Customer-Side Offer Upgrade
Experience an adjacent offer, then translate customer insights into upgrades.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 96%
This framework uses participation in an adjacent premium offer as a form of customer-experience research. The founder enters as a customer while deliberately observing how the provider structures access, facilitation, staffing, atmosphere, peer interaction, and live programming. Each valued feature becomes evidence of what might improve the founder's own offer. Those observations are then compared with direct customer feedback; overlap creates especially strong validation. The final step is not wholesale imitation but translation: choose the elements that solve a genuine audience need and adapt them to the offer's positioning and economics. Jasmine applied this logic to team participation, event sponsorship, mindset programming, unstructured peer time, and additional in-person gatherings after experiencing the VaynerMedia accelerator herself.
Origin
Extracted from The Jasmine Star Show through Jasmine Star's comparison of her own mastermind with the Vive Leadership and Growth Accelerator.
Core principles
- 01You cannot fully see your own offer from inside it.
- 02Adjacent experiences reveal possibilities, not just flaws.
- 03Customer feedback deserves more weight when you feel the same need yourself.
- 04The best upgrade may improve access, atmosphere, or connection rather than content volume.
How to run it
- 1
Choose an Adjacent Experience
Participate in a well-run offer serving a comparable customer level or delivering a similar transformation.
Pro tip Select an experience strong enough to expand your assumptions about quality.
Watch out Avoid treating a loosely related product as directly comparable.
- 2
Observe as a Provider
Track how the experience handles expertise, access, pacing, environment, community, and support.
Pro tip Capture observations during the experience rather than relying on memory afterward.
Watch out Do not let analysis prevent you from noticing your authentic reactions as a customer.
- 3
Record Your Customer Reactions
Identify what you valued, what you wanted more of, and what made the investment feel worthwhile.
Pro tip Pay special attention to features you request without prompting.
Watch out More content is not automatically more value.
- 4
Compare With Existing Feedback
Place your observations beside comments from your own customers and look for corroborating themes.
Pro tip Treat matching attendee and provider observations as high-confidence signals.
Watch out Do not dismiss repeated feedback because it conflicts with your original program design.
- 5
Translate, Do Not Copy
Adapt the strongest practices to your brand, audience, team, and financial model.
Pro tip Define the customer benefit of every proposed upgrade.
Watch out Copying surface details without their underlying purpose can add cost without value.
- 6
Test the Upgraded Offer
Deploy selected changes in the next cohort or event and collect specific follow-up feedback.
Pro tip Ask customers which change contributed most to the result or experience.
Watch out Do not change too many variables if you need to identify what worked.
In the wild
While attending the Vive accelerator, Jasmine looked specifically for ways to improve her future mastermind. She identified direct team-member support, sponsors, specialist mindset facilitation, more peer discussion time, and more in-person events as valuable design ideas rather than simply consuming the program as an attendee.
→ The investment became both executive education and practical research for a stronger future offer.
Jasmine's mastermind clients had requested more peer conversation and more in-person time. Later, as a Vive attendee, she independently requested those same things, confirming that the earlier feedback reflected a real customer need rather than an isolated preference.
→ Her attendee experience strengthened confidence in two specific offer changes.
Common mistakes
Consuming Without Observing
Attending only as a participant leaves valuable offer-design evidence uncaptured.
Adding Content Instead of Value
Customers may value peer access, mindset work, or in-person connection more than additional teaching.
Copying the Provider Literally
A practice should be adapted to the business's audience and economics rather than duplicated without analysis.
Is it for you?
Best for
Coaches, educators, community operators, and founders refining a high-touch program or live event.
Not ideal for
Businesses that would merely copy a competitor without adapting lessons to their own customers.
From the transcript
“I went in specifically looking for ways to improve my own mastermind.”
“The second biggest takeaway from event number two was to put yourself in the shoes of your customer and experience things that you're providing, not…”
“You can't see the forest for the trees when you're in your own offer, but when you go out of it and say, I offer…”
From the episode
How I Maximize My Experiences and Investments to Reach My Next Level as a CEO