Ep 100 Transcript: Why People Pleasing Is Burning You Out and How to Set Boundaries Without Guilt

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

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Shauna Lynn Simon

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and this is episode 100 of the Real Women Real Business Podcast. And I just want to say thank you. If you've listened, if you've shared this episode, if you DM'd me, or if even if you've just taken one idea and use it in your own business, you are the reason that this show exists.

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So let's get into today's episode. I want to talk about people pleasing, because this is a chronic issue that I see so many people suffering from, and especially my women and my accidental CEO. So if you've ever said yes to a client request and like immediately felt that stomach drop, this episode is for you and I want to reassure you, you can be kind and boundary and still not be a people pleaser.

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There's a way to get allow you to be able to support yourself, and you will realize the more you support yourself, the better you're actually supporting others. So I see this in my clients and even in myself, that we want to please others. We want others to accept us, to like us. We want to be fair. We want to be kind.

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We want to be considered nice and accommodating. We want people to be singing our praises. And we often feel as though in order for that to happen, we have to essentially give everything away. And that's not necessarily true. So, people pleasing in business is generally saying yes to avoid discomfort, to avoid rejection, avoid conflict, and avoid being seen as difficult and I would say that probably translates the same way for most personal situations as well.

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In personal situations, it's a little bit more deep rooted in relationships and emotion. Whereas in business we're often finding ourselves people pleasing, even with complete strangers. And every unfiltered yes becomes someone else's emergency and your burnout. So if someone is imposing their challenges, their struggles, their needs on you, and you are saying yes at your own detriment, that is going to eventually burn you out, and you may even be feeling some of the effects of this already.

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I would be willing to bet. And of course, I don't want to speak for you or anything, but I would be willing to bet that most people listening to this episode are probably thinking in their heads of specific times where you have said yes and you feel a level of resentment. But what I hear from my clients often is

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“Well, I think I have to do this. Well, I sort of have to do this.

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I really do have to do this. I can't really say no.” Have you found yourself saying these same phrases? Probably. And honestly, so do I. As much as I speak about boundaries and respecting yourself and saying no more often, I still catch myself. This is something that's been embedded in us from a very young age. Many of us, as we were growing up, were rewarded for being agreeable, for being helpful, for being high achieving.

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This is sort of that good girl, good CEO sort of conditioning that we've experienced. Like, how often were you told as a child to behave or be good, whether it was preemptive, as in you're not doing anything wrong, but before you go somewhere, your parents are telling you, like, okay, let's say you're going to maybe it's a funeral.

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And so of course it's a more somber occasion. They want to make sure you're not going to embarrass them. So they tell you ahead of time to make sure that you're good when you're there, like, “Be sure you behave. Be on your best behavior.” Are these phrases that are sounding familiar?

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if you were actually doing something that was not a desired behavior, you were told to, can you just be good?

Can you please be good? Be good and do this instead? And you were discouraged from doing whatever that disagreeable behavior was, to be encouraged to do what a more desired behavior was. And what this ends up translating to as adults and as entrepreneurs in our business, is now we're over delivering for things. We're bending policies for rescuing clients.

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We can be kind and say, yes, I'm not saying say no to business. Of course you want business. You want to get paid. That's why we're all here. But we need to be saying no to things that take us outside of our processes, outside of our structure, outside of our boundaries, and not overdeliver, not bend our policies, not rescue clients at every whim.

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So I want to borrow sort of a key idea that, I read recently in the experteditor.com article, they wrote a blog about, boomers who insist they did everything right, often raise children who don't know how to identify their own emotions. I'll make sure that this link gets included, in the show notes. You can check it out.

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But one of the things that they talked about was that many people learned to prioritize performance and achievement over their own emotional awareness. So our triggers are cues essentially were taken from that acceptance, that performance, that achievement. And if if you ever find that maybe you can't even name what it is that you're feeling, whether it's resentment or dread or pressure, you just know that something doesn't quite feel right, but you can't even name it.

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Then you're going to default to saying that you're fine and you're going to keep saying yes.

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And if the emotions were treated like problems to solve, you may jump into a fixed mode with clients instead of pausing to actually assess whether or not that's even your responsibility to fix. I especially see this with interior designers, and admittedly, I work with a lot of interior designers.

