August 16, 2025

Reader questions re: Should You Guarantee Your Work?

In my post about guaranteeing your work, I mention only working with clients you trust.

A fellow list member sent in a few follow-up questions:

But you also say that you send a proposal and get hired after a first phone call, which it seems is short (brain dump & 3 questions). When do you build a strong relationship of trust? Or does it happen that quickly for you? I understand the client trusting you quickly because of your positioning as the expert, but how about you trusting the client? Because after all the client thinks they know it all and thinks they know what they want.

I’ll answer each individually:

But you say that you send a proposal and get hired after a first phone call, which it seems is short (brain dump & 3 questions).

Braindump can be 15-25 minutes. The three questions are actually three CATEGORIES of questions, which are very open-ended and can take a while to answer. The call is usually about an hour.

I understand the client trusting you quickly because of your positioning as the expert, but how about you trusting the client?

Yep, I can tell if we clicked in the first call. Bad fit clients won’t want to answer my questions, they’ll be defensive, they won’t be interested in my opinion, and they certainly won’t laugh at my bad jokes ;-)

Because after all the client thinks they know it all and thinks they know what they want.

Not all clients are like this. The ones that are really looking for an expert will know they don’t know exactly what to ask for, or are at least open to the idea that the thing they think they want is not the best option.

If they “know it all”, then they don’t need an expert and therefore aren’t a good fit.

Yours,

—J

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