8. Setting Boundaries with Your Clients

Every boundary you don't set becomes an expectation you'll eventually resent.

In this episode, we're talking about one of the most important skills every business owner needs to develop: setting and enforcing boundaries.

From late payments and scope creep to clients who expect immediate responses, it's easy for small exceptions to turn into frustrating patterns. And more often than not, the resentment we feel toward clients starts long before the moment we finally draw the line.

I'm sharing the lessons I've learned, practical scripts you can use in your own business, and the boundaries that can help protect your time, energy, expertise, and sanity as you grow.

In this episode, we talk about:
• The client behaviors that lead to watch out for
• How to stop scope creep, late payments, and unrealistic demands before they become bigger problems
• Boundary-setting scripts you can steal for your own business
• How to protect your time, energy, and expertise without damaging relationships
• The mindset shift that makes enforcing boundaries feel a whole lot easier

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Visit my website: https://www.itsallmost.com
Join The Conversion Club: https://itsallmost.com/the-conversion-club

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello, my lovely, beautiful yappers. Welcome back to the Conversation Club. I'm your host Kieran, and today we are talking about boundaries. Boundaries, boundaries. Specifically with our business and our clients and colleagues and business contacts, that kind of thing. Maybe we'll do an episode sometime soon about boundaries with other relationships like friendships and that kind of thing. Maybe that's a better episode for a guest to come on and talk about. But for now, we're talking today about boundaries in business. If you have not listened to episode four, I do recommend going and checking it out because I go over some of this stuff a little bit. Maybe if you have listened to episode four, you'll be hearing some similar points, but today we're gonna go a little bit more tactical. We're gonna go a little bit more deep into what are some of the boundaries we should be setting, how we can be setting them. And as usual, I will be sending you home with a little bit of homework. How do we feel about the homework, by the way, yappers? I wanna know. Let me know in the comments, let me know on Instagram when we post our reels or on YouTube, wherever. I would love to know if you guys are actually doing it, if you like it, or if you're like, stop assigning us homework. We don't wanna nobody wants to work anymore, which is understandable. But I'm hoping that these episodes are helpful in such a way that, yeah, you can take some of it home with you and take some action if you are so inspired. Let's get into it. Why? Why are boundaries so important? I know that that's a word that's been thrown around a lot the last few years, and especially as people are getting more into therapy speak and understanding some of the language that's used when we talk about protecting our own peace and protecting our healing process. Boundaries are really important because they're set for you. You set boundaries for you. You don't set boundaries for other people because you do it to protect your energy. You do it to really help others understand and manage their expectations of how you are gonna show up to things and how you are going to react when certain things come across your plate or your table or your sphere. We also set boundaries to show people how to treat us, right? The more we let slide, the more we are showing people that we will to some degree accept that kind of treatment from other people. And so boundaries are setting them, are definitely a way of making sure that people understand, okay, this is what I will accept and this is what I won't accept. It also sets the tone for any relationship, really, whether in business or otherwise, but it helps understand on both sides, among all parties, where we are in terms of how to respect each other, in terms of how to communicate, in terms of just a lot of different things behavior-wise that we are willing to accept or not. And it really just helps manage expectations on everybody's front. And so, yeah, that's really what I wanted to emphasize is that we don't really set boundaries for other people. Yes, it's clarity for other people, which is really important, but we set boundaries for ourselves, for us. Okay, that's what we're here to do today. So, why should we set boundaries early and enforce them often? Okay, here I'm gonna say this one more time again. Set your boundaries early and enforce them often. I mentioned this in episode four, so I'm gonna say it one more time. It is very difficult to set boundaries retroactively when you have already shown people that they can get away with certain behavior, and then all of a sudden you're like, actually, I don't want to be treated that way. That is hard for people to program out of what they know that you will accept, right? So, again, sometimes I know it's really hard to set boundaries before you even realize that it's something you want to set. And so I get it, there are times where boundaries do need to be set retroactively because you're like, oh, wait, actually, didn't like how that went. And I would like to make it clear earlier on, now that I know that I don't like this kind of treatment and this kind of behavior, that's a great place. As soon as you realize that that's not how you want to be treated, that's not how you want that process to unfold ever again, to make that clear to all parties