The Hidden Cost Of Being Too Rigid

Most business owners know the value of structure. But what happens when the very thing meant to support your business starts holding it back?

In this conversation from Honest Brew, we explore the difference between boundaries that protect your business and rigidity that quietly holds it back. From client communication and time management to personal work styles and growth, we discuss how flexibility can sometimes be the thing that helps your business move forward.

Because structure should be your launching pad, not your cage.

A candid conversation between three seasoned business women who've been in the trenches of entrepreneurship. We bridge the gap between the glamorous just market and sell advice and the reality of what it takes to build a sustainable business. While most business content focuses on marketing, branding, OR operations in isolation, we bring all three worlds together. Because your brand culture needs to live in every system you create, your operations need to support your brand promise, and your marketing needs the infrastructure to deliver on what it sells.

We're here for the solopreneurs ready to grow beyond themselves, the partnership survivors rebuilding stronger, and anyone tired of business advice that treats branding, marketing, and operations as separate planets when they're part of one ecosystem.

HOSTS

Cheale Villa, Visual Caffeine, visualcaffeine.com / Monique Johnson, MoJo Design, ...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

We talk a lot in this show about building systems, creating consistency, and having a process. And all of that is true, but here's the thing, but what nobody tells you is rigidity dress up as discipline is one of the quietest ways a business stalls. Today we're getting into the tension between holding the line and knowing when the line needs to be moved. Because both matter. And getting them confused is costing people real time and real money. The last 28 years, my experience with many small business owners and solo business owners was yes, they were trying to have really beautiful boundaries, but sometimes they were at the detriment of their business. So give you an example here. Somebody I know that they weren't actually a client of mine, they, but they complained about how their business was really not moving forward. But they refused to give their mobile number to clients. They they had horribly rigid ways that, I mean, super narrow, rigid ways that people can even communicate them and they would only respond in a very narrow window of time. Now, I will say, I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but this was a very young entrepreneur. And I think that they were really trying to live in the self-care and boundaries. They kind of took it too far. So if any of this is resonating with you or you're concerned that your business slowdown or not moving forward much could be your own rigidity, this is a topic for you. So let's brew on this. All right, there is a difference between rigidity that protects you and rigidity that suffocates you. I would love to hear from you, ladies on what this experience is for you and how you differentiate it. Man, I thought Sarah would be chopping at the bit for this one.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Well, I do. I personally will not give my number to clients. I won't.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

I didn't mean to criticize you.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

I am not offended. I personally don't. However, I have things like Slack or Vox or like another way where it feels more intimate than just send me an email or book a call with me. Like I do want that flexibility of you could type to me, you could send a screenshot, screen record a video. Like that just helps me have balance between my personal life and business life. And I feel where I've gone too rigid before is only forcing myself to work Monday through Friday. And I will give my give you guys context. I am not married yet. I don't have kids. I live in an apartment. So I have a lot more flexibility than people who say have kids, have other responsibilities. And the reason that was really rigid is I was thinking as a nine to fiver instead of an entrepreneur. I wanted indigo elephant because I wanted freedom. So why was I boxing myself into you can only work these hours? You can only work these days. And once I let myself realize that, well, I am creating freedom, which means if I want to take a random Wednesday off and then work Saturday, I can.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

And so I feel like a lot of my boundaries actually came is around time and time management, is another great example where you will see people where they're like, have everything scheduled in your calendar, everything time blocked. Me a couple of years ago, that created a lot of stress for me. I felt boxed in. I'm like, once if I don't want to do this, like can I even move it? Whereas now I do have pretty much everything scheduled, like my workouts, my lunch, when I do client work, when I do indigo elephant work, because it's helping me think less. I'm not having decision fatigue of what I should be doing. I'm actually getting to audit what am I spending my time on, what's most valuable for me. And if it's in my calendar, it helps my brain be like, girl, you have all the time. Don't worry. You don't get to it, you just move it to a next day, or maybe you shift how you see it and your brain will do it. It's really about flexible structure.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

