Ever found yourself responding to client messages at midnight? Or saying yes to a project that your gut is screaming no to? Or maybe you're feeling stretched thin trying to show up on every single platform? Here's what nobody tells you about building a creative brand - the stronger your boundaries, the stronger your business.

In today's episode, I'm breaking down exactly how to set brand boundaries that protect your creative energy without pushing away opportunities. You'll learn how to decide what's actually necessary, communicate your limits clearly, and yes - even say no without burning bridges.

I'll walk you through the four key types of brand boundaries every creative needs and share practical strategies for implementing them in your creative business. From managing social media demands to handling client expectations, you'll learn how to protect your time and energy while maintaining strong relationships.

If you're ready to start 2025 with more energy and less overwhelm, this episode is for you!

Want to put these boundaries into practice? Grab my free Brand Boundaries Toolkit at bit.ly/brandboundaries.

Want your burning questions answered on the podcast, or be part of an awesome community of creatives supporting each other? Join us in the Brand Your Passion Collective at www.makerandmoxie.com/community. We’d love to have you 🧡

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MENTIONS

🧡 ScreenZen - Screen Time Control

🖤 Article - Using Email Templates to Say “No” with Grace by Michael Hyatt

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🎧 114. How to prioritise your mental health when marketing your creative business

🎧 99. The six step system for planning your entire year as a creative business

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Have you ever found yourself responding to client messages at midnight or saying yes to a project that your gut is screaming no to, or maybe you're feeling really stretched thin, trying to show up on every single platform. Here is what you need to focus on. The stronger your boundaries, the stronger your business.

And so in today's episode, I'm breaking down exactly how to set. Boundaries for your creative business that will protect your energy without pushing away opportunities. And you are going to learn how to decide what's actually necessary, communicate your limits clearly, and yes, even say no without burning bridges, which is something I love.

Let's talk about why boundaries matter in the first place.

So if you resonated with what I just said in the introduction, then you need boundaries, because not having them leads to things like Working when you don't want to, working on things you don't want to do, getting burnt out because you are just doing all of the things in ways that are not sustainable, and many other things.

And this is something that you can do. I am currently working on. So these are things that I have learned or that I've been focusing on that might also hopefully help you.

Types of Boundaries for Creative Businesses

So there are four main types of brand boundaries that I think there are probably a lot more, but these are the ones that I think that we can and probably should be focusing on when it comes to our brands and creative businesses.

Then we have service boundaries. So these are things to do with your actual products, your work, your services. This is what you will and won't offer, what you will do, what you won't do, all of those types of things. Then we have space boundaries. This is where and how you show up on social media with clients, events, like all of those types of things that give you the space and put you in the right spaces when you have them put into place.

So those are the four types of things that you can focus on when it comes to setting boundaries.

Setting Effective Boundaries

How do we set boundaries that serve you and your creative business? Number one, you want to identify like non negotiables. Things like, I will not take calls on a Monday and Friday. That is something I have in place.

Those are the kinds of questions you can be asking. To figure out what your non-negotiables are. Then you wanna create like policies, contracts, communication, all of those kind of things that protect and support those boundaries. So it might be like having booking policies on your calendar so people can only book Tuesday to Thursday if that's your rule.

Relationships that need these boundaries in place. We want to communicate those boundaries really clearly or as clearly as possible. And then you want to manage exceptions gracefully. So like I just said, sometimes I make exceptions for my bookings because I have a coaching call that I really want to do on a Friday, or there are calls and things that land outside of my.

Times, but I want to accept them and I want to do them because it makes it make certain things possible or available for me. Or maybe someone is asking you to make an exception and you want to figure out like, what do I do in those situations? If someone is asking for a call outside of my call times or my call days, and I don't want to do that, how do I.

Managing Social Media Boundaries

Some common boundaries that creatives might come across are handling social media demands. So there are a lot of things that creep into our life and our day and our businesses to do with social media and marketing. It might be things like posting, responding all the time, researching things, scrolling through to figure out what you want to achieve, planning, that sort of thing.

Those will help you to stick to those boundaries. You can also set time limits on your actual devices. This is really helpful. So there are certain apps, I'll see if I can leave a link in the show notes for an app that I've used in the past that puts limits on your apps and on your devices so that you can't access certain apps at certain times or outside of certain times.

You can also remove apps from your phone, so if you're finding that you're spending a lot of time on Instagram, or you're replying to emails from work, when you shouldn't be, you can remove those apps from your phone, or those logins from your phone, so that you cannot access them. That puts in a boundary that, hey, I only check social media on my computer at this time, this many times a day, etc.

