Would you rather watch this essay? I turned it into a YouTube video!
Want to read? That's here 👇👇👇
Your ideal client isn’t everyone, not because you don’t want to help everyone (because you do), and not because some people don’t deserve your work (they do), but because if you want to grow yourself and sustain yourself and even thrive, you have to IGNORE what it looks like everyone else is doing (building a massive audience) and focus directly in on who exactly can get the most out of your services.
This is usually not “everyone.”
I mean the people who can take your advice, run with it, implement the hell out of it, and succeed. The ones that give you the easy testimonials.
We have this idea in our heads that if we struggle to get results for people, the results will be more worthwhile. That the people we struggle to help, the impossible cases, are the ones that are the most noble to take on.
Just because you can save someone, you feel like not only should you, but you have to, and even more so if it is impossible.
We completely forget that characters like Doctor House, while they save some of the impossible patients, help a lot fewer people and suffer a lot more for it.
In business, you want to be more like JD from Scrubs. Take on the mundane stuff with flair. Help everyday people with everyday problems. Find the simple solutions. Spend 5 minutes and save someone’s life.
Your service isn’t worth more if you struggle to produce results with it.
Now, in the beginning, you should take every single client that comes your way. If they can pay you, and you can do the work well, take it and learn from them. Consider it collecting data. (If that’s you, I have other resources that can help you get those first 5 clients more easily and get to this stage so make sure you subscribe to me on YouTube above, and then head over to the main channel for those tutorials.)
BUT once you’re in that “I have clients but I don’t know how they keep finding me, and they kinda feel accidental, but I want to start getting more intentional clients and I want to start getting them more easily and predictably and I want them to be a better fit.” stage...
THAT is when you need to start thinking about a niche.
In that stage, you want to grow more easily and quickly. That makes your job as a business owner to figure out the exact circumstances that would make someone hiring you an absolute no-brainer - something that would quickly and with relative ease resolve all of their problems - and then get in front of them, and solve their problems.
You’ll rack up testimonials and referrals so fast by doing this, you’ll forget you ever needed to market in the first place.
So when you DO market, it’ll be that much more powerful.
Now, three things I want you to understand about figuring this out:
- This isn’t forever. You are not supposed to pick a niche and marry it. This can evolve as your work and your interests evolve. It SHOULD. So don’t be afraid to choose one to focus on right now. You’re not putting yourself in a box, you’re giving yourself a path to success. You can widen it later.
- This will very much be non-traditional. You’re going to focus on a specific problem in a set of circumstances. Your niche will not be “women entrepreneurs with a small online presence” and that’s actually a good thing. It’ll feel weird. Do it anyway.
- This is not a magic spell. It will not make clients appear as if from nowhere. At least, not immediately. I have other resources on how to make that work, so be sure to come back to them.
How do we figure out your ideal client? The one who will get the most out of working with you, the fastest?
- Look at the offer you love the most. You know the one I’m talking about. Your baby, your darling, the thing you keep doing even if no one wants it because YOU want it. That offer. What does it do for people? What does it teach them or give them?
- Once you know what it teaches them or gives them, as yourself - who can this help the FASTEST? What are the circumstances of someone who can get this and immediately turn everything around? Who would be your overnight success story?
- Then ask yourself, who is the most motivated to have this? Make a list of everyone who might need it, sure. But then, as you look through that list, ask yourself - who will sacrifice the most to get it? Who would go to the ends of the earth for what you have? Who would pay anything, do anything, and act quickly, to get their hands on it?
This must be a combination of someone with the means AND motivation!! - What are the circumstances of that person or business? What are the signs YOU can see that put them in this group? What is their job or business? What does it do? How is it going? What else are they trying? What are they planning to do next?
- Then, how do they know they need it? That immediate motivation to do exactly what you say or use exactly what you give them, where does it come from? What is the FEELING they have?
This can be broken down into a simple matrix (template here!) with three parts:
- Solution (this is the thing you want to do for people. Yes, you can start here.)
