Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Biznik, blogs, comments, status updates, “friend”ing, fan pages…aaah! Where does it end?

Do you find yourself avoiding social media, or find it overwhelming? You’re so not alone. I’ve talked to many people, of all ages, highly technical and not, and it’s a common issue.

What if you are not a natural social butterfly? How do you get any work done if you Facebook all day? How can you have meaningful interactions when you can’t keep up with all the conversations? What is reasonable? What is normal? What “should” I be doing?

First, empathy.

I have some perspectives I’ll share in a bit. But first I want to state vehemently that there are very good reasons for why it’s overwhelming and confusing.

The online business landscape is changing at a very rapid rate. Nobody can keep up. If you make it about keeping up, you’ll feel like you are drowning.

Social media requires a much different approach to media that we are used to. You approach an encyclopedia very differently than a magazine. You approach a raging river very differently than you approach a still lake. And you need to approach Twitter and Facebook very differently than email. For example, Twitter is a stream – you dip in and see what goes by, but you don’t try to drink the whole river. Email is more like a bucket – you process each thing that goes in and out.

Rules and social expectations are different too. If someone sends you an email, they usually expect a response. But if someone comments or “likes” your Facebook status, a return comment is not expected. It’s a more optional medium. These are rules and norms that take time to figure out and get comfortable with.

And there’s the issue of privacy. The lines between personal, private, public, and professional are getting all blurry. That’s fascinating…and scary. Privacy is a primal need. In human society, rules and norms about privacy usually change very slowly. Right now they are all over the map. Understanding how to navigate in a world where the very nature of privacy and the personal is being questioned and rewritten daily is confusing and unsettling.

Social media tools are changing fundamental patterns of interaction, and I think we can’t even see where that will take us yet. It’s going to be disorienting for awhile. The best way to cope is to expect change and give yourself a liberal amount of self-acceptance for not knowing what exactly is going on or how you feel about it.

Next, some perspectives.

I’m not a social media expert. In fact, I’m pretty skeptical, and sometimes a bit peeved, at most people who call themselves that.

But I’ve had my share of resistance to social media. These ideas represent my  experience making sense of it.

Resistance #1: It is all too much! I have a dozen invites to different services in my Inbox!

It’s an 80/20 thing. 80% of the activity is on 20% of the sites. Only it’s probably more like 95/5. Facebook’s popularity is huge compared with most others. Twitter is up there too.

You only need to have one network that you really participate in to build an online community. So choose one that makes sense to you and you feel at home with.

I like Facebook because I like the way it has threaded comments and it’s personal. Some of my friends live in Twitter. Another friend is crazy about GoodReads. Community is happening on all these sites. It’s more about picking and sticking than about being on all of them.

Don’t join the smaller ones unless you really want to. Or you have a compelling reason to, like you already know a group on that service you want to be part of, or you know that it’s where folks in your niche actually do hang out.

If your people aren’t there, you can’t socialize with them. So join a network where people you like and want to share space with are hanging out.

Resistance #2: I’m an introvert. I have nothing to say to these people.

A lot of us creative types are not exactly the life of the party. We prefer small groups of friends or one-on-one conversations to big gatherings. We’d rather know a few people well than keep up with hundreds of acquaintances. We can’t imagine why anybody cares about all the trivial crap that gets posted on Facebook.

Here’s the thing: Even if you are not that social, a lot of other people are. They will get value out of connecting to you and reading your updates, even if you think they are not worth posting. They will want to “friend” you even if you would never think to “friend” them. Sometimes you don’t have to do much more than let them. Let people (and customers) know you. Start there.

Next, notice what events or activities in your daily life you talk to your friends about. What do you send in emails to people you know well? What do you share with them on the phone? Become mindful of the news you are already sharing with the contacts that you already know. Start posting some of these news items to your Facebook status feed or Twitter. Develop it as a habit slowly over time.

