Modeling: How to Copy the Technique and Emotion of the Best
Learn the modeling technique to speed up results in copy and business by copying not just what your reference does, but how they feel while doing it.
What modeling is and why it works
Modeling is taking someone who already has the result you want and copying not just what they do, but how they think and how they feel when they do it. In copy this is routine: you find an ad that's selling and adapt its structure to your product. The problem is most people stop at the structure. And that's where they lose the game.
Anyone who works with copy knows reverse engineering. You look at a VSL that converts, map the headline, the promise, the objection handling, the order of the arguments, and rebuild it for your context. It works. But it only works halfway when you copy just the skeleton and ignore what was holding that skeleton up from the inside.
Complete modeling has two layers: the technique (what the person does) and the mental and emotional base (why they do it that way and how they feel while executing). Almost nobody talks about the second layer. And it's the one that separates people who copy formulas from people who understand why the formula works.
Why emotion matters as much as technique?
Think about a player taking a free kick. Before he strikes, he tells himself: the ball is going in. That mental state isn't decoration. It changes the kick. The technique of his foot is the same one he's trained a thousand times, but what makes the ball go in that moment is the combination of technique with the right emotional state.
In copy it's the same. I once heard something from a copywriter that I can't get out of my head. She told me that the creatives that sold the most in her life came from one specific day. She woke up feeling really good, looked at her work, and said: today I'm going to make the best ads of my life. And she did. Those ads sold an absurd amount.
It wasn't just the technique. It was the state she was in when she wrote.
This isn't loose motivational talk. Your emotional state changes the energy of the writing, the courage to promise, the willingness to rewrite until it's sharp. Copy written out of fear comes out lukewarm. Copy written with conviction spills conviction onto the reader. The technique is the vehicle. The emotion is the fuel.
How to really study a reference
When you decide to model someone, the job is to gather as much information as possible about that person. Not just the final result, the finished product, the winning ad. The entire path.
That's why reading a biography is worth so much. A biography shows you what the person read, watched, heard, what struggles they went through, and how they got out of them. You internalize that context and start acting on it almost without noticing. It's not about memorizing a catchy line. It's about absorbing the way they operate.
Here's an example of what this unlocks in practice. I was reading about an entrepreneur obsessed with speed, the kind of guy who does everything fast and never lets a deadline slip. His mindset was: you can deliver way faster than you think. That gave me a direct insight.
I had a VSL scheduled for Tuesday. I grabbed my best editor and said: I want this done by Friday. Then instead of leaving it to one person, I split the work: two, three editors, each handling a part. Friday night the VSL was ready. One insight pulled from modeling, dropped into the operation, and it worked.
Anyone who saw only the result (VSL done in three days) has no idea what was behind it. Behind it was a connection that came from studying how someone else thought about time.
Modeling applied to media buying
The logic of slicing the VSL across three editors is the same one that governs scaling in Meta Ads. You don't do everything in series, one step waiting on the next. You parallelize.
The media buyer who models the best at volume quickly realizes the bottleneck is rarely creative. The bottleneck is execution. Uploading 80 variations one by one in Ads Manager, with manual naming, is the kind of work that steals the energy that should go into strategy. Then when it hits midnight and you still have accounts to set up, your emotional state crashes, and the next day's copy comes out worse.
People running operations across multiple BMs usually take that friction off their hands by leaning on tools like DirectAds, which uploads hundreds of campaigns across multiple accounts at once, with standardized naming and structure. The platform doesn't decide the strategy. You decide, and it executes in minutes what would take hours. That frees up time and headspace for the part that actually matters: the thinking behind the campaign.
Modeling speed, in this case, means recognizing where the process jams and removing the repetitive manual work before it drains your mental state.
Why read old copy (and not just the formula)
I read a lot of old copy. But not for the technique itself, and that distinction is the point.
I read to understand how the guy felt when he wrote, how he studied, how he thought about life and about the reader. You can find the technique in any swipe file. What's rare is seeing the reasoning and the state behind that technique.
A formula is one thing. Understanding why that formula works is another. Whoever only memorizes the formula stays trapped in it. Whoever understands the why can create their own formula when the context changes, when the audience saturates, when the old angle dies.
Modeling done right gives you the second level. And it's the second level that makes you actually improve, in copy or in any area. Want to learn English faster? Take the best English speaker you know and model them: how they studied, how often, what they felt in the process. It's the smartest way to cut the path short.
Takeaways
- When modeling a reference, map two layers: the technique they use and the mental and emotional state they execute in. Copying just the structure gives you half the result.
- Read biographies and behind-the-scenes material about your references. Absorb the context, the struggle, and the way of thinking, not just the final product.
- Before copying a formula, understand why it works. Whoever understands the why creates their own when the market shifts.
- Spot where repetitive manual work drains your time and your state. Parallelize and automate execution to protect the energy that goes into strategy.
Frequently asked questions
Is modeling the same as copying?
No. Copying is reproducing the final result. Modeling is rebuilding the entire process: the technique, the reasoning, and the emotional state behind it. You adapt it to your context instead of cloning it literally.
How do you study the emotional side of a reference if they don't talk about it?
Biographies, interviews, behind-the-scenes material, and stories told by people who knew them. You gather as much context as possible about struggles, habits, and ways of thinking, and you deduce the state that held the execution together.
Does modeling work outside of copy?
Yes, in any area. The principle is the same: take someone who has the result you want, study what they do and how they think, and apply it to your reality. It works for languages, business, sports, media buying.
Why read old copy if the techniques have changed?
The specific technique may age, but the reasoning behind it doesn't. Reading old material shows how the author thought about the reader and why the structure worked. You can reapply that understanding in any era.
