I Was Bedbound In Bali For 12 Weeks – Because I Didn’t Set Boundaries In My Online Business

If I was your business coach, the first thing I would teach you is how to set boundaries in your online business. Welcome back to another episode of the Walk With Me podcast. Today we are talking about boundaries. As part of my series of if I was your Business coach. Now, if I was your business coach, it's all about me giving you advice that I wish I had had when I first started my online business.

Sophie

Because when we first start out, usually we don't have money to invest in a coach. So I'm going to give you all of the advice, all of the lessons that I have learned for free. And today we're talking about boundaries because it has been a hot topic for me over the past six years of running my online business.

Sophie

I went from having absolutely no boundaries when I came out of my 9 to 5 and started my own thing at the beginning of the pandemic, to having way too many boundaries after I burnt out along the way. And then slowly, I have been finding my way back to some kind of like neutral playing field. So I feel pretty well versed to talk to you about setting boundaries and boundaries is so important, because boundaries are what is going to actually help you run your online business in the most efficient way, in a way that really, truly does work for you and doesn't feel like a job that you're working for.

Sophie

Without boundaries, it is really easy to fall back into the trap of everything that you were doing back in 95 and really just working a job, rather than building yourself a scalable business. Now, in case you haven't met yet, my name is Sophie. Big stuff. I'm an online business coach and I have been working on life the past six years.

Sophie

I have tried all of the online business models, and I've made all of the mistakes so that you don't have to. And now I'm teaching you everything that I've learned along the way. I'm on a mission to educate more people about how to build a business that actually works for them. Because I personally fell into the mistake of building myself a job that did not work for me.

Sophie

I'd basically escaped my 9 to 5 and then created myself another job where I was in control of my own time. I wasn't really setting the boundaries to actually make it work for the lifestyle that I was living, and that did not end well for me. I went through a huge burnout, which I've spoken about a lot on the podcast.

Sophie

You can go back to old episodes to hear more about that, but I went through a massive burnout, was basically left bedbound in Bali for about 12 weeks, and that was because I did not set boundaries in the first couple of years of me starting my own business. So what is a boundary now? Boundaries are essentially rules that you set yourself and the people that you work with, the people that work around you to make sure that everything that you are doing is actually genuinely working for you and is in alignment with the things that you actually want.

Sophie

And need. Because what happens quite often is when we come out of a 9 to 5 or we start something new, we're a beginner, so we are quite susceptible of saying yes to absolutely everything, when actually not all of those yeses are going to be aligned with what we truly, actually want. The reason this happens is, is a lot of people come out of their 9 to 5, they just want to make more money straight away from their online business.

Sophie

So they go through this process of losing that salary, losing the safety net, and then coming into that online business and thinking, oh my God, I just need to make money. So they often will accept things like projects or clients that actually might not be in alignment with them, and they might not actually stop to question whether this is actually right for them and a good fit for how they want to work.

Sophie

They might not have even thought about, like, how do they want to work when they're operating on online business because they've only ever really known working in a 9 to 5. And I did a whole other episode of all of the things that you need to unlearn when you transition out of 9 to 5 into entrepreneurship. And I also talk about it in my e-book, The Freedom Founder Playbook, which I'll link in the show notes because it documents my entire journey of making that transition, all of the mistakes that I made, and how I personally set boundaries in my online business, and what the consequences are.

Sophie

If you don't. Now, like I said, it's really easy to just carry over your mindset from 9 to 5, which essentially is you saying yes to a lot of things because you are contracted to do a certain job. So you've already agreed to do this certain job. You show up there every single day. So if your manager is coming to you with a list of 20 things, it's unlikely that you're going to push back and say no completely.

Sophie

You might push back deadlines. You might change certain tasks around to fit your to do this better. But in general, if you've been given a job to do, you're probably going to do it. So if you have come out of your 9 to 5 coming in during my business saying no is not really the dumb thing. It might make you feel very uncomfortable to say no, particularly if it means you turning down money, when really that is your priority.