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That's probably why I see it so frequently there specifically. But with as interior designers, it is our responsibility to create a vision for our clients and execute it. We refer tradespeople to help to assist with the execution of things. We do our best to manage every element of the project, but when anything goes wrong, it all falls back to the design.

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The designer is the one person who needs to solve all the problems, and sometimes it's not actually even a designer's within the scope for the designer. For example, I have seen designers who aren't actually involved in the execution process, but they've created the design itself. And when it comes to execution, they may be recommended a trade that trade has not come through for their client, and now they feel a responsibility because they refer them and don't get around before you get all up in arms and say, well, yeah, well, they referred them.

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There's a responsibility there. Sure, they do take responsibility for having referred them, but to what extent should they be involved based on this? Is that not between the trade and the client? And I'm not saying don't do anything and I understand. Yes. Customer service, I really want to make sure they have a great experience. And even if it's not my responsibility, the client thinks that it is.

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And therefore I have to say yes, you see where I'm going here? So, when you don't have the language for your emotions, this is what this article was sharing with. So if you don't have a language for your emotions year, your calendar almost ends up becoming your coping mechanism. And you continue to add things to the calendar even when they're not actually your responsibility.

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So when you say yes to fast, what is it that you're trying to avoid feeling when someone asks you to do something and you know you had that split second that said, oh, I should probably say no to this. And nonetheless you're like, nope, I'll say yes. What is it that you're trying to avoid? Is it disappointment? Is it a fear of being disliked?

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Is it a fear of losing a sale? Or is it simply just some guilt over feeling the responsibility to do this? Or you just don't want to feel guilty for saying no after the fact? You you want to avoid that uncomfortable feeling after the fact.

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Here's the cost of people pleasing not only on the on your business, but on your health as well.

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So in terms of operations, we're going to see this as scope creep. So that means that we're not getting paid for everything that we're actually delivering. We're going to see an inconsistent delivery. This is not necessarily going to align with our standard processes, our standard delivery. Your team may get confused because you're offering all these extra things.

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You're demanding more of them than you originally had outlined for that project. Your clients are going to learn that your boundaries are negotiable, or they simply don't feel that you have boundaries at all. So this is a really common thing. You're saying yes to something that you don't normally do. You don't explain to the client that you're making an exception for them.

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So now they come to expect it. What ends up happening? You're resenting them for asking you to do the same thing that you already did one other time, because you didn't make it clear that that was an exception to how you were doing things.

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You end up suffering from this, a personal cost, that resentment that I've mentioned a few times now and exhaustion, a loss of creativity, a loss of a desire to actually do the work, even what I see it, how I see this often translate for entrepreneurs is you almost kind of fall out of love with your business.

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You start losing some of that passion because it's not feeling as fun as it did when you first started. You might also be chronically just feeling stressed and that takes a physical toll on your body as well. We think that it's just emotions, but your emotions do absolutely manifest themselves in physical symptoms often. And I can cite numerous cases of people that I know myself personally who have literally experienced the physical elements of the stress that they were feeling.

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So a burnout proof business doesn't run on an emotional debt. So my goal through this podcast, through my coaching, through the training that I offer, is to help you to build a burnout proof business. Is it bulletproof every time? Not necessarily because we are all human, but burnout proof means that you have built a business that is sustainable.

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A business where you might have some busy week still, where you're working some extra hours pushing them. You know, burning the midnight oil, as they say. But as a standard, you have boundaries in place, you prioritize yourself, and you succeed in business and build something that's actually scalable. You cannot scale chaos, you cannot scale stress, and you cannot scale something that is overwhelming in order to scale, you need something that's actually sustainable.

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So boundaries aren't a punishment. They're actually the container that makes great work possible. A clear no is way kinder than a resentful yes, or even worse, not being able to actually deliver the quality that you know you could have delivered had you had more capacity. But when you're stretched too thin, what ends up getting compromised is the quality of the results and the service that your clients are getting from you.

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Your processes are how you protect the quality of what you deliver. Now, I'm going to get into a little bit about how you can say no to things and feel comfortable saying no, because I think this is probably the biggest question that I get like, okay, I hear you, Shauna Lynn, I understand. I need to say no more often, but how do you help me to actually feel comfortable doing it?

