It's awful being considered “just a vendor” by your clients.

In fact, if you're seen as a vendor they're not really “clients”. More like “buyers” or “customers”.

That's why one of the most common pieces of advice you'll hear is to “stop being a vendor, be more like a doctor”.

“Customers tell vendors what they want…but doctors diagnose their problems and tell them what to do. Be like a doctor, not a vendor”.

The trouble is that while flipping the relationship so that you're the one with all the power may boost your ego, it's not a healthy relationship for either of you.

And these days, it's increasingly unlikely to work.

The thing is that while in previous generations we might have unquestioningly done what doctors told us, these days we check out our symptoms on the web and we want a discussion, not just to be told what to do.

The same goes for being an authority in any field.

Authority these days doesn't mean being some distant expert who expects people to bow down to their genius and who deliberately makes themselves difficult to reach.

Today we expect authorities to be open. We expect them to be human. We don’t expect them to play power games.

Experts: absolutely. But ones we can talk to adult to adult, not child to parent.