involved, right? If you, for example, have been not getting paid on time, right? But you've let that happen for six months, for three months, for longer than that, all of a sudden saying, Hey, actually, I can't be paid late anymore, it's gonna be a little hard because you've been letting them pay you late for this long. So it really should be, again, as soon as you realize that it's a boundary that's being crossed, that you don't want to be crossed, say something. Do something about it. Because, yeah, in month one, immediately once you're apparently gonna get paid late by this client, as soon as you realize it's really good to just send that message of like, hey, this month's payment was late. We can't do it again. I'm gonna implement a late payment. It's better to say that earlier on. And I'll give you a better script in one of the later examples that I'll give y'all in just a second. So, but yeah, don't let things slide, even if it feels minor. I know I'm still working on this, where I'm kind of like, oh, it's fine, it's not that big of a deal. But it's again, it's just one of those things that little by little it's gonna start to creep into like really, oh, it feels minor, but now a bunch of minor things start to feel really major, right? And so we don't want to get to that point. These are all still things that I'm working on. I'm by no means saying that I am really good at setting boundaries and really good at enforcing them often, but I just want to share a little bit about what's worked for me and some of the things that I'm hoping to implement as well. But yeah, little exceptions, they lead to bigger exceptions. So when we let little things slide, it leads to them trying to push and see what else can I get away with? What else will she let me do? And it leads to more disrespect on their end and it leads to more resentment on your end, right? At least for me, I've experienced where I haven't communicated that something makes me uncomfortable. And because I haven't communicated that they don't really know to adjust their behavior. And for that, I'm just sitting there like being mad at something that I've actually not really communicated that I'm upset about. And so today that's kind of what we're going over. That's kind of what we're hoping to address with some of these tips, tactics, strategies, whatever you want to call them. And the thing is with boundaries, it's not actually telling people what to do. You're not telling people what they are gonna do, you're telling people what you are gonna do when X behavior shows up, when they do this, this is what you will do. You're not saying I need you to email me only between nine and five. That's not what you're saying. You're saying if you email me outside of a nine to five working hour schedule, I will respond within, let's say, 12 to 24 hours of my return to my work, of my return to my laptop. You're not saying you can't email me outside of this. You're saying if you email me outside of this, I will be doing this. And that's what we're setting in terms of a boundary. We're not trying to change people, we're trying to help them understand that X, Y, Z for them leads to A, B, C for you. Okay, that's kind of what we're trying to communicate when we set these boundaries. So, what are some of the, I think, at least for me, the most typical client offenses, quote unquote, that I've experienced, especially when it comes to a need to set a boundary for it. The first one is when clients try to get those discounts, right? When they try to like haggle on price, when they try to say, oh, like, you know, it would be really nice if I could get it for 10% off. Or can we add this without adding to the price? Da-da-da-da-da. Those kinds of clients are, as I'm sure many of you know who have experienced this, are very frustrating. I remember I had one client like this. I ended up firing them after three months because every single thing we did, it felt like they wanted to negotiate on the price. They wanted to negotiate on how it was done. They wanted to negotiate my time and my value and my worth. And I was just like, my worth is enough for negotiation. This is what it is. One of my favorite ways to deal with clients like that, especially if you don't need money from them, right? If you need money and you're sort of in a place of scarcity, that's a little bit of a different conversation. But if you are able and you feel able to, a really great way to deal with clients who want to like get all these discounts and haggle on price and things like that, and who might give you a little bit of a headache to work with, right? I like to triple my rate with them, quadruple my rate or quintuple my rate, or what are the sex tuple my rate, 10x, 20x, you know, whatever, whatever number you want to go with. You increase that rate to a point where you're pretty sure they'll say no. Or if they do say yes, that it won't be the worst thing because you're getting like what five times what you normally would get from a client like that. And so I remember I said that to someone and I tripled my rate, and they were like, okay, great. And I was like, fuck, I should have gone higher. Should have gone higher because either they would have said no or I would have been more okay with essentially what they call the asshole tax, right? Or the headache tax, which is to deal with a client that you're like, oh, it's gonna be really frustrating working with you. Sometimes we can't turn them down, but let's get as much as we can in those situations. Another client offense that I experience a lot that I've talked about before on this podcast is getting paid late. Ugh, an annoying, a very annoying