Reclaim Your Time: Mastering Boundaries and SOPs for Entrepreneurial Success

Is your business consuming every waking hour, leaving you exhausted and unfulfilled? Discover how to reclaim your time and energy by mastering the art of boundary-setting and implementing effective Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Join me, Nicole, as I guide you through the essential practices of maintaining balance between your professional and personal life. You'll learn how gratitude can fortify your resilience, helping you gracefully navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. 

Through practical strategies and real-life examples, we'll explore how to communicate your availability to clients and automate repetitive tasks to streamline your workflow. Imagine running a business that doesn’t require your constant oversight, allowing you to take restful, guilt-free breaks. With these tools and practices, you’ll achieve a healthier work-life dynamic and sustained entrepreneurial success. Tune in and revolutionize the way you manage your business!

Chapters

• 0:02 Setting Boundaries and Business Practices
• 13:07 Establishing Boundaries and Standard Operating Procedures

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello there everyone. Welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. As you already know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here with you once again today, and I wanted to address a question that I've seen going around on social media, something that my clients have asked me, and so I wanted to go ahead and pull back the curtain and show you guys. So the question is how do you handle it all? How do you deal with all of the nuances? How do you deal with all of the things that we have to do between sending emails and posting and client work, and you know resting and like eating, and and you know resting and like eating, and like you know life things. How do you handle it all? And I think that's a great question and it comes down to just a few things, right, it comes down to a few things that are relatable for all of us, right? So, like I can't answer anyone specifically, but I can let you guys know that it comes down to boundaries, business boundaries and having really good SOP, standard operating procedures. These are the things that I teach, that I use to free myself up of time and that I teach my clients to do Okay, and so I wanted to remind everyone that that is the reason why, in my content, in everything that I do, I start with the basics of like practicing gratitude and setting boundaries and doing these really small things, making trust deposits. Because if you're going to go into the next level of business and you're going to be handling multiple clients, you're going to be posting multiple times a day, like you know you need to be doing, you're going to be sending emails and you're going to be doing all of these like, not to mention like building out funnels, you know, sending your website, the next promotion, like there is a lot. And so I talk to you mostly you know out, like in social media, and stuff about beginner level gratitude, boundaries, things like that. Because once we start talking about next level, I need you to be able to say no. I need you to be able to say no to little things, because when you get to that next level, you're going to have to be comfortable saying no to big things. There is going to be clients that are going to come to you and they're going to have the money but they're not going to vibe with you and it's going to be miserable and you're going to be clients that are going to come to you and they're going to have the money but they're not going to vibe with you and it's going to be miserable and you're going to have to be able to say no.

Speaker 1: 3:07

When I talk about practicing gratitude, I tell you to practice gratitude for the little things for your morning coffee, for AC, for your pets, for your kids, for a blanket, for a chair that you have to sit in, for having a phone, for having internet access, whatever it is the tiny little things that we do. It has to start there, because when we get to the next level of business practices, I need you to have a strong foundation of gratitude, for when big things start falling apart At the next level, when you're in positions of leadership, it's not going to be as easy to just throw your hands up and be like, no, I'm just not doing this anymore. Right, because now we have people depending on us, our family's depending on us, our income is depending on us, and so we don't have that luxury. And so when people ask me, what is it? How do you do it? That's what it comes down to is setting up boundaries and having great sops, and it all starts with practicing gratitude for the little things, starting small and learning to set personal boundaries so that when we start talking about bigger business boundaries, you have practice, you have the resilience and you're able to do it. So how does that translate in business Boundaries?

Speaker 1: 4:17

In business can look like a lot of things. It can look like your schedule. You set up a schedule and then you follow that schedule. It's being able to tell clients no or just not responding at all. If they message you Friday at 11 pm and you've made it very clear that you're not going to be online from Friday at five to Monday at nine because you have a special event and they message you at 11 o'clock at night, I need you to be able to not answer or to answer and let them know. Hey, I'm not going to be back in the office until Monday and then that's the end of the discussion, right, and that is set up beforehand, right? I'm not saying always be saying no to people, absolutely not. When you're available, I expect you to answer quickly, right? So I set up so that my clients know that when I'm available I'm going to answer. I don't drop everything I'm doing to answer, but I make sure that I get back to them in a timely manner so that, the moment that I don't, they know that I'm busy, they know that it's not that I'm ignoring them or whatever it is. They know that, hey, you know what. I can count on Nicole to get back to me as soon as she's back in her office, and so I need you to be able to create those kinds of boundaries for yourself and for your clients.