Sophie

When you've just started an online business, you've just lost your salary. You obviously want to replace that money as quickly as possible. Of course you want to say yes to all opportunities, but at what detriment to you? At what cost to you? Are you saying yes to everything? So when we talk about boundaries, it's usually something that you are saying yes to that actually doesn't align with you, doesn't feel good for you, and at some point down the line is going to pay you back in a way that doesn't feel so great because you couldn't say no back at the time that you asked to do something.

Sophie

Now, how this usually plays out for new online business owners, the first way would be you get a client, approach you and they come to you with this crazy long list of things that they want you to do or transformation they think that you're going to be able to provide, and you can do some of the things on that task list.

Sophie

You know, you can provide some of that transformation because a lot of those things are working within your zone of genius. But then maybe there's another like 40% of that list that you're not so comfortable doing and you've never maybe done before, but you're willing to learn. So you might take on that whole big project and say yes to everything, even though you're not qualified to do half of that list.

Sophie

But you want the money, you want the client, you don't want to let someone down. You want to show that you're good at what you do. So you say yes. You take on this whole project and a few weeks in, this client is sending you emails at crazy o'clock that negotiating the money that they're going to give you to really low despite this huge to do list.

Sophie

And because you want the money because you want to please the client, you're just saying yes to all of these things when actually you feel like, oh my God, like, I can't be doing this. This is too much work. This isn't enough money. I feel really burnt out by working with this person. Now, I cannot tell you how many times I did this.

Sophie

In the first two years of starting my online business. I under charged myself. I over promised things that actually I wasn't great at doing, but I wanted the money. I wanted to learn something new, but then ultimately, every single time I'd get a couple of months down the line, sometimes even just a couple of weeks down the line of working with these clients, and I'd be like, so exhausted, so frustrated by the work that I was having to do.

Sophie

So demotivated because the money wasn't actually matching up to the to do list. And in all honesty, it wasn't really worth the mental brainpower that it was sucking for me every single day. It was almost like a vampire was sucking all of the energy out of me. And then, of course, when you are being sapped of energy, it leaves you with very little to put energy back into the things that you do love doing and the clients that you do love working with.

Sophie

So although, yeah, you're being paid all of this money to do all of these tasks and maybe you're learning new skill sets along the way, at what cost to you? At what cost to you is that happening? Because ultimately, for me, for example, I did this repeatedly. I made this mistake repeatedly in the first two years of starting my online business, which then going back to that burnout that I spoke to about in Bali was bed bound for 12 weeks.

Sophie

That was a build up over time, slowly, the work that I was doing was sucking the life out of me and it wasn't fulfilling me. It wasn't in alignment with what I actually wanted to do. So over time, that burnout crept up on me very slowly. And that is what happens when you say yes to things that actually aren't in alignment with you.

Sophie

Now, the other reason that people generally do take these projects on when maybe they're not fully in alignment with themselves, is because they've not actually stopped to think, what actually do I want out of my clients? What do I actually want out of my business? How do I want to run my business? Because again, when we're in a 9 to 5, I spoke about this on a previous episode of the podcast.

Sophie

We are told how we show up, how we present ourselves, how we do the work. But when we are in our running our own online business, we have the autonomy to make those decisions. We have the autonomy to say, I want to work in this way. I want to work with these types of clients. I only want to work a set amount of hours.

Sophie

But again, when you have all of these opportunities thrown at you, sometimes those can go out the window. And if you haven't set the boundaries with yourself before you take on clients, you're going to start losing yourself in that process. And I see this happen with my clients all the time. They come to me and say, I don't even want to run this business anymore, because I've been working with so many clients that don't feel aligned with me.

Sophie

They're burning me out. They're asking me to do things that I don't want to do, and they haven't learned how to say no. So they've been taken on these projects and they get into the place. But I got to where they're getting burnt out, and they're actually at a point where maybe they want to give up their business because it isn't working for them anymore.

