Boundaries in Business

Hello everybody, welcome to the Premium Websites Not Podcast. We are here today with Dr. Michael Sue, and she is a phenomenal woman. Let me tell you a little bit about her. Dr. Michael Sue's mission is to support survivors of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse in reclaiming their power and overcoming past trauma. She incorporates diverse methods including recovery coaching, emotional and spiritual counseling to create a holistic approach for guiding individuals on their personal path to healing and empowerment. And she is a phenomenal businesswoman. So today we are going to learn how she is taking her skills of setting boundaries into the business world to help all of us. I'm so excited for this interview, Dr. Michael Sue.

Thank you for having me, Dotty.

Why don't you start with telling us a little bit about your backstory? How'd you get to where you are now?

Oh my goodness. It's a long one, but I'm going to do the short, very short version. I was married to a very abusive alcoholic and ended up in Al-Anon, which is a recovery program, and I had to learn about boundaries. I had no— I had no idea. I came from a very— we all come from dysfunctional families, most of us. 80, 70 to 80% of us come from dysfunctional families, but I never learned how to set boundaries. And they taught me how to set boundaries. And so over 30 years later, I'm pretty good at this. I ended up in school. I had hurt my wrist doing, uh, retail merchandising and ended up in school finishing my bachelor's degree and then dual master's degrees and my dissertation from my doctorate, my PhD, and I worked with Lenore Walker, who is a phenomenal woman, more, more, more phenomenal than me, actually. And Lenore coined the term battered woman, and she came up with the criteria for battered woman syndrome. And I was fortunate enough to work with her, be a co-researcher with her in Nova Southeastern University research for women in jail, and she wrote the book, um, Battered Woman Syndrome. And so I worked with her. She was my chair for my thesis to get into my doctoral program, and then she began as my chair for my dissertation for my doctoral program. She retired before I could finish, but I told her not to do that, but she did it anyway. I don't know why she didn't listen to me, but anyway, I finished that, and I had to learn how to set boundaries. Writing that dissertation, I was getting calls from people, and especially my mom. She called often, and I finally had to say lovingly, "If it's not an emergency, please don't call me. I can't do this. I am busy. I'm sitting in this chair 14 to 18, 22 hours a day trying to get this dissertation done, and I can't be distracted. The hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I did it and it worked. And I do that, I do that often in business. I have to set boundaries. I have clients. I'm a mental health and spiritual counselor and a recovery coach, and I have clients that don't always want to adhere to the boundaries, and I have to set them. Sometimes I have to set them with myself because I want to give, give, give, and I, I have to follow time restraints. So I can't continuously give too much of my time. We have to— I have to limit it. We'll have another session next week, or we can have another session tomorrow, but I've got to limit it today. So I have to follow that, and I have to keep my calendar, which is really tough, but I keep everything in it. All my personal things, business things, classes, whatever's going on. Time to sit down and read a book in the evening. I have a little thing that dings at 9 o'clock that it's time to sit down and read a book, and at 10 o'clock it says bedtime. I don't always follow it, but I attempt to do that. So, but I had to—

I have to follow these boundaries, and I teach them So, well, I am excited to learn how, what you've learned about boundaries over the history of your entire life. It sounds like how we apply that to business. So let's start with something that everybody is always complaining about, and that is time management.

Calendars. I, you have to keep a calendar. Absolutely. Keep that calendar. Set everything into the calendar, no matter if it's a 5-minute break in between whatever you're doing during the day for work. Set a time to start and set a time to stop. A lot of people work 9 to 5. Don't start at 8 o'clock if you're, if you're supposed to start at 9. Unless it's absolutely pertinent. But keep that, keep those time schedules. They're really important. And when you're doing these things, you're showing other people how to treat you. If you're respecting your boundaries, if you're expecting, respecting your time, other people tend to respect it. Now, there are some that don't, but most of them do. So it's showing, it's showing self-respect for yourself, and you've got to prioritize things. I have to keep lists, and I'm old school, and even though I can work on the computer, I have notepads and I keep lists. I have a journal, I write in my journal, but I keep a list. This is what I need to do first, this is what I need to do second. Sometimes my list is usually, you know, really, really long, but I have to go back to this first thing and finish it. I have a hard time with completion sometimes, but I have to go back in and finish this and make sure that it's completely done before I move on to the second one. I have a friend who used to complain that if the washing machine broke, she couldn't vacuum the floor. It wasn't the next thing on the list, so she couldn't do it. So yeah, just get it. You gotta set those, those time, those time limits.

