How To Become A Dominant Force In Your Market And Create Products Your Customers Love

Starting Point

Imagine this for a moment…

You’re the king (or queen) of your niche market. Your customers adore your products. Your prospects hang onto your every word. Even your competitors respect you.

Now let me ask you this…

If you had this sort of influence in your market – if customers snatched up every product you put on the market – how profitable would that be for you?

You can crunch a variety of numbers all day long, but we know the short answer to that question: it would be VERY profitable.

And yet, look around and you’ll notice that a lot your colleagues are barely scraping by. They might even be creating info products left and right, but they’re hardly making a dent in the market.

You know why?

Because they’re not influential. They don’t know how to create products that their prospects and customers really want and love. And they don’t know how to dominate their market. Simply put, they don’t know how to make a GOOD profit in their market.

Now if you’ve struggled with some of these same issues, take heart that you’re not alone. Most business owners do. And that’s why most business owners fail.

But not you… not anymore. And that’s because you’re about to learn the three crucial steps to turning any business into a really profitable one. Here’s an overiew:

Step 1: Define Your Customer PROFILE: This goes beyond merely knowing the age, gender and marital status of your customer. Because once you understand your ideal customer on a deeper level, then you’ll be able to specialize and give them what they want.

Step 2: Decide Your Value PROPOSITION: Next, you determine how to present your business in an appealing way. That means defining your value proposition so that you can be known for providing what your customers want.

Step 3: Design Your Ideal PRODUCT: This is all about product-market fit, where you’ll find out how to create products that your audience will absolutely fall in love with.

That’s a start.

But to continue along and find success on this journey, we need to cover a few more topics. That’s why later on you’ll also get these important pieces to complete your MAP:

A Packing List, which goes over key issues.
Roadblocks (and how to get past them).
Hot Spots, which are answers to the top FAQs.
Important Documents, where you’ll get a product outline.
Itinerary, where you’ll get a printable checklist.
Destination, where we’ll wrap things up.

Now let’s take a closer look at each of these three steps of the MAP…

Turn-by-Turn Directions

Plenty of marketers think they’ve completed the three steps mentioned above, but hardly anyone knows how to do this the right way. The thorough way. The way that’s going to directly translate to money in the bank.

That’s why you’re about to get an in-depth look at these three steps, beginning with developing the customer profile. Take a look…

Step 1: Define Your Customer Profile

Here’s a typical mistake…

Someone asks a new business owner who their target market is, and that business owners answers, “Everyone!”

Bzzt, wrong. No matter what you’re selling, you’ll never have “everyone” as your target market. That’s why you need to develop a customer profile, which is where you define your ideal customer.

Need proof that not “everyone” is part of your target market? Well, let’s consider that everyone needs to eat. So, that would seem to indicate that the target market for a grocery store is everyone.

But that’s not true.

For starters, only people who live within a certain radius of that store are part of the target market. And secondly, you’ll notice that different grocery stores are geared towards different types of customers.

If you need to see this for yourself, just stroll around a grocery store like Whole Foods for 15 minutes. Then head down the road to a Walmart super center that includes a grocery store. You’ll quickly see different prices, different atmospheres, different offerings, and different buying experiences between these two stores. That’s by design, not accident.

The same applies to your business…

If you’re selling weight loss books, not every dieter is part of your target market. If you’re selling dog training guides, not every dog owner is part of your market. If you’re selling online marketing information, not every online marketer is part of your target market.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The point is, you need to develop a customer profile.

In other words, you need to figure who your ideal customer is. Because once you do that, then you’ll be able to create content and products that are a good fit for your ideal customer. You’ll connect with your audience through every blog post, email and ad campaign. You’ll engage them on every level of your marketing and sales process.

End result? When you create content and products that your market is sure to love, you’ll see more sales, more customers, more market share, and a whole lot more profits.

You can see a lot of good reasons and benefits when you take this step. So, let’s turn our attention to HOW to create this customer profile…

Creating Your Customer Profile

Here’s the first thing to understand…

While not “everyone” is your target market, you probably will have more than one customer avatar. That is, you’ll focus on multiple smaller segments of your overall market.

What you need to do is talk to your market and research them in order to better understand them.

TIP: You can start sketching out your avatars based on certain assumptions, and fix those assumptions as you complete your research and interviews. However, don’t skip the research and interviewing. In other words, don’t make assumptions that you never intend to back up with data and research!

You’re going to want to understand your audience on the following seven levels:

Demographics.
Background.
Goals and Values.
Motivations.
Pain Points.
Objections.
Information Sources.

What does all of this mean? And how do you determine each of these facets of a customer avatar?

You’ll find out the answers to these questions and more as we step through the process of determining how to define these facets.

As we go through this process, we’re going to look at one customer avatar as an example. For this example, we’ll look at people who are interested in getting nutrition and exercise information for weight loss.

Here are some of the customer avatars we could pursue:

A 30-year-old female who just had a baby and is looking to develop healthy nutrition and exercise habits as a means of losing weight.

A middle age man who’s had a health scare and wants to lose weight to avoid heart disease and diabetes.

A professional personal trainer who wants to expand his knowledge so he can better serve his clients to help them lose weight.

Two quick notes before we begin…

First, the process we’re about to walk through is an example of how to do an “in-depth” customer profile. At the end of this section, you’ll learn how to do an abbreviated profile, which doesn’t require as much surveying. However, an abbreviated profile is best for those who’ve been working in their niche for some time, and already have a pretty good understanding of their audience.

Secondly, because an in-depth profile does require you to survey your audience, we’re going to start with a crash course in surveying. Here’s what you need to know…

Utilize a reputable survey tool. A good example is SurveyMonkey.com, which lets you ask everything from multiple choice questions to open-ended questions. This software makes it easy to collect and analyze your results.

Use both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. You can use multiple choice questions for the demographic data, such as age, gender, income and so on. When you’re trying to understand how your audience thinks, feels, or behaves, then use open-ended questions so as not to artificially limit your respondents’ answers.

Avoid leading questions. In other words, you don’t want to ask biased questions which will skew your results. As the name implies, leading questions are those that tend to lead respondents towards a particular answer. Even asking questions in a certain order can skew your results, depending on what you’re asking.

Let me give you an example:

Leading question: What are your thoughts on marketing expert Jimmy D. Brown’s groundbreaking work with private label rights content?

