May 183 min read

How to Set Boundaries as an Entrepreneur

When you’re a solopreneur, you’re a one-man-band. We’ve chatted a lot about the different tasks you need to do, and what you’re personally responsible for. To summarize: it’s a lot.

But you get used to it. And it’s a different kind of busy. It’s not soul sucking-it’s empowering. When you see your ideas start to take off, you know that you were the driving force behind them. It’s a beautiful thing.

It’s easy to get sucked into your work, though. If you’re not setting hard boundaries, you could get stuck working long hours most days. This article goes over the most effective ways to set boundaries in your business that don't compromise your growth.

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Contract

Whenever you start a new project, you should sign a contract. Sometimes a letter with the pertinent details is enough. It really depends on a case-by-case scenario. But, you should have the details of the project written out.

You should include at the minimum:

What you’re creating
What the timeline is
The scope of work
payment

Your contract is your backbone to your client interactions. If your client is asking for more work without pay, you can refer to your contract as a firm boundary. If you don’t have a contract or any written agreement, it becomes harder to justify your boundaries.

Set Hours

You should have set working hours blocked off every day. They can change day to day. And they can vary in length. But you need to know when to put the laptop away.

Track all your hours. Try to set a time when you start working. It helps keep track of your internal hourly rate of running your business. It can also help you realize how much you’re actually working. You may be working 12 hour days without even realizing it.

Calendly link

I’m not a huge fan of meetings. There, I said it. No, I don’t usually want to do

that coffee chat. It’s not that I’m not social. I love talking to people in the messages or in the comment section.

It’s just hard to drop my life for a meeting at a specific time. And I hate having to look presentable if I’m having an off day. I’d rather make a phone call, if necessary.

So how do I set limits while still running my business with meetings? I use calendly. Clandly lets me block off chunks of time where I can take meetings, and other times where meetings aren’t scheduled.

I can schedule all my meetings for Thursdays. Now, I know Thursday is my day to look flawless. Or, I can schedule them every other day from 1-4PM. Meetings are a necessary evil, but you don’t have to let them completely run your life.

Automations

I talk about automations a lot, but they’re incredibly important for any business owner. Everytime you automate something, it frees up that moment for something else. These small moments can really add up and positively affect the user experience.

You can automate:

Emails
Invoices
Taxes
LinkedIn

Automations also take back some of your mental load. Instead of rushing to send that email and dropping everything, you can trust that your system will send it out for you. I’ve found that it greatly decreases my stress level. It also allows me to focus on more important aspects, relax, or work less.

Set Scope

You should have a clearly defined scope of work with every single project. Don’t start unless you know exactly what you’re responsible for and what the timeline is. If you need to write 1,000 words, don’t write 3,000 words. If they want 4 emails, say no if they request an additional 7. You can choose to take on that work if you want, but make sure you're being compensated.

Summary

No one tells you how many tasks come with owning your own business. As you get deeper and deeper, your business starts to grow. And so do your responsibilities. It’s easy to get lost in your work.

But there is more to life than work. Practice setting healthy boundaries by blocking the set time for meetings and your work day. Use a contract to clearly define your scope of work and don’t go beyond it without extra compensation. Use automations to free up some of that valuable time.