Sophie

So the best advice I would give you if I was your online business coach and what I would teach you first before I did anything else with you is learn how to set boundaries. And we learned how to set boundaries by learning what we want and understanding what we want out of our business. The people that we want to work to, the boundaries that we have around our own time, and the way that we want to work and the way that we do that is we need to get really honest with ourselves, and we need to do a little bit of a life audit and say, okay, in my ideal working day, this is the

Sophie

time that I start work. This is the time that I finish work. These are the types of people that I want to fill my time with. This is how I want to fill my time. These are the types of people that I want to work with, and we need to get really specific about what we actually want. Now, sometimes we do have to go through a period of trial and error to understand what it is that we don't want and what we do want, because until we know what we don't want, sometimes we don't know what we do.

Sophie

And that was definitely true for myself. But I'm going to save you a lot of energy by giving you this advice from day one. Because if you can identify and just dream big, think big, like, what do you want out of your business? How do you want your life to look like? How do you want your day to operate?

Sophie

And then you can set boundaries around that and set rules for yourself around that. That is going to really, really benefit you and allow you to work with amazing clients that are fully in alignment and in a way that is actually genuinely working for you. The time capacity that you have and the energy that you have to bring in your life, in your business, it is going to be ten times better than if you were working out of alignment from day one.

Sophie

So the first step of setting boundaries is identifying what it is that you want. And then from the response, you need to set some hard rules for yourself. So if you only want to work four hours a day, you need to be setting those times in your calendar as there, the times that you are working on anything that falls outside of those times, you need to be comfortable enough to say no or ask yourself the question, is this worth it for me to bend my own rules?

Sophie

Because the minute that you start bending your own rules, that is when things start to go downhill. Because that is when you start bending the rules all the time. If you bend your rules once, you normally bend at the second time, and then the third time, and then it is a little snowball effect from that. So I highly recommend that you set yourself some rules.

Sophie

Now, for me personally, I set myself some rules just in my notes, up in my phone so that when I'm making decisions about whether I want to work with the client or how I want to show up that day in my business, I can go back to my rulebook and say, does this actually align with the rules I've set myself?

Sophie

Sophie

But then I get up to the recording and I'm like, oh my God, my brain is deadlocked. I can't host this podcast right now, and it comes back to bite me in a different way. So it is really important that you do stick to your rules within, let's say, a 70% boundary, because that the rules that you've set yourself and you know that that is why you're going to be doing your optimal work.

Sophie

So once you've identified your wants and needs in your business and you have set yourself that rule book, you need to start getting comfortable with saying no to thing. Now, this is the hardest part of setting boundaries because as people, we generally like pleasers. We want to be liked. We want to be seen in certain ways. We don't want to come across rude or unhelpful and sometimes we associate the word no with being those things, and that's not the case.

Sophie

Think of you're saying no to things as literally putting a protective boundary around yourself. You are looking after yourself by saying no when it comes to running your business. Because when you say yes to things that are out of alignment, that is going to cause you problems later down the line. When you say no to things, you can always change your mind and say yes.

Sophie

The right opportunities are never going to pass you by. You can also say, can you think about it? So what I would also suggest is really start looking at the patterns of how you actually make decisions. Are you really impulsive when you make decisions? Are you someone that needs to think about things that it feels pressure to say yes in that moment in time?

Sophie

It is very much okay to say you need to think about a decision before you make it. Because for me, for example, I should not be making decisions in the spur of the moment because I'm an emotional decision maker. So if I'm really excited by something in the moment, but then that excitement fades. I need to really spend a couple of days and make a decision to make sure that that decision is actually right for me, so that I'm not making it an emotion.

Sophie

I'm making it from a neutral place, and that is what I would always recommend doing, is making decisions from a neutral place so that you can say if your boundaries are being tested or not, and if something is a hell yes or a hell no. And I personally operate in a way where if something is not hell yes, then it is probably a hell no.

Sophie

Sometimes there's a middle ground, but generally it should be one or the other and saying no can feel really uncomfortable, right? So what I would suggest doing is looking at ways that you can say no in a way that feels good for you. Just saying a hard no sometimes doesn't feel great, and we don't want to like, be really scattered around the subject.