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Now, before I get to that, what I'm going to do first is I'm going to share three quick boundaries that I have made non-negotiable for myself. And I've got to tell you, since implementing these boundaries, every time I hold one of these boundaries, I feel so good. And every time I compromise it, which of course is way less frequently.

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But every once in a while I'll give something up. Every time I compromise it, I immediately regret it. So the more times I feel the joy of saying no to something and keeping the boundary, and I experience the resentment that I that I have when I say yes to something, the more reinforces that keeping those boundaries is the right move.

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So here are three boundaries that I'm not negotiating more. And I want you to maybe borrow these. The first one is my time is not free.

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If someone wants access to my calendar, someone wants access to my expertise. They pay for it full stop. And if they can't, it doesn't mean that I can't help them. I just help in a way that protects my business.

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So, for example, I might provide an on demand resource I have. I already mentioned this is episode 100. I have 100 episodes of this podcast that chances are, whatever it is that they're navigating, I've got a podcast episode for that so I can send that to them. Is it the same as getting my one on one support? Of course not.

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But you get what you pay for, right? You want this access for free? Here's how you get it. You don't get to ask questions back and forth. So I might provide an on demand resource like a course or training that I have a podcast episode. Maybe it's an article or a blog, or perhaps it's even an introduction to someone within my network.

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I love what I call my little matchmaking. When I find that someone requires something, someone else is offering something and I can match the two of them up. That makes me incredibly happy.

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So free calendar time. Like giving my time away for free isn't generous, and in fact, it's a bit of an insult to my clients who have paid good money to get on my calendar, is it not?

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I want to be fair. We talk about being fair. Well, I want to be fair. So I'm going to give them this time for free. You want to be fair? Be fair to the people who have paid you good money and that from trusted you to prioritize what they've asked you to do with the money that they've given you.

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So being generous with your time and giving it away for free is often the fastest path to resentment, and a business that slowly becomes very unprofitable. All right. The second boundary that I have made non-negotiable, is I do not build my week around other people's urgency. Someone else's timeline doesn't automatically become my emergency. My dad worked in a corporate office for about 30 years, and he had a little cubicle there, and I actually worked a couple of summers as an intern, at his company.

And so I got to visit him in his cubicle quite often, and he had this sign posted right outside of his cubicle that says, your lack of planning does not constitute my emergency. And he often said this phrase, I remember as a child growing up, basically saying that just because someone else didn't plan something properly and now they urgently need your help, does not mean that you have to actually give it so someone else's timeline doesn't automatically become my emergency.

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I don't need to say yes to a deadline that is going to compromise my existing commitments, my energy, or the way that I want to run my life. I've talked openly about being an avid runner. Do you think I'm ever giving up my running time because someone else has asked me for that time, even my own mother, if she's taken off on a trip, she plans her.

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If I need to take her to the airport, she plans the timing of her trip so that I can still get my morning run in because she knows that's such a non-negotiable for me. So if I can prioritize my runs that way, I mean, mind you, it's five, 6:00 in the morning. You know who's exactly demanding my time at that time of day?

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But why am I not structuring the rest of my day as stringently as I structure my runs? So you're allowed to choose timelines that help you to support the quality you want to deliver and your capacity, and decide what's a true emergency and what's just simply poor planning. Wearing what I like to call a very loud outfit. So you see it there, flashing.

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They're waving their hands at you. They're flashing at you. That does not mean that it's actually an emergency. It's just poor planning. Kind of disguised like an emergency. All right. The third boundary that I have made a non-negotiable is just because I can offer something does not mean I should. This is something where I do a lot of gut checks on this one, because there are things where people have said to me like, oh my gosh, you should do this.

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Whether it's a free training or paid training or, speaking at a particular event or whatever, it looks like they someone else has identified that they feel that I would be really well positioned or a great person to be able to offer X, Y, or Z. That's fantastic. I love that they have thought of me, but this is something.

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This is huge, actually for accidental CEOs, because we tend to find ourselves in situations where we are saying yes to something that we're not really well set up to offer. So if I'm not set up to deliver a service or an opportunity efficiently, if I don't have the structure to support it, it's going to take longer. It's going to cost me more energy and it's going to basically be less profitable.