one. Back in 2019, I had a client who ignored me for months, months and months and months, and she didn't pay me. And basically, I called her every single day, every single day for months to get my payment back. Now, is that the best strategy? No, but it was one of those people that I had at the very beginning of my business, I had let get away with not paying me on time and not paying me, and then she just ghosted me before she paid, I want to say, at least 50 to 60 percent of her invoices. And so I really chased her for that one, and I kind of made her life a little frustrating when I called her every single day, just trying to get paid. And I was like, it wasn't even that much. I'm like, girl, just pay me. It's not that hard. But most recently, I did have a client that I think I mentioned this in episode four as well. I had a client who I worked with for almost five years, and in the first four years, 98% of the time, everything was paid on time in full, no problems, no problem for four years. So, like, that's kind of why I was surprised when sort of in the last year that we were working together, the payment schedule went from net 30, which is to be paid within 30 days of receiving an invoice. And I typically net 30 is kind of where I sit with a lot of clients, but yeah, net 30 turned into net 60. They weren't paying me until two months after they received my invoice, and then this year, actually, they didn't pay me for any 2026 work until the end of March. So, as you can see, your girl still is struggling with very, very clearly and early on telling a client or someone like, hey, this payment is late, we gotta get it taken care of. It is not okay to be letting it slide like this. Again, March wasn't that long ago. So your girl is still working on that. But a script that you can use in a conversation or in an email when your client is paying you late is, for example, quote unquote, I wanted to follow up on invoice number, insert the number here. Our accounting team shows it's now in X number of days past due. To keep your account in good standing and maintain uninterrupted service, we'll need to receive payment by specific date here. So just using that script to very, very clearly just say, hey, this is not paid, it has been now past due for this number of days, and we want to continue maintaining your service uninterrupted. And in order to do that, we need to receive a payment by this date. And so saying those things and making that very, very clear, and there's no real like emotionality to it, and there doesn't really need to be. I think a lot of the time people think that they have to explain why they've set a boundary and da-da-da-da-da, and why they've chosen to set it this way. You don't really need to overexplain yourself. You actually just need to say what needs to be said and communicate clearly. Like, no is a complete sentence, right? We don't have to be saying, well, no, because da-da-da-da-da. Because usually that's when people can actually start picking things like, Well, you said it was for this reason, and I don't think I should the less explanation, frankly, actually the better. So just being really clear about like, here's what the deal is, here's what the situation is, here's how we can rectify it, and let's move forward from there, rather than trying to make it too much like, oh, but like I'm really late on this payment, and I really need payment from you in order to do that, and it's like, that's not their problem. Their problem is that they haven't done this and that they need to do this, and let's just kind of keep it at that. Another client offense that I've seen quite a bit of is when you treat your contractor as a full-time employee when clients do that. So, one of the examples that I've mentioned before on this podcast is scope creep, when clients add tasks and they're like, Oh, can you like while you're in there, just throw that in as well. But they don't pay for this extra work, right? It usually starts out small, little things where it's like, actually, could you add maybe just an extra post in there? Like it would be really helpful if you also created this post for us and you're like, oh, okay, it's not that big of a deal. Let me just do that too. But then when you allow that, it builds to bigger asks, right? Because they're like trying to see how far they can push that envelope, push how much you would be willing to let slide, how much you would be willing to do. So a really great script for scope creep is to say something like, That's a great idea. This would fall outside our current package, but I'd be happy to send you a quote for the additional work. It would be X estimated cost, this number of dollars, and it could be completed by timeline. So, like this date or within the next two weeks or whatever it is, that kind of thing. And so again, being clear of like what you're asking me to add is outside of our current package. It's outside of our agreed-upon scope of work. But if you wanted to do any of that, we could add it on for an additional fee and to set those expectations clearly, this is what it would cost and this is when it could be completed by. And so saying those things is a really, really great way just to start with yeah, communicating clearly that you're not really okay with scope create. Another one that falls under the sort of treating you as a full-time employee when you're actually a contractor offense for clients is when they don't respect your time, right? When they are late to calls all the time, either like 10 minutes late or sometimes even 30 minutes late. I don't know. I feel like sometimes it's like a power move, but I don't really know why