Claim your stake in the fast-growing digital business world without spending a fortune on Facebook or Google Ads, the ick factor of messaging people you went to high school with, being lured in by shiny objects or the overwhelm of not knowing where to start or what to do next.
If you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, service professional, or someone who’s dreaming of starting a business so they can leave their 9 to 5 who’s looking to grow their business to replace their corporate income or earn even more, then you probably already know the key to the 6 and 7 figure level is selling more, and you know that selling more means you have to figure out the best way to market your business so you can serve more customers.
So I’ll spare you the spiel.
There’s no need for me to be a broken record and convince you of something you already know. It’s already been drilled into your entrepreneurial mind through countless podcasts, blog posts, and videos.
After all, you probably already know that creating a successful business that generates 5, 6, or 7 figures is the key to changing everything for you and your family. Those dreams you have – buying a home, paying for your kids' college, taking a great family vacation, giving up your commute, working for yourself, they can all become your reality if the business grows the way you want.
You’ve probably also heard that e-commerce generated 3.5 trillion in sales in 2019 and is expected to reach 4.9 trillion by 2021. People are buying more online now than ever before. Covid19 changed the way business is done, and it’s doubtful they’ll go back to the way they were.
Even if you’re lucky enough to have your business up and running and bringing in consistent revenue through done for you services, consulting, products, or e-commerce having a strategic marketing plan can help you:
Even if you’re happy with what you’re earning right now, once you learn how to market your business strategically, you will find that you may be able to increase your prices, even if your competition is charging less than you are today.
You may feel like you’ve got the perfect product mix right now, but what if there’s something you haven’t even thought of offering yet that could be your game-changer?
The more potential customers you can reach, the bigger your business can grow. Once you get to know your Ideal Customer, the possibilities are nearly limitless. It’s so easy to see what type of opt-in to create to grow your email list, what content they want, and, most importantly, what kind of products and services they want to buy from you.
There are so many marketing channels out there. It’s hard to know which one is right for your business. There are ways the professional marketers make these decisions, and they have nothing to do with shiny objects or what worked for someone else. They’re made with data. Once you understand what the numbers are telling you about your business, the decisions are so much easier.
Perhaps in your most courageous moment, you’ve committed to start a business.
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You’ve talked about it with friends and family. You’ve brainstormed names for your business or product ideas. You’ve had a logo designed, set up your social media profiles, and started building your following.
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If you’re super committed, you might have built your website (or started it and realized it’s a job in itself) or signed up for email marketing software or invested in some Face- book Ads to try to grow your audience.
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But even with the best intentions and work ethic, most would-be entrepreneurs end up abandoning their dreams, allowing competitors to swoop in and try their luck while they remain stuck, unsure what to do to grow.
Without a super clear, step-by-step marketing plan, most would be 6, and 7 figure business owners get completely stuck.
They fall victim to tech overload (why are there so many options?), confusion (which of these do I need?), and overwhelm (why do they make this seem soo easy when it’s confusing as heck to put together), shiny object syndrome (why are there SO many options for marketing and how do you know which one is right for my business?), and project overwhelm because there’s no clarity as to what they need to do to grow their business.
As a busy entrepreneur with a few clients to serve, or products to create, a family to raise, and maybe even a day job to work, you don’t have time to waste on marketing efforts that don’t work.
And when things aren’t working, and you’re not sure what to do differently, you feel lost and defeated. It’s almost impossible to recover.
Therefore, your marketing plan is one key element to your business that you NEED to get right the first time.
In all likelihood, your competitors have either failed in their attempts or have created something their customers don’t want.
Which means...
Even if you’re seeing competition today, it’s not too late. There’s still an opportunity for you to jump in, armed with insider knowledge, and convert your business into one with big profits.
That is if you can avoid the same deadly marketing mistakes your competitors are making right now.
They try a few things that don’t work and give up too quickly.
Building a business to 6 or 7 figures takes a lot of work and some trial and error to figure out. It’s not necessarily really hard or complicated, BUT there are so many moving parts, and it can be confusing or overwhelming.
➔ Who are you serving?
➔ What do they need from you?
➔ What do they want from you?
➔ Are you charging the right price?
➔ Can you charge more?
➔ What else can you offer?
➔ What if you can’t get a .com website address? What’s the best alternative?
➔ Should you hire a graphic designer or do your logo?
These are just a few of the many questions entrepreneurs have to answer when they’re working on a marketing plan for their business.
Many entrepreneurs approach marketing as another task or a line item on their to-do list:
But the thing is, you can’t treat it like a single checklist item.
