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In this episode, Tiffany-Ann tackles the nuanced topic of boundaries in business, specifically how they evolve as your business scales. Many business owners face the struggle of setting, maintaining, and eventually clawing back boundaries they've set too loosely at the start. Tiffany-Ann shares her own experiences with managing boundaries, from keeping work within set hours to dealing with client communications that can seep into personal time. She explains why establishing and respecting boundaries from the outset is critical, and how compromising these boundaries often leads to resentment—something only you, the business owner, are truly responsible for.
Through candid stories, Tiffany-Ann talks about her early days of feeling obligated to be available 24/7, including a stressful payroll processing incident from a hospital hallway. She reflects on how such experiences shaped her view of what she is willing to do for work and the value of intentionally setting—and sticking to—boundaries that align with your growth. Whether you're in the early stages of your business or scaling to new heights, this episode is full of practical wisdom on staying true to your vision without compromising your personal well-being.
Key Insights:
- Boundaries are a reflection of what you are willing to do for money. It’s important to know your own limits and communicate them effectively.
- It’s far easier to start off with strict boundaries than to try and claw them back later, especially when it comes to personal phone numbers and working hours.
- The stories we tell ourselves about what we "must" do can lead us to overextend, but it’s entirely up to us to decide if these actions align with our long-term vision.
- Automation tools and structured systems, like CRMs, can be great assets for setting boundaries while maintaining customer satisfaction.
- Bitterness often arises from broken boundaries. Learning to stick to your limits is key to maintaining a healthy business-owner mindset.
Timestamps:
- (00:01:05) – The challenge of "clawing back" boundaries as your business grows.
- (00:02:30) – Examples of unsustainable practices, like overly tight payroll timelines.
- (00:05:10) – What a boundary really means—deciding what you’re willing to do for money.
- (00:09:30) – Boundaries should change as you evolve, not as a result of giving up.
- (00:10:59) – The difficulties of clawing back a personal phone number once given to clients.
- (00:12:20) – A real-life example of a boundary lapse that led to unexpected resentment.
- (00:14:06) – Set systems to maintain your boundaries, such as autoresponders and structured work hours.
- (00:19:22) – The importance of upselling additional services to manage client expectations while maintaining boundaries.
- (00:19:59) – How bitterness can cloud business decisions and how to keep emotions separate from practical choices.
- (00:25:24) – The myth of the five-hour workweek: how clawing back commitments often feels counterproductive.
- (00:26:51) – Boundaries evolve with your business, and what works for a startup may no longer serve you as you grow.
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What is Service Based Business Society Podcast?
Attention entrepreneurs! Are you looking for ways to scale your service-based business without sacrificing your sleep? Look no further than The Service Based Business Society Podcast, hosted by Tiffany-Ann Bottcher.
Each week, Tiffany-Ann shares valuable insights on productivity, business strategies, marketing trends, and tech secrets that you need to know in order to take your business to the next level. She firmly believes that a successful service-based business must prioritize an amazing client experience and sustainable, predictable, repeatable profit, and she'll teach you how to do just that.
But that's not all - Tiffany-Ann also invites expert guests to share their knowledge and experience with you, providing even more valuable insights on service-based business growth and sustainability. You won't want to miss a single episode!
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Hello, and welcome to the Service Based Business Society podcast. I am your host, Tiffany Ann Botcher. On our weekly episodes, we will dig into everything you need to know about scaling your service based business without losing sleep. With my experience in creating over 7 figures per month and a passion for marketing, finance, and automation, this show will provide tangible tips and techniques for scaling your business. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Hello, and welcome back to another episode. Today, we are talking about business boundaries. I know that boundaries are always such a sensitive topic and so much so that some of our most popular episodes of the first couple of seasons talked about boundaries in a couple of different ways. But typically, they really talked about that person to person boundary and not so much business boundaries. And so I had a couple of situations come up in the last couple of weeks that just really made me think, hey, I think this is a really relevant topic right now.
Speaker 1:As you grow here's the thing. We're all growing all the time. Sometimes sometimes in the right direction, sometimes not, but we are all growing. We just are gonna call it to me, growing is always, like, bigger, more, more educated, more intelligent, more something. But sometimes when it comes to boundaries, it's actually about clawing it back.
