Freedom Lifestyle

Saying "NO" with Grace & Setting Client Boundaries [SOLO]

• Sam Laliberte • Season 6 • Episode 101

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Setting boundaries (guilt-free), especially during the hectic end-of-year rush!

Whether it’s protecting your weekends, managing scope creep, or gracefully declining requests that don’t align with your values - boundaries play a critical role in living a life on your own terms... especially as a service-based entrepreneur!

Hear my personal stories of confidently saying no to clients to preserve energy, professional integrity and respect. You’ll learn practical scripts for enforcing boundaries, unexpected ways they can attract the right clients and when to abandon boundaries (and over-delivery) to foster important relationships.
 
Takeaways:

  • how to align on your business boundaries (time, scope and payment)
  • tactics for enforcing boundaries with word-for-word scripts 
  • the root of boundary resistance (why others may react negatively at first)
  • how to inspire others through your boundaries (and weed out wrong clients)
  • when to adapt boundaries for special clients and future leverage 😉
Speaker 1:

Welcome back, friends, to another episode of the Freedom Lifestyle, a show that is designed to help you build freedom and flexibility into your life so that you can live a life that's unique to you, unique to your own desires and your own lifestyle preferences. I'm your host, sam, and today we are talking about boundaries, something so important if we are going to live a life on our own terms, and you know what friends, tis the season to let them slip. Earlier this week, I was hanging out with a close friend of mine here in Squamish and we got into a discussion about work. For context, he owns an advertising agency and has a full roster of clients For myself. I have my own coaching and has a full roster of clients For myself. I have my own coaching clients and my own freelance work. And in our conversation there was a clear energy in the room, this shared feeling that we are in this final push to end the year strong. We both really were like doubling down before we get a break type energy, and this is the time of year where I realize our boundaries might start slipping. We might find ourselves saying yes to things that we know we shouldn't, or falling back into old ways of working that we had previously promised ourselves we'd avoid, all in an effort to end the year strong, all in an effort to have that final push, that final sprint to the end of the year before we relax and indulge in the holiday spirit. For me, my boundaries are being lowered right now because I have this pressure to save as much money as I can before going on sabbatical. Jared and I are doing a three-ish, maybe four-month, trip, starting in january, where he's not going to be working at all. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do, but I'm no right now. I want to be making as much money as possible while I can.

Speaker 1:

My friend who owns the agency. He is very focused on showing great results for his clients. They're starting to make decisions about next year allocating budgets and, of course, he wants to be in their good books while they're making those decisions. So he's finding himself saying you want me to jump? How high as we're all in this final sprint of the year.

Speaker 1:

I want to create this solo episode to remind us why our boundaries are valid and why they are important and the consequences of abandoning them. When it comes to boundaries, it's about feeling confident that your boundaries are valid and a way to honor yourself, but also to have the wisdom about when not to use them, when to let them slip. You may have heard the phrase strong boundaries loosely held. I really do believe this and my hope is that you're going to leave this episode feeling more confident about saying no when necessary, but, of course, have the wisdom to know when it's time to suck it up and do something. I'm even going to equip you with specific language and tactics that will help you say no with grace, because I know it's difficult. I get it, I've been there so many times Our natural tendencies to people please and say yes just to avoid a difficult direct conversation. They're real, but there is an art to saying no and I've really learned by having boundaries you can actually gain someone's respect, so much more than if you're just a yes person. So let's get into it by unpacking.

Speaker 1:

What are boundaries really? When it comes to being an entrepreneur and having clients, boundaries are really about establishing clear limits and guidelines about how you expect to be treated, the kind of work that you're willing to do, how communication will happen, and these boundaries are put in place so that you can protect your own time, your own energy, your professional integrity and ensure that the relationship you have with your clients, that it remains respectful, that it's sustainable. Right Now, not all boundaries need to be clearly stated up front with clients. Some can really just be established as you go based on things that come up. Sometimes I find just by changing my behavior a client can get the hint, they can pick up on the dynamic of how you want to be working and when they've crossed a line. So if you're somebody who dreads having the talk, direct conversation isn't always necessary. I want to give some examples of boundaries, because maybe you're someone listening to this and you haven't really brought into awareness what boundaries are important to you and you like examples. You want me to be specific, so I'm going to get there with you. I'm also now going to get specific in how you can enforce some of these boundaries.

