3 Areas to Think About When Defining Your Boundaries as CEO

Promote Yourself to CEO | Small Business Strategy for Women Entrepreneurs

People keep asking for your time, energy, and attention. Someone invites you to an impromptu coffee date in the middle of something important or wants to meet up with you about something after business hours. But when it comes to your business, you need to learn to say no when necessary.

You want to turn these types of things down but fear it’ll have a detrimental affect on your life or business. Maybe you’ll miss out on an opportunity or offend a client or potential business partner or friend.

But there’s always a trade-off and saying yes to everything is really the thing that can hurt your business. The key to not doing that is the CEO’s best friend: boundaries. You need to set strong boundaries for yourself and your business and not waver on them.

That (especially the not-wavering thing) sounds easier said than done, right? Well, in this episode of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast, you’ll learn about the three different types of boundaries you as a business owner need to think about setting for yourself. You’ll also learn how to enforce and stick with your new boundaries.

On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO:

8:47 - The first boundary you need to examine is the biggest challenge I hear from women entrepreneurs.

12:32 - What is the flow state, and how do you get into it?

16:46 - How do you organize your calendar? I walk you through how I do mine as an example.

19:13 - I talk about how to manage clients when it comes to your calendar’s specificity, including emergency appointments.

23:40 - What about appointments for non-business related things (i.e. lunch with a friend or potential business referral)?

26:50 - So many of us struggle with constant communication. I discuss setting up your boundaries around this so you don’t make yourself seem available 24/7.

30:22 - How can you set expectations for your response turnaround time? Here’s how we do it through my preferred communication channel.

33:27 - I talk about boundaries around your non-preferred methods of business communication.

37:48 - How do you respond to questions? You might experience this particular scenario, especially as your business grows and you become known as an expert.

43:09 - Having clear, upfront boundaries saves you so much time and energy when dealing with sticky clients situations such as these.

48:24 - Feel free to do this with clients when necessary. But make sure it’s in your contract/client agreement.

52:02 - To wrap up the show, I give a quick recap of the three boundaries.

Mentioned in 3 Areas to Think About When Defining Your Boundaries as CEO

• The CEO Collective
• “How a Model Calendar Helps Me Work Just 25 Hours a Week!”
• Help Scout
• Racheal on Instagram and TikTok
• Rate and review on Apple Podcasts