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And sure, you might be saying, okay, great, but now you have the structure to offered in the future. Sure. But what if this is not something that I think I'm ever going to offer again? What if no one else is going to want it? Or even better yet, what if I don't really want to offer it? What if I'm just saying yes to this particular person because I've got a really good relationship with them?

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So I'll say yes to that. But I wouldn't actually do this for anyone else. Why are you saying yes to them? This is going to take you so much time on the back end to be able to properly offer it, that you're barely going to make any profit, I'm sure. So those. Sure, I can do that. Yes. Those are really sneaky time wasters.

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And every time you say yes to work that doesn't align with your long term vision, you're saying no to the work that does. Now, if an opportunity comes up and it actually aligns with my vision and maybe it just shows up sooner than I'm ready, that's a little bit of a different story. I may be able to make it work, and I may say yes to that because the long term benefit has real value.

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But the quote I can is not a business strategy. Having the right alignment for the things that you actually want to do is, all right. Now we are going to get into a framework that I have been using in all of my businesses practically since their inception. That is going to help you to get better at saying no and help you to overcome your people pleasing. And we're going to cover that right after this quick message.

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All right. Welcome back to the Real Woman Real Business podcast. We are talking about a hot topic today. We're talking all about people pleasing and what I want to share now is the framework that I use to allow me to feel comfortable saying no. So you want to avoid discomfort.

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That's one of the main reasons why you're saying yes, right? I want you to avoid that discomfort as well. But I also want you to get more comfortable in the discomfort. So when a request comes in that doesn't fit your offerings or your hours or your process. So maybe someone maybe you don't work evenings, but someone's asked you to work an evening or a weekend, or they've asked you to offer.

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Provide a service you don't normally provide, or they've asked you to step outside of your standard process like, oh, I don't really need everything that you're offering. Could you just like, cut it down to this small part? Or even worse? I love your quote in your proposal. Can you add these six things to it? But I don't want to pay anything more for it, right?

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These are all opportunities still to say yes, just not necessarily do what they're asking. So I don't want you to really feel like you have to just shut it down when what you're going to do instead is this is what I call a yes opportunity. So you're going to decline the exact request I gave you, but you're going to offer an alternative that you feel confident you can deliver.

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So why does this work? Well, for starters, you stay. Solution focus without abandoning your boundaries. I want you to think in terms of problem solving and solutions, but it doesn't necessarily have to look exactly the way that it's been presented to you. And this helps you to train your clients to respect the process by saying, I can't do this, but here's what I can do now.

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They respect the fact that you have stayed within your process. I truly cannot tell you how frequently I've used this with clients. I have managed to not only protect my boundaries, but actually make more money from them. Not because I'm gouging them or anything, but simply because I didn't feel that what they were actually asking for was going to provide the benefits that they wanted.

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So I understand they were trying to fit within a budget or whatever it looked like, but I didn't feel that I could provide the quality and my willingness to walk away if they didn't meet a certain minimum quality or minimum package that they respected so much that they knew I was the right choice because they felt that I was protecting them and their experience as well.

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So you train your clients to respect the process through these opportunities, and you reduce the emotional load of that of saying no because you're still being helpful, right? So here's a few examples. So let's say it's something outside of the scope. The client says hey can you do X your yes opportunities. I can't add X to this package, but I can offer a paid ad on or a referral or a separate project.

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And it might be, you know, simply a matter of maybe it's not even X, maybe it's Y. But here's what I can do. So let's say after hours appointment I mentioned that with clients is can we meet at 7:00 tonight? Your yes. Opportunity to say I actually don't take calls after 5 p.m. and you don't have to give an explanation.

You don't have to say yes, I want to spend time with them. I think this is the other thing too. I want to be clear about this. We often feel like we need to explain ourselves. Stop explaining yourself. I still catch myself on this. I have some great friends in my network who will call me out on this when I say okay, yeah, I'll just explain like this.

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Like, why do you explain anything? Why do you need to explain this simply, flat out? I don't take calls after five, but I can do 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. You can even say, like, maybe you don't normally take calls before 9 a.m., but you're going to make a small exception. Like, I'll be back from the gym by about seven.

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Don't get me time to shower and have breakfast with my kids. You know I can do 830 tomorrow morning or this is one of my favorite. When you can't meet their timeline, why don't I do a screen share video and I'll send that off to you, and then we can try to connect another time. Once you've had a chance to review it.