Neutral question: What are your thoughts on Jimmy D. Brown’s work with private label rights content?

See the difference? The first question is leading, as it will undoubtedly slant answers in a positive way due to words like “expert” and “groundbreaking.” The second question will produce more neutral results.

Survey enough people to create a representative sample. If you survey too few people, then you won’t be getting an accurate representation of your audience as a whole. For example, there are about 300,000 personal trainers in the United States. If you survey three of them, then your results are not going to do a good job of being reflective of your entire population.

The more people you survey, the more confident you can be that your results are representative of the audience. For example, if you surveyed all 300,000 personal trainers, then you can be 100% confident that your results are truly representative of your audience.

But you don’t have the time, money, or means to track down every personal trainer and survey them. So, what you do is find the “sweet spot” – that’s the number of people to survey that’s enough to get your representative sample so that you’re confident about your results, yet not so many that you’re spending excess time and money that are resulting in diminishing returns.

What is the sweet spot? It will depend on your population size, how confident you want to be in the results, and what sort of margin of error you’re willing to deal with.

Fortunately, you don’t need to do any of these calculations yourself. Here’s a nifty sample-size calculator from Survey Monkey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-calculator/

For our 300,000 personal trainers, we’d need just 97 respondents for a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 10%.

Generally speaking, you should aim for about 100 survey respondents. That number may go up or down depending on the factors mentioned above. In general, however, you can even have a population of 10,000,000 and still need just 100 respondents (if you’re comfortable with a confidence level of 95% and margin of error of 10%). After 100 respondents, you won’t get much more in the way of useful information by surveying significantly more people.

So with this crash course out of the way, let’s now look at our in-depth profile.

We’ll use the weight loss example to walk through these seven facets of this profile (with a focus on the last avatar, the professional who wants to learn more in order to better serve his clients)…

Demographics

You can find some of this information through a Google search (e.g., “personal trainer demographics, or “dog owner demographics” or “gardening demographics”). Just be sure that you’re pulling data from reputable sources, such as government research, research conducted by reputable organizations such as PEW research, research conducted by universities, and so on.

Secondly, you can confirm and better zero in on your target market by directly surveying your market. These are the sorts of demographics you’re after:

Gender.
Age.
Where your target market lives.
Rent or own.
Marital status.
Whether your market has kids or not.
Highest level of education obtained.
Income.

Let’s go back to our example for the nutrition/exercise market. The avatar for a personal trainer might be a 30-year-old male who’s single, has various certifications related to nutrition and exercise, and is making $35,000 (and is eager to earn more).

Next…

Background

This pertains to the customer’s experience level in the niche. E.G., beginner? Intermediate? Advanced?

You may gather some of this information via demographical data. For example, you may discover whether the customer has a degree and career in the field. However, you’ll gather the best information by asking your market directly.

Questions to ask:

Do you consider yourself a beginner, intermediate or expert in the field?
How many years have you worked in this field?
Do you have any educational background in the field (e.g., a related degree, certifications, etc.)?
Tell me about your accolades, awards and other credentials in the field.

In our example, the customer avatar for our personal trainer is that he has three certifications in exercise and nutrition, he’s worked three years for a gym as one of their trainers, and he’s owned his own personal-training business for two years.

Thus, he has an intermediate level of knowledge (and he’s actively looking to become an expert).

Goals and Values

This information is all about what your customer wants (their goals) and what they’re committed to doing (their values).

Once again, you’ll need to survey or interview your audience to gather this information. Here are potential questions to ask:

What are your goals [related to the niche]?
What do you want [related to your niche]?
What are your [niche-related] principles?
What do you care most about with regards [to the niche]?
What will you not stand for [with regards to the niche]?

For example, we may find that our personal trainer has goals to increase his income to the six-figure level, expand his business to a certain number of clients, hire or one or two trainers to work with him to expand his business… and buy his own gym in 10 years.

This trainer may value good work ethics, good business deals (where both parties feel like they got a good deal), and rewarding employees for a job well done.

Motivations

The next thing you need to figure out is what motivates your prospects and customers (both personally and professionally). This is information that you’ll need to collect by directly surveying or interviewing your market.

NOTE: Some of this information is going to be highly related to the person’s goals. For example, if our personal trainer has a goal of opening his own gym in 10 years, then he’s going to be highly motivated to make as much money as possible now, start saving for the down payments, and building a good reputation and credit profile so it’s easier to borrow money in the future. The overall motivation may be to build a successful gym, and then take an early retirement (so he can spend more time traveling and with family) by selling the business.

Point is, be sure to consider the motivations in relation to the customer’s goals.

Questions to include:

Where do you see yourself [with regards to the niche] in one year… five years… ten years?

What are your reasons for wanting to [achieve some goal]?

What do you NOT want to happen [with regards to your niche goals]? E.G., What negative outcomes scare you the most?

Next…

Pain Points

The next facet you need to determine through interviews and surveys is what your customer views as pain points and problems. Again, these will be related to your customer’s goals.

Ask questions like this:

What challenges do you face [as you seek to meet your niche goals]?
What problems slow you down [as you seek to meet your niche goals]?
What do you find most frustrating [about something in the niche]?

Once again, let’s go back to the example of our personal trainer. Perhaps we find his challenges and pain points include being unable to differentiate himself from other personal trainers in his market and growing his business.

Knowing this, you’ll be able to create weight-loss programs that are brandable and unique, so that the personal trainer can get attention, get more clients, and grow his business.

Objections

Here we are talking your prospects potential objections to purchasing your product. No matter how “perfect” your product is, nearly every prospect is going to have an objection. Your job is to uncover these objections, so that you can do two things:

Create products that overcome these objections. (Not always possible.)
Create sales copy that raises and handles objections. (This is a must.)

One of the advantages face-to-face sales people have is that prospects will often state their objections during the sales process. Since you are likely selling online, you’ll need to figure out your prospect’s objections through interviews or surveys.

Here are questions to ask:

What are your thoughts on this product?
What don’t you like about this product?
What are the reasons you would NOT buy this product?

Let’s go back to the example of our personal trainer who’s looking to purchase weight-loss information so he can expand his business. One of his objections may be that it takes too much time to go through an in-depth guide. You could solve this problem by making much of the content available as a downloadable .mp3, and then advertise that customers can save time by listening to the program in their car, at the gym, or even while doing household chores.

