From Pushover To Professional: Setting Boundaries That Stick

If you’re apologizing for your business boundaries, you’re essentially telling people they’re optional.

Tonya Kubo and operations expert Gwen Bortner explore why your boundaries aren’t suggestions, how to communicate them without guilt, and what happens when you stop treating your professional limits like requests for permission. You’ll learn the difference between boundaries and preferences, why women entrepreneurs struggle with enforcement, and how strong boundaries actually improve client relationships and your reputation.

Key Takeaway: Your boundaries aren’t suggestions – they’re the framework that allows your business to function sustainably. Stop apologizing for your professional limits and start treating them as business practices.

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From Pushover To Professional: Setting Boundaries That Stick

From Pushover To Professional: Setting Boundaries That Stick

In this episode, we’re talking about why your boundaries aren’t suggestions, how to communicate them without guilt, and what happens when you finally stop treating your professional limits like requests for permission. If you have ever felt like a pushover in your own business, this is the episode for you. Let me tell you something. If you find yourself apologizing for establishing a boundary in your business, you’re pretty much telling your clients, your team, and your peers that those boundaries aren’t really boundaries. They’re options.

Gwen, first of all, I know that you speak on the topic of boundaries in business. I’ve gotten to sit in on some of your workshops. I feel like you do such a great job of explaining why boundaries are non-negotiable limits that protect a business owner’s well-being, in addition to their time and integrity. Lay the foundation for us right now.

Here’s the thing. People assume boundaries are bad, but boundaries are actually good. The reason is that we all want to know what our boundaries are. That’s why people push against them, to figure out where that piece is. There’s a great study, I probably should find it and keep it as a reference point, that was done years and years ago with children in a play yard with no fence. When the children had no fence, they all stayed huddled together, and they weren’t very functional. As soon as they had a fence, they were all out to the corners, doing everything.

Boundaries are good. We all really want to know what our boundaries are, and that's why people push against them. Share on X

We want boundaries. We want to know what is within our play area and what is not within our play area. Where is it too risky? Part of the reason we push boundaries is to say, “Is it okay if I go out there? Is it okay if I do these things?” Setting boundaries for yourself makes it easier for your clients to get what they want because they have figured out how far they can push, what they are allowed to get, what they are not allowed to get, and all of those things.

The other piece for you is that by setting the boundaries, you also know what you’re allowing yourself to do and not allow yourself to do, and to create your own safe comfort zone. Boundaries work on both sides, whether you’re inside the fence, like the kids, or you’re outside the fence, like potentially the adults. Where are you allowed to be? We think of boundaries only in one direction, but they’re in both directions. They’re protecting us on both sides.

Boundaries Vs. Preferences: A Clear Distinction

Let’s talk a little bit about the difference between boundaries and preferences because I feel like these get blurred. I’ll give you an example. The common example we hear is the difference between “I don’t work weekends and I prefer not to have a morning meeting.” For instance, I was having a conversation with somebody. They work in an office environment, and they were struggling to get a certain project done.

I said, “Can you work from home?” My question was like, “Would your boss let you take a day to work from home so that you could get this done?” They were like, “No, that’s a boundary.” I was like, “Is it?” I think what they heard is that I was asking them to do the project after hours or on weekends, but I’m like, “I get you don’t want to work after hours. I also understand that if the culture that you’re working in, if you took one day to work remotely, they would assume that you could then work after 5:00 and on weekends, but that’s not the same.”

I could appreciate that in this particular case, they probably did have boundaries. It just wasn’t clear the distinction you were talking about. Boundaries are, this is the way it is, everyone knows it’s this way, this is the way it’s going to be unless I explicitly say we are changing the boundary for a period of time, whatever the given situation might be.

The trick with boundaries is you can’t do that exception early. You can only do the exception long after the boundary is well-established. If we do it early, then we can’t establish the boundary because the boundary is about consistency. It’s being able to say, “What are the things that I absolutely, positively want to be true and why do I need them?” I’ve had people set boundaries. It’s like, “I need to only work two days a week.” Is that actually true, or is that just something you want?

