One of the interesting things about having a home based business as a marketing consultant is that your biggest frustration is rarely going to be getting new clients, making money or trying to learn the craft.

In fact, if you do it right, clients will all but come to you, money will practically jump into your wallet and learning the craft is easier and cheaper than taking a business course at your local community college.

In reality, the biggest frustration is when clients don't take your advice.

In other words, they hire you because you're an expert and they need your help, then when you advise them on what to do, they disagree and think that their way is better.

At that point you have to decide whether you should "fire" them, try to compromise with them, or just do what they want.

Firing them is probably best, but if you've done a lot of work or if you have a contingency contract with them (i.e. you are getting paid commissions directly on gross sales you help make) you will probably want to compromise.

But, really, the best way to handle this is to simply nip it in the bud at the beginning -- before anyone puts pen to paper and before you spend a significant amount of time on the client's business.

How do you do that?

It's actually pretty simple: you create what I like to call a "psychological contract."

This is when you basically say right up front:

"I'm going to recommend certain marketing steps, Mr. Business owner, and I'm going to make sure that we get them executed. I do need your total support behind that, otherwise my guarantee is void. I'm guaranteeing to you that my system will perform, but unless everything is done the way I say it should be done and in the manner that I recommend it should be done, I can't guarantee my performance. So, if you want to change it, if you want to do something else, or if you say, 'I don't want to do this.', then it just voids our guarantee. Is that okay?"

See what I mean?

Cover all of that ahead of time.

Now, certainly there's going to be cases -- and I've had them -- where you will have clients pay you and some of the marketing doesn't work. And yet the reason it doesn't work is they haven't done their part.

So, by making that psychological contract up front, you will have fulfilled your guarantee, your part of the deal. And there's that understanding that if they mess with what you're doing, and it goes bad, they have nobody to blame but themselves, and you still get paid.

Like I said earlier, if there's any real frustration in a home based marketing consultant business, it's clients not doing what you tell them to do.

And you know what?

That's a pretty easy frustration to deal with. Especially when you compare it with all the shenanigans that go on in other home businesses where products, manufacturers and corporate offices do things beyond your control that can negatively affect you.