Flink Ideal Client Profile

---
name: flink-ideal-client-profile
description: Writes your Ideal Client Profile from your best past engagements, naming the situations clients were in when they called, the job they hired you for and the words they used, plus who you are not for. Use for "run flink-ideal-client-profile", "who do I help", "write my ideal client profile", "who should I write for on LinkedIn", "describe my best clients", "jobs to be done for my clients", "who am I not for", part of the Claude Playbook for Authentic LinkedIn Presence Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Ideal Client Profile

## When To Use
You post about everything because you never wrote down who you help. Use this before you write a headline or a single post, when you need to answer one question from your own record: what was going on for the clients you did your best work for, at the moment they picked up the phone?

## When Not To Use
If you have no past clients yet, there is nothing to draw on; write down the situations you expect and test them in real conversations first. If you already know who you help and want the market moments to post about, run Buying Situations Map.

## Inputs
- Three to five of your best past engagements (you choose how many and which): a line on each, plus the first emails, call notes or proposal intro where the client described the problem; and any work you turned down.
- Optional: keep the finished profile in a Project (beta) so it sits beside every draft.
If you have none of this, I start from your memory of one engagement, ask for the client's own words, and mark the output as a first draft.

## Approach
Jobs to be done, as the Christensen Institute describes it: people hire a product or a service to make progress in a particular circumstance, and the job has functional, social and emotional sides. A persona says "founder, 40s, busy"; a job says, for example, "just lost their head of sales, with a board meeting coming". The failure this prevents is the invented ideal client: a tidy portrait nobody has ever paid you, which makes every post sound like it is for everyone.

## Workflow
1. Ask at most three questions: which engagements were your best and why, where the client's first words about the problem live (inbox, notes, proposal), and what work you decline.
2. For each engagement, write the circumstance when they called: what had just happened, in plain terms. Push past "they needed help with strategy" to the event that made it urgent that month.
3. Write the progress they wanted, then the job on three sides: functional (what had to get done), social (how they wanted to be seen by a board, a team, a partner), emotional (what they wanted to stop feeling). If an engagement has no clear social or emotional side, leave it blank rather than guess.
4. Pull their words from the emails or notes you supplied, quoted exactly, each with its source. A paraphrase is labelled as your summary, never dressed as a quote.
5. Lay the engagements side by side and find the situations that repeat. A situation seen once stays in, marked "single case".
6. Write the "not for" list in your words: situations you decline, do badly, or that drain you. This list is what lets you post narrowly without feeling you are turning work away. Then remove client names and identifying details from the output; keep your own key privately if you want one.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Ideal Client Profile
## Engagements and the job they hired you for
| Engagement (no name) | When they called | Progress wanted | Functional | Social | Emotional |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Engagement A] | [what had just happened] | [progress] | [what had to get done] | [how they wanted to be seen] | [what they wanted to stop feeling] |

## Their words
| Quote, exactly as written or said | Source (email, call note, proposal) and date |
|---|---|
| "[client's words]" | [source] |

## Situations that repeat
1. [Situation] (seen in [number] engagements)
2. [Situation] (single case)

## Not for
- [Situation you decline, in your words]

## Decision
[You confirm which repeating situations define who you write for, and what goes on the not-for list, by [date], before you run the Buying Situations Map.]
```

## Done When
- Every situation traces to a named past engagement in your inputs.
- Every quote carries its source; nothing paraphrased sits in quotation marks.
- The not-for list has at least one item in your words.
- No client name or identifying detail appears in the output.

## Quality Bar
- Circumstances describe an event, not a demographic or a company type.
- The three sides of the job are kept apart; a blank beats a guess.
- Clients appear as situations, never as described individuals.
- Every situation and every quoted word comes from your own past work; Claude never invents a client.

## Next
Run flink-buying-situations-map (Buying Situations Map) to turn the situations into post themes.

## About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).