Next…

Information Sources

The final piece of information you need to gather to complete your customer avatar is where they get their information.

You can gather some of this information simply by researching the top products and platforms (blogs, social media accounts, newsletters) in your niche. However, you’ll want to directly ask your prospects and customers where they get your information.

Here are the questions to ask:

Which [niche] blogs do you read and visit regularly?
Which [niche] pages do you follow on social media?
What [niche] books have you read?
Where else do you get [niche-related] information?

Take note that there are some blogs and experts that almost everyone in your niche follows. What you’ll want to focus on is who your particular niche segment/avatar follows that differs from other segments in your market.

For example, maybe you discover that your personal trainer reads all the usual nutrition and exercise trade magazines. But what makes this segment of your market different is that this trainer follows professionals who teach group-training techniques. This tells you that if you design a product for this particular customer avatar, you need to offer exercise instruction that can accommodate groups.

Creating the Abbreviated Profile

If you’re new to your niche, then it’s a good idea to create the in-depth profile in order to truly understand your audience on a deeper level. However, if you have experience in your niche, then you can create a profile without doing surveys. You’ll still need to do research in order to gather information.

Here are the parts of the profile to complete when you’re doing an abbreviated profile:

Demographics, which you can easily complete by doing a Google search as described earlier.

Background information, which you can get a sense of by examining demographics information. (E.G., if someone has an advanced degree in a field related to the niche, it’s fairly safe to assume they are at an intermediate if not advanced level.)

Objections. You can brainstorm the most common objections (such as price, “this won’t work for me,” “I don’t believe you,” etc.). You can also search for the names of similar competitors’ products to see if your prospects have raised objections in blog discussions, social media conversations, and similar.

For example, search for statements such as, “I didn’t buy [name of product] because…”

Information sources. You can get an idea of what your audience is reading, watching and listening to by researching to uncover the bestselling information products and biggest platforms (such as Facebook Pages) in your niche.

What about the deeper-level information such as goals, values and motivations? You may be able to glean some of this information by reading product reviews and niche-relevant discussions on blogs, forums, and social media.

For example, if you’re trying to figure out your audience’s problems, then search for niche discussions that include statements and questions such as:

I can’t [get desired result] because… (e.g., “I can’t lose weight because…”)

I’m tired of…

I no longer [perform some niche-related activity] because…

Has anyone had this problem before?

How do you overcome…

How did you solve…

What do I do?

I hate/don’t like…

Does anyone else really like/love…

This isn’t a perfect method because most of the time you don’t know the exact audience demographics of someone who’s participating in these discussions. That’s why we consider this is an abbreviated profile. Nonetheless, researching niche conversations will give you a pretty good idea of how your audience thinks, feels and behaves.

Now it’s your turn…

Assignment

Your assignment is to first identify your potential customer avatars, and then begin completing each of these avatars. Fill in the information you can using research, and then do interviews and surveys to complete the rest of the avatar.

Then move onto the next step…

Step 2: Decide Your Value Proposition

Look around your niche. Your prospects have plenty of other options to choose from aside from your products and business, right? So the question is, why should they do business with YOU?

That’s a question you need to answer in a succinct way. Because you know what? Your prospects aren’t going to spend even a second trying to figure out the main reason they should buy your products rather than your competitors’ products. If you don’t tell them – and do it quickly – they’re simply going to move onto your competitors who has a clearer message.

That’s why you need to convey this “reason why” message in a succinct statement. And this succinct statement is called your value proposition. It tells your customers how you solve their problems, what sort of benefits you offer, and why they should do business with you.

Now that you know what a value proposition is and why you need one, here’s the next question: how do you create an effective one?

In order to determine how to create an effective value proposition (VP), you need to first understand what makes a good VP. Here are the characteristics:

It’s succinct. Your prospect must be able to read and absorb it in three to five seconds.

It attracts prospects. The first time they see your value proposition, it hooks their interest and keeps them engaged.

It helps close the sale. When prospects are internally debating whether to buy your product, your value proposition gives them the “reason why” they should buy.

Now keep those in mind as you walk through the steps of creating your value proposition. Here’s an overview:

Step 1: Identify Benefits

Step 2: Indicate Values

Step 3: Individualize Your VP

Step 4: Improve Your VP

What does all this mean? Let’s take a closer look at each step…

Step 1: Identify Benefits

The first thing you need to do is determine all the benefits that your product offers to customers. A good way to do this is to identify each feature of your product, and then identify the benefit (which is what each feature does for the customer).

For example, a feature of a product might be that it’s available as a downloadable .mp3. The benefit is that customers can listen to the product anytime, anywhere (which saves them time by allowing them to multitask, such as listening in the car).

Another example is that a dieting product may include features such as meal plans, grocery lists and recipes. This makes it quick and easy for the customer to create delicious meals.

Mini assignment: List all the benefits of your product.

Next…

Step 2: Indicate Values

Now your next step is to take a look at the list of benefits you just created, and indicate what value those benefits provide to your customers.

In general, there are five types of value that your product can provide. Before you craft your value proposition, you need to determine what value you provide across all five categories.

Here are the five types:

End value. What sort of guarantee do you offer? How committed are you to customer satisfaction?

Economics. Is your product less expensive than the competitors’ products? Does your product save customers money when they put it to work for them?

Engagement. How does your product engage customers on an emotional level? How do they feel while they use your product?

Effect. What effect does your business have on the prospect in a greater sense? What effect does your product have on the customer’s status, the community, on the environment, or with regards to something bigger?

Equip. How does your product equip customers to solve their problems? How is this different and better than the competitors’ products?

As you’re going through these five types, it’s a good idea to look at “before” and “after” states.

For example – what is their emotional state BEFORE they used your product versus AFTER they used it?

Or take a look at the “Equip” category. How did your customers used to try to complete a process or achieve some goal before they used your product, versus how do they do it with your product? What changed?

Let’s go back to the example of the dieting product, where the focus is on making it quick and easy for anyone to lose weight. This product might offer the following value across the five categories like this:

End value. You guarantee that your diets make it quick, easy and convenient to lose weight. (Whereas before dieting was difficult and time consuming.)

Economics. The product saves people money. (Whereas before they needed to purchase expensive pre-packed diet meals.)

Engagement. The product produces a sense of confidence, attractiveness, and pride as customers begin to lose weight. (Whereas before they felt unattractive, depressed and even disgusting.)

