I Thought More Clients Would Fix It… I Was Wrong

I used to think that when as an entrepreneur, when someone paid me money for my services, from that moment on, I had to be at their disposal all the time. I stopped existing as a person outside of my business. I stopped showing up in my family. And even when I did spend time with my friends and family, I was never there. In my head, it was total overwhelm. This is the Leap Live and Laminate podcast. Hi, I'm your host, Esther Godor. Twelve years ago, I took a bold leap. I left my corporate role, I moved to a new country and I built a business from scratch in my fifth language. This podcast is for new and aspiring entrepreneurs who are ready and eager to turn their ideas into something real and thriving while making a lasting impact. Whether you are contemplating on leaving your nine to five or you are already on your entrepreneurial journey, this is your go to place for honest stories, actionable strategies and real talk around building a business and life you love. Your best life and success story are still ahead. Let's write them together. I used to think that when as an entrepreneur, when someone paid me money for my services, from that moment on, I had to be at their disposal all the time. I had to adapt my schedule to their schedule. I had to adapt my services to their liking. And I was in that space for years. And this whole situation got to the level where I stopped existing as a person outside of my business. I stopped existing as a person for myself. I stopped taking care of myself, of my health, of my physical, my mental balance. I stopped paying attention to what I ate. I stopped showing up in my family as a daughter, as a sister, as a spouse. I had almost zero time for my friends. And even when I did spend time with my friends and family, I was never there. In my head. I always had like the endless list, ongoing of what I still should be doing, what is still left to figure out who I should call back, whose message is there in my phone or in my inbox that I still haven't gotten back to. It was total overwhelm and like I said, I thought it was temporary. But now looking back, I think I was in this space for a total of four years, which is extremely exhausting on the body and on a person mentally as well, but also on your social relationships. So. So there came a moment when I had to understand the hard way that it's not whether I have a few or a lot of clients, it's not whether I make little or a lot of money, it's if I want to be able to show up for people, if I want to be able to serve, I need to set some kind of boundaries. Because you know what? At this start I had this impression that I will put my heart and soul into it and people will appreciate it and respect it. But once you buy a service, you are actually spreading until they let you. If my VA says you can set tasks with any deadline you want, I will be tempted to set tasks with a 24 hour deadline for. But if they tell me that there is a minimum deadline of 48 or 72 hours for any task I send them to do, then that's what I've got and that's what I'm going to respect. But if they said no boundaries on that, I as a client will want stuff for yesterday. To give you an example, now just looking around here at my desk, I have this little cup which is for like a cafe con leche, a coffee with milk. And I have this big mug which is 40 ounces which is 1.28 liters. So if I sell a service for my client which contains this much of service, this much of content, I can't let them expect this from me. But if I'm the client, if I'm not, but if I'm the client, if I'm not set boundaries, I can very easily naturally go from this to this. So it's the service provider's responsibility to set those rules, to set those boundaries. And in the early days I thought okay, if someone pays me the normal fee then I can set the rules, I can put those boundaries. But if someone pays me a lot more, like if they are on my VIP service, I did have that in the days when I had a language school. If people have their kids on the VIP package then they should have way more access to me. And I still, and I still kind of allowed unlimited access which meant like answering whatsapps on a Saturday night. Like people actually having my phone number and being able to send me whatsapps or doing meetings whenever they were available. Like even if I didn't have the physical language school open normally in the mornings, if a parent said oh I can, I can do tomorrow morning, then I would run open up and set everything up for them to have the meeting. While originally I might have planned to do the weekly shopping for the school on that day or I would have planned to go to the gym that day, I would move everything and fit it around my clients needs and desires. And believe me they were not the little, they were the, the big stumbler signs of needs. And then there was a moment where I felt, oh my God, this has to stop. Or for more it was my husband, then boyfriend who said this has to freaking stop. As I don't see you, even when you're here, you're not here. This has to stop. I mean, for a while it was easy as he was in the same boat on his his with his company. But yeah, I think I also realized it on my own because previously before I started my my own business, before I moved to Spain, I used to be in corporate for seven, eight years. And I always associated the overwhelm I felt with being in corporate. And I thought, okay, I need to leave this job and I need to start my own. So I don't constantly