You're listening to Cubicle to CEO episode 219. Master the art of being unmess-withable in your service based business from a true boundary (and social media Queen) Becca Booker of Homemade Social. Becca has clear and firm boundaries set on her calendar, phone, email, social media, client contracts, and even with her team. Having all of these boundaries may seem scary or restrictive at first, but it actually allows her to do better work for her clients faster. Thanks to her streamlined processes and boundaries, her agency has cut average work hours by 12 and a half percent, allowing her whole team to work only 35 hours a week, while clocking an impressive 44% increase in revenue year over year as well. In today's case study we dig through every area of Becca's business and dissect each boundary she's put in place, as well as the impact it's had on the company and her clients. If you're ready to work smarter and permanently rid yourself of people pleasing pitfalls. This episode is your roadmap to freedom.
Welcome to Cubicle to CEO the podcast. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. I quit my job without a backup plan and bootstrapped my first $300 freelance project into $2 million in revenue by age 28. On this show, you'll hear weekly case study interviews with leading entrepreneurs and CEOs who share one specific strategy that successfully grew their business revenue. Skip the expensive and time consuming learning curve of testing everything yourself by borrowing what actually works from the best and brightest mentors. You'll also get a front row seat to my founders journey through transparent income reports and behind the business solo episodes, subscribe now so we can grow together every Monday.
Hey, Becca, we're so excited to have you on the show. Like I was telling you before we hit record, we've not really had a lot of guests on before to talk specifically about boundaries, and even more importantly, how they're actually implementing it in their own business model. So very excited to have this conversation with you today.
I am so excited as well. I think the only reason I really dive so much into boundaries is because I used to literally have none. So I'm excited to kind of share my my findings.
As a recovering people pleaser.
Yes, exactly.
We see you. Alight Becca, before we get into your case study today, which is all about how you created boundaries and systems in your service based business that fuels not only you, but your team and your clients a win win win, we love a trifecta. And that resulted in you reducing your own working hours from 45 plus hours a week down to 35, as well as also reducing your team's time and workload by 12 and a half percent. And we'll get into the details of all of that in just a moment. But first, I want to hear your cubicle the CEO story. What was that catalyst that made you take the leap into entrepreneurship?
Great question. I forget what is the first episode of your podcast that I listened to. But I just remember nodding my head when you were sharing your story about your cubicle to CEO life. I went to school, I went to Arizona State for marketing and journalism. And most like, you know, big business schools, their quote, brainwashing you to go work for a fortune 500 company or a publicly traded company, even though that was nothing I really dreamed of those are the only companies at the job fair. Right. Great. And so I took a job at Target right out of college. I was like, You know what, it's not doing anything related to social media. But I love shopping at Target. I love Target as a brand. How bad can it be? I'll keep up to date with social media trends on the weekend. And that was kind of the that was what I was hoping would happen. And it was like the opposite of what happened. I was working 50 hours a week and I had to work every other weekend. Some of my shifts would start at 4am.
Oh no
Yeah. So in this was, it was dumb. It was my first real job that and all of my internships had been in social media. I honestly don't know what I was thinking. And I quickly, like you said, recovering people pleaser. I was trying to make it work so bad. I was seeing a therapist. I was seeing a doctor because I was like my hair was falling out and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. And he's like, did all this blood work and he's like, you're fine. Maybe you're stressed. And I was like, oh god, yeah, I'm stressed. And so I ended up actually quitting that job, but within three months, it just was not a good fit. And I didn't have a job lined up and I remember that that felt like rock bottom to me right out of college where I was like I had all like I could have my pick up whatever internship I wanted in the marketing world. Why did I take this? Why am I now jobless three months later, like it was a really low point for me.
But I scrambled I utilized my network. I got a job at a company in the Phoenix area called Blogettes. And it was a really small company and I was fortunate enough to work my way up from part time to their marketing director and eight months because people left To end, like my qualifications just fit the role. And so it worked out really well. And they were, as much as I love that job. It was startup culture, a little bit toxic to female co founders who weren't always on the same page. expectations weren't clear. And I was so unhappy, I was so underpaid. But I stayed there about two years. And I, this was 2016 2017, I took a course in how to manage Facebook ads. And at the time, the only people freelance or not who were running Facebook ads were men in their 40s. And so I think it was a really great competitive advantage for me to now have this amazing skill set, it was like, right when Facebook ads were kind of at their peak.
And after taking that course, and having that skill set, I was like, Oh, my gosh, I could be making so much more money, offering this as a service to small businesses in the area. So that was honestly the catalyst for me, that opened my eyes to self employment, because I was like, I have such a marketable skill set right now. And so I put in my two weeks at that job, I actually negotiated to have them keep me on to do their ads as a freelancer. And over the next year and four months worked on growing my freelance business, I made six figures in my first year, and I rebranded to what is now a homemade social art agency, in February of 2019, we are now a team of 10, or a team of 11, if you count our amazing contractor, and it's been a really fun ride.
