern....it's...ironic...that....you....call....Mic hael....a....NLP....zombie....when....
you....are....still....so....attached....to....you r....three....dots. Haven't....you
....heard? All....the....cool....kids....are....using....four .

....

yeah Mike, you're such an nlp zombie!

You left your damned right shin in my car the other week!
Please be more careful with where you leave your atrophic bodyparts!

;-)