EPISODE 20: Upholding Boundaries as a Content Creator

Jessi:
I think though, you know, you brought up a really good point, Marie, in that sometimes in our desire to help, we actually ended up doing more harm than good and a lot of the time, a lot of times when that happens, that desire to help shows up as stepping over a boundary as saying, yes, I can do this when either I can't, or I shouldn't, for some reason or another, and it comes from a good place. It comes from a place of wanting to help because you do care about these people. But you also maybe are better served by saying and would be in better service to them and to you to say, I would love to help you. I'm not the best person for the job. I might know someone and I can refer you to them, but I, I should not be the person doing this.

Marie:
Yeah. So this whole series that we're now in number three of podcast episodes, where we're talking specifically about things we've done to make our content creation business more successful and profitable. We're just going to go through for this types of boundaries that you can, and we have learned to set with our clients and with our team. That our team also is empowered to set with our clients. And, you know, so that we can be in optimal service to them. And sometimes the very best kindest thing you can do is say no. So, let's roll down this list that we've, we've put together here, Jessi.

Jessi:
Yeah. And this isn't a comprehensive list. You and your business and yourself, you are all unique and you may have things that we do not talk about that are really important boundaries for you to have. So I want to also invite you to do a little self-reflection.
These are the things that come up most frequently for us, especially came up in those early days, where as soon as we started putting boundaries around these items, it changed the entire way in which we worked. Because suddenly we had more space, we had more brain space, we had more time. We have the ability to serve our clients even better than we were.
And so the first thing on that list is capacity and timelines. So being really clear as a content creator, how much work can you take, and how quickly can you turn it around? And this doesn't mean you have to know the exact numbers. You don't need to be able to say, well, this is going to take me exactly three days to do or exactly two weeks to do, but being able to give people a range and give them the larger side of the range so you have some buffer time is really valuable, especially because it's common for people who hire content creators to want things quickly, to want things last minute, to want things turned around. Going back to not necessarily knowing what's going on behind the scenes, not being the content creator means they don't see the content creation process. There's not a sense of I asked you to create this thing, and I didn't realize that it was going to take two weeks to create, I thought you could do it in 24 hours. So setting those boundaries upfront around your timeline and your capacity is really, really valuable.

Marie:
Yup. And remember too, I mean, one of the concerns that we as content creators have that our clients may not even be aware of is every different client you have means you have to, like, adopt a new voice, learn a new brand. Like, you know, you're like a chameleon and you're shifting from voice to voice brand, to brand strategy, to strategy day in and day out. And there's like, literally only so much of that you can take before your brain explodes. Maybe not literally. Figuratively. Thank goodness. But- so that's, that's a part of your capacity too. It's not just how many hours do I have to sit down because the more context switching you have, the less capacity you actually have too.

Jessi:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so- and then the time that you do set aside for that, for the content creation, actually preserving it for what, for the, for what needs to happen. So this means making sure that your clients know how do they contact you. They don't necessarily need to have your cell phone number so that they can text you with an emergency, because it's probably not an emergency and having your own space to do your own creative ideation is really important.
So if you want all clients to email you? Making that clear. If you want all clients to connect with you on voxer? Making that clear. The method isn't as important as just knowing what the method is and making it really clear to the clients.

Marie:
Yup. Same thing with payment. So, how do they pay you? When do they pay you? I was just listening to someone recently say, you know, I really actually prefer it when people pay me on payment plans, because then I know that I have revenue coming in, dripped out over time and I don't just like, see a bunch of money come in and spend it. There are ways around that by the way, Profit First is a great book, gunna plug that, but whatever it is, you get to decide. You know, you can say I don't take credit card payments cause I don't want to pay visa their percent so I only take checks. Or I only take credit card payments because I want to get paid immediately. I don't want to have to wait for you to mail a check to me, whatever it is you get to decide and you let them know. And you also let them know whatever your rule is around them not paying you, right. If they don't pay you, maybe they get three days of grace periods and reminders before, all work ceases or like, whatever it is, just let them know. Because they deserve to know. And, if there's no clarity around it, then they're just going to make assumptions and fill in the blanks for you.

Jessi:
Yeah. Um, and quick plugin, and we're going to mention this later in the episode, but to reinforce that, please have a contract.

Marie:
Oh yeah. We're going to tell you exactly where to get one.

Jessi:
Yes, please, please have a contract that talks about all of this stuff.

Marie:
Cause, we did not for super long time.

