The 3 Levels Of Your Ideal Client

Welcome to The Evolved Entrepreneur, a weekly newsletter where I share practical tips to go from “drowning in work” to OWNING your business and life.

A common mistake most entrepreneurs make is not getting clear on who they do and don’t serve.

This isn’t about “niching down” or “niching up”.

It’s about Avatar Clarity: being clear in your offers on who you say YES to working with, who you say NO to, and knowing the difference.

The clarity is not just for you, it’s also for:

• Your team to know who to create for and how to best support them

• Your future clients/customers to know if and when they are the right fit

• Your brand to speak directly to your ideal clients

Clarity creates alignment.

Alignment creates momentum.

I’m about to give you what most coaches and consultants typically charge thousands of dollars for.

Snapshot of Today’s Newsletter:

• What is Avatar Clarity and why not knowing this will hurt your business

• How to create the 3 Levels of your Ideal Client Profiles

• How to integrate this all into your business and team

What and why Avatar Clarity?

Avatar Clarity is being crystal clear on who your offer, product, or service is for and not for.

Entrepreneurship is a path of service, not a self-serving endeavor. And through service of others and the world, we get gifted the ability to create a life of freedom, fulfilment, and joy.

I believe entrepreneurs are the biggest source of human evolution and transformation in the world.

The root of that comes from us answering the call of service from the universe.

To be in service requires being clear on WHO you’re serving.

Avatar Clarity is understanding the demographics, behavior, and psychographics of your ideal clients and customers.

This sounds simple and straightforward, and yet, almost every client I’ve worked with has struggled with clearly defining their ideal audience and customer.

Let’s start with why Avatar Clarity is important:

• It’s challenging to be the best in the world at multiple things. It’s surprisingly simple to become the best in the world at something specific.

• Your marketing is far more powerful and meaningful when you know exactly who you should be talking to.

• Having a specified audience makes it exponentially cheaper and faster to scale your business

• In today’s world of diffused attention spans, marketing to everyone means you’re marketing to no one.

• People are self-centered, they care about what your offer will do for them, not your products or services. Understanding what they truly desire helps you create better products or services.

• People trust people who talk like them and affirm their beliefs. People buy from people they trust.

• Clarity allows your team to provide the best support, meeting your clients where they’re at on their journey

I can go on but I think you get the point.

Let’s talk about how to create Avatar Clarity by creating the 3 Levels of your Ideal Client Profiles.

What are Ideal Client Profiles?

Ideal Client Profiles (ICP for short) define the demographics, behaviors, and psychographics of your ideal clients or customers.

These profiles must live in a document or somewhere everyone on your team has access to, like your Business OS or business command center.

Back to ICPs.

You want to create 3 levels of ICPs and even your Non-ICP:

• ICP 1 - your “Golden” Clients

• ICP 2 - your “Bread & Butter” Clients

• ICP 3 - your “Hand Holding” Clients

• Non-ICP - your “Do Not Sell To” people

Let’s break down how to define each one.

Defining your ICP 1

Your ICP 1 are your “Golden” Clients.

They are your BEST clients, the easiest people for you to work with and create results for. They require the least amount of time and energy from you and your team to achieve the desired outcome.

They typically make up less than 5% of your audience.

Describe their demographics:

• What is their age?

• What is their gender?

• Where do they live?

• What is their relationship status?

• What is their average income?

• Any other general information?

Describe their behaviors:

• What kind of products or services have they purchased in the past related to what you’re selling?

• Who else has the attention of your perfect clients and prospects? (What other experts or influencers do they follow?)

• What are their favorite movies, TV shows, or Netflix series? (List 1-3 each)

• What are their favorite magazines, online publications, or sources of free content they follow?

• What are their favorite books?

Describe their psychographics:

• What is their single BIGGEST problem or pain they want to solve?

• What are the 5 biggest mistakes they are making when trying to solve their problem on their own?

• What is their single BIGGEST fear that keeps them awake at night?

• What are their top 3 frustrations on a day-to-day?

• What core/dominant emotion do they feel right now? What do they want to feel?

• What are the beliefs or rules they live by? What are their beliefs about their problem/situation?

• What do they DESIRE or want to HAVE?
  (Example: health, time, money, popularity, improved appearance, comfort, freedom, pride, fulfillment, self-confidence, prestige…)

• What do they want to BE?
  (Example: good parents, good partners, good leaders, creative, proud of their business, influential over others, productive, recognized and appreciated, loved…)

• What do they want to be able to DO?
  (Example: express themselves, travel more, be present with family, acquire or build assets, impact people, improve themselves…)

• What do they want to SAVE?
  (Example: time, money, energy, discomfort, worry, doubts, risks…)

• What do they want to AVOID?

• What would their 5 biggest objections be about purchasing your product or service?

Describe what attributes make this person the BEST client for your business.

• If you’re in B2B, it could be attributes of their business. What stage of business they’re in, what industry they’re in, what elements of their business they already have that make them easy and fun to work with.

• If you’re in B2C, it could be what stage of their journey they’re in, what experience they already have, and what qualities they have that make them easy and fun to work with.

