5 Tips for Setting Boundaries with Your Copywriting Clients

Learn how to set clear boundaries with your clients to lay the groundwork for a happy and long-term working relationship.

 

Ad Agencies and Lack of Boundaries

 

Setting boundaries with your clients is essential for your health and well being. I want to first take it back a little bit and talk about my experience in agencies regarding boundaries. I started my career as an in house Social Media Manager and then I really wanted that ad agency experience so I went over to a digital marketing agency for social media, and then worked as a copywriter for a few years in a couple of other agencies. 

 

My experience working in agencies was not great when it came to boundaries. Everyone’s experience is different – I hope if you are working in an agency that you love your role and experience there, and hope you are being treated well. But my experience was a little bit different. There were no boundaries when I was working in agencies. People were actually rewarded for working around the clock. Answering emails at 2:00 a.m. was recognized and rewarded by the CEO. It was just bonkers. There is also a false sense of urgency that is ingrained in you. Hopefully you are working at an agency that you love, and cheers to you if that’s the case, but it is really common to have this crazy, gas lighting, intense, super masculine experience working at agencies where there are zero boundaries.

 

There are also physically zero boundaries in many cases. A lot of agencies have these cool, hip, open concept, coworking areas. It’s basically just a bunch of tables in a concrete room with Macbooks and Mac computers all over the place. Someone can just roll up next to you, set their laptop down and get you out of your workflow, asking questions. I am a very textbook through and through introvert. So, working in that open concept, no boundary, no comfort of having even a cubicle wall around me and having people literally just wheel up next to me asking questions, just did not fit my workflow. So give me a cubicle all day long. I hated not having a defined space for myself where I could just go and retreat. That is another example of the lack of boundaries in many agencies.

 

But if you are in an agency, try to set yourself some boundaries. I feel I could have been more assertive in setting those boundaries for myself. I could have politely said that I was in the middle of something, and asked them to come back later. If you have the option to include your office hours with coworkers that might help. Maybe tell them that when the little troll doll is up on your desk that means you are in the middle of something and they need to come back later. There are creative solutions I’m sure. You have every right to create a work environment where you are feeling happy and you are thriving in. I would hope that leadership would encourage that because they are going to get a better product out of you that way. 

 

Let Go of Linear Thinking

 

When I was first starting out as a freelancer, I was basically still working from 9-5. I would take a measured lunch break and I would stress myself out if I felt I was taking too many breaks. My coach at the time called me out on this – thank goodness – because WTF? There was no one telling me that I had to work these set hours. I could do whatever I wanted. I could even decide that on Mondays I’m only going to work on building my personal brand and I’m not going to do any client work. Things like that were hard for me to grasp at first, but once you start trying things out and embrace the freedom it really starts to make sense and it feels good. Breaking that schedule is a great way to exercise setting boundaries. If you say you are going to have your CEO Mondays and you aren’t going to do any client work, it’s going to be hard at first. It’s going to be really hard not to jump on those projects or just do this quick thing for them here and there. But letting go of the linear is a great way to start practicing setting boundaries. Another great tip is to challenge yourself to go grocery shopping in the middle of the day on a Wednesday instead of going after work. Being away from your work environment is going to train people that you are not going to be at their beck and call 24/7 and it’s another great boundary setter.

 

Be Intentional with Answering Emails

 

I like to make myself wait to answer emails. What I learned from agency life is that you are supposed to answer emails like they are text messages, meaning immediately. In my opinion, even texts shouldn’t have to be answered right away. It’s so crazy that at this day and age we are available for consumption all the time. Glennon Doyle talks about this on The Skinny Confidential Podcast. It’s true! We are expected to answer a text message we get within seconds. People have access to us and our energy 24/7 and it’s just not natural. This is the first time in the history of ever that has been the case. So, I feel like the more we can control that and be less reactive, the better. 

 

You have control of how and when you are responding to messages and it doesn’t have to be right away. That is being reactive and basically giving someone else your power and letting them know that you are going to take time out of what you had planned and what you were going to create that day or what you were going to accomplish, for them. Being selfish is a selfless act. It really holds to be true when answering emails. Answering emails immediately is going to train your clients that they can expect an immediate response from you and then they’ll get fussy when they don’t hear back right away. Remember that we teach people how to treat us. If you are like me, it’s so tempting to answer right away. I was conditioned that way. And to take it even deeper, as a child I was loved and praised for following all the rules and doing things right and then I carried that into my adult life. It’s still there bigtime and I’m working through it. Although, that is probably a topic for a different blog, but it’s worth mentioning. 