And then once a week, I'm going to spend some time on social media, like researching sounds to use inspiration, like all that sort of thing, trends to follow you can set aside time that will make sure, okay, I'm only going to do this at this time, or I'm going to try to only be on social media for work in these certain times.

You can turn off your like online indicator. So then people won't see that you have seen their message and expect you to reply super quickly. Hopefully they won't anyway, but if you feel that pressure, that's a good option for relieving some of that.

Handling Client Expectations and Scope Creep

Okay, another common boundary challenge is to do with Scope creep when it comes to clients or client and customer expectations.

You want to have a contract in place that clearly explains what is included and what isn't so that okay, once we've gone past this, or you're asking for more things than what's in the agreement, we've gone past that and I need to reinforce and re explain the boundary and make sure that we come up with a plan for how to solve your problem.

But outside of this, so that might be mean actually not doing it or charging for it or whatever it might be as a solution to that situation. Related to that and just around general client expectations, if they have extreme expectations or expectations that don't align with what you had in mind. And again, this could be.

You could have onboarding material that clearly explains the expectations and also include those in your contract. So that can be, again, things like if you're onboarding, A client, or you have a packet that you send to wholesale clients that explains like this is how it's going to work and how I operate or same with like brand partnerships or collaborations or anything like that.

You can have set up templates, which we're going to talk about in a minute that explains these are the expectations. This is how I operate. This is how I work. And that's how it is. My online business manager slash VA has a list of norms and her contract that then we adapted and added to mine because I was like, Oh my God, those are so good.

Like, all of those types of things that are norms that I want to make sure every client is agreeing that this is how we're going to work together and this is the expectations they can have of me and I can have of them. So those are a few ways that you can help with client expectations, client relationships, things like contracts, templates with onboarding material, lists of like norms, those sorts of things.

Saying No to Opportunities

Then when it comes to saying no to opportunities, this is one that I mentioned in the intro. I struggle with this. I have been working on it with my coach, Alexis, to say no to things and to turn things down and to cut things out of my business. So the top tip I have for you here is to use a template.

Basically I'm giving you a summary of what it says. I really appreciate it. I can't accept it at this time or I can't work with you at this time. Here's why but not in too much detail. And then how, yeah, maybe here's some other options of how I can support you or how I can point you in the direction of somebody who can.

I then took that and turned it into an outline that I can use anytime I need to in that same situation. So I can, plug in the different things I need to say, like for the certain client and the experience that we had together or whoever it is. And what I want to say about how I can help them going forward or not.

So every time someone reached out for a coffee day and they didn't want to accept it, they had a template for that anytime somebody asked them to review some of their work or like their book or their article or whatever. This is how they say no. And they had a template for every single thing. So I will leave a link to that in the show notes too, because I found it really helpful.

Support Systems for Maintaining Boundaries

Some other tips or systems that are going to support your boundaries. Let's talk about those. Number one, I mentioned briefly just earlier is like creating templates and policies. So you can create swipe files for messages and emails like I just mentioned. So like an outline or a template for different types of conversations.

You can set up contracts. That really have really clear boundaries of this is what's included. This is how much you're going to pay me, all of that sort of stuff that really makes it clear, this is what is included and what's not. Then you can also have templates for those expectations, norms, or boundaries, like I mentioned earlier.

And this is what you can expect of me. And so it's all laid out really clearly. And then I have another one for podcast guests, that's this is what you can expect from the podcast experience, and this is how it's gonna work, and here's how you can contact me if you have questions. And all of this stuff is, hopefully, laid out really clearly.

And I just use the same document, and everybody gets the same one. You can also automate boundary enforcement. So there are things that you can set up that will help you do this automatically. So you don't have to feel the pressure of enforcing your boundaries all the time. Number one can be like auto responders.

And that's setting the expectation that high. I'm not going to reply to you within an hour, or I might, but you can't get angry at me if I don't because I've clearly communicated to you this is my timeline, this is my procedure or process for getting back to people. So you can do that via your email, via socials, via any platform.

These are the boundaries. If you're not going to work within that, you're going to get charged more or whatever it might be. And you can do that with a lot of things too. You can automate, maybe if people are asking you about your shipping times or they're getting back to you and, messaging you all the time, you can have automated reminders that say, Again, hi, I'll get back to you within this amount of time, or I, my shipping times are this, and this is how it works.