Jessi:
It was bad. Bad ideas. I want to mention one more quick thing on the pain, how people pay you a note, and we're going to do a whole episode on this later on, but, when you are working out your fees with clients, keep in mind that content creation and I'm speaking to writing specifically cause that's what I do, and that's what we do but I'm positive that this is true of other creative areas as well. It is not limited to butt-in-chair time. It is your- as a writer, I am not just writing-

Marie:
She said, butt-in-chair time first, I thought she said button chair time, so you'll have to excuse-

Jessi:
Sorry.

Marie:
If you also heard what I heard. Go- carry on.

Jessi:
Butt-in-chair time. And what I mean by that is you are not only working on your client's work when you are sitting down and typing actual real words you are working on their work, when you're thinking about it in the shower. You're working on it when you're staring at the blank page, running through different ideas in your head, but not actually writing them down. You're working on it during the revision process,

Marie:
You're working on it when you literally have a nightmare about it, because you're like, Oh my goodness, I didn't get that done. True story that has happened to me.

Jessi:
And the work that you do doesn't end when you pass it onto the client and they approve it because it goes out to the world and has a longterm ROI. It will continue to potentially bring revenue in or traffic in or whatever the goal of that content is in for your client.
So when you are deciding how much to charge and how to charge your clients, what those boundaries are, keep all of that in mind. I'm not going to tell you how to do it right now. We will have an episode on that, but keep in mind that it is not just while you are sitting down actively writing words.

Marie:
Perfect. So next then would be the scope of work. So obviously this includes things like number of deliverables, what types of deliverables, you know, whether they have access to you and what that looks like. If there's certain meetings, whatever, all of that is probably hopefully communicated to them in writing in some format, like through an email, for instance, a formal proposal doesn't really matter.
Definitely plugging the contract also again. But also make sure that you include things like turnaround time. Like what is a reasonable turnaround time? What constitutes an emergency last minute request, or some kind of add on and how is that handled? How many revisions do they get? Is it infinite? Is it one? Is it something in between? What constitutes a revision versus like a copy edit? So all of that kind of stuff can be clearly laid out in terms of your boundaries, but your boundaries are basically worthless unless you also communicate them when the time arises. And the time I would argue when arises very early on, when you're having initial conversations with a client.

Jessi:
Also, on the note of revisions, please, please, please do not allow for infinite revisions.

Marie:
Yeah, we've been there too. I remember, gosh, I remember the two of us, like we were on a vacation one time and we had an infinite revision policy because we wanted the client to be happy, right? And I mean, obviously we still want the client to be happy. We also improved our process so that we don't need infinite revisions for that to happen. I remember like we were on vacation and we were like, Sitting in a hotel room, like on the bed hunched over this laptop, trying to come up with catchy sub-headers and I'm just like, shoot me.

Jessi:
Yeah. Well, and I think it also, you know, this is a whole other conversation, so I'll speak very briefly to it, but the infinite revision policy. It doesn't just speak to wanting to make the client happy. It also speaks to not necessarily having the confidence in what you're producing, being best practices as a copywriter or content creator. And, I don't want to say that to like, shame anyone who has an infinite revision policy, but I do want to remind you that you are the expert. You are the expert content creator, and you sometimes will make decisions that a client may not understand right away. And so they come back and they're asking for revisions on something that is actually copywriting best practices or content best practices, that's not necessarily an invitation for you to say. Okay. Yes. I'm going to do whatever you ask. Instead, it's an invitation for you to explain the logic behind it because it may actually serve them better sometimes to say no.

Marie:
Yes. There's a really brilliant woman and colleague and friend of ours, Brandy Lawson, who runs fiery FX, please check her out- she has a new podcast herself. But she, one of the things she told me one time is you will never hear me say, you know, are you happy with this? Because. They don't actually know, like her clients don't necessarily know better than she does, what is a best practice and like what the data is pointing to is going to serve them the best. And so obviously, yeah, we want them to be happy, but like, it's actually more important that what we create is effective and aligned for them. And so, thought I'd pass on Brandy's words of wisdom.

Jessi:
Great. And so true. And that doesn't mean that we don't, uh, allow for revisions. We do allow for revisions, we allow for two rounds of revisions and we state that very clearly in our contract and in the calls that happen prior to someone working with us.