I totally agree. I, I do have some clients that reach out to me in the late evening hours and I have adapted the policy of just turning my phone off and dealing with it during business hours. So I love that. So I heard you mention earlier that some of your clients don't respect the boundaries. So talk to me a little bit about client boundaries.

A client will get on a roll. We're working and we're on a roll and they're talking to me about what happened or what's happening now. And sometimes it's difficult to stop midstream, but we have a time frame, and a lot of times I have something to do right after their session, so I can't go over. So I have to really be careful with that, and I have to watch the time. I'm not a real good— I'm not really good at watching the clock, but I have to watch the time and make sure that we're not going over and we can wrap it up. So I usually try and wrap up 5 minutes before we're, we're done. I have 50-minute sessions, so at 45 minutes I try and wrap it up. This is what we've talked about today. This is what I want you to do for homework, and I'll see you next week. Doesn't always work.

Do you have a, like, a little dinger or something that, that reminds you?

Yeah, and you know, as I was saying that, I thought maybe I should get something like that, but I don't. I do have a big clock that's right here on the wall, and if I'm sitting here, I can, I can peek at that, and I can look down at— if I'm online, I can look down at my computer, you know, like at my clock here. So I usually pretty, pretty well, well aware. If I'm sitting here and I have a client in person, the clock is here and they're there, so I have to, I have to be aware of it and just kind of pay attention. And I wear a watch. So I'm, I'm pretty much aware of it that way, but sometimes it's necessary to go over if I don't have something else and they're in crisis, and I will.

I would assume that that is an exception and that you explain that it's an exception so you don't set that precedence. Is that true?

Yes. Yes. Now I am available. I always tell my clients if it gets, if it gets bad, Babies get sicker, drunks get drunker, and we get crazier at night. And I always say, if it's, if it's an emergency— if it's not a 911 emergency where you have to go to the hospital and you're cutting, you're bleeding, or something's really wrong— if it's really an emergency, call me. If I'm asleep, I'll wake up, we'll talk about it. If it's not an emergency, write it down, send me a text in the morning, we'll talk about it. At some point. But perfect if it's, if it's truly an emergency, and sometimes it is. I, I deal with battered women, so, and, and sometimes it's the emotional— and I, I work with women who are emotionally, physically, or sexually abused, and a lot of times, he didn't hit me, so it's not, it's not abuse. But it is. He called you stupid. He did some other things. He threw a glass and he broke it. That's abuse. So there are times when, when they need me for that.

Now, speaking about business, because we were talking about how boundaries can increase the revenue in your business, I want you to speak a little bit to financial boundaries because I know that some businesses fail because they can't seem to figure out the income versus expenses and how to draw lines and say no. So what do you have to say about that?

Yeah, it's a matter of setting your policies. Do you have price points? Do you stick to the price points? I used to tell people, I was in the tire business with my ex-husband years ago, and they would come in and they wanted to dicker price, and I'd say, excuse me, this is like Kmart when Kmart was around. This is like Kmart. They don't dicker with prices. I don't either. This is my price. This is what we're— this is what I'm charging.

You don't have a blue light special?

I don't have a blue light special, no. I'd never had a blue light going on, so nope, we're not doing that. That's funny, Dotty. You just, you just told who you— how old you are. I know, we remember these things. But you've got to go ahead and set these boundaries as far as your prices and, and what you'll do and what you won't do. Limit the distractions. Is everybody doing what they're supposed to do? Is everybody functioning in their position? Do they know what they're supposed to be doing? Do you have guidelines around those? Those are really important that everybody knows, this is my responsibility. And they take— they do that responsibility. They take care of what they need to take care of, and they don't pawn it on— pawn it off onto someone else. That gets really bad. And just knowing where you are, keeping your budget, keeping your books in order so that you know where you are.