Speaker 1:And I think that that is the tricky piece. I often talk about setting up businesses the way that it needs to be in the end from the start. There's things that you do when you are a small startup that you can't do when you're big. We've talked about it on previous episodes. Your business gets bigger.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like a ship. So when you start, your business is very small, more like a speedboat. You can turn quickly. You can go. You can stop.
Speaker 1:You can you can change it up. In the great words of of mister Ross from Friends, you can pivot very quickly. As your business grows, you become less and less able to do things like that. It becomes bigger. It becomes a ferry where it's just going one direction, big turns, then it goes into a cruise ship.
Speaker 1:Now, then a Freightliner. As the business gets bigger, you can do less and less maneuvering. But that also means that everything else changes. So if you are setting things up with a very small look into the future, sometimes as we grow, we have to claw things back. And this is one of the reasons why I say, hey.
Speaker 1:That's not sustainable from the start. So one of the most common areas, and this isn't necessarily a boundary specific thing, but one of the things that an example of things that shift as you get bigger. So often when businesses start running payroll, they have a very small hold back window. So oftentimes, we see that the hours payday is Friday, and that means that it includes everything up to Thursday at midnight on the Friday check. In fact, some businesses even include the Friday.
Speaker 1:And if people's hours need to be forecast, people are like, well, it includes up to Friday. And then if someone doesn't show up, then we adjust it on the next check or all of these adjustments. That gets really tricky when it comes to direct deposit because usually it has to be posted to the bank ahead of when you would have at one time cut a paycheck. Now as a business gets bigger, that process takes longer, especially if there's some kind of hour review process. So now if your whole team is on salary and it's the same every paycheck, then you probably don't have much to worry about.
Speaker 1:But if you are reviewing things like commissions, if you are reviewing hours, if you need to make if you have to collect up timesheets or something like that, then you need more time, especially because you need to be calculating and making sure that vacation pay is correct and sick pay and all of these different remittances and all that. If you have half a day to do it, and you might say, it only takes me 3 hours. But if you have one day to do it, in 1 3 hour block, what happens if you are sick? What happens if you have a meeting? What happens if that 3 hour block does not become available to you?
Speaker 1:Now you're scrambling to get it done. Now many years ago, I was running payroll, and, this was very early on in my career, and I had committed. I said, no matter what, I will get it done. And this is one of these things where there was not a lot of wiggle room. And, unfortunately, my son ended up he was in the hospital for 10 days or so.
Speaker 1:And I had my laptop, and I will never forget the moment that I laid on the hospital hallway trying to find enough Wi Fi to process payroll because it needed to be done in that exact moment or that team would not be paid. There's something about that that was long before any kind of bookkeeping, payroll service agency, anything like that. I'm at the I'm doing these things, and it just needed to get done. The Wi Fi signal was not great, and I'm trying to post it to the bank. That's a level of stress.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing. Let's look at that. Let's break down that situation. Number 1, let's talk about boundaries. What is a boundary?
Speaker 1:Well, a boundary really is what are you willing to do for money? Now referencing 2024, I feel like the world has gone a shift of what people are willing to do for money. You hear about the most random things online. People in their feet videos, their OnlyFans, whatever. There's lots of different ways to make money in 2024.
Speaker 1:I'm not here to judge any of those things. I'm just saying, what is a boundary? Truly, it is. What are you willing to do? And so if we look and we would say, well, back then, I felt like I needed to do that job because if I didn't do that job, I could potentially lose that job.
Speaker 1:So I would never wanna say I cannot process the payroll and say, hey, we're gonna have to find someone else to do it. I just said, of course, I will get that done. So that was my boundary or lack thereof at that time. Now, many years later, I still at times lack boundaries, but it's it's almost intentional. There's a lot of talk in the business space, in the online space by some really talented people.
Speaker 1:I saw a post just day before yesterday, scrolling social media, and it was really what it was the the final I I was thinking about this podcast episode. I already had a couple of boundaries things on the mind, and this post really made me think about it. It was a business owner saying that he has set some very firm boundaries, and he does not ever bend them. So in his example, he says he works Monday to Friday, 9 to 3 on his business. If there is anything outside of that, it's a no.
Speaker 1:He does not travel for business. He does not attend training outside of those. He does not meet with people outside of those. He very specifically works between 9 and 3, Monday to Friday. That is it.