That's incredible. I do see a lot of similarities, I can see why you were nodding your head as you were listening, which is I was actually just talking to my producer about this, I think literally the other day, I was like, oh my god, I I always feel a slight twist of cringe, Whenever someone's like, oh, I went back and listen to your first few episodes. I'm like, Oh, my God, the, the, the content, I have no idea, I haven't listened back to any of those episodes in probably years. But I'm glad that there was still something that was resonant with you. Because I can totally relate to not having the, for lack of a better word awareness or wherewithal to understand that if you have a marketable skill, you can create a business or you can have options outside of like you said, the corporate fortune 500 track that is presented to you through traditional institutions of education. And yes, that's so well said it's so hard, right? When you're not exposed to people who have carved out a different type of career, if you're if you're never shown those people, if they don't come visit and guest lecturer in your classes, you know, your professors...
Or if you don't have a family member who was entrepreneurial. Like you're just like, well, this is the path I'm gonna go down, because it's all I know. And then when you're so unhappy, I think a lot of us unintentionally got into the entrepreneurial world, because we just realized cubicle life wasn't gonna work out.
Yeah, and I have to applaud you too, for the foresight at such a young age to know that it wasn't a good fit. And to not keep yourself stuck in that situation. Just to I guess, appease the shoulds, especially if you struggled with being a people pleaser, like I did. So anyways, know us for corporate stunt, pretty short, leading right into your case study about creating boundaries and systems that serve you that serve your team that serve your clients. So like I said, a moment ago, you used to work 45 hours or more a week, you were able to cut that down to 35 hours a week, I want to start with kind of a broader question about how you define a boundary. Because I think for a lot of people, especially those who aren't used to practicing boundaries, there's a lot of misconceptions about boundaries and how people might view it as a way to control someone else's behavior, when it's really about setting clear, you know, distinctions for how you're going to act in a certain situation. But I want to hear your exact definition what it means to you.
Well, I think what I really had to wrap my mind around is that boundary needs to be set from the start of any working relationship, whether it's with a team member working for you or a client you are partnering with. So a lot of our boundaries we now have like when a client reaches out to us via the lead form on our website, the initial email that automatically gets sent to all leads literally has bullet points of like, we believe in relationships that operate x and then we have it listed out you know, like having healthy relationships. We work half day Friday, like we're setting the tone before I even speak to these people because I want them to self disqualify if they already know that they want to take advantage of us further.
That's actually such a great filter you I feel like you read my mind because I was researching for our conversation. I literally typed as one of the questions. What do you use? As a filter to determine if people are not a good fit for your ethos, right? Yeah, that's really great to hear. What did you notice? I guess prior to establishing boundaries, what did you notice? Were the recurring issues with your clients especially that became your biggest time sucks that was causing you to work 45 plus hours a week?
Yeah. So let me backtrack and say that a lot of this was happening in 2020, which was honestly an amazing year for growth for probably any digital marketing agency or digital marketer, because so many client budgets were getting pivoted to the digital space. And so it was a blessing in disguise. It was a really great, expansive period for our business. But like I said, I didn't have any of these boundaries put in place. And I quickly became so overwhelmed with clients who were texting me after hours, or they would even DM me via my personal Instagram, like a content request, which we now you know, spell out in our contract like no DMS, because you can't delegate that to someone, it's really you can't search that history. If I'm like, where did this girl tell me this content requests, I don't want to be searching DMs, text, email, it's just not it doesn't make sense. And other things we would get would be super last minute requests like day of, hey, can we just throw this up on Instagram, when they had already approved what was going out today? So I sat down with our attorney, and I was just like, something needs to change, like, help me figure out where I can be setting rules that aren't going to be causing all my clients to straight up, leave me. But I will say I think it's always one client, who you can think of in the back of your mind who you're like, they are why I have boundaries.
We used to call them in my agency days, PITA clients, we try to keep the show clean, but it's a pain in the Yeah.
I'm gonna copy that.
Yes. I can totally understand the mayhem of trying to feel so many channels of communication. And I think you're so right, if you don't clearly define this as the way you communicate with me people do. I mean, naturally, it's like, wherever I see you is where I can talk to you. Right? So that makes a lot of sense. Did you find anything else that was really causing a lot of stress, a lot of extra hours worked that weren't necessary had you had boundaries in place.
