Can they contact you via email or not? Can they DM you with questions
about your course? Can they DM you with questions about their specific situation?
If it's a coaching client, can they DM you between coaching sessions? Can
they email you between sessions? Is there maybe do you have access with them
where they can message you via voxer between sessions? And if so, is
there a limit? How long can they wait to expect a reply from you?
All of these expectations they form a boundary that you can then communicate to
your client or your student. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm Steph Taylor.
The years I read all the books, downloaded all the freebies, and did
all the courses, but it wasn't until I started taking imperfect action that my
business had its first million dollars year. Imperfect action is about doing things before
you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving forward even when
you're not or you're doing it right. On this show, you can expect
mindset advice, actionable marketing tips and strategies to build a business that brings you
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in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to in Perfect Action. This
is episode seven hundred and ninety four. Today we are talking about boundaries in
the context of online courses, online coaching, and any really any digital products
that you are selling. So back when I worked one on one as a
marketing consultant with clients, I had zero boundaries. I didn't realize this at
the time. I didn't even really know what boundaries were at the time.
But I was traveling and I was working, and I would take client calls
at four am because that was the only time that would work for the client.
I would reply to client emails in front of the Eiffel Tower because I
thought that if I didn't reply to them within an hour of receiving the email,
they would be mad at me. And you know, I even I
remember being on a yacht in Greece my first that was meant to be my
first seven days completely offline, since I had quit my corporate job and started
a business. And even then there was a client emergency that I felt like
I had to respond to. I also once had a client call me on
a Sunday night to make one tiny, tiny, little insignificant change to a
sales page, but that they thought was an absolute emergency. So I was
feeling pretty exhausted because I was getting pulled in all of these different directions.
I was pretty resentful, and I didn't know that there was anything else I
could do. I didn't know that there was a different way to run my
business. I didn't know that I could say no right. I thought I
just had to say yes, and I thought that I had really painful clients,
But in reality, it was me who was not setting boundaries with them
that was making them quite painful clients. Now, let me just say there
are clients out there. If you are dealing with a painful client, it
does not necessarily mean that it is your fault. There are some clients out
there who can be quite painful and demanding. However, a lot of the
time, what we perceived to be a painful client we can actually fix,
or we can, I guess, not eliminate the situation entirely, but we
can really smooth the situation out A little bit by setting some boundaries. And
this goes with one on one clients as much as it does for online courses
and group programs, and I don't think enough people talk about the importance of
setting boundaries in those contexts. Now, boundaries teach others how to interact with
us. And if your clients know that they can expect you to answer their
calls at eight pm on a Sunday like mine did, guess what they will
do more of. They will call you at eight pm on a Sunday because
they know you're going to answer same within your online course. If your students
in your course know that they can DM you on Instagram and ask you any
questions about their business or about their situation, then they're going to keep doing
that. And it's actually doing them a bit of a disservice because rather rather
than you teaching them how to think for themselves, they are now just learning
to rely on you to give them the answer. And then as soon as
they finish your course or as soon as their access to you runs out,
they're exactly where they started off because you haven't actually empowered them with the skills
to go and figure it out themselves. They've just learned. Oh, I
can ask a question, I get my answer, and now'll you know,
that's what I'm used to doing. I don't need to go and figure it
out. So when I started letting go of clients, when I started going
from one to one to more of a one to many style business where I
was selling more digital products, I had a membership, I had a couple
of courses, I didn't realize just how important boundaries would be in selling and
in delivering my one to many offers. Okay, so let's backtrack. What
actually is a boundary? Boundaries are a bit of a hot topic at the
moment in the insta psychology kind of world. I know, there have been
a lot of psychologists on Instagram who have shared a lot of carousels and you
know a lot of really catchy posts around the importance of setting boundaries. But
what actually are they? So Nedra Glover tawab and I'm no idea if I'm
pronouncing that right, I really hope i am. She's a licensed therapist and
author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace, which by the way, is an
awesome book, and she calls a boundary. She says, a boundary is
something that keeps you safe and comfortable in your relationships. Now, obviously this
applies to friendships, it applies to romantic relationships. It also applies to your
client relationships, your team, contractors, anybody who you are working with in
your business. And we chatted quite a bit about boundaries in the episode that
I did back in Oh Oh My Goodness. It was quite a while ago
with Monarcha Yates. We did a really deep dive into setting boundaries and upholding
those boundaries. If you want to go back to find that episode with episode
four ninety nine, the easiest way to find it is if you DM me
on Instagram at Steph Taylor dot Co. Just send the numbers four nine to
nine to me and you'll get a direct link to this episode back automatically.
