4 Boundaries Every Business Owner Needs
Saying yes to every request that comes into your business will negatively impact the health of your business.
That may seem obvious, but business owners are notorious for saying yes to all the things for all sorts of reasons (they don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, fear being disliked, or even FOMO).
When you’re the leader of the company, you’re responsible for making sure you meet your obligations. You get to decide what you say yes and no to, and you’re responsible for holding firm to the overarching strategy for the business. A yes to one thing means a no to something else.
Boundaries - setting them and stick to them - equates to more success in business.
Beyond business success, having strong boundaries as the CEO allows you to feel more empowered, create the freedom you wanted when you started your business, prevent entrepreneurial burnout, and strengthen your relationships with your family, friends, and clients.
In short, setting business and personal boundaries helps you feel and stay aligned with your business vision and ensure your time, energy, and effort is aligned with your biggest priorities.
How Do I Set Business Boundaries?
Many of the boundaries you’ll set will be tied to your personal and business values. Perhaps the most important question you can ask yourself in the context of setting boundaries is: What will I not allow?
I encourage you to sit with this for a second and really think about what’s important to you. What are your hard limits with regard to the way you treat others and how you want to be treated? How you manage your time? The kind of people you’ll work with? How you’ll communicate?
What are your non-negotiables?
Once you're clear on this, it becomes easier to set boundaries in the following 4 areas.
Your Time
“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” That’s one of my favorite quotes by Warren Buffett, and it highlights just how important it is to protect your time.
One of the best parts about being an entrepreneur is your ability to set your own schedule, and one of the biggest challenges is your ability to stick to it. We easily get derailed by shiny objects, client demands, and wanting to ensure we’re delivering top-notch service.
The reality to this, of course, is that you can’t do this forever without real consequence to the growth of your business. When you’re constantly scattered, have no structure, and are available to everyone, it means you’re saying no to being strategic in your business, to having the creative white space in your calendar, and actually having the time to do the work you need to do.
As the CEO of your business, it’s critical that you prioritize your time AND stick to it. Here’s the way I encourage my clients to manage their time on a weekly basis:
CEO Time
Marketing and Sales (Business Development)
Client Service
Administration
It may be surprising to see Client Service in the #3 spot, but if I’m not taking the time to strategically manage the business or doing sales and marketing, I don’t have clients at all. And when you do get clients, you can’t stop doing those activities. That’s how you find yourself in the feast or famine revenue cycle.
Ask yourself:
How are you prioritizing your time?
Do you have established business hours?
Do you have certain times of your day/week that are sacred?
Do you use some method for managing your time? Is it working?
Is your calendar blocked to effectively enable you to limit others’ access?
Have you communicated those boundaries with clients?
As corporate employees, most of us rarely said “No” because we didn’t want to miss out on potential opportunities, but as an entrepreneur, you cannot say yes to everything. You have to be very clear on your priorities and say NO to everything that doesn’t fit.
No is a complete sentence.
Your Communication
Effective communication is central to growing and running your business. It’s very easy to allow little things to slip through the cracks, respond to clients in ways that aren’t ideal for you, and for scope creep to balloon.
Establishing clear and easy to understand contracts with deliverables, dates, and expectations is vital to ensuring everyone is on the same page. This should include how you prefer to communicate. Should everything be over email? Text? By phone? What about communication apps like Whatsapp and Voxer? As the CEO, you determine the communication medium and set that boundary. This also includes your availability and response time.
Scope creep drains your time, energy, and profitability as a business owner. It often seems insignificant when you say yes to a little thing here or there, but when you do that for every client, all of sudden you’re drowning in work you’re not being paid for. Set clear boundaries on deliverables, timelines, and what the process is when what they want exceeds the agreement.
And lastly, how will you handle people who want to “pick your brain?” Your knowledge didn’t come for free, and while it’s fine to answer a question here or there, know that it’s okay to tell someone they need to pay for your time and expertise if the ask becomes too big. You can always establish a one-off session if you think it will be useful for just those kinds of situations.
Ask yourself:
Have you communicated your boundaries? Expectations? Preferred communication style and channels?
Do you have a clear process for dealing with scope creep?
What will you do if/when people want to “pick your brain” or get free advice?
How will you document the agreements between you and your clients?
Your Clients
When you worked in corporate, I’m guessing you rarely got to choose the clients you worked with. But as an entrepreneur, that’s one of the biggest benefits. Over the years, I’ve seen just how challenging it can be to work with wrong-fit clients.
In the early days, there’s pressure to take everyone that comes along. I get that, because you need to make money. Trust me. I’ve been there. But as your business grows and you build a solid client attractions system, your goal is to work only with right-fit clients.
Everyone of my clients has a Client Yardstick, a tool they create to help them filter who they will and won’t work with. The Yardstick includes key characteristics to help them determine whether or not this potential client will be the right fit for them and has a problem they can solve. This approach is powerful for both the CEO and the prospective client because you ensure that everyone’s needs will be met.
Additionally, part of your client boundaries should include knowing how many clients you can effectively support. It may take some time to determine what this looks like, but trust me, you’ll know it when it happens.
Ask yourself:
What are the non-negotiable characteristics for my potential clients?
Who can I not help?
Who am I not the right fit for?
How many can I effectively serve while still delivering the client experience I truly want?
Your Work
This is a tough one. Most entrepreneurs are deeply passionate about lots of things, and they don’t like to be put in a box. Unfortunately, this means everything about your messaging, your approach, and the problems you solve are muddled.
When I first started my business, I was all over the map. I knew I could help people with lots of different challenges because of my own varied career background and the kind of work I’d done over the years. As people came to me for help, I found myself life coaching, business coaching, corporate leap coaching, funnel coaching, and loads of other things. While that worked to help generate some cash in the early days, it didn’t help me in the long run because no one really knew what I did… including myself.
Ask yourself:
What’s not in your zone of genius?
Do I really want to do work in this space?
Will this lead to future business opportunities that I truly want?
It’s okay to say no to work that falls outside your zone of genius, even if you know how to do it.
Boundaries are designed to help you protect your energy, show up as the best version of yourself, and serve your clients well. If you’re constantly dragging, pushing the boundaries on entrepreneurial burnout, or chained to your desk, it might be time to examine your boundaries.
If you’re struggling to set boundaries and stick to them, join us in the Empowered Entrepreneur Community where we’re talking about how to know which ones are important, and more importantly, how to stick to them.