Often, they make the boundaries so extreme that it makes it hard to achieve. Two days a week is fine if you aren’t trying to run a multimillion-dollar business with no staff, for example. You can’t do this. Sometimes, the boundary and the reality can’t hold together. It’s back to whether the boundary is reasonable, can I hold it, and does it matter to me? That’s the other thing. If it doesn’t matter, we’re not going to hold it because someone, somewhere, somehow, is going to push against it. If it doesn’t matter to you enough, you’re not going to hold it because initially, it takes a lot of work to hold a boundary.

If boundaries don't matter, we won't hold them, because someone, somewhere, somehow will push against them. Share on X

It’s surprising. It doesn’t take very long for the boundary to be held. It feels like it’s a tremendous amount of work, but it’s relatively short if you’re consistent, if you’re not wavering and saying, “This time we cannot.” The issue I see with lots and lots of my clients is that they know what they want the boundary to be, but they’re not willing to hold the boundary. They’re wondering why it’s taking so much effort to hold the boundary. It’s because you’re always reestablishing it, and the reestablishment piece takes effort.

The Core Challenge: Why Boundaries Aren’t Held

Why do you think they don’t hold it?

We work primarily with women. I do think this tends more to happen with women than men. We have been taught that people need to like us. It’s a systemic thing. People need to like us. We think that if we hold a boundary that someone is not going to like us. It’s not true that men deal with it better. That would not be true. I think they deal with it less. They’re less worried about not being liked. That’s not something that they talk about when they’re little boys. We want everyone to like you, little boy, but with a little girl, we want everyone to like you, little girl.

I think that some people are going to bristle at that statement because there’s a little bit of generational difference there. There are certain ones of us who want to be liked because we were told that’s what made us good girls. Also, there are women younger than me who have been conditioned to be accommodating to avoid conflict. You don’t want to be bossy. You don’t want to be a dragon or a bulldozer. We’ve heard that before. You don’t want to be seen as difficult because, for some reason, being difficult as a woman is seen as unprofessional.

All of those things, but it’s all part of the same systemic issue.

It’s all people pleasing. We are conditioned to be people pleasers. Somehow, that ends up getting interpreted by our mind that success requires that we say yes to everything. I’m not saying it’s conscious.

 

 

We have some natural tendency to be more caring because we are the ones who get pregnant and we are the ones who will deliver a baby. We haven’t got men doing that yet. That care piece, we want to make sure that we care for people. It has gotten conflated with making people happy. Those two things are not the same thing. Our society has conflated caring and making sure that people are happy as a very similar thing. It’s like, “If I make them unhappy, then I’m hurting them. I’m not caring for them.” No. Often, by not making them happy, sometimes, we’re caring for them more. It’s the difference between being kind and being nice.

Our society has conflated caring with making people happy. Often, by not making them happy, we're actually caring for them more. Share on X

Do you think Imposter Syndrome plays into it at all? Do you think they don’t think they deserve it?

I’m not sure if it’s Imposter Syndrome, but I will say confidence plays into it. What I find is that confident people tend to have fewer issues holding boundaries than non-confident people. When I say confidence, I’m not talking about being blustered and the rest of it. It’s being comfortable with who you are kind of confidence. It’s a very rooted confidence, not the “I can do anything” kind of thing. You know who you are, and comfortable with who you are.

I have also seen that the better you get at holding boundaries, the more confidence you create for yourself. What you start realizing is you can do it, so success helps create confidence. It’s like, “I can do this.” What you’ll also discover is that very few people, if any, will kick you out of their life because you held a boundary. It’s like, “These two things were not interrelated. They’re completely mutually exclusive, whether or not someone likes me as a person, and whether or not I hold boundaries.”

There will be someone, undoubtedly, who will be like, “If you’re not going to do that.” They are probably not a good person to have in your life anyway, so it’s probably okay that they have left. The majority of the people will realize, “This is okay.” Quite honestly, for other people, it’s easier when you have clear boundaries because you don’t have to wonder what the response is going to be. It’s not like a rollercoaster ride. It’s not like, “Is it going to be up today or is it going to be down today?” It’s just, “I know if I do this, this is what’s going to happen. If I ask for this, I 95% know what the answer is likely going to be.” It simplifies it.