feel this way. I don't constantly have messages from my boss that I have to answer. I don't constantly have messages from my team, requests from my team to get back on. But now looking back, I realize my boss might have sent me stuff on a Saturday night, but they didn't mean for me to answer. And I would go home from partying and I would get home like at 3, 4 in the morning and I would be responding those emails. It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but this is how I was doing things back in the day. So when the same happened to me as, as an entrepreneur, as running my own business, I had to realize it wasn't the job, it wasn't corporate, it wasn't my boss, it wasn't my team, it was me. It was the way I let people, their requests invade. It was the way I let those things overtake my personal space, my personal time and my personal energy. And as long as I, and as long as I let people take advantage of that in my own company, that will keep on happening. And now I'm talking about it as if it was something from the past. It happens to me a lot fewer times than it used to. But actually I'm recording this episode because I just caught myself do it. I've been doing that with someone for the last couple of months and that has to stop. So this is also a reminder for me because when I first understood that I was responsible for setting my own boundaries, that people will treat me my time, my energy, my space, the way I treat my time, my energy, my space. Because I'm setting an example for them. When I first understood this, that's when I finally was able to breathe for the first time as an entrepreneur. And that was after at least four years. So imagine being four years under the water and not being able to come up for fresh air. It's killing. And it's not only that, it's killing you. When this creeps in, when you let things get out of hand this much, there will be resentment building up in your body, in your soul, towards those people, towards the people that you are here to serve, towards your dream clients. And this resentment shines through in everything you do, in every single message you send them. Or if not towards them, then it will show up very vividly in the relationships with the people you love the most. Your children, your spouse, your best friend, your parents. That's where it will come out. Quick sip of a lemonade time. Do you ever catch yourself wondering what the actual f I'm doing? Same happens to me at times. That's why I created a secret podcast series to get you out of the chaos and back into I got this energy in just five days. It's cozy, it's actionable, and it will reconnect you to the version of you who already figured it out. Grab it for free@esthergoldor.com WTF or click the link in the show notes. And now back to our episode. So little by little after I realized this, I started changing, bending the rules on those areas that were the most painful to me. And first, my approach was, okay, I'm going to communicate to people that this is the last time we did that, but next time, please, let's do it differently. Let me give you an example. I had an FAQ page, which is a frequently asked questions page for parents of my language school on my website. But I was still answering 45 times the same question to those parents over email, over WhatsApp, over phone calls. So in my WhatsApp messages, I would answer on a Saturday night I would say, all right, so I'm going to answer this time, but please, next time, if you have this kind of a question, check out the FAQ document on the website. And then next time, they still came to me. And then next time, guess what? Again, with the same type of question, they would send me a WhatsApp. Why? Because I didn't change their actual habit. I just told them to do so. So then I had to change tactics and my new tactics. Sorry, I can't give you this answer. The answer to your question is right there. And here is link to the FAQ page on our website. You can consult it and please check it first anytime you have a question before you reach out to me. And that started to work because even at that moment, I started driving people to that Page. So I built a new habit for them. I didn't just say, next time we will do it differently. And it's the same on whether people should have your phone number. At some point I decided people won't have my phone number. I won't be available for WhatsApp. And I changed my phone number. And that was one of the most relieving. That was one of the biggest reliefs of my whole entrepreneur career. Changing my phone number and not sharing it with more than, I don't know, 40 people and none of them being clients. That was amazing. I can wholeheartedly recommend it to you as well now. It works the same way when it's about covering activities that are out of scope of a contract you have signed, when it's about changing meetings to days or hours when you normally don't take a meeting. Having my Friday afternoons without meetings doesn't mean that if someone can't make it on a Thursday, they can meet me on a Friday. No, I have my Fridays for something else, possibly for recording this episode. The next time they can meet me is a Tuesday, because I'm doing meetings on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in the afternoon only. And I do meetings one morning. Those are my boundaries. I didn't have them before. I was doing meetings all the time, even on a Saturday morning. It was crazy. Crazy. You. If you have been on this journey for a while, I'm not telling you a secret