Episode 60: Boundaries to Empower Your Business and Yourself
In Episode 60, Sam explores the concept of boundaries and how you can use them to empower yourself and your business. This is a follow up from Episode 59, which was about rethinking our capacity for personal and business success, and boundaries are a part of how we can increase our capacity individually, in business and with our teams.
Sam explains the two questions you must ask yourself to have clearer boundaries and how they impact almost every aspect of life and business: time, thinking, lack of rest, work-life balance, offerings, pricing, scope of work, marketing, customer services, employee productivity and leadership.
She shares some different ways to think about boundaries in business and how self-awareness about goals and direction will help you develop better boundaries.
Sam covers the two types of boundaries most people have, and gives a Boundary Impact exercise that you can use to get started in your boundary work.
Finally Sam explains what to do when people push on your boundaries, the reasons you must start small and the three steps to do so.
Listen to an excerpt
What we cover in this episode
How understanding and using boundaries can increase capacity, individually, in business and with your team
Why boundaries are Sam’s superpower and how she learned about them
The two questions you must ask yourself to have clearer boundaries
How boundaries impact almost every aspect of life and business: time, thinking, lack of rest, work-life balance, offerings, pricing, scope of work, marketing, customer services, employee productivity and leadership
Some different ways to think about boundaries in our business
How self-awareness about your goals and direction will help you develop better boundaries
The best way Sam has found for thinking about and looking at boundaries
The two types of boundaries most people have
The Boundary Impact exercise to get you started in your boundary work
What to do when people push on your boundary
Why you must start small with boundaries (and 3 steps to doing so)
Quotes
“Boundaries really gave me my life back, in a way. Understanding boundaries and how to use them kindly and effectively is the key to increasing your capacity and empowering your business and team. And I'm going to go as far as to say [they’re the key to] empowering yourself. As always the work starts with ourselves.”
“One of the big things that I learned through there, and the initial boundary work that I did, was very much around how to structure your week and keep your time dedicated to what you want.”
“Boundaries put a line on two things: what is your responsibility and what is not your responsibility? And what is okay with you and what is not okay with you?”
“Nine to five is a boundary in itself. And if you're taking calls or sending messages to your staff on weekends, or you're taking calls from your clients, and you [think], ‘Oh, I'm working too hard, and I'm working weekends.’ You're stepping over your own boundaries.”
“People tend to have two types of boundaries. They they have—and I think we're very good at this as accountants because of our nice personality style—very open wide boundaries. That's why we get very overwhelmed. And then the other extreme of that is very shut down boundaries [with] no pliability about it.”
“Start small on this, do not go over the top. Pick one thing that you want to do during your week to set a boundary.”
“Be very clear with everybody, make sure that you tell people upfront if it's going to affect them. And then when that boundary is actually come across, push back on it and keep people accountable.”
“I can tell you that if you build clarity about what you want, and then work step by step to enforce it intentionally, then you will ensure that you'll…increase your capacity and that your business will grow. As I said the boundary work that I started fairly simply and built out over time has become one of my most important tools.”
Links mentioned
Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris
Dr. Brene Brown’s work
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