Do you have an easy tool that lets you easily see where you are? No, well, I can say that I do.

So I will share, to be honest, I'm, I'm working on that and in getting it into place. I do have it for my personal, yeah, budget, but I'm working on it. And, um, and actually you're gonna help me, you're gonna help me figure that out, Dotty, when we get into this GoHighLevel stuff and I learn how to use this platform and I can figure out how to do invoices and, and keep the books that way instead of all this paper stuff.

Yep, I use QuickBooks, but I think anything would work, any, any sort of a software where you're putting in your, putting in your receipts, your expenses, and you're putting in your income. And so when I open up, I have a dashboard set up, and I think most of them, you You can kind of customize the dashboards and you can see at, at, and I have mine set for this year so I can see for this year how much I've spent and how much I've brought in. And it shows me my percentages of, of revenue I'm making, profit, whatever you wanna call it. That way you can see if you're on track. And for me, it makes it easier when someone calls me with this super cool marketing opportunity. I know instantly if I am good to partake in that, or if that's going to just set me further back in the hole and maybe I want to do it later.

Yes.

So it works for me for making decisions on what I should and should not be spending my money on.

Yes, I keep a lot of my stuff on the computer, but I also have paper books that where I keep things, and I can tell exactly what I've got and what I don't have. Um, and I know I had an opportunity come up the other day, come up the other day. It's a really good deal. It's a really good course. That I probably should take. My time constraints— it's 10 hours a week. I don't have 10 hours a week right now. I just, I just finished the dissertation for the doctorate in April. This is all starting over again because I didn't work for several years while I was finishing up the dissertation, so I'm re— rebranding and restarting and redoing. And I have to remember there are certain things that I have to get done and I don't have time for one more class. And I've taken, I don't know how many classes. So I don't have time for one more at this time.

Yes. And that brings up a good point is when we think about our finances, um, as solopreneurs, it's more than just money. It's also our time. Our time is of value. And if we run out of time to fulfill client obligations, then we're not getting paid. So, you know, it's, it's more than just looking at your bottom line and seeing if you're profitable, but it's also planning out the, the ability to have the time to serve the clients that you're bringing on. And if you're looking at maybe spending money on a marketing program, I'm assuming the class that you were gonna take has something to do with business growth or, or marketing or something along those lines.

Mm-hmm.

If you already don't have the time to fill the clients that you have, then there's probably another issue that needs to be resolved. Before taking on something to bring you more clients. It's a whole thought process.

I've tried to expand 24 hours. I have not figured that out yet. So if somebody knows how to do that, I really would like them to tell me because sometimes I need 26 or 28 hours in the day.

Yeah, I don't think you really do though. I think that's up here. Yes. You did mention something about making sure everybody was doing their specific jobs. So how do you set boundaries around the team and collaboration and those sorts of things?

It's about delegating. I can't do everything. I have to delegate to other people. And there are times, sometimes our team members can do double duty, but that's not working real well. Everybody needs to do what they're supposed to do. And yes, collaborate with each other. Yes, work as a team, work together, but you've also got things that you have to do by yourself. And that's really, really important. And you've got to remember that sometimes we get really bogged down. People have— people come in with issues. There's family stuff that goes on. There's, there's things that are going on in the world. And so these outside issues get brought in and the emotions come in. And we've got to, we've got to separate those things. We can, we can sit and talk about, talk about these things. I remember, uh, years ago I was in the car business and we would have a morning session, this rally. And I think a lot of people do this, and I think Walmart used to do it or still does it. You have this rally in the morning, everybody gets together and you cheer each other on, you, you talk about what the day is going to be and, and get everybody pumped up. And the other thing that's really important is tell people that they're doing a "Good job." If there's something that they're not doing correctly, or something that's missing, or something that's lacking, and in some sort of a way, "You did a really good job here. Let's talk about this." One of the things that I use for everything, and I learned this in my personal life, is I have to say what I mean mean what I say and don't say it mean. Not always easy, but if I say what I mean and I stick to it and I say it in a kind way, people hear that. My uncle always said, you get more with honey than you do with bitters. So yeah, you catch more flies, they like the honey. So you're gonna get your people to listen. Somebody's telling me, "You, you, you," I'm not listening. I turned you off. Now if you tell me, "I feel," "I need," "I want," "I think," I'm listening. So I have to do those with clients. I have to do that with family. I have to do that even in a store. I have to do these things. So I have to keep "I" statements. And not the you statements. And I have to encourage people. People work better when they're encouraged. At least I do.