The stars of social media post constantly and consistently. And they’ll say it’s necessary. But it’s not, in my opinion. Once a day, or even once a week, is enough for people to have a presence to connect to. Do what is natural to you. More becomes noise. You don’t have to become Ms. Chit-Chat if that’s not who you are. Start with just showing up, in your authenticity, and letting people get a glimpse of you from time to time.

Resistance #3: People won’t like me. Nobody will care about what I write.

Do your friends like you in real life?

Of course they do. Bring whatever it is that they like and love about you into social media.

What value do you already bring to the network you already have? Ground yourself solidly in who you are and what value you bring before approaching social media.

Use your strengths. Are you an idea person? Post some of your ideas. Are you a researcher? Post interesting sites or discoveries. Do you inspire people? Post inspirational thoughts. Do you like to make people think? Post questions or links to controversial articles. Are you an artist? Do you love your family? Whatever it is that makes you a well-rounded human being is stuff you can share.

Bring your full self.

Then let go.

You can’t control what anybody else thinks about you. Whether they like you, friend you, ignore you, or even criticize you in some way, it’s not about you. You met their needs, or you didn’t, or they had a bad day, or they had a good day, or you remind them of their favorite niece, or who knows. Take it as information, weighted evenly with what you know of them and how close they are to you. Consider its value to you as feedback, but don’t take it personally.

Any kind of recognition brings up our fear of rejection. Notice it, affirm your own worth, be true to who you are and show up in the fullness of you, and then let go of the need to control what other people are thinking. You can’t control anybody else’s opinions, actions, or preferences. You’ll go nutty trying.

Hand it over, or do whatever works for you to surrender things you can’t control.

Resistance #4: It will take over my life. I sit down and suddenly it’s 4 hours later.

Reading updates and following blogs can be addictive, it’s true. And it can be draining. You sit down to check your feed and make a status update and suddenly you have followed a thread to a blog to another blog to a new site you spent 1/2 hour on to a book you had to buy on Amazon. And now you are down $12.95 and you didn’t get anything done today.

This is an opportunity to get mindful and notice what really serves you. How much time per week reading blogs and Twitter fits into your life in a balanced, healthy way? Is it 1/2 hour? 5 hours? Nobody knows but you. But that’s the amount you should do it.

Personally my limit is about 15 minutes per sitting, and I like to do it once a day or so. I’ve developed the habit of checking in with myself: “Is this getting draining? Is it time to stop now and do something else?”.

Mindfulness is simply noticing what is true for you. As you become more aware of your needs and validate them, you will find it easier to approach things that are overwhelming and be confident that you can be responsible to yourself.

Resistance #5: I am a private person. I don’t want to be “transparent”.

There is a difference between “authentic” and “transparent”. Authentic means what you say is true and it’s about you. It’s not spin, hype, promotional, invented, or, um, plagiarized. It’s said in a genuine spirit of sharing.

Transparent, on the other hand, means you share everything. That works for some people. But it doesn’t work for most people. And that’s not what social media is really about. It’s about connection. It’s about inviting people into your living room occasionally. Or maybe onto your front porch to sit and have a chat. Not into your bedroom, or any other rooms you don’t want them visiting. You get to choose.

You can be authentic and share only 5% of what is going on for you in your life. That’s OK. You don’t have to be naked. You can wear a snowsuit. As long as people can see your face, they can connect to you. And that’s the point.

Resistance #6: Social media is full of shallow self-promotion and friend-collecting. I’d rather spend my time cultivating real connections.

Yes, there is a lot of self-promotion going on in social media.

Of course, there is a lot going on everywhere.

When I go to an in-person networking meeting, there are the people who shove their business cards at me, and the people who engage in real conversations with me. I get to choose which one I’m going to be, and which people I’m going to engage with. The choices I make determine whether the event meets my needs or not. You have those same choices online.

Social media is like one giant party that you can drop in and out of at any time, and you can pick exactly who you want to talk to. Get comfortable with tools like “hide this person’s updates from my stream” and “ignore” and “unfollow”. There is no reason you have to engage with people who aren’t being real. Make choices, just like in real life. Go for connections with people that are genuine and that you care about.