by reminding you that you shouldn't wait with making these changes until the time you have more clients, until the time you have enough clients, until the time you make enough money, whatever that is for you. Because if you don't set those boundaries now, if you don't respect your time, your space, your energy right now, you might never, you might never actually get to that point of having enough clients, enough money as those few clients you have now, maybe even at a price you are not entirely happy with, have already invaded all that space you would have for those new clients coming in with set boundaries. So I would definitely recommend that you start doing it even with your existing client. Don't just go for new clients on setting boundaries. But it's enormously powerful setting new boundaries when you have new clients coming in. You know, it was super difficult to take away WhatsApp from my old clients, but then the new ones who came never had that option and it was the norm for them. It was so much easier. And to some extent, you might be afraid of losing them, having this thought of, oh, they have paid me, or they Paid me a lot. They paid me so they can set the rules. No, they didn't pay you so they can set the rules. They paid you as the expert so you set the rules for them. If I go for a, for a cosmetic treatment and sometimes I pay a lot for that, do I go because I want to tell them what product to use? Because I want to tell them how long each product they should leave on my face? No, I go. So they do an analysis and they recommend the best product that works for me on that day for what I'm expecting to get out of that session and they will leave it on for the time they know it's best for me. I'm paying them because they are the expert. The same. If you go to a doctor, do you go. So they prescribe and same with a doctor. Do you go to a doctor to self diagnose or to tell them what to prescribe? No, you go to them so they help you figure out what's going on if you have a problem and if needed, prescribe what they know is going to work best for your situation. So let me say it again, they pay you to set the rules. It often comes up if you. It often comes up from people who work online with different time zones. I want to accommodate everybody's time zone. But if you are working for a global audience, it will never work out for everyone. And even if they pay you a higher price, it's not that you have to be available in the middle of the night for them to do the calls. I enrolled into a $13,000 program a year last year and it was 200 plus people on that program together with me and we are working with one main coach and seven and we are working with one main coach and I think at that time was five additional coaches. So. So they do try to accommodate various time zones as there are. Yeah. Different people available for coaching. But they're not going to ask the 200 people who are on this program when does it work best for you? No. And for specific events done by the main coach which might be a 2, 3 day live on Zoom on your communication or on you running your business so you don't go crazy. If those are live events, they are happening at one single time on a few specific dates. And if you, and if you want to be there live, you will make yourself available. So for me it's sometimes yes, it starts at 11pm and goes on until 3am but if it's enough of an importance for me, I will make it work or There are live events. They're not going to ask me if I'm able to come. They're not going to ask me, they're not going to ask me if the 14th and 15th of April and the 20th and 21st of August I'm able to be in LA. They mention that there are live events and these are the approximate dates, but then I commit to being there live. Or if I can't, then I'm okay with that. But I'm not expecting them to move the date because maybe I have a birthday party to attend on the 14th of April and I'm talking about a more than $10,000 a year program where you would say, oh my God, then they fully have to adapt to your time. No, if it's enough of an importance for me, I will adapt. If it's of enough of an importance for your client, they will adapt to whatever works best for you. And and this is not only about and this is not only about not building up resentment in your body. It's also about you need to choose your best time so you can show up as your best self for them and provide the best ever value to them in that moment when you are working together. It's super interesting. In that 13k program we also have like a Lifeline call, like an emergency call available, which is 15 minutes twice a quarter in which is 15 minutes twice a quarter with one of the coaches we have to submit a request in advance. We have to describe the situation. It's mostly for moments when you are too overwhelmed to see the situation from the outside, you are unable to take a step back and you need help figuring things out. It can be on your ads, it could be a launch you are running and you are stuck and people are not buying. It could be which it was for me last year once about maybe not feeling that the niche I'm working with is the right one for me. But you only have 15 minutes and one of the prerequisites of being able to get on this call is that they ask you not to bring your overwhelm, your anxiety, your panic into that call, but take radical responsibility. Even if your ads stopped running because Meta has completely blocked your account and you need help with that. Even if Your VA deleted one of your products