0:00:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ve been trying and you know, I’ve been tested.
0:00:06 B: Welcome to the Friends In Business podcast with your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemima Ashley. Ben, known as the sales strategist, and Jemima, our resident visibility expert, are here to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with a little fun along the way. Whether you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or aspiring business owner, this is the podcast where we share everything we know about business to help you succeed.
0:00:31 B: Let’s get started. Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast.
0:00:43 Ben Wright: Yo, Jemimah.
0:00:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: What up, homie? That was so not where I thought you were gonna go with that. Feeling spicy today.
0:00:53 Ben Wright: I’m a father. I can make that joke.
0:00:56 Jemimah Ashleigh: I don’t know if that’s true. What’s your best dad joke?
0:00:58 Ben Wright: Oh, God, you put me on the spot.
0:01:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ve got one for you.
0:01:01 Ben Wright: Yeah, go.
0:01:01 Jemimah Ashleigh: Why did the chicken cross the road?
0:01:03 Ben Wright: I don’t know.
0:01:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: To get to the idiot’s house. Knock, knock.
0:01:06 Ben Wright: Oh, no. Who’s there?
0:01:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: You have to ask
Ben Wright: Who’s there?
Jemimah Ashleigh: The idot
0:01:12 Ben Wright: Oh, is that me?
0:01:14 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:01:15 Ben Wright: Great.
0:01:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: Sad, Right?
0:01:17 Ben Wright: Well, if you’re tuning out now, I don’t blame you. That was savage. In fact, what I’d actually say to Mum was, you probably stepped over the boundaries just there. So lucky that’s what we’re talking about.
0:01:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: Maybe we can talk about boundaries today.
0:01:32 Ben Wright: It’s amazing how it doesn’t matter what we talk about at the start. There’s a way to weave it in.
0:01:36 Jemimah Ashleigh: To the top of the. You have the most uncanny knack to take whatever we’re talking about to make the worst joke about being friends in business and then also bring those together so beautifully. I’m almost wanting to challenge this a little bit to see how we can get there. We’ll see future episodes. Stay tuned.
0:01:52 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, Look. Can’t wait. Although I will say there’s really only room for one of us to make terrible jokes. The other one’s gotta be genuinely funny. So I’m happy for you to take that mantle and I’ll just continue with something that’s a little bit corny, but actually probably want to get a bit serious because boundaries. I mean, we can talk about having boundaries with kids, we can talk about having boundaries with friends and family, with neighbors. Right. With lots of different things.
0:02:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: They’re important in every aspect of our life.
0:02:18 Ben Wright: Yeah. And boundaries in your professional life, I’m sure you’re going to cover through boundaries around team members, boundaries around the amount of time and your balance you spend in life.
0:02:28 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:02:28 Ben Wright: But I think for me, they’ve been something that has always challenged me because I am so committed to my work that when I get focused on something, I’m very. I can be very tunnel vision and that can then have an impact on the rest of my life. But. And it’s not an impact I want it to have, but I have in the past, not realized until it’s probably a little bit later than I’d like. So I have to be really, really focused on setting boundaries, particularly around doing some of the softer things with Amali. That Amali, my daughter, that you could easily not do when they pass you by, like picking her up from school or dropping off to school or taking.
0:03:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: Swimming lessons that you love doing.
0:03:07 Ben Wright: Yeah, my favourite thing or her favourite thing going for at the moment, it’s Yochi. There you go, Yochi. You would be a terrific brand ambassador.
0:03:14 Jemimah Ashleigh: I love yochi. 10 out of 10. Or any other yogurt brand out there.
0:03:19 Ben Wright: All right, let’s get into.
0:03:20 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, let’s talk about boundaries because I think it’s really important and I think, Ben, you’ve really nailed why I wanted to talk about this topic. Because it’s something I’m actually seeing a lot of at the moment and people getting towards. You know, we see this a lot towards the end of the year and like the end of financial year. This is a time where people get really tired. This is a time where our boundaries, actually, we drop them down a little bit and we get a little bit lazy with them. And I wanted today to really kind of outline the three different types of boundaries we need to have and maybe a couple of strategies, maybe what’s worked for us a little bit. And just going, it’s really.
