Episode 340: Boundaries In Your Agency

Show Summary

Rob Cairns talks about setting boundaries in your agency.

Show Highlights:

1. Why you Need Boundaries.
2. The Dog Ate My Homework.
3. Why You Should Stick To Your Boundaries,

Show Notes

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here and the founder, CEO and chief creator of amazing ideas at stunning digital marketing and today’s Quick podcast. I wanna talk a little bit about boundaries in an agency and why you need to set them and some of the things that you should do in order to set those boundaries so. Kind of. What precipitated this little bit of a discussion was I went through a situation in my agency recently where I had a client who decided. That we needed a a reset meeting for a project, so I set that reset meeting and I actually sat down with them and said OK, everything’s off track. So let’s get it back on track. And then they promised to hand me information that evening. Needless to say, it didn’t come. What I actually got was the old the dog ate my homework story, IE word blew up and I didn’t get it done and I didn’t see fit. To finish off what I promised you, that’s great. Especially considering in this case I’d said to the client. Ohh, I give them. Tuesday and Wednesday all day to get this done cause I wanted to help them. Well, the reality of it was I never got the information till Wednesday evening. And I had other stuff barked, and then I went into my July vacation. And so on. And so forth. In this all the client decided to see fit and go into my booking system which have an online available link and book 16 daily meetings because they know frankly I don’t take phone calls typically just ad hoc. It usually needs to be scheduled. And there’s a number of reasons I’ll get to that in a minute. That’s one of my boundaries schedule some phone calls. The other boundary is don’t book 16 meetings. My booking policy on my website actually says that will get you banned from my booking system and there’s penalties attached to abusing the system and so on and so. So there’s boundary #2 boundary #3 is I usually don’t work after 5:00 PM Eastern or I don’t take calls after 5:00 PM Eastern Monday to Friday, and I generally don’t take calls for non emergencies except on the weekend. So that’s another boundary. And why am I talking about all this around boundaries like let’s be. Agency owners are their own worst enemies. We all set boundaries down and at the end of the day we all break them and we say, ohh, we’ll let it go this time. We’ll let it go this time we’ll. Let it go this time. And then you really don’t have the boundaries. The boundaries become the exceptions. And I’m not a big fan of letting boundaries go. I actually tend to enforce them and say here they are. I don’t mind giving a little bit of leeway, but abuse breaking of boundaries isn’t the type of person I wanna work with, and that’s not a good idea. As an agency owner, what I would say is define your boundaries. Make sure you communicate your boundaries, but the main contracts on your website, which I do and so on. And then stick to those boundaries, because if you don’t stick to the boundaries, you end up in the situations I’ve been in the past where it’s all I need this job. So I’ll I’ll just give in on the boundaries. I don’t recommend doing that. Really, what I suggest doing is the finding some boundaries. Stick to them. And that seems harsh. But on the other hand, if the person doesn’t accept those boundaries, they can choose to work with somebody else too. So I think for your own sanity, mental health. And workflow boundaries are a must. Rob Cairns, CEO, founder and Chief Trader of Amazing ideas of stunning digital marketing, talking about boundaries in your agency, why they matter. And please stick to them. Thank you. Bye for now.

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