Client boundaries don’t limit your service—they unlock your focus, flow, and freedom.
In one of my coaching calls, a client—let’s call him John—shared something that stuck with me.
He was proud of the service he gave.
Clients could reach him any time.
WhatsApp, phone, email—he was always available.
And in his industry, that kind of responsiveness was rare.
But when I asked how things were going behind the scenes?
He paused.
Then said, “I’m giving everything to my clients…
and somehow still falling behind.”
No space for deep work.
Constant inbox firefighting.
And evenings reserved for catch-up, not rest.
We didn’t fix it with a productivity tip.
We changed the rules.
First, we stopped the direct calls.
A real human answered the phone, filtered what was urgent, and booked the rest into callback slots..
Next, we pulled urgent client messages out of his inbox (which was acting more like a black hole than a to-do list).
A Slack channel became the new home for anything critical.
Eventually, he stopped triaging email entirely.
Someone else filtered and flagged the few things that truly needed him.
Then, what happened next?
Clients were still happy.
The business still ran.
But John got his focus—and his evenings—back.
If you’ve ever felt trapped between providing great service and staying sane, this episode about client boundaries is worth a listen.
KEY TAKEAWAYS: How Setting Client Boundaries Improves Focus and Service
- Balancing Availability and Deep Work: Service-based business owners often struggle to provide high levels of client availability without sacrificing their ability to focus on deep work. It's essential to set boundaries to manage client communication and expectations while still being responsive.
- Implementing a Call Answering Service: For instance, transitioning to a call answering service can help filter urgent calls from non-urgent ones, allowing business owners to focus on their work without constant interruptions. This service can also set clear expectations for when clients can expect a callback, streamlining client communication.
- Using Separate Communication Channels: Establishing a dedicated client communication channel, such as Slack or a separate WhatsApp for urgent matters, can help business owners avoid distractions from non-urgent emails and messages, ensuring they only see what requires immediate attention.
- Email Management: Having an assistant manage emails can significantly reduce distractions. Moreover, when assistants filter and prioritise emails, business owners can focus on essential tasks and avoid less critical communications, freeing up mental space for more intentional client communication.
- Setting Clear Expectations: Lastly, clearly communicating response times and availability to clients helps manage their expectations. By informing clients about when they can expect a response, business owners can maintain high service levels while protecting their time for deep work.
BEST MOMENTS: Real Lessons from Setting Client Boundaries That Work
00:01 – 💬 “If you run a service-based business and you want to stand out with your availability to your clients, that you are there to help them when they need it and respond in a really timely fashion to the problems that might come up…it can be really hard to get the balance right.”
02:11 – 💬 “He didn't have the headspace or the time set aside during the week because he was too open and available. Now he was really struggling with this because he wanted to have the highest level of availability for his clients so they felt supported.”
08:13 – 💬 “If you explain to your clients, this is my communication policy, this is the timescale I'm going to get back to you…if you set those clear expectations, people know what to expect.”
TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW
00:00 Balancing Client Access and Work Efficiency
06:13 Streamline Notifications; Delegate Email Management
07:12 Efficient Task and Time Management
Episode Transcript
Dr Steve Day: If you run a service based business and you want to stand out with your availability to your clients, that you are there to help them when they need it. And respond in a really timely fashion to the problems that might come up. Especially if you\'re working in an industry where there are time demands ; that things actually do need to be resolved in real time sometimes to be able to overcome challenges and problems.
If that\'s you, it can be really hard to get the balance right to understand. How to provide that high level of service you want to without it negatively impacting on your ability to do the work that your clients want you to do? When you\'re available on the phone, through email, through WhatsApp, etc. You can continually be bombarded and never get the time to block out to do deep work. You can end up working in evenings and weekends when the phones. And the emails are quiet to simply find the time you need to get that work done.
However, there is a better way. Today I want to take you through a journey that I went on with one of our clients.
When we took him from a place of being at the beck and call of his client, totally overwhelmed and interrupted, to one where he has carved out deep work time to do the work his clients want him to. But also still to have a business that stands out in terms of its availability and its service to its clients.