Knowing who your ICP 1’s are helps your team identify and attract the best potential clients in your audience.

Document all this in your ICP 1.

Defining your ICP 2

ICP 2 are your “Bread & Butter” Clients.

They’re fun and great to work with and require the expected amount of time and energy to serve and help get results.

Ideally, these clients make up the majority of your client base.

Define your ICP 2:

• Describe their demographics or note any differences from your ICP 1s.

• Describe their behaviors or note any differences from your ICP 1s.

• Describe their psychographics or note any differences from your ICP 1s.

• Describe what makes this person a GOOD fit for your business and what difficulties you may encounter working with this type of client that keeps them from being the BEST clients.

Knowing who your ICP 2’s are not only helps your team identify and attract them. But it also helps you better design your products and services to get your clients results faster.

For example, say you’re a YouTube growth consultant helping wellness experts build and grow their YouTube channel.

And you know the differentiator between your ICP 1 and ICP 2 is that your best clients have a warm and engaging email list that they’re already sending emails to frequently.

Then one thing you can do to provide additional support to help your ICP 2’s get results is a mini-course or training on how to warm up your email list with email nurture sequences that way they can leverage their email list to promote YouTube growth and engagement.

Clearly define your ICP 2 and document it.

Defining your ICP 3

ICP 3 are your “Hand-Holding” Clients.

These are clients you would take on and work with but you would want to be mindful of how many you’re taking on because these clients require the most time and energy from you and your team to help get outcomes.

Define your ICP 3:

• Describe their demographics or note any differences from your ICP 2.

• Describe their behaviors or note any differences from your ICP 2

• Describe their psychographics or note any differences from your ICP 2

• Describe what challenges this type of client is dealing with that makes them difficult clients to work with or to get results for

• What other products or services (down-sell or referral) can you guide this person to so that they can quickly become ICP 1 and ICP 2’s

Ideally, these clients make up less than 20% of your client base.

Your main focus is to build and market your core offer to your ICP 1’s and 2’s.

Once you’ve tapped out on attracting the ICP 1’s and 2’s in your audience, then you can move on to your marketing for your ICP 3’s.

But here’s the thing, because they’re “hand-holding” clients, you don’t want to bring them directly into your core offer.

You want to build separate products or services that turn your ICP 3’s into ICP 1 and 2’s so that they’re a better fit for your core offer.

Let’s use the scenario above with YouTube growth consulting.

If the differentiator between ICP 2 and ICP 3 is they have an existing audience or email list vs building a YouTube channel from scratch.

You don’t want to be enrolling these ICP 3’s directly into your core offer because your team is going to have to invest more time and energy working with these clients.

Instead, you can create another course or program that teaches your ICP 3’s how to build an email list first, before launching and going all in on building their YouTube channel.

Once they’ve completed the course and have an email list audience, they become an ICP 2 and have a higher chance of being successful in your core offer.

(FYI this is a hypothetical scenario and not actual YT growth advice!)

Clearly define your ICP 3 and when ready, design products and services to help them transform into ICP 1 and 2’s.

Defining your Non-ICP

Non-ICPs are people you absolutely will not take on as clients or work with.

They either:

• Are not ready for your products and services

• Are not aligned with your company’s values and mission

• Are not aligned with your personal values

Define your Non-ICP:

• Describe their demographics or note any differences from your ICPs.

• Describe their behaviors or note any differences from your ICPs

• Describe their psychographics or note any differences from your ICPs

• Describe what makes this person a Non-ICP

Document all this in your Non-ICP.

It’s important that your team knows who NOT to build and market to, and why.

Integrating your Ideal Client Profiles

What to do with these ICPs?

• Organize your ICPs somewhere everyone on your team can easily access.

• Share them with your team and educate them

• Train your Sales and Marketing team to identify each ICP and speak directly to them

• Train your Delivery team to identity each ICP and provide support meeting them where they are at

• Tag your clients with ICP labels in your Client Management System or CRM so everyone on your team is clear where each client is at

Colin’s Recommendations

Cool tools and things I personally use and rave about…

If you’re trying to level up your game on Linkedin, a tool I can’t recommend enough is Taplio (not an affiliate link)

What I like about it:

• Allows me to schedule and automate my posts weeks in advance

• Allows me to auto-plug a CTA in the comments immediately after a post is published. This way I can keep my post links-free for the algorithm and instead put any CTA links in the comments.

• Has AI features that help with generating hooks and viral content ideas

• Makes it easy for me to engage with other top creator’s posts on LinkedIn, helping me build relationships and increase engagement

• Has features to automate outreach and start conversations that build relationships and find prospects for my offers.

Taplio has been a game-changer for my LinkedIn growth strategy. Which btw, if you’re not already following me on LinkedIn… connect with me here.

The Weekly Round-Up

Awesome content and things I’ve shared this past week…

• 7 Ways To Build Mental Fortitude As An Entrepreneur (LinkedIn)

• How To Save Time On Meetings With Asynchronous Updates (YouTube)

• Special Invitation to the Biz Ops Academy (you won’t want to miss this!)