How to Define Your Ideal Client [Even If You're Pre-Licensed] (Episode 75)
You know you need a niche. You’ve heard the advice, read the blogs, and listened to the podcasts. But actually defining your ideal client? That’s where many therapists get stuck. In this episode, Anna breaks down a practical, reflective process for identifying the clients you do your best work with—and why the answer starts with understanding yourself first.
Rather than treating niching as a permanent decision, Anna encourages listeners to view it as an evolving practice. She walks through how to identify the common threads among your favorite clients, uncover what makes your work uniquely effective, and use those insights to create marketing that feels more specific, authentic, and compelling.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why defining your ideal client starts with understanding what you do best as a clinician.
2️⃣ How to identify the “red threads” that connect your favorite clients and reveal your niche.
3️⃣ Why specificity in your marketing helps you attract more right-fit clients—not fewer.
4️⃣ How your niche can evolve over time without limiting your growth or opportunities.
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Hey there. Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to Marketing Therapy, episode 76. We're talking today about the concept of your ideal client.
Now I remember seven years ago when I started Walker Strategy Co. and began serving clinicians, and the idea of figuring out your ideal client or choosing a niche was like, mind blown moment for some people. Like, just the idea of picking a niche, figuring out your ideal client was, like, absolutely groundbreaking for some people. We're past that. Chances are by now you know you need a niche. You hear it everywhere. You see it everywhere. You've probably heard the concept of the ideal client. This isn't new for you, and yet figuring out who the heck that person is, what the heck that niche is, that's the hard part, right?
So you see the advice out there, pick a niche to find your client, like it's obvious, like duh, but no one actually tells you exactly how. And the reality for a lot of clinicians is you're either too new to know what to do with the information about your ideal client, about your niche, so you maybe have experience, you have exposure. You know who you like or maybe who you don't like, but not what to do with it, or you've been doing this for so long that you've never stopped to actually look at what the common themes are and pull these things out. You've just been heads down doing the work, right? Either of these, whatever camp you find yourself in, maybe you're pre-licensed, and you're like am I good enough? Am I qualified enough? Am I experienced enough to pick an ideal client or pick a niche?" Or you're so deep into this, and you're just ready to finally be lit up again by your work, right? Whatever camp you're in, we can figure this out together, and it starts with self-observation.
It starts with looking at first and foremost what you do well and what you bring into the room and then turning the lens on your client and starting to figure out who that person is that allows you to do that best work. Okay? And that's what this episode is about. I want to walk you through this process. This is a process we go through in a far more in-depth way in our Magnetic Niche Method mini course. If you haven't jumped into that, it's $47, walkerstrategyco.com/mnm, the letters M-N-M. That's a tongue twister. But the Magnetic Niche Method is my signature process for articulating a niche in this market, and I designed it after coaching hundreds and hundreds of therapists on their niche and helping them do it whether they are, like I said, brand new or deep in the work and ready to revitalize that work or step out of burnout or lean into your ideal clients.
So here we're gonna be talking about a process that I ultimately want you to remember you can come back to. This is not a one-time exercise, okay? You do not pick your niche and then be married to it for the rest of your career. You are not pigeonholing yourself. You are not closing yourself in. You are simply getting clear enough to market with intention right now. I was just kicking off with a clinician earlier today, so I just got off a kickoff call before pressing record on this episode, and she has been wrestling for a long time about, do I continue speaking to men? Do I wanna do individual female work? Do I just wanna work with couples? And we had a really great conversation, and I'm excited to see where she lands following the coaching and conversation that we had. But ultimately, I reminded her, you can change your mind. You can evolve. You can change. This does not have to stay stagnant. So please hear that message in your own ears today, that if you go through this process and you figure out an ideal client and you figure out a niche, whether it's in this episode, Magnetic Niche Method, Confident Copy, whatever it may be, that can change. This is a process. This is a strategy. This is a way of thinking and approaching the work that you do well and your marketing that you can come back to. So may that be liberating, not limiting, when it comes to figuring out what it is that you do best, okay? You can change. You should change. You're allowed to evolve. Consider viewing the idea of niching as a practice that you go through. Something that you return to and not just a box that you check in your career. Okay? All right.
