The Lost Art Of Defining Your ICP

BusinessThe Lost Art Of Defining Your ICPByCase Lawrence,Forbes Books Author.for Forbes BooksAUTHOR POSTExpertise and opinions of authors published by ForbesBooks. Imprint operated under license. | Paid ProgramJun 04, 2026, 10:34am EDTAt Sky Zone, we’ve defined our ideal customer profile as a seventeen-year-old boy named Landon.gettyMany leaders are asking about the “Why” for their organizations, but not many are asking enough questions about their “Who.”Too often, the topic of your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) gets punted over to marketing. And even in marketing circles, conversations about a company’s ICP turn into a pretty pile of data. But there is no personality or soul.If you’re leading an organization of any kind, you’d better know your Who. You’d better have a clear picture of them in your mind, not just some statistics about their demographics.The most successful companies are those that practice the art of defining their ICP in granular detail. They’re crafting a multi-faceted person like a novelist would do, not solving equations like a mathematician. And at Sky Zone, that person is Landon.Find Your LandonRunning a trampoline park is unusual enough, but at Sky Zone, we developed a somewhat unusual R&D process. We “gave birth” to an imaginary customer we named Landon.To move Landon from a simple customer profile to being a “real” person, we defined everything we could about him.“Landon is a seventeen-year-old boy who loves extreme sports, video games, and he’s probably got a couple of empty energy drinks on his bedside table.”We even defined his taste in music, the books he read, and the food he ate. He became real to our team.So much so that whenever we had R&D meetings, we saved a spot for Landon. He even had his own nameplate. Every idea had to be run by Landon. We had to see the world through his eyes. And if he didn’t approve of something? We either trashed the idea or took it back to the drawing board.And not just in R&D meetings. Landon...