Boundaries = Freedom: 10 Ways to Protect Your Peace in Business
The importance of setting boundaries, especially for those who often struggle with people-pleasing tendencies. I'm sharing practical tips on how to implement boundaries in your business, working with your natural rhythm and the importance of saying no.
Let me know if boundaries is something you struggle with!
Transcript below!
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00:02 Welcome back. My name is Ellie, and if you are new to this channel, I talk all about systems, simplification, how to do business with ease, and how to do it with a little bit of tech. 00:14 So, today's topic all about boundaries. Boundaries are key, in my opinion. Uhm, we'll get into it in a moment about why boundaries are so important, but I do want to, like, say that at the top, especially for people who have been socialized as women, boundaries can feel really frickin' hard, because 00:40 we have been socialized to be people pleasers, we have been socialized to, to give, give, give, give, give, and to take care of those around us. 00:48 Within reason, that's not a bad thing, but it can be really difficult to hold our boundaries, so I want to talk about why it's so important to hold our boundaries, and some tips and tools to do that in our businesses, specifically. 01:01 let's talk about why it's important to have boundaries. But before we really do, I want to ask you a question. 01:06 What do you want more time and more energy for? Because that's what you should be fighting for when you're fighting for your boundaries. 01:16 As we know, if you run a small business, you know that if you let it, it can take up all of your time. 01:25 We wear all the hats. We are accountable. We're running, we're customer support, we are shipping and we are, uh, just marketing. 01:33 We are every single hat. And so as you're being CEO and you're coming up with ideas and you are innovating and supporting your people, it can take up everything you have. 01:46 In my business, I know that it has for me at times. and that can lead to. Exhaustion, a lack of feeling of agency, feeling resentment towards your business, towards burnout, overwhelm, again, that people-pleasing thing where you are giving more to the people in your business than your business is giving 02:06 you. And that's not why any of us are here having our own businesses, right? We started them for various types of flexibility and freedom. 02:18 So, boundaries are so fricking important. They are a key to having a sustainable, thriving, long-term business that serves you and your life and your needs. 02:30 So here's some ways that I protect my time and my business and set up, um, those boundaries for myself. there's a lot of ways to do this. 02:41 There's no right answers, but I do find that these are the types of things I'm constantly recommending to people because they work. 02:48 They work. And sometimes they're really hard to do. So let's start with turning off notifications. I have notifications turned off for like 90 plus percent of my apps. 02:58 I don't want to hear from them. I don't want them interrupting me, interrupting my work, interrupting my evenings. Um, I use Do Not Disturb. 03:05 So at 1030 at night, my phone is like, I can't hear from you. And this is not just work stuff either. 03:13 Um, again, it goes until 7am. I also have Do Not Disturb options for when I'm working so that certain notifications can come through, but others don't. 03:22 Kind of leading into that, I don't do evening or weekend work almost ever. Now, I run my business for my flexibility. 03:30 So occasionally, very occasionally, I will work an evening or weekend, but what I do is make sure nobody else knows I'm working a weekend or evening. 03:39 So if I've maybe taken a good chunk of my Friday to do something for fun, then I might work a little bit on Saturday, but if I work on that Saturday, I'm scheduling the emails to go out for Monday morning, or I'm scheduling those notifications to go out during business hours because I do not ever want 04:00 my clients to feel like I am at their beck and call. That's not how this works. And in my contract with my clients, if you do not have a contract with your clients or customers, make one. 04:13 Uh, if you're a product-based business, that's probably your terms and conditions and shipping policies and all those things, um, terms of service on your website. 04:25 If you are a service provider like myself, use that. You have a contract and you should have a contract with your clients. 04:32 So that's another big one is having a contract and having your working hours, what happens if you take a vacation, all those things in there, set your boundaries up, set your communication expectations up in, even in your contract. 04:45 And again, in your client onboarding process. way that I protect my time is with my scheduler, and I talk about this all the time, if you are overwhelmed in your business, especially if you're a service provider business, the number one thing I recommend to people is to set up a scheduling tool, because 05:03 I do that, it means two things. It means that I can then batch all my calls together. It also means that when, and it means that I'm serving both myself and my clients quickly, they can book a time into my calendar at the most convenient time for them, and I guess there's three. 05:24 It also means that they cannot, like, try and push me around. It means that they can't, they typically, I send them a link, and they have to book in those windows. 05:32 They can't say, oh, actually, can you make nine o'clock work, and I'm kind of going, Hmm, maybe? That very, very little. 05:39 It rarely happens because I have a scheduler, and these are the times I'm available, and usually, if somebody replies saying, oh, can you do this time, I say, so sorry, I'm unavailable at that time. 05:49 Can you try for next week? And that just really emphasizes that my time is protected. The work time that I set that I'm not working on calls, that I'm only doing my work or deep focus work, I try not to take calls on phone Fridays, like those things are for me and for the sustainability of my business 06:11 . All right. Obviously another big one, and this is what I tend to help people with is with outsourcing and automating. 06:18 Um, so a lot of my work is automated. A lot of those fiddly tasks, um, from things like client onboarding. 06:27 To, um, oh gosh, just so, so much is automated. Um, managing my team is a lot of that as Matt is now automated through Asana. 06:38 Um, I also have, um, automated replies in various places. So if somebody goes onto my Facebook page, um, they get an automated reply. 06:50 Like, Hey, we only work with these hours. Here's some resources for you. If those don't help you, we'll be in touch. 