Effect. The product may be a step in reducing dangerous obesity and developing healthier eating habits. (I.E., This is a movement that’s gaining momentum, and this product contributes to that.)

Equip. This product makes it convenient and easy to lose weight, and the meals are so good that the whole family will enjoy them. (Whereas before the dieter needed to cook separate meals for the family.)

NOTE: For the above example, I only listed one or two values that are linked to the benefits of the product. When you create your list, you’ll want to brainstorm as many values as possible across these categories.

Now it’s your turn…

Mini assignment: Brainstorm what value your product provides for each of these five categories.

Next step…

Step 3: Individualize

In this step, you’re going to crystalize your value proposition.

Now, in order for your value proposition to be effective, it absolutely MUST be of interest and value to your target market. It does you no good to pick a value proposition that your market doesn’t care about.

That’s why you’ll want to go back to the beginning of this guide and look at your research, interviews, surveys and other notes about your target market. Now compare your target market’s values to the value your product provides.

Where is the overlap? ______________________________

Any value that your product provides AND that your market also values is one for you to consider for your value proposition statement.

Now the next step…

If you look at the values you brainstormed in the previous step, you may notice that your competitors provide the same types of values. If you create a value proposition based on the exact same things your competitors offer, then your value proposition isn’t going to serve you very well.

Remember, your value proposition tells prospects why they should buy from YOU instead of your competitor. That’s why you need to use your VP to differentiate yourself from your competitors. You need to INDIVIDUALIZE your VP and set yourself apart.

As such, your next step is to research your top competitors. Take note of their value propositions (which are usually easy to find since they’re placed in predominant locations, often on the front page).

Now look back to your own list of potential value propositions. Cross off any potential propositions that your competitors are already using, or any propositions that can’t be tweaked/individualized to set your products apart from the competitors.

At this point, your list of potential value propositions just became a short list. Now what you do is select the value proposition that your target market strongly values and your product greatly delivers.

Mini assignment: Once you’ve completed these steps, then write down the value proposition that you’ll be using: _____________________________________.

Don’t’ worry about creating a polished statement at this point, because that’s what you’re going to learn now to do in the next step…

Step 4: Improve Your VP

You now know, in general, what statement you’d like to use as your value proposition. Your next step is to improve this statement by making it succinct and compelling.

Generally, your value proposition will have the following parts:

A short headline.
A subheadline that elaborates.

SIDE NOTE: Those are the two essential parts. There are also two optional parts:

A short, bulleted list (benefit statements).
A visual representation of your VP (such as a graphic or video).

For the purposes of this guide, we’re going to focus on how to create the two crucial parts of your value proposition: the headline and subheadline. And that’s because we want to create a value proposition that can make a huge impact in three to five seconds.

Let’s start with the headline. This should describe your value proposition in just a few words.

What you do first is draft a longer statement just to get clearer about your value proposition. Specifically:

[Name of your product] helps/enables [the type of people who buy your product] to [get some value – to experience the desired “after” benefits] with/by [some special way that differentiates you from the competitors].

Let’s use our diet product as an example again. Here’s an example statement:

Whiz Bang Weight Loss helps dieters slim down, feel good and get healthy with a complete set of easy-to-use and delicious meal plans and recipes that the whole family will enjoy.

Now, what you want to do is take this statement and make it more succinct for your headline (and then elaborate in your subheadline).

Let me give you an example:

VP Headline:

Lose weight and feel great with these quick and easy meals your whole family will enjoy!

VP Subheadline:

Use this complete set of delicious meal plans, recipes and shopping lists to make it easier than ever for you to lose weight, get your confidence back, and feel 10 years younger!

Now let’s look at a couple real-life examples of how businesses present their value proposition in a headline and subheadline:

WordPress:

WordPress is open source software you can use to create a beautiful website, blog, or app.

Beautiful designs, powerful features, and the freedom to build anything you want. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

Stripe:

The new standard in online payments.

Stripe is the best software platform for running an online business. We handle billions of dollars every year for forward-thinking businesses around the world.

Now it’s your turn…

Assignment

You’ve received mini assignments throughout this particular step. Now it’s time to pull it altogether to create your value proposition. Go ahead and:

Identify the benefits your product provides and the values of these benefits.
Check these values against what your market values.
Research your competition to avoid creating a “me too” value proposition.
Choose a value proposition.
Create your VP statement.

Write down your final statement here: ________________________________

Then let’s move onto the next step of this MAP…

Step 3: Design Your Ideal Product

You know your audience. You know the value you want your product to provide. Now it’s time to design your ideal product. This means creating a product that’s aligned with what your customers want and what you are known to deliver. This means figuring out your product-market fit.

How?

You’ll accomplish this in three steps:

Let’s get an in-depth look at the process…

Step 1: TOPIC: Chart Your Product

You’ve completed the previous steps, so at this point you have a pretty good idea of what your prospects want. Now we’re going to narrow down and choose a topic for your info product.

TIP: Through your initial research, you should have already developed a pretty good idea of the general type of product your prospects want. You can further confirm this by researching marketplaces (like Amazon) to see what types of products are selling well. Look for bestsellers, as well as multiple products on the same topic on these platforms as well as on your competitors’ sites. These are all signs that a particular type of product is in demand.

At this point, you need to narrow down your topic. Now you’ll return to the previous work you’ve done in developing your customer avatar and developing your value proposition. You need to align these to find your product-market fit.

Take a moment and answer these questions (these should be easy, as you’ve already determined the answers in the previous steps):

What do your customers WANT? ______________

(Specifically, what outcomes/progress/results do they want?)

What does your value proposition offer? ______________________

What pains and problems are your customers currently experiencing? _________________________________

What would they rather be experiencing instead? ____________________

Now take a good look at the answers you’ve written down. Now do this:

Note the overlapping areas between #1 and #2. Any place where you see overlap is the sweet spot with regards to the product-market fit. This is where you determine the topic of your product.

Now look at #3 and #4. Currently, your prospects are at #3, as that is their “before” position. Meanwhile, #4 is where they want to be. And the topic of your product is the BRIDGE between these two states.

In essence, what you’re determining in this step is:

This is the TOPIC of your product.

Let me give you an example…

Let’s go way back to the example of a personal trainer who’s looking for diet and exercise information (preferably in group settings) in order to better train his clients and grow his business.