Okay, so today\'s episode has been inspired by one of my clients. I\'m going to call him John, just to protect his identity. Now, John came to me when he was totally overwhelmed. Overwhelmed in terms of his clients. He had brilliant clients who he loved serving. And he wanted to serve them at the highest possible level.
That means he\'d made himself truly available. They had his phone number, they had his email address , they had his WhatsApp. And they would basically ping him problems; give him a ring and it would cause him to be totally interrupted throughout the day. This led him to have to work in the evenings. And at weekends just to get the work done that the clients needed him to do.
He didn\'t have the headspace or the time set aside during the week because he was too open and available. Now he was really struggling with this. Because he wanted to have this highest level of availability for his clients so they felt supported. So he stood out in the industry because the industry he\'s in. Well actually that is not a typical way of working and he wanted that to be his unique selling point, that he was available.
But, in doing that it was actually causing him far more stress and negatively impacting the service that he could provide. In order to move him from that place of total availability to one of actually setting some clear expectations, realistic expectations, ones that were still industry leading, but also gave him enough time to actually get the work done, actually put things in place of his clients being able to get in touch with him unless it truly was of an urgent nature.
It was about removing the possibility of distraction from his workday so he didn\'t get sucked into problems that weren\'t of an urgent nature. Nature that he was able to focus on his deep work that he needs to do to do the work for the client, but also just be there, be available should he ever be needed for an emergency. For John, the first step was to remove his client\'s ability to phone him directly.
This was a big mindset step for him. He\'d always been available for his clients. But what we did was simply to put a call answering service in place. They would then field the calls and decide which ones should actually be of an urgent nature. And which ones could be passed on. And then John could then phone that person back at an appropriate time.
We carved out certain blocks of time throughout the week; and John would then be available at those times to be able to phone those clients back. So the person on the receiving end of the call would take note of the call. They\'d make a decision if it was an urgent nature.
And there were some criteria that we built against that so they could actually determine; whether or not it should be put through or not. And for everything that wasn\'t urgent. The person set expectations saying, yep, John will phone you back between two and four on Wednesday. Is that okay with you? And nine times out at 10, it would be absolutely fine.
And if it wasn\'t fine for some reason, of course it could be escalated. That\'s the beauty of having a human involved in. This is that we can actually treat things on a case by case basis. But doing that meant suddenly there was no more unexpected interruptions into John\'s workday.
If it was a truly urgent problem. The call answering service could contact John and say, hey, can you give this person a ring back? Straight away, they\'re really stressed out and they need your support. That way the clients were still getting the support they needed, but the majority of stuff was getting fielded.
And then John was able to deal with that as at time set aside. Which didn\'t interrupt him from doing the deep work he needed to. That was step one and it was an absolute game changer.
But there was a problem with this and we didn\'t identify this until a few months later. When again I got on a call with John and we talked through his current situation and he said, I\'m stressed, I\'m overwhelmed, I\'m getting interrupted, I can\'t get my work done. It sounded very similar to when we first met a problem I thought we\'d solved.
Now the issue was, and it\'s so obvious in hindsight. That the person in the call answering service who was filled in these calls was emailing the information to John when there was an urgent problem. So therefore John was having to keep an eye on his emails. This meant he was logging into his emails regularly. And actually seeing all of the noise that was going on about all the non urgent stuff.
He was being distracted by emails which weren\'t of a hugely urgent nature ; because he had to look in his inbox to find the ones that were. This is a common mistake in business owners. The fact that we feel that we need to go and clear our inboxes. And then what happens is we go down rabbit holes.
We see stuff that actually may not be relevant to right now that could wait until another time. Or could be dealt with someone completely different that we don\'t even need to get involved with. But because we see it, we feel obliged to do something about it. And that was the problem here.
So we put a second step in place that instead of urgent calls being transferred via email to John. We actually set up a Slack channel. Now if there\'s an urgent call, the person in the taking that call. That call receiver will ping a slack to a private channel.
Or you could use a WhatsApp business for this; something separate from your typical WhatsApp number, from your typical phone number or your typical email that\'s separate. And therefore you only see the emergency stuff.
It means you\'re not ; when you go into that channel going to see all the other stuff that\'s going on in the business. It allows you to be very specific about the types of things; that are alerted to you on an urgent nature versus everything else that can be dealt with at scheduled times; that dealt with the cause.
