July Retrospective: Back in July 2014, I wrote a daily series exploring the realities of navigating the creative economy. Twelve years later, looking back at these entries (and my original awful hand-drawn illustrations!), I’m struck by how the core truths of a creative career remain completely timeless. Each day this month, I’m opening up the archive to share these foundational lessons—with a few modern reflections layered in.

If you’re a new creative graduate looking to find your footing in the creative economy, a Gen X looking to pivot into a creative business, a side-hustler or someone who just wants to up their creative business game, there’s something for you in this series. Just don’t judge my drawings 😉

Profile Your Customer

Alright, you’ve got a niche and you know who you are targeting for your product or service. Now you want to spent time understanding everything you can about them.

You want to know their hopes, their dreams, & their fears. What gets them excited? Where else do they spend their money? What priorities influence their buying decisions?

Spend time reading their media (what newspapers and magazines do they read? What’s on their best-seller list?). Find out where they hang out online. Locate forums that target your niche audience. Spend some time reading their posts – it will give you insight into their major concerns. You’ll also pick up the language that they use.

Social media is a great way to learn about people. You can do searches for your demographic (niche) and find suitable candidates. You can then ‘follow’ them and read what they post. Look at the photos they share, the links they post. This will give you a lot of information about them.

At the end of this exploration, you want to create a profile of your ideal customer. Give them a name. Describe all their characteristics, what motivates them, what their priorities are and what their pains are. The clearer a portrait you paint, the easier it will be to market to this ideal customer.

Pinterest is a great tool for profiling. You can set up a secret board or your ‘ideal customer’ and pin images and links to it. This will give you a composite picture of your ideal customer.

The more you understand your target customer, the easier it will be to market to them. Your work will resonate with them because it will answer their needs and solve their problems. This makes your job a whole lot easier.

Action: spend time writing down words related to your target audience. Bookmark some sites they visit. Collect some images that speak to them. Set up files for storing information on your target customer.

Stuck? Use the comments box below to share with us your target customer. Maybe we can help you come up with some more words to describe them.

Longevity in a creative career isn’t accidental—it’s built on strategy.

While the landscape shifts, the core principles of thriving as a creative freelancer haven’t changed. For deeper, modern frameworks on building a sustainable creative practice:

• Read the Book: Looking for a step-by-step field guide to building a resilient career in the creative economy? Pick up my recent book The Thriving Creative: Successful Freelancing in the Creative Economy available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and from my publisher Routledge.
• Stay Connected: Join my community and to receive the complete 31-day hand-drawn playbook as a single PDF at the end of the month. Sign up below.