One of his pain points is that he has a hard time differentiating his fitness boot camps from others in the area, so he’s not getting very many sign ups. That’s a pain point and a challenge because he’s not making enough money for it to be worthwhile to continue offering boot camps.

That’s his current “before” state. His “after” state is that he wants to have fun, exciting boot camps that attract a lot of clients, get good results for these clients, and grow his business.

This is where your product comes in as a bridge between the “before” and “after” state.

Perhaps you’ve determined that your value proposition is based on providing a full suite of tools so that personal trainers have a business in a box. That’s the product-market fit… the value you provide is in line with what prospects want.

So, consider this with regards to a nutrition/exercise product for personal trainers…

If you just provide the programming, workouts and nutrition for an eight-week boot camp, that’s not going to help your customer with his main pain point, which is that he’s not attracting enough sign ups to his boot camps.

The solution? You create an ideal product that bridges the “before” and “after” state.

This means you create a complete, rebrandable boot camp that’s based on a unique theme that’s sure to help your personal trainer attract plenty of sign ups. And not only that, you also provide the marketing tools (emails, graphics, press releases, display ads, flyers, etc.) so that your customers can easily attract clients without having to spend time or money creating the materials themselves.

End result: your customers move from their before state (poor sign ups and attendance for their boot camps and zero business growth) to their desired after state (a booming business with sold-out boot camps).

Now it’s your turn…

Mini assignment: Go ahead and spend a few minutes thinking about your product-market fit. If you answer the questions above carefully, then it should become clear what topic you should choose.

Then move onto the next step…

Step 2: TYPE: Choose a Format

Now you need to determine the type of product you’re going to create. Here are the most common formats:

Physical book
Ebook
Membership site
Ecourse
Video
Audio
Software/apps/plugin
Tools (templates, swipes, checklists, planners, etc.)

Now what you need to do is figure out which format most closely aligns with your value proposition.

Let’s go back to the example of the nutrition, exercise and marketing materials for a personal trainer. In this case, you’d want to offer a set of tools as this most closely aligns with your value proposition of making it easy for a personal trainer to grow his business.

To that end, the rebrandable tools would include:

Workouts
Meal plans
Recipes
Shopping lists
Marketing tools such as email templates, ads, graphics, press releases, social media blurbs, lead magnets and more.

Now let me give you a few other examples of how to tie the format of your product to your value proposition:

If your VP is all about helping someone achieve a goal more quickly, then you might create an app to help them do exactly that.

If your VP is about simplifying a complex process, then you might offer content in a multipart format, such as via an ecourse or membership site.

If your VP focuses on convenience, then you may decide to offer your product in multiple formats (audio, video and ebook).

Mini assignment: write down the product formats that most closely align with your value proposition.

Now, in some cases you may have several types of product that align with your value proposition. So, the next thing for you to do is determine what types of products your market is comfortable using.

To figure this out, you’ll need to do some market research. This involves two steps:

Seeing what types of products they’re already buying.
Surveying them to see what types of products they prefer.

Let me give you an example…

Let’s suppose you’ve decided to create a text guide, but you’re not sure whether to offer it as a physical or digital product. So, you go to Amazon and look at products in your niche both in the regular “books” section as well as the Kindle section. Then take note of how well those two formats are selling.

If you see that physical books greatly outsell Kindle books, then that may be a sign that your market prefers to purchase and use physical products. You can then survey your audience to confirm these findings.

Mini Assignment: Do your preliminary research to see what types of products your market is buying in your niche. What is their preferred format?

And finally…

Step 3: TITLE: Connect Buyers

Now you need to create a title for your product. This piece is important, because many of your prospects are going to use the title of your product to help them make the buying decision. That means your title can make or break the success of your product.

The functions of your title (and subtitle) are to attract your buyer’s attention and arouse their interest. You do this by creating a title that ties your customer’s wants with your offer.

We’ve been talking about using your product as a bridge between your prospect’s current state and where they want to be. Your title and subtitle are going to be most effective if they convey this promise of getting your customer to their desired state.

Generally, your title is going be just a few short benefit-driven words to capture attention, and your subtitle will elaborate on this promise.

Let me give you a few real-life examples:

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Note that the “4-Hour Work Week” provides a big benefit in just a few words, and the subtitle elaborates on the benefits. The author’s value proposition is based on helping people achieve their dreams in less time. Most people think you need to work 40 hours, 60 hours or more to become rich – thus this book’s title and sub-title present the benefits and desired state that the prospects really want.

Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale Into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days or Less

This title directly reminds prospects of their current state and pain point (losing customers and profits), and promises to get them to their desired state (loyal customers who buy again and again).

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life

In three words, the title captures attention by telling people they CAN design their own life (whereas so many assume they can only helplessly watch their life unfold). The subtitle promises the desired state (joy).

TIP: It’s a good idea to brainstorm multiple potential titles and subtitles, and then test your top picks using randomized split-testing. In other words, let your marketing vote with their wallets.

So now it’s your turn…

Mini assignment: Brainstorm titles that align with your value proposition and promise to bring your prospect from their current state to their desired state.

Assignment

Throughout this step, I’ve given you mini assignments. Now it’s time for you to pull mini assignments together for this final assignment.

Choose your TOPIC.
Choose your TYPE of product.
Choose a TITLE for your product.

Go ahead and complete those three items if you haven’t already done so.

Quick Recap

At this point, you have a nice road MAP for creating products that your prospects are sure to love. This MAP includes:

Step 3: Design Your Ideal PRODUCT: This is all about product-market fit, where you’ll find out how to create products that your audience will absolutely fall in love with.

Now it’s time to take a look at the Packing List. Read on…

Packing List

At this point, you have a really good structure for your business. You’ve developed a customer profile, defined your value proposition, and developed your idea product.

You’re good to go, right?

Mostly. But if you really want to have a thriving, profitable business, you’re going to need to do things to make your customers fall in love with you. And that’s exactly what you’ll discover how to do inside this “packing list.” Check out these five essentials to make sure they’re a part of your business…

1. Gather Customer Feedback

Your customers are a wealth of information if you pay attention. And here’s the thing – not only will gathering customer feedback help you build your business, it also bonds your customers to you. When they offer feedback and see it being implemented, they feel appreciated, listened to, and respected – these are all things that greatly help you develop a good relationship with them.

