[Lesson 2] Finding your dream people

You’ve probably heard like a thousand times about creating your ideal client or customer profile. You’ve probably been advised to know your ideal client from head to toe, all about her demographics + psychology + sociology factors. Heck, you’ve may even been told to find out what’s her hair color and favorite ice-cream.

For me, that’s just a HUGE waste of time!

I don’t believe in ideal client profiles, for years I struggled big time trying to create a profile as detailed as if I was talking about myself, but my attempts never worked.

Why?

Number one, because I was trying to come up with someone in my head, and then trying to find her in the real world. But actually, it works backwards, with experience and time you’ll know who your dream clients are, who the persons you want to keep working with and creating for are.

And number two because my ideal clients can’t be canned in a +20-page description, they are different from each other, they come from diverse backgrounds, they live in distinct countries, and their budgets are also different.

For example, I’ve had dream customers who are moms and other who are teens, who love my fashion illustrations so much that they commissioned me to make custom portraits. I’ve also had dream clients who are small business owners who wanted me to create fashion illustrations + surface pattern designs for their branding + products.

Another example, from FSbS, is that I have students from all over the world, literally, some of them live in the USA + Latin America + Canada, other students live in Europe, other students are from Australia, and even some are from Africa + Asia.

Their age and education level are different. Some are teens in high school; some are in their mid-twenties trying to change their career, and some are self-taught moms starting their business.

You see, how a profile is not the best way to approach dream clients?

I’ve been forced by various business coaches, and I’ve been told one time after another dive deep into your ideal customer profile, get it done before doing anything else, don’t even try to sell if you don’t have it completed. And I got tired of that. So, the advice and how-to I’m about to share here may not be the typical way to find out about your dream clients. But they’re all the steps that have removed the stress + frustration + confusion of creating a customer profile that doesn’t even work, and they’re the steps that have been working for me for several years now.

Instead of forcing you to create your ideal client’s profile, I want to encourage you to find the one person who’s closest to be your dream client, and hone in on that over the time and your experience. Because as you and your business grow + evolve your dream client will change too.

So, whether you’re just starting out and have never had a customer at all, or if you’re a few years in business and you’ve had clients before, during this lesson I want you to think about the one person that’s closest to be your dream client.

Again, I don’t want this exercise + research to be super strict and restrictive because I know how easy it is to fall behind thinking that our dream client is not clear. From my own experience, I can tell you that your dream client will get clearer and clearer to you as you move forward in your business, and as you keep showing up as who you are because the strongest magnet of dream clients is you.

The one person who’s closest to be your dream client – Phase 1

People from your past

Your job right now is to get a little clearer on who your dream people are, so you set the foundations, and you get the ball rolling. And from now know that every time you have a new client, you must assess her and your experience with her, so you can determine if it was a dream or a nightmare experience, and tweak your dream client description as needed.

Alright, if you’ve never had a client before, think of persons giving you praise for your work + skills + talents + strengths. You can also think of previous co-workers. Or the people that you have in mind when you create your work. Maybe they’re people you know in person like a friend, persons you have met like a professional acquaintance, people you admire, or persons from social media that you haven’t met just yet, but you know your work could be a good fit for them.

If on the other hand, you’ve had the chance to work with several clients, think of those people that were the most dreamy. Maybe the process of working with them was so smooth and fun that you’d love to work with more people like them. Or maybe their project was super exciting that you want to work on more projects like that. Or maybe you sell products, and the person who purchased was so delighted with your work that you want to see more people as excited + happy for receiving your products like her.

Okay, the first phase of finding your dream clients is answering these questions:

• Of all the people in the world who could buy from you or work with you, who are you most passionate about serving? Who do you relate to, understand, and sympathize with?
• What kind of person will benefit the most from your business + offerings?
• What people have you worked with or sold to in the past that got you so excited?
• If you were to devote the next 3-5 years learning about a particular kind of client, who would you love the most?
• The people (clients/co-workers) who really clicked with you in the past were:

And the next couple of questions is all about your past clients. Who are the people you’ve worked with in the past that you liked? Who are the persons in the past that you worked with that you didn’t like? I want you to list out all the qualities for both categories. Analyzing past clients will help you assess how to attract more of the dreamy ones in the future and less of the not-so-favorite ones from your past.