Sophie

We don't want to be scattered around the know and leave room for interpretation. We want to make sure that it's a no. When we say no to whatever it is, the opportunity that's come in that doesn't feel aligned. But your delivery is everything of this. No. So if, for example, I come to you and say, I want x, y, z to stop and I want you to do it by a set date and you're thinking, oh my God, I don't have time to do it by this date.

Sophie

But I could get this work done in three weeks longer than that. You might be really inclined to say no to the whole project, or you might be inclined to say yes to the whole project. But setting a boundary for yourself is also saying, actually, I want this thing. I think I want to do this task, but I just can't do it right now.

Sophie

So setting another boundary that isn't just a hard no could be. Do you know what? This isn't going to work for me by the timeline that you've proposed. I could do it for this timeline. Let me know if that's okay. That is also setting a boundary. And if they come back and say, you know what? That doesn't work for us.

Sophie

You're like, okay, cool. That doesn't work for me either. And you need to stay clear in that know in that moment in time, because that is you protecting yourself. And if I come to you with a project that is completely out of your scope, but you're really feeling like, oh my God, I feel pressure, this is a friend asking me to do it.

Sophie

I think I could potentially do it, but I'm not sure that feeling of like unknowing in itself is probably telling, you know? So you could come back to me and be like, thank you so much for the opportunity, but it's not right for me at this moment in time. That is still a no. And I will respect that boundary.

Sophie

But you said it and delivered it in a really nice way. That makes me understand that it's not about me. It's about something that you can't actually deliver for me right at that moment in time. And that is okay. Nobody is going to hate you. Nobody's going to think any less of you. You are not going to miss out on those opportunities.

Sophie

Actually, if anything, more opportunities that are more aligned are going to come in because you have had the courage to stand your ground and know what is actually good for you and what's not. Honestly, when you get used to saying no and setting your boundaries, it is the most empowering feeling because you're like, oh yeah, like this isn't in alignment with me.

Sophie

This would have made me feel ten times worse if I'd have actually gone down the route of doing this. But now I have space and capacity to go and look for opportunities, or say yes to opportunities that are going to work for me. Because the more that you stay in alignment in your business, the more that you get your business to work for you, the more opportunities you're going to attract that are actually aligned with what you want.

Sophie

There's a lot of energetics when it comes to business. I'm not going to go into that in this episode, but there is an energetic around saying yes to things that are in alignment, saying no to things that are not, and then calling way more in of the things that are aligned. That is a really empowering and special feeling.

Sophie

And it's happened to me so many times in the past six years. I find in my business it happens with my clients when they finally get into alignment with what they actually want. And it can happen to you if you have the courage to say no to things that aren't in alignment with you. So to recap, setting boundaries is all about knowing what it is that you actually want, how you want to work, who you want to work with.

Sophie

Setting yourself rules around those wants and needs. Learning how to say no, but delivering it in a really nice way, and knowing also when to sit and think about a decision rather than making it on the spot. If you master all of those things, you're really going to set off your business in a really strong way, with solid boundaries in full alignment and authenticity with yourself and your business is going to feel so much easier to run.

Sophie

It is truly going to work for you, not feel like a job that you are working for. And that is the whole point of this podcast, is to teach you how to build a business that truly does work for you your energy, your capacity, and the way that you want to live your life. Because ultimately, what is the point in us building businesses that don't work for us?

Sophie

In fact, work against us? I don't understand why we would spend most of our time building something that we don't actually like to show up for every day. So if you're in the process of building your online business right now, and you want to learn how to set boundaries from day one and jump into the mindset where you can set the boundaries and feel not uncomfortable about that, I'm going to suggest you come and join my online course and group coaching program, foundations, where I teach you how to build a business with those boundaries in mind.

Sophie

With the founder's mindset in mind from day one and all the way up until launch, that you are building your business with solid foundations for you as a founder, but also on how you operate your business from day one. I'll pop the link to that in the show notes. And if you love this episode of working for Me podcast and you want to learn more ways on how you can build a business that genuinely does work for you, make sure you like and subscribe on your favourite podcasting platform and I will see you in the next one.