Ideal Client Avatar? Try This Instead: Finding Your Muse
“Ideal client avatar" feels extractive. Demographics. Pain points. Buying behavior. It feels un-human.
A muse is different. She's someone specific. Someone real. Someone you want in your world. An actual person.
Here's how to find yours.
Start with an old version of you
You can only lead from lived experience. So your muse is often an old version of you: A few years back, mid-struggle, before you had the thing you now teach.
Ask yourself:
What did she believe, back then?
What were her core values?
What kind of person was she at her core?
What did she want that she didn't have language for yet?
What was she tired of putting up with?
What pisses her off?
What does she wish were different?
Know how she spends her time
Her actual life.
Where does she get coffee?
What movement class or yoga studio does she love?
Which wellness providers does she already trust?
What groups does she show up for?
What does her weekend look like?
Know where she pays attention online
The podcast she never misses
The Substack she's read for years
The one email she actually opens
The accounts she loves, not just follows
Know where she goes for advice
Which local Facebook groups?
Book club? Knitting circle? Mom's group?
Get specific about what she wants
Where is she right now? What’s her current reality, her situation, her perspective?
Where does she want to be instead?
What's the gap between the two?
Name your unique role
What challenge are you uniquely built to help her with?
What's the thing you see that other practitioners miss?
What did you have to live through that now makes you the right guide for her?
What do you want to be different for her, after working with you?
Exclusion is the point!
Good marketing excludes the majority of people.
99% of the world isn't going to want what you're offering. That frees you up to speak clearly to the 1% who's actually your muse.
Marketing isn't about your offer. It's about her. The clearer you get on who she is, the more your words will land.
Bottom line: get clear on who you're for. Everything else — your offers, your copy, your network — follows from that.
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Weeklyish Musings goes out roughly once a week with reflections on building a business + life that doesn't ask you to extract from yourself to survive.