I would agree with that. One of the things that has not served me well— I grew up with a father who always used to say, one of his favorite sayings was, "If you have nothing nice to say, it's better to say nothing at all." And so I find that I have a tendency when I have nothing nice to say to somebody that's, you know, working with me, that I say nothing and I just do it instead for them, instead of giving them the ability to fix whatever it was so that they learn and grow. So I, I like your mean saying much better.

That takes me to someplace Another one of my practical tools: no is a complete sentence, which leads into another tool, which is J.A.D.E. I don't have to justify, argue, defend, or explain why I said no. So if I can't do something, I just have to say— that's all I have to say is no, I can't do that. No, I don't want to do that. No, I'm not capable of doing that. And, and allowing somebody else to have the responsibility— if you come to me and you want me to do your work, I need to allow you how to have the responsibility to do it. You know how to do this. Now, if you need my help, I'll help you, but you need to do what you, what you're supposed to do. It's your responsibility. And I have to give people that— I have to give people the dignity and respect them So that they have self-respect and self-esteem.

Perfect. How do you deal with digital boundaries? I know you're not necessarily a tech kind of person.

No, no, I muddle through and I'm, I'm okay with it, but there's a lot I don't know about it. I do have a watch and I can put it on silent. It takes phone calls and I can put it on silent. My phone. I put it on silent. I actually still have a home phone and it's on— the ringer is turned off so that nobody calls. This little thing has voicemail.

Yes, it does.

For a reason. Let it go to voicemail. Let somebody send you a text. You can read the text. If it's not urgent, let it go. You'll get back to it. You'll deal with it later. So that's how I deal with the digital stuff. And if I don't know something, like you and I were talking before we started, there are some things that I don't know, and it's called go ask Dotty. And I'm gonna have— I'm gonna ask Dotty to do this, and Dotty and I are going to work together. And yeah, so those are the things that I do. I'm not capable of doing everything. It's just like if somebody comes to me with an issue. I work with PTSD and trauma and boundaries. Those are my areas of expertise. The, the domestic violence, the sexual abuse, the emotional abuse— that's my area. If you come to me and you're schizophrenic, that's not my area of expertise. I'm going to send you to a therapist that's That's their area of expertise, and I'm not gonna cross that line, and I'm not gonna cross that boundary. That's not my area. That's a boundary that I've set in business. I don't do what somebody else can do and knows how to do when I don't know anything about it.

I can tell you that was one of the very first hard lessons I learned when I started about 20 years ago in business. People would come to me, I'm a, I'm a website designer. I don't know why, but people equate website designers with computer technology, with IT people, with all of these different things that are not what I do. And in the very beginning, it was like, okay, it's a client, it's money, I'll take it. But I quickly learned it drove me crazy and it wasn't serving the customer the best way, right? Because they were gonna get better service by me referring. And that's when I became a referral resource, which it— for this conversation, being a referral resource is setting your boundaries. Knowing exactly what you do, knowing and being in connection with people that do all kinds of other things so that you can be the hero and refer the right person.

Right.

And then I've noticed that when I do that, they come back when they actually need my services. So that's another huge thing with boundaries. Yeah. With the digital, what I do is I consider email digital. So I've figured out a good way to manage my email. I check it regularly throughout the day because that's where my business comes from. And I've trained my customers, do not text me. If it's business related, if it's something you want me to do on your website or do for you, it will not be seen in text. Until I'm not working because like you, my phone, it just kind of gets off to the side. And when I'm working, I'm in the work zone, which is not on my phone.

Right.

So there's, and you have to, as a business owner, figure out what works best for you and what boundaries you're gonna set for your business. I love that.

