How to Find Your Ideal Customer From Your 10 Best Jobs

October 10, 2026

This is the video behind the post. It follows Nora, a made-up renovation contractor, through all 4 steps, so you can watch the whole thing work before you try it on your own jobs.

How to find your ideal customer starts with your own 10 best jobs, not a guess. You list them, count what repeats, test that group with 4 questions, and write 1 sentence that says who your business is for.

That sentence is the result. This post is how to get it, in 4 steps that go in order.

The deck job 45 minutes away

The phone rings. It’s a deck job, 45 minutes away. The customer already said the other guy is cheaper.

You say yes anyway. You don’t turn down work.

Then Saturday is gone, and not much is left at the end of the week.

The fix isn’t more calls. It’s knowing who your best customers are, so you can go get more of those and say no to the rest.

And you don’t have to guess who they are. They’re already in your own job list.

Meet Nora

Say Nora runs a small renovation crew. She’s a made-up example, and so are her 10 jobs. They’re built so you can watch the whole thing work.

Nora thinks her best work is basements, because those are her biggest cheques. Her own list says something else. You’ll see it in step 2.

Before you type anything in

You do this in Claude. Claude is the AI chat we use as our thought partner, because it’s good at counting a list and asking you questions back.

What may go in: the type of job, the part of town, how the customer found you, and about what you kept after materials and labour. A rough number is fine. “Good” or “thin” is fine too.

What stays out: customer names, street addresses, phone numbers and emails. You don’t need them.

Type it yourself. Don’t paste or upload invoices or customer files.

It goes into a chat in your own Claude account. It isn’t public. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, can review a chat in some cases. Check your privacy settings in Claude first, because that’s where you set your choice on training.

How to find your ideal customer, step 1: list your 10 best jobs

This step gets the evidence out of your head and onto a page. You’d measure the room before you quote it. You wouldn’t guess.

Best means a job you’d take again tomorrow. It paid well, it paid on time, and it was no grief.

The mistake is listing your 10 biggest jobs. The right move is the 10 you’d happily do again.

Write 1 line per job. The type, the area, how they found you, and what you kept after materials and labour. A rough number is fine. If you use job or invoice software, look your jobs up there.

Here’s your table:

And here’s Nora’s list. 10 jobs, and no customer names:

Fewer than 10 jobs? Use what you have, and say how many.

Keep that list open. You’ll check Claude’s count against it in step 2. (Step 1 in the video)

Step 2: find what repeats

This step shows you the pattern in your best jobs, in numbers. Measure twice, cut once. Claude counts, then you count.

Open a new chat in Claude. Paste in the prompt from the bottom of this post, then paste your list under it. A prompt is just the set of instructions you give Claude.

Claude reads your list back as a table and asks if it’s right. If it’s wrong, tell Claude what to fix. If it’s right, type yes.

Then it counts what repeats. The job type, the area, and how they found you. For Nora you should get:

• Bathrooms, 6 of 10
• The north side, 5 of 10
• A neighbour, 5 of 10

Claude can get a count wrong. So check each number against your list. Count the rows yourself. If Claude’s count is off, type the right number. Your list wins.

The mistake is trusting the count. The right move is checking it.

Now see where Nora’s guess falls over. Basements were 2 of her 10 best jobs, and in total she kept $12,400 on them. Bathrooms were 6 of 10, and in total she kept $26,200. All 5 of the jobs that came from a neighbour were bathrooms.

Then Claude checks which of those show up in the same jobs. 4 of Nora’s 6 bathroom jobs were on the north side, and 5 of the 6 came through a neighbour. That’s 1 group of customers, not 3 separate counts.

If nothing repeats 3 times, stop there. Add jobs as you finish them. Otherwise, take that group into step 3. For Nora, it’s north side bathrooms. (Step 2 in the video)

Step 3: test the crowd

This step checks that the group needs you, can pay, and can be found. You check the ground before you pour.

The 4 questions here are adapted from Alex Hormozi’s book $100M Offers. The steps are in my words.