people show up late to calls all the time. I know there are people out there who do it all the time, and it just boggles my mind because I'm just like, I could never, could never be me. But anyway, people who don't respect your time that way, clients who don't respect your time that way, or when they communicate off hours, when you have said, hey, I'm available between nine and five Monday through Friday. If you communicate with me outside of those hours, I'm probably not gonna get back to you right away. I'm gonna get back to you when I'm back at my computer during my working hours. So a great script for something like this when people are communicating with you off hours and kind of expecting an immediate response or expecting you to be available outside of your working hours is to say something along the lines of, hey, thanks for thinking of this. I'll add it to our project notes and address it first thing Monday morning during business hours. So just to say, like, hey, I'm gonna add this. I've heard it, I've seen it, I've read it, and I can address it, but again, on Monday morning or on Monday afternoon or Tuesday or whenever I get back to my actual computer and do my actual work. Again, communicating in a professional way that, hey, right now, when you're communicating with me, it's actually not in my typical working hours. And so let me go ahead and make note of that and address it later. One of the most frustrating for me client offenses when it comes to treating your contractors as employees when they're not employees, is when they don't respect your expertise. I kind of hate that. Clients who love to micromanage or they ask for your recommendations and they don't actually take it, or they ignore some of the warnings that you bring up, like, hey, I've brought up so many things in terms of like cultural appropriation, or like, are we the right people to be saying this? I don't think so. And I've had clients ignore me and almost always backfires on them. So definitely communicating earlier on to them, hey, I've worked with X number of brands and I've learned that da-da-da-da-da, the situation that you're trying to warn them about. In this scenario, when this happened, this was the fall, these were the consequences. I want to make sure that we avoid doing that in this situation and just really making it clear that you understand where they're coming from, that you're seeing their concerns, that you're wanting to address them, but also in your experience as someone who has been doing this for X number of years, who has this level of expertise, that you don't recommend doing that. But at the end of the day, again, it's not your monkey, not your circus. And I just think that if we're gonna really abide by this, like not your circus, not your monkeys scenario, that if they don't listen to you, they won't listen to you. And there's really nothing you can do about that at the end of the day. And so respecting your own expertise, respecting your value, respecting your worth, and just saying, you know what, if you don't want to listen, don't listen. I mean, obviously, you don't say that front-facing to the client, but there have been plenty of scenarios where I'm just like, you know what? I don't give a fuck. You do what you want. Don't say I didn't try. Don't say I didn't fucking try. What does it actually feel like when people respect your expertise? Oh, incredible, incredible. Oh, chef's kiss. I have had clients, amazing clients, who have said, I hired you for this. I'm gonna trust that you know what you're doing. And it's hands off. And I'm gonna check in and we're gonna make sure we're in communication, but like I'm hands off. You do your thing, girl. Like, we trust you. And that feeling is truly wonderful. So we're trying to align towards more people who can be respectful of us as contractors, as workers, as service providers. Also, when clients ask for work earlier than an agreed-upon deadline, again, going back to that script of saying, like, hey, we can speed this deadline up or move it up, push it up earlier than we agreed upon, but like it's gonna cost a rush fee. Don't just agree to do things by Friday of the week before when you're only supposed to get it to them Wednesday the week after. Really make sure that the sooner the better. As soon as that comes up, that you say, hey, actually, we can't do that unless we add a rush fee, unless we do this. Because if you say yes to that, they're just gonna be like, oh, okay, I can get her to do things five days early. I can get her to do things seven days early, I can get her to do things 24 hours after I asked for it to be done. We don't wanna be doing that. We just don't. So, what are some of the boundaries that we set first with our clients? The very first boundary that I really recommend is to very clearly communicate when your deliverable turnaround will happen. So, when can they expect X deliverable from you? For example, for me, if I say, hey, I've got a newsletter coming up for you to review, you can expect it by this time. That's when they know to maybe not bother you until that date comes. There are gonna be clients out there that are gonna bother you anyway. But you can always say to them, hey, as I noted in this email, I will get this deliverable to you that you're asking. For by X date. If you would like it earlier next time, let's communicate a different timeline so we're understanding how we are expecting each other to show up and when we're expecting things from each other. And really just being able to, as soon as possible, let them know that we're not going to move it up for any willy-nilly reasons. Let's communicate, let's