Marketing is the core of the success and growth of your business. Without a solid marketing plan, you will struggle to succeed, and that’s why so many small business owners never grow beyond the beginning stages of success.
They get stuck, and they don’t know what to do to get moving in the right direction again.
And they don’t have the money to hire a professional to tell them what to do so they end up trying everything they hear about and wondering why none of it is the magic solution to their problem. It’s time to respect marketing for what it is, the core base of your business, and approach it accordingly.
They’re afraid they don’t have enough time to do everything they need for marketing.
Growing a business to a bigger level does take time, but I’d bet it takes less time than you’re spending right now. If you’ve been trying to DIY your marketing, then you’re probably spending a lot of time reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos, researching marketing topics, or trying new tactics. It’s frustrating and exhausting to keep working on something and not seeing the results you wanted. It’s disappointing too. It is.
Still, you don’t see the same results the other person had, and then you feel disheartened. You’re determined to succeed, so you start over again with the next shiny object someone says is going to change everything for you, and you go all-in because you want this bad. You spend hours building, struggling with the tech, trying to make it all work only to find it drives minimal success, and you feel frustrated because you’re putting in all this time and not getting much in return.
Professional marketers don’t chase shiny objects. We spend time learning about our audience, doing research about their needs and wants, and determining the correct pricing, and then we create a marketing plan that addresses everything we need to do, and we get to work. We see results quicker because we know what to do to adjust if something doesn’t work as expected. When you have a marketing plan in place, you save so much time and frustration. It takes less time to make more money when you learn from someone who can teach you step-by-step. Rather than watching YouTube videos or reading multiple blog posts that all end up contradicting each other, you find out exactly how to do it the right way for your business, you do it, and you move on to the next task on your list.
They’re afraid they don’t have a big enough Marketing Budget, so they focus on only Free Marketing Channels.
Over the years, I’ve talked to so many small business owners who wanted to only focus on free marketing channels because “we don’t have a lot to invest in marketing.” If there’s one thing that sinks businesses fast, it’s a lack of a marketing budget. Yes, you can use the free marketing channels, but you can’t rely on them entirely. For starters, they don’t want you to grow your business for free on their channel because they’re businesses that make money off ads. They want you to buy their ads. They’re not going to give you much visibility for free today. Those days are gone.
The thing is, the free channels, like Social Media, aren’t going to help you grow your business in the same manner and at the same speed that some paid channels will. You don’t have to have a huge marketing budget. You can start with a few percentage points of your total sales and build from there. We’re not talking $1,000/mo at the beginning. That’s too much for most small businesses. But having something set aside for marketing makes a difference.
Every dollar you invest in marketing should grow your business by more than a dollar. When you understand the Return on Investment of your marketing, it’s much easier to see it as a revenue generator, not an expense. It’s easier to invest more when you know you’re getting more in return.
Businesses that grow big do not do it solely on free marketing channels. They invest in marketing their business in multiple places.
They let the fear that there’s too much competition stop them.
Many small business owners spend so much time focusing on the number of competitors or what the competition is doing that they miss opportunities to grow their businesses. They feel that if they’re not the first ones to market with something, it’s not worth trying, but they forget they’re not all the same. Some people love Wal-Mart, while others love Nordstrom. You won’t likely find one person shopping from both stores regularly. It’s the same with all businesses. Customers are going to connect with different brands.
Having competition isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s a good thing. It shows the market is viable. You have to focus on serving your customers and differentiating yourself from the competition to grow, but worrying about them being there in the first place is unnecessary. You can succeed, even in a crowded marketplace, if you know what to do to stand out the right way.
They try to DIY their marketing without professional guidance or training.
Over the years, this has been one of the biggest failing points I’ve seen with small business owners. DIY marketing can kill businesses so quickly. Whether it’s targeting the wrong customer, offering what you think the customer needs rather than what they want from you, pricing yourself out of the market, having websites that don’t convert, using non-professional email addresses for business purposes, having amateur looking branding, or many other reasons you can turn off potential customers before you have the chance to connect with them.
Your marketing plan is the foundation your businesses’ success is built upon. I’m not kidding. When you figure out who your customer is and what they want from you and can connect with them in a way that they say, “it’s like you’re reading my mind” or “I feel like this was created for me” your business grows so much faster.
When you find the right mix of marketing strategies and have a positive ROI on most of what you do, your profit margins can increase significantly.
When you master SEO and learn what it takes to rank higher in Google’s search results, you get more traffic for free, which allows you to invest more in other marketing channels.