And I know we've talked about this in the past, but it is like, I think, I think this was a Sarah quote. The it was like fluid, what did she call it? Fluid, fluid calendar, fluid something. I don't it the concept of it was so embedded in my brain after that. I mean, that's basically is a description of how I roll as well. I used to also be in the mindset of nine to five. I came from working full time for many years. And then when I um transitioned into being a contractor and now solopreneur, I was like, I have to work nine to five. I gotta get it all in. And it was just that mindset. And it took me years to get myself out of that thought. And now, you know, I used to at the time I used to feel guilty if I like on a walk in the middle of the day. Yeah. Now I feel like those things that are important to me, maybe going on a walk in the middle of the day, are embedded into my calendar. It's not like, oh, this is a nice to have. This is like part of my work week. And if taking the hour on a Wednesday to, you know, clear my mind, if that means that I then have to work another hour at night, I'll do it. I'll do it until I feel it's I'm comfortable with the amount of work that I achieved that day. But I also feel moving it to another day is not the end of the world. I mean, there's some things that you're like, I have this goal. By the end of the day, I need to get this proposal out. I told them that's when I'm gonna send it and I'm going to send it. Those are boundaries that you, you know, you kind of like set those for yourself. That's my goal. But if it's something like, you know, um, you know, I wanted to get this postcard design to them, but it's not the end of the world if I send it in the morning instead. So just having that flexibility and um allowing, I think knowing yourself too, knowing what you should be more rigid about versus not. For example, if you know that it's a is a little bit of a slippery slope and you don't have as much self-discipline as you want, then maybe keep yourself a little bit tighter until you get in that rhythm and then allow yourself to, you know, have a little flexibility when you're more comfortable with the goals that you've set for yourself. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 6:48

That does make sense. Because something I do want to add to this too is also just understanding how your brain works. So I lean more towards neurodiversion, neurodivergence, OCD. My fiance has ADHD. So the structure and support he needs may feel rigid to me, but it's so supportive to him and vice versa. And it's come from us understanding like this is how my unique brain works. This is what my unique brain needs to function for me to feel accomplished, for me to feel good at the end of the day. Because I hope for everyone listening or watching that one of your main priorities is that you feel good when you go to bed and you feel excited the next day. If you don't, something's off, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

So true. And I think that um, I think that you have all brought up really good points. And I want to go back to Sarah, you saying you're not sharing your number, but you also countered that with other ways that people can communicate with you. Yes. You know, the example I was giving, that was not the case. It was a narrow way someone could actually get in touch with you. And so we have talked about other episodes of how that, how are you making your customer feel by decisions you're making, by your brand decisions, by your operations? It's like it's at the end of the day, yes, we're building a business that we want to be as satisfied in our lives and and match how our brains work and how we work, but we're selling to somebody that we also have to consider just as much. Um, and what is the experience of that for them? It's about me and you meet me where I am at. And that's what I've experienced with people from the outside with their businesses. Like, you know, it's it's so rigid that it's like, well, I'm not feeling welcome anymore as a class. And that's not a good thing. That's not a good thing. And so I think, you know, we had that, we had an episode where we talked about being the bottleneck. I think this is another way we can be a bottleneck in our business. It's just, it's not really a bottleneck. It's more of it's a we'll just call it the rigidity contagion. Going on that frame. So what it what it looks like from the outside versus how you're framing it as an owner internally. And what does it look like to maybe loosen that up or the things to think about to kind of be able to meet it in the middle?

