Create Your Ideal Clients List

Chapter

Getting Clients

Experience

Just Starting OutBooked My First 3 ClientsGrowing & Scaling

Format

VideoGuideTracker

Lesson Description

How to build a targeted, validated list of leads to reach out to over the next 2 years in under 3 hours.

Suggested Order

Tags

Ideal ClientsOutreachCold Pitching

Est. Time to Complete

2.5 hours

‣

Video Transcript

Hey freelancer, I am going to teach you how to find your ideal clients today. So this is what we're going to talk about today. First, we're going to go over what an ideal client is, what an ideal clients list is, and then how you can define your ideal clients so that you can then go and find them and create your own ideal clients list.

So what is an ideal client? That's really for you to decide, of course. But your ideal client is going to be someone who can pay your rates, hopefully, are within your desired niche, and can either help you earn what you want, give you a well-respected byline, or get you major exposure. So if they can't afford your rates, they should be giving you some other benefit to help you build your business.

And I would only recommend working with clients who can't afford your rates if you're at the beginning of your business and you've had less than three clients in that niche or service, and you're still trying to build your business. So it's basically just someone who's going to find a solution to their problem in whatever your services are. So the easiest ways to define your ideal client is by filling in these blanks.

So pause this video here and take a moment to fill this out. If you can't fill this out, I'd recommend doing the services workbook if you don't know what your services are, or go through the find your niche workbook to figure out the type of clients and companies you want to work with if you don't know your niche. And the whole value part at the end of this sentence, everything from who after, is optional.

So if you can't fill that part out, that's okay. But just pause right here. I'm going to keep going, but you can pause to fill out this sentence before you move on to the next step.

All right, so now that you know sort of your proposition for what you want your ideal clients to look like, we are going to talk about the ideal clients list. Your ideal clients list needs to be large enough to play the numbers game that is getting clients. I always recommend having at least 200 potential clients so that you only have to sit down and make this list once, and then it can last you two to four years, and your getting clients routine can just seamlessly keep rolling long term, and you don't have to worry too much about it.

There are target benchmarks here on the screen. You can pick the one that makes sense for you, whether you're full-time or part-time, whether you want to do LinkedIn direct outreach or email cold pitching. If you want to do both, you can cut each in half and combine them.

I personally recommend knowing how to do both, but it really depends on your niche which method you choose. If you're not sure which method to choose, I am making a video soon about email versus LinkedIn. There's also data about it in the Get Clients on LinkedIn webinar workshop.

It's in the Freelance Resource Library. If you want more on that, definitely check that out, or just shoot me a DM or a shame-free question to figure that out. Now that you know your benchmarks and how many ideal clients you need, let's talk about where to find them.

There is an entire list below with actual hyperlinks to all of these options in this lesson. If you're looking for that, or you just want to copy and paste it into ChatGVT and ask which one would be best for your industry, go for it. That is an option, but these are the main ways that I recommend looking for your ideal clients.

You do not need to do all of these options. You could literally just pick one, run with it, and be done. I personally used Crunchbase to do the majority of building my ideal clients list, and then I occasionally will see other ideal clients around on LinkedIn, and then I slowly add them to my list as I see them, but the foundation of my list was made by Crunchbase.

I have helped more than 200 freelancers make their ideal clients lists, so these are the ways that I've gathered up to help you guys. Every single one of these slides has a best for option, so the industries or niches that this is going to be best for, as well as a description and how to use it. The deck for this presentation is in the lesson below, but also the step-by-step instructions and information is all in the lesson below as well, so if you're having trouble keeping up, don't worry.

Notes have already been taken for you. If you don't need to take notes to process, you do not have to. Crunchbase is just a database search engine situation for startups.

You can just click search Crunchbase, click companies, and then once you're in the free trial, oh, apparently I've been mistaken for a bot. Once you're in the free trial, you can pop in the parameters on this side that I recommend. You can screenshot these or you can just look at the lesson below where they are written out.

