Setting Terms & Boundaries
What I’ve found over the years as a small business owner is how managing the P&L has tentacles touching all aspects of the business and ultimately the business plan. And vice versa.
I’m a big fan of having defined lanes of responsibilities and functions within the company but oftentimes these lanes do intersect and need to interact for a healthy company. All that being said, taking a holistic perspective is a way to help the business operate more as a healthy organization rather than an entity with external forces driving its destination.
There was a time mid-career for me where I was feeling completely beat up and abused by clients. I finally got to a point where I had a moment of clarity … this isn’t the client’s fault, it’s mine! It was time to stand my ground and establish some rules of engagement … some boundaries. I literally put a Post It note on my computer to remind me “On My Terms.”
I don’t know if it’s just part of the small business owners’ DNA, but I would contend we are typically aiming to please, and typically getting to a point of resentment—all (or mostly) from our own doing. We often avoid upsetting the apple cart in fear of a client deciding to take their business elsewhere.
The slightly more seasoned version of me approached this dilemma more proactively in a different business where I saw wasted time on smaller projects literally bleeding our cost of labor. I faced pushback from our sales team. I faced customers arguing “I’ve been coming here for years … .” Remarkably our sales team thanked me after they saw the positives of setting boundaries. In fact, after we got comfortable, we explored tightening the parameters even more. And customers? Well, the bigger, more profitable ones appreciated the added attention they received.
While a business plan can take the lead on setting healthy terms and boundaries, what I’ve found is business owners are so busy working on the day to day it often takes someone bringing this topic to them with some reporting from the P&L to help make the case. I like to say it’s a combination of hard and soft data to make the decision. That and some good ole intuition and gut feeling mixed in.
The idea of terms and boundaries also spills into other areas like hours of operation, pricing (value vs cost) and deadlines. I’ll expand on those at a later time.
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Kyle Dreier is still a pleaser at heart but does his best to ask the sometimes challenging questions to prompt business owners to consider terms and boundaries to serve the business’s (and the owner’s) best interest.