By Lukman Olabiyi
Rajiv Sharma is a digital marketing expert, managing director/CEO, NLP Nigeria Limited who believes in the country’s strength and diversity. He believes that Nigeria has what it takes to be among countries with the best economies despite the numerous challenges facing it.
In this interview, he reveals many benefits of Neuro Linguistic Programming and how it can be used to influence Nigeria’s economy.
He also gives clues on how the ‘Japa’ syndrome can be addressed by the government and its people.
Nigeria seems to be failing. There is a high rate of inflation amidst an economic downturn. What do you think can be done by the government or citizens to better the situation in the country?
Nigeria is the only place in the world which is balanced. The country has everything. The country is blessed with both human and natural resources. They have everything. The only thing is how we can fix it. The government cannot do it alone. If the country has to change, it has to be changed by business people. It has to be changed by the great business people the country is blessed with. The government is just an enabler but the business people are the ones that will change the country.
The next thing I will say is the youthful population, which I am really counting on. The government can’t do it alone. Yes, we have a new president, he has good intentions. He is a gentleman, a thorough man. He has done it before but what can he do alone? He cannot do it alone. He needs a team and you and I are his team. The citizens of the country are his team. If we don’t support the president, he cannot do it alone. This is a country of over 200 million people. The country has resources, but one thing with every human being is greed. What we need to do is stop greed. People have to stop being selfish. People need to invest in this country, if they don’t invest in this country, people will go out, There will be “Japa.”
You just talked about ‘Japa’. Is it a good omen for the country? Will the trend not further hamper the country’s economic growth?
‘Japa’ is not a bad thing. Japa paid off in my country, India. In the 1980s, 90s, when I was growing up in India, a lot of people were moving out of India, a lot of people were doing ‘Japa’ there too. They were jumping around. Today, those people who ‘japa’ from India are doing well in USA and others and they supporting India. They’re raising the country back. So the people of this country that are going out are not doing the wrong thing. These people will be uplifting the country. They will help the country back.
The government actually has to be the enabler and the business men and women have to jack up their plans. We have to start manufacturing things in this country. It is a chicken and egg story and you will say, do we get the chicken first or the egg? The economy depends on business. Only business can control the economy. Government can only provide the enabling environment.
Another thing is the capacity building. Building of our people is very important, we don’t need to give them money. The problem is that the government gives them money. The government should train them to make money. Teach them how to fish; don’t give them fish. If you teach them how to fish they will fish and go sell in the markets. They will feed themselves and their families. We need to make sure we are training the people . This again is Where Neuro Linguistic Programming comes in. We need to re-programme how our people think.
How can Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) be used to grow the economy?
We live in the digital world today, and the major component of NLP is digitalisation. Whether we like it, whether we don’t like it, we are living in a digital world. And now we can use NLP to get better results in a digital world. That is where we are playing a very important role as a digital agency. Digital marketing is all about how you are communicating your messages to other people.
Every post, every message you see in the digital platforms is actually connecting with the people. It is about using the right language. It is about going to impact somebody’s mind, impacting his or her behaviour. It is about mindset. So if I draft a message which is going to appeal to your mindset, you will pause, look at that message once or twice and you will think about it.
The first thing is that, you have to draft your message in such a manner that it should impact the human mind and connect with someone. For example, there are certain words which are very important and NLP teaches you that, teaches you how to use those words effectively to communicate better, to relate better, to establish good relationship with the other person.
The second element of the digital marketing is about creating the reach. You actually create a reach of about seven billion people and that is what digital marketing allows you to do. The digital media allows you to be seen all over the world. There are no boundaries. It helps you expand your reach.
The technology used by NLP in digital media is called RACE. R stands for Reach. After the reach, someone has to take an action, so there is an Action which is the A. The C is the Convergence place and E stands for Engagement because you will actually need to engage the customer; otherwise he or she will leave you and go somewhere else.
This RACE methodology is what we use in digital marketing. We started digital marketing in Nigeria 10 years ago. In NLP, we are your thinking partners. A lot of companies hire us because they think their employees are not thinking in favour of the company but when we meet with the employees we align their thinking with that of the management.
Could you expatiate more about Neuro Linguistic Programming?