work towards a timeline that makes sense for both of us together, right? It doesn't have to be a end-all be-all, like it only is going to happen this way or that way. There can be a compromise as well, as long as there's communication involved. Another good boundary to set first with your clients is responsiveness and when they can expect to hear from you. So making clear to them what hours you're available during the day to receive messages, making clear what your response time looks like. Is it within an hour? Is it within six hours? Is it within the business day? Is it within the week? Let them know what your typical response time looks like. And then also, what do you expect of their response time? So for example, if something is urgent, maybe you set a boundary early on that you say, hey, if something is urgent and I need to address it by the end of the workday or within the few hours after I send it, you can write urgent in the subject line and say, if I write urgent in that subject line, then I need you to respond within X amount of hours or within this time frame. So that they understand that you also respect their time, but you're also hoping for a timely response to something, for something that really needs to get addressed this moment as soon as possible. For example, me, in terms of my responsiveness and my communication hours, I let people know that I do work some strange hours. So I don't really expect them to respond when I send something at one in the morning. I do use a scheduler sometimes, but my scheduler also doesn't allow me to track when emails are opened. And your girl loves to be nosy and she loves to see when an email was opened because I'm like, I know you saw that, I know you opened it, I know you clicked on this link. Why no response? Why no response? So sometimes they use a scheduler, but I also just send things out when I think of it because I'm like, my undiagnosed ADHD is gonna make me forget, and then I'm gonna weeks later be like, oh shit, I was supposed to send that email to them. I was supposed to ask them for that thing. So usually I kind of just send it when I think of it. But I tell my clients, like, hey, it's okay to respond the next day. It's okay to respond when you're back to your computer. Like, I don't expect you to respond immediately after I send you a message at like three in the morning. That's obviously kind of unreasonable to expect of you. And so that's how I set my boundaries with my clients in terms of responsiveness. Another place to start when it comes to setting boundaries with your clients is to help them understand where you would like to be communicated with or where you like to communicate with them. So, for example, for me, I am available via email, Slack, and text and texting, like on the phone. I don't know why I needed to clarify that. I think all of you know what texting is. I'm so sorry. It's like so hot here, and by hot I mean like not even that hot because your girl's a wimp when it comes to heat. And I'm also hungover again because your girl also loves to go out. It's summer here in Lisbon, and anyway, it's just like, why did I explain what texting was? Okay, back to my point. My point is I like to be communicated by email. If it's urgent, usually email is a really great place to find me. Slack is also good for sort of everyday communication, and texting is great for if you're like, uh, have you seen that email? I sent you that email, it was urgent, please respond to it right away. So I tell clients, hey, that's the best way to communicate with me. If it's urgent, this is where you find me. If it's less urgent or if we want to work things out in detail, email is sort of the best place to do that. If it's just a quick hit, like a real quick reminder, you can slack me or whatever it is. So just letting them know here are the different scenarios in which we might be communicating, these are the places. But honestly, in general, at the very least, letting them know, okay, here's where you can expect a response from me by communicating with me through these channels, and here's where the really urgent stuff should go. I think those are two really good places to start. And then also making sure that you are setting the expectation of the client's responsibilities. So, what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is when you are working with clients, obviously you're gonna need things from them, right? You're gonna need graphics or you're gonna need materials that they have in their vault, in their bank of files and things like that in their drives that you're gonna need to be able to complete certain tasks. So saying to them, hey, I'm gonna need this amount of lead time in order to deliver this by X date, right? So giving them deadlines of like, okay, I need feedback for this brief that I sent through to you by X date in order to be able to put the draft together in order for you to approve it and da-da-da-da-da. Or for any of my folks who do edits and things like that, podcast managers or designers or website managers, that kind of thing, helping them understand, okay, we only have two edits per deliverable, right? So for me, it's like two rounds of edits for emails. We don't do really a million rounds of edits. Also making sure they understand the turnaround time. So if you have a 48-hour rule, for example, where if an edit or a revision needs to be made by X deadline, then they need to request it at least 48 hours in advance. So, for example, if you're like, I know that the deadline is Friday. So, in order for a revision to be made, you need to tell me that revision by the end of the day Tuesday or by Wednesday morning