Discover how creating and maintaining business boundaries can reduce stress, prevent burnout, and help you achieve greater work/life balance.
IE 461: How Creating And Maintaining Business Boundaries Can Help You Achieve Greater Work/Life Balance with Amber De La Garza
Amber De La Garza is a productivity specialist who works with small business owners on how to improve their time management productivity to increase profits and bring back joy to being a business owner, so they can enjoy the entrepreneurial journey.
What does “business boundaries” mean to you, and why are they so important for entrepreneurs?
A lot of business owners do not realize the importance of business boundaries. How are you setting the standards of how you are interacting with the people in your business?
This could be team members, either contractors or employees. It could be vendors or clients. Not only do we need to have boundaries with our clients, but we also need to have boundaries with ourselves.
Sometimes, we think it is only about how we set those standards for other people but having boundaries for ourselves sets the example of how other people should treat us as we navigate the relationships that happen in business.
It is the piece that many people miss. We feel like it is only the people we are interacting with but we have to start with ourselves or it is more difficult to set those boundaries in business.
What are some signs that a business owner has weak or nonexistent boundaries?
A large source of stress comes from a lack of boundaries. If you are experiencing miscommunication with team members or clients, it might be because you are not clearly identifying what your boundaries are.
If you are trying to understand why people don’t know not to call you at 9:00 at night, why people are texting you, or canceling an appointment at the last minute, you have to determine how you are playing a role in those things. How can you take ownership and responsibility to clearly articulate what your boundaries are?
You may not have explained them. Just because we have boundaries does not mean that people magically comply. That is not the case.
Boundaries begin with articulating clearly what you need. It may sound easy but it is harder than it sounds. You might be frustrated that you have clients reaching out to you on weekends and at night because you may not have told them what your contact boundaries are. You have to determine what those boundaries are.
Ask yourself what you need and what you want and then articulate that. No one is a mind reader.
Amber has worked from home for almost 15 years. Another place that boundaries need to be set is with family members, the physical space of your work zone, and how you make yourself available to the home during working hours.
What do you need to show up in your business consistently and at your best? How can you articulate that to others?
If you can feel yourself tensing up and getting frustrated over an email or at a child coming in, it normally stems from a boundary issue. The frustration will begin to show.
When we do not have boundaries, it means business, work, and relationships are bleeding into the other areas. It is very healthy to have boundaries in both our personal lives and in business for various reasons.
You may not have boundaries because you are a people pleaser, meaning you just go with what anyone wants or needs. It comes from a good place. You want people to be happy. They are not going to be happy if you say you are not available after 4 pm.
That is a mindset that affects behaviors and patterns of how you show up for others. That, continually over time, will create burnout.
You also need boundaries for yourself when you do work. What are your days off? What is your policy on working or non-working? Do you take your laptop to your bed? Are you working at the kitchen table after dinner? Having those blurred lines without boundaries will lead to burnout.
When we start these behaviors, it is generally from a good place. Maybe you are new to business and trying to figure it out. It takes a lot of time.
Those are true but unchecked and unevaluated; they become the things that are a double-edged sword that are no longer serving your business. They are hindering your physical and mental health, and how you show up in business and relationships.
Jenny realized the cell phone was an issue. It was easy to be in the car and pick up the phone between driving the kids around. She would be in the middle of an email when her kid came along. She was annoyed at the kid and wanted to finish her thought process. The cell phone makes it easy to get frustrated and cross the boundaries that are in place.
Why do you think women entrepreneurs in particular often struggle with setting boundaries?
Boundaries are like a mindset. You cannot check them off, and you are done. Boundary issues are like the game Whack-a-Mole. They keep coming up in different ways and different areas and arenas of our lives and business.
It is often rooted in the fact that we don’t want to inconvenience someone else. You feel as if others need you after 4:00, that your personal needs are not as important. This is people pleasing. This can be a confidence issue.
It happens more often with women than with men, but men also have a difficult time with boundaries. The way we were raised can play a part in this. We were either taught that boundaries are safe and healthy or that they are rude and selfish. What were you told and what are your current beliefs around boundaries?
For Amber, boundaries were blurred and not welcome in her home. She had to work through and process. She finally determined that for her to show up best in her business as a leader, to her clients, as a wife, and a mom, she owed it to everyone to get clear about what she needed to show up as her best.
It is a gift to articulate that and not make assumptions. When you get frustrated because they don’t know the boundaries, you have resentment in the relationship.