Set the tone you want. It’s as much about how you show up as how others show up. If you’re being real, other people who like that will want to be part of the conversation you’re having. Ask yourself: am I demonstrating the quality of connection I am seeking? Am I open to genuine interactions with people?

It’s up to you.

There are no rules here. It’s really up to you.

The key to working with any resistance is mindfully noticing what it is about over time and seeing what is true for you. Eventually the resistance unwinds and you come back to a place of choice. Curiosity arises about the possibilities.

What do you want to create? What works for you? How might social media be an asset to your life or your business? In what ways do you want to open to the larger world around you? In what ways do you want to reserve space and time for aloneness, introspection, time away from the computer, and rest? All needs are valid, and there are many strategies to meet these needs.

A final note: Believe in yourself

A lot of resistance to social media boils down to one thing: shyness. Not the natural introversion and need to be alone that a lot of us can relate to, but a more insidious lack of faith in oneself. It’s a feeling that your work isn’t so great that it would be all that interesting to anyone anyhow. So you hold back, in big and small ways. And people don’t get to see you, or benefit from what you have to offer.

If this rings true for you, consider this: it’s highly likely that people already love you more than you let them. If you have a habit of hiding or putting up fences for fear of being exposed and rejected, you are probably keeping love out more than you are keeping criticism out. Criticism will happen, but love will happen more. People like to love each other. Social media is just a conduit for it.

The biggest struggles I and many of my clients have had are around setting and navigating boundaries in business. The client that asks for extras–and you feel queasy inside as you say “Ok…I guess that wouldn’t be that big of a deal”. The person who wants to trade with you and you say yes…even though you don’t really want what they are offering all that much, but you don’t know how to say no. The person who asks for a discount and you reluctantly agree and then kick yourself later. The project that just keeps growing and growing, and you charged a flat fee. The client who always shows up late and you end up giving them a full hour session but part of you doesn’t want to but you didn’t know how to navigate the situation.

These situations all involve boundaries.

In every relationship, boundaries are what make it healthy and functional. Business is the same; you have to know who you are and who you are not, what you will do and what you will not. You need to know how to set, reset, and negotiate boundaries. Boundaries serve to keep your business functioning smoothly, and keep you from burning out.

Don’t underestimate how hard setting boundaries can be. A plan helps.

The clearer you can become internally, the more solid and clear you can be with your clients. I suggest writing down your boundaries in a “Boundaries Plan”.

Here are some examples of business boundaries:

• My minimum project fee is $2000.
• I customize Wordpress blogs, but don’t work with other blog software.
• I’m not open to trades at this time or I only take on one trade client at a time.
• I see people for a minimum of six visits.
• I fix bugs in my software free for six months and then charge my normal hourly rate of $X.
• You must notify me 24 hours in advance to cancel, otherwise I will charge you for the session.

Your boundary plan can include more subtle boundaries as well.

• I will turn down clients who want a rush job; my project turnouround time is 4-6 weeks.
• I will turn down clients who ask me to sell myself to them; I let my work samples speak for themselves.
• I will gauge where people are in their process and suggest X if they are not at least at stage Y.
• I won’t work with people who communicate only via phone or who can’t provide a written spec for their project.

Your boundary plan can also include boundaries you make between your business and your life, such as:

• I don’t work on Sundays.
• My max client load is 3 active projects.
• I won’t answer the business phone line after 6pm, or if I’m eating lunch.
• I don’t do trade shows.

Some people will test your boundaries. Most just won’t know where they are until you tell them.

Most of the trouble people get into is not actually from someone pushing their boundaries. It’s the fear that comes before you even set them. That fear can keep you from spelling them out clearly enough to be understood. It can also lead to defensiveness when you state them–which muddies the water and makes people uncomfortable.