Speaker 1:

The biggest one, I would say, is time boundaries. You'll often see people set specific hours or days that they work. I know I have a friend who in the summer they always do half day Fridays or take Fridays off and they let their clients know that they're not available for calls or to be answering messages or emails on Fridays. Sometimes I'll see in an email thread, I will only be responding to emails between these hours For me. I've like entirely solved for this by just having a calendar booking tool. When somebody wants to meet with me, I send them my calendar link. For so many reasons do I love a calendar link? It saves so much administrative burden of going back and forth to find a time. But a really unexpected perk is I just control what my availability is without having to tell the client oh, I can't meet with you on a Saturday. I send them a link and it just shows that I happen to be available between 10 am and 4 pm Monday to Friday. And oh right, I take an hour break at lunch and oh right, I don't start before 10 am or go past four, and nothing is available on the weekends. The system just completely works for me, and so when I send that to somebody, that's how my hours end up getting filled With.

Speaker 1:

That said, some clients can still try to test your boundaries. I have one client who likes to call me unannounced, thinking that, oh, I just have a quick question that could be solved with a short call and sure I get it. But one time they called me early on a Saturday morning. I was shocked that they thought that was appropriate, but guess what? I just didn't answer the call. A few hours later I just messaged them saying hey, I was still sleeping. I'm not available to hop on a call today, but if you send me a quick voice note I'll reply as soon as I can. They made some joke about oh, you're a sleepyhead, I've been up since 5 am, okay, but otherwise they just accepted it and that was that. If you want to be more direct in this scenario, you could say something like I'm happy to discuss project updates during our weekly check-in calls. If you do have urgent matters outside of those times, send me an email and I'll get back to you within 24 hours. Right, that could have been the message I sent this client if I wanted this to not happen again. Instead, I kind of just let them know hey, I'm still sleeping and therefore don't call me at 8 am on a Saturday, even though you've been up since 5. Good for you.

Speaker 1:

Another type of boundary would be around scope. So scope would be the type of work that you have agreed to do for your client typically involves defining the specific tasks, specific projects, deliverables that you are agreeing to which helps prevent scope creep, which is when a client asks for work outside of the original agreement. This is a boundary that I do make clear up front and ideally in writing. In this scenario, if you're finding a client is asking you to do things outside of what you agreed upon, maybe you've agreed to sending them a number of assets every single month, or perhaps there's a certain amount of calls they get with you as part of a package.

Speaker 1:

Whatever that might be, if you're noticing that scope creep coming up and they're wanting more from you, you could say something like I'd love to help with that. Since this is outside the scope of our current contract, I can provide an estimate for this additional work. It could be as easy as saying something like that and that's going to let them know that I'm interested in doing this for you. I think it's a great idea. I can still bring that level of enthusiasm and professionalism and reliability that you clearly appreciate about me. Considering you're coming back for seconds and you want more from me. However, it's going to cost you, and then the ball is kind of in their court about whether they have extra budget for this project. This does happen to me fairly often with the agency side of my business and so I have a few different revenue streams. But one is having a podcasting agency where I have clients whose shows I essentially manage and I have a roster of freelancers and team members I work with to help me manage these shows.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes a client will want more than we've discussed, and this is something I find I have to use fairly often because it's a slippery slope and the top thing is is sometimes you think their idea is actually a good idea. Maybe the work that you're doing for them is helping them market something, and you originally discussed the various social media channels or maybe blogs or different placements where you're going to market, but then you realize that they have this big email list that you didn't even know they had and you're like, wow, we should totally be sending emails to your email list. Of course you're going to want to be doing that type of work because you want to give them the results, but it was outside of your scope, you didn't include that original contract. So if you're going to start sending regular emails for this client, you need to be getting paid for that and it's up to you to advocate for that and to acknowledge that 90% of the time the client is going to get it. And if they don't get it, if they're offended by the fact that you're not going to do more for free, they're probably not the right client, which more on that in a second.