so that I have 48 hours to make that edit, to make that revision. And if you communicate with me on Friday that you need that revision, it's not gonna happen until Tuesday, right? Because that's the 48-hour sort of working business hours that we are setting that boundary for. So a really great script for that is to say something along the lines of, hey, I'd be happy to make that change since we're within 48 hours of the posting schedule. I can implement this for next week's content, or we can process this as a rush change with the associated fee, which would work better for you. And so this way you are saying, okay, look, you are asking me of this with like basically giving me no heads up, no real turnaround time. And either we can just push it to next week, or we could do it now, and there's a rush fee that's involved in that. So what we're saying with this kind of a message is we're telling them, hey, I am within this time frame, not going to be able to do what you expect because you didn't give me enough of a heads up. But I can add a fee on in order to do that. And so it's communicating that you are able to address it. But if you're going to address it now, this is what it would involve. At the end of the day, I feel like people, especially clients, have a hard time understanding. Like, we are not doing brain surgery, we are not doing life-threatening procedures or you know, saving people's health and wellness and lives in sort of the immediate sense, right? These are not emergency services. We can push things to next week. It's really not the end of the world. So, anyway, in a more professional way, I do like to make it clear to people, it's like it's really not that serious. And if it was that serious, you should have paid attention and done it 48 hours before. Because this, like, same-day shit, no, fuck that. Fuck that. I mean, that's kind of what I wish I could say, script-wise to clients. But hey, here we are. In terms of other things to set first with your clients, boundary-wise, is to make that payment timeline clear. You know, your girl's saying this to you as much as she's saying it to herself, and actually, hopefully, actually implementing it for herself. But making sure that payment timeline is clear. Hey, if we have net 30 rules, if you need to pay me within 30 days of receiving this invoice, let's set that. Let's enforce that and enforce the late fees as well, just to say, hey, you didn't pay on time. We're gonna implement the late fee and apply it to next month's invoice. And say that earlier rather than later. So, some of the language that might work to enforce these payment timelines is to say something like, to ensure we deliver the highest quality work, da-da-da-da-da, or our process is designed to maximize your results. Or this approach helps us stay focused on your strategic goals. Again, you don't need to overexplain. You don't need to be like, oh, I need you to pay on time because I'm late on my car payment, or I am dealing with a lot of medical bills, whatever it is. That's not what we're trying to do. What we're trying to do is just say something along the lines of like, we want to stay focused on your goals, we don't want interrupted service, we want to continue to bring the highest quality work for you. And in order to do that, we need to be paid on time, right? And just leave it at that. No uncertain terms, this is what it is. At the end of the day, what we want to do is we want to communicate clearly, we want to communicate kindly, we want to communicate professionally, and we want to make sure that our clients are understanding that this is the level of communication we expect from ourselves and from them. So if we need to set regular meetings to get on the same page about things, that's something that we can organize and communicate with our clients. I always err on the side of over-communication. I always ask how clients prefer their updates or what it is that I can do to reassure them, to make sure that they are feeling like they are being addressed, they are feeling like they are being seen and they're being heard. And it's always beneficial to be more proactive, to go to them rather than waiting for them to come to you about something that they might be frustrated with or something that they expected that they didn't get from you. So it's always better. I know sometimes people are avoidant and they're just like, oh, I don't want to say anything because what if they didn't notice and da-da-da-da-da. And I always err on the side of like be proactive, go and let them know that you noticed XYZ happen and that you want to make sure that it doesn't happen again. You can always reference your original agreements rather than making it personal. You don't have to be like, oh, well, you did this, and so I did this, and that's not what we're trying to do. We're just trying to say something along the lines of like, as we discussed in our original onboarding, our revision policy requires a 48-hour notice to maintain quality standards. So something like that, right? As we discussed in our agreement, as we covered in our signed contract, this is what we said. And so, just again, making sure that that's clear, that that's kind and professionally said goes a long way. And there definitely will be initial pushback. People have to adjust, they have to learn, they have to learn how they are going to communicate, how they are going to be communicated with. And in my experience, the high-quality clients, they will understand. They will be like, I get it. Thank you. Thank you for letting me know. The low quality clients, they will complain, they will complain or they will leave. And