Setting Boundaries for Business Success

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Setting boundaries doesn't just mean telling people no. It's being strategic and smart to set expectations, solve problems before they happen, and plan your way to business success. Life coach Stephanie Domrose joins us in this episode to share a few of the most important boundaries for entrepreneurs.

Stephanie Domrose helps people-pleasers, caretakers, and helpers be independent, empowered, and free through connecting with their intuition and learning to ask for what they want. She provides support through this process with 1:1 coaching, online education, and other products.

Website // Instagram // Facebook // Facebook Group

The episode:

Katrina Widener: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. It's Katrina here. Today, I'm here with Stephanie Domrose, another entrepreneur here in the Twin Cities. And we're going to be talking a little bit about boundaries for entrepreneurs, but first I wanted to introduce you to who she is. She has been a guest expert for the group coaching program. And she also is a fellow coach here in the Cities area. She helps people pleasers, caretakers, and helpers be independent, empowered, and free through connecting with their intuition and learning to ask for what they want, which is something that's super, super aligned with who I am and what I talk about here. So I definitely wanted to have her come on. So I'm going to pass it over to you a little bit, Stephanie, just to introduce yourself a little bit more and let everyone listening know who you are and what you do.

Stephanie Domrose: [00:00:44] Yeah, definitely. Thanks Katrina so much for having me. I'm so excited that you have this podcast and I so enjoyed speaking to your group coaching group, that was such a powerful experience. So I'm happy to be here today. You summed it up really well about what I do and I'm also a course creator and just an educator at heart. So anytime that I get the chance to share any information about what I've learned or little nuggets that I've gleaned from coaching other people with everyone else I'm down for it. So I'm really excited to be here today.

Katrina Widener: [00:01:20] Thank you so much for coming. I'm so excited too. So, I know that today we're going to be talking about boundaries for entrepreneurs, but I kind of wanted to get a little bit more information about who you normally work with. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you only work with entrepreneurs. Is that right?

Stephanie Domrose: [00:01:34] That's correct. Yeah, I've worked with all sorts of people and so men, women, and it's basically anyone who is drawn to working with me. I don't narrow it down to just entrepreneurs, but I will say that I definitely end up working with people who are trying to connect with themselves on a deeper level. And it generally ends up being people who are helpers themselves, or like the type of people who are wanting to make a difference in the world, or are really drawn to caring for others. And that maybe leads them down this path of unhealthy boundaries for themselves. And so finding that balance of how much to help someone else versus how much to help yourself is just this dance that we all play when we're people that care a lot. So that's, that ends up being the type of person that I like to work with. And that is drawn to working with me usually.

Katrina Widener: [00:02:32] That makes a lot of sense, cause there are a ton of these people out there anyway, like I'm an Enneagram type two, which is literally called the helper. So I'm like, yeah, I understand this 100%. But I also feel like that happens oftentimes with entrepreneurs. And then I know I get a lot of clients who are like, okay this is what I really got hired for, but you wanted me to do this, so maybe I'll do that too. Or these are my quote unquote office hours, but they reached out to me and I could do it right now. And I think that setting those boundaries for entrepreneurs is so important because oftentimes we want to make sure that we're serving our clients in such an important and impactful way that we are almost like I can do that and I can do that. And I'll step up here and I'll step up there and oh, you need help with this. Okay. I can get it covered. And so I think that it's something that's very important to talk about just because it is something that is in the entrepreneur industry. So often.

Stephanie Domrose: [00:03:30] Definitely. And speaking directly to your audience -- you work with a lot of entrepreneurs specifically. And that is something that I can say that I have experienced. You've probably experienced this when you first started your business. And it's a part of what you think that you need in order to be successful as an entrepreneur. There's this part of you that's "I need to jump on every opportunity" because it's almost like FOMO. Like you don't want to miss out on what that could potentially mean for you and for your business, but not every opportunity is good for you. And you will spread yourself so thin and have zero energy and hate being an entrepreneur and forget all of the reasons why you wanted to be an entrepreneur in the first place, when you say yes to everybody and everything. And so that's why I'm so passionate. Partially, why I'm so passionate about talking about this topic of better boundaries and healthier boundaries.