Claude asks you 4 questions, 1 at a time, about that group:

• Does this customer have a problem that hurts right now?
• Can they pay for it?
• Is there a place or a list where you can find more of them?
• Are there more of them coming, or fewer?

Answer from what you’ve seen on real jobs. If you don’t know, say so. If your answer is vague, Claude asks you again. For a no or a don’t know, ask past customers before you choose.

Here’s how Nora answers for bathrooms. A failed shower in your only bathroom hurts now. All 6 of those customers paid her in full. Neighbours refer her. More north side homeowners now need their bathrooms redone.

The mistake is keeping a crowd because you like the work. Nora likes basements. But 2 jobs is thin, so she’ll test that crowd later. She picks bathrooms, and keeps an eye on basements.

If 2 crowds pass, pick the one you can find more of.

Keep your answers. They go into your sentence in step 4. (Step 3 in the video)

Step 4: write the sentence

This step turns the count and your answers into something you can say. A truck that says “we do everything” doesn’t say who it’s for.

Claude drafts it. Who, where, what they need and how they find you. Then you change the words until you can picture 1 real person.

If the draft says something your list or your answers don’t, take it out.

The mistake is stopping at “homeowners”. Say where, and what they need.

Here’s Nora’s, after she changed a few words:

My crowd is homeowners with 1 failing bathroom, on the north side, who need it fixed fast, and they find me through neighbours.

Keep yours to 25 words or fewer. Short enough to say out loud. (Step 4 in the video)

Why the order matters

List your 10 best jobs. Find what repeats. Test the crowd. Write the sentence.

Skip the list, and you’re back to guessing. Skip the check, and you could build on a wrong count.

The prompt

This is the prompt for step 2. Open a new chat in Claude. Paste in everything in the box below, then paste your list under “My jobs:”.

Before you paste anything, remember what stays out. Only the type of job, the part of town, how the customer found you and about what you kept go in. Customer names, addresses, phone numbers and emails stay out, and so do invoices and customer files. Check your Claude privacy settings first.

I run a trades business. Below are my best past jobs, 1 per line:
job type, area, how the customer found me, and about what I kept
after materials and labour.
There are no customer names or addresses in this list. Don't add any.

1. First, read the list back to me as a table and ask me if it is right.
   Wait for my yes.
2. Then count what repeats in each column: job type, area, how they
   found me. Give each count like "6 of 10". Add up what I kept for
   each job type. Don't guess a reason for anything.
   Then take the job type that came up most. Count how many of those
   jobs were in the same area, and how many found me the same way.
3. Then ask me these 4 questions, 1 at a time, about the pattern that
   came up most:
   - Does this customer have a problem that hurts right now?
   - Can they pay for it?
   - Is there a place or a list where I can find more of them?
   - Are there more of them coming, or fewer?
   If my answer is vague, ask me again.
4. Then write 1 sentence in this shape, and stop:
   "My crowd is [who], in [where], who need [what], and they find me
   through [how]."
   Keep it to 25 words or fewer. Name each thing once. Use only what
   my list shows or what I told you plainly.

Only if I gave you fewer than 10 jobs:
- say so when you read the list back;
- after the counts, ask me whether to stop there or carry on;
- if I carry on, start the sentence with "First draft, from N jobs:".
If I gave you 10 or more, don't ask that and don't add that label.

If nothing repeats at least 3 times, say "not enough to go on yet"
and stop. Don't fill gaps.

My jobs:

Do it on your real business today

List your 10 best jobs, run the 4 steps, and write your 1 sentence.

Then take your last 10 finished jobs, good and bad. Fewer? Use them all. Count how many fit your sentence. That’s your starting count of recent jobs from this crowd.

Next up is your offer. You write it for the crowd you just named.

If you’re a member, post your sentence and your count in my Skool community. Your 1 sentence, and “N of my last 10 jobs fit it”. Leave your customers’ names out of the post.

If you want to see Claude used on another part of a trades business, Claude + Airtable shows how to build a painting quote on your phone.

More at thevlway.com.

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