Another big one was content revision limit. So now we allow for one round of revision limits. Each week, we send content to our clients weekly, and they have a 48 hour period to get us one round of revisions. And what that does, it's not necessarily that we want them to only give it in one round. But what that did is it forced clients to actually let us know what they wanted, they would just be like, Hey, can you change this, but now because they know they only get one round, they're gonna say, let's change this word, or I don't like the color of this picture or this graphic. It basically just helped improve communication by doing that. And whenever possible, we do have the option for clients to bill like, we will bill out or hourly rate, if they do need additional edits, if something comes up, we're happy to do that, say we have the time to do so. But that just like protects us. And it helps improve the client relationship.
I just want to pull that out real quick for our listeners, because I love what you said about sometimes when people aren't giving us the quality of answers that we want, or they're not respecting. You know what that supports our ability to deliver on a service. It's so easy to blame the client and say, oh, you know, they're the problem. But really what you just share there, it's like, if you didn't give them that specificity of being like, you need to be intentional with what you tell us because you only have one chance to tell us. I really like that just slight mindset shift of okay, if I'm not quite getting what I need for my clients, is there something I can do to help them make a decision more clearly or to communicate more clearly. So if you're listening to this be brainstorming.
I did want to also kind of just go, I guess, piece by piece backup of how you set boundaries in different areas in your business, because that was one of the things that really stood out to me when we were refining your case study for this episode, how you've been able to set boundaries, in your calendar, in your phone, on your email, social media, and then like you've even alluded to your contracts. But let's kind of go point by point. Let's start with your calendar. Yeah. Did you change about your calendar?
Okay, great question. I'm sure you also use a tool like Calendly or acuity for allowing clients or podcast guests to book your calendar time slots. So I really take advantage of the settings in those calendar so I allow for no external or internal meetings on Fridays. Fridays are like my day to do CEO things and then I also between Monday and Thursday, I limit when each bucket of calls can be scheduled for so I put buckets into like discovery calls and then reoccurring client calls. So our reoccurring client calls, they have a little more flexibility throughout Monday through Thursday, but it's between 10 and 3pm. Like those are our meeting hours, if needed. I also for discovery calls, so we're only Tuesday, Wednesday. So on Tuesdays, we work remotely. And so I was like, there's really no point if I'm in the office with my team, I want to be able to interact with my team. And so if I'm on a call on Zoom, I'd rather do it on a day where I'm at home, and I'm not getting FaceTime with my team anyways, right?
Other things we've done, and this was slowly over time. And as our most popular calendar boundary, we do half day Fridays. It's amazing.
That's so awesome.
We started doing that last summer by just doing like the summer Friday policy in between Memorial Day and Labor Day. And we loved it so much that I worked with our attorney throughout q4 of last year to slowly get all of our clients as their contracts were renewing before summer 2023 to get them all on the new contract that stated like starting May or Memorial Day of 2023. We will be doing summer Fridays eternally.
Wow. So okay, I have a couple of questions that popped up as this was happening. By the way, love summer Fridays, we've implemented that on our side for a couple of summers as well now, too, we always look forward to it. Especially in Oregon, where, you know,
That's the peak. Yeah, that's why you live there is Oregon summer.
Yeah, Oregon summer is beautiful, because, you know, seven to eight months out of the year. It's dreary and cold and raining. And so you don't feel as cold to be outside. I feel like during those months, but the fact that you made it a permanent policy, did you feel that there had to be a lot of reach shifting of not only communication to clients of okay, this is how our team works moving forward, like don't expect us to answer you on a Friday afternoon, but also how you restructured your own workload and your team's workload, to be able to fit the same amount of work into less hours in a week.
Honestly, it wasn't that big of a change, the biggest thing we did have to do is like I said, we send clients content for review weekly with edits due within 48 hours. And we've always sent content for review on Wednesdays with edits due by Friday. So now we just on Wednesday mornings, we need to make sure that all clients receive content, usually by 10:30am. That way, we get their edits back by Friday at 10:30. And we have a couple hours to make edits, confirm that with them before we need to schedule for next week. So that was like I would say the biggest change. And I won't lie, there are some Fridays, especially as we're getting into Black Friday, and like q4 madness of the marketing world where we work beyond that, but it's still so much better than it was before.
Right? Having that as the baseline rather than the exception. I totally get that. You also mentioned some of the things around, you know, kind of blocking certain days and times for different types of calls. I am curious, do you still find it stressful and not stressful? But like, I'm trying to find the right word to describe this feeling, I guess just not able to anticipate if someone let's say is going like a reoccurring client because you give them a wider window to book right. So maybe they're gonna book with you on Monday. Maybe they're gonna book with you on a Thursday and it could be anywhere from 10 to three, do you find yourself feeling a little bit less prepared, I guess to structure how you're going to spend a certain workday if you don't know well enough in advance what time they might look with you that week.