Katrina Widener: [00:04:20] I definitely know what you're talking about. That's that's definitely something that I have also worked with and had to deal with on my own. And I see it in my clients. And I know that when I was doing one-on-one coaching, that was one of the reasons why I hadn't moved to group coaching yet. Cause I was like I won't be able to help them as much. I won't, they won't get my undivided attention, even though it wasn't what was aligned for me. And it wasn't the right decision for a service for me to provide. It was something that I thought that I should do, because it would be so important and impactful for them when it really is when I'm doing, what's aligned for me, that's when it's going to be really impactful for them.

Stephanie Domrose: [00:04:56] Totally. Well and two things from that. It's, it's finding the overlap of what is your thing that lights you up that you're really awesome at and what is the thing that your audience or the people that you want to serve needs? And then where that those two things overlap is where you can make the most of a difference. And when you can focus on that, then you're going to feel like you're more aligned with your energy. But I think you hit the nail on the head when you started saying "I should do this thing". And anytime that you're shoulding on yourself, then you got to back up and examine that because that's usually an indicator of trying to guilt yourself into doing something that you don't really want to do. And that doesn't really align with your values in some way.

Katrina Widener: [00:05:32] Oh, 100%. I'm a big proponent of no shoulds. No "I have tos", no "I need to do this." And again, I always give the caveat yes, I still need to send invoices. But it's not like I should be on Facebook when I hate it. Or Twitter. I don't even have a Twitter account. So it's like, well, that's not me and my ideal clients are also maybe not going to find me on Twitter. And I think that what you said about it being like this perfect fit between who you are and what you bring to the table and who your ideal audience is and what they need from you and finding the place that those two kind of align and come together is the perfect way that you can honor yourself and still make an impact on the people that you're helping.

Stephanie Domrose: [00:06:19] Absolutely.

Katrina Widener: [00:06:20] So today where you are going to be talking about three boundaries in particular. Stephanie, I don't know if you wanted to get us started with what the first boundary is that we wanted to cover today.

Stephanie Domrose: [00:06:32] Yeah, definitely. As Katrina had mentioned, we're going to talk about three boundaries for entrepreneurs and these can be things that ideally you would think about when you first start out, but a lot of us have been doing this for a long time. So it's a good thing to check in on yourself from time to time throughout your entrepreneurial journey, just to see how you're doing with these particular boundaries.

So the first one is about streamlining your communication. So boundaries around how you communicate and where you communicate with your clients and where you communicate about your business. So when I first started my business, I'll use that as an example. I was like, I need to be everywhere. I need a website. I need it to be on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and YouTube and Twitter, and like everywhere. And nobody can do that as a one person show. And when you're starting out on your own, it's so important to realize that when you break down the jobs that you do in your business, you are as an entrepreneur and a solopreneur when you first started out, you were probably doing about 15 different jobs. If you were to look at a corporation, those would all be salaried positions and you only have so many hours in the day. And so one of the things that was really powerful for me, and that's been really helpful for a lot of the clients that I've worked with is to set really clear boundaries about where you communicate with your clients.

I have a client who's a tattoo artist and originally she was taking in clients from everywhere. They would send her requests on Instagram and then there'd be some in her inbox and some out of Facebook and some on TikTok and like everywhere she was getting all of these inquiries about work. And when you're having people come at you from all angles like that, you really can't keep everything organized. It's going to be harder to follow up with your clients and you're going to go insane and feel really scattered. And I'm a huge fan of making sure that you are feeling strong and calm and peaceful in yourself before you communicate outward, just so that you have your self right in order to communicate through your business in a really authentic way.

And so one of the things that we ended up doing is streamlining all of her communications so all of her lines of communication pointed to her intake form that was on her website. If someone wanted to contact her from another avenue, she would say, please fill out the form on my website and direct them directly to that place. So this required her to say no inquiries over Instagram. It says it in her profile, no inquiries over Facebook. I only take requests for art through this one particular avenue. If you want to work with me, that's how you work with me. And it's completely changed her business.