Here’s what you want to do to maximize your strengths and minimize or eliminate your weaknesses:

Encourage feedback. Here’s where you regularly remind customers that you encourage their feedback on your products, your customer service, your website, and other parts of your business. For example, you may end each newsletter with your email address and an encouragement to drop you a line with feedback.

Solicit specific feedback. This means surveying your customers from time to time to better how satisfied they are with your customer service, products, and business as a whole.

And again – don’t just gather feedback. Be sure to implement it as well.

Next…

2. Go Above and Beyond

Businesses with superior customer service tend to stand out from the crowd. And those with poor customer service tend to lose business – even if their products or services are great. For proof of this, just look at your local Yelp reviews to see how many people refuse to return to a restaurant or other business not because they received a poor product, but because they received poor service.

Here’s what you need to do to step up your customer service:

Under-promise and over-deliver (especially in your sales copy). This will surprise, delight and satisfy your customers.

Be prompt. Make it a priority to answer all customer-service inquiries promptly. Even better, hire more customer service staff and offer the option of instant online chatting.

Keep your promises. For example, if you promise to release a new blog post at a certain time and date, then be sure you do it then (and not a minute late).

Next…

3. Give Customers Added Benefits

The idea here is to make your customers not only feel valued, but also increase their level of satisfaction. How? By adding value to your offers.

For example:

Offer unadvertised bonuses. For example, give your weight-loss customers access to a private support group.

Provide special deals. For example, send out a “Preferred Customers” special offer via email.

Create perks and incentives. For example, you might start up a customer loyalty program where customers receive free products and other perks for making multiple purchases.

Give good customers advanced notice. For example, if you have a big sale going on next week, you can give your best customers advanced notice of the sale. You might even open the doors a day early for them and offer them an extra 10% off.

Next…

4. Guarantee Satisfaction

Your goal here is to not only guarantee satisfaction to your customers, but make sure you do everything you can to create highly satisfied customers.

For example:

Be trustworthy. This means always being honest, and always making good on your promises. For example, don’t use “false scarcity” (such as a fake countdown timer) to try to boost sales.

Take responsibility for your mistakes. Despite your best efforts, you’re going to mess up sometimes. When that happens, you need to not only take responsibility (i.e., “it’s my fault”), you also need to make it right. For example, you might offer unhappy customers a free product.

Maintain high quality standards in everything you do. From every product you create to every blog post you publish to every email you send… be sure you’re sending out high-quality goods, information, and services.

Here’s the next item on your packing list…

5. Get to Know Each Other

Getting to know your customers has a dual advantage. For starters, when you know them, you’ll be better able to create products and content that really resonate with them.

But here’s the flip side of the coin: when your customers know YOU, your business will grow. That’s because people like to do business with those they know, like and trust.

To these dual ends, here’s how to get to know one another:

Get personal. Tell stories. Share pictures. Let your prospects and customers know what’s going on with your life. For example, if you’re getting married and you’re going to be gone for a couple weeks, let your lists, visitors and followers know about this exciting event in your life. It will draw them closer to you and help you build a relationship with them.

Empathize with prospects and customers. Whether you’re writing sales copy or answering a customer service inquiry, be sure to empathize with your audience and let them know you really care. E.G., “I’m so sorry you were unable to download and open the meal-planning app. That must have been very frustrating for you. But don’t worry, we’ll get you up and running in about five minutes. Here’s how…”

In short, let customers know there’s a real, breathing human sitting behind your website!

Conclusion

Your customers are the key to you having a successful business, which is why you need to make customer care and satisfaction a top priority. Put this packing list to work for you to help you do exactly that!

And now let’s turn our attention to potential roadblocks…

Roadblocks (And How to Get Past Them)

Picture this for a moment…

You’ve done all your research, so you know you’ve created a product that your market is sure to love. But when you release it, all you see are tumbleweeds blowing through your inbox.

No inquiries, no interest, no sales.

(Ouch.)

The good news is that you can avoid that sort of heartache by checking out the following roadblocks. Below you’ll find five of the most common reasons why your prospects aren’t buying from you – and how to overcome these problems. Take a look…

1. You’re Not Speaking Your Target Market’s Language

In other words, your sales copy and other content simply isn’t resonating with your audience. Most often, this is because you don’t really KNOW your audience. Perhaps you made assumptions on your customer avatar that you never confirmed through research.

Let me give you a simple example. Let’s suppose you’re targeting men who are in their late 20s and early 30s. And let’s suppose you assumed that these men are married with at least one child. So, you write sales copy that says something like this:

“You’re busy – I get it. You barely have time to yourself after you get done playing the kids, bathing them, and putting them to bed…”

SCREEEEECH!

That sound you heard was your childless prospects doing a quick U-turn and leaving your sales letter. Simply put, your copy didn’t resonate. It wasn’t relevant to them.

Solution: you need to dig deep and learn as much as possible about your prospects. That begins by surveying a broad swath of your prospects. You’ll learn even more if you directly interview a dozen or more prospects so that you can ask follow up questions and really get into their heads.

2. Your Sales Copy Doesn’t Build Value

As your prospects read your sales copy, they’re going to be asking themselves, “How much is it?” And they’ll probably even create a dollar figure in their head. If your order button is above that dollar figure, they’re going to hit the back button.

If you want more sales, you need to overcome these price objections. Here’s how:

Build value for your offer. This means creating sales copy that focuses on what your customers get – that is, you focus on the benefits of your product.

Don’t mention the price until you’ve built value. Sometimes marketers make the mistake of mentioning the price too early in the copy. If you haven’t built up value for the product yet, then prospects will think the product is “too expensive.” So, don’t put an order button until you’ve listed all the benefits.

Justify the price. For example, tell your prospect how much more expensive it would be to pursue an alternative solution. Make them see that your offer is a great deal and a great way to solve their problems.

Next…

3. Your Prospects Don’t Trust You

This is a big one – if you want to boost sales, then you need to overcome credibility and believability objections. Here’s how:

Build your credibility outside of your sales letter. This includes maintaining your own platforms (blog, newsletter and social media) where you share useful information and establish yourself as an expert. You should also do guest blogging, talk radio, webinars, and similar events.

Build your credibility inside of the sales letter. In other words, tell your prospects why they should listen to you. Describe how your experiences, credentials and background makes you uniquely qualified to teach this particular subject.

