When your working for someone else, as an employee, 9 times out of 10 there are already established rules as to how business is supposed to be done within that organization. However, as you go from working as an employee to working for yourself as an entrepreneur, you become the one responsible for SETTING those ground rules for your business and the expectations and boundaries that come with how your business functions and how it should be run.
As an entrepreneur, having gone through the motions of this process myself, I can assure you that setting CLEAR expectations and REALISTIC boundaries with clients during the onboarding process is the ONLY way to eliminate misunderstandings, stress, and the burnout for your business that you would feel if you don't layout these ground rules with your clients, to begin with. This is something that I have struggled with in the past, especially if the client was a friend or family member. I thought it would be great to share what I’ve learned thus far or to recommend my best advice and honestly I had to find the confidence in own expertise, my offer, and the advice I offered forth to my clients, to begin with, to realize there were plenty of other reasons why we as entrepreneurs can benefit from clearly defining expectations and boundaries with our clients, like the fact that clients will be far more assured of their investments, and comforted even by you laying these things out in the beginning too.
Educating clients on what you expect of them, what they can expect of you, when and how you’re going to be available, and how you can best communicate with one another is going to set your relationship up with a precedent for success and ensure that you don’t get burned out and worn out by an out of control client with unreasonable requests and last-minute demands and changes to your original scope of work.
By setting clear expectations and being upfront about what your client will need to do for you and what they can expect FROM you, will make them feel so much more comfortable in the long run, and taking the time to set expectations also reinforces the fact that they are working with a professional service provider and not an employee, buddy, or team member and that you should be taken seriously as that professional, who they hired to provide the expertise and knowledge that you have within your realm of genius.
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