Now, what boundaries might you set in your online offers? Obviously, when
you are coaching, that's a slightly different container, slightly different relationship to if
you have fifty students in a course or one hundred students in a membership or
more than that. So here are four key boundaries that you might want to
set in your online offers. The first one is around how much support that
someone can expect can they contact you via email or not? Can they DM
you with questions about your course? Can they DM you with questions about their
specific situation? If it's a coaching client, can they DM you between coaching
sessions? Can they email you between sessions? Is there maybe do you have
access with them where they can message you via voxer between sessions? And if
so, is there a limit? How long can they wait to expect a
reply from you. All of these expectations they form a boundary that you can
then communicate to your client or your student. The next one to set is
interaction in the community. So, if there is a community component to your
offer, is that community there for them to ask you questions or is it
there for them to interact with the others in the community. There's no right
or wrong, but one of them is going to be a lot more hands
on for you. You. Can they expect you to reply to every single
post in the community or is it more of an expectation that they will reply
to each other's posts. Maybe they can expect somebody in your team to reply,
but they can't expect you to reply. What is that going to look
like? Set those expectations, then the third one is response times. So
this goes for any offer that you are selling online. But what time frame
can somebody expect a response to a support query? So if they are emailing
your customer support inbox because they've lost their password or they can't find a particular
lesson or whatever, what time frame can they expect a response? Twenty four
hours, forty eight hours, even just having that expectation communicated to them.
If it takes forty eight hours but they know it's going to take forty eight
hours, they're much more likely to be comfortable with that. Then they've just
sent this email to a support inbox and they've never heard back, and they
don't know when they're going to hear back, and they feel like maybe they've
been ripped off. And then the final boundary to consider setting is around any
calls that you have. So if you have Q and A calls, if
you're doing one on one, if you have the one on one calls,
group coaching calls, how long should they expect the calls to be? Can
they expect them to go overtime or under time? How much time can somebody
expect from you in a group situation, You know, if somebody's asking you
a question in a Q and a call or in a group coaching call.
How much time can they expect? Do they get every single question answered?
Is it that everybody is guaranteed a certain amount of time each call? Or
is it a first in, first served? Is there a limit to how
many questions they can ask? Is there a limit to what the questions should
be about? Where should they ask the questions? Is it something that they
unmute and ask on the call. Is it something they put in the chat?
Is it something they need to submit ahead of time to be considered?
These things I've really been learning as I do more and more smaller group things,
I'm really learning the importance of having done boundaries in those calls. But
even with your one on one clients, right, setting an expectation of hey,
I book my calls back to back, so our one on one calls
cannot go more than one minute overtime? Great. Now the client has that
expectation communicated, They're not going to be resentful if you have to cut them
off mid sentence because you have a call to run to. Okay, because
they know that is part of what is involved with working with you. Okay,
So setting boundaries in your business. That is one thing, and it's
hard enough setting them, I know, But how do you then communicate those
boundaries to your students, to your clients. I personally, I've learned the
hard way that I think the easiest way to communicate them is proactively if you
can. Okay, So if you've got a course, having a welcome video
where you talk about the expectations and what is required of them and what is
expected from you, maybe if you're doing one on one a welcome kit for
your clients, or an email even that just sets out those expectations for both
parties, what you can expect from them, what they can expect from you.
Some bigger boundaries you might actually communicate in your services agreement or contract.
If you have a coaching contract, for example, you know, if they
cancel a coaching session less than twelve hours before the session, then they forfeit
that they pay for that one and they don't actually get to rebook that because
that's you know, messed up your calendar. But most of these boundaries can
be communicated in the onboarding process. They don't need to be in a formal
contract, but definitely you know runs around like free funds cancelations. Put those
in a contract or terms and conditions on your website if it's a course,
so that it is there and it's legally communicated. And then if someone doesn't
listen to boundaries, then what do you do? Well, I definitely still
get this, like I'll have, you know, a student's dm ME and
ask me a question, and I generally I'll give them the benefit of the
doubt and I will assume that they forgot or that they weren't paying attention to
the onboarding process, maybe they didn't watch the video, and I'll communicate the
boundary again. So if somebody from launch Magic dms me with a question about
their launch, I will usually reply and I'll say something like hey, like
thanks for asking this. Unfortunately, I can't answer questions via dms as we
have hundreds of students and if I answer one person's question, then I have
to answer everybody's questions. And you know that's not fair on me because I
only have a limited number of hours in the day. But here's the link
where you can go and submit it for our next Q and A call and
I will answer it at the start of the call. That's that's all.
It is. Nice and simple. I've never had anybody push back or get
angry about that. They're always like, yep, that's great, thank you
so much. I didn't know. I didn't understand that I wasn't allowed to
DM you, okay. So there you have it, a couple of couple
of boundaries to set around support, community response times, and the calls that
somebody can expect. You might also notice that, depending on the particulars of
your own care, also your own program, your own coaching, there might
be other boundaries that you need to set as well, and you might start
to notice some as well. Like in an episode with Monica back in episode
four nine nine, I think she mentioned that one of the ways to identify
where a boundary needs to be set is if you're starting to feel a little
bit resentful. Right, So, if you're feeling resentful towards a student or
a client, there's a boundary that needs to be set there, and you
need to do a little bit of digging to figure out what that needs to
be. All right, if you've learned anything from this show so far,
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