I think of us recording this show. Because you travel and I travel for our businesses, our scheduling doesn’t always align. We know we have to work a few weeks ahead because if you are traveling, we’ll miss some weeks. If I’m traveling, we’ll miss some weeks. When I’m looking to make up time, I don’t even talk to you about Fridays because I know you work Monday through Thursday. I try hard not to record on Mondays because Mondays are not good recording days for me. I don’t come to you and say, “I guess we’ll have to do this Monday, Gwen,” any more than I would ask you to make space on a Friday because it doesn’t matter. That’s a clear boundary, and it’s been a clear boundary since 2022.

It has been a very long, clear boundary for me.

Since I started working with you in 2022, it’s been a non-issue.

At the same point, there’s been at least once or twice when we looked at the calendar and I said, “We probably need to do this on Friday. Are you willing to do this on Friday?” You’re like, “No.” I know that that’s what needs to happen, but because we’re so clear about the boundary and that I am being very conscious to say, “We’re breaking that boundary this time,” you don’t assume that anytime that we’re getting a little behind, we’re going to put it on Friday.

 

 

Communicating Boundaries: No Justification Needed

This proves the point. It never occurs to me to ask, because I know your boundary. It is on you to come to me and say, “In this case, we can do a Friday because otherwise, we’re never going to get ahead.” I also want to talk about justification. I’m going to give you an example. I know that there’s going to be somebody who’s a Gen Z, maybe Gen Alpha, whatever. I lose track of the gens, I’m not going to lie.

They are going to think that I am making this up. This is an actual, real-life example that happened to me when I was working in an office setting, where we were trying to coordinate on something, and it was going to have to be done after hours. I don’t have kids at this time. I’m like, “I could do this and this,” and everybody is shouting at the time.

The time that works for everybody doesn’t work for the one parent in the room. They say, “I can’t get childcare at that time.” I’m not even going to tell you the gender of the boss, because we all know the gender of the boss who says, “Can’t you get a babysitter?” This woman says, “No, I can’t. My husband is on a business trip, and I don’t have a babysitter.” Somebody else pipes up with, “So and so could babysit for you.”

Everybody in here is deciding that this woman can work on this day that she doesn’t have childcare, and they’re going to solve all these problems. The person in charge is thinking, “This is an amazing example of teamwork.” All I can think about is, had she never opened her mouth about why she wasn’t available? Nobody else was saying why the other times didn’t work for them. They were like, “No, I can’t do that. I can do this on this day.” Help us understand how to communicate boundaries without justification.

I think your example is the perfect example, which no one needs to know. We talk about all the time why I don’t work on Fridays, but I don’t have to justify it to anybody. I use it as an example. I can explain it and how I thought through it and why, and all the rest of it. It’s happened more than once where someone has reached out, and I’ve looked at their calendar, and if we’re doing a coffee chat, their coffee chats are only on Fridays. It happens more than once. I get that.

What I will do is I will reach out and say, “I would love to be able to chat with you. I don’t work on Fridays, but I see that’s when you have your coffee chats, and if you’ve got that as a boundary, I totally understand. At some point, we’ll run into each other. We’ll have a chat.” I don’t tell them I need them to change their boundary. I say, “I respect your boundary. Your boundary is that you do coffee chats on Friday. My boundary is that I don’t have meetings on Friday.”

Guess what? We’re not going to get together. Now, if they choose to say, “I want to talk to you. Let’s do it on Tuesday instead,” I’ll find a time. We’ll do it on Tuesday. Lovely. If I want to talk to them, I will say to myself, “I’m going to take this Friday because this is the best Friday to do it. This is the best time to do it.” When I talk with them, I’ll let them know that normally, this is not something I wanted to do. I wanted to do it at this particular time, but in the future, if we’re going to continue to have conversations, I’m not going to be able to do it on Fridays.