Marie:
Yes. Okay. Another set of boundaries that you may not be thinking about, but whew, when they are broached, it is painfully obvious, which is values-based boundaries. So, some of it is like how you communicate, right? Like, okay. You're not allowed to call me these words. Not that you have to have a list of words, but like be respectful, be respectful of me. That's a boundary I have. Right. You may not agree with me, but like. We can be respectful of each other as a client service provider relationship, business owner or business owner or whatever it is, right. Also what you believe. As content creators, we are taking on the voice of our clients. And that means that what they believe is something we have to produce, and like replicate. And so again, going back to my maybe slightly hyperbolic example earlier of like, if everything they say is just like white power all the time or something like that, like... That's not a good boundary fit for you, which I hope it's not a good values fit for you then, like, that's a boundary you can uphold, right? And just to say like, actually, um, I'm not comfortable with this and I have a problem with this and I can't create this for you. And it's better to know that like early, than to get into something. Right. And so this is actually why for- we have a form that prospective clients can fill out.
And one of the questions and it is like, Hey, this is our policy on things like discrimination and, you know, messaging and like, Our anti-racist policy, our policy about, you know, discriminatory language in general. And I really need to make sure that you can agree with this because we can only create content that fits within our values, because otherwise we're out of alignment with ourselves, even if we're in alignment with you.

Jessi:
Yeah, absolutely. And it really is something that is the earlier that you put that out there, the better. And hopefully as a content creator, your values are evident within all of your own content. Anything that you're putting out there- but not everyone who finds you is going to read everything that you create to see if- they're not going to necessarily do the due diligence. They may just want a quick fix, quick amount of content. They're looking for someone to do the thing that they need done. So it is on you to say, this is what I believe. And if you are not in alignment with it, we are not going to work together and it's not a good fit.

Marie:
Yeah. And we're not judging them necessarily. It doesn't have to be a stark. As the example I gave, like, it could just be like we had this conversation- it was much gentler with somebody recently where we were like, look, this is like, this is who we are. And so like, what you do, I think is really helpful and probably makes a huge difference. But I just know that, like, there's not going to be anybody on our team, who's going to get excited about it. And so, you know, I just don't know if we're a great fit. So it wasn't that, like, I think they're evil and horrible and saying mean things. It's just like, it wasn't a good fit.

Jessi:
Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And being able again, to say- to recognize and say that it's not a good fit, it's really powerful because you're opening up space for people who are a good fit to come in.
Okay, so next boundary, we kind of touched on this already, but how you operate. So just making sure that it's really clear, clearly stated everything from communication to turn around. And then if you are working with someone who has their own team, they already have maybe a marketing team. They maybe have other content creators, or maybe they don't have any other content creators, but they do have other team members who are doing other things for the company. Just making sure that you're really clear on how you work with them. What the lines of communication are, who you're directly speaking to, how you get access to the people you need access to and how they get access to either you, or if you have a team members of your team that they need access to.

Marie:
Absolutely. And then the last piece of this is what are your offers? So, you don't have any obligation to create a custom package or offer or anything like that for anybody. Just because somebody wants a certain thing doesn't mean you have to create it. You may choose to do that. But if you decide to say, you know what? No, like this is the way I prefer to work. That's okay. You can uphold that boundary. So now that we've talked through a bazillion of them, how do we actually establish them and how do we reinforce them? My favorite way to do this is to set the boundaries and expectations in the very first conversations. And even before. So I mentioned before we have an application to work with us on our website. We actually start setting boundaries there. We, like I said, you know, we have this thing about like, here's our beliefs and values. Is this aligned for you? We also ask questions that help us understand if they may be somebody who's going to step over boundaries.
Like we ask, you know, Hey, do you have a budget? If somebody says, yeah, my budget's 4 cents, you know, like, okay, well maybe that's not a great fit. Right. And like, if somebody is like, my budget is, you know, a thousand dollars, like, okay, I know, kind of like, what are the types of things we could support them with? And what are the things that are going to be probably outside of that. And that's fine. And then initially on the sales call, you know, a lot of times people want to know what's your process, what's it like to work with you? So you can just weave those boundaries in. And when you say things like, yeah, you know, you're allowed to run rounds of revisions and, you know, we, by the way, like, you know, when you- next step would be letting us know, we'll send you a contract and then from there you'll get an invoice. And then once that's paid, we will begin work. So like, again, that helps them understand the boundaries right from the get-go.

Jessi:
Yeah. And I think it's really comforting to them too. Often I think that there's this pool to be accommodating and to hop on a sales call. And when someone asks what's your process or how would we work together, there's this, this desire sometimes to just say, you know, however you work, I'll fit into your process. I will make it work. But what you're doing then is setting yourself up for working in a thousand different ways. And trying to fit into a thousand different processes. And I think that the clients or potential clients that you're talking to really appreciate knowing that you have a process that you have those boundaries in place. And so you start those conversations early and then they get reinforced when you send that contract. And again, like we said earlier, please have a contract, a lot of content creators, a lot of creatives start off without having a contract. It's a sort of gentleman's agreement. I kind of hate that phrase, but-

Marie:
it's a handshake agreement, right?

