How Do You Define Your Ideal Client If You Can Help More Than One Type of Person?

If you’ve been sitting with a version of your ideal client that feels almost right but not quite, this is for you.

I spent weeks convinced I knew exactly who I was building my business for. Creative women freelancers. (Photographers, designers, copywriters.) The gig economy is exploding, companies outsource more than ever, and skilled freelancers are hard to find when you need one. The opportunity felt obvious.

The more I dug in, the more I realized I was solving the wrong problem.

A lot of newer freelancers aren’t stuck on marketing… they don’t quite think like an entrepreneur (yet). They’re stuck on mindset. They are still operating like employees, needing to be convinced why they need a website, a marketing strategy that is more than just Instagram, and that they deserve to charge real rates. That’s important work, for sure… just not my work.

I wanted to build a business where my clients meet me halfway. I have worked with early-stage business owners before and it requires a special kind of coach, someone equipped to work through the foundational stuff before strategy even makes sense. I like to focus on implementation. I wanted clients who were already ready or close-to-ready to work with me.

So I had a decision to make.

I was setting up my Upwork profile, figuring out how to position myself for freelance work, and it hit me mid-sentence.

My current ideal client wasn’t going to be looking for me there.

The woman I want to work with is more established. She has clients, a reputation, an important message to share. She is starting to outgrow her network and referrals. She knows where the gaps are in her marketing strategy. She’s been listening to Amy Porterfield and Jenna Kutcher long enough to know the vocabulary. She just couldn’t figure out how to actually do it alone, without it taking over her life.

I already knew this woman. I’d worked with her.

Kate Scott is a web designer and educator who teaches Squarespace designers to build more sustainable businesses through templates and scalable offers. Organized, strategic, trusted me completely. Her content system was so clean it practically ran itself.

Vanessa Joy Walker is a healthcare advocate, speaker, and author of Make Room for Joy. She’s a woman with powerful stories to tell and a gift for putting words to complicated human experiences. She’d share her thinking and let me take it from there. Zero ego about the process.

Maggie Skarich Joos runs This Is the Real Good Life, a wellness brand with a cookbook in progress, yoga classes, and a weekly newsletter. She wrote engaging content and just needed someone to make it work harder across her channels.

Three different businesses in three different industries… with a common theme: expertise, ideas worth sharing, and ready for a system to make it all findable.

How I Used Claude to Build My Ideal Client Profile

I opened a conversation with Claude and started talking. I didn’t ask it to hand me an answer. I just brain dumped my ideas and thoughts, describing the clients I’d loved working with, what made those relationships work, and tried to understand what those women had in common.

Claude started reflecting the pattern back to me. Not adding anything or steering me in a particular direction. Just organizing what I was already saying into something that made sense.

I used Claude as a thinking partner. I wasn’t asking it to write my ideal client profile from scratch. I was using it to make sense of what I already knew. The outcome is something with depth and understanding.

As someone with ADHD who processes by rambling in writing or talking through something, this was really helpful. I had the answer the whole time, I just needed the right questions to surface it.

The line we landed on:

Women solopreneurs who sell expertise, transformation, or creative services — where the sale requires the buyer to trust them first.

I read that back and said out loud: yes, that’s it!

So here’s the process I used, in case you want to try it yourself, with or without AI.

Start with who you think you serve

Write down your best guess and don’t overthink it. The point is to have something to pressure-test. I started with “creative women freelancers” …that was wrong, but it was the right kind of wrong. Close enough to find the real answer.

Let the problem lead, not the job title

Ask yourself what problem you actually solve. Not the marketing version of it, the real thing. The problem I solve isn’t “content marketing.” It’s helping people who are invisible online get found without performing on social media every day. Job titles are labels. Problems are what people type into search bars.

Ask who else has that exact problem

Once you know the problem, the job title stops mattering so much. Being strategically aware but implementation-stuck, invisible online, ready for the next level but overwhelmed by the learning curve, that’s not a freelancer problem… it’s a solopreneur problem.

Apply a real-world filter

Not everyone with your problem is your ideal client. Run them through a filter that makes sense for your business. Mine: Is she on Pinterest? Is she far enough along that she already believes content marketing works and just needs the system? That filter took me from a long list of possibilities to six clear sub-segments worth writing for.

Build from real people, not archetypes

Think about your best clients, or the people whose problems you understand most deeply because you’ve lived them. Describe them out loud like you’re telling a friend. The patterns show up on their own. I didn’t invent my ideal client. I reverse-engineered her from three women I’d already worked with.

Listen for her exact words

The most useful thing in an ideal client profile isn’t the demographics. It’s the language. What does she say when she’s frustrated? What does she type into Google at 11pm when she can’t sleep? That language becomes your content, your blog post titles, your Pinterest pins.

Name her and make her real

Give your composite persona an actual name. Mine is Maggie Joy Scott — a nod to Kate, Vanessa, and Maggie, and to remind me who I am speaking to. By giving her a name, she becomes a person, not a concept. When you sit down to write, you write to her specifically.

Want to try this with Claude?

Here’s a simple prompt to get started:

“I’m trying to get clear on my ideal client. I’m going to describe the clients I’ve worked with (or the people I most want to work with), and I want you to ask me questions and reflect the patterns back to me. Don’t suggest an answer — just help me find mine. Ready?”

Then just talk. The more honest and specific you are, the better it works.

A few questions I get about this process:

Do I have to pick just one ideal client if I can serve multiple types of people?

No. But, you need one core problem that connects them all. My IC includes coaches, designers, course creators, VAs/OBMs, and authors. What connects them matters more than what separates them: they are all personal brands that sell something that requires trust before the sale, they’re all invisible online, and they all want a system that works without a team or a daily social media performance.

What if I haven’t worked with many clients yet?

Start with yourself. The problems you’ve personally struggled with are often the clearest signal for who you’re meant to serve. Or spend time in the communities where your ideal client hangs out, like, Reddit, Facebook groups, YouTube comments…and just observe. Look for the language people use to describe their frustrations. I have learned so much by simply being a fly on the wall.

How do I know when my definition is specific enough?

When you can picture one real person reading your content and thinking she’s talking directly to me. Vague ICs produce vague content. Specific ICs produce content that makes people feel seen. You don’t have to get it right the first time, this will evolve over time, the more you explore.

Can I use AI to help with this?

Yes! It’s one of the best uses of AI I’ve found in my own business. Not because it tells you who your ideal client is, but because it asks the right questions and reflects your thinking back clearly. You bring the raw material. Claude or ChatGPT (or your favourite LLM) helps you see the pattern. The answer was already in you.

This is not a one-and-done exercise. The more I build, the more I learn about my IC. The ideal client is fluid, and the business moves with it. Stay connected to who you’re building for, keep paying attention, and don’t be afraid to shift when the data tells you something new.

I’m building this business for Maggie Joy Scott. A woman who is brilliant at what she does, has clients who love her, and is ready to ascend to the next level in her business. She knows the direction. She just needs the map.