So as I mentioned earlier, before you can identify your ideal client, you first, you gotta look at yourself. You gotta get really, really comfortable with what you do well, with what you bring into the room, with why you're really good at the work that you do before we can start thinking about who you're doing that work with, okay? I see a lot of clinicians jumping straight to, "Who do I wanna work with? Who do I wanna be bringing in? Who is gonna pay my fee?" Whatever that might be, instead of first and foremost, "What do I do well? What makes me excited? What lights me up? What gets me energized? What are the sessions I leave where I'm like, 'Ugh, I'm so glad this is what I chose for my life.'" That's what we gotta start with, okay? Your ideal client is ultimately defined in relationship to you. Let me say that again. Your ideal client is defined in relationship to you. What you bring, what you're good at, what lights you up, okay? So yes, your marketing is all about your client. You're gonna hear people say often that your marketing is not about you, people don't care about you, but it has to be informed about who you ultimately want to be sitting in a room with, okay?
So I love to start this process by encouraging you to reflect. To think about the sessions that have energized you the most, the clients that if you could clone an entire caseload of them, you would. Sink down into those memories, sink down into those sessions, and then do some reflections. After sessions that leave you feeling alive or fired up, maybe you had a breakthrough last week, sit with that. If you have one this week, reflect on it after. Don't just rush into the next session or be grateful and move on. Actually reflect on it. Write it down. What happened in that session? What did you bring? Where were you shining? Because yes, the client is doing the work, but not alone. You're bringing something special into the room. That's really what niching comes down to. There is a reason every client on your caseload right now, or every client on your future caseload, is going to choose you. What is that reason? If we can figure out what that reason is, then we have found ourselves a niche. Okay? But you do something special. You have the absolute power and training and experience and presence to help your clients legitimately change their lives. That is so powerful. So please don't just skim over that as if that is something that every therapist is capable of doing, because there is something special you do.
Now, in The Magnetic Niche Method, we walk you through some reflection questions on this. So before you get into even picking a niche, quote-unquote, you first reflect. You first do a little bit of journaling. What do you wanna be known for? What do you want your practice to be a destination for? When other therapists think of you, when your community thinks of you, when clients think of you... Similarly, how do you want your clients to refer to you when you're not in the room? When they're telling a friend about how wonderful it was to work with you, or they're just thinking back on how much change and transformation they experienced in their life or their marriage or their work, whatever it is. How do you hope they refer to you? What words, language, concepts? When you leave a session that lights you up, what did you do? What did you bring into the room that made it effective? 'Cause like I said, the client might be doing the work, but they're not doing it alone. There's something you brought into that room. What was it? Get curious about that. Explore it. Get comfortable with it. And ultimately, why are you good at this work? When I am sitting down with done-for-you clients, so people for whom we write their websites, I will encourage them, "Brag on yourself here. Tell me why you're good at your work. What do you do that other clinicians may not?" You've gotta get really, really comfortable owning that. That's not to say that you're perfect. It's not to say that there aren't areas for you to grow in. But the fact is, you are good at what you do, and you gotta get clear on why in order for this niching and marketing thing to truly sink in and to truly be effective.
Now, if you're sitting here and you're pre-licensed or you're brand new to private practice, you might think, "Well, I haven't been doing this long enough to know." You have likely served some clients you either know were a great fit, you would love to do work with more clients like that, or that you know were not. Both of those are powerful data. So again, look at what you've got so far. Look at what you've got under your belt. Think about what your ideal caseload would look like, and reflect from there. Because again, you can come back to this. Just as you start putting yourself out there in one way and you gather more data about how you do your best work and who you do your best work with, then we can pivot, we can shape, we can refine. But you've already probably got more data and more insight into this than you're giving yourself credit for. So just some encouragement for those pre-licensed folks or those thinking maybe, "I don't have enough experience yet." Yes, you do. You have enough experience to know at least a little bit about what it is that you bring into the room, why you do this well, and who are the right or not right fits for you. That's good enough for now, and you can always come back later.
So first, like I said, we're looking at yourself, getting really comfortable with, "You know what? I am a dang good clinician." When you choose a niche from that place, it is so much more life-giving. We can trust that you are going to be choosing a niche that is actually going to fill you up. You're not just choosing a niche because it's, quote-unquote, profitable. And we can know that you're choosing a niche from hopefully a posture of that abundance of confidence of knowing that you do things well, and there is just something to be said for that energy. We can't put a finger on it. We can't measure it, but when you feel good about the work that you do, when you feel good about how you're marketing yourself and who you're speaking to, the results are just better. Like I said, I k- I'm not a particularly woo person, I've said that before, but man, there's just something to be said for that. So starting there, sinking down into your best sessions, your best clients, your best days. What's happening there? What are you doing? How are you showing up? Knowing that first and foremost.