Imagine if everything you did worked together. Imagine taking one offer, one piece of content, on promotion, and having it bring money in from 5 or 6 different channels in a week.
Even though there are lots of small businesses and entrepreneurs out there, only a few will ever grow to 6 or 7 figures. There are a few businesses at the top, making most of the money while other business owners are working crazy hours for not much money.
One that allows you to achieve more freedom earn more income and make an impact while scaling your business to true profitability.
The key to all of this is your marketing strategy, marketing plan, and your execution of that plan.
And with your permission, that’s what I’d love to teach you how to create.
I’ve taken everything I’ve learned from working with thousands of business owners and executives over nearly 20 years to generate multiple hundreds of millions in revenue from marketing and turned it into a step-by-step program that not only teaches you theory, strategy, and tactics but the actual EXECUTION and how to replicate it quarter after quarter on your own.
Marketing Foundation for Success isn’t so much a marketing training program as a business success implementation program.
Yes. You will learn the foundation of marketing and the strategies behind everything we do, but more importantly, you’ll have a step-by-step project plan that guides you through the entire process. Nothing is left out.
The result: A business that’s built on a strong foundation with a marketing plan to grow it to the next level.
All action-packed, step-by-step guidance that will address what’s not worked so far and teach you how to adjust so that you are successful.
No filler. No useless modules. No fluff. You don’t have time to waste, so there’s nothing here that is unnecessary. Everything you do in this course is designed to move your business forward. You can do the classwork in about an hour a week.
You need to make money in your business, not spend more money on something else that isn’t working. I hear you. You don’t have thousands to spend on ads today, and I get that. There are a lot of other marketing channels you can use.
Your competition can help grow your business in so many ways. You’ll be amazed and look at them entirely differently once you know how to leverage them and your learnings for your business.
Marketing Foundation is a hands-on, step-by-step marketing training program that will teach you how to plan, adjust based on results, and succeed in the long-term. No shiny objects or hunches allowed.
Introduction to Marketing
It’s week one! You’re in the course now, and it’s time to get to work. This week is your Marketing 101 crash course. You’ll learn marketing principles, terminology, and more so that you’re ready for the modules ahead.
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Here you’ll work on perfecting your elevator pitch for your business and share it with your fellow students.
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You’ll never have to fumble through, “what do you do” again. It will be easier to grow your business through networking and referrals because people will quickly and easily understand what your business offers. When a friend says, I need X they’ll be more likely to connect them with you because they know you offer X.
Who is Your Ideal Customer?
This week we’re getting started with the most critical element of your entire marketing plan and business foundation. Who are you helping?
Even if you’ve never developed an Ideal Customer persona before or you currently “help everyone,” this module will break down the importance of identifying and defining your Ideal Customer and choosing a specific niche market for your business.
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You will use my Ideal Customer Workbook to dig deep into your Ideal Customer’s needs and wants and develop them into a persona that you will use for everything we do from this point forward.
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Create and illustrate your Ideal Customer persona and begin to use them and the data in everything you do from this module forward.
Where Does Your Ideal Customer Spend Their Time?
We’re taking a deep-dive into data in this module, no more guessing about which Social Media channel might work best for your business. We’re looking at the research and aligning it with your Ideal Customer persona to determine which Social Media channels will work best for your business.
We’re getting to know your Ideal Customer even better. Where do they spend their time? What do they do for fun? Who do they spend their time with?
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You will identify 2-3 Social Media channels to use for your Marketing Plan based on real research data. We’re not guessing here. We’re using data. You’re now a data-driven marketer. Look at that; you’re becoming a marketing pro.
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We’re also spending time unpacking the psychographic information for your Ideal Customer and getting to know them as if they were your best friend. You’ll know what type of content they’ll be most interested in, when and where you want to post content and send emails, and so much more.
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Use this information and the Ideal Customer persona work from module two to grow this business, and any business you start in the future. This is the core of your marketing program, and everything builds from here.
Setting Goals
Now it’s getting exciting. You’ve identified who you’re going to serve in your business and where you’re going to focus your marketing efforts. Now it’s time to set some goals so you can celebrate as you achieve them.
Using the Goal Setting Workbook, you’ll learn how to set SMART goals that will guide everything you do and help you stay on track, focused, productive, and away from the shiny objects that are such time sucks for so many entrepreneurs.
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Set your revenue goals for the quarter and track your success.
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Set your revenue goals for the year and learn how to adjust them for a year-over-year increase and determine what growth increase you should expect each year. You don’t want to remain stagnant; you want to grow. Learn how to do it strategically.
