Why people-pleasing is costing you clients

11 Jun

The positioning shift from "Who can I get?" to "Who am I willing to lose?”

Most of us have sat down to create our ideal client avatar more times than we’d care to admit.

It starts well every time.

Let’s say you’re a career coach, and you can picture your ideal client clearly: a woman in her late thirties, successful on paper but miserable in a job that doesn’t suit her anymore, and finally ready to do something about it.

She’s exactly the type of woman you would love to help. But the longer you think about it, the more doubt starts creeping in…

What about the woman in her twenties who’s just been made redundant? She needs me too. And the one going back to work after maternity leave. And the senior leader who isn’t quite unhappy but a bit restless…

So you add them to the avatar. Then a few more. And by the time you’re done, the woman you help is every woman who’s ever felt a bit stuck at work.

In the previous post, we built the first half of your position: what you stand for. Now we turn to the other half: who you stand for. This is the part that makes people flinch (myself included), because narrowing it down feels like turning people away.

The Conversion Brief is a series I publish on Substack — conversion education for women who are done being told more visibility is the answer. This is where it started. If you wish to get notified when a new brief is posted, you can subscribe here.

Two things happen when your website speaks to everyone

Being for everyone is, at its heart, a form of people-pleasing. And I say that as a reformed people-pleaser who spent a long time diluting my own voice to sound more "professional", more polished and more likeable.

We all want to be liked. It's human nature. But in business, blending in makes you one more option in a crowded market, easy to overlook and forgettable.

You may get some enquiries, but they won’t be great.

Because when your site speaks to everyone, everyone replies: the woman who wants a third off, the one who books a call to "pick your brain" then disappears, the one whose budget was never anywhere near your pricing… When this happens, enquiries feel like such hard work because you invited the wrong people into the room.

Another scenario that happens often, but you don’t see for yourself, is when the right person lands on your site – the one you'd love to work with, who can afford you, and who would send three friends your way. She scans the homepage, looking for a mirror of herself in your words. And she can't find it, because you're talking to everyone, which means you're not quite talking to her. So she leaves without enquiring. There's no notification to let you know she was even there in the first place. All you see is an empty inbox every day, so you conclude you need more traffic.

But as I’ve said before, more traffic does not necessarily lead to more clients. Not when you’re not speaking to anyone in particular.

Authority isn't built by being broadly acceptable. It's built by being unmistakably for someone.

When people recommend your brand to others, you want them to say "she's the one for women making their way out of corporate,” or “she’s the best for period homes that need a refresh without losing their character.”

Authority isn't built by being broadly acceptable

I give my clients this example all the time:

In 2021, Coach decided it wanted to attract Gen Z women – not everyone who likes a handbag, but a specific young customer it set out to win and keep. It was priced for her, refreshed the Tabby for her and put her favourite faces on the campaigns. The "mom-approved" shopper it had been known for wasn't the centre of the brand anymore. Within a year, it went from being the fourth favourite handbag among young American girls to the first.

Around the same time, Bottega Veneta did the opposite. It deleted its social media entirely – Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter – and built an exclusive world for a buyer who finds chasing the algorithm a little beneath her.

Two brands, making opposite decisions, but with one thing in common: each chose one person, and accepted it wasn't for everyone.

That's the right positioning mindset: not "who can I get?" but "who am I for, and who am I willing to lose?"

Recognition is where conversion begins

In the first few seconds of a stranger landing on your website, before she's properly read your content, she's asking herself three questions, whether she realises it or not:

What does this woman stand for? Is this for someone like me? What is she actually promising me?

On the second question, it’s easy to assume that if you stay broad, more people will feel included.

Cast a wide net, catch more fish. It feels safe.

But the reality is that when that woman scans your page, she isn't asking, "Could this be for me?" She's asking, "Is this obviously for me?"

It happens unconsciously, but she's looking for ONE thing: herself.

Her situation and her exact moment. And if she doesn't find it within a couple of scrolls, she leaves the page.

You know this because you do it too. You've landed on a website before and known almost instantly whether it was for you. Not from reading carefully, but from a feeling of recognition. And recognition only happens when something specific reflects you back to yourself.

When you name her situation precisely (the exact thing she's trying to do and the exact situation she's in), she feels a small jolt.

That is the moment she leans in and begins to trust you a little. Often, it's the moment she decides to enquire, before she's even reached your services page.