Great question. And I should have clarified that we have all clients on a reoccurring bi weekly call time. So like I meet with a client on Tuesdays at 10am. I'm meeting with them every other Tuesday at 10am. We also have a missed meeting policy. And we clearly define it a miss meeting as defined after a client is five minutes late to a meeting, which I know is strict. But if they let us know in advance that they're going to be late, no biggie we can usually accommodate. But sometimes we have like calls booked back to back so we just can't guarantee like we're going to be able to meet for full duration that we had intended. But yeah, we allow clients to have one free missed meeting. But honestly, the main reason we have that is not to like make money from the charge on the missed meeting fee. It's just so that they respect our time because we respect theres.
Yes. Oh, I love that you gotta respect yourself before you can ask people to to show you the same. So just to clarify, that's a really interesting policy that I definitely want to dig into. Because, again, this is such a unique I think case study that we haven't really dug into on the podcast. So for this policy, you're saying that if someone is five minutes or later that they get charged a missed meeting fee but let's say okay, let's just use an example. Let's say you're meeting at 10am And they show up at 10:07. Are you and or your team member who's supposed to be on? I mean, have you guys already bounced at that point because you've considered it a late meeting or you still let's say, it's a 30 minute meeting, are you still willing to meet with them from 10:07 when they arrive up to 10:30. But regardless, they're going to get charged a late fee.
So technically, we will have bounced out. So here's what we do. The day before the meeting, all clients automatically get sent an email from our account manager confirming the meeting time and with a link to the agenda, we make it so easy. And in the link to agenda, it has reminders about our meeting policy. So like, what happens if they're late? What happens if they need to reschedule? What happens if they miss and then see, it's 10:03. And my account manager and I are sitting in the waiting room waiting for the client, we also then send them one courtesy reminder, like, Hey, we're in the meeting room, hope to see you soon. And I would say 95% of the time of clients running late, they will email us back spending like "Sorry, second meeting, be there in two". And it's like not a big deal. We will wait if time allows. If not, we're out, we'll ask to cover off email, and hopefully get everything we need from the client via email.
I love how clear you are like at every stage of the process. For listeners who may be wanting to try implementing something similar in their business, what is the late fee? Or I guess the missed meeting fee? Charge?
$150.
Ooh, okay. I want to ask you, did you? Because did you choose this because you wanted it to be significant enough that it would sting a little? Or like, what was the thought? Okay, I see you
Exactly, significant enough to where they're like I cannot miss this meeting. So I don't want to I don't want to rob them. But I want them to be like, Oh, I saw that fee in the meeting outline. I want to make sure I'm there.
100%! No, I really do think that sometimes because of all the inputs that we get in the age that we live in that it really is helpful to use money sometimes as a guardrail to help keep us on track, you know, and that old saying, like people who pay pay attention, it really is true. And and that risk, I guess, of having to pay a significant fee is enough for someone to maybe have a little bit higher accountability to timeliness.
Exactly. And, and like I said, we allow for one freebie. Like I get it. Sometimes things happen. We allow for one freebie per six month period. And that is our default term length. So it all kind of works out. Most people never go beyond that first missed meeting.
That's great. And I do want to point out, yeah, fingers crossed. I do do want to point out too, that something that I've noticed is unique about online businesses versus traditional in person service based businesses is sometimes I feel like because we operate primarily in the digital space, I've noticed this among my peers, more so in my early years. But still, I feel like it's worth pointing out sometimes I feel like we don't value the work, we do as much because it's not transacted in person. And so like, I'm just thinking up, for example, like every two weeks, I get my lashes filled, right, like that's a service. I've paid for it for years and years and years, because I'm a lazy person. It's really, it's really a point of like, I just don't like spending time putting on makeup, like that's your non negotiable? 100% Yes, I will make room in the budget for that.
So I think about that. And I think about how, you know, they're so clear with their studio policies, like if you exactly what you're saying, if you miss an appointment, if you cancel less than 24 hours before, whatever it may be, your card on file will be charged for that. And it's not, I guess, out of the ordinary for a studio like that to have a policy. But yet, for some reason, in the online services world, I feel like people just it doesn't for whatever reason, they don't translate it the same to their business. So I'm telling this to encourage any of our listeners if you're scared to implement a policy like what Becca is sharing here, don't be because in the normal world that we live in, this is alright. Like even with dentist offices, right? Or like dental offices, my eye doctor like they all implement policies like this. So your service is not worth any less just because you operate online.
That is so well said and think about it. Like if you don't show up for a 15 minute meeting, you expect me to one have prepared for that meeting in advance and then sit in the waiting room for 15 minutes hoping you're going to arrive that just wasted probably at least 30 minutes of my day. Which I could have been working on your actual account and doing you know real things for your marketing purposes rather than prepping for a meeting so exactly that way it's just like your eyelash girl. She could have used that time to book another paying client.