I recommend just doing the free trial of Crunchbase. Do not pay for it. It is way too expensive.

If you've already done the free trial, you can use another email address. It's just so expensive. I would never recommend paying full price for Crunchbase, so that is what that looks like.

Try it out. If you're having trouble navigating it, let me know. I'm happy to help.

Some other options you could do is an industry marketplace like REI for outdoors, Sephora for beauty. Course Report has every coding boot camp that exists. Wayfair has a bunch of furniture companies.

AppSumo is for SaaS. They have a ton of good stuff. Chewy if you're in the pet industry.

iHerb if you're in wellness. Featured Customers has a bunch of software options as well, so those are nice because you can just copy and paste their vendor list and that's your ideal clients list right there. Some other options are directories if you're looking for mission-driven companies or companies with certain types of certifications as an indication of being your ideal client, then there are tons of directories out there.

There's a huge list in this lesson below that is not completely on here because it couldn't fit on this slide. You can also just ask Chat2BT for some directories in your specific industry. Another good option is just seeing who's hiring on job boards.

There are niche job boards. There general job boards, but if you see who's hiring, it can give you a good indication of places that might also hire freelancers and you can look up competitors of the people who are hiring on job boards and add them to your ideal clients list. It's not the most efficient and it's not necessarily like they're guaranteed to be hiring, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be hiring freelancers, so just keep that in mind.

This is the first method I ever used to create my ideal clients list. It's just brainstorming and if you want a chart to brainstorm all of these categories and the target audience info, the find your niche workbook in the follow the money exercise has literally a workbook for all of these things, so definitely go check that out. It's in the resource library.

It can help you really refine your niche and take a deep dive on your options if you're feeling stuck or you're feeling like you're having a hard time finding your ideal clients and it might also make you realize like, oh maybe I'm in the wrong niche. So this is really the brainstorming is just like the find your niche workbook. It's definitely pretty time intensive.

You could use ChatGBT to help you move this along and just have it brainstorm all this stuff for you if you sort of know your niche, but I really enjoyed doing it when I originally did it when I didn't know who my ideal client was or what I wanted to offer. And lastly, the devil we know, ChatGBT. It's also a great option for brainstorming.

I have a bunch of prompts here for you that you can try. You can just copy and paste them into ChatGBT and anywhere there are brackets, make sure you fill it in with your own information or you can use any of the methods I just showed you and ask ChatGBT to help you with that. I think you can literally upload this presentation as a PDF and it will read it and help you define a list of your ideal clients.

So that's always an option. Anything that is like not super creative, I highly recommend outsourcing to ChatGBT. All right.

So now that you know how to find your ideal clients, oh, I will say also the methods that are most likely to get you companies that are definitely going to be able to pay you well are really going to be the directories, the industry marketplace, and Crunchbase. Crunchbase because you can validate their funding. Industry marketplaces because they wouldn't be there if they weren't spending money on marketing.

And directories, like most companies are not going the extra mile to register for things like these directories and certifications if they don't have money to hire. So I'm just putting that out there. The job boards are probably guaranteed to be hiring, not necessarily that they're going to be able to pay you well.

And brainstorming is really a shot in the dark. So just keep that in mind when you're making your ideal clients list. If your rates are more than, say, $50 an hour, you're going to want to lean towards the things that you know are going to have more funding.

So let's run through the ideal clients process now that you know sort of each piece of the puzzle. So I really want you to prioritize efficiency here. I don't want you to go down any research rabbit holes.

What I am asking for is a list of 200 ideal clients. It is meant to make you feel less lost when you go to network and pitch, not more lost. All you need to do is strategically curate this list now so you can use it long term.

First, you're going to define your ideal client with that little prompt or with the brainstorm options in the find your niche workbook like that last slide I showed you. You might want to make a list of the types of companies you want to work for, potential ideal clients and brands that you know off the top of your head if you already know. Say you want to write for beauty, start with whatever beauty products you already own.