Now the next objection…

4. Your Customers Don’t Know You

Remember, customers need to trust, like AND know you in order to buy from you. But here’s the thing—you’re not going to build that sort of instant rapport with one sales letter. That’s why you need to largely overcome this objection outside of your sales letter. Here’s how:

Borrow credibility. Go ahead, drop names of influential people in your niche who’ve endorsed you. Even better, create content and products with these influential folks.

Capture visitor emails on your website. And then follow up with them regularly with good content and products to solve their problems. If you reliably send useful emails, your relationship with your audience will grow quickly and easily.

Interact with your audience. For example, like, comment, and share your audience’s social media posts. When someone replies to your posts, acknowledge and engage.

And now the last objection…

5. Your Customers Don’t Believe They Can Do It

Your solution sounds great. But the whole time your prospective customers are learning about it, they’re thinking… “This won’t work for me.” In many cases, your prospects are thinking they’re inadequate (meaning they don’t have the intelligence, traits, skills or experience to make it work). They think it’s going too difficult for them. They might even be afraid of becoming overwhelmed.

Here’s how to overcome these objections:

Offer proof (and inspiration). In particular, show how average people (just like your audience) are able to get results. You can do this with case studies, motivational stories, and testimonials.

Provide simplicity. Your customers have probably tried to get results in the niche before, but they failed because they got overwhelmed, the process was too complex, or they didn’t get results quickly enough. You can overcome these problems by offering simplicity – that means stripping down a process to the bare minimum number of steps to get results. Be sure to also provide tips and strategies for getting quick results (which will help your customers gain momentum).

Back your product with a guarantee. This gives your prospects a no-risk way to try out your product. If it doesn’t work for them, they’ll get their money back.

Now let’s wrap things up…

In Sum…

If you want more sales, then you need to identify and overcome your customers’ objections. You can start by overcoming the five objections mentioned above, as those are pretty universal. After that, you’ll to talk to your market to see what’s holding them back from buying your products, and fix the issue where ever applicable.

Now let’s take a look at the Hot Spots. Read on…

Hot Spots

You’ve got yourself a good roadmap for creating products that your customers will really love. Now let’s take a look at the hot spots along your route that will help you enjoy even more success. Check out these popular FAQs…

Q: How do I become popular in my niche?

The answer: you don’t. And in fact, that’s the wrong question to ask.

You see, there are a lot of marketers who are popular, but they’re not making any money in their niche. People like them, but people don’t buy from them.

Reason? They have no pull. No sway. No influence.

If you want to make more money, then here’s the question you should be asking: how do you becoming INFLUENTIAL in your niche?

Here are two ideas:

Work with other influential people in your niche. When your prospects see that you’re associated with powerful people in your niche, they’ll associate your name with someone who is powerful, respected and influential too.

Pioneer ideas in your niche. In other words, don’t teach the same strategies in the same way that everyone else is teaching them. If you’ve been in your niche for a while, then you should be experimenting with new ways of doing things. And when you get good results, share these results with your niche.

Next question….

Q: How do you make the jump from building interest to building desire?

Here’s how the sale process works:

Capture attention -> Get the prospect interested -> Build Desire -> Create Action

A lot of marketers know how to capture attention with a good benefit-driven, curiosity-arousing headline. But then they flounder, and they can’t quite bridge the gap between that step and getting the prospect to take action. Basically, they’re not sure how to build interest and then build desire.

Here’s your answer: use features to build interest, and benefits (and emotions) to build desire.

Let me give you an example…

Let’s imagine you’re selling copywriting information. One of the features of your program is that you offer sales letter templates. That’s going to get an astute prospect interested in your offer.

Now if you want them to all-out desire your offer, you need to tell them the benefits of these templates. E.G., let prospects know how these templates make it quick and easy for them to create a high-converting sales letter in as little as 10 minutes. Plus, they’ll save money when they don’t need to hire expensive copywriters anymore.

Next hot spot…

Q: Everyone says “build relationships” to get sales. How do you do this?

Elsewhere in this MAP we’ve touched on how to get prospects to know, like and trust you. This is through interacting with them, getting personal, being trustworthy, and providing good information.

Now here’s something else: if you work on building relationships with one buyer, then you’ll make one new customer. But if you work on building relationships with affiliates and joint venture partners, then each partner could result in dozens or hundreds of new customers.

So, how do you build relationships with others in your niche? Check out these tips:

Help without expectation of receiving anything in return. For example, become a potential partner’s affiliate and make money for him first before you ask him to become your partner. (But don’t expect that he will – he’s under no obligation.)

Create a dialogue. You can do this on social media or even by joining the discussions on a potential partner’s blog.

Start small. Here you ask your potential partner for a small favor which only takes a minute or two of his time (such as offering one tip that you’ll compile into a tips blog post). When you later ask for a bigger favor – a joint venture – he’ll be more likely to say yes. This is a proven psychological tactic.

Create a great experience. If your partner gets good results and has a pleasant experience with you when you do your first joint venture together, he’s more likely to agree to another partnership.

Next…

Q: How do you sell without selling?

A lot of marketers go crazy trying to boost their conversions. So, they hard-sell their products to the point that they’re churning and burning through their mailing lists and blog readership. They use lots of “tricks” such as creating scarcity. And so they end up doing a whole lot of selling, but it seems like people aren’t buying.

Here’s the solution” stop selling your product. Instead, start selling YOURSELF. Create value in your marketplace, and people will naturally want to see what you’re offering.

Here are examples of selling yourself:

Do interviews. Having someone else interview you naturally establishes you as an expert.

Blanket your niche with content. Syndicate quality content, do guest blogging, and maintain your own platforms to distribute your content.

Specialize and solve problems. Pick one problem in your niche and become the “go to” expert on solving that problem. Offer tips that create quick results, so that readers will keep taking action on what you’re teaching them.

Finally…

Q: You say that people buy results, not products. How do you sell results?

What you do here is look at the “ultimate outcome” that your product produces, and then you focus on that benefit above all else.

For example, people don’t buy diet information. They don’t buy cookbooks. They don’t buy exercise videos. What they’re actually buying – the ultimate outcome/result – is a lean, attractive body and a boost of self-confidence.

If you focus on selling these results (attractiveness and self-confidence), it will be easy to sell your products.

