Setting Boundaries for Balance in Consulting

Video Transcript: Transcript: What do boundaries mean to you in your personal life? Do you have them? Do you stick to them? Hi there, this is Krissi Thomas coming at ya. I have been with Simplicity's since 2008. I've also had my own marketing company since 1999. So consulting has been a thing for me for a very long time. And I am here today to as part of the work your way series to talk to you about something super important, which is boundaries. Before we start, I have a question for you guys to think about, which is, what do boundaries mean to you in your personal life? Do you have them? Do you use them? Do you stick to them?

The reason I ask this is because you have strong boundaries for yourself in your personal life, it translates quite easily into work life things like, Do you get up at a certain time every day? Do you stick to a boundary because you know that your day is going to be better because of it, whether that's reading your book every day, whether it's working out, it really doesn't matter. It's really a self boundary. So if you are honing in on those, it's going to work really well for you.

When you're consulting, what are boundaries in a work context? It's basically how are you setting yourself up for that positive outcome that you want to have with your client. That is sometimes the scariest part, what I would encourage you to do, even in the interview process, to be quite honest, it should start even then let your client know who you are and how you operate. You work really great early in the morning, or do you work really great late at night? Are there certain things that you absolutely cannot be at meetings at a certain time of day because, I don't know, maybe you have to go pick up your kids from school, once you land that contract is to reiterate those boundaries and communicate them very clearly as forward. You're kicking ass, you're doing great. And then you start to see that scope creep. So what happens when your client actually infringes on those boundaries? Well, it's up to you to be really strong and go back to the original boundaries and just say, hey, you know, that's not going to work for me. And here's why. Remember, we talked about it, do not waver, because if you do, it'll happen again, really honor yourself and those boundaries. Last is remember why you chose to work your way. Remember why you did that? It's so that you probably could have more flexibility in your life. It's probably so you could hone in on the skills that you know you're really good at. It's so that you can vary up your work so you can change it up a project by project. Those are usually the reasons why we choose to go into this field of consulting, remember, you own it and love what you do.