Yeah, opportunity cost folks opportunity cost. Alright, moving on Becca to your phone. So you already mentioned that you don't allow clients to text you. But is there anything else regarding your phone that you changed?
Yes. Okay. So what I will say about my phone, I actually did sign up for It is an app called OpenPhone. It is $9.99 a month, and it gives you a new phone number. So I technically do give clients that phone number. The only instance I ever use it is for two factor authentication. If I need to text a client, hey, just so you know, we just sent a code to get an Instagram, can you let us know? Like, that's really the only time I'm ever going to text them? Because the two factor goes to their texts anyways, so into the better sense for Exactly, yeah. What is amazing about that app is it can set automatic like out of office settings. So if a client texts me or calls me before, after office hours, nine to five or nine to 12, on Fridays, they get an automatic text saying, hey, thanks so much. You've reached us outside of office hours, please email me according to our policy, I'll get back to you as soon as possible and the voicemail, it will take them straight to voicemail to with the same message, it is fantastic. The third great thing I'm going to talk about OpenPhone integrates with Slack. And so you have a Slack channel called phone, you can add all your team members to it. So let's say a team member on a remote day needs the two factor authentication code. I text the client, the team member can still see in the Slack channel, what the code is, it just makes it so easy.
I'm obsessed. Okay
It is so cool. You need it.
I do because Okay, I'm sorry, hold your thought for just a moment for what you were going to share next. Because I don't want you to forget it. But I just have to say I have used apps in the past that create essentially like a, you know, a local looking phone number that you can access but nothing quite like what you described, where you can integrate it with Slack and actually give your team access. One of the most annoying things actually about two factor authentication not even for clients, because we don't you know, manage accounts for clients. But for us is whenever my team's trying to log into something and let's say I'm in a meeting and it's texting my phone, then they have to I can change it. I can change it. That's so brilliant. Okay, this is not an ad, by the way. But we need it. So let's put that in the show notes in case any of you are listening and want to check it out. Yeah. Anyways, Becca, continue with your thought.
Moving on. So the rest is probably more so specific because I work so heavily in the social media industry. I downloaded the app. It's called Opal, like you know, the stone. Yeah. And it's basically the glorified version of Apple's screen time monitoring app with more a little bit rules regulation, flexibility on what you can and can't use when you're in work mode. For example, if I set it to actually blocked me from social accounts between 10am and 3pm. So in the morning, you I can still check in on client accounts. If I need to get into any account. I can go on desktop, but it really just turns off those notifications for me I'm in Do Not Disturb mode all day. And I cannot be on those social apps. So it really helps that one is pricier I want to say it's like 100 bucks for a year. But you can take breaks if you need to. You can leave early if you have to. But it's much better than like the default Apple screen time monitoring setting.
Are you ready to skip the learning curve when it comes to agency growth? Today's guest Becca Booker has inspired me with how she scaled her digital marketing agency homemade social, and she's sharing her secrets in her new online course the soft SMM from unveiling the exact investments she recommends and regrets making at each income level, to spelling out the pricing boundaries and processes she's built to bring in long term clients and recurring revenue. Becca tells all think of the soft SMM as the course on becoming the internet's favorite social media manager. Every brand and business wants to work with go from uncertainty to competence, from financial worries to financial stability, from burnout, to balance and from a solopreneur to a thriving team. Grab a seat and Becca's online course at homemadesocial.com/soft-smm. Again, the link is homemadesocial.com/soft-smm, we'll also drop a clickable link below in the show notes.
Well, we're here for all of the app recommendation. So anything that Becca shares, we'll make sure to drop it in the show notes for you guys. Just to clarify, I realized earlier I said, because I assumed so I could have been wrong about this. I had assumed that clients don't have I guess any way to text you now I'm hearing that you have a business number right that they can test that they'll receive an out of office message if they text outside of your normal 10 to three office hours. My question is if they text you during office hours, do you have any policies regarding your response to them there?
Yes, and I will say I am a little bit more flexible here. If they're emailing me about something that is a content request or something that I'm going to need to include a link or an attachment I do have a saved note in my phone that can be like, hey, received, thank you so much. Like as a reminder, we don't allow for texting these types of requests, shoot me an email, I'll get back to you quickly. And we mentioned in the text that like this allows our team to better delegate and search past content request, like we mentioned, why it is beneficial. And we've never had a problem with it in the past.
I like the education aspect too, because I do feel that sometimes people it's not that people want to be annoying, or they want to be disrespectful, right. But if you can kind of guide them to understand why it's actually better for them to follow your, you know, your boundary, they're more inclined to to actually adhere to it. So I think that's really smart. Anything else regarding phone before we move to email?