Firstly, it’s really okay to have boundaries. It’s actually necessary to be a leader, to be an entrepreneur, to be a business owner. They exist for very good reason. Because if we don’t have boundaries, there are catastrophic consequences. And it usually comes at the cost of our mental health and our relationships. And that is. That’s the premise that I’m going to say. It’s a. It’s a long bow from when we started talking about chickens crossing roads to going, there are catastrophic consequences if we don’t have boundaries. This is as simple as if you are constantly working. Your relationships will suffer with your children, with your partner, new relationships with your friendships will absolutely suffer.
0:04:33 Ben Wright: And you know what? I think most people know that. But what we’re going to go through today, no doubt, is how we actually take that from recognition to implementation. Right.
0:04:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: So the first type of boundary that I really love exploring with people is a mental boundary. And this is one that’s less around. I’m not going to do a specific action for a specific reason, a specific time. So this tends to look like I’m not checking my emails on the weekends, that at 5 o’clock I am finishing work, my emails will not be checked to the following morning. This will be that we have after hours. We are ensuring that close of business is close of business for us. As leaders, as business owners, we often have so much gray. And I know we talk a lot about flexibility here. And I’m not saying this is really just an industry best practice. And if we can get this right 80% of the time, Ben, that’s more than enough.
0:05:32 Ben Wright: Yeah. An example of some mental boundaries you set yourself.
0:05:36 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. So one of the things is that I have really taught all of my clients that email you will get a response within 24 hours. I will not be responding after hours. And also if you need something urgent, the best way is to pick up the phone, but I won’t answer after 6pm. There’s a really strong boundary and I’ve maintained that I’ve educated people on this as the best practice. If there is a crisis, I need to know about it. And often in pr, when PR crisis has happened, they happen beautifully. If a current affair is chasing you, give me a call. But what constitutes a real emergency here.
0:06:08 Ben Wright: Yeah. Okay, so if they need you after 6 o’clock, it’s a phone call, otherwise it’s your emails. Great. Okay, so that’s a good example of customer boundaries. So for me personally, my boundaries are, and this never used to be the way for me, but I do not check emails over the weekend. And that again, I’m always available on the phone. That’s not about not wanting to be there to help my customer. If my customers need me over the weekend, they know to call me. And if they ask me for help that needs my time on the weekend, if they need a full day out of me on the weekend, I’m there for them. But that’s more about me in knowing that if I get a cognitive break from my emails, I actually, I’m better during the week. And what I do now versus what I do when I was leading big teams was that when I’m on, I need to be on with every customer meeting I have. There’s no kind of ups and downs here.
So having that mental break for me is really, really important. And the other boundary I have is that Friday mornings I swim time with my daughter and it’s very rare. And when I say very rare, there might be two or three times a year when I’ll take on an engagement, that means I miss that, but I will supplement that with something else with my daughter that week. So yeah, they’re two boundaries that I set at a mental.
0:07:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: So this can also look like social media is one and a boundary that you could set for yourself here is setting timers on social media. There are social media timers on every phone that you can say I only want half an hour or 15 minutes on this app because otherwise we’re doing the dreamscroll and it’s super, super addictive to do that. This is also maybe putting your phone in another room for a day. So on Sundays, notoriously difficult people to get a hold of me unless I have to be somewhere, I my phone is in another room. I need a day off. We are constantly on our phones. That’s part of the job. I understand that. I’m not negating that that needs to occur. But if similar to you, if I can control those emails, no one’s going to die if the email doesn’t get done by Monday and if they are, pick up the phone. Email’s not the way for you to get a hold of me.
0:08:08 Ben Wright: And can I ask you, how do you set those timers on your phone around social media?
0:08:11 Jemimah Ashleigh: Those settings that you can go into that literally specifically, they’re all settings. IPhones are a lot easier.
0:08:17 Ben Wright: So they’re within LinkedIn or Instagram?
0:08:19 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. And if you are having Trouble Finding this, YouTube is great. It’s how I set mine up. I have half an hour apps on all of them because even for when I’m posting social media, I’ve got half an hour I’m in and out and I post every single day on every platform. I want to get in and out with that because very easy, particularly late at night when you’re stressed to sit there and just do them. It’s a dopamine hit and it’s really addictive. It’s as addictive, if not more than cocaine and cheese.
0:08:42 Ben Wright: Great. Love it.
0:08:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: So yeah, there’s some real mental boundaries that I set that this is work time, this is playtime and this is really important to have that switch off time. We can get very addicted to the work and it’s extremely dangerous.