Speaker 1: 5:39

The truth of the matter is there is always going to be something to do, always. We always have a perpetual like cause. There's always new things are coming up, right, and so being able to set boundaries and business means getting your work done and then not working anymore when it's time to rest. I need you to have strong boundaries so you can close the laptop, turn off notifications on your phone and go rest. Whether that means taking a nap, taking a bath, going on vacation, going for a walk, sitting on the couch and drinking some coffee and just not doing anything at all, I don't care what it is, but you have to have a strong foundation of boundaries so that you can. That's where it starts. Right, the other part of that right.

Speaker 1: 6:32

We talked about boundaries and then we talked about SOPs the things that you are doing repeatedly, every day, every week, every month, every year in your business. They need to be duplicatable, right? You need to understand exactly like we're going deep here, guys. You need to understand exactly how each one of those things is done. When you send out an email, what happens? How do you do your keyword research? How do you decide how to set up that email? How do you decide what to write? How do you know what your calls to action are? Simply by observing.

Speaker 1: 7:17

I don't want you to create this fancy outline of things that you think you should be doing. No, fuck that. What I want you to do is pay attention to what you're already doing and then write it down, because when you understand the steps that it takes, you can look at those steps and you can be like how can I make this easier? Is there a service that I can implement that's going to help me do something about this instead of me having to do it? Right? And then it's going to also make it easier when you hire someone.

Speaker 1: 7:45

I don't want you to be a bottleneck in your business. I don't want you to be the only person that can do what you do in your business, well, that does all the things right. You're the only one that can do what you do, but I don't want you to be the only one that can write emails and write posts and schedule the posts and do because you can't like. You don't want to be doing that either. You didn't get into business to be doing all these things all of the time. You got into your business to do the thing that you're great at and you're great at it Right, and so I just want to help to facilitate all of the other things that make your business a business, the things that you know that you have to be doing to keep seeing clients Right, because once we get to the client, that's fulfillment. That has nothing to do with sales. That has nothing to do with sales. That has nothing to do with marketing except for referrals, obviously, but I'm being kind of general right now. But working with your clients is fulfillment, like the work of getting them as a client is already done Right, and so we need to continue marketing so that we can continue having more clients or we can continue selling more of our offers, our products, whatever.

Speaker 1: 8:59

It is Right If that's your goal, and so when you are trying to figure out how do I handle it all, the answer is going to be setting really good boundaries. The answer is going to be setting really good boundaries. My podcast only happens on Tuesday. So if I'm going to do a podcast interview, it's going to happen on a Tuesday. If I'm going to be scheduling out content for my podcast, unless it's an emergency, it's going to happen on a Tuesday. That is the boundary. Sometimes I adjust like today is not Tuesday and I'm recording, but whatever, that's okay, because usually I'm within those confines and I understand that this is like a bonus thing that I'm doing Right. So I made the conscious decision about doing this on a Tuesday, whatever. But that's that's beside the point.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Right is having those strong boundaries so that you know what's going to happen when your clients know how they can get in touch with you. Where are you going to you? You cannot be expected to be available 24, seven for your clients. Uh, unless you have an offer that compensates you adequately for being on call all the time, right? Like if you were a doctor and you're on call, you're making the big bucks because you're on call, hopefully, um right, but if you're like a specialist, you're the only person that can do what you do. You get paid the big like a specialist. You're the only person that can do what you do. You get paid the big bucks because, literally, you're the only one that can do it, and so it's either you pay me or this is just not going to get done, right? Um, that's a boundary right, and you, as you become more specialized, those are boundaries that you might need to set, um, so, yeah, so those are my big things.

Speaker 1: 10:52

When you want to know, how do we handle it all? We set really good boundaries, and even within our work, we make sure that the time that we set up to get work done is time that we're using to get work done. Right. Like, you can't say I'm going to be creating content for social media from 10 to 11 and then scroll on social media from 10 to 11 and be like whew, that was a lot of work, you didn't do shit, okay. And so do not allow yourself to fall into that trap. If you're going to be working from 10 to 11, do what you've got to do, because once 11 o'clock hits, you're done, you're done, and so you remember that things will fit into the time that we give them right, so you don't need two weeks to write a bunch of content. See what you can get done in an hour. See what you can get done in two hours, whatever it is Like if you do use a Pomodoro method, whatever doesn't matter. But what I'm saying is make sure that the things get done.