Then, then we're gonna start talking about your clients. This is where we turn the lens on them and we start thinking about, "Okay, when I'm doing my best work, who am I doing that with?" Who are you sitting across that room from, right? Now, if you're like a lot of the therapists that I work with, you might be saying something like, "But Anna, my ideal clients are so different. I like working with couples, but I also like working with dudes in their 30s, and I also like working with teens." You know, whatever that might be. Maybe you feel like they're just really, really different. I hear you. And on paper they might not look anything alike. Their ages might be different. They might have different presenting issues. Whatever. I hear you. There's still a niche in there. Because at the end of the day, like I said, there's a reason they pick you. There's a reason, so we're gonna figure out what that is. I like to think of them as common denominators. So if I were to hold up five of your ideal clients, say, so call to mind three to five of just the best clients you've ever worked with, there's some common denominator here, right? There are some threads that run across all of these clients because you are the constant. You brought something consistent to the room. There was a reason all of those clients chose you, and the clients who respond to you, who respond to your approach and the way that you work and how you show up in the room, they share more than you might think. So maybe give them a little bit credit about how they might be similar.
I often find that the resistance to looking for those patterns, the resistance to finding what those common denominators are, is because you don't wanna leave anyone out. Well, I wanna be able to bring in this person and that person, the other person, so therefore I can't be specific. We know this. Specificity is the name of the game right now, and specificity does not mean you're refusing other clients. It just means that you are being for someone. You are showing up as the right fit for someone. When you attempt to market yourself without knowing who you're talking to, without holding in your mind a particular type of person or whatever that might be, you end up resonating with absolutely no one. Okay, so we have to know who we're speaking to here.
So again, hold in your mind three to five of just the best clients you've ever worked with. What qualities did they share? Did they have qualities in their personality? Were they all, like, really rigid type A people? Were they creative thinkers, deep thinkers? You're probably gonna say, "Anna, they were motivated." I understand that. Motivated is not itself a personality trait. They're probably motivated therapeutically, and I understand that you wanna do your best work with those folks. What else? What about outside the therapy room? Were there personality common denominators? Maybe it was in their demographics. Maybe when you look at it, that client I was mentioning that I just kicked off with earlier, we realized as we went through the kickoff exercises that, hmm, we're speaking to people in a little bit of a later stage of life. We're not speaking to 20s and 30s. We're speaking to 40s and 50s and, and above with her ideal clients. Maybe it is demographics, and that opens us up to something. Maybe it's similarities in their presenting issues. So not so much outside the therapy room, right, their personality or their demographics, but maybe it is what they brought to the table. It was that tendency toward people pleasing or that over-functioning even though they don't have the words for it. Maybe it was repeated patterns in their relationships that they're noticing. Maybe it was the presenting issue that was the common denominator. Maybe it was in their goals, what they wanted to accomplish in therapy. Maybe it was a desire for better relationships, to not be the type of parent that they had. Like, maybe it was not so much in what brought them in, but in where they were wanting to go. Or maybe it was in what they were wanting out of therapy. Again, holding in your mind those clients, were they all showing up, say, "I want skills. I want something concrete out of this process," or, "I, I wanna figure out what the root of this issue is. I wanna do the deep stuff," whatever that, whatever that might be? Was the common denominator more in what they wanted out of therapy with you?
This is where we can find those common denominators. And in the Magnetic Niche Method and Confident Copy, we call those red threads. Find the red threads and start pulling. Pull on them. Go look for what those commonalities are, and you're gonna start to see, wow, there is more that ties together these clients than I originally thought. And that is where the heart of your niche lives. That is what allows you to speak to a variety of different clients, if that is what you enjoy, and still have a centered and focused and clear message that makes you compelling, that makes you specific, even though you work with a handful of different types of people. It's a really, really powerful process when you sit down and do this exercise. Now, the common denominators you are likely to land on are gonna tend to fall into, like, one or two of the following buckets. It can be a certain type of person, so demographics or personality wise. It can be a certain type of problem, a presenting issue, a symptom, something that, that brings them in, a circumstance. It could be a desired outcome or goal. Again, like the cycle breaking, things like that. Or a certain type of therapy experience. So one to two of those is really where the heart of your niche is going to live. You can likely find some commonalities in all four of those categories, and that's fantastic, but usually one or two are gonna rise to the surface as your primary red threads.