Yes. One of the things that I learned, I, I've been doing this for a long time. Over 20 years, and I used to give it away. I was always— people would come to me and I was always, okay, what do I do? All right, so do this, let's try this, let's try that. And I would talk to anybody. It was money. It was—

I—

people needed my help. I needed to be needed, and I was a people pleaser. And I have learned over the years that that is— that does not work. It doesn't work for— it doesn't help anybody else, and it certainly doesn't help me because I'm not giving them my best or my all. And so I have to know who my client is, and I have to be very specific. This is who I work with. Now, if, if a man were to come— I work with women, so But if a man comes to me and he's been abused, which I've worked with men before that have been abused, absolutely. But if it's something that's not in my area, I'm going to tell you and I'm going to send you to somebody that it is in their area.

Perfect. This leads into, do you have any tips for boundaries set around maintaining productivity during the workday?

Yeah, you got to take breaks. It's not all about you're sitting there from 9 to 5 and you're just do-do-doing. A break. The state and the government, you know, the federal government, they say you have to take a break, and it's a law that you have to take a break. Well, it's good that you take a break. One of the things that sometimes I use if I'm, if I'm writing and I'm coming up with coursework. I can only do it for so long. So I use the— where I use— I sit down for 25 minutes and then I take a 5-minute break. So I'm always on that half an hour schedule. But I have to take these breaks. And I have this little 5-pound Yorkie that's sitting behind me somewhere. And she has to go— she has to go outside once in a while. She needs to eat once in a while. And I've learned I can't go on no fuel, so I have to eat. So a lunch break, because if I'm, if I'm steadily working, I'm not, I'm not doing my best. So taking breaks, giving that encouragement— can I help you do something? Giving it to somebody else, delegating. So it's, it's really It goes back to if you're working with other people, that teamwork, and how do we help each other? Is there something that you need that I can do while you go take a break? Can I answer the phone while you're off on a break so you don't have to worry about that somebody's going to call you and you're not going to be there? Things like that.

It's so ironic that you started with, I take a break because dating myself again. Back when I was in the workforce, one of my favorite things to do, uh, and I, I don't think you could get away with this this day and age, is I would accumulate my 15-minute breaks, my lunch break, I'd add them all up together and leave an hour and a half early.

Yeah, I understand.

Yeah. And, and as I've gotten older, I, I have realized I can't do that anymore, especially now that I'm self-employed.

When I was in retail merchandising, I wanted Wednesdays off. I had a meeting, there was a lunch date, there was a, a date with a friend afterwards. So Wednesday was my day. So I had to get up at 4 o'clock on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and work. Monday was a long day because I went to different places. I traveled. And so sometimes it was midnight before I walked back in the house and I walked out of the house at 5 o'clock in the morning. So I don't do that anymore.

Yes, I agree. So we're closing in on our time here, Dr. Michael Sue. Is there any other of your nice golden tips that you would like to leave around setting boundaries?

Yeah, the biggest one, and I usually lead with it and I didn't. Boundaries are not walls, they're bridges. I was big on building walls. I— if you, if you crossed my line and I didn't want you in my life anymore, I cut you out. And I had these huge walls and I had a moat around it with all these alligators and you couldn't get across to get to me. Whereas it's a bridge, and today I have this bridge and I've got a gate and I can open or close it, but it's low and I can see who's on the other side and I can choose. So it's about choice and it's about self-respect. And Maya Angelou always said, we teach people how to treat us, and if we're not treating ourselves well, we can't expect them to treat us well either.

That is so true. Teaching your clients how to treat you. I fired a few clients over the years, and I have felt so much better after doing that because we just were not a, a good fit. So if someone wants to work with you, Dr. Michael Sue, how do they get in touch with you?

They can go to drmichaelsue.com and look around my website. There's Actually, there's a quiz on there that we're going to be working on a little bit, but there's a, a 7-question quiz about boundaries. See how your boundaries are. But if you wanna work with me, it's in there. I can do recovery coaching. I do mental health and spiritual counseling. I'm getting ready to put together some courses and have them out there. And so they'll be out in about soon, and they'll be on my website. So some courses, some group work. So one-on-one work.

Perfect.

DrMichaelSue.com is where you can find me.

Well, it's been a pleasure chatting with you today, Dr. Michael Sue, and I will see everybody else around the internet. Have an awesome day.

Thank you for having me.