Recognition is where conversion begins. And you cannot trigger recognition while trying to be for everyone.

Tell-tale signs of a website built for no one in particular

Personally, when I open a website that's trying to be for everyone, I can usually tell within the first scroll. Not because the design is bad, but because the page is describing a job, not addressing a person.

It starts right with the hero section (the part of a website you see before you start scrolling down).

The first thing you see is a title: Nutritional therapist. Brand photographer. Business coach.

All accurate, but they just tell me what the person does, not who she's for.

For example, one of my clients, K, came to me as a "London photographer." That was her title. It told you her craft and her postcode, and nothing whatsoever about who she was the right photographer for. By the time we were done working together, she was a “Brand and portrait photographer for people stepping into a new chapter of their lives."

Then there are the taglines so broad they dissolve. “Helping you live your best life,” or “Support for wherever you are on your journey.”

A wellness coach can write a sentence like that and mean every word, but it could sit on ten thousand other websites without changing a thing. A line that fits everyone fits no one in particular.

The giveaway I see most is the "whether you're" sentence. Whether you're renovating a family home, fitting out your first restaurant, or styling a rental to sell… an interior designer trying to hold three completely different clients on one page, and losing all three at the same time.

This mistake is usually a result of fear; fear that the moment you choose one person, you lose everyone else.

Narrowing when you're not yet booked out

This fear is not irrational.

When you're not yet booked out, when the day job is still paying for the dream, "turn people away" sounds reckless. Every enquiry feels like one you can't afford to lose.

I understand it. I'm building alongside a 9-to-5, too. I know what it is to want every door open because you're not sure which one pays the bills.

But there are two things tangled together here that feel like one: reach and income.

A broad website gives you reach. It puts you in front of more people. What it hasn't given you is more clients.

So take an honest look at the people you're afraid of losing. The ones a narrower site would turn away.

Were they enquiring? Were they paying? Or were they scrolling past, the same way you scroll past the sites that aren't for you?

You can't lose a client who was never going to become one. Narrowing doesn't cost you those people. It just stops you waiting on them.

Yes, an ultra-specific website attracts fewer people, but far more of the ones who do see themselves, trust you faster, and actually get in touch. A handful of the right women, already half-sold, beat a crowd of the wrong ones who need talking into it.

You don't want a fuller inbox. You want a fuller calendar.

And choosing who your website is for is not the same as refusing everyone else. If a friend of a client lands in your inbox slightly outside your lane and it's a good fit, you can still say yes. Your website's job is to make the right woman feel certain – not to police the rest. The specificity lives on the page. You stay human behind it.

So if losing people isn't the risk you think it is, how do you choose who to build the website for?

Why niching by demographics still leaves you confused

You've been told to narrow by demographics. Your ideal client’s age, her income, her job title.

Women, 35 to 45, running a service business, based in the UK.

You've probably written some version of that, looked at it, and felt nothing — because it describes a category, not a person, and it could fit half the women you know.

That's why niching by demographics feels incomplete.

So what should you do instead?

Instead of narrowing down by who she is, narrow down by where she is – the moment she's standing in, what she's trying to do, right now. What triggered her to open Google or ChatGPT in search of the service you provide? What does she believe about herself that she's ready to change?

Two women with identical demographics can be in completely different places. And two women who look nothing alike on paper can be standing in exactly the same situation.

This is how my client K’s positioning worked. "People stepping into a new chapter" isn't an age or a job – it's a moment. A twenty-five-year-old starting a modelling career and a forty-five-year-old launching her first business have nothing in common demographically. But they're standing in the same doorway: leaving one version of themselves, becoming the next, needing images that show who they're growing into rather than who they've been. That shared moment is what makes both of them stop on Kaya's site and think that's me.

The demographic was never the point. The moment is everything.

So how do you find an ideal client? Don't invent her. Look at the best client you've already had – the one you loved working with, who got real results, who you'd happily clone.

Then ask: what moment was she in when she found me? What was she trying to do? What did she believe about her situation?

You're not building an avatar from scratch. You're working backwards from a real woman who already chose you.

You now have a clear positioning: what you stand for and who you stand for.

That's further than most business owners ever get.

But right now, that position lives in your head or in your notes, where no client can see it.

Making it visible is the next step.

If your website isn’t doing the work it should be, the Website Reset is where most people start.