People often talk about setting boundaries.

And while boundaries can be important in certain situations, they don’t always work. Sometimes others end up violating them, and sometimes we put ourselves in situations where they have the chance to be crossed, intentional or not.

So, we need to ask ourselves: Are boundaries important? Do they exist? What situations should they apply to, and in what situations do they do more harm than good?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I share some thoughts on boundaries based on my own life experiences.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Why this podcast episode will be a bit different

00:48 – How I’ve been spending my time this past week

02:27 – How important are boundaries?

02:57 – Boundaries and client relationships

06:36 – How boundaries apply to musicians

07:13 – Setting boundaries with difficult people

08:48 – Setting boundaries with people you love hanging out with

11:35 – Life happens whether you want it to or not

12:38 – Final thoughts

Transcription:

Hey, thanks for joining me. This is going to be a little bit of a different podcast. I’m not at home, so first of all, I am not recording in front of a broadcast quality microphone. Second of all, it’s going to be a little bit of a different topic that I might not normally choose to cover on the show, even though you’ve probably noticed, I cover everything from like personal development and finances all the way over to various music marketing tactics and methods and so forth.

Today, I wanted to cover this issue of boundaries. Now, first of all I just wanted to let you know I am on the road right now. I am headed over to Chase, BC where I am staying in British Columbia. It’s a beautiful place. I just came out here to spend some time to recharge, and recover, reflect, think things over.

I haven’t really taken much time for myself in the last six years or so. I do believe I had a little bit of work vacation back in 2011 followed by a fairly brief true vacation where I took a little bit of time to rest and enjoy myself in Canmore and Red Deer.

I was going to be in Canmore again this year. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out because everything was booked up. That’s just following a theme with things that have happened this summer because I also got away from the long weakened with a friend. We headed out to Cranbrook. Now, we may have chosen to stay in Radium instead but the issue was that everything was booked up.

Anyway, that’s just a little bit about some of the adventures I’ve been on this month specifically. If you’ve been following my updates and everything else, you already know that I’ve done quite a bit of this this summer.

It’s just really important for me to do this, to take some time to recharge because not everything has gone according to plan, which is somewhat normal in life, and we have to roll with the punches a lot of the time.

So, getting back to this topic of boundaries, I think first of all we have to consider how important they are. To be perfectly honest, I don’t believe they apply to every single situation. Now, a lot of people talk about boundaries and setting boundaries. I think there are certain situations where they totally apply, but there are also other situations where they sort of get in the way and don’t serve you. That’s what I want to get in to.

I think boundaries are specifically important when it comes to client relationships. Now, as a musician you may not have clients, but as an entrepreneur you may. But in my situation, I still have other work outside of The Music Entrepreneur HQ, so I do serve clients in different capacities, whether it’s ghost blog writing or developing websites.

In some situations, I’ve either had to say “Look, I’m going to be a day late on this. I’m still finishing it. It’s still going to be important for me to do that. I’m going to get around to it right away.