that had 30x people paying for you on it with access, with live access, which happened to me, you should show up as you should show up fully taking responsibility, fully being open to the coaching you receive and going with that information and make the most out of it and come out the best possible way out of that situation. But if you are in panic mode, if you are blaming others, if everybody else is at fault but you, you can easily just fill up the 15 minutes with telling the story of how bad things are going or how much you are suffering, and the 15 minutes are gone. But you have another choice, which is showing up showing radical response, which is showing up taking radical responsibility and getting amazing value out of that session with a highly experienced coach who will be still way more grounded than you in that situation. But if you come in as crazy Pat, it won't be worth it. You better not even request that call. And it does happen to me that I'm filling in the request for the call and I'm in this total overwhelm, total suffering mode and oh my God, this is happening to me and I don't know what I'm doing. And just by reading through the instructions of how to show up for that call, sometimes I'm even able to solve that situation without logging that call. So it's, it's really amazing. I'm telling you, this limitation, this boundary is on a pretty high price program. But I realize how much it's actually helping me to stay grounded and to not go crazy as much as I would if I didn't have this reminder. And if now you are thinking, yeah, when I'm able to pay a $13,000 yearly amount for a course, for a program, I won't be panicking anymore, I will be laid back about everything. Believe me, you won't. I totally thought like, when I have 100 students, when I make 100k a year, I will have it all under control. It's better if you accept it right now that you won't. You will have it way more under control than you might have it now. But still, you will be the same person, Things will creep in, you will have amazing tools to handle those situations. But your feelings, but your feelings, the person who you are, even if transformed into your next level self, you might still get moments of overwhelm. You just know better how to handle them. But you might still need these boundaries. And you want to set the same boundaries for your clients, even if they are your highest paying clients. So again, you as a client will spread into the container your service provider lets you invade, or the space your service provider lets you take up. And your clients, even if they are your best, most appreciative, most respectful clients, they will spread into the container you let them take up. So I invite you to look into this today what is the area that keeps you stuck the most? What is the area that keeps you underwater the most? What is the area that overwhelms you the most? What is the area that possibly creates resentment towards your clients, even if they are amazing clients? And do something about that today. Take the first step. Don't wait until you are going to be able to put out an FAQ document answering all the questions. Just answer five questions today and inform people that there is that document they can go to before booking a session with you or before picking up the phone to talk to you. Otherwise, your resentment goes as otherwise your resentment grows and it will take up all the remaining space inside your body, inside your soul. And this comes back to the point of you can't take care of others before you take care of yourself. And this is true when it comes to your children, when it comes to your parents, when it comes to being there for your friends and being there for your clients. And there is a fantastic analogy from Lisa Nichols. You know, we often say stop pouring from an empty cup, but Lisa says don't pour even from a cup that's full. That's for you. Let your cup overflow. And all the overflow that you have, that's for people around you, that's for your family, that's for your friends, that's for your clients. So let's forget pouring from an empty cup, but let's forget giving out what we have inside our full cup. Let's create that overflow. And it's so much easier to go the extra mile to do the surprisingly unique extra service when you have this overflow. We all want to go the extra mile. We all want to be there in an amazing way for our clients. But when it goes from an already depleted container, it's so difficult. While when you can do that from the overflow, that's what nurtures even more. That's what makes people even appreciate the boundaries you set for them because they have paid you. Because you are the expert. If you do so, you will never regret having given. You will never feel resentful about giving away something extra, whether it's for people in your private life or people in your professional life. Not saying don't make exceptions, do it. That's what differentiates us from others. We are here to create unique experience. We are here to create unique experiences for our clients. And that's what make makes us stand out. Just do it from the overflow. So check in with your cup today and let me know what's one thing you are going to change. I hope you found this episode of value. Do let me know. I would love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment Send me a message do subscribe so you get a notification on the next one. Give me a like whatever the way to express if this resonated with you and I'll see you in the next episode.