 Hello Aces, welcome to module 2. Last lesson of this module is validating your mind space. In this lesson you're going to learn how do you validate your mind space with the competitive benchmark which I'm going to be sharing with you. So then that way you know what you've created would work. In the previous lesson we talked about creating your mind space. This lesson is all about understanding your competition to see how you stand within this marketplace. How do you even know where you stand in this marketplace? You wouldn't know if you don't do the comparison. Is the mind space that you're declaring unique enough from your competitors? Are you in tune with the marketplace? Have you found your own white space? Your own white space means have you found your own voice, something that is authentic to you and you only. And this is the only way for you to differentiate and outbeat your competitors is when you actually have something that is a little bit different and uniquely yours. Three ways we're going to be able to find out our competitors. I know some of you might be asking you're like, hey Wilson I created my mind space but then the thing is how do I know where I stand within the marketplace? Well we're going to dive right into it right now. We're going to use Google, Yelp and then Instagram. Google. What you're going to be doing is you're going to be searching for your competitors. You're going to be searching for something that is not too specific. Be broad. You want to be able to type in the specific cuisine and log the top five restaurant in the area that you plan on opening. After you log the top five, jot down their websites, their review ratings, their top three five-star reviews and their top three one-star review in the worksheet that you can download from the link below. After you jot those down, go on Yelp, do the same thing. Type in the cuisine and the top five restaurant that pops up, log them down. There will be discrepancy as Yelp is going to be different from Google. Just two different platforms and on top of that Yelp usually strong arms their restaurant into signing up for ads and thus pushing their ranking a little bit higher. Google is a little bit different which is why there will be discrepancy when you type in your specific cuisine. The generation that pops up might be a little bit different. Jot down the website again the review ratings and also the top three one-star and top three five-star review as well. After you have done that you now should have around 10 different restaurants. Circle the duplicates that are from Google and Yelp to find your core competitors. Now after you've done that we're going to conduct a more thorough analysis on them through their Instagram and their website. Instagram now that we figured out for example Shambhar would be our competitor. We locate their IG and record down their bio, their positioning, their followers, what makes them most engagement of a post, what makes the most likes, geographic locations, how many locations they have, any sister restaurant overall offering from their Instagram. At the end of the day we want to gather as much information from this platform as possible. This is also a great indication on how they're performing and who they are with their whole customer database. Are people engaging? Are people responding to the post? This is something that you must be able to do so now you can dive in a little bit deeper. As we go even deeper we go through their website. You want to be able to see what menu offering they have, what is the pricing, what is their background story, some of their values, position accolades, geographic location, number of stores, business models, all of this. You can put that into your competitive benchmark. Now that you've figured it out you've done a full on dive of the restaurant and the competitors of your choice. The final step is short listing them to three different companies with WWID. Wilson, what is WWID? What would you do? So put yourself as the customer, the avatar, as that demographic that's going to be consuming at these restaurants. Which one would you choose out of the four? Yourself being one of them and three more of the top ones that you would choose. Identify the specific problem that you want to be able to solve. Thinking in the minds of your customers. Which four would you choose? And those are the ones you should circle. This exercise, yes, might be a little bit more subjective, but then a date because you're in the trade, because you understand demographic and because this is your dreams, you should be able to understand which restaurant is your biggest competitor and you can put that into your list. Plot all the findings on the competitive benchmark worksheet that you can download in the link below and then now this should come up. You're going to figure out basically their business model, their geographic coverage, positioning, product portfolio and innovations. Basically, when you put all these things down in a competitive benchmark Excel or document, you get to see, you get to have different insights on how you differentiate from them. What makes you different? What makes you have a competitive edge over your competitors? So for us at 720 Suites, we realize that we compete really well in this competitive landscape due to the fact that our offering is super unique compared to all the other restaurants around town. We also have a very strong brand presence because we do a lot of collaboration. So that itself has already told me and validated why we're successful is because we're unique with our offering. We would need to expand compared to our competition because our average order value is too low. We realize that with companies like, for example, like SoftPeaks and Theory, they offer different types of offering. Therefore, when people come, they're not just buying ice cream. And in turn, they would spend more at our ice cream shop. So that is a opportunity for us to take advantage of. We also have a competitive edge around our distribution and our franchise locations over the one-off locations. And this itself acts as a great advantage for us for branding purposes and whatnot. So these are the items and these are the validation that I'm able to capture from doing that analysis. You would be able to have your own analysis from your own competitive benchmark. Now, make sure that you guys go out there and actually execute and actually do the work so that way you can validate that's the mind space I want to occupy. But if you feel like that after doing this competitive benchmark exercise, you're like, you know what, this competitiveness or this mind space we're trying to occupy is too similar to my competition, then it is also time to actually go back, revisit, pivot, and then revise, and then you can launch again specifically so then that way you can take advantage of your specific mind space. In this lesson, we talked about how do you validate your mind space with the competitive benchmark? I hope this has helped you greatly. In the next lesson, what we're going to be talking about is how do you negotiate for your rent? This is something that a lot of people have been asking me because I'm a landlord and I'm a tenant at the same time, which means that I understand best of both worlds. Next lesson, that's exactly what we're going to be talking about. I'll see you guys there.