78: How to Set and enforce boundaries in your business Featuring Lisa Jacobs

Am I going to hear you clap?

I already clapped.

I definitely didn't hear it. Your studio must be on point.

Here's my clap. Hold on.

You go, here's my clap. And it's utter silence. I can't hear a thing.

Really? I wonder why.

Do it one more time. I'll just know after the silence to start talking.

That is wild. Okay, here I go. I'm Bonnie Christine. And this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spread. Spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Professional Creative. I'm here with Ms. Lisa Jacobs. Hi, Lisa.

Hi, Bonnie. Thanks so much for having me. I always love talking business with you, Lisa.

You are a beloved voice on the podcast. If you're just meeting Lisa for the first time, she is my integrator and we've done several episodes before because I know you're going to love her and you're going to want to go dive in. So we'll link those on today's show notes. Today I wanted to invite Lisa to talk about something that we have worked on in my business and Lisa has really, really been the one who's made strides in this area. And it's around dealing with difficult people and I and difficult situations. And I want to say that this is actually really rare. It's very rare for us. However, as you grow, it is also inevitable. And we want to talk about boundaries and making sure that you're prepared for it when it does happen.

It is. While it is rare, I think it can also be so impactful. It can really impact your business and not in a positive way. It can disrupt your operation, it can disrupt your plans. And we all know there's such a thing as imposter syndrome. We're all, all just making it up as we go along and we're all Giving it the very best we've got. So when we have a difficult party come into the business, whether this be a comment on a social media post or a reader who has read your blog and just is not happy with what you're saying or the direction you're taking, or as far as a disgruntled customer, it is very challenging to handle that non emotionally. And when emotions get involved, it can be really tricky because they'll escalate the moment, they'll escalate the situation, it'll affect how you respond and how you behave next. And it could even further such things as imposter syndrome. It could hold you back, it could make you fearful to take a next step. And we are humans doing business. And so that's where I love to pull in things like boundaries and systems and have those things in place. So you can refer to how the business should operate in such an emotional situation.

This is also something that I see really holds people back from playing a bigger game. I hear so many times people are afraid to post on social media because they're afraid of the comments that they'll get or they're afraid to go bigger in their business because of the potential for feedback. Not even the feedback, but the potential for feedback. And so I really want to kind of un unfold what we've done in our business to just prepare for this, set up some boundaries and so we can confidently play a bigger game. And you know, just to be very clear here, we're not talking about, you know, legitimate feedback that we really need to hear. We're talking about that, that one that's really in left field, the one from someone who you don't know that's clearly having a bad day and they decided to wreck yours as well. You know, that comment that you see that keeps you up at night or really, you know, for every hundred great comments, you see this one that sticks with you. And this happens in all kinds of different ways. Again for us it's rare, but it definitely has happen happened in the inbox on lesson posts. As you know, we are serving students on social media and so it's just great to have a system because really the opportunity here is once you have clear boundaries, it feels so incredibly empowering. All of a sudden all those fears are wiped away and you feel like you can just show up, you are, you know, prepared to receive feedback, you know what to do, this, that or the other might happen. And it just really helps you lead with confidence because you've got something to rely on other than your emotions when you're in the moment.

I love this. And one thing that I'm even noticing coming into this conversation, Bonnie, is that when you and I speak with each other or we are getting excited about a topic in business, which we do quite often, we come with an energy that's exuberant. I think that we both are very confident in business and our approach to business. And then when we sit down here, it is a difficult topic. So I think that it's important that we just give some space for that right here. We're even approaching each other knowing we're about to embark on a difficult topic. And we're just using so much care and caution and calm. And I think it's just a great time for anybody listening to take a deep breath. This is going to be a hard topic, but it's a necessary topic and it's a very human topic. It is so important that we understand that again, as business operators, you are employing your heart, which is so vulnerable. You put yourself out there, that's so vulnerable. And then your mind is trying to keep up with everything that's going on. The many hats that you're wearing, your own success, you are. The challenge that I love about an entrepreneur that nobody else can really understand is that to go to work, you have to figure out everything you need to go to work. You have to figure out how you're going to post it, how you're going to edit it, how who's going to create the content, who's going to come up with the ideas. That's not how most people go to work. And so it's a special, unique situation. And it's so human what you put into your work. It's so precious what you give out and it can become so vulnerable. So I just again, love the care and caution that we are taking to approach this. And then Bonnie and I of course, have an empowering step by step plan for you to be able to put into action. Just build the structure around how you can protect your vulnerable human self for all its humanness and deal with these difficult situations when they arise in your business.

