How boundaries help you to avoid burnout as a business owner
Running a business is tough.
Particularly when you’re running that business on your own, like most of us are.
There’s a never-ending list of things that need doing, emails that need responding to, articles to be read, social media to update, payments to chase… and that’s on top of time spent with clients! The fact that we only have 24 hours in a day sometimes makes running a business feel impossible.
And honestly? A lot of the advice out there about running a business will say being busy is just par for the course. It’s just what happens. We have to ‘hustle’, or we’re never going to be ‘successful’. So just deal with it.
But I’m here to tell you a different story.
I’m here to flip the hustle narrative on its unhelpful head and tell you that it is possible to run a business that doesn’t need you to work 60-hour weeks. It is possible to build a business that gives you the flexibility to drop the kids off at school or take time out of your week to enjoy lunch with a friend or book a week away for a break when you need one. It is possible to earn enough money to live comfortably, without having to take on hundreds of clients and work all the hours of every day.
Basically, I’m here to tell you that you can run a profitable, sustainable and ethical dog training business without working so many hours that you’re permanently on the brink of burnout.
And one of the keys to this is boundaries.
What is burnout?
I’m sure we’ve all heard the term ‘burnout’ before - because it’s something us business owners are forced to deal with fairly regularly. But what does it actually mean?
Sometimes, it can be tempting to say we’re ‘burnt out’ at the end of a particularly stressful week, when we’re tired and just done with the week. And that’s fair enough - because it does feel a lot like burnout.
But there’s also a ‘scientific’ psychological definition of burnout too, that encompasses a whole lot more serious stuff than just feeling exhausted at the end of the week.
The World Health Organization defines burnout as follows:
“Burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:
Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and
Reduced professional efficacy.”
While that definition clearly focuses on the traditional employee-workplace relationship, it can definitely apply to those of us running our own businesses too!
And it’s more than just feeling tired. It’s the feeling of “why did I even start this business?” or “I just can’t be bothered anymore, because it’s never going to be a success anyway” or “I’m too tired to give my all to my clients, because this business is too difficult”.
If you’re lucky enough to have never had any of those thoughts before, you’re in the fortunate minority. In a study conducted in 2021, after we’d been living through a pandemic for 18 months already, 51% of UK small business owners reported having experienced burnout in the last two years - and I’ve seen that anecdotally with many of my clients, too.
Burnout as a business owner will look different to each of us, but there are some common signs that most people I’ve spoken to have experienced before, including:
You’re feeling bored, procrastinating more than usual, and getting distracted
You’re following someone else’s rules, doing what you think you’re ‘supposed’ to be doing, and have lost sight of your big goals
You’re working long hours and struggling to switch off in the evenings
You’re feeling overwhelmed, even by the smallest of things
You’re making more mistakes than usual, even if they’re tiny
You’re not making the time to take care of yourself - skipping lunches or grabbing convenient dinners because you don’t think you have the time to eat properly
You’re feeling grumpier, more cynical or snapping at your friends or family more often than usual
You’ve considered giving up your business and finding something ‘easier’
Being able to spot the early warning signs of burnout can mean you’re able to adjust your schedule, rejig your workload, and re-prioritise your wellbeing before you reach full-blown burnout.
But what’s even better than identifying those early symptoms? Not letting them creep in in the first place!
And that’s where boundaries come into play…
What are boundaries?
For us service-based business people, boundaries are essential if we stand any chance of serving our clients to the best of our abilities and building a business that’s sustainable for us too.
It can be all too easy to put client needs at the top of the pile - because we care so much about the results we get for them. And that’s great, because it means we’re passionate and efficient and amazing at what we do!
But it also opens the door to using all of your energy, your time and your expertise for your clients, and neglecting yourself and your own business.
Business boundaries are guidelines that each of us needs to put in place to determine how we run our businesses. What we prioritise, what clients can expect from us, what we expect from clients, when we stop working in the evening - pretty much anything that will contribute to us giving our absolute best to our clients without sacrificing ourselves in the process.
