5 easy work / life boundary hacks
Star Castle Studio provides artful entrepreneurs and makers with tips and custom-created visuals needed to beautifully run a professionally branded business and make an unforgettable impression online.
Running your own business can be tough… and as a soul-aligned entrepreneur, the lines between business and personal life can sometimes blend into a tangled mess! Not to mention avoiding the energy vampires and/or ‘nightmare clients’ you’ll inevitably run into while running a business…
While it’s great to embody your brand and truly live your business mantra, it’s also key to your mental health to establish – and actually stick to – work/life boundaries to keep things running smoothly (+ save your sanity)!
1. Establish (& stick to) ‘official’ work hours
The BEST possible way to keep work and personal time delineated is to establish ‘official’ work hours. Key into when you’re most productive and/or when you feel most inspired and set that specific time slot(s) for ‘work’. As an intuitive, maybe you feel pressured by specific time slots, so keep things simple & choose specific days of the week (that way, you’ll have a bit more wiggle room to play with what time you’re actually doing work throughout the day).
Once you have work hours established, STICK TO THEM.
This doesn’t have to mean not working outside these hours, but simply appearing not to work. You may decide to tackle that stressful project over the weekend since you can’t sleep, just make sure your client doesn’t think you’re accessible during this designated ‘off’ time.
This is key to avoiding overbearing clients and non-stop over-communicating, which will not only leave you feeling taken advantage of, but also lose your business precious time you could be helping MORE people!
Whether or not you actually abide to a ‘hard start’ and ‘end time’ for working on your business, your people should recognize there are certain times when you are accessible and others when you are not.
Make things super clear by adding your availability to your email signature so you don’t have to remember to mention it every time to new clients!
2. Scheduling emails
Your inbox is a great place to start implementing these boundaries!
If you’re checking your work email late one Saturday night, a quick response back to your client will indicate that you’re available to chat / work on weekends. Since it’s best not to leave that email for ‘later’ (aka never since it will most likely get lost in depths of your inbox by Monday) write your response, but schedule it to send during your work hours!
There are plenty of simple ways to do this – I use the free service ‘Streak’ for Gmail, or schedule emails using my current CRM software, Dubsado.
3. Let your people know WHEN (& how) they can reach you
While it’s great to provide next steps whenever you’re chatting with a new client, be sure you also fill them in on your availability and preferred form of communication. For me, you’re more likely to reach me via smoke signal than phone call, so I choose to emphasize Instagram messaging, emails and Asana for client communications.
There’s no ‘right’ way to communicate, just whatever works best for you & your people.
For example, some business owners choose not to communicate with clients via social media, while others (like myself) are strongly anti-facebook – whatever your communication preferences are, be sure to let them know these ‘rules’ ahead of time, so you’re not stuck dealing with a messy situation down the line. If there are certain avenues you prefer to avoid, take some time to seal that flood gate. For me, that meant setting an auto-responder on Facebook messenger to transparently let people know I’m not on Facebook much and provide alternative / better ways to get in touch with me!
4. Stand up for your business & yourself
Since you started your business from a place of passion, it can sometimes feel like your metaphorical ‘baby’. While many believe ‘the customer is always right’ it’s important to get crystal clear on your intentions and how you CHOOSE to run your business, so the work that comes doesn’t decide for you. Clients should feel honored to work with you, as they couldn’t get the same product/service from anyone else in the exact way you offer.
Protect your business sovereignty honoring certain boundaries, such as a limited number of revisions, video calls, etc. Not only will limiting these interactions create space for you to create better work & keep the project on track, it will also allow the few you do include to be that much more valuable! Never forget you’re able to release clients that don’t respect your boundaries.
5. Delegate!
You know what you are best at… Whatever’s not on that list could potentially be handed off to someone else!! Struggle with words? Contract a copywriter. Always find yourself wasting hours cursing Canva? Get a designer on retainer to create all the visuals you need. (My Magical Maintenance retainers start at only 3 hours per month!)
There is always a solution, and freeing up that time will allow you to take back some much needed personal time and have you less frantically playing the ‘busy game’ of running an online business!!
It can feel impossible to separate personal life and business as a passionate soulpreneur, but by putting the right guide posts in place, you can protect what you’re building while also delivering the best possible experience for your clients.
Dying to take some time back for yourself by getting all things ‘design’ off your plate?!
Checkout my magical maintenance packages!