- Problem / Diagnosis (this is what’s wrong, this is why people need your solution, this is the thing that people are so motivated to solve they’d do just about anything to get their hands on your solution.)
- Symptoms (this is how they know they need it. This is how it FEELS to have the problem. The more subtle signs that show up in someone’s life.)
- Target (this is the circumstances of the person, with this problem, who feels those symptoms, is incredibly motivated to take you up on your solution, AND would benefit the fastest and easiest from your solution.)
There are two reasons we create this matrix:
- Understanding the symptom/problem/solution relationship gives you the language to speak to your ideal clients before they even know what the problem is. They just know it hurts, and they’ll do anything to stop it.
If you can be the one to tell them WHY it hurts, and how they can fix it, that builds massive trust and they’re more likely to take you up on YOUR solution instead of finding someone else’s. - Understanding your target and their circumstances tells you where to go and put this in front of your ideal clients. Not just the ones who might feel the symptoms, might have the problem, or might want the solution, but specifically the ones who are the most motivated to DO something about it AND can get results quickly and easily.
This leads to faster buyers who implement more thoroughly, give you fantastic testimonials and referrals, and build you a reputation that precedes you.
This isn’t the question we usually ask when we’re choosing a niche. We usually hear “what would you do for free?” or “what could you talk about all day long?” or “who are your dream clients?” or “what keeps them up all night?” or “write a day in the life of your ideal client!” where you end up knowing what coffee bar they go to but not the other services they’re spending thousands on, trying to solve the problem you can solve better, faster, and with less effort.
The magical part is, you’d probably help people get massive results and be ridiculously happy with your work for free if you could. You’d probably talk about that work all day if you could. You’d dream of those clients. Finding you keeps them up all night. A day in their life would ideally include you.
If you understand who can benefit most from your solution AND who is highly motivated to take you up on it, the other questions are easy to answer.
So. Go check out the worksheet and let me know what you find. Did you narrow a bit? Did you change completely? Did you uncover something you hadn’t realized before?
I did this exercise for myself and even tightened my own targeting. This stuff works!
- Cheryl
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- There’s no more 2 am client work (unless you want it!)
- New clients no longer feel like happy accidents.
- Revenue is stable and predictable.
- You have a clear path to generate leads.
And you’re getting practical, actionable advice you can actually use from a whole team of experts who are on your side.
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💪 Business adaptation of the week
Moving my camera and lighting around.
I have been doing more videos, long and short, and this week I went to record my video but... I didn't like how I looked. I didn't like the lighting. I didn't like any of it. And instead of forcing it anyway...
I moved my camera. I adjusted my lighting. I played with the setup until I felt like it looked okay enough to not feel self-conscious as much, and then I did the thing.
Will I look back years from now and cringe? Yes.
Did I do it anyway? Also yes.
“If you are not afraid of what you are about to put in the world, then chances are it’s been said or written before. When you take chances, even if they don’t work out, you are starting to build your real voice.” - James Altucher
🎁 My favourite things this week
Open Source Code!! I'm working on multiple simultaneous changes to Solo School's platform to bring its data into Canada for... Reasons. cough
I'm doing it all with Open Source projects and the support systems in place and communities around these projects are just amazing. I'm so thrilled. Could not be happier about working with projects like Ghost and Flarum and Jitsi to bring this to life.
I'm not a super programmer person, just a nerd with enough knowledge to be dangerous and a connection to Google. (If you ask a programmer that's also how many of them would describe themselves once they're senior developers so. I guess I'm doing okay?)
📚 What I'm reading
Not enough! But also lots?
Admittedly my time for books is mostly being dipped into by my obsession with small, independent authors and their essays. Substack, Medium, independent publishers on Ghost... I'm doing a lot of that type of reading lately.
I'm ridiculously excited, a friend gifted me "As You Wish" - the behind the scenes story of The Princess Bride - for my birthday, and it's next on the list. I might even finish Gabby faster, just to read about all of the injuries Billy Crystal caused when people had to try not to laugh on set.
Want to follow my reading? Check me out on StoryGraph, the minority-owned GoodReads competitor I love!