You know, I mentioned in a recent episode on my lowest points as an entrepreneur, I mentioned how very much I had hoped someone had told me to make sure that I developed myself as I developed my business, because my business, there was a time a few years ago where my business had outgrown me and my ability to handle what came with a business of the size that I had built. And so I had to play catch up pretty, pretty, pretty hard for a couple of years. And so this is, this is one of those things that we're hoping that will help you develop around this so that when it does happen, you're prepared for it, you're confident, and you won't have to worry about it. Like, let's just do what we need to do in order to squash those fears and be able to confidently do the work that we were born to do.

I love that and I love that you shared that, because you're right. There's always some type of push. You're pushing yourself. The last thing you need when you're pushing yourself so hard is anybody to come in and do anything that feels any sort of kicky while you're down. That's the last thing we need. We. And the encouragement goes a long way. It fuels us a long way. But it is, it can be a really draining endeavor to come back from a difficult customer. A really harsh criticism, likely an untrue criticism. We all take feedback well, but there, there can be times where somebody is just being unkind. And that is, that. That's really challenging. It's really challenging at. In a phase in your life and stages of your business that are already extreme, over the top challenging.

Okay. Something you just said made me think of something that I want to say but a little bit later in this episode. So you dive into the framework while I jot down my thoughts so I don't forget them.

Okay. The step by step to really start to build in enforcements and structure in your business operation. Well, the last thing you want to do is reinvent the wheel. Every time that you have to handle a difficult situation, a difficult person, or a difficult, common, disgruntled customer, what have you, these things are going to continue to pop up. And like Bonnie said, the bigger your business grows, the more that it's likely to happen. The first thing you want to do is to treat your business like the company that you're becoming and treat yourself like the business person that you are. I always liken this to a doctor's office. You're a respected professional with tons of experience and education and mastery behind you. And if somebody were, if you were a doctor and somebody were to visit your office, would you answer the phone and schedule their appointment? Take notes during the meeting, make sure that you file and track all of their information before and after? Or would you honor your specialty and your expertise and would you let other people handle that? Would you adhere to boundaries that says, no, you can't email me on the weekend because you're concerned about that bump on your leg, or you can't call my cell phone at all hours of the night, I'm not that accessible, I'm not that available. And there are other protocol to follow when I'm not in. Just like a doctor, you are building that same experience, you're building that same mastery. And so you have to determine what access people have to you. That's step one is you're going to define your company's policies, terms and agreements. What hours are you available to people, and are you adhering to that? Or are you checking in at every hour in the morning, evening, afternoon and night? And make sure that the people reaching out to you know that you're operating like a business and you're only available during certain hours. This is also fantastic for anybody that's in your life, in your household, or around you a lot because they can understand what working hours looks like versus what being on the computer and shopping online looks like. And it helps them also to respect those same boundaries. So what are your company hours?

You know, one way that we do this in our business is just to tell people and make sure that once you set them, you let them be known. And so, for instance, we put an away message up on all of our emails from noon on Friday to Monday morning, just letting people know that we take the weekends off to refuel. We hope you do the same and we'll be back in touch with you when we're back in the office. And that just helps a lot of people's, like, expectations to match your actions.

