In general, I do branding and marketing work for three kinds of clients:

  1. Individuals
  2. Local small businesses
  3. Start-up companies

I enjoy working with these kinds of clients for several reasons.  Primarily, though, they tend to have a deep understanding of their mission, some kind of core driver that makes them unique, and a complete misunderstand of what I do for a living.  (Most people think "branding" is a field reserved for multi-billionaires like Microsoft).

Above all, I like to work with these smaller clients because I can see something of myself in them: they have a goal and will stop at nothing to achieve it.  At the same time, they are also unwilling to compromise on their values in order to do so.  I admire and respect this quality, and I devote a great deal of my time to finding clients that fit the bill.

Yes, I even turn away business from time to time because a potential client doesn't fit my model.

I've worked for a very long time to understand my perfect customer.  As a matter of fact, I just completed a contract for a local church that needed a new website.  Their old site was fairly robust, but difficult to maintain and didn't adequately represent their brand.  I took the time to understand where the church leadership wanted to take their site in the future and worked hard to accommodate those goals by developing a rich, easy to navigate, useful website.

Now that you know a little more about my perfect customer, who is yours?  How much time have you invested in defining him, her, or them?