So this is getting them the information that they need in a sooner time frame without me having to actually put them on my calendar. Remember I mentioned earlier, one of my boundaries is you do not get my time for free and you don't get on my calendar for free. Meetings are very disruptive to your calendar because it's not just let's say you book a 15 minute meeting.

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Does that meeting only take 15 minutes? How often does it does it actually only take 15 minutes? Not to mention for about five minutes before the meeting starts, you're not really doing anything productive because you're watching the clock like, oh, I got to get on this call in five minutes. Oh, maybe I should take a bathroom break and do that really quickly, and then maybe check in a couple of messages while you're while you're waiting to do it.

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And then after the call, you got some follow up stuff to do. Like, you just got new tasks from that call. You want to document them before you forget them. So that 15 minute call now just took 30, 40, even maybe 60 minutes. Right? So ensuring that you are meeting your boundaries, one of the great ways to do that is by doing screen share videos, or just even audio notes to someone to give them some real time responses without necessarily having to actually schedule something in.

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All right. But let's, review another option. So let's say the clients ask for a rush turnaround. Can you do this by Friday? Let's say it's Monday cuz by Friday they're yes opportunities. So you know standard timeline is ten business days. If you need Friday I can do it with a rush fee. This is one of my favorite things stagers.

Are you listening because all the home stagers out there, you're constantly getting these quick turnaround requests. Sure, you want a staging done tomorrow? No problem. If you actually have the space on your calendar to do it, go for it, but charge them for it so I can do that with a rush fee. Or I can deliver a partial by Friday.

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Okay, stages, I know this one doesn't work for you, but for designers it does. I can do a partial delivery by Friday, and the rest of it will come next week. So what? Which of these feels good for you? So here's a quick little decision filter that you can use. A little three question filter to ask yourself. When someone asks you to do something, asking, is this aligned with what I sell?

The scope of of work that you sell? Is this aligned with how I deliver it? This is your process. This is your time. And is this aligned with my capacity and health this week? So that's your sustainability. We want to make sure that we're protecting that. If the answer is no to any of these, offer a yes opportunity.

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So here are some practical ways that we can stop people. Please. And I'm going to give you a bit of a pause script. So tool number one sorry, this is a bit of a pause script as well as some additional boundary scripts. So let me be clear. So I've got let's see here I've got five tools here for you.

The first one is the pause phrase. And this stops the auto. Yes. I think that's often one of the biggest challenges, is that many of us are saying yes too quickly. I almost never say an automatic yes to something unless it's an obvious yes. Yes, this is what I do. Yes, I came into this conversation prepared to say yes to something that's different, but when it's an exceptional thing, do I automatically say yes?

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No, I do the pause phrase. Let me check my current commitments and get back to you by X amount of time. So as an example, I met with a client earlier this week. They're a design client of mine. We spent an afternoon together. We did a whole ton of work on their project, and they wanted to arrange another shopping trip with a or a shopping meeting with a particular supplier.

It's going to take another couple of hours. And they were asking me when I can do it. And this is on the spot I'm in in this other showroom, I don't have my calendar right in front of me. I know offhand that I for sure cannot do the next couple of days. I said I may be able to do later in the week, but I would prefer to take some time to look at my current commitments and see what I might be able to do.

I will get back to you by the end of day tomorrow. Now of course, the next day that they did message me earlier on in the day and I responded to them, I will have a better handle on things by the end of today and will confirm with you. Great! They're super happy now. In the end, I could not actually make it meet.

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Make that meeting work for the same week and I offer them the following Monday and they agree. So that worked out really well. Here's another pause phrase. I want to think about that and respond with a clear answer. And you can rephrase these. However it makes sense for you to say something. You know, I want to make sure I'm really giving you a thoughtful answer.

And I don't have one right now. Can I can you leave this with me and can I get back to you? I still recommend generally giving a timeline of when you're going to respond. Most people in general, we like to have sort of those timelines. We like to understand it leaves us in uncertainty and we're really uncomfortable sometimes with uncertainty.

So we want a little bit more certainty, you know, explain to them when we're going to actually get back to them okay. So that's tool number one is the pause phrase. Tool number two is to name the feeling. So the article that I referenced earlier again it will be in the show notes. You know I want you to, you know, quickly notice like do a quick little practice and notice, you know, I'm noticing what does this feel like?