frankly, it's for the best. It's better to just get rid of them. Get rid of them and say thank you so much for your time. But I don't need to be working with people like that. Obviously, if that's not the part you say, but when that initial pushback happens, when you set that boundary at the beginning, it's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard. I totally get that. But the right people will understand and the right people will respect your boundaries, and the wrong people won't. And those are the people that we gotta get rid of. But at the end of the day, like, let's remember to make some exceptions. There are exceptions to every rule. I think there's definitely a difference, at least for me, between a long-standing trusted client and a new client, right? Things that we're probably not gonna let the new client get away with. We might let, in some cases, not every case, but in some cases, let the long-standing trusted client get away with or say, hey, in this situation, I'm willing to do X, Y, Z. In the future, we're gonna need to set some processes to make sure that, yeah, that we have enough lead time, that we have enough da-da-da-da-da-da, whatever it is. Don't make it a habit at the end of the day. That's not what we're trying to do. We're not trying to let it slide all the time, but there's some discretion that's involved, right? And discernment that's involved. There's a difference also between respecting your own time, which is very important, but also maybe hindering the process, right? So at the end of the day, if you do want to make sure you're not hindering the process, if you want to make sure you're not affecting how a project gets finished or how it flows, sometimes you do sacrifice your own time a little bit in order to do that. And so there is a case-by-case basis when it comes to these things. So don't say that every situation is gonna apply to this, and every situation is gonna be perfectly easy to follow these mechanisms and set these boundaries and enforce them often. But yeah, it is up to you. It's up to your discretion at the end of the day. And what we're really trying to do is to honor ourselves and to honor our energy. I know this process, it's not easy, it won't be perfect right away or maybe even ever, but like we just have to practice it. Practice will help us get familiar with that feeling. Practice will help us get familiar with saying it with our chest and saying it confidently. And we want to make progress. We just want to make some progress. So honor yourself, honor your energy, honor and respect your own worth and what you bring to the table. And we really want to release the perfection and get out there, really just enforce those boundaries and make sure that they are respected. A little bit of homework for you before you go. I hope this episode was helpful. We kind of went over some of the things that might be good for you to set boundary-wise in business. But I wanted to add a little homework. Homework number one, add some language to your contracts or your sales call scripts so that it's very clear that hey, we only do 48-hour revision heads-up lead times, or we only do two revisions, or we only do this, or we only do that. Add that language in earlier on so that people are understanding and they don't feel like they're being blindsided with this. Oh, did you say that? When did you say that? You know, and you can say, according to this recorded call that happened on XYZ day, like have those receipts. You know, I love a receipt. I love being able to say, I said this here on this date, or you said this here on this date. Here's the proof. Homework number two is just to set a boundary this month with one of your clients or with a colleague or something like that that may be pushing, pushing the limits of their boundaries, pushing into a territory where you feel like, I don't love this. I don't love that you are trying to get away with XYZ. And so set that boundary with that client or with that colleague or with that business contact this month at some point. Okay. I feel like that's pretty feasible. I hope that feels pretty feasible. And this episode was even for me very helpful. Sometimes I think I might have to come back and listen to it just for myself as well, because I'm learning as much as all of you are in doing all this. And so I hope you found this episode helpful. I hope you're able to go back and rewind and use some of those scripts that I mentioned for your calls and for your emails and for your conversations with your clients. Go out there and do it. It's hard, but it's very rewarding. And it feels really good when you make it clear to people how you expect to behave based on their behavior. So, respect, love, all the good stuff. That's what we're here for. Thank you again for listening to this episode, for making it to the end, and I will see you very, very soon next week. Love you all. Ciao ciao. If this episode gave you something to think about, take it and do something with it. If you want more of this, or you just want to see what my life actually looks like, come follow me on Instagram at it's almost with two L's. I'll be sure to link it in the show notes. You can also follow me at Almost Consulting for some juicier, spicier takes. And if you're serious about getting your emails to convert, you can check out the Conversion Club, our monthly email marketing membership for founders who are ready to turn email into their most profitable and sustainable sales channel with expert guidance, plug and play tools, and strategy you'll actually use. Check it out. I'll put in the show notes. I'll see you in the next episode, yappers.