Katrina Widener: [00:09:11] That's awesome. I get a lot of people coming to me from all different areas. And it's so important to say this is the way that this works. We're not going to do this over email. We're not going to go back and forth over DM. Like you were saying I'm not gonna check my Facebook messenger if I'm being really honest. So it's always just here's the place where we can hop on a quick phone call and talk these things through.

And for me, it's even with my clients. So send me something over email. If you need to let me know if you're very short on time, you could send me a message to let me know to go check my email, but I'm not going to send you any feedback. We're not going to go back and forth anywhere but in email, because like you're saying it's a great place to keep things organized.

And then if I'm like, "Oh, we talked about this, but did you text it to me or did you DM it to me or did you email it to me? Or did we talk about it in this other area? It always makes sure that I know exactly where things are, and that they know when to expect me to respond to them.

Because I always say, if you email me, I'll respond to you within 24 to 48 hours. And it's setting that boundary, that expectation in the beginning. So that then later on when they're like, okay, but it's been 12 hours and you haven't responded to me yet. I'll be like, again, 24 to 48 hours.

Stephanie Domrose: [00:10:29] Yeah, it's almost like you teach your clients how to interact with you and how to work with you. And that's a huge part of being a business.

Katrina Widener: [00:10:36] Yeah, definitely. And it's also one of those things where I always tell people, if you set the expectation for your client, and then you fulfill that expectation -- even if it's something like I'm not going to respond to you for 24 hours -- they're like: "Oh yeah, you set this. You're holding your own boundaries. I'll do the same, or I respect you for this, or you're fulfilling the expectations I have of you."

Stephanie Domrose: [00:11:00] For sure. It's a part of the agreement of working together and there's a quote that says something at the end of it, like a good boundary shows people where the door is. So it's really not so much about saying no and putting up walls , "no, you can't talk to me there." It's about showing people where the door is so that they can open it when they want to talk to you.

Katrina Widener: [00:11:22] 100%. Okay. So what is the second boundary that we're talking about today?

Stephanie Domrose: [00:11:28] The second boundary is to put boundaries internally and externally on what feedback you're going to receive from anyone else about your business. So this can be feedback from other entrepreneurs. It could be from coaches, it could be from well-meaning friends and family. Everybody in your life is going to have an opinion about what it is that you're doing. And so you need to decide on an internal level, whose opinion you're going to value and actually take into account and how you're going to let that affect you.

And then also on an external level who you're going to ask for opinions from and what opinions are going to allow through your screen, through your boundary screen, because when it comes down to it, you're the one steering your own ship with your business. And you're the one who has the last say, you get to decide where it's going. And you're the only one probably who understands the overall vision for it. And so if you let other people come in with their million of ideas and it's going to start steering you all over the ocean and before you know what you're going to be a little bit lost because you've got this amalgamation of a million different ideas that you've put together for your business. So having those filters in place with some very strategic boundaries is really essential.

Katrina Widener: [00:12:41] I love this boundary. It's so like juicy to me, because I think that is something that is super, super important for every entrepreneur to say, this is what my business is. It is my business. I call the shots. I make the rules. I get to align it to who I am. Or that anytime you get those outside voices being like, "Hey, you should do this", or "Hey, you should do this", or "Hey, you should do this", taking the time to say like for me, I'll take that advice and then I'll sit on it and I'll wait a couple days. And then I'll be like, is this for me, or is this not right for me? And then I'll move forward. Some people might know immediately, but I don't know about you, but when other people are giving me unsolicited advice about my business, my initial reaction is always just like, ugh, please don't. And then maybe two days later, I'll be like, okay, that was actually a good idea.

Stephanie Domrose: [00:13:35] Yeah. Yeah. I think that, that is an area where I've had to develop some internal boundaries around that. And internal boundaries are really like agreements that you make internally with yourself and they're there to protect your sense of identity and your emotional state. And so there are people who like, for example, I've put things out and I've run Facebook ads before, and there are strangers out there who have all sorts of opinions about these Facebook ads that were not positive. Some of them are great, some of them were not positive. And when that first happened, because it was something new that I was doing, I didn't have my guard up. I hadn't really like mentally prepared for the emotional roller coaster that it would be. These hurt, like hell when I read them, I was like, "Oh gosh, like I'm a bad person. I can't believe that they misunderstood me." And I hadn't fortified my internal defenses to say this is the thing I'm putting out into the world and some people aren't going to understand it and that's okay. I'm not here for them. And so taking the time to really set up those internal boundaries can be really helpful. But I do know what you mean with just receiving feedback that you never asked for. That's always a little bit of an uncomfortable situation.