Yes. And when, if you're still at the solopreneur stage or your team is very small, it is as important for you to define whether or not you work on the weekends and whether or not you work holidays, what holidays you will work and what holidays you don't. Otherwise your business will creep into all areas of your life. If you are not respecting, if you're not setting and respecting your own boundaries, then it's very difficult to ask or expect other people to observe those boundaries. So the first step is to set the basic boundaries around your business.

It's so important.

The next thing you want to do is define your levels of service and this goes into that terms and agreements part of your business. So what I would advise that you would do is start with your very best client and describe what you love about their channels of communication, their appropriateness in, you know, the containment of your conversation. Is it always in the right channels? How do they speak to you? Are they very respectful when they reach out and ask for your time? You can start to describe your best client or customer and that will start to help you shape the culture of what your company does. With clients, with readers, with social media, media commenters, you can think about the people you love to engage with and start to carve that outline of this is how our customers and myself relate. And then you can next think of your very worst client or commenter. And that's where we're getting into what we do not offer, what we do not tolerate, and what we will not stand for. Because your culture is likely kind and caring, open and transparent, but not threatening or unkind or extremely disagreeable. Then step three is decide exactly the behaviors you will not tolerate in your business ever again. And this can and likely should be private for your own reference. This is where you might get into some toxicity behaviors, where you found a comment or an email exchange or something to be threatening or intrusive or something that violated your nature, where you just did not feel good from the exchange. If you have an experience in your life where you did not feel good in the exchange and this is your business, then it is up to you to say you own the space, you own the company, and that will not enter the space. Again. It's important that you are defining in this step exactly those behaviors that intent that triggered you and caused you so much upset.

You know, with this, I you'll hear me say sometimes your house, your rules. And I think that that's part of why we became an entrepreneur, because we wanted to build our own house. And somewhere along the lines we were taught to let anybody who wanted to walk by and come in our house and eat at our table and stomp our, you know, ideas and and opinions, just do it. And we need to take back ownership of. No, this is my house and I have rules around what I allow to be said in here to be thrown around. I mean, we're talking about within reason, of course, but it's important to remember that you are in control.

Yes, please. I love that you said that if you were throwing a party, would this person be invited into your life to your house? And if they weren't, they are not welcome in your business. So in situations that get hostile or get really uncomfortable, we tend to de escalate as best we can. We do everything in our power to break up with that person in the kindest way manageable. And just like if you were having a party, it's not personal. If somebody isn't welcome there. It's just that the two of you are not aligned. It's not a good relationship. For whatever reasons, it's not a good relationship. And it's okay. I love the way that you phrase that, Bonnie. But it's okay to stand in your power and say, this is who is invited to do business with my company and interact with my company. And if you're not following these standards, then it's okay if you go find somewhere else to do business. We should part ways amicably as much as possible.

Let me give an example of this. Like for instance, I teach a course. We have thousands of people come through the course, and I have also have many peers who have courses. And oftentimes if they have someone who's disruptive, they're not sure how to handle it. And so in over 6,000 people who have come through my course, we've dismissed one person. So like I said, it's rare. But my goodness, when it happens and it needs to be taken care of swiftly to have a system in place is like, when this happens, what do we do? Is so incredibly beneficial. And so you never know, you might have someone who's just clearly disruptive. Clearly they don't want to be there and you don't have to let them be there. And so in order to dismiss someone, we, we provide a full refund and exit them from the course and say, like, be well on your way, please go find, you know, someone else to learn from or something like that. So again, it doesn't happen often, but it is really beneficial to know that you do have a plan in place in case you do need to take