Speaker 1:Now as someone who works lots of different hours, I I find this peculiar. I think that's not feasible. But that is what's important to him. That's what he's willing to do. And so I it's not right, wrong, or indifferent.
Speaker 1:It's just it's just a different boundary level than I have. Now I work often late at night. I do so by choice. If you follow along in the podcast, I choose to be there for certain family events, certain times for my kids, etcetera. And I just know that I'll make that time up later.
Speaker 1:So it's not that I work any less hours by deciding that I'm going to be there to pick my kids up from school. It just means that I'm going to work different hours. And I will say to this day, I believe it's been over 4 years since I left the corporate space, to this day, I start work at 9. I cannot start work at 9. I don't know how to not do it.
Speaker 1:In my mind, when I left the corporate world, I had this fantasy, I realize it is now, that I was going to get up. I was gonna take my kids to school. I was going to work out, and then I was going to work. In actual application, that does not work, And here is why. I live in the Pacific Standard Time Zone, and we have clients all over North America.
Speaker 1:Pacific Standard Time Zone, we are on the west far West Coast. We are in the last time zone. So we have clients already that have been working for 3 hours before I even start. I always feel like I'm late. Even though I'm like, we set meetings.
Speaker 1:I don't mean I'm late for a specific time, but I feel behind. They've already started. So now I think, well, if I started working out at 9, and then I did my workout by the time I showered and got, like, soon I'm showing up at lunchtime. It doesn't work. This didn't work in application.
Speaker 1:I still, in my mind, think maybe it's possible, but it really isn't. There are many people that then get up and work out before the day, before their kids get up. I know that this I not gonna be me. Sometimes we have these things that don't necessarily work out, and we have to change the plan. Boundaries are not a plan.
Speaker 1:That's really where the distinction here is. Boundaries on a short term basis should not be changing. They do change and evolve over time. You talked about things as your business grows, your boundaries will change, but not as much as a plan. The boundaries should only change as you evolve.
Speaker 1:It should not change because you gave up on it. If you have decided you are willing or not willing to do something, you're really kinda committed to that. And there is some personal accountability because as a business owner, you don't really report to anyone. So if you choose to either follow through on the boundary or not follow through on the boundary, the only person who really deals with that is you. So but let's talk a little bit about those boundaries and the ones that will shift over time.
Speaker 1:So a lot of times people start out their business and they are using their personal mobile device. They answer the phone. They answer text at all hours. Maybe it's from team. Maybe it's from clients.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's from other vendors. Whatever it is, that personal phone is attached to your hand or your pocket or whenever all the time, and you are constantly available. It's really 2 pieces. The constantly available and the personal phone number. So let's break those down into 2 different things.
Speaker 1:The personal phone number is one of the hardest things to claw back. And so I always say don't give it in the first place because clawing things back is very challenging. So if you have a business that operates on a short life cycle, it's actually much easier to claw things back because you don't have the same people. If you are in a long term business cycle relationship, well, that means that you might have a customer for several years. And so if you gave them your personal phone number on day 1, and now on day 300, you decide, actually, I don't want you to have my personal number anymore.
Speaker 1:That's hard. Because you're gonna run into 1 of 2 things. Either you have to stop answering that personal phone when they call or you have to have a conversation about some kind of shift in communications. Either way, it's not ideal. So most business owners just don't do it.
Speaker 1:So as they evolve, as they change, everything everybody new deals with the office number or whoever the new way of doing it is. And there will always be some residual people who call the the telephone. There will always be some residual people that still call that cell phone. I'm guilty of it. And more not so much the phone calls, but the texts.
Speaker 1:And so, actually, recently, this is one of the there I am. It's a Sunday, and someone is texting me that is no longer a current client. They are a former client. They are texting me on a Sunday because they are concerned about a spam message that they have received. They're not sure if it's spam.
Speaker 1:They're not sure if it's not. And now they're reaching out to me to ask, is this legit? Is this spam? What should I be doing with it? And I'm standing in my kitchen thinking, I don't wanna answer this on a Sunday.
Speaker 1:But my personal guilt prevents me from just ignoring it. This person is in stress. They're in distress of, like, their stress about potential scams. So I answer it. I answer the question and I just wanna say that person did not even say thank you.