This is where your ideal client definition is going to actually start to become marketable. Not just who I like working with, but who you are speaking to in your copy and in your content and in your social media and in your networking. Not just who you like to work with, but who are you speaking to? This is where you start to find those golden nuggets that make you memorable and that make you specific in the eyes of the people that you most enjoy. Now, when you know who you're talking to, when you go through this process and you get really, really clear, not just on what you bring to the room, but on who you're actually talking to and who that person is that you're sitting across from, people start to see themselves in your marketing, and that is what they are craving, especially in the age of AI and everything that we're up against in this current market. That's how you get on consults and people say, "I read your website and it felt like you were talking to me." Well, yeah, 'cause you were, right? When you start to talk to someone in your marketing, everything gets clearer for them on the other side. Now, when you don't know who you're talking to and when you try and sort of spray and pray, your marketing tries to speak to absolutely everyone and it lands with no one. The metaphor I've used before is how are you gonna catch fish, with a wide net or a deep one? When you get deep, when you use your marketing to deeply speak to a particular type of person, you're gonna catch way more fish, way more clients than if you spread yourself thin across the surface. Vague messaging is going to produce vague results, especially right now.
Now, reminder, this doesn't mean that you can't talk to multiple different types of people. You can enjoy variety in your caseload. I love getting to see our Confident Copy graduates go out and market their practice and pulling in different types. That keeps them energized and revitalized in their work. Maybe that is what you want. You can still have a niche and enjoy different types of clients. Those are not mutually exclusive. This is also why this exercise is so worth revisiting. Because as your practice evolves, as you evolve as a clinician, your ideal client is going to sharpen and refine and evolve as well. And if your marketing doesn't keep up with it, then we're in trouble. Your marketing has to be updated as your ideal client is updated, as you yourself as a clinician are updated. This is often the culprit for the established clinicians that we work with, the people who are like, "I know I do great work. I've worked with a ton of different clients across my career. I know what makes me excited." But my marketing doesn't reflect it at all. You wouldn't know looking at their website or any of their marketing that they actually are for a specific type of person because they spent so long doing that generalist thing. So if you're someone who knows, oh my goodness, there is a space for me, there is something I want to carve out and a, an ideal client I wanna speak to, we gotta do this first so that it can sharpen everything else that you're doing out there to bring in those folks.
All right, I hope this was helpful for you. I love this process if you couldn't hear my energy. Coaching on niching, seeing people unlock this in their practice is one of my favorite things because it genuinely unlocks everything else. When you know what it is that you do well and who you're speaking to, you have the grounds upon which to build a marketing foundation and a practice that actually makes you excited. I want you to get excited about opening up your calendar and loving who you're seeing there. That's what I want for you, and it starts with knowing who the heck you want that person to be, right? And why you're really, really good at the work that you do when you're doing it with the right person. So a reminder, this process is a process. It's a practice. It's something to come back to. Maybe you earmark this episode and come back in a year and reflect on this again. You are evolving as a clinician. You're getting better every day. You're getting to know your ideal clients better. Please make sure that your marketing keeps up with that. Please don't leave your marketing, your website behind as you get better and you improve and you refine who you wanna be working with. Bring that up to speed so that those clients can see themselves in what it is that you're putting out there.
As I mentioned, Magnetic Niche Method is a fantastic starting point for this. If you want to explore this, whether you're pre-licensed and brand new or years in and, and wanting to refine, walkerstrategyco.com/mnm, Magnetic Niche Method can guide you through that. And if you know that you want to take this clarity and head straight into your website copy and your marketing, then Confident Copy is the place for you. The self-study version is available at all times. You can jump in right now, walkerstrategyco.com/cc. Or if you're interested in live feedback, if you want some guidance and additional insight into your niche and your website as you go, amazing. Then join us for Confident Copy Live. The wait list for that will be opening next month. You'll be on the wait list for the August cohort if you know you want that live experience and coaching over the course of 16 weeks, then you'll wanna keep an eye out for that. I'll let you guys know here on the podcast as soon as that wait list is open. All right, go forth, niche well, get to know that ideal client, and I'll see you in our next episode.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Confident Copy: https://walkerstrategyco.com/cc
Done-for-you services: https://walkerstrategyco.com/services
Episode 74: https://walkerstrategyco.com/show-notes/74
The Walker Strategy Co website: https://walkerstrategyco.com
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About Marketing Therapy
Marketing Therapy is the podcast where therapists learn how to market their private practices without burnout, self-doubt, or sleazy tactics. Hosted by Anna Walker—marketing coach, strategist, and founder of Walker Strategy Co—each episode brings you clear, grounded advice to help you attract the right-fit, full-fee clients and grow a practice you feel proud of.
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