I’m honoring their boundary. I’m expecting them to honor my boundary. As I said, I can choose to negate it, but I can also say, I’m not going to negate it, but I’m going to let you know what my boundary is, but I don’t have to say why I don’t have meetings on Friday. It’s completely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. As soon as we give it a reason, then someone thinks it’s a problem to solve, like your example.

“I don’t have childcare.” “Let us help you solve the childcare problem.” “I don’t have childcare” is like saying, “If you can get me childcare, I can come to the meeting.” That wasn’t what she was saying. She was saying, “This is my boundary, I’m not doing this.” As soon as we give a reason, it’s like, “Here, let me solve that problem for you so that that’s no longer a problem.” My boundary is not a problem.

Enforcing Boundaries: What To Expect Initially

I understand that justification matters to a lot of people, but when we assert a boundary and we give a reason, then suddenly, my justification competes against yours. It’s my childcare versus your desire to go have a hair appointment versus somebody else’s chemotherapy appointment. That’s not what we’re in the business of. We shouldn’t be competing against what we all do with our non-work time. It’s just, “Am I working or am I not working?” I know you work with a lot of people who come to you and don’t have strong boundaries, and you work with them on how to establish them, assert them, and maintain them. What do you see typically happen when somebody starts enforcing boundaries that they haven’t before?

First thing is that it’s hard. They think every time they say no, someone is going to run, scream, yell, and lose their mind.

They always think people are going to call them names.

It’s not saying that no one will. Someone probably will, but they’re usually the ones who were just waiting for the opportunity to call you a name, or already calling you names behind your back, but you didn’t know. These are not your people. That’s the first thing. It’s hard. The first thing you want to do is you want to justify it. You don’t need to justify it. You can say, “Going forward, I don’t meet before 9:00 AM.” I’m picking something random. It’s like, “If you can’t meet after 9:00 AM Pacific, then we’re not able to work together.”

Most of the time, they’ll say, “Okay,” or “I can’t work because they’ve got their boundaries too.” You’re going to have to deal with solving the problem, dealing with the boundaries, having the conversations, and then holding them because if you say, “I’m not going to work before 9:00 AM,” it’s like, “I can only work with you at 8:00 AM Pacific. Otherwise, I can’t do it.” You say, “I’m going to make the exception.” What you’ve done is say, “This is a boundary. No, it’s not.”

If you don’t mean it or if it’s a preference, “I would prefer not to work before 9:00 AM,” then don’t call it a boundary. The first thing that’s going to happen is it’s going to feel hard. Back to if you’re motivated enough for your own reason, not for somebody else’s reason, back to what is your real definition of success, it can become pretty easy to hold, but you do have to be consistent. That’s the hardest piece, which means you’re going to say no to some people. Every time you say no, particularly if you have been a people pleaser, you’re going to assume that they are all going to throw a fit. Almost none of them will.

I think sometimes, you read more into the responses and behaviors than there is.

You said this once, I don’t remember where it was, but it was in the top ten of the most amazing things you’ve ever said. It was something about how when we read a text, we hear the evil voice in our head.

You can’t read tone and text, and so you tend to default to reading it in the voice of your inner critic.

Same thing for this. We hear the response in the voice of our inner critic. We do not hear it as the response that it is.

Here’s the other thing. A lot of people don’t recognize that pricing is a boundary. Somebody says, “I want to hire you.” I say, “It’s $500 an hour.” They go, “That’s too much.” It’s like, “It is what it is.” They work with somebody else. I don’t go, “They think I’m mean,” or “They’re so mean. They don’t like me anymore.” No. It’s just that they did not budget $500 an hour for the service that they were asking for. Therefore, they went and hired somebody else. This is not nice or not nice, but we oftentimes don’t think about the price of our service or our products as being a boundary. That’s one example of a boundary. Another example of a boundary would be a brick-and-mortar shop’s open and close times.

I’ve seen shops that don’t hold those well, and then they wonder why they’re paying overtime all the time. It’s because you’ve trained them that that boundary is not a boundary.

