Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The OBM Educator. I'm so excited to be coming here this week after missing last week. If you don't know, I have three littles and they are all in school, and so that means that our house is sometimes an incubator for various diseases and they all just get passed back and forth between us, and so last week I had strep and was definitely not able to come to you and share knowledge. So I hope you guys caught up on other episodes. But I'm really excited to get into this week because we are talking about something that I think that a lot of OBMs, yes, but also just service providers in general struggle with, and that is the feeling that you owe someone something that you need to do X because they're your client, because they pay you all of that stuff. And we're not talking about contracted obligations you know what you actually list in your contract but instead things that people are doing that you know it goes above and beyond, but at the same time they're resenting it, and so that is what we're going to be diving into today. Let's get into it.
01:30
Welcome to The OBM Educator. I'm your host, Amanda McVicker, a veteran OBM who serves six and seven-figure entrepreneurs as well as educates new OBMs with the skills and confidence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights behind the scenes, sneak peeks, and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business. Okay, so the idea of you don't owe anyone anything in your business came to me when I was talking with one of the women in my program, the six-week OBM. We are a couple of weeks into it now and every week I have group coaching calls and then I've also done one-to-one calls, and a theme that comes up constantly is this idea that, oh well, you know I don't want to say no, they're asking me to do this. I don't want to say that I can't. I don't want to disappoint them, basically feeling like their client is owed this for whatever reason. And when I was breaking this down like, I really saw this in three different areas that I think really hold people back. But it also makes the service provider so resentful if they, you know, allow it to keep happening. And when we get resentful in our business, it leads to burnout. When we burn out, we are not as effective in our work. We are more likely to, just, you know, quit our whole business. So we want to avoid that, we want to avoid feeling resentful to our clients, right?
03:16
And so I'm going to break down these three things that I see a lot of people feeling that they, you know they have to do this for their client and again, we are talking outside of contractual obligations. And so this first one is doing tasks that you don't want to do. This is why it's, you know, super important to put your services in your contract because you want your client to know you know this is what you are doing for them. And then this is not what you are doing for them. But I think this comes in when either you're starting work with a new client or you've been working with them for a while and they're like you know something outside of what's in your contract. They're like, well, you know, could you, could you do that for me? Or do you know how to do this, or you know XYZ For me?
04:10
Personally, I know how to do a lot of things. I can also figure out a lot of things. It does not mean that I like them, it does not mean that I want to do them, but earlier on in my business if I had a client that said oh, can you just post on Pinterest for me, you know, create a couple pins or whatever like. Okay, yes, I did a little bit of Pinterest for my business, but it doesn't mean I'm a Pinterest manager, it doesn't mean I know it, you know too much about Pinterest and it doesn't mean that I enjoy it. But earlier on in my business I was too afraid to say no and so I would take that on and then I would become resentful for doing those tasks. I think service providers usually are, you know, some type of people pleaser and have a hard time saying no. But if you are doing tasks that you do not want to do, you are going to be resentful, you're going to burn out, you're not going to have time to do the things that you actually want to be doing, the things that need to be done in your client's business, because you know they're focusing on, like this one thing, but you're looking at the entire bigger picture of all of these other things that need to be done right. So being able to say, no, I do not have capacity to do that right now, no, I do not want to do that. That is not a service that I provide is going to be so important in protecting your peace and your sanity your peace and your sanity.
05:59
The next one of what you do not owe your client is time outside of your work hours. Now, as contractors, we do not have set work hours, but typically we have times that we are devoted to our business. Sometimes you will give your clients office hours, not necessarily times that they can expect you to get back to them, but times that you are going to be at your desk and usually working. But there are kind of some understood outside of work hours For me, because I have kids. That includes the morning when I am doing drop-off and that is the evening when I'm doing pickup, dinner, bedtime, all those other things and so time outside of work hours, whatever it is that you have determined in your business, you do not owe your clients a response. You do not owe your clients a last-minute favor. There are times you might want to do it, there are times that you are able to do it, but you do not owe that to your client If this is something that you are having trouble with in your business saying no to tasks outside of your work hours or just your client constantly messaging you asking if you can do something.
07:24
Reestablish your boundaries. Reestablish your communication turnaround time, your task turnaround time right In contracts for future. Put the hours that you work the communication turnaround time, your task turnaround time right In contracts for future. Put the hours that you work the communication turnaround time. I have 24 hours to respond to a message. I have 48 hours to get a task back to you. You want to have these things in there to protect your time. Yes, sometimes we do grant those requests, but don't make it an all-the-time thing, because then your client is going to come to expect it. But you also can break that habit, even if it's something that you have been doing.
08:05
And the third thing of what you don't owe your client is actually something I hear so often. You do not owe your client staying on when you do not want to. There are so many times I am talking with an OBM or a VA or another service provider and they're like well, I have this client, it's not working, but I feel so bad leaving. This is your business. You do not owe anyone to stay on. It could be someone you started working with a month ago. It could be someone that you've been working with for four years. It could be someone who has given you referrals. It could be someone who maybe was your first client, your first OBM client. You do not owe them staying on if you do not want to. There are a couple things that happen when we stay on with a client that does not fit what we want anymore, one that takes away the ability for you to find a client that you actually like, that you actually want to work with. But then also, you are probably going to again become resentful. You are going to procrastinate on their work because you don't want to do it. You're going to come to dread meetings with them, dread any message that you might get for them, and it's going to become a toxic environment.
09:34
When I was about almost a year into being at OBM, I had a period for about three or four months that I felt like I was just going through clients. There were a few clients that I started with and it just was not the right fit, and I remember in that time feeling like I mean, once it got to like the second client, I was like I can't just keep letting go of clients, like I need to stick this out. But why? Why did I owe it to them? Just so that I felt like I wasn't going through clients. That doesn't make sense. Even with one of the clients being like I really need you, I still don't owe that to them Because I was able to go through that and, you know, let go of the clients that weren't fitting me, find clients that were. I was then able to find extremely long-term clients who I'm still with right now, because I was not afraid to say things are not working. Let's both find something better.
10:41
So if the idea of saying no to any of these three things feels scary and uncomfortable Any of these three things feels scary and uncomfortable. One, it's probably a sign that you need to do it. But two, take some time to reflect, to journal, to think about you know what is it that's blocking you on this? What are your worst-case fears that could happen? And then think about what are the best-case scenarios that could happen. And then think about what are the best-case scenarios that could happen. Sometimes our minds run wild with the worst-case scenarios that usually almost never happen. But really, what is the worst-case scenario? You don't work with them anymore. For some clients, that actually might be a best-case scenario.
11:32
When you have clients that are not respecting your boundaries or pushing you to do things that you don't want to do, that's not a good fit client. And so if you were listening to this episode and you're like, wow, that client does that and that and that maybe that's good information for you of figuring out a decision of maybe this isn't the right fit for me. We want to be creating a business that makes us happy, that serves us well, that makes us so excited to come to our computer every day and get to do this work. So I hope that this episode was helpful. I hope that it gave you some good insight on your clients and how you feel around them and served as a good reminder that you do not owe anyone anything in your business.
12:31
If you enjoyed the episode, I would love it if you would subscribe, leave a rating, and review. I do episodes every Thursday, so I will see you next week. Bye, thanks for joining me for this episode of The OBM Educator. I hope what you heard today is helpful for you on your OBM journey. If you loved today's episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Want to be a guest on The OBM Educator? Fill out the form in the show notes and I'll be in touch. Join us next time on the OBM Educator. Thank you.