Remember, if you have never worked with a client before, you can simply think regarding your past co-workers. People you’ve enjoyed working with, or people who were a pain in the butt, etc. But the goal here is to think through past working relationships (whether colleague or client) and honestly examine what made you feel awesome and what left you feeling blah / blue / or mad.

• Who have you enjoyed working with the most? Who have you got the best results for? Who were you super excited to work with?
  
  Write down the specifics about them and find a pattern. Was it a particular niche, project, or mindset?
  
  List their name and why you loved working with them:

• What client commitments have felt like a drain on your creative energy + life?Write down the projects or clients that felt unenjoyable + uninspiring for you.

  
  
  List their name and why you disliked working with them:

The one person who’s closest to be your dream client – Phase 2

What classifies them as dream clients?

Now is time to filter all the persons that you thought + wrote about on the last phase, and see if they qualify as dream clients.

But, first you got to know what a dreamy interaction looks like, so start with the following questions for this phase:

• What is your dream client interaction like?
• What kind of client relationship do you want to build and grow?
• Do you like to keep things professional? Or do you like to know each other and cultivate an authentic connection and friendship with your clients?
• What kind of client interactions do you enjoy the most, face to face meetings, email, phone calls, etc.?
• What things have frustrated you so far that you want to avoid in future client relationships?

Okay, now let’s continue with filtering your dream people.

You know they can be past clients, past co-workers, friends,  professional acquaintances, or people from social media. The goal is to ask yourself what qualities they possess that would make them qualify as a dream client and why you think your business + talents + strengths would be helpful to them. Remember, the more real people you can add to your dream client wish list, the better because sometimes having faces, names, and interactions with real people can make the dream client vision come alive.

• List their name and what qualifies them as a dream client:

The one person who’s closest to be your dream client – Phase 3

Making them real

Now it’s time to make your dream clients more real. You’ve researched and found out real people from your past and some from your present, but you have to link them to your offerings and your business.

Some of the following questions will be easier than others. You could ask some of these questions directly to your prospective dream clients, and sometimes you’ll have to deduce them from your interactions with them.

When you ask people or survey them, the most likely is that they’ll tell you what you want to hear, or what they think you want to hear. For example, if your friend fits in your dream client vision and you ask her ‘what do you think about this new product I want to launch?’, the most likely is that she’ll tell you how a great idea it is, that she can’t wait to see it come to life and all kinds of good stuff.

We’re humans, we want to encourage each other, and we want to make feel our friends and family good. So, it’s no one’s fault.

Then, what you’ll need to do is to learn to listen and read between the lines. For example, maybe the same friend who fits into your dream client vision wants to remodel her living room and lift it up with art and prints on the wall, but she’s afraid that her selections wouldn’t meet her style – then you can jot down on your worksheets and under the pertinent question that your dream client wants her surroundings to be a reflection of herself + her style.

Or maybe a new client seems to be a dream client, and she’s concerned about meeting the deadlines on time. Then you can then you can jot down on your worksheets and under the pertinent question that one of your dream client’s values is punctuality, and you can make a note to yourself to deliver the work a couple of days earlier than the deadline, so she’s delighted with the experience of working with you.

Okay, so let’s make your dream clients real with the following questions:

• What are their main pain points or problems?
• What are they often frustrated about?
• What fears and anxieties are they struggling with?
• Who do they most aspire to be like? What are their biggest dreams for the future?
• How do they want to feel about their professional and personal life?
• What are they willing to spend their money on? And what are they not willing to spend their money on?
• What language (keywords) would they specifically use to describe your offerings?
• How would they describe their biggest frustration surrounding your offerings?
• What problems, frustrations, or pain points are they actively trying to find solutions for?
• What have they already tried (that didn’t work) to fix these?
• How can you solve their problems, frustrations, or pain points?
• What motivates them?
• What are they working towards and why are they choosing to hire you to help them?
• What’s the why behind the goal they’re working towards?