06:55 Um, and those types of things, if I'm out of, out of office or whatever, I always have that automated email going out, telling people what they can expect when I'm back in office, how my team can help them, if they can help them when I'm gone, if it's not like a big holiday that we're all out of office 07:13 . Um, so automating all of whatever I can, and I automate a lot, like the scheduling, uh, like my client relationship management and onboarding and client emails, forms, um, client intakes with people when they book a consultation with me, all of that is automated. 07:30 And I do that because it saves me so much time, energy, and it creates a lot of consistency between me and my people. 07:39 And the other thing I do a lot of is batching to reduce task shifting, and that's the other thing about turning off your notifications. 07:49 Not only does it protect your peace, but it reduces that task shifting of like, oh, I'm going to check my phone, and then I'm going to send this email, and then I'm going to go back to client work, and then, oh, this thing has notified me, or we're cutting that out. 08:00 So, what I mean by batching is doing the same task together. So, I will schedule several social media posts, usually about two weeks worth, at a time. 08:08 Uhm, I will create a couple of reels at a time, uhm, and that really, really helps. I also create a lot of templates and tutorials. 08:20 So, when it comes to managing my team, they have tutorials on how to do things, and I create them just like I do this video almost every once in a while, for they can see my screen and clicking around. 08:29 And then, once that task is set up, I set it on recurring, and I never have to think about it again. 08:36 They have their tutorial for life on how to do these things, uhm, unless I change the process, and that only usually happens rarely. 08:43 Uhm, I create a lot of templates, so those or email templates. I have a text shortcut on my phone. And on my computer, so that any, for various things, like my address, uhm, for when people want to book a consultation, a lot of times they'll reach out to me, not on my, through email. 09:03 And so, I can send them, if it's an Instagram, I literally type the word consultation, and it goes out into this full, like, two sentences of, hey, I'd love to have a chat with you, uhm, here's a little bit more information. 09:14 When you're ready, you can book a consultation. Here, and there's a link, and that link takes them right to my scheduler, and that's just all automated, right, or templated. 09:21 Uhm, but it saves me from typing that out over and over again, and having to find that link over and over again. 09:26 So, where are we at now? Working your way. That is a big, big boundary. You don't have to do your business the way anybody else does. 09:39 I don't have to do a whole video on this at some stage, but working with your natural rhythms. If you're a morning person, work early. 09:45 If you're a night person, let yourself work with those energy levels, as long as your other commitments allow for that. 09:52 So, working with your natural rhythms, so I try not to work Fridays most of the time, or have light work on Fridays. 10:01 I am a morning person, but I- I know that I need to clear away that fiddly admin in the morning to really focus, uhm, I also know that if I'm coming up to my monthly cycle, I know to give myself certain types of work during certain parts of that, because I know that certain things are going to feel really 10:21 overwhelming at certain points, uhm. So, working with your natural rhythms, your natural cycles. I whole podcast series on this, uhm, a whole season of my podcast was dedicated to various versions of working with your own rhythms, so you might want to check that out, I'll link it, uhm, and so the next 10:41 thing is along with that is taking breaks, one big boundary is taking breaks and checking in with yourself, uhm, so on my, I was flat out on client work yesterday, but I still made sure to take short breaks, feed myself, drink a little water, I went at one point and walked on the treadmill down at the 11:01 gym, uhm, I, and check in with myself every single morning, this is a newer thing for me, I'm still getting into the practice of it, but it is really important, every morning I try and spend, even if was just five minutes sitting there. 11:16 Checking in my journal, checking in with how I slept, how my brain's feeling, how my body's feeling, uhm, how am I word of the year's going, and then just anything else on my mind, and taking that time to like really center with myself is, has been really, really good for me, it's been a big shift for 11:33 me over the last few, couple months that I've been working to implement The last, the last thing I want to say, the last big frickin' boundary, and this is the hardest one, is saying no. 11:49 Saying no when something doesn't feel in line, saying no when you don't have capacity for something, saying no when somebody is asking too much of you, saying no when the money's not enough, or going back and countering for the money you deserve. 12:04 Saying no and letting bigger opportunities come, the right opportunities come, not filling things for the sake of having, you know, like holding the space for more and the right fit is so hard, but also just saying no when you're like, no, I'm tired, I'm busy, or no, it's not the right fit, I'm sorry 12:22 , uhm, here's some other options for you, I really appreciate you coming to me, so, so key. Alright, so first off, I wanna say thank you so much for listening, uhm, I really hope you've gotten something out of this, you can, if you have, if one of these tips is, you're gonna implement today, I would 12:41 love to hear about it, put it in the comments, it would really mean a lot to me, uhm, I do try to reply to almost all my comments, like, I, unless it's spam, I'm replying to ya, and, uhm, finally, if you feel really overwhelmed in your business, and you are not sure how to get unstuck, you're not sure 12:59 what the next big shift to make is, so that, or, small shift, to make a big difference in your business, I have a really great quiz for you, uhm, I will link it below, and it is all about diagnosing the biggest time-sucker, energy-drainer, uhm, or, what thing in your business is costing you the most, 13:20 and, when it, you do that, it's a really short quiz, it'll take you less than 30 seconds, and I give you some really great juicy, uh, tips, tricks, processes, and, videos, and so much more about how to solve that problem in your business. 13:37 So, if you have any questions, I'm here. And, I can't wait to hear what you learn from this video and what you're implementing to create a more boundaried, badass business.
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