Great start to your list, right? The second thing you're going to do is research. What I mean by researching is just finding the names of companies of your ideal clients. It's not in-depth prospecting.

You don't need to know whether they have a blog or not yet. You don't need to know whether they hire freelancers, how much they offer, how much revenue they make, how much funding they have. You don't necessarily need to know that to make your ideal clients list.

It can be helpful, but that is not something that you need to spend hours researching right now because you're going to do that research later when you're going to get clients anyway. And this process will take you days if you do that for every 200 potential companies. You're going to end up doing for like 500 because you're going to eliminate.

The 200 companies is a benchmark so that you have wiggle room. You are going to eliminate at least 50 of those companies once you realize that they're not your ideal clients later. Right now, we just want to make the massive list, okay? So number three, get specific.

I only want to see specific company and business names on your ideal clients list. We are not doing general types of products and things like that, okay? And then lastly, I want you to add your ideal clients list to a tracker. This could be the ideal clients tracker that's in the resource library, that's in Notion.

You could make your own ideal clients tracker in Asana or in a spreadsheet. You could use a calendar and a notepad. You could use a CRM.

I don't care. I just want you to be able to have a way to track what phase of the getting clients routine your contacts are in and what date you need to follow up with them without you forgetting to follow up. That is like the criteria of the ideal clients tracker.

And if you need a template to start with but you don't want to use Notion, you can always open the Notion template so you have the phases that I have in there and you can like replicate it in another tool, okay? So you're going to brainstorm, you're going to get specific, and then you're going to track. And we're not going to procrastinate, we're not going to waste time, and we're not going to go down any rabbit holes, okay? Now, if you are still in need of help with your ideal clients list at this point, don't be afraid to shoot me a DM or just comment on this lesson. The next lesson I would recommend after this is get clients on LinkedIn.

Before you can go out and do your getting clients routine or email cold pitching, you’ll need to know who to reach out to. That’s your ideal client.

In the MeltzerSeltzer community, we do things efficiently and strategically (while still keeping it real and human). Creating an ideal clients list will help you feel less lost when you need to get clients and maximize your time (and income in the long run).

What is an Ideal Client?

An ideal client is basically just the perfect client for you. An ideal client is someone who finds the perfect solution to their problems in the services or products that your business provides.

Your ideal clients:

can pay you what you ask for your work
are within your desired niche
help you earn what you want, give you a well-respected byline, or get you major exposure

What is an Ideal Clients List?

I recommend creating a list of about 200 potential clients before you start the other lessons in this chapter.

Getting clients is a numbers game so it’s important that you have a list big enough to send:

~100 connection requests a month (if you’re going full time)
~40 connection requests per month (part time)
~50 email cold pitches per month (full time)
~20 email cold pitches (part time) for your first six months

You’ll just pick 1 of these target benchmarks based on the method you choose (LinkedIn or email cold pitching). You’ll be sending connection requests or emails to multiple different people at each company on your list so you may only work through 10-15 companies per month at most.

Learn more about this in →

To maximize your time, making this list ~200 companies long will have the list lasting you 2-4 years. You can continue to add to it over time as you see new companies you might want to target, but I want you to sit down and do this process of finding your first 200 companies just once ever 2-4 if possible.

That way, you can focus on doing your as efficiently as possible so you’ll only be spending 1-5 hours per week on getting clients.

Define your Ideal Client(s)

Okay, now let’s determine who your ideal client is. This is actually my favorite part of the getting clients process. It’s so fun to dream about who you’ll get to write for!

Grab your or if you just know your niche already, have it top of mind.

Fill in the blanks: I offer [service] for [type of company/client you want to work with] (optionally, you can add who [value, industry, action that your company/client models] to get more specific).

Fill in that sentence as many times as you need to in order to cover all of the services and niches you wan to cover. (the simpler the better, though)

Examples:

I offer content writing for coding bootcamps who teach in english.

I offer email marketing for garage grown outdoor gear.

I write SEO blogs for beauty products.

I write product descriptions for clothing companies.