I’ve been made aware of this. I think it’s because I’ve been making later in the day appointments, where we close at 5:00, but you have to be inside our shop by 4:15 if you want to be helped, because that’s when we take our last new customer. That makes perfect sense. One is, it’s hard. Sometimes people may push back. Something that we talked about before recording that is important to unpack here is that we’ve both seen, sometimes, that you attract better clients.

You totally attract better clients because they match what your boundaries are. It’s completely related to the pricing. You don’t get people who are going to try and argue with you about every penny if they know this is what the price is, this is what is always the price. If you’ve changed it 5 or 6 times, then they’re going to say, “Maybe I can get this. Can we do this instead?” You’re fighting that energy all of the time. Back to when you’re consistent, I had a client a number of years ago who did speaking. She was talking about preparing the proposals. She said, “It takes me all this time.”

I was like, “Why does it take you so long to write a proposal?” She said, “I have to think about whether or not they can afford it and what they can afford, and I want to make sure that I price it within their price range, but I don’t want to price it too low.” I said, “How much do you want to make for one of these types of talks?” She gave me a reasonable number for the type of thing that she did. I said, “That’s your price.” She said, “What if they could pay twice as much?” I said, “Would you go to the buffet and eat all the food just so that you could eat all the food?”

She’s like, “No, that would be rude.” I was like, “This is the same thing. You don’t need to take all of their budget because you can. Now, at some point, you may raise your price, and then you’ll get that, but at the same point, you don’t need to cut your price because somebody wants you at a lower rate because they’re not a good fit.” As you said, it’s a boundary.

Once she did that, she didn’t have anybody kicking the tires and spending lots of time. They knew what the price was. It’s like, “Don’t make it a big secret. Know what the price is. If you’re in their budget, great. If they’re not, great.” I had another friend in a similar situation. She said, “This is my price.” They said, “That’s more than we can afford for this event, but it’s what we pay our keynote speaker for our bigger event.”

What happened is that instead of getting a little tiny stage, she got a bigger stage because she had the boundary. Back to a much better client. The same thing is true with my clients. You have said it many times. I agree. I have amazing clients. Part of the reason I have amazing clients is that they all know what my boundaries are, and they all honor my boundaries.

The other thing about when you start enforcing boundaries that I have seen, and this is something that you have shown me. As you said already, your confidence does improve as you start getting comfortable with your boundaries. Your reputation gets better because you are showing up as your best self in all cases.

You’re showing up consistently. You’re only doing the things that you want to be doing. You’re only doing the things that you excel at. You’re only doing the things that you have time for. It’s all of those things, so that you’re able to show up as your best self consistently. It’s not like, “Am I getting the amazing Tonya, or am I getting the so-so Tonya, or am I getting the bedraggled, barely can function Tonya?” Nobody wants that, including Tonya.

Nobody wants to show up less than their best self. Yet, when we don’t hold boundaries, that’s what we end up doing. We’re showing up as less than our best selves. Back to the inner critic, we often start beating ourselves up for not showing up as our best selves, etc. There’s no winning in that. Better to have not done it at all than have done it poorly and feel bad about yourself.

The Hidden Costs Of Weak Business Boundaries

We’ve talked about the good parts of enforcing boundaries. The flip side would be, what is the actual cost of weak boundaries? Back to other episodes we’ve had where we talked about business owners not paying themselves enough or business owners overworking. In their mind, it’s on them. There’s no cost. What do you see as the cost of weak boundaries?

This is one that I see a lot. It is, “Here’s my boundary.” Scope of work is a great way to think about it. “This is my scope of work, this is the thing that I’m supposed to be doing, but I like this client. I’m going to go above and beyond for this client because I like this client.” That can be fine, but when the boundary is not clearly defined, and the going above and beyond is not explicitly communicated as above and beyond, this starts to become the new norm.

We go above and beyond that, and that becomes the new norm. We go above and beyond that, and that becomes the new norm. All of a sudden, what they feel like is within the scope of work is nearly impossible to deliver on a consistent basis, definitely not for the investment that they’re making. We start resenting this client that we loved because they’re taking advantage of us.