Sometimes people will push, but I’ve found that the stress and awkwardness of that is directly proportional to how clear you are in yourself. If you can stay neutral when you communicate your boundaries, then they will nearly always be respected.

Writing them down and really owning them for yourself will help you stay neutral and communicate them clearly without defensiveness or other sticky energy.

For tricky boundaries, create procedures and policies that you lead clients through.

When I did web design, I had a “Designer’s Readiness Checklist”. It outlined everything people needed to have in place before they contacted me. Then I had a worksheet people filled out that asked them key things about their project. In essence my boundary was, “I don’t take on strategy or organization, I just do the design part”. What my clients saw was a clear procedure they were led through that helped them get organized and think strategically.

My clients appreciated the structure and it served to weed out clients who were not organized or didn’t yet know what they wanted.

For in-person situations, practice your replies.

I spent several years learning how to say no to people who wanted to work with me but I didn’t for whatever reason. It was really hard for me, and then I got really good at it. What helped me the most was finding the right wording–the kind nobody can argue with and I didn’t have to explain:

After reviewing the details of your project, I don’t think we’re a good fit to work together. I recommend …

I had a few different wordings and list of recommendations for different occasions and I kept them stored as snippets in my email program.

Another area I practiced was not giving off-the-cuff project quotes over the phone. If someone asked how much they thought I would charge I would give my standard range (the same one listed on my website) and say I would have to review their project in more detail before I could give a more accurate quote. If they pressed, I would state that I made it a policy to not give quotes on the phone because I know from history that they are not accurate.

When you use the word “policy”, people usually get the hint. If you say in some way, “This isn’t about you, this is for everybody”, then it becomes much harder for them to take it personally.

Pay attention to queasiness, dread, procrastination: these can indicate a need for a boundary.

The more aware we are of what is going on, the more we can do about it. If you are not aware of your boundary, your unconscious will follow its usual patterns–procrastination and avoidance. These are not usually very clear or effective, and take a lot of energy.

Sometimes you have to find boundaries from the outside in. For example, I learned to notice that if I had a client inquiry email that I was procrastinating for more than a week on replying to, that meant that I probably didn’t want to do the project for some reason that wasn’t immediately obvious to me. Procrastination became an indicator to check in with myself , validate that it’s perfectly OK to be choosy, and make a decision that worked for me. (This was a much better strategy than letting it sit there for another week and have my subconscious struggle with it while I started to feel guilty about not getting back to them.) I learned to notice the early warning signs that I was feeling uncertain about setting a boundary, and then just get it over with.

Set boundaries early and often. And don’t hesitate to renegotiate.

When appropriate, work your boundaries into your website and client emails. Don’t assume people will know where they are, and don’t get offended if they assume a different boundary: just educate them in a calm, neutral way. Usually their response will be, “Oh, I didn’t know!”.

And if you forget or slip or are just having a bad boundaries day (stress can cause us to get weak about our boundaries), it’s always OK to say, “Hey, I apologize, I made a mistake when I said …. What I should have said was ….”.

Your boundaries are yours alone–they are what fit you.

Every industry and culture and family and human grouping in general has standards of behavior, and most people tend to assume they are shared. If you don’t share them, feelings of being wrong can get in the way of asking for what you need and setting up clear expectations.

It doesn’t matter what works for someone else, or what someone else expects. What matters is what works for you so you can serve your clients and stay happy. Get really honest with yourself–what do you need to feel nurtured and healthy in your business? What do your clients need to know so your work together goes smoothly and serves you both? It’s OK to ask for that.

Outer boundaries stem from inner boundaries.

Before you can clearly state to another what you want and need, you have to validate and own that your needs and wants are OK. If you don’t have that internal validation, you will not be able to communicate clearly to others.

If you struggle with this, invest in self-care, and evaluate your beliefs about what you have the right to ask for and expect from your life. Is it OK to be 100% happy and satisfied with your life and your work? Or does that make you selfish? What do you really believe, and does it support you?