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Use the Goal Setting Workbook to finalize your goals and track your success.
How Will you Make Money in this Business?
Now that you’ve identified your Ideal Customer and what they want and need from you, where to market to them, and what goals you’re working towards this year, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to make that money.
Here’s where you’ll set your Marketing Budget so you can start to grow your business through different marketing channels. You’ll learn what most small businesses start spending, and don’t worry; there’s no huge commitment or big ad spend expected. We’re keeping it small because you can do a lot with a little if you work strategically.
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You will use the Products and Pricing Workbook to determine what products you will offer in your business. You’ll learn how to expand your product offerings so that you can increase your revenue.
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You’ll learn how to make more money from the customers you already have while serving them so that they can’t wait to tell others about you.
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You’ll learn how to expand your product offerings to be your clients’ solution for other products or services.
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You’ll learn how to complete competitive research to ensure you are charging the right prices for your business.
Creating Your Marketing Plan
This is it. Everything you’ve done up to this point is about to come together to create a marketing plan that you can execute upon so that your business can grow beyond your wildest dreams.
These two modules are a deep dive into online and offline marketing channels and strategies you can use in your business.
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You will use the Marketing Plan Template, Ideal Customer Workbook, Goal Setting, Workbook, and your notes from Modules 2-5 to begin creating your Marketing Plan.
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You’ll choose the social media channels you will focus on and create a marketing strategy for them.
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You’ll choose additional online and offline marketing channels (some of which are free 🙌) and learn how to repurpose content from one channel to another to speed up your process but ensure potential customers are seeing you where they spend their time.
Why Branding Matters
Before you start executing upon the marketing plan, you’re creating you need to ensure you have the right marketing materials in hand, and for your Ideal Customer to know it’s you and not your competition, you need a cohesive brand strategy.
Learn what goes into developing a brand and how to ensure the colors, fonts, images, and words you’re using are sending the right message to your potential clients.
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Understand color theory and how it relates to branding choices so you can make sure you’re not accidentally turning off your Ideal Customer with your website, ad, or other marketing material.
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Learn which items need to be branded and with what information so that you can ensure potential customers know it’s you when they see your marketing materials.
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Create your own Brand Standards Guide to use or share with your graphic designer.
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Determine which paid and free tools you will use to create your marketing materials.
Testing and Tracking
You’re almost there, almost to the finish line in class. You’ve got your Marketing Plan, and your marketing materials are developed and ready to go. Now it’s time to start marketing your business.
You need to track your results so that you know what’s working and what isn’t. Next time you go to update your marketing plan, you’ll want to review the results from this year to make decisions about where to invest your time and money to generate the most revenue at the lowest cost.
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Learn how to determine the Return on Investment (ROI) for any marketing promotions, so you know if you should continue or adjust your effort.
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You’ll use the Marketing Log Book to track your marketing efforts and take detailed notes to use for future decision making. What you do this year should help decide what you do next year.
Reporting and Analyzing Performance
Now you get to learn what the numbers you’re seeing mean and, more importantly, how to adjust based on what they’re telling you.
You’ll get a deep dive into marketing reporting and full training on Google Analytics. Even if you’ve never logged in before or you don’t have it on your website today, you will by the end of this module.
You’ll also learn how to verify if the data the paid marketing channels (or your consultant) gives you is valid.
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You’ll never have to wonder again if a contractor is doing a good job because you don’t understand Google Analytics or another reporting program.
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You’ll be able to make decisions about marketing opportunities or paid promotions based on data. You’ll know if they send the traffic they claim they’re sending to your website and, more importantly, if that traffic is converting on your site.
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You’ll learn what the numbers mean in GA. No more logging in and clicking buttons because you’re not sure what any of it means. No more feeling overwhelmed by GA.
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You’ll know what content to create more of and what to get rid of based on your customers’ behavior on your website.
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Knowing what’s working makes all the difference in growing your business. It’s much easier to grow when you know what to increase and what to decrease based on ACTUAL performance numbers. Understanding what the numbers are telling you changes everything.
Marketing Foundation for Success is the most comprehensive, step-by-step implementation program for business owners who are excited and COMMITTED to growing their business through marketing.
Our community is filled with helpful, motivated business owners who are building businesses. When you join, you will become part of this exclusive group of Academy Students.
Maybe you’re reading through everything here and wondering if you’ve made mistakes along the way with your marketing plan, or perhaps you realize you don’t have a marketing strategy. That’s OK. You’ll learn what it takes to market a business so that it can grow successfully.
