How to Set Boundaries & Get Your Clients to Respect Them
Kelly Rice
We help small businesses take their companies to the next level through strategic marketing.
Do your clients seem to expect responses from you 24/7? Do they get frustrated when you don’t answer them outside of your office hours? Do you feel like you have zero to no free time to spend with your loved ones or to do focused work because you’re constantly arranging your schedule around your clients’ needs and what’s most convenient for them??
If so, this episode of Priority Pursuit is for you.?
This week, Victoria and Kelly are breaking down how to set boundaries and get your clients to respect them in a way that is firm, serves your customers well, and commands respect for you and your business.
If you want your clients to respect your boundaries, you have to decide what your boundaries are.
You can just blindly come up with boundaries or set typical boundaries, such as having 9-5 office hours, but you are going to be so much more likely to stick to them if the boundaries you set are a result of your personal and business priorities.?
Now, this is The Priority Pursuit Podcast, so you know we’ve had countless conversations about how to set and live according to your priorities. If you’d like to hear more about this, we recommend going all the way back and listening to episodes “001,” “120,” and “125”.?
However, to put it plain and simple, if you want to build a life and business that you love, you have to know two things:?
Once you have a clear list of your priorities, you can easily determine what your boundaries should look like.?
Examples of Setting Boundaries
As examples, we’ve included a few boundaries that we’ve implemented at Treefrog.
Set Working Hours
One boundary is that we’re closed on Fridays. We’ve had a four-day workweek for seven or eight years at this point because caring for our team’s well-being is one of our top business priorities.?
Being closed on Fridays means that our team only works and responds to client messages Monday through Thursday. Now, to be honest, Kelly acknowledges she often works outside of office hours. She doesn’t take client meetings, but when you have multiple kids in sports, you do what you have to do to get work done and make every game. But, she doesn’t expect the rest of the team to do this.?
Set Methods for Client Communication
Another boundary we’ve set is that we only allow client communication via Basecamp—which is our client communication system. Yes, we take meetings and phone calls, but we don’t allow our clients to email any of our team members directly, DM us, or text us. This is to be sure that all of our client communication is in one place. We do this so nothing falls through the cracks—which has happened in the past and is why we’ve set this boundary.?
And, after a phone call or meeting, we’re always sure to send clients messages through Basecamp that include notes, a recap, or even a recording of the meeting.?
Reserving Days for Specific Tasks
As an example of setting boundaries in your own work schedule, Kelly recently started blocking days to work on specific tasks. For example, on Wednesdays she works on her personal brand; on Thursdays, she takes discovery calls; and she and Victoria both have predetermined days that their strategic marketing coaching students can schedule their sessions with them.?
When Victoria was a wedding photographer, she also had strict boundaries with her schedule. She capped the number of weddings she took at 20 per year—and only took one session per week if she had a wedding that weekend (two if she didn’t have a wedding). She reserved Fridays and Saturdays for weddings, meaning she shot engagements and other sessions during the week.?
Boundaries & Priorities
Though we’ve provided a few examples that work for our team, it’s important to note that there aren’t any “right” or “wrong” boundaries. Maybe you need to set working hours; perhaps you need to cap how much work you take; or maybe you need to schedule time off in advance.?
But, again, as you determine your boundaries, we want to encourage you to look at your personal and business priorities and set boundaries that protect those priorities. Because, when your boundaries are in alignment with what’s most important to you, you’re going to be so much more likely to respect your boundaries and you’re going to be able to simply enjoy your life and your work more.
Consequences of Failing to Set Boundaries
As someone who has had to sit in the bleachers with her laptop during many baseball games, Kelly knows that without boundaries, you will miss out on time with family and friends, never have time to come up for air, and burn yourself out again and again.
On top of that, without boundaries, you can’t serve your clients well. I mean, if you take on too much work, you’ll miss deadlines, you won’t have time to under promise and over-deliver, and you will—ultimately—fail to serve your clients well or in a way that will make them want to come back to you or refer you.?
Basically, when you fail to set boundaries, you will damage your relationships, your personal life will suffer, and your business won’t thrive and may not even survive. Yes, there are seasons where you’ll likely have to grind, but that can’t be your norm.?
If you’re reading or listening to this episode and thinking, “I don’t have that much business coming in right now. I don’t need to set boundaries, or I can’t afford to set boundaries. I need to take all the work I can get, “ Kelly and Victoria want to encourage you to think otherwise. Because now—before your business consumes you—is the ideal time to set boundaries so that you can preemptively set yourself up for success.?
The key to getting your clients to respect your boundaries is to clearly communicate what your clients can expect from you.
Once you’ve determined your boundaries, you have to get your clients to respect them.