0:08:53 Ben Wright: Can I add one more thing with the mental boundaries? Share those boundaries with everyone around you. So share them with your family, share them with your team members. I think they’re probably and your customers they’re the three most important team, family, customers and ask them to support that. Customers not so much customers. It’s more about saying hey here’s generally how is the best way to get in touch with me. Does that work for you? If it doesn’t let me know and I’ll change and you change within reasonable reasonable limits around the boundary your family it’s about helping them support you. I’m very clear with my wife don’t let me turn my computer on on the weekend unless it’s pre organised. Great. She’s aced it. And with colleagues it’s so they know the best time to get me and what to do if they really need me outside of those hours. Cool. What’s next?
0:09:33 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great. Let’s talk about emotional boundaries because this is one that really does come up when you’re working individually very closely with people. And then as you and I both know, if you’re working closely with someone and it’s about their performance or it’s about their visibility or it’s about their teams, there’s often really underpinned with emotional stuff that’s under there. So many years ago and I’m going to use a law enforcement example here, I got given a task and it was about senior leadership management in the organization. And I was given like I was doing a one on one coaching session while a whole bunch of other people and I’m there to talk about timesheets. The timesheets are incorrect. This is something that needed to be and this is a conversation. We know most people in this that are listening have had this conversation at one point. What I didn’t know is the other participants role was to absolutely derail the conversation at every point and within 15 minutes I had been so emotionally manipulated in this situation that I’m there to talk about the fact that owe about 10 hours on their worksheet. We need to get these hours back up please. I have agreed not only to go to their birthday party but to have lunch with them next week. And it was so easy and so quick how this happened and the one piece of advice I got at the law enforcement I’ll never forget is you never get on board the crazy train. And unfortunately one thing that happens when we are caring, when we like our job, when we like our roles, when we’re doing that human interface we can often get really dragged into other people’s stuff without meaning to. And so emotional boundaries are really really clear here.
Now this just means I’m giving a Very hyper example of what this can look like. But often. And Ben, I know this has happened to you, that when you have a client meeting, sometimes really big stuff comes out and how hard that can be when you’re, you know, maybe facing something that they’ve already faced. That often in our lives, when we have coaching sessions that often mimics. We have strategy sessions that mimics what’s happening in our lives, that sometimes it can feel very, very heavy. So emotional boundaries are very, very important to know. This is a professional interaction. Knowing what you can help with and what’s not your responsibility.
0:11:38 Ben Wright: Okay. And what are some practical tips you could have to control that.
0:11:41 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great. Some practical ones is really just around knowing what they are and knowing where you’re going to draw lines. So as an example, if someone called me and said, you know, I can’t come to this coaching session. I’ve just broke out with my partner xyz. I have a litany of people that I’m going to go to next. Great. Can I recommend. I know this counselor who would be amazing for this. I know this person who is a relationship coach. If you’re trying to salvage this, I know this person is a marriage counselor. Can I give you to someone else? It’s not my job to then run that coaching session and help them go through a marriage breakup. That’s not my role or responsibility. And I know that. But the problem is we often get pulled into it because of the roles that we sit into. So emotional boundaries, I cannot stress this enough, will absolutely take down businesses because it will drain you and your energy and especially the staff around you and taking those into it.
0:12:33 Ben Wright: And I guess this also flicks across to emotional boundaries when you feel yourself becoming emotional. I’ve got some great things that I work with leaders around the country and around America as well around helping them keep control of those boundaries. I’ve got three. I might share them.
0:12:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: So mine is always respond, don’t react. Respond to the situation that you’re not getting involved. We are not getting on that train, guys. When that crazy train’s in front of us, we are opting to go. No, thank you.
0:13:00 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. Cool. I love that. Well, I think where my piece will come between, when that emotional cue hits you and you start to feel your emotions build up to get you to the point where you can respond rather than react. Right. Cause often the natural piece here is gonna be to react. I’ve got three things that work really effectively. Number one is a pinch of the palm. So you pinch between. So it’s between, for those who can’t see, between your thumb and your first finger, pinch right there. And you pinch hard.
0:13:26 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:13:26 Ben Wright: And what it does is as you feel that sea of red mist building, the pain on your hands should be more pronounced than the sea of red mist. And it just calms you down. You down.
0:13:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: For our NLP people out there, tapping is a really, really good one to bring you down as well.
0:13:43 Ben Wright: Great. Love it. Second one I do is three deep breaths. When you feel like you’re about to react rather than respond, it goes like this. Now, you obviously don’t make the sound, but the point is it buys you five to ten seconds to just chill out. And the last one I do is when I know I’m going to be reacting. The last one I try is I will often look up and to the right. That’s what works for me. For some people, it’s up and to the left. Right. But you take your focus off the situation, you look at something that’s in a different corner, chills you out, and you can come back and you can respond but not react. Right. And I think that’s part of emotional barriers
0:14:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely.