Figuring out your needs
To lead a sustainable, ethical and profitable dog training business, we need to take care of ourselves before anything else. If your business isn’t taking care of you, you can’t take care of your clients. It really is that simple.
So before establishing boundaries with clients, you need to figure out what your own needs are. Once you know what you need from your business, it’s much easier to establish boundaries that protect and support those needs. And it’s far easier to uphold those boundaries when you know why they exist!
This is the perfect time to grab a notebook and think about a few things:
What do I want my business to look like in a year’s time?
How many days a week do I want to work?
How many hours in a day can I work without feeling exhausted?
What do I want to be able to do each week that an employed job wouldn’t allow? (For example, taking the kids to school, midweek appointments, taking a 2-hour lunch break, etc.)
When you’re thinking about your needs, you really need to focus on you - as a solo business owner, your business is an extension of you, so if you don’t prioritise what you want your life to look like, your business will take over and you’ll end up burnt out!
Establishing your boundaries
Once you know what you need your business to do for you, you can work back from that to figure out how your business should function in order to protect those needs.
One thing lots of people think when they hear the word ‘boundaries’ is specifically boundaries with clients, i.e. when they can contact you, how they can contact you, what they can expect from you etc. BUT boundaries are bigger than that!
Boundaries cover a huge range of business-y things:
Your capacity, i.e. how many clients you take on
Your pricing and whether you offer discounts etc.
The method you use to communicate with clients, e.g. email, WhatsApp, phone calls, etc.
How you choose to market your business, i.e. which channels you use, how often you show up on social media
How many days you take off each year
How many hours a day you work
Which days of the week you spend with clients and which you spend on your business
Starting with your needs first, it’s usually pretty simple to map out your boundaries, particularly when it comes to your capacity.
Let’s say one of your core needs as a business owner is being able to pick up your kids from school each day. Knowing that, you can then establish a clear boundary: you only work with clients between 9am and 2:30pm, so that you’re able to spend the rest of the afternoon with your children. It also means that you won’t respond to emails or other client communications outside of those hours, and it also means that you don’t work with clients who are too far away, otherwise you won’t be able to make it back for school pick up!
If one of your needs is having time and space to not deal with clients (especially if you’re an introverted business owner!), then one of your boundaries should be around limiting and streamlining client communication. It might be that you only allow client communication via email or that you will respond within 48 hours of receiving a message or that clients should only contact you during working hours from Tuesday to Friday each week.
Whatever your boundaries are, the most important thing is to communicate your boundaries as openly and clearly as possible. Particularly with client boundaries, like methods of communication and other expectations, telling clients as early on in the process is super important! It’s often easiest to put together a template or a welcome guide that you can give to all prospective clients - something that you can create once, and then send over whenever you need to to communicate your boundaries (and remind existing clients too, if they’re pushing them!).
How boundaries prevent burnout
At the most basic level, boundaries prevent burnout by prioritising your needs over those of your business or your clients. That might sound selfish, but think about it this way: you started your business to help your clients and their pets, right? Can you do that if you’re burnt out, stressed and overwhelmed? No, you can’t. So establishing and protecting your boundaries helps you to do what you started your business to do: help people and animals.
Knowing your needs and setting boundaries for yourself and your clients helps to achieve three things:
It protects your energy and your mental health, so that you can give the best to your clients and their pets
It gives you the confidence to run your business in the way that you want to
It allows you to balance work and life without feeling guilty or overwhelmed all the time.
And I for one definitely want a little bit more of those things!
Burnout isn’t an enjoyable thing to experience. Although it looks different to every one of us, as we saw earlier, boundaries will always help to prevent it.
Your goal is to build a business that’s sustainable - and that means a business that takes care of you as much as you take care of it. If your business drains your energy, undermines your confidence, and leaves you working 60+ hour weeks, it is not sustainable. It’s the exact opposite of sustainable. It’s a one-way road to burnout.
Having boundaries in place is like having a roadblock in that road. Or, more accurately, it’s like not setting foot on that terrible road in the first place. Establishing boundaries might feel tricky to begin with, but they’re one of the best ways to build a business that’s truly sustainable and gives the best of you to each and every one of your clients.
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