Having clear boundaries will save you money, stress, and time.

Having a good niche is the first step in finding perfect customers: it’s the attractor.  Boundaries are the other side of the coin. They redirect the “not a good fit” customers and make it clearer who your ideal customers are. They provide your business with integrity and keep everything running smoothly. And they take care of the human vessel that is making all of this happen.

Boundaries also make your business more appealing, because you come across as professional, “together”, and have some structure for people to interact with. Think about interpersonal relationships–we are all wary around someone who is not clear on their boundaries. The same is true in business–the more clear, communicative, and neutral you are about your boundaries, the safer your clients will feel. They’ll know what to expect, and be able to make clean choices.

What kind of boundaries do you need to set?

Healing is the process of grieving and accepting this pain and change, and integrating the information into our lives in a way that supports our growth and wellbeing. Healing is an opening-up process. The ultimate goal is to reconnect you to the flow of life.

Our resistance to pain and change blocks this flow. Our ability to adapt to change, and to grieve pain and loss, determines how much we will be able to taste life as it unfolds before us.

The stages of grief

If you look at the five classic stages of grieving, there are four stages of resistance/contracting/”inner war”, and then one stage of healing/expansion:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

And that’s OK. This model was developed for dealing with death, which takes our bodies and minds some time to adjust to. It’s OK to take however long it takes to go through the grief process. But in each stage, one can hold in mind the idea to open up and to be kind to oneself (this supports opening up).

I believe that all change requires grieving on some level. Our bodies and minds naturally attach to things and it’s up to us to develop the ability to move through change and transformation gracefully.

Acceptance is not resignation

Resignation is a form of closing-down. Acceptance is an opening-up. To cultivate acceptance means practicing opening our heart when it wants to close.

Being open-hearted requires skilled self-protection

Pain is always an opportunity to open up more; but this requires skill, not just ambition. Being a pain junkie will not transform you. It’s being able to learn from pain that helps us to grow.

To do this requires inner and outer boundaries. If we open our heart when it’s dangerous to do so and if we don’t look out for ourselves, we will get hurt more and shut down again.

Part of cultivating acceptance and open-heartedness is developing the skills to protect ourselves in healthy ways. They go hand in hand. Our mind is not going to give up its shutting-down behaviors if it doesn’t have any sense of trust that we can provide protection for it any other way. You have to earn the trust of the scared parts of yourself by learning to care for them well.

Re-parenting

If your family did not teach you grieving skills, or adapt well to change, this is something you will need to learn and coach yourself through.

But it’s well worth it–developing this “grieving muscle” gives you a strength and inner resilience that keeps you steady and centered throughout everything that life brings.

Water is also transformative, but in an entirely different way. It gets into the nooks and crannies of things and gently dissolves them. It wears rock smooth over time. Water is a common metaphor for the Tao – it “flows in places men reject” and supports all of life. Water also cools into ice and heats up into steam.

Being able to describe ourselves in this way, we could see our various strengths and differences as unique and wonderful, and shift out of comparison and competition. All the elements of nature co-exist and support each other in a dynamic system.

Metaphor gives us a way to name ourselves, to tell our stories, to describe who we are in symbolic ways that can be deeply nourishing. Recognizing some essential element of yourself can validate the way you are in the world, and how you are uniquely different and wonderful. It can also relieve you from trying to be someone you are not. Can water be fire? Not likely! Yet fire and water can influence each other: fire heats up water, water cools fire. They can transform and enliven each other without seeking to change each others essential nature.

Try it: what element describes you? Air, earth, fire, water? Some combination like lava (earth + fire, but flows like water), mist (air + water),  steam (air + water + fire), mud (earth + water)? What is that like? Mud sounds unappealing, but mud is primordial, nourishing, and rich. In what way does your element interact with the other elements?

Now think about your business partner, a friend or colleague, or someone you chafe with. What element(s) are they like? How do they effect you? What ways are you similar, different? How can you honor each others essential nature while also honoring your own?  How can you frame your interaction as a natural and dynamic process?

