I have a theory. Most people just want to be told what to do.

Not everywhere. But in places of expertise, for sure.

Like, I don’t want someone’s unsolicited advice on when to go to church or how to vote.

But I DO want someone to just tell me how to get published in Entreprenuer.com (thanks, Jeff).

Or how to fix my dishwasher.

Or how to get a response from a famous person I want to meet.

There’s a stigma attached to having someone else give you the answers, of course. Like you aren’t man or woman enough to come up with your own solutions.

But solutions take time. Time most of us do not have. Which is why we want to cut to the chase. Have someone else do the hard decision-making work and tell us how to proceed.

I used to take a much more collaborative approach with clients.

I’d ask questions like…

“How does this hit you?”

“What are your thoughts on this?”

“We need to choose between this option and that option…what’s your take?”

Then I realize, to our best clients, this was annoying.

They didn’t want to have to do MY job and THEIR job. They wanted me to do it for them.

Conversely, our WORST clients always seemed to have endless input into the direction we wanted to take.

There were moments with bad clients where I’d ask myself, “Why did they hire us in the first place? They don’t want to do what we need them to do. And they don’t like what we give them!”

Then I realized some folks just want to push other people around. And they’ll even pay for the privilege to do so.

Thankfully I learned my lesson early. Took my bumps and bruises. We don’t work with those types of clients any more.

Now I focus on cultivating good clients. The ones who trust us to do the job they hired us to do: create measurable business results with social media, blog, and email content.

Does this mean they never have input? Of course not. They’re busy, not brain dead.

They want us to make smart decisions on their behalf. So that’s what we do.

Your clients need you to lead the dance. They’re expecting you to take charge. To use your experience, wisdom, and know-how to get them to the next level.

Start seeing yourself that way.

Maybe you already do.

But maybe there’s a small part of you, deep down on the inside, that still wonders if you’re a fraud.

Here’s the thing. You breathe in the oxygen of your expertise each and every day. It’s normal to you. Knowing what you know seems obvious. Like everyone else knows it as well.

But they don’t.

Not by a long shot.

In the negative, this looks like Nick Burns, the IT guy:

Watch Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy with Billy Bob Thornton from Saturday Night Live on…
Nick Burns' (Jimmy Fallon) dad (Billy Bob Thornton) helps him insult the office flunkies (Chris Kattan, Rachel Dratch…www.nbc.com

He gets annoyed when anyone asks a question to which the answer is blatantly obvious. To him, anyway.

In the positive, it looks like when I went to get my oil changed the other day. One of those super fast lube places.

About five minutes into the process I looked out into the bay and saw all the mechanics looking at my engine.

‘That does not look good,’ I thought to myself.

They poked and prodded around. Investigated. They took some parts out. Cleaned a few things. Tightened a few bolts. Put everything back in. Closed the hood.

NEXT!

The manager came to get me. He confidently stated something about fluids and air filters and my engine and how it could have been really bad.

I literally had no idea what he was talking about. Pure gibberish.

But then he handed me the keys to my car and said they fixed it for no charge. “Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day.”

I will be a customer of that Valvoline shop for life.

They did in five minutes what it would have taken me a whole Saturday to figure out. Even then, I’m positive I would have broken something. Most likely ensuring my car would careen off the road and into a bridge embankment.

They didn’t consult with me before they fixed my car. They just used their expertise to get the job done.

This is what serving your client looks like.

You answer the questions they didn’t know they had. You fix what they didn’t know was broken. You use your expertise. You take the lead. And you freaking dance.

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