That meant that John was no longer needing to go into his email inbox to look for those urgent messages ; because they were getting past that private channel. The next step was to get someone to manage all of his emails for him. And actually just to show him the stuff that needed his attention.
Again, it\'s about removing all of that distraction. About all that admin, about filing, about unsubscribing, about forwarding emails, about replying to stuff with FAQs, about handing work over to other people in the business. Because even though the inbox was John\'s, some of that work coming in was not actually for him. It may need to be passed over to a different member of the team.
So removing John from being the piggy in the middle, so to speak ; and having an assistant manage that inbox coming in again removed huge amounts of work, huge amounts of distraction, allowed him to focus on just the stuff that he needed to see.
The way we do it is to have those tasks ; that he needs to actually action be brought into a task management app. Or if you don\'t use a task management app, you could again use something like an urgent slack channel like I described before. To allow you to be alerted to stuff when you really need to get involved, especially if it\'s of an urgent nature.
And everything else can then be dealt with other people; or be put somewhere for you to review at a given time. And that\'s another key element to this process working effectively to actually block time out either each day ; or a few times a week for you to actually go and deal with all of the non urgent stuff, whether that\'s email, emails or messages, or replying to calls, etc.
So blocking out specific time when you are available to actually make calls back to people; to contact people and to do your admin means that it can give you the headspace to focus on your deeper work the rest of the time.
And the final thing to make this work in practice, to give your clients that same high level of service that you want to. But without you getting completely interrupted all day long, is to set clear expectations. If you explain to your clients, this is my communication policy. This is the timescale I\'m going to get back to you; if it\'s any urgent, I\'ll phone you back within the hour.
If it\'s not urgent within like 24 hours or 48 hours. Everything else will deal with it within a week. If you set those clear expectations, people know what to expect. And typically most people will be happy as long as they know they\'re being heard; and they\'re going to get responded to.
So having people between you and your clients means that they can actually share those expectations ; when the message comes in. So for example, my comms manager will receive an email from whoever emails me. And she\'ll know that I\'m not going to respond to this for a few days.
So she\'ll send a holding message saying, hey, thanks for your message, Steve will go back to you the next X number of days . Or if it\'s an urgent nature then it will be flagged up in a particular meeting and we\'ll get back to them the same day. We have these clear expectations for communication, so my team know how to communicate that with our clients or people wanting my time. And I know how quickly I need to respond stuff so I don\'t end up sort of dealing with non urgent things in an urgent nature, etc. Which interrupts in my typical set up default diary way of working.
So that\'s it. Putting things in place to allow you to have the time and headspace to do the deep work you need to serve your clients ; while still setting clear expectations allows you to provide the highest level of service, allows your clients to feel heard and listened to, and ensuring they get their questions answered in a reasonable time frame.
That, I believe is how you can still serve them at the highest level. And provide a brilliant level of service without you getting overwhelmed and stressed and having to work overtime just to actually get it all done. That\'s it. Hope you found this helpful. Please do remember to subscribe. And please do share this with any other small business owners you know who want to live with more purpose, presence and freedom. Thank you very much.
VALUABLE RESOURCES
- To access our Internal Communications Policy, go to: https://sys.academy/guides
LINKS TO CONNECT WITH THE HOST
- Podcast: https://www.systemizeyoursuccess.com
- Website: https://systemsandoutsourcing.com/
- Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/systemsandoutsourcing/
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/systemsandoutsourcing/
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- YouTube: https://youtube.com/@drsteveday42
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ABOUT THE HOST
Steve moved to Sweden in 2015 and transformed how he ran his businesses—switching to a fully remote model. A former NHS doctor, with a background in computing and property investing, he now helps overwhelmed business owners systemise and outsource effectively. Through his courses and coaching, Steve teaches how to automate operations and work with affordable virtual assistants, freeing up time and increasing profits. He runs his UK-based businesses remotely with support from a team of UK and Filipino VAs, and is passionate about helping others build scalable, stress-free companies using smart systems and virtual support.
For more articles related to setting clear client expectations and eliminating interruptions, you may also like:
How We Create Outstanding Client Experiences Through Systemized Communication
The Communication Framework That Eliminates Interruptions and Wasted Time