0:14:23 Ben Wright: Great.
0:14:24 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. I will say that this one is one of the more challenging ones because often we hit with the emotional part first and we have to learn how to respond and not react to the situation. And often we need to make sure those boundaries are there very clear before we get to this moment. So one of the things I would definitely urge is that you have to learn to go. I think I’m going to run into this problem. I’m watching this happen. How am I going to react to it being very clear about it. Final thing, third thing, Ben. Time boundaries. I love these. These are so good. Have you ever done a meeting with somebody and we’ll just catch up for. We’ll just catch up afternoon, we’ll have lunch and there’s coffee.
0:15:06 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:15:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, I’m leaving. Excuse me. No, I can’t do that. My time is valuable. And let’s really talk about time boundaries. So number one with time boundaries, this is what I really like as a bit of a time thief is that you got the people who are not going to be, one, respectful of your time, but two, it means you’re not respecting your time either. I know about you, Ben, but I take my time very seriously. How about you?
0:15:30 Ben Wright: Yeah, look, I do, but I have been very guilty, given the game that I’m in, which is where networking is really important. Of previously having lots of coffees. With lots of different people.
0:15:40 Jemimah Ashleigh: We have all done that.
0:15:41 Ben Wright: There are better ways.
0:15:42 Jemimah Ashleigh: We don’t do that anymore. Let’s be clear. We might have done something historically, but it doesn’t mean we get to continue in the future, which is really important. So. Absolutely. The coffee thing. And we had a coffee, but also we were both going into that, going, I think this is an interesting person.
0:15:55 Ben Wright: Yeah. We had an agenda.
0:15:56 Jemimah Ashleigh:, A hidden agenda, but we got there. So what’s interesting about this one is time boundaries means multiple things. So this can actually really be about mental boundaries as well. This could be like, I do not work on Sundays at all. I will not open my computer before 9 to 5 and setting those real time boundaries. The other thing that works really well here is like our allocated time for tasks so we don’t have to. What I refer to as bleeding. We don’t have. I’ll just get back to that later. Like, we’re going to do X thing from here to here. And this is the timeframe we have to do it. And you will magically make that fit. Without fail, you are going to figure out how to get. We needed to do a podcast episode today. We are doing that in this hour. That is the job. That’s all we have to do for that hour. And magically, when it’s in the calendar, it’s done.
The other thing here is around being very careful of where you’re spending time for no reason. This means networking groups. Very important to go to. Huge advocate for it. But you’re right. What really is going to be quite dangerous is if you finish that at 9 and you have a meeting at 12 and you don’t really have anything here and someone says, hey, want to grab a coffee?
0:17:06 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah.
0:17:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: And you’ve got this much work to do.
0:17:08 Ben Wright: Yeah. Then there’s time to. And from what I’ve started doing here is I would get requests for coffee meats once a day.
0:17:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, for sure.
0:17:16 Ben Wright: Easy. I mean, that’s a lot. Jemimah. Once a day, that’s five a week. That’s 250 a year. Right. That’s a lot.
0:17:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: Am I doing any of that?
0:17:23 Ben Wright: A lot of people. What I look at here to help me make decisions is if I don’t think it’s going to be a valuable meeting, but I don’t want to be rude to the person on the other side. I’ll suggest that we catch up on the phone.
0:17:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:17:37 Ben Wright: And say hello for five or ten minutes and then work out if we want to get together. Right. That’s a nice Short way of being polite because for me is now I’m not talking about the cold email you get that wants a coffee. Right. I would get multiple ones of them every day. I’m talking about a referred introduction where someone said, hey, I recommend you contact with Ben. See what you can partner together around. And this is not necessarily a customer prospect either. These are those ones where you’re just not sure they’re going to add value outside of your traditional customer network. So to avoid being rude, it’s phone call if I’m unsure if that there’s going to be any value. But it’s not a no and it’s not a yes. I’ll suggest 15 minutes on video. Set up a 15 minute video. Right. And then that gets to have it. Sometimes that goes to 20 minutes.
0:18:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: What I love there is already the time boundary. You’ve got 15 minutes.
