Especially when you’re stepping into the freelance world and starting your own business for the first time, working exclusively with clients you love can feel a long way off. You might think you have to accept whatever work comes in, even if it’s not a great fit for you, because you don’t feel as though you’re in a position to leave money on the table.

This is perfectly understandable. In fact, to a certain extent and while you’re still able to do a professional job, working for lots of different types of clients can be a good thing. This is because the varied experiences will help you figure out which customers you enjoy working with and why. Perhaps you like collaborating with small business owners and seeing the direct impact your work is having on an individual. Or maybe you prefer the larger organisations where you can be part of a wider team of people.

Whatever your preference, as you continue to develop your business, it’s important to take it in a direction that reflects who you are and why you do what you do. Working with clients you love is a big part of this because it gives you the inspiration you need to continue growing your business. If you don’t have enough of these customers and carry on working with clients that don’t inspire you, they’ll eventually wear you down.

Since we all want to wake up in the morning loving our work and our clients, in this blog post, I’m showing you how to make a shift in your business so that you only end up working with your favourite customers.

How to find your ideal customer and only work with clients you love

The first thing to say is that this isn’t something that will happen overnight. Getting to a point where you’re only working with clients you love takes time. Experience will help you understand what kind of clients you’d like to work with moving forwards. Then, you’ll need to make constant tweaks to your marketing to ensure you’re attracting them.

And don’t forget, based on your priorities at different stages of your life, your ideal client might change over time too. There are likely to be periods when you might appreciate those more demanding clients, and others when their requests are the last thing you need.

Whether your ideal customer changes or not, here are 4 steps you can use and repeat to guide you on your journey to only working with clients you love.

1) Identify who your ideal client is

There are various factors to take into consideration when identifying your ideal client.

One of these factors is financial because you need an ideal client who is able to pay your rates. In this blog post, I explain why knowing how much you need to be earning can help you understand who you want to be targeting. If you need to earn a certain amount, it can make sense to target those clients who tend to have a higher budget.

Another factor is more emotional and is based on what success means to you. What do you want from your business? Are you looking for financial freedom, full-on flexibility, or the best of both worlds? Your answer to this question will also have an impact on the kind of clients you want to work with.

2) Market to your ideal client

Once you’ve understood who your ideal client is, you can make sure you’re marketing to them. By clearly targeting the kind of customer you want to work with, all new customers who approach you will already be more likely to fit your ideal client profile and be the kind of client you’ll love.

This might involve updating your website so that it’s speaking directly to small business owners, large companies, or people working in an industry that fits with your area of specialisation. The more specific you can get, the more likely you are to be approached by the kind of customer you want to have.

As potential customers start to contact you, you can then hone your marketing to make sure you’re attracting precisely the right ones. You can rewrite parts of your copy that you’ve noticed are giving potential clients the wrong impression. Or you could think about updating your branding to be more in line with the tastes of your ideal customer.

3) Carry out a current client assessment

During Charge with Confidence, all participants carry out a client assessment. Not only does this show them which clients are allowing them to earn their minimum hourly rate and which aren’t, it also gives them the opportunity to rate clients based on attributes that are important to them.

These attributes could include the type of work you’re being asked to do, the relationship you have with the client, whether or not they respect your boundaries, and anything else that has an impact on how much you enjoy working with them.

A good question to ask yourself is whether the relationship you have with the client aligns with your values and priorities. If it does, working with the client will ‘feel’ much better than if it doesn’t.

Giving your current clients an overall score from the point of view of how much satisfaction you get from working with them will help you understand which clients you love and which ones you don’t.

4) Take action!

Now that you know which clients don’t bring you joy, you can start to deal with them.

If there are any clients you don’t enjoy working with and that aren’t particularly profitable, I would recommend getting rid of them as soon as possible. This will free up some time so you can look for more of the clients you love.

As for those you don’t particularly like working with but that pay well, perhaps you could ask them to make some changes that would result in the job being more enjoyable for you. For example, are there any suggestions you could make to help them be more organised and avoid last-minute urgencies?

Gradually, as you find new clients that inspire you, you can filter out those you don’t really enjoy working with. By replacing customers you don’t love with those you do, you’ll soon find that you’ll only be working with your favourites!

Working exclusively with clients you love might sound like the dream, but it is achievable over time. The important thing is to have a clear vision for your business so you know what you’re working towards. Once you have this, you can create a plan and start implementing it!

If you’d like to get clear on the direction you want to take your business in so that one day you’ll only be working with clients you love, I’ll support you on your journey through Shift to Success. During this ongoing mentorship, we’ll look at what success means to you before setting goals (and following through on them!) to make sure you achieve it.

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