Speaker 1:And I had a moment of bitterness because I knew that my boundary should have been don't reply on a Sunday. Just wait and reply on the Monday. It wasn't that I was gonna ignore that person. It was a business message. Although it came into a personal channel, this is a business message, and I could just respond.
Speaker 1:When that person did not say thank you and I felt bitter about it for a moment, I thought, but the only person who really is at fault here is myself. Because had I not responded, had that person sent that other message back on a Monday, I probably would have been less bitter about it. That is a boundary. I chose to break my own boundary, was unhappy with the situation that followed. It's really my own fault.
Speaker 1:I I had another situation. It was a it was in a mastermind type program, and someone was saying, this client kept texting me early in the morning and, you know, got back to them. And I said, I don't work on Sunday. I can't be responding to you. And the the other business owner's business business relationship said, that's fine.
Speaker 1:I do work on Sunday, and so I'm sending these to you in my working hours. And so you can get back to me in your working hours. I didn't say please respond to me right now. I did not indicate it was an emergency, and I believe this is the work number. And the other representative said, well, yes.
Speaker 1:But I saw the message come in, and then I needed to answer it. And and I just wanna let you know that you can't message me on Sundays because I don't work on Sundays. That entire situation really bruised that business relationship, and there was a lot of you know, we say right, wrong, or indifferent. We have to be committed to our peace. So if you're not gonna answer the phone on Sunday, then don't answer the phone on Sunday.
Speaker 1:Perhaps set up a system. Go back to the, you know, systems of business. Voicemail, auto text back, vacation responder on the email. Whatever that is, whatever system you're going to use, you always just want to one is the customer contactor in this case, taken care of? Yes.
Speaker 1:Is the boundary protected? Yes. Don't give the farm at the beginning on things that you cannot sustain. But the caveat to that is what each business owner wants to sustain long term is different, and that is okay. That is the boundary discussion that we need to have is that some people don't mind answering on a Sunday.
Speaker 1:Some people don't mind answering in the evening. I will say that I don't know very many real estate agents that would say I work Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, and I don't respond outside of that. Because the fatter is that industry exists outside of that. I remember at one point selling a house and there was a we we were signing papers in in a it was late. And the the realtor from representing the purchaser, he was not super electronic savvy.
Speaker 1:He was driving to me to get it signed, my my husband and I, and then he was driving to the other people. It's just like 11 o'clock at night, and he's driving around town getting all these signatures. And mine could help here, but at the end of the day, what I'm saying is, like, he knows that if he wants to get that deal done, it's going to happen when it's going to happen. He's okay with that. Other business owners really say, you know, ace of the one I was mentioning there, 9 to 3 Monday to Friday, 0 exceptions.
Speaker 1:And that's okay. Where we run into some trouble there is you just have to remember that these are the type of people. And so while other business owners may be cheering him on in the comments saying, gosh, like, love that. I wish I could do that. Like, guess I could, but, like, you are doing business with this person and you feel like, hey.
Speaker 1:I actually like to do my business at 5 PM. He might not be the business to work with for you. These are the types of things that we really have to realize upfront because you don't wanna be in a situation where you feel that person should be existing outside of their boundaries. You're destined to fail. That relationship relationship is destined to fail.
Speaker 1:So personal phone, hard to claw back and so easy to replace. So one of the things that we do in our business, we use GoHighLevel. GoHighLevel is an amazing CRM system. It does different things. But one of the things it does is it have the ability to add a business phone number.
Speaker 1:And from that number, you can text, you can phone, they can phone you, and it all comes into an app. You're still getting it on your mobile device, but it is through the business number. So why is this great? Well, number 1, all of that information is going into your CRM. So you can tell that x has called on Tuesday, client x has called on Friday, they left this voice mail.
Speaker 1:It's all in the customer record. It's not muddled in with pictures from grandma and, you know, to the the kid's teacher and this and that. It's 2 separate things. Less likely to miss things, easier to scale with a team because the communication is in one place. It also means that you can turn on things like autoresponders and and missed call text back and AI chatbot response for text.
Speaker 1:These types of things. Even if it's only to say, thank you for contacting us. We are currently closed and we'll get back to you by Monday morning. If this is an emergency, we do offer, you know, hours emergencies, you know, apply urgent and a team member will be available so that charges will apply. At least then you're up front.