Speaker 1:

But let's transition to another type of boundary, which is around payment. These boundaries are about setting clear expectations about your terms, your pricing, the timelines for when you're going to get compensated. Look, if you're not getting paid consistently, on time and at the fee that you agreed to, you need to cut that client immediately. Of course, yes, we need to pay our bills and I don't want you to go in debt or not be able to buy your groceries for the week just because I'm telling you to quit this client. But other than those types of extreme circumstances, if a client is not just respecting your compensation, immediate no immediate cut from my roster. That's absolutely unacceptable to me. I am very fortunate here.

Speaker 1:

After seven plus years of client work, only twice have I had clients pay me late, and while it was annoying to continue working for them during that delay, I just kept putting on a smile and eventually got my money and then I ended the contract. I mean, it wasn't just one late payment. I'm talking it was like month three and I still hadn't been paid for the month prior, and when I would send the new month's invoice I would say, hey, I didn't actually get paid for last month. Can you send both payments at once this month? And after that had gone on for a few months, I was getting worried. I was never going to get the money and so I didn't want to start being passive, aggressive or confrontational in fear that they were going to take a significant amount of money from me. I just smiled, kept doing the work, kept reminding them, letting them know why it was really important. I started to add some drama to the story, like I have a really big credit card bill that I need to pay off. It would really help me if you could send this. I didn't have a credit card bill, but anything you can do to let them know that this is something that you really need there's some urgency here and you're not actually making it about their relationship I think creates a harmonious dynamic where they will pay you and then you just stop working for them.

Speaker 1:

What works really well in my business is I'll sell coaching calls, strategy calls, right. You can either buy one call with me or you can buy a package, and how it's set up is the calendar booking tool that I use on the last page. After they choose the date and the time within the hours I want to work, it then collects their payment via Stripe. So before I've even gotten on a call with a new client, they have paid, and so that is very helpful. Of course I have larger clients and freelance work on retainer where I'm not just trading my time for money. I'm doing project-based work and for the most part I just invoice after a month's worth of work. So if I started with the client on November 1st the first of the next month I'll send an invoice for the previous month work. If I have a larger project let's say it's a $5,000 or more project to get started, then I will take an upfront deposit before starting the work. It's kind of like a safety net to make sure they are serious. They do have money.

Speaker 1:

You've worked out all of the kinks to actually getting paid, setting up all of the accounting and wire transfers or whatever you're going to use to get paid, and then after that I'm invoicing them monthly. That seems to work really well for me, but it's just about knowing that getting paid is probably the most important part of your relationship with your client. I don't care if it's the most amazing industry with the most complimentary, easy to please client who allows you to really be in your zone of genius. If they're not paying you, paying you well, on your own terms, on time, that's not a healthy client relationship, and I just don't agree or think that that should ever be happening. Of course, you can be doing work for free.

Speaker 1:

I do work for free all of the time when it makes sense and we are going to talk about that in this episode when it's okay to let our boundaries slip. But I'm not working for free when I agree that this is a paid project. That's to me, is cray cray. So, despite having these types of boundaries and maybe when you listen to this you're like check that in place. Yep, I agree, yep, I do that sometimes we slip and this was the whole inspiration for this solo episode is that I feel, okay, I've got to drop my cat. No, stay off my lap. She loves to just like sit on my lap and purr and move around, especially when I come to record a podcast. It's so annoying. The inspiration, though, for this episode was that this is the time of year when we start to compromise these types of boundaries.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you're so close to hitting a revenue target and if you just say yes to a little bit more work, or a client is willing to pay you, but you have to work on the weekends in order to get this done, sure that makes sense. But it's also knowing about when it's coming from another place, when it's less empowering and more tied to some form of scarcity mindset, some sort of limiting belief that convinces you that you need that client or you need that revenue source. Maybe you say yes to weekend calls or agree to do work for free because you're scared of losing that opportunity. You just want to please them because you really feel like you need them and honestly maybe that's true Everyone's situation is different. Maybe you truly need this revenue, and when I think about when I was first starting my business, I didn't have many boundaries. I was saying yes to anyone that would pay me on my terms, which, at the time, my terms were remote work and work from anywhere in the world, which was still a boundary right Like I still wasn't willing to come into an office, but I was willing to work whenever and pretty much at whatever rate in order to get this business off the ground. But seven years in, I don't need this client and at some point you have to promote yourself right. There's nothing wrong with working hard. Having a yes attitude is important early in our careers and early in our business. But at some point we got to promote ourselves to a new level and it's tricky to stay with it For me.