This might sound difficult but think about this for a second. You probably aren’t surprised when your dentist can’t clean your teeth at 9:00 pm on a Friday night or by the fact that you can’t swing through the Chick-fil-A drive-thru on a Sunday afternoon, right?
This is because your dentist and Chick-fil-A have clearly communicated their boundaries—which are their hours in this case. And, because of this, you aren’t shocked that you can’t get chicken nuggets on Sunday and you even respect the boundary.
You see, the key to getting your clients to honor your boundaries is simply to clearly communicate what your clients can expect from you. When you proactively set your clients’ expectations, you’re actually setting them up for success.?
They’ll know what they can expect from you, and this will prevent them from ever assuming something or feeling disappointed while working with you.?
How can you clearly communicate your boundaries with your clients?
We’ve established the fact that you need to clearly communicate your boundaries to your clients, but how do you communicate them??
For the record, the answer is NOT to hide this information in your contract. There is a very good chance your clients’ will miss this information and then feel blindsided when you say, “No. As your contract states . . .” Basically, hiding boundaries in your contract is only going to set you up for confusion and frustrated clients.?
The best way to communicate your boundaries with your clients is to make mention of them both aloud and in writing again and again.?
Just to give you an example, as we mentioned, Treefrog is closed on Fridays—meaning we are not available to our clients Friday through Sunday.?
Now, if we didn’t communicate this boundary to our clients, they would have every right to be frustrated with us if they contacted us at the end of the day on Thursday and didn’t receive a response until Monday. However, our clients respect our hours because they’re informed of them from the beginning multiple times.?
For instance, we:
Basically, by making sure we’ve informed our clients of our four-day work week again and again, we’re able to set them up for success and prevent an awkward situation where we have to tell clients no.?
As another example, we also require all of our clients to communicate with us through Basecamp.?
To enforce this boundary, we:
That said, every time we make mention of this boundary, we’re also sure to explain why this is our policy in a way that shows that this boundary is meant to set our clients up for success.?
For example, if a client texts us, we’ll respond with something like, “It’s good to hear from you! As a reminder, we keep all communication in Basecamp. This helps ensure that our team and yours can access all communication and that nothing gets lost, missed, or forgotten. Please send this message via Basecamp, and we’ll get back to you ASAP.”
By reminding clients that we have policies in place to better serve them, they are so much more likely to respect that boundary moving forward.?
How you communicate your boundaries matters. So, when you communicate your boundaries to your clients, try to do so in a way that’s kind and helps them see your boundaries as a win for them.?
Are you thinking, “This won’t work for me?”
Now, you might be hearing all of this and thinking, “I’m sorry, but there’s no way this is going to work with my clients or for my business.”?
And, Kelly and Victoria get that, because they used to tell themselves the same thing.?
In fact, when Victoria was a photographer and decided she wasn’t taking weekend sessions anymore, she was so nervous that people would be upset. However, not a single client batted an eye.
Not a single couple told her they were going to go with a different wedding photographer because someone else was willing to shoot their engagement session during the weekend. Instead, her couples regularly took off work for their engagement photos and made a date night or whole day out of the experience.
More surprising, though, families adjusted. Victoria primarily shot weddings, but she took families as she could fit them in, and she’s still amazed by how many families she worked with were happy to have family photos shot on a weekday either at sunset or even at sunrise before going to work, school, or daycare.?
To give you just one more example, Victoria really likes her chiropractor, and just the other day, he told her that he’ll no longer be taking appointments on Wednesday afternoons starting next month, which is when she typically goes. And, Victoria—of course—wasn’t frustrated by this. He made a boundary clear and explained that he wanted to be able to spend Wednesday afternoons with his kids. And, because she appreciates his business and respects his decision, she simply scheduled her next appointment for a Tuesday.?
Again, when you clearly communicate your boundaries, your ideal clients will honor them.?
Start communicating your boundaries to protect your priorities!
If you’re finishing this episode with a new list of reasonable boundaries, that’s great! Get this information on your website and in your onboarding materials, and make it part of your workflow so that future clients can see this right away.?
Also, if these boundaries will affect your current clients, be sure to inform them via email, a phone call, and/or during your next meeting. Chances are, you’ll need to tell them more than once, so decide how you’re going to do that.?
Now, this probably goes without saying, but if you currently have things on your calendar that break your boundaries, don’t cancel on your clients. Complete the obligations you said you would and set a new precedent moving forward—like Victoria’s chiropractor did by giving her a one-month warning.?
We hope your shoulders are feeling lighter because you’ve taken the time to think about how to set boundaries and get your clients to respect them and how it will create a better experience for you, your customers, and your team.?
View the original blog here.