Mistakes connect us all as humans.

There is always the urge in business to pretend that we are perfect. I struggle with this too. But at times when things do fall apart – and they always do eventually - what matters most is that you are honest and clear about it.

I run a web hosting business, and while I’d love to have 100% uptime (and we do have really really good uptime), sometimes stuff happens. Servers are complicated entities and eventually something goes wrong. The best lesson I got in how mistakes can build trust was this conversation a few years ago:

<phone rings>

Me: This is Emma. 

Client: Did you know the server is down?

Me: Yes, we are working on the problem. I’m not sure when it will be back up but we are working on it right now and it will be up as soon as possible.

Client: Great, I’m so glad I chose you as a host.

Me: What? Really? But…your website is down right now.

Client: Yes, but you are giving me a straight answer about it. You didn’t try to act like it wasn’t happening. You always tell me the truth about what is going on.

Me: Oh yeah. I guess I do. I never thought of it that way.

Working through sticky situations builds trust.

I read a study once that clients rate their work as more rewarding over a 6 month period within a client-therapist relationship when something goes “wrong” and the issue is worked through than when there were no interpersonal issues to resolve between the therapist and the client. Mistakes and working through them create trust, bonding, and a shared connection. There is a mutual sense of accomplishment that adds value and investment to the interaction.

So next time you make a mistake, try thinking of it as an opportunity to build trust with your client by demonstrating that you are responsible and honest – rather than using it as an opportunity to criticize yourself or hide out from your client.

You don’t need to grovel or give them tons of free stuff to apologize.

Mistakes do happen. I think you can over-do an apology which can make it seem like the problem was even worse than it really was, or it can give the other person the job of making you feel less guilty. 

Acknowledge what happened, communicate that you understand the impact on the other person, and let them know what you have done to fix the issue. This communicates that you are responsible and that you care about the quality of your service; not that you are guilty and wrong.

Sometimes this can be difficult when the person on the other end is really mad and blaming you. But the same principles apply. Sometimes people freak out when something goes wrong because of their stuff. But you don’t have to make it your stuff. Just be clear, calm, honest, and responsible. They will eventually calm down too. The most important thing is to not escalate yourself to match them and to not take their reaction personally. If you can find it in yourself, try to empathize. Think to yourself “From their perspective, they are really freaked out right now, they are scared, and also perhaps they had a bad day”. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

When all else fails, stay connected to yourself .

Sometimes it is necessary to set boundaries with clients and be clear when something is not your responsibility to fix, even if they think otherwise. Try to not be defensive, but be calm, clear, and firm instead. Sometimes it is not possible to create connection with a client right away while doing this, and the best you can do is stay in connection with yourself – you are beautiful and doing the best you can in each moment. You want to succeed and help your clients, and occassionally things do get missed. You are human. Overall, you do a great job. Don’t let someone else’s pain make you forget your own beauty.

When you can come from this place of understanding, forgiveness. compassion, and respect for yourself, you will be less likely to be defensive, and more likely to be able to be calm, clear, and compassionate toward your client. And your client will (probably) come to meet you there.

However, I noticed that my projects that were paid for in trade didn’t always go the way I had hoped.

• They would take a lot longer than my other projects.
• There would be a lot more revisions than my other projects.
• I would end up getting more of the other person’s time in trade than I wanted to or planned to.
• I would end up spending more of my time in trade, than I really wanted to.
• I would end up frustrated and unhappy.
• I would realize at the end that would rather have had cash than the trade.

Because of this experience, I stopped doing them for awhile. Why bother? Normal contracts were so much simpler. Then the perfect opportunity to do a trade came along:

• I really wanted what the other person was offering but it wasn’t something I could comfortably afford to pay for.
• The other person really wanted what I had to offer but it also wasn’t something she could comfortably afford to pay for.

