Are you always thinking about how to help & support your clients? Of course! But are you helping or hurting? If you have trouble setting boundaries and sticking to them, you’re hurting your clients and yourself.

We can be afraid that setting boundaries will cut off opportunities, or make us the bad guy. Having clear boundaries and making sure you are taking care of yourself actually make you a better coach.

Here are 3 ways you can empower your boundaries and give yourself a raise by stopping your habit of giving away your time.

One: Have clearly defined times when you are available.

Create “office hours” even if you are working from home. Let clients know when you will respond to emails and calls. If you don’t do business at night and on weekends, tell your clients if they email or call you late in the day, you’ll get back to them the following day, and if they contact you on Friday, you’ll respond on Monday.

If you respond to client emails at all hours, you train them that you are always available, and you will resent them for taking your family time, your down time, fun time, kid time, etc., and you set yourself up for feeling overwhelmed by your business. That doesn’t serve you, and it doesn’t serve them, either!

Two: Create a clear policy about rescheduling appointments, and stick to it.

Honor your time, and honor your clients’ time. If you allow them to reschedule without notice, you are not honoring your time. Your time is valuable. You schedule time to work ON your business (marketing, accounting, planning, etc.), and you schedule time to work IN your business (client sessions). When you allow a client to reschedule on short notice, you are giving up more than the $$$ for that session. Your whole business is negatively impacted.

I require 24 hours’ notice in order to reschedule an appointment, or the person loses that session, and it’s in the contract my clients sign. I set aside the time for them, and can’t schedule anything else in that time. I require my clients to honor my time.

I also honor my clients’ time. If I space out someone’s session (which I HATE to do, but very occasionally happens), I give them another session.

When I was doing bodywork, I had a client who was frequently 30 minutes late, or would call at the last minute to reschedule. At first, I accommodated her. When she was late, I still gave her a full hour. When she asked at the last minute, I would reschedule her without charge. I came to dread her appointments. I resented her using up extra time without paying for it, and I couldn’t do my best work when I was feeling resentful.

I finally decided it wasn’t worth it for me to work with her. Because I really didn’t care if she never called me again, I was willing to have the hard conversation. I told her that I felt she didn’t respect my time, while she expected me to respect hers. Going forward, if she was late, I would only give her the rest of her scheduled time, and if she canceled with less than 24 hours’ notice, she needed to pay me the full fee.

I thought she would stop calling, but instead, she respected the clear boundaries I set, and reformed her behavior. Not only that, she got better results in our sessions.

It was a big lesson! My inability to hold my boundaries and have the hard conversations had not served my client or me. When I said what needed to be said, established clear boundaries and held them firmly, my client and I were both happier, and she got better results.

Honor your time, and honor your clients’ time. Require them to do the same for you.

Three: Stop over-delivering.

When they begin working with me, many women admit to going over time in their client sessions. If they schedule an hour, it ends up being 75 or even 90 minutes. If they schedule 45 minutes, they routinely give an hour or more. They also tend to pack their programs with so much content that they overwhelm their clients.

What happens when there is WAY TOO much packed into a program? Here’s what happens to me: I stop working on the program – I don’t do the homework, and I don’t implement what I learned. I get discouraged, blame myself, blame the provider, and end up feeling awful about the whole experience. I don’t get the results I wanted and expected, and resent how much I invested. I don’t recommend the program to others, either.

Ask yourself, what would happen if you took 50% out of your program? (I heard that gasp!) Now think: What results could your clients get if they actually had the time and bandwidth to fully implement each step of your program? How would you feel about your ability to support them? How much deeper could you take your work? How satisfying would that be for you, and what would the results be for your clients?

The best boundaries can be set with the energy of giving (not taking away).

Shift your mindset. You are actually giving your clients more value by setting clear boundaries. When you set boundaries, you prevent yourself from being overwhelmed by a business that seems to take ALL your time, and you prevent your clients from being overwhelmed by too much information and too much to accomplish. You set them up for success, while setting yourself up for success, and you make more money. What could be better?
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What are your thoughts on todays article? Did you have any a-ha moments? I’d love it if you’d share them with me in the comments section below.

Ways I can support your further:
Would you like to learn how to turn your Speaking Into Dollars?! If you answered yes, I have a free gift for you. It’s my Authentic Voice Assessment! It’s a wonderful tool that will help illuminate your gifts and unique challenges so you can turn your speaking into six figure success!

Click here to receive my free gift!

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