No, that's all for phone.
So for your inbox, then what are some of the boundaries that you've implemented?
Okay, same sort of thing with like I said, we're allowing clients to email us only outside of office hours, I'm not replying to any emails. There is another Gmail plugin called Boomerang, which allows you to let's say, I am checking my inbox on a Sunday. And there's a really quick email I can reply to. I feel like sometimes I would be hesitant to reply to it. Because I'd be like, I don't want the client knowing that I'm working right now. Right. But it's so easy for me to reply. Boomerang allows you to schedule the session so that I can say, hey, here's the link you requested and it gets sent to them Monday at 9:01am. So that kind of helps. I know that some even internal jobs have policies for like not sending emails outside of work hours. That's kind of like a hack to getting around that.
Yeah, no, I'm with you. I am naturally a night owl. And so sometimes it is easier for my brain actually to function and respond, you know, late at night to something then try to get up early to you know, quote unquote, send it during normal hours. Yes, actually. So boomerang I haven't heard of that plugin. So great suggestion. I don't know if you know this, but Gmail actually has that feature natively, like you can schedule a send without Boomerang.
Oh, I actually didn't know that. Yeah, one thing, then maybe one thing the reason I use Boomerang for as well as you can set it to like, if this client has not replied to this email by Friday, bring it back to my inbox. Oh, I think that's why it's called Boomerang. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's why I originally got on the like, hooked on that little plugin. But that is a good to know. Because that's free. So yeah, actually, Boomerang is free too
Wait that's so smart, though. Because sometimes, yeah, I mean, you know, the fortune is in the follow up. Sometimes it's so easy to forget even that you had replied to someone because there's so much in your inbox. And so really, really helpful. Great recommendation, anything else in your inbox that you wanted to pull forward for our listeners?
I feel like that's where our bread and butter of email communication lies. Like, that's where we expect clients to reply. So the more I can do there is ideal.
Yeah, absolutely. What about social media, you mentioned that you use Opal to help you stay off of your own and social media during working hours. But in regards to your clients, is there anything there that you have experimented with that works well?
Yes, the last thing I'll say, with social media boundaries is I have turned off my personal setting on Instagram so that I can not view Instagram likes, the main reason being, let's say, I'm scrolling at eight o'clock at night for fun for pleasure to see what's on the feed. And I came across one of our client posts, and maybe the post didn't do as well as I was hoping my brain instantly would go into fixing mode, analyzing mode, like, what was it about this post that didn't do? Well, I need to remember to go over this with the team tomorrow to make sure we're brainstorming ways to avoid this. It didn't allow me to turn off my brain. And I wasn't allowed to enjoy social media as much as I did before. So I can still view my own likes on my own page. But I think that's really one that's specific to working in social media. When I'm logged into the homemade social Instagram account, we have likes turned on for everyone. So like if I'm browsing there for work, I know I'm going to be seeing the likes, but just allows me to set one more boundary with my work.
I really liked that. I think that could be healthy too, even for your own personal. Like if you're not working in social media, and you're listening to this. I think sometimes it's so easy to get sucked into self critical mode of your own post not performing right as well as you might want to. So I'm comparison Yeah, exactly. I feel like that's a really helpful additional layer to protect yourself like you said, Yeah, level of awareness that you exhibit with understanding that your default reaction is to get into fixed remote because same, I feel like we are so yes, and that way. It's so good.
What is your Enneagram Ellen?
I'm a three. I feel like I'm the boring typical entrepreneur in that in that.
Wait, what is also your, your Zodiac?
I am a Taurus.
Okay, I'm an Aries. And so I feel like Aries being the third month and also being an engram three. I feel like that's really symbolic. As a person, I'm like, this is just I'm so textbook like that.
You are ready to go to war at any time. In a different life, you could have made a great general. Yeah, yes.
My therapist actually told me she was like, if there was a zombie apocalypse, you are the person who everyone would want on their team, because you'd be like, here's what we're gonna do. Here's how we needed to prepare. I was like, You are so right. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
That's such a good thing. Because that's hilarious that you mentioned that because I am the complete opposite. I would be that person that like, I don't know what to do. I'm so afraid of like physical pain, like I am just the worst when it comes to any level of physical pain. So I always joke if there was any sort of Apocalypse like that, I'm like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna be the first one to die. Like, why even suffer through all the fear of trying to like, escape these zombies, but you live every moment on edge? Like I'd rather just like, be at peaceful unknowingness.
Just going into fetal mode in the closet she's hiding. She's like, I'll be here. Meanwhile, I'm fighting them head on. I'm in the trenches.