I offer LinkedIn content marketing for female startup founders.

I offer creative copywriting and strategy retainers for family-focused product-based businesses.

I write website copy for heart-lead nonprofits and certified B-Corps.

How to find your Ideal Clients

There are so many ways you can find your ideal clients – but I recommend starting with just 1 method and then if that’s not enough to fill your list, trying another one (or two). You don’t need to try all of these methods!!

Crunchbase

This database of startups is a great place to find businesses with funding in specific industries.

⚡️ Check out for the specific search parameters I recommend + a video tutorial of how to use Crunchbase!!

Industry Marketplaces

Websites like:

REI
Sephora
Course Report
AppSumo
Wayfair
Farfetch
iHerb
Chewy
Featured Customers

have massive lists of brands within a specific industry/niche that you can literally just copy and paste as your ideal clients list.

I made my entire first Ideal Clients List from coding bootcamps that were listed on Course Report!

Directories

There are certification and industry directories that you can use to find companies with common values, interests, or niches.

Here are just a few that are value-focused:

The BCorp Directory
1% for the Planet
Fair Trade Certified Directory
Certified Organic Directory
LEED-Certified Projects Directory
The Vegan Society Trademark Directory
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certificate Holder Directory
CarbonNeutral® Company Directory
Social Enterprise Alliance Directory
Certified Humane Directory
Green Seal Certified Directory

And a few that are more technical-focused:

ISO Certified Companies Directory
AWS Partner Network (APN)
Microsoft Partner Directory
Cisco Certified Partners Directory
SAP Partner Finder
Adobe Certified Partners Directory
Oracle Partner Network (OPN) Directory
VMware Partner Locator
Autodesk Certified Professionals Directory
CompTIA Authorized Partners Directory

Anyway, you get the idea! If you’re struggling to find directories (there are thousands), try asking ChatGPT for help!

ChatGPT or Claude

The devil we know (ChatGPT or Claude ) can be a really helpful resource for brainstorming Ideal Clients. Here are a few prompts you can try:

I’m a freelancer and I offer [service] for [type of company/client you want to work with] (optionally, you can add who [value, industry, action that your company/client models] to get more specific)
Can you help me come up with a list of potential ideal clients?

I’m looking for companies in the [niche/industry]. Can you provide a list of directories, marketplaces, or databases where I can find businesses in this industry?

I’m looking for [niche]-specific freelance job boards. I offer [your services]. Can you make me a list of every job board you can think of for this niche and service(s)?

"I specialize in [service]. Can you help me brainstorm 20 types of businesses or organizations that might benefit most from this service?"

What are some popular industry events, conferences, or expos for [specific industry]? Companies that sponsor or attend these could be potential clients.

Can you list trade associations or professional organizations in [niche/industry]? I want to look at their member directories for potential clients.

Can you help me brainstorm 50 companies in [niche/industry] that are mid-size or larger? I’d like to target clients with budgets for [specific service].

Can you help me brainstorm a list of [number] companies in [industry/niche] that recently raised funding or launched new products?

What are some job boards or platforms that often feature freelance opportunities in [industry/niche]?

Job Boards

While I don’t really recommend using Job Boards and applying for gigs as a main source of getting clients, they’re a great way to see who’s hiring…

You can use Job Boards like:

Outdoor Industry Jobs
Outspring
Basecamp Outdoor Jobs
All Things Freelance Writing
ProBlogger Job Board
Contently
LinkedIn Jobs
WriterAccess
Superpath
ClearVoice
Freelance Writing Jobs
Wellness Living Job Board
YogaTrade
NutritionJobs
Health eCareers
Travel Massive Jobs
Matador Network
Remote Year Marketplace
Outside Network
The Dots
FitnessJobs
Conservation Job Board
OutsiderJobs
Product Hunt Maker Jobs
AngelList Talent
Motherly Writers Program
Scary Mommy Writers

There are TONS of niche-specific and general job boards out there. If you’re having trouble finding them, don’t be afraid to ask ChatGPT for help!