I came across Richard Bandler in 2006. He is co-creator of Neuro Linguistic Programming and I got fascinated and fell in love with the concept. What is NLP? Neuro is the way you think, Linguistics is the way you speak and Programming is the way you behave. Your success, your results actually depends on three things – the way you think, the way you speak and the way you behave. If you have to achieve anything in life you have to ensure that your thinking should be of a good mindset.
Thinking should not be fixed. Your language is very important and you know nobody will go into your heart to see what you tell them. How you speak actually demonstrates how you are thinking. So that is where language is important. Language is very important and you will be wondering that some companies make a lot of money and some don’t and actually fail. It actually depends on how the leaderships of the companies are thinking. The management’s think-tank, what kind of common language have they created for themselves? They use specific languages. The programming, like I told you, if you conduct yourself very well in the presence of your customers, your customers are going to become your fans.
How does the concept apply to business?
Neuro Linguistics applies to business, it applies to teaching, it applies to coaching. It applies to sales, it applies to customer service. It applies to human resources because human resources think, speak and hear. All human resources managers need to imbibe Neuro Linguistic in their programming. Leaders need to imbibe Neuro Linguistic concepts in their organisations.
If you continue to think about the thoughts of yesterday, you will keep getting the same result. If you want a new result you need new thinking. You need a new language, you need to articulate something else. You need a new behavior, if a bank for instance is behaving in a particular way another bank has to behave in a better way to take their customers. The bottom line is that everyone in the world uses NLP. It raises your consciousness in performing things. We have been working with the Dangote group, banks, telecommunications. We have developed jobs for Microsoft.
How long have you been doing this?
I started my career in 1990 with Suzuki Motors. I never wanted to be in sales at that point in time, but the realities of the world hit me hard. You are looking for a job and you don’t get it and you pick up whatever comes your way. That is what happened to me. That is how I got into sales. I got into sales with a company and the job was to sell cars, but I took that job as a temporary job. That is what happens when you get a job that is not up to your taste. So you say to yourself: before I find the real job let me pass time in this. So I didn’t make any sales for six months. Then the company decided to sack me. That was when my eyes opened. The realities of life dawned on me, I went to my manager. I told him, sir, I really need this job. If you sack me I will be without a job. I have been trying hard to get a job. He told me he didn’t need people who are highly qualified and educated with this kind of attitude but want real people who can do the job. I said, all right, give me a chance and he said okay. If you perform this month, the company will review its decision.
That year, I was rated the best sales rep in that same company. I really learnt it in the beginning of my career that if you change your thinking, you can actually change the fortunes of your career and do anything in the world that you want. This happened to me in my early phase of life, first job, first year and then when I look back at that period I see that it is not about what we want, it is about what the universe wants from us. Today I am rated among the best sales trainers in the world. Rated number six by Best Global Trainers which is a research company. Which means I was destined to start a career like that. Today, I coach people not to fight the universe; the universe has a plan for you, even though you have a plan for yourself. Whatever the universe has put to you, master your game very well and when you master it, there is a bigger plan than your plan, which is the universe’s plan. That really changed the way I see things. Then after that there was no going back, there was no looking back and then I got promotions and promotions because my mindset changed.
In 2013, I invented a model called the MARK model. M stands for Mindset, A stands for Action, R stands for Repetition and K stands for Knowledge. Now you might really have a great mindset but if you don’t take any action nothing is going to happen, if you keep thinking great that things are going to happen and you keep lying on the bed, doing nothing , nothing is going to change around you, so you have to get out of your comfort zone, you have to get out of your bed. You have to start taking proactive actions. Those actions are either going to take you to your goals or away from your goals.
So, whatever actions you take are either going to move you towards that vision you want to achieve or take you away from the vision of where you want to be. Lots of people want to create wealth, they want to make money. How many people are taking good actions, proactive actions towards creating that wealth for themselves? Are you busy just scrolling on social media, watching Instagram and Facebook? Or you are taking some actions to create some wealth?
Once you identify that you are taking some proactive actions, one action may not get you the desired result that you want. That is where the R comes in. You need to repeat those actions again and again. When you repeat, you achieve self –mastery. With time, that self- mastery becomes a new evolution of knowledge for you. You are going to get a new knowledge and when you come out with a new knowledge, that is when the world respects you, appreciates you and that is how I came up with the MARK model. Today there are over 200, 000 professionals practising the MARK model across the globe. This is changing the result they get; this is transforming their lives to the next level.