I had come across the first rule of trading:

Only trade when you really want what the other person is offering. Do not do trade as a favor for someone unless you are very clear inside yourself that you are doing this and want to. Realize you are giving them a gift, not a trade.

I still had things to learn however. Because some of the same things happened:

• The project went on for months longer than I had estimated it would.
• The project involved many, many revisions.

In the end, the site was something I was proud of, I was glad to have what I received in exchange, and overall the trade was successful. But I was also tired and a little frustrated. Why did it take so long? Why was it so much more work than similar projects for other people who paid with money instead of trade?

Here’s what I’ve concluded: trades, by their nature, end up taking longer than work for cold hard cash. Here’s why.

People who trade consider their money to be worth more than their time (otherwise they wouldn’t trade).

When someone pays money for something expensive, they think hard before buying it and get their ducks in a row first. It’s not that they value your time, it’s that they value their money and they know they are paying their money for your time. I’ve noticed this is true even when I charge a flat fee. Paying a chunk of change for something makes people invest their time and energy into being clear on what they want.

When someone would rather pay in trade, it’s because they consider their time a more abundant resource than their money. And when you consider a resource to be abundant, you spend it more freely (some might say “waste” it more freely). That means more revisions, more meetings, more waffling, and more of everything else that drags a project out.

So it only makes sense to do a trade if:

• You also consider your time to be more abundant than your money.
• You just dont mind it when a project takes a longer amount of time than normal and your client takes a long time deciding what they want.
• You just don’t have the money to afford the services the other person is offering and you really want those services.

Think long and hard about doing a trade if:

• You have the money to pay for the other persons services but they don’t have the money to pay you, so you would be doing the trade as a favor to them.
• You get annoyed when clients don’t know what they want or ask for a lot of revisions.
• The trade is for something you wouldn’t otherwise purchase even if you had the money.

Here are some ideas for ways to mitigate these problems that come up in trades:

• Trade for a specific number of hours, instead of an indefinite number of hours. For instance, trade 5 hours of your time for 5 hours of their time, and anything after that will be paid for in cash. That gives them the incentive to get clear on what they want out of those 5 hours.
• If you don’t want to cap the hours, cap the weeks/months or the amount of work. Set up deadlines for each deliverable and set the number of revisions or cycles. You will want to make this clear from the start, and you may want to specify why, as in say “I want to be clear about this because otherwise I’ve found trades can take a really long time to finish and I want to be purposeful about our work together”. The more you can get them on board with that goal the more you will be working together toward it, instead of you trying to ‘get them’ to be more on task, which can end up in a power struggle.
• Make a paper contract, or anything else that you normally do for your other for-pay clients. Treat it in every way like a “real project”, because it is.

Any other ideas, insights about how to make trades work?

Robert Subby defines codependency as “An emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of an individual’s prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of oppressive rules.”

The term comes out of treating alcoholics and their loved ones, who developed codependent patterns to cope with the alcoholic’s behavior. Codependency is a pattern of response. It’s a habitual way of reacting that is learned as a coping mechanism to an unhealthy situation.

Researchers found that the codependency habits become so ingrained in people that they persist beyond the interaction with the addict. That is, these patterns can exist and be passed down in families over time, even when the addiction is no longer present. I think many of the patterns that are classically defined as “codependency” are actually ingrained into our culture, some as gender roles and some just as “this is how people ought to act”.

How Does Codependency Apply to Business?

Business involves interacting with people on a daily basis. If we’ve learned disempowering ways of interacting from our family history, personal relationships, or from our training to be “good girls” or “strong men”, it is likely those same patterns will play out in business relationships.

If you often feel confused, angry, overwhelmed, or hurt in your business, you may find value in looking at the issue of codependency. Looking at these patterns can lead to more ease, clearer boundaries with customers, and ultimately, making a lot more money.