To see who’s hiring and/or look up “[company name] alternatives” to also find their competitors and add them to your Ideal Clients List.

Brainstorming

This method is the most time-intensive but will work if none of the other options here did…

Watch the video lesson for this method here:

Write down (in a Google Doc or some other way you take notes digitally), at least 5 things (or as many as you can) for each of these categories:

Products
Brands
Places (physical locations)
Services
Activities
Publications

Then, expand your list to include information about your niche’s target audience:

Every product they might use
Where they finds information
What they read, watch, or listen to
influential people they’d love
places/stores they visit frequently

Once you’ve got all that, create a list of specific brands that offer the things you brainstormed and add those to your Ideal Clients List!

How to actually create your Ideal Clients List

Step 1: Brainstorm

First, define your ideal client. This prompt might help:

I offer [service] for [type of company/client you want to work with] (optionally, you can add who [value, industry, action that your company/client models] to get more specific).

You might even make a list of the types of companies you could work for and potential ideal clients/brands you know off the top of your head.

Step 2: Research

Using the methods above start researching and brainstorming potential Ideal Clients. Your research should only focus on finding company names not in-depth prospecting.

You DO NOT need to know:

if they have a blog/linkedin page/etc. relevant to the service you’re offering
if they hire freelancers
everything about the company
specific people who work there
if they’re the perfect client for you

… right now. You can easily and quickly eliminate them from your list later. Stay focused and just make a massive list of companies.

Context switching and researching every single company on a list of 200 companies is a great way to waste your time and procrastinate the actual act of getting clients (aka sending email cold pitches and connection requests on LinkedIn!!).

Step 3: Get Specific

Only put specific company/business names (revenue generating entities) on your actual Ideal Clients List!!

Step 4: Track

Add your ideal clients list to a tracker. You need to be tracking your getting clients activities (a.k.a. direct outreach or outbound marketing) whether you’re getting them on LinkedIn, via email cold pitching or some other way.

You’ll never be able to keep up with follow ups (which is how you’ll really get your clients) if you don’t track!

I recommend using or something similar (you can make your own in Asana, a spreadsheet, or another tool you prefer) – check out if you don’t like Notion.

⚡️ Pro Tips

Exporting Your List from Crunchbase

You can’t export your list directly from Crunchbase unless you pay for a subscription. But, us Pop Clubbers are scrappy and have a cheeky ‘lil workaround for you.

Take screenshot of each page of your results using Go Full Page (you’ll need to be using Google Chrome (the browser) to use this free plugin) or CleanShot X’s scrolling capture feature if you’re on Mac.
Pop over to ChatGPT or Cluade and input this prompt:

I need your help turning these screenshots into copy and pasteable text. Can you take only the names of the companies in these screenshots and turn them into text for me? I have a few screenshots. I’ll send them to you one at a time. You can just reply in this chat thread.

Once it replies that it understands the assignment, start sending it the screenshots one at a time.
Copy and paste the results into your tracker.

How to import a big list into Notion

Once you’ve got your ideal clients list, you can bulk import it into your notion by:

Find the “Table” view (or create a new table view).

In the top left-hand corner of the tracker, you’ll see “board” highlighted in gray. If you’re on a small screen, click “board” and you’ll see other view options. On a larger screen, choose “# more” to the right of “board” to see more options.

Once you’re in the table view, find the “filter” icon near the blue “new” button and filter by tags → Ideal Clients. That way, anything you import will automatically get tagged as an “ideal client” and end up in the first column in the “board” view of your tracker.
Scroll to the bottom of the table and click “new page.” A box will pop up with a blinking cursor. Click outside of the table (anywhere to the left) and the box should turn blue.
Head to your ideal clients list (a spreadsheet, doc, note, etc. will work as long as each company name is on a new line or in a new cell). Copy all the company names. Go back to Notion and just type command + V or win + V to paste the company names into your Notion tracker.

Now you’ve got a tracker full of your ideal clients 🎉