Katrina Widener: [00:14:48] Oh, totally. And that was one of things I felt very lucky when I worked with a coach when I was first starting my business, we talked about what are your boundaries for social media when you've hit 5,000 followers, when you've hit 10,000 followers, when you have 50,000 followers? What do those look like and what are you going to allow and not allow because people will comment and people will tell you how they feel about you. How do you want to react to that? So I think that's super, super important.

Okay. So both of these have been amazing boundaries and I'm so excited that we're talking about them today and everybody gets to learn about this and hear about it for themselves. So what is the final boundary that we have for them today?

Stephanie Domrose: [00:15:30] The final boundaries around your work hours. So entrepreneurship is something that since you are running your own business, you can literally work on it day and night. Your mind will probably be working on it day and night. And if you don't set boundaries around how much energy and how much time you're going to spend on your business, it will start to run your life. It will run your emotional life. It can start running your romantic life if that's all that you talk about in your relationships. And it can run, your, it's a huge part of your financial life as well, but if you don't protect your energy with really healthy boundaries around how often you are working, then your energy is going to deplete really rapidly and you're going to be headed toward burnout pretty darn quick.

Katrina Widener: [00:16:15] Yes. Yes. I wish that I could put that and broadcast it to every single entrepreneur in the entire world all at the same time and that they would absorb it. Because I think that these are conversations that I have with clients all the time. And I've actually given clients homework beforehand where I'm like, don't do any of the work for group coaching in December, don't touch a single bit of it. Your homework for this month is to take a full month off. Because so often we see ourselves and our businesses as the same entity instead of seeing ourselves separate from our businesses and what it really boils down to is saying, what can I do for my business today? How can I help my business move forward today? How can I help that grow today? And it's not, I am my business. And if I'm not working on my business, I'm a failure. Or if I'm not where I perceive others to be, which I think is also important, not where others are, but where I perceive others are, then I'm a failure and all of that kind of stuff. And it's so very important to say, actually, I am separate from my business and I'm choosing to spend this amount of time on my business each day, each month, each week, whatever it looks like, because I want to make sure that it grows and can prosper in the correct way. Not because I tie my own self-worth and my own value to my business.

Stephanie Domrose: [00:17:42] Yes, you hit the nail on the head. I couldn't agree with that more. And that actually comes up a lot with the type of people that I work with because I'm a very similar person. You find that out in the coaching world that you end up attracting people who are, have very similar experiences to you, maybe you like five or 10 years ago. And I like to tell my clients, remind them that productivity is not a measure of your self-worth. However, a lot of us grew up in a society and with parents who were doing the best they could. And this is a very common way to parent where you were told that you were a good girl or a good boy or a good person if you achieved. If you met a certain standard. If you did at your chores, if you did your homework, it made you good as a person. And so we started to at a very young age to really tie these two ideas together, that the more productive, more tasks that you accomplish, the more worthy you are as a human being.

And it happens in an unconscious way, for sure. But when you take this into entrepreneurship with you. It turns into this "how much work can I do and how much can I produce?" Because there is no separation because this thing is your baby that you created from your own mind. And so those boundaries are so important there to be able to rebuild that sense of self-worth, first of all, and like separate yourself, as you said, from your business.

And also there's this -- I think with social media, it's become really popular, too -- we're just so all up in each other's business and lives that we're seeing what everybody else is doing, and then comparing that to our own business. And. If the reality is we're not seeing the naps that people take during the day. We're not seeing the time off that they have, unless they're going on like some fancy vacation. We're not really seeing what their work-life balance is. We're just seeing the productivity and that can be really toxic because then we're all comparing ourselves to each other. " Oh, this person works so hard and they're making it work so I must just not be doing enough. I'm just going to keep doing more or I'm going to find more systems or more information and keep taking on things outside of themselves." When the boundary really needs to happen internally first, deciding how much you're going to give to your business, what is worth to you, and what you really want your life to look like.