My Experience With Business Codependency: Boundaries and the Right to Say No

I used to have such a hard time establishing boundaries with people that I just would avoid meeting clients in person. I disliked phone calls as well. Email conversations I felt OK about, because I could think about how to respond. It was so ingrained in me to feel bad about my right to say “no” to requests that I limited my exposure to “on the spot” situations where people might ask me for more than I wanted to give. In email, I worked long and hard developing replies that worked in situations where I wanted to say no. I created mantras for myself of “It’s OK to want what I want.”

One of the hardest things for me to work through was saying no to work that didn’t interest me. I felt I needed to “have a good reason” to turn down paying work. If I didn’t have one, I felt I ought to take it. Heck, I even thought I ought to want to take it. Who was I to have preferences anyway?

created snippets to send in response to “Request Quote” inquiries that looked boring to me, or weren’t the kind of work I wanted to be doing:

Thank you for your interest in my web design services. I’ve looked over your responses and included them below.

Unfortunately your website project falls outside of the scope of the work that I do. My niche is to work with small businesses and artists to create online stores and galleries.

I have created a list of other great providers, including other web designers in town who could be a better fit: http://www.redacorn.com/providers.html

Thank you again for your interest and good luck with your site!

I had different ones depending on why I didn’t want to take the project. “I don’t think we’re a good fit to work together” is a good standby. It took a long time to be able to accept that I want to be interested in the projects I’m working on and it’s OK to turn down a project if I don’t want it. I had this ingrained rule of “You should want to give if someone asks.”

These kinds of “rules” hamper our ability to respond to our true needs and the needs of our customers.

Here are some examples of internal rules that can get in our way:

• If something goes wrong, it’s my fault.
• If someone is angry, I’m to blame.
• If someone’s upset, I caused it and it’s my job to make them feel better.
• If someone is in trouble, I automatically should help them.
• No one else can do this work. My clients need me.

Here are some behaviors that we can find ourselves in when we are operating under the above rules:

• Responding to criticism by defending yourself or “going overboard” to fix problems.
• Responding to angry customers by making exceptions to your company policies, working beyond your stated hours, or giving refunds that are not in your policy.
• “Guessing” what might make your angry customer happy (out of panic) instead of asking them to state their needs clearly.
• Dropping everything to deal with an angry client, or someone who is in a hurry.
• Lowering your rates or charging less to avoid having to say “no” to a client that can’t afford you.
• Continuing to work with clients that drain your energy.
• Continuing to work on projects that aren’t alive for you.

How do you work through codependent business patterns?

My strategy has been to:

1. Read books about codependency and self-esteem. Understanding the underlying causes has been very helpful.
2. Pay attention to my inner dialog. I try to notice what I’m telling myself, and instead use affirmations that I’ve consciously created that affirm my worth and my boundaries.
3. Think like a bigger company. It doesn’t have to be a big evil corporation. Would Ben & Jerries offer a discount on their ice cream if someone complained it was not affordable? Of course not. That’s their business, to sell expensive ice cream. That’s that.
4. Take things much less personally. The first time I whined about my clients and how they didn’t appreciate me to someone who had been a designer for many years she said “It sounds like you want them to approve of you. You’re taking things too personally. It’s just business.” That helped me get out of the trap of “If they don’t like the design I made, they don’t like me.” That meant I could really listen better to what they needed, and more clearly ascertain if we were a good fit to work together. It’s this kind of healthy detachment.

Here are some inner mantras (affirmations) to get you started:

• Everybody makes mistakes. Every business makes mistakes. It’s OK.
• Nobody is every perfect, and no business can serve everybody.
• I am doing the best I can and that’s enough.
• I believe in my product and I do a good job.
• It’s OK to want what I want.
• It’s OK to say no in any situation.
• I am at choice.
• Someone else’s failure to plan is not automatically my problem.
• I get to choose who I work with, and I choose people who respect me and my work.
• My time and work is valuable, and I choose to provide it to people who honor that.
• It’s OK if I choose different clients.
• It’s OK if my clients choose different providers.

Have you had experiences that resonate? What has worked for you in setting boundaries with your clients?