Speaker 1: 11:54

That's where it comes back to trust deposits. When you say you're going to drink water every day, right, and I ask you those things, it's not about the water, it's about creating those habits. Are you going to stick to what you said you were going to do and it's got nothing to do with me? That's between you and your brain, right? Am I going to do the thing that I said I was going to do? And so that's why I wanted to give you guys, like a backstage glimpse of why do I start with these things that seem so unconnected, like it, seems like it has nothing to do with business, but these are the foundations of everything that that we do, right, and so, having those really strong boundaries, practicing those boundaries, like with your family, with your neighbors, learning to say no, getting comfortable with saying no, um, getting comfortable with saying yes. Maybe you don't say yes enough, right, and you have to have a year of yes for yourself, and so maybe that's the boundary. Maybe you have too many boundaries, right, and so take a look at that and see where you know where are my boundaries? Are they productive? Are they helping me get things accomplished, right?

Speaker 1: 13:07

And then your SOPs. Your SOPs, your standard operating procedures that can even include your rest. If you rest on Sundays, if that's your standard operating procedure, that's fine. I'm not telling you to work seven days a week. I don't, you don't have to right, but you've got to create the boundary of doing that for yourself. So I leave my Sundays open. I don't do work unless it's an emergency, unless I have, like a big event coming up. For the most part Sundays, our lives completely open, right?

Speaker 1: 13:39

My clients know that you can message me on a Sunday. You're not getting an answer back unless it's an absolute emergency, cause I don't even look at my phone. Um, so, and they know that, right, so the boundary is letting your clients know. Hey, I am not going to be available in the evening after 10 o'clock. My phone goes on, do not disturb, and I'm not going to answer you until like 10 because I'm not, I don't look at my phone before that, and so my clients know okay, cool, even if I send her a message now, if you get a message back from me, that's like a bonus. Oh, my god, thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 14:13

I didn't even think you would answer, right, but it is not the expectation that I set that I'm going to be answering you at one o'clock in the morning because I don't want to have to, because it's not fair, right, and then I'm tired and it's like a whole thing, not at one. Like one is normal, is normal, whatever. But you guys know what I mean, right? Um, so, making sure that you have those boundaries set, I'd rather work late than get up early, whatever, and I don't. I just don't do meetings before 10 because, because I don't want to, because then I get grouchy, I'm just you don't want to see me in the morning, um, okay, so, um, unless it's an emergency, you know, I have those boundaries set for myself and then I don't violate those boundaries. So when I do have to, right, like if my coach is like, oh, we're going to be meeting at 9am, okay, well, I'm going to make an exception, but I know that it's not like a normal thing, so I don't have to be stressing about oh my God, it's to be super early, no?

Speaker 1: 15:12

So, understanding what your boundaries are and then having your standard operating procedures, take a look at those things that you're doing every day. Automate them. Like instead, see how can you automate things, how can you do it for free, right? I'm not telling you that you have to go pay for a bunch of things, but what tools are available? What is at your disposal that you can use to help you automate the flow, to help you take yourself out of the equation? So things that can happen without you.

Speaker 1: 15:44

So, like, scheduling out emails is a really good example, right? Like? You don't have to sit down every week to write an email and send it out. If you sit down one day and you're like this is the things that I want to write about this month, you can write out four emails in Google and a Google doc and go into your email newsletter, paste those emails into your email newsletter, schedule them out, and you don't have to think about your emails for the rest of the month, right? So I want you to take inventory. This is what I tell all my clients Take inventory of what you are doing.

Speaker 1: 16:17

Understand your boundaries, set up your standard operating procedures and then follow them so that you don't have to be thinking about, well, what's the next step? No, I know what the next step is, because this is how it goes in my business. It's going to take you a little while. Okay, don't beat yourself up. Grab like a Google Excel or a Google document and then just start writing things down. There's also some apps that you can use for that, and we can deep dive into that another day.

Speaker 1: 16:43

But think about what are your boundaries in your business, what are your SOPs, your business, what are your SOPs? And establish those so that you can take time off and you don't have to be stressing about work. I know that tomorrow, when I get back into my office, 10 am everything's going to be rocking and rolling. Right now I'm off. That's an example, right. So, like if I'm off and I start feeling guilty about it, today's not a work day, today's an off day. Tomorrow, 10 am, I'll be in my office, I'll do all those things, yeah, and then that's how you create freedom for yourself, guys Having really strong boundaries with yourself, with your clients not too strong and having really good SOPs, understanding what is your standard operating procedures and and having really good SOPs, understanding what is your standard operating procedures and then automating things so that you don't have to be the one they're doing it all the time. All right, I'm not saying anything new, so thanks for joining me. I will see you on the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. Thanks, guys, see you soon. Bye.