We all became entrepreneurs for a reason. I wanted freedom. I wanted to have a life that I was living on my own terms. And there've been certain times in my business where I've created a little prison cell for myself, where I work inside of it for way too long. And I've made myself completely not free. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs can feel that and have felt that in certain times in their lives. So it's really remembering what is it that I wanted out of this experience. And then making sure that you're still finding ways to connect to that.

Katrina Widener: [00:20:28] It's definitely something where I feel like it ties back to what we were saying about shoulds, where society told us we should be working this many hours in order to be successful or we see someone else, quote, unquote, doing it. So we feel like we should be doing it the way that they're doing it, or we should be operating. And I, if I could get the word should like erased from the memory of the collective human world, then I would be a happy person because I'm not here for shoulds.And I don't let my clients be here for shoulds. If. You're doing something that you feel like you should be doing. It's most likely not aligned with you and therefore it probably won't get you the results you wanted in the first place. And it's one of those interesting t,ings that when we take the time to actually ask ourselves why we're pouring all of these hours into our business or why we turn to productivity or routines or structures or habits.

Whenever I hear someone who's like, "How do I create a new habit?" I'm like, "What's the habit? Why?" I'm like, I'm immediately suspicious. And it's just one of those things I'm like, we need to actually be sitting and thinking about why we want things to happen and how we want to feel and what we want our life to look like. And yes, putting in a lot of hours can get you success. Is it the easiest way to get success? No. Is it the most effective way to get success? No. Is it the most joyful way to get success? No, it doesn't feel effortless. Doesn't light you up. Wouldn't you rather have all of those things and also have success? Because I feel like if anyone was given the option of, can I work really hard on things I hate and be successful, or can I have a lot of fun and do things I love and be successful? They're going to pick the latter. And so let's all aim for that one. Let's start from there. Let's build our foundations of our businesses with that.

Ask the goal in mind, instead of being like, "Alright, productivity is going to get me where I want to go. Yay!" I'm like, please. No.

It's examining those old beliefs though, too, I think a lot of us were raised to thinking that if you work hard, then you'll be successful. If you work more hours, then you'll get more money. And I was in the service industry for a lot of years. And so that was the truth. If I wanted more money, I had to work more hours. And so bringing that into entrepreneurship and into a different business model does not work. So you're totally right. It's connecting with, with what you actually want that overall vision to be and then also how you can create those feelings. And if you're creating from a place of, "I should do this and I have to do that", you're being motivated by fear, which is just a terrible motivator and it doesn't feel good and it will burn you out living in that state. And and I also want to just say here, I read this in an article once and I've had to remind myself of it so many times, our most productive hours in a day happen like about three hours a day of work, four maybe. All of the other ones are fluff. Like you're not going to do your best work. You can still pump things out, but you're not going to be as efficient. So when you can really take that into your entrepreneurial journey and really remind yourself, "okay, I have a certain amount of really productive hours in the day and I'm going to do my best, but I don't need to work around this work model of nine to five or 40 hour work weeks or 60 hour work weeks." That's just an abstract. It's something that was created for our society that's incredibly outdated.

Totally. And okay, I could, I'm like, I have 50 things that I could respond to, but unfortunately we do not have the time for that, but thank you so much, Stephanie, for coming on and talking about all of this stuff. I nerd out about it a lot. I love talking about this stuff. I think it's so important for the entrepreneur community and honestly, the entire world, if I'm being really true with everybody, but the ideas of boundaries and the ideas of shoulds and productivity is all things that everyone struggles with. And so thank you so much for coming on here and talking about it. How can my listeners connect with you later on. Where can we find you?

Stephanie Domrose: [00:24:41] Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me I'm on Instagram @stephdomrose. And then I do have a Facebook group that's free that's all about having better boundaries. So you can find me on facebook.com/groups/betterboundariesbetterrelationships.

Katrina Widener: [00:24:57] Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I, again, could talk about this with you for hours.