action that is so important. The next step is to make rules in regards to the behaviors you will and will not tolerate. What, what's going to happen in any difficult situation is that your emotions are going to escalate. And like Bonnie just shared with us, when you have a situation that you've gone through once, you might have that in your frame of reference, but your emotions will take front and center place during the next event. If it happens again, your emotions will come first. Your frame of reference that it's happened before will be somewhere in of your mind. And your emotions will take over for as long as they need to ride that out. And so not only make the rule, make yourself a document, write a template, or create a proper standard operating procedure known as an sop, and list step by step how to handle that situation, you will de escalate your own emotions as you work through the reference sheet. You left yourself step by step and calm yourself a lot faster than if you are hit with it and don't have something in place. And you have to think, well, this has happened before and what did we do in that case? Do not reinvent the wheel in an, in an emotional time. You want frames of reference for how to deal with it. And so we keep standard operating procedures and we keep scripts on hand. Once it happens once, we don't want to go through the emotion of it happening a second time. Now we want to be prepared with how to handle it and, and cause the least disruption to business operations as we possibly can.

You know, I love a good sop. If you do something once, create a procedure so that you're not just reinventing the wheel every single time. You do this specifically for things that are rare because you may have to P this sop out, I don't know, once a year and you'll be so glad that you have it.

Now before we go into the last step, which is step five, this is going to be about how to respond when this happens. And this is more my style than Bonnie's. But sometimes not replying, not responding sends just as clear a message and can help you close the door to further discussion better than a reply. In Bonnie's company, everybody is taken care of to such a standard and capacity that this is a last, last, last resort. But I'm more of an introvert and I, I'm, I tend to be more protective over my boundaries and my time. And so when something has gone on long enough, I feel completely comfortable just deferring to silence and calling that quit and closing out the conversation. But in Bonnie's business, we are always making sure that we have prepared in advance scripts that we can adapt to the situation once it happens. We want to know exactly what we're going to say when we, when it happens. We are always want to leave really smooth waters, really good foundations with everybody we interact with. And if you don't have them on hand, this is my favorite thing you can use chat GPT and I've learned this so much from Bonnie. If you're having trouble crafting any type of script or reply and keeping it kind. ChatGPT is such a friend to say. I want to say this firmly but kindly and it will sure enough give you a great response to any situation

and you can go ahead and write your response and then take it to ChatGPT and say, can you make this feel more confident? Can you make this feel less emotional and just play with it and see. See what you get. It's really phenomenal.

Yes, that's the step by step that we had prepared for you. But, you know, I just want to leave you with this thing you're doing is so hard. And it's important that you protect yourself from any challenging or difficult, unnecessary situations coming in and making it that much harder. Your company deserves respect. Your business, your work deserves respect. And there's something to be said about standing in your power and saying, this is what I will tolerate, and this is what I will not tolerate.

You know, I think a couple of things that we struggle with around this is maybe it's not time to create, you know, processes around this because I'm so small or I don't need to have that yet. And again, I cannot tell you how reassuring this is to have to pull out when emotions are high. And then I think the other thing that we struggle with sometimes is just being everything to everyone in our business. And I'm guessing that your business is just as heartfelt as mine. And it means that we very much want to show up and be there for people and help them and give free advice and. Yes to all that, but with boundaries. And so, you know, no one, no matter how much they pay you, no matter how much they are, a customer of yours should be expecting to hear back from you on Sunday morning or in the middle of the night. Right. So absolutely have boundaries. And, you know, do we respect doctors more or less for their boundaries? We respect them more. And you will be respected and. And kept in higher regard for your boundaries as well. So we just wanted to. Lisa, you said something earlier that made me start taking notes on some things that I wanted to come back to, and I realized it's an entirely different episode. I furiously took notes. It got me thinking about really tending to the heart of the entrepreneur and the emotional side of this. And just some things that I've heard over the last five or six years that have deeply impacted me around what it's like to be fighting in the ring and get feedback from people and. And you know, why and how to receive feedback and why it's actually a really good thing to have in your business. And so I just. Outlook outlined the entire next episode. So you're gonna have to tune back in for. For that. But it very much accompanies this one. And we really just want you to know that you're seen. We see you. We know that it's difficult, and we also know that it's very much worth it, and we need you to be willing to go through it.

We need you. Keep up the good work, my friends.

Continue to create the beauty that you want to see. Come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you. Bye. Everyone.

Sat.