Jessi:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It's an informal handshake agreement of, you know, this is what we're doing and this is how we're paying you. And it allows for situations like the one we talked about at the beginning of the episode, where all of a sudden someone stopped paying us and there was, we had no recourse. There was nothing we could do about that.

Marie:
Right. I mean, sure. You can take things to small claims court, but they're counting on you deciding it's not worth your time and often it isn't so contracts. If you do not have a contract in place, this is for every one. Everyone please run. Do not walk to destination legal.
Sarah Waldbuesser is our friend. And we have worked with her. We've purchased contract templates from her before. She is an attorney. I'm making a big plug for Sarah here. Cause she's great. Yeah. So we've purchased contract templates from her before. We've hired her for some support and if we needed some kind of specialty contracts, we've even hired her for trademarking. Can't say enough wonderful things about Sarah, Destination Legal. We will put a link in the show notes so that you can go straight there and get everything you need.

Jessi:
Yeah. Yeah. And the good news is you really don't need to have like a completely different contract for every single client. You have a base framework of a contract and you swap in whatever the service is. And you know, Sarah will take you through all of the actual, you know, nuts and bolts of it. But, it's a simple thing. That's not hard to implement. And once it is there, it feels so much better because you are protected. Your client feels better because it feels like more of an official relationship, feels less like a freelancer relationship.
That's based on that sort of a handshake agreement. And anytime that those boundaries are overstepped, you can begin that conversation in a really not- it's a non-confrontational way to say, Hey, just a reminder, this is what you agreed to in the contract to just reinforce those boundaries. And it doesn't have to turn into an argument or anything like that.
There's no risk of them being able to say, Oh, well you never said that. And you say, well, yes I did. And then it just becomes the back and forth because you can say you signed this contract. This is what's in the contract.

Marie:
Yep. Exactly. So if you take literally nothing away else, otherwise from this episode than that, that's great. I mean, I'm very happy that you're going to protect yourself in the contract. I do want to make a quick note just on rigidity and compromise and the graceful process of evaluating when it makes sense. To be on the rigidity side of things and the compromise side of things. And that is, you know, we've been talking about boundaries and some people, ah myself type A type person, I'm like, I hear some rules and I'm like, okay, those are the rules. And that's the way it is. And like that doesn't always serve us. When we have a boundary, we may decide to be flexible with it, but we need to just make sure we're doing so for the right reasons. We're not doing it because we're afraid that we're never going to get another client or, you know, we're afraid that I don't know, they're not going to like us anymore.
If we're going to be stepping outside of our boundaries, maybe it's just because, Oh, there's another great way to do it. And I'm fine with that way of doing it. And I think that this is going to be a respectful relationship, all signs, point to that. And so I'm comfortable with this one. Or to whatever it is, shifts from the usual. So use your best judgment, but like really ask yourself why you are compromising on your boundary as it's happening. And hopefully before you actually like, hit send on that email or open your mouth, just be like, yeah, we can do that.

Jessi:
Yeah. And also, if you do decide to bend a boundary, which is everyone's prerogative and happens sometimes I think- is it in integrity- to happen a lot of the time and a lot of the times, some of the time. But it's also important, I think, to communicate it. And so there have been times where we have bent a boundary for our client. And when we do that, we'll send them a message and say, Hey, just as a reminder, this is our usual policy. We're going to do this instead this time. And here's why, but just keep this policy in mind because you know, we are going to enforce it moving forward. And just, again, your clients don't always know what's happening behind the scenes. And a lack of communication is what can lead to that resentment and lead to a breakdown in the relationship. And so just making sure that when you make a decision around your boundaries, if it impacts your clients, they're aware of it, and they're aware of why that decision is being made. And that way there's much lower risk of there being any sort of breakdown.

Marie:
Yep. Really good point. Okay. So your homework then is to identify one area with loose boundaries in your business, and then to take an action to strengthen that boundary. But that's not all- make sure you communicate it. Like Jessi said, just let the involved parties know that it's happening because otherwise, if it's a boundary that you don't actually tell anyone about, then that probably means you're not enforcing it.

Jessi:
Yep. Absolutely. And I would add to that one quick thing. If you have a boundary that you feel good about, but you haven't done the communication piece, instead of tightening or creating a boundary that you need to create, maybe go back to that existing boundary and figure out a way to communicate it so that people know it exists. And aren't surprised by it when it comes up.

Marie:
Exactly. All right. Well, congrats on your new boundaries and I hope this is a helpful episode for you.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Brand Your Voice Podcast. Make sure to visit our website, northstarmessaging.com, where you can subscribe to the show on iTunes, spotify and more.

Jessi:
If you found value in this episode, we'd love for you to leave us a review on iTunes and share it with your friends. Thank you and happy content, creating.