Speaker 1:You've said, hey, we're currently closed. I'm totally happy to talk to you, but you're gonna pay me more. Then the person can decide. There's lots of different options. You don't it's not an automatic yes.
Speaker 1:It's not an automatic no. Sometimes it's about fine tuning it to get get it how you like. K? There was a a conversation going on recently in a Facebook community. And someone is the vendor, and they're basically saying, you know, customer bought package a, and it does only include one planning call.
Speaker 1:But this customer keeps calling and asking, you know, how make a decision and we're planning, and I don't know what to do because I just don't want I'm burning hours. I don't wanna do this anymore. This was the big the big question. And she said, do I just need to let the client go? And there were lots of discussions back and forth.
Speaker 1:Some people who erred on the side of this person is pushing your boundaries, get rid of them. I lean on the side of, well, that doesn't sound very profitable because now you've already spent all of the hours dealing with all of the things and you're gonna give the money back. As a business, this is not a great financial decision, but we have to respect the boundaries. So instead, my response was in this particular case, you know, asking what do I reply? And so lots of people had put in their replies and my reply, you know, necessarily verbatim, but was basically like, hey.
Speaker 1:I understand that decisions are difficult. I'm happy to help you plan. We do offer additional planning sessions. If you'd like, I can send over the booking link in order to book one of those sessions. And if not, no worries.
Speaker 1:Don't stress. Let me know when you've made a decision. This allowed a upsell on the additional call because I'm not. And, you know, it said, hey. If you don't want my help, no like, you don't wanna pay anything, no problem.
Speaker 1:Just let me know when you're ready. We don't just need to sometimes it's those minor adjustments. Right? You have to decide what are we willing to do. But I think that oftentimes, we immediately and it comes back to that that comment of I felt a little bitter.
Speaker 1:When we are bitter, we respond in a not great way. Bitter is an emotion based. It's not business based. Bitter belongs on that emotional shelf. Now it's not to say that we can't run our business with some emotions.
Speaker 1:Obviously, we use emotions to drive the passion, to drive the hustle, to drive all these things. It's only natural that we also feel them in other ways. But sometimes you have to take that step back and think, if I was the employee working for and pretend now you're the boss, and what would I say? What would I want that person to do? Because here's where we lack accountability as business owners.
Speaker 1:If we say, I don't wanna do it. I don't like it. Feels uncomfortable. I don't wanna do it. No one's gonna say, give it a try.
Speaker 1:You should do it. It's the best part. You do what you want, but it's also a challenge. You have to have discipline to still do the things that are uncomfortable, to still be, you know, to to do these things, but within your boundaries. And that see how the boundaries guide.
Speaker 1:They really do say they're almost kind of that core set of, yes, I'll do it. No, I won't. You know? It comes back to funny analogy, but, you know, our people in film, some people who film, you know, put their top off, some people don't. That's the, you know, you or you don't.
Speaker 1:There has to be a decision. There has to be a boundary. So you have to set your boundaries and that you have to be willing to commit to them. Another post I saw on social media. And I I reference social media a lot on the podcast because it gives great insight to what's going on around us.
Speaker 1:So one of the big viral occasions is, of course, the very horrific storms in Florida, the hurricane. Now of that, I, of course, am on the West Coast of Canada, very far away from the hurricane. The the social media coverage from inside the hurricane, as in the people who were on the ground, who were dealing they were their homes. They were their families. They were the that coverage of that storm was unlike anything I personally had ever experienced on social media.
Speaker 1:You felt like you were along with the people. It was absolutely crazy. There I were talking and and people from all over the world talked after the storm about how the first thing I did was checked in on my Florida families because you needed to know. That is the power of what is going on. It's global reach.
Speaker 1:So I often lean to social media for what's going on. And one of the posts that I saw about the hurricane was someone who obviously based in Florida, business provider. And he said, well, I could be helping my my family prepare for the hurricane. I'm on a sales call. Hashtag hustle, hashtag killing it.
Speaker 1:I'm not so sure. I'm hustle. Is it where my values align? No. I saw the post and I thought, ugh.