This is dread. This is tightness. This is resentment. Like that's data. So I want you to pause and name what you're feeling because that is trying to tell you something. We had Rusty Osborne on this show, just a couple of months ago, and he talked about those negative feelings that you have and how much data is actually in those negative feelings.

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Be sure to check out that episode if you haven't checked it out already. I we had, just at the end of the year last year, and he did a fantastic episode all about your negative feelings and being able to identify them and recognize them and name them really will help you to be able to see where you might be able to move forward.

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And if you can name it, you can choose differently. Now, if you if you get that feeling of like, oh, this sounds amazing, I'm super excited to do this. Okay, maybe that is a quick yes, right? But I want you to still pause and think about it for a moment. Now, tool number three is just having some boundary scripts ready for you and hang tight, because I'm going to give you a really cool tool for this.

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Give me free but hang tight for this one. So having a few prepared phrases that you practice, practice them in the mirror, practice with your significant other, friends, or whatever is most comfortable for you. Practice them with your cat or dog, but practice them so that they become muscle memory to be able to see them. So something along the lines of, you know, that's not something I'm able to offer, but here's what I can do.

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Or to protect project quality. I mentioned this one earlier that I say this to my clients often to protect project quality. I keep all requests inside our process. Here are your options. So this is. I use this often as well for communication. For example, my clients want to text me and I explain to them that you are welcome to text me, but understand when you text me, I now need to follow it up with an email to ensure that everything stays within our project process.

00:31:35:23 - 00:31:58:19

You are getting billed for all of the time, my time to respond to the to the text. My time to record the information in is in a place that actually will be accessed by my team, and added in the time to compose that email. To follow up on our discussion. So it's best if we keep all of our communication over email if it's related to the project, if there is quick little like I'm running late for our appointment, that can be a text message.

Sure. So to protect project quality, I keep all requests inside our process. Here are your options. Another boundary script. You know I'm not the best fit for that, and I'd rather be honest with you rather than over promise. If you want to take this to the next level, you can even say, I believe I know someone who might be a better fit for this.

00:32:18:20 - 00:32:23:00

Let me do an introduction, give you a recommendation, whatever that looks like.

00:32:23:06 - 00:32:25:23

Tool number four is the policy over personality move. Make it about your business standard, not your mood. I think we often again this kind of goes back to the overexplain. And we often want to explain to someone like, I just really don't enjoy doing that.

I don't really like doing that. No, no, no, it's about your business standard, not what your actual mood is. So phrases like our service hours are my process is the next available time slot is it's not about saying, I don't really like to do evening appointments. I mean, I have definitely found myself going to this justification, especially ever since hitting perimenopause.

00:33:01:07 - 00:33:20:21

My brain fog is bad enough during the day. Some weeks of the month, never mind in the evening. Sometimes it just feels like it's completely turns off at like 5:00 in the evening. So I prefer not to do evening appointments. Does that mean that I don't ever do evening appointments? No, I will sometimes, but I make it very clear that those are exceptions.

00:33:20:23 - 00:33:42:14

Okay. Tool number five is the guilt detox question. I love this one. This one really helps you put things in perspective. Here's the question. If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to? What does that look like? What if you say yes to this because, you know, saying yes, that is going to compromise something else?

00:33:42:14 - 00:34:08:04

Is it your sleep? Is it your family time? Is it deep work? Is it work on your business rather than in your business? Is it another client commitment? What does that look like to you? So those are five great tools to help you to overcome the people pleasing. Now if you've got a team sometimes is people pleasing kind of show up in your leadership as well because you want to make your team happy all the time, and your team is going to take their cues from you.

00:34:08:04 - 00:34:26:21

So they're going to, in turn, do the same thing for the client. So train them. I had my entire team trained on yes opportunities. And in fact, we actually discussed these at every meeting that we had. What are some yes, opportunities that we had this week and share them and we celebrated them as a win. This was an opportunity for us to say no to someone.

We celebrated that. So make sure your team is in alignment as well and make sure that you are practicing what you preach. Make sure that you are living this. So train your team on the pause phrases. What? What are your hard no like absolutely no way, no how. We are never doing this kind of thing. What are maybe some approved yes opportunities that are on the menu for them to be able to choose from.

