If serving your customers and running your business feels like an ongoing battle between what you feel you should be doing and what you actually want to be doing, then you might want to look at the boundaries you currently have in place (or perhaps lack thereof).

I have helped a number of fellow Pioneers and private clients re-define and reestablish their professional boundaries so that they:

• Are no longer at the beck and call of clients who don’t pay enough for the level of service they’re receiving.
• Began to attract the kinds of clients who respect and value them, not those who take advantage of them.
• No longer feel like they’re chasing their tails just to keep up with the demands of their business.
• Claim back time to work on their business, and do the fun things they really want to do but never had time for.

It’s easy to talk about establishing better boundaries and sticking to them, but far more challenging to actually go about doing that. Here are a few thoughts on how you might begin to do so…

Establish the Ground Rules

If you find yourself constantly over-delivering in a way that’s detrimental to you and your business, then you likely need to lay better ground rules.

Over-delivering to customers and clients usually means that you haven’t been clear enough in describing exactly what is and isn’t included in your product or service.

Go and take a look at how you describe what’s on offer on your website…I’m willing to bet that you may have left some things open to interpretation – and certainly that you haven’t been as explicit as you might be.

The most common culprit: Failing to describe what is and isn’t included in your offering.

It’s just as important to describe not just what is included but also what isn’t, since when you don’t state this explicitly, things are left open to interpretation.

…which likely means you’ll be required to say “no” to a client if they ask if you can include something which isn’t usually on the menu. (And saying “no” is usually people with boundary challenges typically dislike intensely, hence the reason they often end up with so much on their plate!).

Action Item:

List exactly what is and isn’t included in your offering in a way that leaves no room for (mis)interpretation or misunderstanding. If you need to, use an FAQ section to cover things which don’t fit anywhere else.

Protect Your Time

If you want your customers and clients to respect you and your time, set the right expectations when it comes to your availability and contact-ability.

To give you some specific examples…

• I almost never give out my mobile phone number, except to family and close friends.
• I don’t answer unscheduled calls – and I won’t return a call unless someone leaves a message.
• Phone calls and face-to-face meetings are premium options, 80% of my business is conducted via email or some kind of text-based support.

Some people will find this very strict, perhaps unwelcoming and unsociable but if you’re constantly spending unscheduled time on the phone with clients/customers, or responding to “urgent” emails – and you wonder why you never get through your to do list, these kinds of boundaries are vital.

How can you expect a client not to call you whenever they want if you always pick up, or not to email you on weekends and expect an almost-immediate response if that’s what you always do?

Action Item

It can be hard to move towards your new approach when you’ve been offering such a supreme service previously, but there are some simple things you can do to ensure you begin to communicate your new boundaries to all (existing and new) clients:

• Remove your phone number (especially your mobile) from your website entirely.
• State your availability and target response times on your website.
• Hold “office hours” so your clients know exactly when you’ll be responsive.

The above are practical actions you can take to establish better boundaries in your business; they’ll come to nothing however without the fortitude to stick to them…

All sorts of fears will no doubt be running through your head when you consider making some of these changes in your business…

• “My clients will leave”.
• “It won’t work.”
• “I don’t want to let people down.”

But before you dismiss these suggestions entirely as “too hard” or “too harsh”, just ask yourself the following…

Can you keep going the way you’re going now? Do you want to?