How To Identify Your Ideal Client

How do you identify the ideal client for your private practice?

You've probably heard of having an ideal client before. But, I imagine no one's ever walked you through the process of how to identify that ideal client.

Well, there are actually just three steps to that process and we're going to walk through those right now.

Step 1. Identify Your Misfit Clients
You need to get out a sheet of paper. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna think about your current caseload. You're gonna write down the names of three clients you currently are working with, or have worked with in the past that have felt like they weren't the right fit. We'll call them your misfit clients. So, write down their names, and then underneath that, write down some characteristics that stand out about that person. 

Write out some demographics. Write out what problem did they come to you to solve? What was their attitude or mindset like? How far in did you maybe recognize this isn't gonna be a good fit? Go ahead and take some time to write that out for those three people.

Next, underline the things that stand out to you as you, as you, as you reread over it, what, what really jumps out at you. What's gonna happen is you'll start to see some themes among the clients that are really not good fits for you.

Step 2. Identify Your Ideal Clients

Now, I want you to think about three clients that you love working with, that when you see them pop up on your calendar, or you see their name on your schedule, your face lights up. You can't wait to meet with that person.

Go ahead and write down the names of three of those clients, either current ones or past ones, and then do the same thing, write down some demographics.

You know, what were their attitudes? What problems were they struggling with? How early on in the relationship did you know, “I'm gonna love working with this client? Go ahead and underly things that jump out at you, bold it have fun with it. Get a red marker out, you know, some colored pencils, um, and then go from there.

Step 3: Identify Themes

As you look at these 3 Misfit Clients, and 3 Ideal Clients you now have to operate a little bit like a strategist or an investigator. You need to unpack what are the themes that you see there? This is the part of identifying your ideal client that's a little bit more subjective. 

What are the terms that you see there that jump out to you? It might be very clear, like maybe you'll say, wow, my ideal clients are “athletes”, or “struggling with depression after their career”, right? And it'll be like, boom, super, super broad.

Or, you might have men and women in all sorts of ages and occupations. And it might be a different type of a theme that you need to identify.

After you do that work, you'll have a clearly identified ideal client for your practice, which then opens up to the question of how do you then start attracting those ideal clients? What do you say in how you talk about your business or on your website to attract those people? Well, that's where we're gonna be covering in the next Thrilled Therapist Thursday. See you there!