➔ One, that’s…
➔ …more profitable
➔ …easier to manage
➔ …fit perfectly into your life
...Marketing Foundation teaches you how to develop a complete marketing strategy, execute upon it, and review your results, so you know what worked and what didn’t. There isn’t another program that’s this comprehensive that’s brought to you by someone with this much corporate experience. You will learn what it takes to succeed in this program.
I’m so sure of it that I’m willing to offer a 100% money-back guarantee for 60 days from the start of class. By this time, you will have identified your Ideal Customer, determined where they spend their time, created products and services, done competitive pricing research, set goals, created your marketing plan and marketing materials. If you do all of the work for the first eight modules and feel like this isn’t going to work for you, then I’ll give you your money back, OR we can review your work together to see if something is missing and help get you on the right track. I want to see you succeed. Email me personally, show me your work, and let me know if you want to review it together or not and I’ll either issue the refund or answer your questions to get you on the right track. ~Rachel
10 modules, 65 video lessons, pdf guides, checklists, and cheat sheets
Bonus #1
SEO Keyword Research Secrets Training
Bonus #2
Private Facebook Group for 12 weeks
Bonus #3
Bi-Weekly Q&A Group Sessions
Monthly Payments
6 Monthly Payments of:
$197
Full Purchase
Single Payment of:
$997
Great question! Balancing your course work with other responsibilities is going to be necessary. This class was designed for busy professionals in mind. Most weeks, the lessons will take less than an hour to watch and take notes. The best part is the course is self-paced, and you have access to it as long as Etched Marketing Academy sells it, so if things get crazy partway through, you can slow down the pace, as necessary, and continue at a comfortable speed.
The homework each week allows you to work on your business in a step-by-step manner. Every assignment you have gets you one step closer to done.
Congrats on being off to a great start! Yes, you still can benefit from Marketing Foundation for success. Some of our most successful students are ones who pivoted or added new product lines after taking the course. They uncovered revenue streams they hadn’t thought about before.
Thanks for asking! Marketing Foundation for Success is 10 modules, so 10 weeks long. You have the private Facebook group for 12 weeks, one week before the kick-off of class, and a week after to ensure your questions get answered.
There’s so much support available to students. Every other week we have a Q&A session in the Facebook group so that you can ask for clarification or help with the coursework. You can also post questions in the group at any time and get help from your fellow students or Rachel.
Yes! You can. If you can find a few hours a week to focus on your class and implementing what you’re learning in your business, you can do this while working full-time. I’m not just saying this to convince you to do it; I know it can be done. I worked full-time and went to grad school full-time for several years. You may watch a little less Netflix than usual, but you’ve got this.
Yes! You will. I’ve designed the program so that each module builds on what you learned in the last one so that you have the right foundation when it’s time to create your marketing plan for your business. It’s broken down into sections so that the work each week should only take a few hours at most to complete.
Absolutely! You’re exactly who it was designed for. You’re being asked to create a marketing plan for a business without knowing much about marketing. You will benefit from this class.
No, it’s the perfect time to invest in yourself and your business. Learning how to market your business the right way is the key to growing bigger. If you have dreams of earning 5, 6, or 7 figures, now is your time. There’s a six-month payment plan designed with you in mind. I know it’s scary to invest in yourself when your business isn’t making much money yet, but this is an investment with a tremendous potential ROI (return on investment). All you need to do to recover your cost is to come up with one new product, service, or package that generates $1,000 or more, and you’re already earning money.
You’re right, there are lots of courses out there, but this is the only one that’s been designed by a marketing professional with almost 20 years in the industry for small business owners. Many of the other courses out there are from people who don’t have professional education or training in marketing but figured a few things out on their own and are teaching what worked for them. Still, they don’t understand the foundations of marketing to know why things worked the way they did. In this course, you learn why things work, what the numbers mean, and, most importantly, how to adjust when necessary, and how to replicate success. This is the only marketing course you’ll need to take.
On a personal note, I completed my MBA online while working full-time. I understand the juggle and challenges of learning online and have designed the course with that experience in mind.
Not at all. This course is in-depth and covers the topics you need to know to make the changes in your business. I spent many years answering hard questions from clients who were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing every year…they didn’t want fluff; they wanted real results. I believe in data-driven marketing and know how to get results. I want to teach you what I’ve spent 20 years learning so you can make your dreams a reality quickly.
Monthly Payments
6 Monthly Payments of:
$197
Full Purchase
Single Payment of:
$997