And of course you want them to be creative and think outside the box sometimes as well. But giving them some guardrails is really going to help things. Remember that being consistent for both your team and your clients is actually being kind.

00:35:00:22 - 00:35:12:08

Okay, so I want you to build your yes opportunities menu. I want you to think of your top five common boundary pushes, whether it's scope, it's hours, it's rush, it's extra revisions.

00:35:12:08 - 00:35:28:06

It's those I just have a quick question kind of calls for each of them. I want you to write the clear no as well as the yes opportunity that give a couple of options for some yes opportunities maybe what the condition of this is, is, is a fee, a timeline, a channel, what does this actually look like?

And I want you to see this as a bit of a template.

00:35:30:09 - 00:36:00:06

Okay. And because this is episode 100, I have made you a quick, free, 100% free Boundaries Bundle, and it's free right now. I don't know if I'm going to actually charge for this at some point, so grab it while you can. But what it includes is a worksheet to help you to create your own yes opportunities menu like I just outlined plus and giving you a phrase and Boundaries script cheat sheet, it'll help you to say no without feeling like a jerk, and it will also help you to still protect your boundary.

00:36:00:06 - 00:36:27:19

So I want you to grab it in the show notes. Or you can go to aboutshaunalynn.com/yes. Okay, so to recap a few things we covered here. People pleasing is not kindness. When you are feeling resentful, you are not showing up at your absolute best and what you owe your clients, what you owe yourself and what you owe your family and your friends is to show up as the best version of you possible and you can't do that if you're stretching yourself too thin.

00:36:27:21 - 00:36:57:08

So people pleasing is often a fear of being disliked or being judged, or being tagged as being difficult to work with. And, you know, we hear all these things about, you know, customer is always right, and we want to please the customer. You can do that if you take the time to actually pause, take a moment to review the situation and see if you actually want to say yes to that, or if you should be presenting a yes opportunity here.

00:36:57:10 - 00:37:18:10

So I want you to think about maybe this past week, maybe it was this past month. What is one resentful yes that you have had. And if you could go back and do it again was the yes opportunity you could have maybe should have offered and what you live in regret on this one. I just want you to start training your mind to start looking for those opportunities.

00:37:18:12 - 00:37:37:02

Now, if you do want a business that runs on a clear foundation, on a strong foundation that is actually scalable, that is going to give you the tools that you need to show up as your best self every single day. That's exactly what we do inside of the Real Women Real Business Mastery program. So feel free to book a call with me.

00:37:37:02 - 00:38:06:09

These are free calls you can get on my calendar at aboutshaunalynn.com/coachme, and we'll review where you're at in your business, what the best next steps are for you to take, and see if this program is the right next step for you, but it is focused on a 12 month structure that provides you with the foundational business pillars that you need to strengthen in order to ensure that you have a scalable business that is not going to kill you, that's not going to burn you out, that's not going to cause resentment and not going to take you to the point where you want to just light a match and set

it all on fire. Please don't do that. I promise you, we can get that passion back for your business, but you can't scale chaos. And this is the program that's going to help you to put the systems in place that you need to put in place, and the boundaries you need to put in place in order to show up as your best self every day.

00:38:21:19 - 00:38:39:13

I want to thank you again for not only tune in to this episode, but for continuing to join me on this journey of podcasting for our 100th episode. And I hope that you allow me to continue to be a part of your journey as well. Continue to tune in. Each week. We drop new episodes every Tuesday at 7 a.m. eastern time.

And of course, don't forget to subscribe to us wherever you get your podcast and leave us a review. The reviews really do help, and I really encourage you if you want to give me a gift for this 100th episode, that would be the best gift ever. Now, if you want to give a gift to your fellow women entrepreneurs, here's the best gift you can give to them.

00:38:56:19 - 00:39:16:15

Share this episode with someone that you know needs to hear this. I guarantee every single one of you listening. You know a people pleaser and they need to hear this episode because we will all be stronger if we start setting some boundaries and saying no more often and release the guilt and the resentment that comes along with that.

So please be sure to share this episode with someone that you know can really benefit from it.

That's all we got for you today. Until next time. You know what you got to do. Just keep thriving.