Now let’s turn our attention to the Important Documents you need for this entrepreneurial journey…

Important Documents

Earlier in this MAP you learned about creating an ideal product, one that hits the sweet spot of product-market fit by tying together your customer wants and your value proposition.

Question is, how exactly do you create this sort of product? Below you’ll find an outline for a typical course which ties together what your customer wants with your value proposition. For this example, we’ll create a typical step-by-step type course.

Title for Course: ___________________________

A. Introduction

Describe your prospect’s current state. Empathize with them. Show them that you understand how they’re feeling.

Present your course as the solution – the bridge that gets them to their desired state. Be sure to tie your value proposition into your description of how the product will solve the reader’s problem.

Build anticipation by telling prospects what they’ll learn and what benefits they’ll receive. Arouse curiosity to keep them reading. (E.G., “You’ll discover a simple trick for [getting some benefit]…”)

B. Step 1: [Insert Step Here]

Give an overview of the step.
Explain the step in more detail.
Where applicable, provide extra instruction that ties the value proposition to this step.

For example, if your value proposition is based on saving people money, then you might offer tips for this specific step that tells people how to save money.

More specifically – if you had a course on building a mailing list, then your first step might be to select an email service provider. Here you might provide a list of the most affordable yet reliable email service providers.

Quick summary of the step.

C. Step 2: [Insert Step Here]

Give an overview of the step.
Explain the step in more detail.
Where applicable, provide extra instruction that ties the value proposition to this step.
Quick summary of the step.

D. Step 3: [Insert Step Here]

Give an overview of the step.
Explain the step in more detail.
Where applicable, provide extra instruction that ties the value proposition to this step.
Quick summary of the step.

[Insert any other required steps.]

E. Shortcuts/Tools/Etc.

Provide extra tips, tools, mistakes to avoid, etc. to help people get to their desired state quicker and easier. Again, tie these tips and tools to your value proposition whenever possible.

Let’s go back to the product that covers setting up a mailing list (with a value proposition related to saving small business owners money). You might offer a lead page template, which saves money because the customer doesn’t need to hire a copywriter or web designer to create it.

F. Conclusion

Recap what the reader just learned.
Remind them of the benefits of taking action (tie this to what the customer wants/their desired state).
Encourage them to take action immediately on what they just learned.

Itinerary

Are you ready to take action? Then print out this itinerary, which is a checklist of what you’ve learned in this planner. Be sure to keep this checklist near your work station so that you can refer to it easily and often as you work through these steps…

Step One: Define Your Customer PROFILE.

List your possible customer avatars.

Define each of these avatars – fill in assumptions until you’re able to confirm those assumptions with research, surveying, and one-on-one interviews.

Complete your avatars based on these seven facets:

Demographics: this includes age, gender, income, location, marital status, number of kids, education level, current job.

Background – what level is your customer at with regards to the niche? (Beginner, intermediate or advanced/expert?)

Goals and values: What does your customer want? What are their values?

Motivations: what motivates your customer to strive towards their goals?

Pain points: what challenges and problems do your customers face?

Objections: what are your customer’s objections during the sales process?

Information sources: where do your customers get niche-relevant information?

Step Two: Decide Your Value PROPOSITION.

Follow these steps:

Step 1: Identify Benefits: list all the features and associated benefits of your product.

Step 2: Indicate Values: determine what value the above benefits provide to your customers. Brainstorm across these five categories:

End value
Economics
Engagement
Effect
Equip

Pay special attention to your customer’s current state and their desired state.

Step 3: Individualize Your VP:

Determine which of these values are important to your customers.
Determine which of these values set you apart from your competitors.
Decide on what concept you’ll use for your value proposition.

Step 4: Improve Your VP

Create a powerful, succinct headline that conveys your value proposition.
Create a subheadline that elaborates on the headline.
Polish these statements.
[Optional: create a short list of benefits and associated visual.]

Step Three: Design Your Ideal PRODUCT.

Step 1: TOPIC: Chart Your Product

Review your previous research regarding:

What your customers want.
What your value proposition offers customers.
Your customers’ pain points.
Your customers’ desired state.

Decide:

Which pain point you’re going to eliminate.
Which goal you’re going to help your customers achieve.
Which set of benefits you’re going to provide.

Step 2: TYPE: Choose a Format

Ask yourself: which product format most closely aligns with your value proposition?

Ask yourself: what types of products are your customers already buying in your niche?

Decide the best format for your product.

Step 3: TITLE: Connect Buyers

Ask yourself:

What kind of title would attract buyers?
What kind of title bridges the gap between your customers’ current and desired state?
What benefits do you want to include in your title?

Craft a powerful, succinct title (just a few words) that conveys your value proposition.

Craft a subtitle that elaborates on the benefits and value conveyed in the title.

Polish your title and subtitle.

Test your title and subtitle.

Packing List

Be sure to:

Gather customer feedback (and implement it).
Go above and beyond what your customers expect.
Give customers added benefits.
Guarantee satisfaction.
Get to know each other.

Roadblocks

Identify and fix any of the following issues:

You’re not speaking your target market’s language.
Your sales copy doesn’t build value.
Your prospects don’t trust you.
Your prospects don’t know you.
Your customers don’t believe they can do it.

Hot Spots

Check the following issues:

Are you working to become influential in your niche?
Are you selling yourself?
Are you building both interest and desire for your product?
Are you building relationships in your niche?
Are you focused on selling results?

Important Documents

Did you consult the course outline before beginning to create your product?

Itinerary

Did you print off this checklist and hang it near your work station?

Destination

You’ve now reached the end of this Dream Business planner, but you’ve really just started on your journey! That’s because the planner you’ve just read gets you started on the first leg of this journey. Once you have one product on the market, then you can fill out your sales funnel using the exact same strategy that you just discovered for creating the ideal product.

So here’s what you need to do next…

Review the Itinerary so that you know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.

Gather the supplies you’ll need for the road. (I suggest a nice cup of coffee or your favorite beverage and some snacks so you can sit at your work station and focus for a while.)

Put this vehicle into “drive”. This means taking action on everything you just read about in this planner, starting with Step 1 (developing your customer avatars).

A journey of 100 miles begins with you deciding to take the trip and going that first mile. Before you know it, the miles will fly by and you’ll be at your destination. And in this case, that means creating products that your customers will really love!

So go ahead and take action ASAP (today) – because the sooner you do, the sooner you’ll get to enjoy the profitable rewards that come with reaching your destination!