0:18:25 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:18:26 Jemimah Ashleigh: This is all we’re giving you. And it’s all that you should be given in an initial conversation. And that’s because your time is valuable. And instead of doing one hour, we both staring at each other going, so what kind of chicken do you like? We don’t need to have that conversation. And how much more productive you’ll be in that 15 minutes because that’s all you’ve got.
0:18:44 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, I like poached chicken, is the answer to that. But yeah, absolutely. So the third piece is when I think there’s going to be value with someone and I back my intuition, what I will do is I will, first of all, when I know that request is coming in, I’ll actually research the person just to make sure. So before we caught up, I researched to go, you know what, I know you’ve had a successful podcast. I know we’re quite different in our perspectives. I think it’s worth us catching up.
0:19:09 Ben Wright: And then I will set the meeting.
0:19:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:19:10 Ben Wright: And I will generally make them 30 minute coffees or 30 minute videos and I’ll try and weave them into a day so that it takes an hour of the day, not two hours. So that’s the way I approach it. Hope that’s valuable for those out there.
0:19:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, I love that boundary. What I will say is that when you’re rejecting these offers, Let me be very clear here. And when I was saying earlier, like, oh, that easy. Of course you get one a day. That’s an easy number to hit when you have people who want your time and to pick your brains. And that’s fine. There’s a time and place for that. But it also can be At a time where it’s convenient for you. I recently got an email. I went to a networking group and it was someone that I didn’t talk to. It was someone we’re just like last night. You kept going. They added me on LinkedIn. They said, I’d love to catch up for a coffee. And I said, oh, thank you so much for the invite. Unfortunately, my calendar is pretty packed at the moment. What I’d love to do is invite you. There’s a zoom, there’s an introductory coffee. It’s 15 minutes. Please book that in. If you’d like to have a conversation, that would be great. Again, I met this person through someone else. I was at someone else’s networking group. I don’t know them, I want to have that conversation with them quickly. And he said, no, no, no, I don’t do that. I only do it when people come to my studio. You can have a look around. I was like, oh, respectfully, I’m sorry, I don’t have time for that right now. Thank you so much. I will hopefully see you at another networking event. But there is my boundary and they showed theirs too.
0:20:29 Ben Wright: Okay, excellent.
0:20:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: All right, Silver Bullet, what’s yours? The wrap up.
0:20:33 Ben Wright: Sorry.
0:20:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: Mental boundaries. Be really clear about what you’re willing to do, what you’re not willing to do, what times you’re going to work, and time boundaries will come back. But just also making sure that we are clear about what we’re willing to take on, what we’re not willing to do, where and when and what the priorities are. Number two, emotional. We are not responsible for everyone else’s feelings. We are not responsible for how we are going to learn how to respond, not react.
0:20:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: That’s going to be really important, especially in the people who are working front, like face to face with people. And finally, time boundaries. Know when you’re working, when you’re available, what you’re willing to provide for free, what you’re not willing to provide for free. These things will absolutely make your life significantly easier. Silver Bullet, what do you got?
0:21:13 Ben Wright: Excellent. For me, I wouldn’t recommend you start on one boundary over the other. What I would recommend you start is setting the boundaries. Start small, so start with something that’s not business or personal critical. Do that two or three times to practise how you do the boundaries and how you implement them, because you’ll likely get them wrong first Few times they just take some time to build. Right. So start small and then come in with your whoppers. Once you’ve got two or Three done and down pat. Yeah. How about you?
0:21:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: I think my silver bullet for this will be this needs to be written down. However, wherever you decide to start, this is calendar worthy. This is like I’m turning my laptop off in 10 minutes. So send those emails out. That is on the Sunday you’re doing the wrap up, you’re doing the Sunday scaries list and you’ve got the priority list for Monday, whatever those look like for you. Prioritise. Change your calendar so you can only put 15 minutes in there. Change that your calendly links so you can only put 15 minutes in there. Have days where people can’t schedule meetings if you only work three days.
0:22:10 Ben Wright: So in this one we almost. We have slightly conflicting number ones and perhaps if we put them together in a seamless way it might be start small from my end, make sure you then put them into a calendar from your end and move to the big ones as quickly.
0:22:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. Absolutely.
0:22:23 Ben Wright: Great. Good punchy episodes. In terms of boundaries, we’ve hit bang on time boundaries. We really do try and commit to keeping people for only 20 to 25 minutes. So enjoy your week, everyone. We will see you next week. Well, until then, we’ve been your friends in business.
0:22:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: We’ll always be your friends in business.
0:22:40 Ben Wright: See you next week.