Speaker 1:

Earlier in this episode I mentioned that I'm preparing for my sabbatical in New Zealand with Jared. I know that 20, 30 years from now, when I look back on this time, if I am fully present and fully capture this experience with my husband and everything else that you can gain from taking several months to just pause on your life and live at a slower pace and have more nature and be with the person that you love most, I know that that is going to pay dividends for the rest of my life. I know I'm going to look back on that moment and be so happy I did that. I know being stressed about work and trying to make some money while I'm on the trip, just so that I don't have to tap into my savings. In the grand scheme of things, that money is peanuts. This time with my husband is so much more important, but it's hard For me. Making money is easy, but saying no to money is the thing that I really need to work on.

Speaker 1:

I've already decided that I'm going to keep one core client during my sabbatical. That's the plan. I am going to work for one client. I've thought about it, I've thought deeply. This client is primarily asynchronous, so I don't need to hop on calls for it, and I've been working with them for over five years. I'd be so bummed if they replace me and if I just kept this one client. It will pay for all my trip expenses and I won't have to dip into my savings. So that is a huge blessing and I've thought through it very deeply and I am committed to keeping this one client.

Speaker 1:

But once I started that, oh wow, it's a slippery slope. Now it's like well, what's a few more clients? You know what's just this person or this one's not too much work. Or in this date, I'm going to be in this location. I mean, I could do some video calls on this. It's so tough. Even though you know what's right for you, it's so different actually enforcing it. It really takes a lot more effort. Now.

Speaker 1:

Boundaries truly no, no bounds. It's up to you to decide what's important to you, based on how you want to work and how you want to live. I've found boundaries are just as important in my personal life as they are professionally. One thing Jared and I often debate is this idea of doing things out of obligation. I value freedom and flexibility so strongly that I actually feel energetically drained and get very annoyed when I have to do something I don't wanna do. When I have to do something out of obligation and this is the debate Jared and I have, because not everybody is bothered by that. Some people are totally fine doing things that they don't wanna do and it's caused me to analyze myself quite a bit. And what does that mean about me? Am I selfish? And I've come to the conclusion that life is too short to be doing things begrudgingly. But people don't always like that, especially if they don't have boundaries themselves.

Speaker 1:

And now I'm sure you have encountered this experience either in your professional life or in your personal life with a friend or a family member, where someone is quite startled or maybe even a little bit offended by you setting a boundary or you attempting to gracefully say no to something. This reaction has nothing to do with you. Okay, this reaction, almost every time, stems from their lack of understanding about healthy limits of their own time and their difficulty asserting boundaries themselves, to the point that they will think well, why can't you just make an exception? Because they're so used to saying yes to everything and they expect you to do the same. When somebody else is enforcing boundaries, it can cause them discomfort because it highlights their own inability to do the same right, and so they respond with trying to make you feel guilty or trying to make you feel pressured, thinking well, I never set these limits, so I expect you to be as flexible as I am. People who are overly giving and they don't have strong boundaries. They are going to be the people who are the most triggered when you try to set yours, but that is part of the process. The good news is that people who have boundaries respect other people who have boundaries, but that doesn't mean that we write off people who don't have boundaries, because we can actually train them, and it's part of the process to train these types of people and be an inspiration for somebody else.

Speaker 1:

I have seen this happen on so many occasions where at first someone was offended and had a reaction to me, trying to say no to something, but then after time they came around, they accepted it and then started to accommodate it and then proactively accommodated it. Okay, and I'm going to give you some examples of when you're on the right track, of when this is starting to happen. So, let's say, a client reaches out to you outside of your office hours, a boundary that you have previously set You're going to know they respect your boundaries and are starting to accommodate them when they start sending messages after hours that explicitly say hey, I don't expect a reply until the next business day, but just wanted to share some information, right? If they want to be working outside of the hours you've agreed to, they should be allowed to. I don't think you should prevent them from communicating with you. Maybe they just need to get something off their chest, maybe they just want to write something down before they forget it. I mean, I can totally relate to that, but when they start to say, hey, I don't expect you to reply until the next business day, you're on the right track. Another example could be maybe if you are on vacation or it's the weekend, they might say hey, I know you're off right now, so feel free to get back to this when you're back at work. These are small indicators. They are signs of hope that you're on the right track.