We want a great relationship with our team members and clients. It can feel more and more distant if we are continually holding on to resentment. To show up in a healthy relationship with all of these people and not have resentment, Amber owed it to herself and them to get clear and lovingly articulate the boundaries.
What are the most important business boundaries to have?
One of them is your contract with your clients. Client agreement contracts seem really formal, so use whatever fits your business model. Have some sort of clear expectations. If your clients do not sign a contract, then maybe you set the boundaries in your onboarding process.
Educate them on your availability, rescheduling, and cancellations. When something goes wrong in this relationship, because life happens, are you front-running how those situations are handled? Clearly articulate that. Just because it is in the contract does not mean anyone will actually read it.
Amber likes to say those things on a discovery call and share best practices and how certain situations are handled. She wants to set the expectations while the relationship is really good.
When there is an opportunity to reinforce a boundary, you will just be referring back to great conversations you had or the client agreement they signed. It is important. If you do not have clients and only digital products, you have an email nurture sequence that comes after the purchase, where you can lay out the boundaries.
How do people get access to the video content and downloads? You should have an FAQ section within the email sequence, course, or membership to direct them to that. When those processes are laid out, you have the boundaries set for the team member who might be doing customer support.
If it can be found in FAQ’s and is part of the process, the team member can easily handle it. A process and system can reinforce the boundary with the team member.
We often want to just answer their questions if we have the answer. Instead, we can redirect them to the FAQ’s or procedures. “If you are unable to find the answers there, then come back to me.” You can answer it, but you have gracefully shown them the boundary.
You have trained the team members to go to the source of truth to find answers. As a leader, you don’t want to assume every answer is in there, so you can add whatever they bring to you that they cannot find.
Step #1 is getting really clear about what you need and want. Instead of getting frustrated in the moment, you can go back to those wants and needs.
The next step is to identify the solution. You might be frustrated that the team is peppering you with questions again. What is the solution? You will articulate that the expectations are to go to the FAQ’s and the SOP’s first. Then, if they cannot find the answer, come to you with the specific question.
The third step is to lovingly and consistently hold the boundaries. Everyone pushes boundaries, even when you have articulated them. The boundaries matter to you, and it is your job to lovingly hold those boundaries.
This is where most people get tripped up and start to think maybe the boundaries are not good ones to have. You cannot send mixed messages. If you want a lesson in boundaries, teach a toddler the lessons of office space and what it looks like when mom is working.
Was it misguided to think the toddler would keep the boundaries? It is not, but you send mixed messages by allowing the toddler to open the door, come in, and tell you something one time, but then get frustrated the next time they do it. You tell the child you are excited to hear it, but they will have to wait.
You don’t want to send mixed messages. If you have a client reach out to you and you answer it “just this one time,” you are not keeping the boundaries with yourself. They might expect you to answer the next time.
If there was one tool you could invest in to get your time back and to set boundaries, what would be that tool?
Utilize your calendar for both appointments and also for how you are planning your day.
Time is very abstract. Time slips through our fingers. When we think something should take 30 minutes, it takes 45 minutes. We are very optimistic.
One strategy Amber uses is to make time more concrete and visual. Many of us are visual. Plan the specifics activities, tasks, or projects that you are working on, and schedule them on your calendar as you would an appointment with someone else.
Now you can properly plan your day and understand what your capacity is. Everyone has a calendar and hardly anyone is using it to its full potential. It doesn’t cost you anything to properly plan your day.
Jenny also loves Chat GPT. For those that are people pleasers that don’t know how to kindly but forcefully say how to abide by your boundaries, use ChatGPT.
A lot of us try to be too nice or even too direct. Use ChatGPT to ensure that your language is clear. If you know you are on the direct side, you can instruct it to be “soft but clear.” If you are on the soft side, you can ask Chat to be more direct and clear. People don’t have time to read between the lines with boundaries.
We need to be super clear with what we are saying. ChatGPT is time-saving. A three sentence email might take us 30 minutes to write because we are mulling over the words, the sequence, and how we are going to say it. Using ChatGPT can be used to get it done quickly.
Take Back Your Time Training
This is a short mini-training on how to get five hours back in your day. Some of it is about boundaries. There are other tips and tricks included.
Business owners dream big and have big goals. One of the biggest reasons we have a gap between what we want and reality is that we have the belief or experience that we do not have enough time. This guide recreates that belief to show you that you do have enough time and you can reinvest it.
