Ask pretty much any business owner about their first year or so in business, and they’ll most likely tell you about two things:

1. A client they LOVED 💖
2. And a client they really, really, really did NOT love 😬

Everyyyyyy business owner has them or has experienced them…

—> The awesome clients that totally “get” their services, their value, and their prices and are just generally joyous to work with.

—> and those that are the complete opposite of all of the above 😬

The first is called your “ideal client” and the second is called—for lack of a more accurate term—the “client from hell.” LOL

The first one is the reason you created your business in the first place, the reason you hop out of bed in the morning, and the reason you do everything you can to deliver the best possible product or service.

The latter is the reason you dream of disappearing to Bermuda, look like a haggard witch who’s gotten no sleep, and wince every time you open your inbox dreading to see their name.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the best-case scenario is to build your entire business around your ideal clients.

Yet so often we don’t attract them simply because we’re not crystal clear on who they are!

Sure, we may luck out and get some ideal clients in our pipeline, but just as easily we can find ourselves working with clients that we don’t mesh well with.

It doesn’t have to be a crap shoot, though. In fact, it can be easy to attract ONLY ideal clients by spending some focused time figuring out exactly who they are and what makes them so ideal.

To do that, complete the following steps:

1. List all of your potential ideal customer types. Then, prioritize that list and pick your most important customer—the person who is MOST likely to buy your product or service. That’s your primary target audience.
2. List the demographic and psychographic details, traits, characteristics, and attributes of your primary target audience. Consider things such as gender, age, level of education, average annual income, socioeconomic situation, and spending habits. Write down everything you can think of.
3. Next, take a birds eye view of their life. What makes them happy? What are their common frustrations? What are their biggest and smallest pain points or challenges that relate to the solution you provide?
4. Finally, create a persona or a fictional character that represents this ideal customer and spend some time creating a profile about them and their life. Be as specific and creative as you can to flesh out their story fully.

Creating this profile will help you personify and humanize your ideal customer and deeply understand them. It’s this kind of understanding that will help you create content, position yourself, and market in a way that will RESONATE with this ideal client group so that you will attract them to you again and again.

Don’t underestimate the law of attraction in this process either. When we get clear on who we serve they will begin to find you.

Added bonus: it will most likely help you REPEL the types of clients you’d rather avoid!

With this thorough and strategic approach, you can feel more confident that your days of ideal clients are indeed the future of your business—and those “not-so-ideal” ones will be gone for good!