Speaker 1:

Okay, as long as you handle these situations with calmness, but also consistency, the person can start to respect your boundaries over time and you might teach them and inspire them to establish their own. I do really want to emphasize the word consistency. If you give in to the other person's guilt and the pressure, you've actually had the opposite effect. You've actually trained them that if they push hard enough, you will cave, and that can be so damaging. So I know it's not easy, friends, but stay strong. Establish your boundaries calmly, confidently and consistently calmly, confidently and consistently.

Speaker 1:

Now, one of my favorite stories is a client that I have been working with now for years. We have an amazing relationship, but it didn't always start that way. It was actually a bit rocky at first. I wouldn't necessarily say that they were a micromanager, but definitely close. They were very particular and they had tons of feedback. They would always want several rounds of revisions Every time I would send them my work. They would send me very frantic messages on WhatsApp at all hours of the day and they would always want something changed right away.

Speaker 1:

There was consistent urgency on their end and I thought first crap, this is not going to work long term and I just have to get through this initial contract, which I believe at the time was three or four months that we were starting with, and I just got to bear it and I just got to get through this, and then they're going to be out of my life. This is just what they were used to. They weren't a bad person. You could tell that. This is just their norm and this is how they've spent their career, with this urgent attitude and high pressure expectation that everything has to be perfect and everything needs to be done right now, and by me just very gently and calmly sharing okay, I'm happy to do this. However, things are taking longer than we had initially scoped out, citing the initial contract and the approximate hours that we had agreed to and letting them know that this is now going beyond that. I'm happy to do this, but I am going to need to increase the budget. Totally reasonable, and they did agree, but that is not the special part of the story.

Speaker 1:

The special part about this story is that now, years later, not only are we loving, still working together, but sometimes we'll get on a call and they'll say I channeled my inner sam today in a meeting and they would have these stories about how they've been putting up their own boundaries, now in the workplace for the very first time, advocating for more balance, a a more calm culture. And at first I was like, okay, is this a passive, aggressive jab? But it wasn't. I had truly inspired this person to, for the first time, actually go and set boundaries, and now they come to me for career advice. So the takeaway here is that, yes, people who don't have boundaries themselves are gonna find it hard to accept someone who does, but that doesn't mean that people can't change. Just like you've been inspired by someone else maybe me right, maybe this episode was a source of inspiration. You had some other expander for you and you can become that level of inspiration for someone else which is so cool and definitely an unexpected perk of setting boundaries, I would say another one is weeding out the wrong clients.

Speaker 1:

There will come a time in your entrepreneurial journey where you transition from I need any client to I want more of these types of clients and less of these types of clients. Okay, and that is an exciting level to get to, where you start to have more clarity about who is not only more fun to work with, but more aligned, more ease, more respectful, and you're going to want more of those and less of that other type of person. For me, I have learned that somebody who tries to get a deal from me or a discount, 99% of the time they're going to be a difficult client to work with. And I'm sorry if you are someone who always asks for a discount and always asks for a deal, but I'm not that sorry because you're probably this type of client and maybe you're going to be nodding along because, yeah, you work for your money. It's hard earned money. You want to use it thoughtfully and if you're going to be spending your money, why not try to get a bargain and why not try to maximize the deal? Okay, that's cool for you, but for me the type of person who's going to try to maximize the value from me and get every ounce of the agreed upon scope that isn't fun for me.