So that can help too. You can also have automated onboarding. So as I mentioned before, like I have those. Documents and that communication that really explains to people, this is how we are going to communicate going forward. And this is what our experience is going to look like. And you can automate all of that.

And these are the expectations that I'm sitting. You can also have support structures around you to help you implement those boundaries and keep them in place. So that could be people like mentors, coaches, or a community or like your friends and family that can help you to keep those boundaries. And maintain those boundaries.

So for example, as I just told you, I've been working with my coach. She helped me stick to my boundaries to put them in place, to write emails, to set up processes, like those kinds of things that I can figure out. This is what I need. And she can make sure and check in with me on how they're going.

So those are just a few tips for systems that will support you and your boundaries. Again, as I mentioned, some things that you can think about or work on are having scripts for difficult conversations. You can think about how you're going to handle that boundary pushback if anybody comes back to you and isn't happy, or doesn't want to fit with those boundaries, or wants to go outside of them.

Practical Tips for Balancing Work and Creativity

Now I want to quickly answer a question from a member of the Brand Your Passion Collective. So Krista asked me, I would love some practical tips on how to switch between working on my business and my creative projects and setting stronger boundaries around my creative time. This year I want to set better boundaries to carve out more time and energy to write and paint and not just teach and sell.

So this is what I mentioned earlier about that one Section of brand boundaries. So these are around your schedule. How do you set boundaries around your schedule so that you can work on writing and painting and not just teaching and selling or whatever it is that you want to work on and spend more time on or less time on.

There is a. Law, like that, basically, whatever time you give something will, that thing will expand to fill that time. So if you say, okay, I can work on this thing anytime, all the time, then you are going to work on it anytime, all the time, whereas if you say, okay, I'm only going to work on teaching and selling within the first hour of every day.

The collective on marketing on the podcast, whatever it is that I need time to work on. So calendar blocking can be really helpful. It doesn't mean that you can't work outside of those times or you can't be flexible, but it's a really helpful mental shift, or it has been for me to say, okay. My calendar was set to work on this until one o'clock it's now it's hit one o'clock.

Spaces too, rather than having like your head in 12 million different places. Another one that you can do is allowing people to book time with you around in certain times or to have calls in certain times. I mentioned this earlier. I try to only have calls on Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays between a certain time, ideally like 10 until five o'clock, but because I'm in New Zealand, I'm a bit flexible with that because I know the time zones are a bit tricky, but for you, you can do the same.

You could say, I'm going to do all of my teaching on Wednesdays. I've done that too. All of the calls, hopefully, or mostly, within the collective right now are on a Wednesday, New Zealand time. So that I know, my head's in the zone, and I'm doing that on a Wednesday. So you can do the same. I'm only going to take calls, I'm only going to do teaching on these certain days, and then, outside of that, I can work on all the other good things I want to do.

And then at the end of three of those cycles, you get a longer break. So that could be 15 minutes, half an hour, whatever you need it to be. I do this a lot. I use the Pomodoro technique within those calendar blocks to be like, Okay, I am working on this branding client for the whole afternoon, but I'm gonna do it in 20 minute sprints, where I'll work for 20 minutes, take a 5 minute break, look at my phone, or go for a walk, or get some water, or whatever.

This is not going to expand outside of this time. I'm just going to work in these 20 minute blocks. And it helps with the boundaries of life. Other things too. If you're feeling like I'm getting distracted by like the washing in my house or social media scrolling or checking my emails or anything like that, you can set boundaries by saying, I'm only going to do those things in those five or 30 minute breaks.

Putting things in place to be more productive within those boundaries so that it's easier to maintain the boundaries that you have and that you want. Thank you, Krista, for asking that question. If you want to ask questions for the next episodes, you can join us in the collective and you can ask me questions in there and I will answer them in the episodes.

I hope this has been really helpful.

I want to let you know that if you want to go through this process and you want to figure out some boundaries for your creative business and how you can put them in place, you can go to bit. ly forward slash brand boundaries or one word. This will be linked in the show notes as well.

So if you want to check that, Out. You can go to bit. ly forward slash brand boundaries. And I've just mentioned the collective in terms of the questions, but if you want support and maintaining your boundaries, you want to talk to your fellow creatives about how they do it, how they're putting it into place and get kind of accountability and support doing it.

Then come and join us in the brand, your passion collective. You can head to brand, your passion. co or the link in the show notes to join us. And we will help you. Put your boundaries in place, figure out what they are, set them up and stay accountable to them while still building successful brands. Okay. I hope this episode has been really helpful.