They’re not. Most of them don’t realize that they are taking advantage because, in their mind, this is all within the scope of work. “Why would you be upset that I’m only paying you X when that’s what you asked for?” It’s like, “That was for this other thing.” It’s like, “Yeah, but you’ve been doing all these extra bonus things. Why would I not think that was within the scope of work?” That’s because you did it. We can ruin our own best client relationships by putting our own boundaries because we like our clients so much.

In that example, you’re talking about scope creep, but I heard a whole bunch of other costs listed in there. There’s scope creep, burnout from being overcommitted, or resentment. You mentioned the resentment towards your clients. Too many clients like that, then you start resenting your business.

You can’t keep it up because you’ve got 4 clients that each take 10 hours a week, but now you’ve got 4 clients that are each taking 15 hours a week.

What you’ve also said not so explicitly is that you’re setting precedents that are hard to change later. You’re like, “That’s not included in this.” They’re like, “You’ve been doing it for a month or 2 months or 3 months. What has changed?”

“I want to go back to the original scope that I had to pay for.” Whose fault is that? That’s yours. Boundaries.

To recap, one of the things that you had talked about is that clear expectations prevent misunderstandings. That’s one way that those clear boundaries improve your client or your customer relationships. Clients respect professionals who know what they’re worth, both in what the scope of work and the price for that scope. The boundaries create a structure that makes working together easier. What I said is you’re able to show up as your best self when you’re not resentful. What you said is, and you’re able to do that all very consistently. That goes back to your reputation in the marketplace.

What we talk about all the time is sustainability. We talk about building the business you really want. It should be a business that you could do day in and day out for as long as you want to be working. That’s sustainability. Sustainability requires boundaries to say, “I want to isolate whatever pieces of my business as my business.” It’s one of the challenges that I see when I hear folks say, “I took my computer in and worked on my email while I was watching TV with the family.”

That’s a big, giant flag for me. My eyes get very big because what that shows is either they’re not focused on their family or they’re not focused on their work, which means they’re probably doing both poorly. Why do you need to do it there? I’ve had clients who I could tell were using their job or their business as a way to avoid their family.

It’s like, “I’m not sure that’s a healthy thing to do. That’s above my pay grade because that gets into therapy and other things.” Back to when I would talk about boundaries, what I’d realize is you don’t want boundaries because you don’t want to have to deal with what the reality is of having those boundaries. For entrepreneurs, one of the reasons they often fight boundaries, particularly around time, is that they don’t know how to behave if they’re not working.

Entrepreneurs often fight boundaries, particularly around time, because they don't know how to behave if they're not working. Share on X

They don’t know how to rest. They don’t know how to take time off. They don’t have a hobby. They don’t know the concept of a hobby. I said boundaries have two sides. There’s your side and there’s their side. Other people will push against your boundaries. The question you have to ask is, are you pushing against your boundaries?

Your Next Steps To Stronger Business Boundaries

That brings us to the end of our time together. I’m going to say, if you’re tuning in and you are ready to stop being a pushover in your own business, start setting the boundaries that actually stick, but you’re not sure where to begin, we should talk. Especially if you already know that you’re not using your business to escape your family, because that’s not a business advising issue. That is a therapy issue.

Sometimes you do need somebody outside of your business to help you see where your boundaries are too weak, how to strengthen them, and how to go about starting that process without damaging your relationships. That is exactly what you could accomplish in a Clarity Call with Gwen. That would be a focus conversation, where she’ll look at your specific situation, identify where boundaries could make the biggest impact, and give you a clear next step. You can book that at EverydayEffectiveness.com/clarity. Whether you work with us or not, you’ll walk away with at least one concrete thing you can implement right away.

 

Mentioned in This Episode

• Clarity Call with Gwen
• Everyday Effectiveness on YouTube
• Gwen Bortner on LinkedIn 
• Tonya Kubo on LinkedIn

 

About Your Hosts

Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.

Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.