Speaker 1:

It makes me feel like the only way to delight this person and to make them extraordinarily satisfied is by going above and beyond what you agreed to is by going above and beyond what you agreed to, it's not necessarily the quality of your work, but it's often about the quantity. Ultimately, it's a respect thing, especially in the service-based industry, right? Because when somebody is asking you to lower your rate, they're effectively saying that they don't actually think you're worth that much. And who are they to decide what you're worth when they haven't even worked with you yet at that point, typically when they're asking for a deal? So if that's happening to you, remember all those amazing clients who did come and pay you in full and maybe even came back from more. Those are my people and that is the type of client that I am for somebody else, and it's a great way to weed out the wrong people, those who want to deal. You know, please stay away. Another example that I have learned in terms of weeding out the wrong client is somebody who expects you to speak with them on the weekend.

Speaker 1:

I had an example come up very recently where someone had reached out to me and they wanted to book one of my bigger packages and they wanted to make a decision quickly. They were ready to move fast and it was Saturday morning and they wanted to get on a call that day and they thought I was a great fit. But they just needed to have a quick conversation to confirm I was a good fit. Well, two issues here One, I don't offer free calls, okay, and two, I don't offer calls on the weekend. So this was like a double negative, but tempting, because they wanted to buy my biggest package.

Speaker 1:

When people ask me if they can have a free call which you know is normal Some people want to make sure someone is a good fit before they buy from them, and I get it. When I was first starting my business, I did free calls all of the time, and I still do. For certain programs maybe that are new ones that I don't have as much of a track record, for, ones where I don't have a ton of reviews or proof that the program is great, absolutely let's get on a call, let's make sure you're a good fit. Also, if I'm selling a higher ticket package, sure, but if you're just trying to buy a strategy call with me or a few strategy calls like maybe a package, I don't offer a free call with that, and so an alternative to having a free call with someone is I basically point them to a YouTube channel where I have free videos that give them ideas of what I'm like to work with, and they can sample not only my style, my personality, but can also be confident that I know what I'm talking about. Another thing I can now point people to is all of the reviews I have. Especially, what's great with being a seller on Fiverr is now I have hundreds of public five star reviews that they can read through, and so that has worked really well for me.

Speaker 1:

I say I don't even really actually say I don't have a free call. I'll just say if you want to learn more about working with me, I have hundreds of free reviews here, and here's my YouTube channel with some free videos that I've created to give you an idea of my style and the depth of knowledge that I have in this space. That works like 99% of the time, but this woman she was relentless. She wanted to talk to me on Saturday, she wanted to talk to me now and she wanted to speak to me for free, and she was dangling this carrot in front of me, regarding this like big package that she was going to buy from me, and so I knew that I wasn't willing to talk to her. On Saturday I was literally on my way back from hot yoga with Jared. We were heading to the market. We had a whole day together planned.

Speaker 1:

I'd had a busy week at work. It was an easy like no frigging way. Am I hopping on a call right now and getting camera ready to go on my webcam. I'm like a sweaty mess after hot yoga. So I said I can't talk today but I'm happy to have a quick chat with you first thing next week. And I sent her a secret link I have which allows someone to book a free 20 minute call with me. So she books it for Monday morning at 10 am, literally my very first spot.

Speaker 1:

And Monday comes around and I remember it perfectly because I was going on a long run that day and I was almost at the distance. I wanted to hit for my run but I had kind of got a late start. I was being a bit lazy that morning and I was running at the distance. I wanted to hit for my run but I had kind of got a late start. I was being a bit lazy that morning and I was running out of time, and so I actually ended up having to cut my run a little bit short, which was kind of annoying. But whatever, I agreed to this call. So I like run home early, get in the shower, and I kid you, not one minute 9.59 am one minute before the scheduled call.

Speaker 1:

She actually said to me hey, don't want to waste your time, but I'm moving forward with somebody else. And in that moment I was so freaking annoyed. I was like this is exactly why I don't offer free calls, because this disruption in my day is so maddening to me, like it completely threw off the whole start to my day. I went from having a runner's high to just being pissed and it reminded me why I have this boundary up in the first place. And yes, some people will try to push past that boundary and dangle a carrot that seems tempting towards you to see if you'll actually jump for them when they ask you to do it.