Exactly. You don't want me on your team in a zombie apocalypse? So what about, lastly, your contracts, because I feel like this is the piece that can really, like you said at the beginning of our conversation, not only set you up for success, but actually protect you legally down the road. If a client disagrees or whatever, you can point back to this and say, you agreed to this, right? You had every opportunity to review this and you agree to these terms. So what are some of the other things you layer into your contracts to help protect you and your team?
That's a great question. I kind of wrote down the main ones that I feel like really set our contract apart from where it was before, again, half day Fridays, and our overall office hours and anticipated out of office dates. And when clients like let's say I'm going on vacation, when do I need to let clients know like when can they expect to know I'm going to be gone, approved forms of email communication, and like texting and DM policies, content request content, approval and content revision limits or deadlines, and then how our hourly rate can play into that if they need to go beyond those if needed. Pausing services when invoices are overdue, we have a seven day grace period, If payment is made seven days later, all services pause, late and rush fees. And then I wrote down the screen time limits on social media usage. That's not necessarily like spelled out in our contract for how we are going like, just so you know, I'm not on social media between 10 and 3pm. Because the rest of my team is but just so they know, like, I'm working as well. So like, I'm not going to be on social media all day. So that's kind of our bread and butter.
I love that a contract is like our Bible. It's like what we like five. I would say the hardest thing though, is when, and I actually, all this could be a good one to link for the listeners in your show notes as well, Jenna Rogers, and she just recently got married, and I can't remember if that is her new, like if she still goes by that, right? But her business is career civility. And I booked a consultation with her. Right around when we were implementing all these changes. She is a communication specialists like in the workplace. And so that once we got this contract in place, what we struggled with is like how do I politely reply to a client after they're trying to push this like, Hey, can I get one more round? You know, it's sometimes like, again, you go back to your people pleaser tendencies. Like oh, yeah, we can do it if we needed to. But she really helped us to spell out professionally, how we're going to reply to all of those boundary pushing requests from clients. So we have a Google Doc that we are always updating always referencing so we can copy and paste if we get like client wants to x and then we just throw it into the reply.
Oh, that's such a good rec. I'll definitely have to check out Jenna's work. I love learning from a communications experts. I remember years ago, one of the very early interviews on our podcast was with a Columbia University Professor Michael Heppner, who is a communications expert that has worked on a lot of like political campaigns and all sorts of different things in addition to his academia and he talks about a lot of like nuances to not just the words you say, but like, how you say them, the way your body is positioned the pace at which you say them the tone in which you say them that like really can impact someone's willingness to work with you or against you. So anyways, if you're curious about that conversation as well, I will also link that resource.
Great idea Yeah, and that reminds me probably my favorite tip we learned from career civility is let's say we are we have emailed a client twice requesting something and we still haven't gotten it back. Our account manager, you can in Gmail hit reply but change subject line, and we change it to RE:Is this still a priority? Always gets a reply
Flags there. Okay, that is such a good hack. Yes. Okay. Jot that down, everybody. Let's report back with results. I want you to DM Becca or tag us, both of us on stories.
Let us know in how many minutes so they reply.
Even better. Okay, wait, that's so good.
My handle is @bbooks
Okay, amazing. We'll drop that in the show notes as well. So tag Becca and tell her how many minutes it took for your client to get back to you. That's a great social experiment. Awesome. I'm curious, how did your existing clients react when you implemented these new changes with them and had them you know, sign new contracts? I can see how moving forward with new clients, right? It's like your established policy. They don't know any different. But for your existing clients who maybe were used to communicating with you or working with you in a different way. Did you receive any pushback? And if so, how did you navigate that?
That is such a good question. And that is what so much of my anxiety was wrapped around. Because exactly like you said, I was like, Are these clients going to push back for these new changes? Like they've already signed this contract agreeing to this? Or what if we change the policy? So my attorney helped me lay out, okay, we would just have written down in a sauna. Okay, on this date, this clients contract is renewing, I have a reminder to email them, I had a template like, Hey, thank you so much for your business. We have loved working with you, I do want to let you know, we are making some adjustments to our policies moving forward. Explain to them that like this is not only good for us, this is good for everyone. And we're going to be allowed to serve you better because all of our other clients are moving to this policy as well. And no one gave me pushback. Wow. It was fascinating. I was so anxious about it. And everyone was like, Sure done sign like it was really easy.
Okay, that is such a great, I'm so glad that you told this story. Because that is such a great illumination of how so often, the stories we tell ourselves are wrapped in just pure lies or fantasy, right? It's like It's like our own fears that we project onto other people that we think they're going to react a certain way. When in their head. It's like as routine as anything else. Like they're like, Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, cool.