Speaker 1:And I'll be honest. If I was the person on the sales call and saw the post after, I would feel I would be like, oh, I wouldn't. But I guess if if that was a huge sales call, you know, closing the biggest deal of the year, you need that money to fix the house after the hurricane comes. Maybe. I guess.
Speaker 1:We never know what we would do in a situation unless we're in that situation. From the outside, it's it's not an alignment with my own boundaries. I guess if I felt in this situation I was that desperate, I probably just wouldn't share it on social media because as soon as you put something on social media, it opens up for other people's opinions. Boundaries are a funny thing. I am a huge Ryan Serhant fan.
Speaker 1:And on his most recent reality TV show, Owning Manhattan, which, by the way, even if you don't like reality TV, even if you don't like the real estate shows, this is quite different than, like, selling sunset very drama ish vibe. This one really shows some of the challenges of scaling a business. It really gives that insight as to more not just the real estate side, but the the owning, the brokerage side, and the challenges that come with it. He is actually in the very last show, spoiler alert, he is at their big, kind of, whatever party. And he gets a call and someone says, I wanna do the deal.
Speaker 1:You know, not a direct quote or anything, but basically, we're gonna do the deal, but we gotta do it now. And he leaves everyone partying and he slips out the back, and he goes and does the deal. Now I get it. It's on TV, and I take that with a grain of salt. But that is who he is.
Speaker 1:He has has always been very authentically, always available. That's his part of his brand. That's part of you've read any of his books. If you follow his shows, that's who he is. That is in alignment with the boundaries that he has.
Speaker 1:Now does every business owner feel the need to leave a holiday or, you know, some kind of party slip out the back and go close a deal? No. But if you have done those types of things for clients, whether that's allowed the scope to change and not charge them, whether that's allow them to call you at 10 PM at night, whether that's, you know, team member that asks for the pay advance every second week, whether that's the person who gives, you know, requests a day off work with no notice. All of these things. If you have ever just let it happen, the clawing it back is never fun.
Speaker 1:Because it's that next time where you have to say, I can't do that. No. I'm not willing to do that. No. We don't do it that way anymore.
Speaker 1:The person is like, well, what do you mean? But we always did it like that. Yes. We did. But it's hand sustaining it.
Speaker 1:Yes. You can answer 1, 2, 3, 4 clients at 10 PM at night if you so choose. But when you have 15, 30, 45, 50 clients, how many clients are you dealing with at 10 PM at night? Here's the distinction. Here's as a business owner because this is the tough part.
Speaker 1:What it takes to get there is not what it takes to stay there. And so often the people who are talking, the coaches, the mindsets, the people standing on stages, the people talking on podcast, they are all the ones who are saying, you know, 5 hour work week, the Monday to Friday, 9 to 3, the set your boundaries and don't ever let them go, the peace, the all of these messaging. The thing is none of those people did that to get where they are. Gary Vaynerchuk is the example. I was a when I say fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, like, I flew across the country to see him speak on a stage.
Speaker 1:I arrived. I got settled into my Airbnb. I checked in, did all the things, and then went to bed for, like, hours before the event. And in that 3 hours, I later saw on social, like, his he had been, like, on the streets and, like like, hey. I'm here.
Speaker 1:And, like, it was the middle of the night, and there was, like, a whole crowd of people. And I was like, oh my goodness. I missed it. I got that 3 hours of sleep, but I missed it. That was him.
Speaker 1:He promoted the hustle unlike anyone I knew. There was no sleep. There was just hustle. Now 6, 7 years later, that is not the message he pushes at all because he evolved. The problem is that many a successful people were built on the hustle first.
Speaker 1:Yes. You can shift later, but be mindful that clawing back things from people is hard. So, yes, easy to say absolutely. Yes to every lead. Yes.
Speaker 1:We can do that. Yes. We'll deliver. Yes. But as you grow, you probably won't be able to offer the exact same thing to everybody.
Speaker 1:And if you have a long business cycle, so you still have those original people, that is a long unsustainable journey. It's okay. Do the unsustainable. Live it. Grab your success, but just know what you're doing at the time.
Speaker 1:I often say these are all strategic decisions. So, yes, sometimes you say yes knowing that you're gonna go the extra mile. But it needs to always be done in a way that the end end at the end in mind. Know that your boundaries will shift over time as your business evolves. When I started my business, I answered every call, every email, every time.
