This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Do you ever struggle with setting boundaries? Do you struggle with kind of carving away your time or there might be a time of day in which you don't wanna be bothered or you might have certain expectations that you're like, "Hey, I can do these things, "but not these other things." And then somebody kind of walks all over them or just pushes the edges of those boundaries. What do you do in the side hustling world when it comes to boundaries with clients in particular? I loved this question that we have. Comes to us from Stephanie in Orlando.
She's got a side hustle. She's got a main job just like so many people do. Presumably she has other responsibilities as well. So she's got all these things. And finding it challenging to set boundaries with clients who expect her to be available all the time.
What should she do? How should she proceed? Obviously she should set some kind of boundaries or maybe enforce boundaries, but how? It's all about the details. How do you actually do that?
So for anybody out there who sometimes struggles with this area or is moving into a new area and thinking I want to start more of a side hustle or grow my side hustle, but I'm kind of worried about how to manage those expectations. Let's talk about some practical strategies for doing that. That is our focus for today. Quick little shout out to our sponsor and then on with the show. [Music]
This is Stephanie calling from Orlando.
I've been running a successful side hustle as a UX designer for about a year. And while I love working with clients, I'm finding it hard to set boundaries. Since this isn't my full-time job, I sometimes struggle with clients expecting me to be available during regular work hours or on short notice. I want to make sure I'm delivering high quality work without sacrificing my main job or my personal time. What are some effective ways for setting clear boundaries with clients while still keeping them happy?
And how do I communicate them without losing business or coming across as unprofessional? Well, this is a conversation we need to have more in life, all forms of life, not just side hustling, but I love the topical focus here. So if you have a side hustle or a small business and your clients kind of expect you to be available all the time, you have a couple of issues. And one of them may be that you have kind of enabled that. So it may be that you have difficult clients and that's one thing, but it may be that you have just kind of set that pattern yourself.
So something you can just start doing right away is to clearly communicate your availability, just define your work hours. You can do this in lots of different ways. If your primary communication is done through email, just include a little email signature that's like, here's my availability. I'm available for this work on these hours. And if you write me another time, I'll get back to you then, right?
So you're just kind of setting your own expectations. You could include your availability in your initial communication or on your website as well. When you're dealing with new clients, you can use technology to automate responses, email auto responders, online booking tools are helpful like Calendly or other calendar software. When somebody asks you for a call, you could just send them to this calendar. And this basically, when you send them to the calendar, it's got your hours right there.
They can't choose a time that's outside of those hours. So that can be a gentle yet effective strategy to use. And then next, you want to build trust through high quality work. When clients trust your work, they're more likely to respect your boundaries. This is something I've noticed on all sides.
When I've worked with great partners, when I've done work for people, if you do good work and you communicate proactively, that's going to go a long way. And I think these are the things to solve before you think, oh, my clients are bad or my clients are abusing me or taking advantage of me. You first try to kind of sort out yourself. And then if that continues, then it kind of turns into something where you're like, okay, I might need to consider changing the relationship here with this client. One more thing you can do is to make a separate identity for your side hustle, different contact information, perhaps a different email address for sure.
And that helps you again to manage client interactions without feeling overwhelmed or distracted during your main job, during your other stuff that you need to do. So set those boundaries with clients, communicate your availability, use technology, practice a sort of communication. Doing just a few of these things should get you far. And I also always recommend the book from Melissa Urban, a friend of mine. She wrote a book called "The Book of Boundaries." And it's great, it has lots of scripts that you can use in all kinds of situations to help you clear up time for yourself.
And not just time, but also energy and overwhelm. So I recommend Melissa's book. Listeners, if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Much more is coming up. I'm excited for these final two months of the year.
Thank you for being out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