 

An exercise you can do is try and wait 5 minutes, or 15, or 24 hours! Especially if there is something emotionally charged in the email, I definitely encourage you to wait to let it process and just let it sit a little bit. If someone sends you negative feedback, let that $h*t simmer down before you send your response because you are probably going to be in a bubble of emotion. It is pretty vulnerable what we do with our writing, it’s a creative act. We are putting our thoughts and energies onto paper for people and when they come back and tear it apart or ask you to rewrite the whole thing, it can initially be a little hurtful. I encourage you to just let that sit, think about their perspective and where they are coming from, and just don’t respond right away because you are probably going to have a different response 12 -24 hours after you get that email than you would if you answer in haste immediately. 

 

Text Communications

 

In my opinion you should not give out your personal number to clients for text communications. Now this is obviously completely up to you whether you want to make yourself that available to your clients or not, but in my experience it has not been great. This is again teaching people that they have immediate access to us right away. I have done it before and started getting text messages on weekends, late at night, and then multiple messages back to back. Alerts that we receive on our phone or from social media release hormones in our body. That is why our phones are addicting, we get a physical rush and response to certain things we receive. But in this case, these messages began to make me feel a rush of anxiety and I would feel the need to drop whatever I was doing to take care of my client’s needs. A way to avoid this is to not give out your personal phone number. Don’t even open the floodgates of a texting relationship with clients. 

 

This is also tricky now that we live in a world of DM’s as well. I have a few clients that like to DM me on social media, which is fine, but I get to dictate how and when I respond to those. It’s another thing to watch out for. Make sure you plug your energy leaks of where you want to allow people to access you and your energy and when you want that to happen. For me, it is not via text message. I save that for family and friends only and keep me far away from group texts. This is a personal note but I am just not a group text person, it’s probably due to my introvertedness again but it’s just overwhelming to me.

Clear Communication Up Front

 

Lay out how you plan on communicating with your clients from the GET GO. Put it in your contract or welcome letter and say how you communicate and how fast they can expect a response from you. Email is my personal favorite way, but a lot of people don’t like email and they move all their communications off email and onto something like Boxer, or WhatsApp or Slack. But if you set that expectation right away that’s just how it’s going to go and there is no room for discussion anymore. So it’s like, done, that decision is made and now we are moving onto the creativity and projects and fun stuff. So if you spell it out for your client that they can reach you via email and you’ll get back to them within 24 hours or however you want to say it, your client will know exactly what to expect and they won’t freak out when you don’t respond within 30 seconds. They will chill out and wait to hear from you the next day and everyone moves on with their lives.

 

Set Energetic Boundaries

 

Keep things easy, breezy and fun to protect your energetic boundaries. One time, I was writing for a political candidate and I was using a subject line saying that a certain person endorsed this other person. It wasn’t true and that is a big deal in politics. The word “endorsed” is very weighted and it means a lot more than I realized, I just thought it sounded good. This person was not officially endorsing them because that means more in politics, it means they always have to be on their team no matter what, which wasn’t the case. But they can still support them without endorsing them. So, it was a major problem, but how I reacted was in my court. Agency Amy would have been crying, freaking out, having a panic attack that my client came back saying we cannot use this word, etc. But Freelance Amy kept her $h*t together and kept it easy breezy and said Oops here is a quick fix and that was that. 

 

Leading the way with your response and where your energy is, is going to keep things on a more even keel. If there is a mistake, typo or something like that, it is never the end of the world. But you can understand why a client would be frustrated or worried. They hired you because they don’t like writing and don’t know anything about content or digital marketing. So maybe they don’t know that it is an easy quick fix. They are also paying you and want to make sure their product is to the highest quality it can be. So, we can understand where they are coming from but you just want to keep everything kind of chill and mellow. And when you model that behavior to your client, they are going to chill out too. They are also going to trust your work more. They are going to know that no matter what, they are in good hands because you are going to keep it together, keep it cool, calm, and collected, and everything is going to work out fine. That is just peace of mind. Peace of mind feels so good for your client to know that their business is in really good hands. The copy is in your hands and they are going to love working with you even more when you keep things positive and calm. Not boring and sleepy, still get excited and celebrate and do all those things, but we just want to not encourage the frantic urgency that leaks through from agency experiences and a lot of corporate culture in general. Keep it light and fun! 