Speaker 1:Doesn't matter the day. Didn't matter the time. I could not be away. In fact, I remember one of the first vacation vacations, it was, like, days away that I took after I started my business. And, like like, it could go wrong, it did.
Speaker 1:You know, like, person who was supposed to be leading was sick and then this happened and then that part. And I remember sitting at a restaurant on an iPad. I forgot my laptop. Talk about business owner fail. I didn't bring my laptop.
Speaker 1:I had tablet and my phone, and I'm, like, seeing a restaurant. My family's waiting for me, and I'm like, one sec. I just have just have to get this to it was absolute chaos. And it was in that moment that I was like, okay. We gotta figure this out.
Speaker 1:We gotta get this right. Now we still have clients that I started with. In fact, I still work for the 1st client that I ever closed when I started my business. And we have gone through different evolutions. You know, one point it was 7 days a week.
Speaker 1:Didn't matter anytime. And over time, what we do, it was a very, you know, VIP inclusive package to start and now we do less. You know, the systems to start and now it's just a matter of just just run the systems and provide some support in the background. It is less, you know, high touch situation. But I also don't give out my personal phone number anymore.
Speaker 1:Very few people have clients related my personal number very intentionally. Because people always go to, like, path of least resistance and they wanna talk to the top person that they can. So instead of my team member reaching out to them and then them getting the response on something that I am unrelated, so often people would call me. My team member would email them. They would call me, and they would say, you had a question for me.
Speaker 1:And they would start and I would think, I don't know what question you're talking about because I'm not a part of every single thing. Personal phone, hours, days, scope, and and HR are the top five things where we start to just it it starts out for back of lack of a better terms, a little bit loose and free, and over time, it just isn't. I guess it depends on how fast your business grows. You know, you have 5 employees, really anything under 10, you could still be a little loose and free. Any you don't have to get over that.
Speaker 1:There has to be a little bit more, especially when you have people in set roles. If everybody's away for, you know, weeks in August, how does the business function? Those are the types of things. So boundaries in business, super important. We've talked about the difference between boundaries and plan.
Speaker 1:Plans do evolve and change over time. They are less hard stop. The boundary really should be the hard stop, what you're willing to do and what you're not willing to do. And I always say everything has a has a price. And so someone will say, is that business for sale?
Speaker 1:People will be like, no. I'm like, well, I guess it depends. You know, talking about my business specifically, but, you know, grew up riding horses very competitively and, you know, was taught that everything is for sale for the right price. And so within reason, within the boundaries. If we said everything is for sale for the right price, I can think of a few things no matter the price I would not be selling.
Speaker 1:Boundaries. What are you willing to do? Yes. It'll shift to less. Your business grows, you will your boundaries will get tighter.
Speaker 1:You will do less. You would think it would be the reverse but it is not. Yes you'll do more of other things. You'll do more you'll do more. Yes there's more of other things.
Speaker 1:But in terms of those things that are really just the I'm willing to do this. I'm willing to not. It will be less. You'll always be clawing back. So be mindful of that.
Speaker 1:If you're starting your payroll journey, please put in a hold back period. 5 days ideally. Because everyone says 5 days? That's really long. I don't need 5 days.
Speaker 1:Okay. Most payroll processors need 2 days or you're gonna pay more. You can get it to be shorter, but most times you pay more. 2 days. Now if it's the long weekend, stat holiday, there's 3 days and now you're up 5.
Speaker 1:So often, it comp it really complicates things if you have no holdback period. Or you're always making adjustments. I can't tell you what the boundaries you need to keep. I can't tell you if you should reply to a text message at 8 AM on a Sunday morning or if you shouldn't. You have to decide always what are you willing to do and then do that and never present someone because you chose to not follow your boundary and they didn't appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Because most likely they didn't even know that boundary existed. They sent a message, you chose to reply. That's on you. No bitterness. Have a good day, guys.
Speaker 1:We're all out of time for today, but the fun doesn't stop here. Make sure to subscribe to the Service Based Business Society podcast on your preferred podcast app. If you're hanging out over on YouTube, search for Tiffany Ann Botcher. Your likes, shares, and reviews really do help the show. Until next time.
Speaker 1:Have a great week.