The one person who’s closest to be your dream client – Phase 4

Your dream client skeleton

Below you will find the DREAM CLIENT SKELETON I’ve created for you to fill out. Again, you can not simply guess here. You have to input real data that you’ve observed + noticed + asked. Some of these things you will know automatically, some of them will take some digging deep. The goal is not to ask just ONE person; you must take this information from a handful of potential dream clients and then analyze the themes + patterns + spoken or unspoken needs + conscious or subconscious desires, etc.

• What are your dream client’s goals?
• What are your dream client’s hurdles?
• What are your dream client’s beliefs?
• What are your dream client’s values?
• What are your dream client’s needs?
• What are your dream client’s wants?

The one person who’s closest to be your dream client – Phase 5

Your dream client flesh + body

As you begin this process of truly noticing your dream client, your eyes + ears will become more and more open. Even after studying my dream client for more than five years, I’m still learning new things about them every single day. And when I learn something new, or I notice a new complaint + need + taste + desire I add it to a folder called Dream Client Flesh + Body.

I learned this trick from a postgraduate course I took several years ago on branding; the file was called something like ‘dream client swipe file,’ and it really changed everything. Because I used to have everything about my dream clients all over the place, and most of the times I forgot what people were telling me via email, or where to find that exact thing that someone expressed about their needs + wants.

The goal is to have a file or a folder that you continue to grow over time. The content of this file may come from dialogues you have, questions or answers your receive, or just things you observe. Your aim is to have a case of study that keeps unfolding day by day.

Here all the observations you add should be EXACT phrases you hear, pictures they post, or questions they make. These are things directly from your dream client. As you start to craft your marketing campaigns + content strategies + new offerings you should always be coming back to this file, so you know the exact language your dream clients use, visuals they’re inspired by, and questions + doubts they want the answer for, etc.

If you notice that a lot of your dream clients express a desire to feel stylish, then maybe the next product you create would directly relate to that desire. Or if you notice that many of your dream clients are interested in authentic products, then maybe the next service you create might help them build the perfect authentic line of fashion products.

The best places to source for your flesh + body folder are:

• Comments left on your blog.
• Comments left on blogs that attract your dream clients.
• Comments left on Facebook (private groups, status updates, etc.).
• Comments left on Instagram photos.
• Questions sent to you via email, social media, etc.
• Questions you observe them ask via online platforms.
• Complaints or frustrations you see them post online.
• Posts or comments about things that make them happy or excited.
• Photos from their Pinterest boards.
• Photos from their Instagram accounts.

This folder will become quite large, so you may want to create an Evernote file, Desktop folder, or Google Doc that you can keep growing over time.

I have a folder on Google Drive, and I have a different Google Doc for each of the above categories. And now that I started using Trello, I have all the flesh + body of my dream clients in one of my Trello boards as cards, and each card is linked to a Google Doc (for each category).

Your dream clients flesh + body might be small right now, so you can use the worksheets in the workbook, or you can start creating a folder and the corresponding files on your Desktop, on Google Drive, or wherever you prefer.

And start adding those comments + questions + posts + images that come directly from your dream clients.

Then what?

Complete every phase of this exercise during this week, or during the time you assigned yourself to finish this module.

And then, every time you have a new client go through each phase of this lesson. From assessing your experience: What did you like? What didn’t you like? Can this client be considered as a dream client? What could make the experience + client + project more dreamy? To adding more information about your dream client’s needs + fears + wants + desires. To making your dream client skeleton richer, and your flesh + body files more comprehensive.

Honing in on your dream clients is how you create a brand and a business that is focused + irresistible + memorable, instead of generic and forgettable. And the clearer you get with who your dream clients are, the easier it’ll before you to create your marketing + content + new offerings.

LESSON 3