Speaker 1:

Those types of people are not my people and there were so many signs that she wasn't going to be the type of person that I would enjoy working with, expecting me to talk with her on the weekend, right away, with absolutely no advance notice. Like sure, maybe it's Wednesday and you see my calendar is full for the week and you're thinking is there any way we could chat on Saturday? It'll be super quick. You let me know the time. Sure, you've given me some advance notice, and maybe I can plan for that depending on what's going on, but in this woman's case, she expected me to get on a call right now, on a Saturday. That is a red flag for me in terms of what you're going to expect from the rest of the relationship more than anything else, and I ignored that and I took the free call, and it completely ruined my day, and it just honestly, just like pissed me off. Something, though, that did work, that I wanted to give you as a tactic, was how I got out of talking to her on the Saturday, and this is something that works 100% of the time.

Speaker 1:

As I say, something like the weekends are the only time I get to spend with my family, so they're so important to me like essentially painting this picture that during the week, things are just so chaotic and busy. My husband must just be like off, working shift work, and my kids are off at school, and it's finally Saturday and we're all together and it's this moment of bliss. No one can argue with that. Well, if they do, then they're really not the right person because they don't respect personal life or family life at all. But it's not even true. Like my husband and I literally have lunch together every single day, we have dinner together every single day and we don't have kids. We have one cat who, as you know from this episode, is just like always around, and I'm working from home and she gets a lot of my attention. So it's a bold lie, but it works.

Speaker 1:

That is a great way of being able to enforce your boundary without having any type of direct confrontation. So feel free to steal that. But sometimes you don't actually want to lower your standards and enforce your boundaries, because sometimes it makes sense to be accommodating and go above and beyond. There's a very big difference between doing something out of obligation and doing something because you have a general desire to act out of scope, to exceed their expectations, to meet their high demands and standards. Which brings me to my final point, that sometimes you have to lower your boundaries to do great work, to earn respect, to build important relationships and to invest in your future leverage with a client. Okay, nothing feels more true for that, other than this recent promotion I received with one of my favorite clients, and guess how that happened? I earned it. I earned it by doing great work and by also being great to work with. You don't wanna be known as that person who's difficult to work with just for the sake of being difficult to work with. Sometimes you gotta go above and beyond, and for this particular client, I was willing to do that because they hire me primarily for the type of work I really want to be doing.

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There's a revenue stream of mine that I'm particularly excited about. That's on the newer end. It's one that I'm trying to grow. It's one that I'm trying to build up my portfolio of clients and proof of experience in this space, and so I'm willing to do things out of the ordinary. This is my revenue stream around hosting and public speaking, and for this client, right now they're hiring me to host their new podcast. It hasn't launched yet, but it's super exciting, and most of the guests that they book for me to interview are in Asia. So what does that mean? It means that on multiple occasions, I had to miss my five o'clock workout and have an evening interview, and guess what? I was 100% okay with that. They also hire me on site to host their events. They fly me around to different locations around the world as their host and, guess what? I'm the first one on the team awake and I'm the last one to sleep.

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Even though I'm only paid a set day rate and even though I'm not financially incentivized to go above and beyond, I do whatever it takes to exceed their expectations and do my best work. And, yes, I got a promotion recently and that's a direct outcome from being great to work with. But they're also just a client that's worth it, Even if there wasn't this promotion at stake or this new opportunity that's come up. They've been treating me well for years. They pay me fairly, they respect my talent, trust the work I do and they continue to give me opportunities to evolve. So they're a client that's worth over-delivering for.

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In these moments, I'm able to put my ego aside and those strong boundaries in the corner in order to do great work, and they continue to reward me with things that matter.

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So, yes, this episode is about giving you the tools to say no with grace and put up those important boundaries for yourself and enforce them with confidence. But it's up to you to have the wisdom to intentionally choose when to sharpen the tool and go to battle, and when to put the tool back in your toolbox and show up with an open heart, and only you can make those decisions, and that part is up to you. I wish you well, friends. That's all I have for this week's episode. If you wanna hear more solo episodes, or if you found this information valuable, please share it on social media and tag me at samlaliberty. Not only does it help other freedom seekers find this content and benefit, but it also indicates to me what are the types of episodes that you love so much. You're willing to tell your friends, which truly is the ultimate gift for a creator and entrepreneur. I love you so much. Until next time, enjoy your freedom.

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Sam Laliberte

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