You are so right. Yes, I think a lot of these boundaries stemmed from me, going to therapy doing the work. But another great resource I would like to push is To Be Magnetic. Have you heard of that? I feel like the way you speak. I'm like, You have to know about it. They have a podcast as well. But a lot of it is kind of like manifestation one on one on blocking those fears that you have on blocking your shadows healing inner child. And I think like, as I learned more about myself, and where those fears are stemming from, it allowed me to be like, oh, I need to set a boundary on that. Or I need to email clients and change his policy.
That's such a good resource, this show notes is going to be a goldmine, you can already tell like, you're not checking out the show notes today. I don't know what you're doing. So make sure. Lots of resources for you to explore there. I really appreciate that you moved forward despite feeling very scared about what that pushback could be. And I think it's smart. This is another piece I wanted to pull out for the listeners. I think it's smart that you waited until their current term was up. So it wasn't like you were pulling out the rug from under them on something you had already previously agreed to you honored your word. But then you said, Look, if you want to continue with us moving forward, this is what that working relationship is going to look like.
And I think that made the task of doing so more digestible for me because I was asking one client at a time. And so in my head, I was like, if 60% of my clients push back on the same day, like say, I had emailed them all at the same time. I don't know what I would have done. So allowing myself to kind of like do it in increments really helps me too
Ooo yes, pacing yourself. Good, good tactic
Good for financial reasons too.
You don't want everyone dropping off on the same day, right? That's awesome. One thing we haven't touched on in this case study yet that I kind of want to wrap up our case study with is that you estimate that not only did you reduce your working time and your team's working time by about 12 and a half percent in terms of hours worked per week. Your agency also achieved 44% more revenue growth and a year over year comparison. So do you think that At this was attributed primarily to the implementation of the boundaries that you discussed in today's case study or was something else, the main driver behind that spike in revenue?
Okay, I have two theories. And it's hard because these are like soft theories. And I honestly didn't have these numbers. I didn't have that 44% Until you asked me for it, I had to ask my accountant. And then when I saw that, I was like, shut up. I was like, That is amazing. So I'm so glad that you asked me to find that out for myself by two things. I think it helps with employee retention. Employees are happier, I have better girls, I am spending less time training new hires, I can trust my team. Like that helps with making more money because they're more talented alone. Secondly, because we have these boundaries, we're no longer wasting time making that fourth set of revisions that we didn't have in the contract prior. So our team existing team can take on more projects, more clients, without having to work more hours. So I think that it's a combination of the two. And I think that just because of the two, our quality of work has gotten better, because we're not spending as much time going back and forth with clients in the inbox. We're just allowed to like do good work.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And that is the other thing that I really liked about your approach to this and your case study is that it's not only benefiting you and your team, but truly you are actually producing better work for your clients. So it really is in their favor, to be on board right with the boundaries that you're setting with them. Love that. My final question for you in this case study is the one area that we didn't touch on in terms of boundaries. And that's boundaries between you and your team. So we talked a lot about you know, your your boundaries with your clients. But is there anything that you also implemented with your team to better define that working relationship?
Yeah, I would say a lot of it is just mirroring the same more so office, our policy that we have with clients, I do not expect my team to be working outside of our hours in the inbox and slack really anywhere. I think just as I've gotten older, I'm like, my hairstylist can only fit me in on a Wednesday at 2pm I don't want to feel guilty about having my goal is to take PTO for something similar. So I have also allow for them to have eight hours of just personal time off that is separate from their paid time off for little appointments that come up like that. And I think they just they respect those boundaries. They like I've never really had to worry about a team member going over their hours clocked in or, you know, Miss reporting something like that. But I think there's just mutual respect because I follow those boundaries. And I expect them to as well.
That's such a good word to end on. Well, two words, I guess technically, mutual respect. I feel like that's kind of a thread of everything you've shared today. It's all rooted in how can you create the best relationship where all parties mutually respect each other? So so true. Thank you so much backup for sharing all of your wisdom and all the little hacks like seriously so good. Again, check out the show notes.
You're so welcome! Ellen you're such a star interviewer like, I am surprised you were never on the Today Show. Like you're just an excellent reporter.
Wow. Okay, my whole face is glowing if you're watching this on YouTube, because because that is literally my dream job is to be a daytime television talk show host like I'm not joking. That has always been my dream. Interviewing is a craft for me. I really take it seriously. And so your words of affirmation mean a lot. Thank you so much. No, thank you for having me. And Becca, where can our listeners further connect with you and Homemade Social if they want to be a client or a collaborator?
Excellent question. My Instagram handle, like I said is at @bbooks @homemadesocial_ is on Instagram and all other channels @homemadesocial_ on Instagram. There is an annoying underscore at the end, but you'll still find us. And then our website is homemadesocial.com. There's a big button in the upper right hand corner if you want to work with us.
Amazing. Thanks, Becca.
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