 

It’s also not our job to dictate what someone else thinks of us. I had a question recently about how to handle feeling “mean” when you are setting these boundaries. I totally get that and I’m a huge people pleaser. I actually like to say I am a recovering people pleaser. But, being selfish is actually the most selfless thing you can do. If we get too people pleasy, we’re going to start feeling resentful, start over promising things, and then not be able to deliver them. We’ll start letting people down and rushing our work. And then that can have an impact on both ourselves and the service we are providing. So, again, being “selfish” saying what you mean, saying, what you think, being super super honest is key. If you can’t get to something within a week, be honest about it. You are not going to be “mean” by doing this. It’s meaner to sugar coat things and push the reality of what your calendar looks like, and then let people down. That’s much worse than sending a straight forward email explaining you are not available to correct this email header within an hour of them sending you the request, or whatever the case may be. It’s going to be much more respectful of their time and your time to just be straightforward and honest about how you expect to be treated and then everyone will know and we’ll all keep moving forward. It just works out better for all. 

 

Find Joy by Setting Boundaries

 

The best advice I can give for setting boundaries, is to go little by little and see what happens. Try to wait those lengths of time to respond to that email, and then see what happens. You are going to find out that 99% of the time it’s fine, it’s all good, and you might even feel better about the response you were able to give by waiting a little bit longer. Test out sending your availability and response times in your welcome letter, and just see what happens. Test out breaking your linear thinking by going grocery shopping in the middle of the week, or spending one day a week on just your business, take a whole friday off and just see how that feels. Once you realize how great it is and how you feel from it, and then once you are feeling high vibey and good, you’re going to notice magical things start to roll your way as well. Our one job here on this Earth is to feel joy right? So, it’s really cool to see what happens when you start putting yourself first by setting these boundaries with your clients. It snowballs into your world around you really being brighter, happier and more abundant. All those things that you want really start within you. This is true as a freelancer and for really in any role in life. That is one of the reasons I know I left “working for other people” was to have that freedom. I encourage you to start taking those little steps, see how it feels, see what starts coming your way and let me know how it goes! I hope you found these tips helpful, shout them out on social and tag me if you did. Thank you so much for being here and reading. Stay well, stay safe, stay happy and cheers to you for making these motions to better yourself and your work environment. 

 

I don’t have anyone in particular to recommend you check out this time, because I’ve just been watching a lot of The Food Network and HGTV. However, I would like to share something that I have learned from mistakes I have made. I have spent money on people who I didn’t do the proper research on and realize they stand for things that I am against, like certain social issues and things like that. I just encourage you to do research on who you spend money with. These people are industry leaders in the online digital marketing space and a little bit of spirituality, and it came to be through some simple research that they support causes and people that I do not support. Make sure you do your own research on who you spend money on. The dollar is one of our most powerful forms of protest, so I just think that we need to use them wisely.

 

Let’s connect in some other places! I have a Facebook group that is super fun with tons of awesome ladies in there. It is called the Copywriting Girls Club. You can connect with other copywriters both in agencies and freelancers. And there are also people that write copy for their business. We give each other feedback, tips, advice, support and collaborate, and all that fun stuff. So hop on in there HERE.

 

Come find me on Instagram as well and connect with me HERE.

 

I also just started my A18 Media account which is mainly my portfolio page. Connect with me there and you can see some of my work.

 

And if you want some tips on how to repurpose your content, like take a blog post, for example, and use it all over your different social media channels, I have a Spread Your Magic Cheat Sheet. You can grab that for free HERE.

 

Want to connect with other passionate female copywriters, grow your network to get new leads, improve your craft as a writer, and have a safe space to vent about clients? Join us in the Copywriting Girls Club! It’s our private girl gang on Facebook, and we would love to have you in there to share your zone of genius.

 

And if you’re looking for even deeper support in expanding your freelance copywriting business, making more money, working less hours, and filling up your roster with clients you LOVE, the Freelance Flow Mastermind could be a great fit. Learn more HERE.