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Yeah. You know, you just brought up something. I'm just gonna go back for a minute because you just brought up something that I could I just can't resist. I worked with a web developer that was absolutely excellent. His work was meticulous, and he, I mean, it was just perfection every time. However, every single time I said, Hey, can we just hop on a call? Let's just talk instead of like emailing. Never once did he, I've never talked to him. In the the years that I worked with him, he would always make up an excuse why he couldn't talk. There was always some reason. And it just made me feel like, did I say something wrong? It just, it definitely feels like um it's excluding or pushing me off in some way. Um, and this was someone that I hired, you know, and I and I paid him. So it was it was bizarre and I didn't really know how to handle it. Um, but so like that we when you just brought that up, Shell, it really hid home for me because it's just it's it's such an off-putting thing. Like it's what seems like a small thing to one person can be very off-putting to someone else. What since then, I have sort of levels of communication for my clients. And so typically we'll do a lot of email back and forth. And then we have our calls set up on a cadence so that they feel comfortable. Well, I'm meeting with I know what I'm meeting with Monique next. And then if something is a little bit more urgent, they might text me or have um an immediate call, something that's a little bit more urgent. So, and I respect that those different levels of communication, it's still keeping my boundaries. Typically, I don't work on the weekends or at night with client work. I might work for my own self at night or or on the weekends. I'm very clear about those boundaries to my clients. Like, hey, if there's some crazy fire drill, like yes, I will, I will take care of it for you. But generally speaking, I don't work on the weekends or at night. Um, but just having that that layers of communication. So almost like the the levels, which one is more urgent versus not, and then being really clear to clients and knowing that they can, you know, they can always reach me and I'm there to guide them. There just has to be some kind of boundaries because that's life.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah. Yeah. I always establish boundaries with potential clients right in the proposal of this is how you can reach me, this is why I'm available. Just because I do want them, I want to train them to respect my time and expertise. I feel like when I was more loosey-goosey with it, if people could get an inch from me, they would start taking miles from me. And so even though I have those hard and fast boundaries, there have been times where I will maybe do something out of my skill set to help ease a crisis. I had one where a client launch didn't go well. Part of it was the tech, part of it was a mistake on my end. So I was like, hey, you know what? Let me draft off a version of sales emails that we can send out. You just edit them and then I will schedule them. I made it very clear I am doing this as a one-time thing. However, I wanted to go that extra step because they hired me to provide them with relief and support. And that is how I can do it, even though it's a bit outside of the scope. I still wanted to see something successful and show them, hey, I will go above and beyond to support you within reason. If it becomes consistent, then we need to, then we need to talk. I need to be compensated differently then. So that's where it's kind of I am here to be of service, to provide that relief and support for clients. And I feel if I was like, oh, like that's shit out of luck, like I don't do that, I may have lost that client. But because I had this skill set from my past experience, I was like, you know what? Screw it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna make sure that XYZ happens, doesn't happen again. And they really appreciated it. And they were like, you know what, we actually want you to do more for us.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Yeah. And that points your value too of integrity. Like you're human and we all make mistakes or or things happen. Maybe something happened out of order and you weren't, you know, prepared for it or whatever happened, but you fixed the problem. And that's what they're gonna remember, not that something got messed up.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Well, and I think that there is a in that ultimately what I hear is uh being clear is kind, being unclear is unkind. So communication is is the like the backbone to all of this. Early on, it was kind of like, oh, my client should read my mind. Like but no, like the stating these things is a good thing. Um, it sets up expectations versus leaving people in kind of elusiveness. So before we wrap up here, I want to point to a couple things. We have an email list that you can join, and some of our episodes have goodies that come from them. And so you will receive emails when those goodies are related to an episode if you are on that list. And the reason I'm stating this is not to just pitch this, but it's actually what I'm about to take you through is something that I really think would be a great thing for you to receive in uh email that you can reference just to kind of guide you through um this navigation, I should say guide you through this world of boundaries versus being too rigid. So the places that you should be rigid, you should be rigid on your core values, your voice, who you are, who you serve, not bending to trends or client pressure in your your ethical standards, your message integration, not chasing every platform just because a competitor did. Clients experience standards, payment terms, scope boundaries, um, and the things that protect your business and your team. So the litmus test in this is this serving my business or protecting my ego and fear? And I think that that's a really good question to ask. The other sections um that are going to be included in this download is also where you should be flexible. And I'll just give a couple of them because we are limited on time. We do we want to value your time for listening, is how you express your identity, tactics, algorithm changes, audience change, holding on to strategy that stopped working isn't loyal, isn't loyalty? It's avoidance, processes that made sense at 100K and don't make any sense at 400k. And the pivot question to this one is is this still working or am I just comfortable with it? And what happens when your rigid brand meets your flexible market? What happens when your operations is so locked in that your marketing team can't move fast enough? With all of this, I do hope that this is even giving you a place to go. And this, we said earlier, it's an evolution. We've all been in business for a very long time. And it's really about awareness of where you are right now and what are the small steps that you can take from here. So write down five things that you call non-negotiable in your business. And then honestly ask if each one is protecting a vision or protecting a comfort zone. That's your over today. And I'm gonna leave you all with a quote before we go into last sieves. Structure should be your launching pad, not your cage. The businesses that grow aren't the ones with the most rules. They're the ones that know which rules are sacred and which rules just need to breathe. And with that, last six.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

With this episode, I hope you take away from us that you have every right to have boundaries and you have every right to protect those boundaries. But the same grace that you would want someone to give you if you're late, if a crisis happens, if you forget something, you owe that same level of grace to your clients as well. There is a time and a place everywhere. And at the end of the day, I hope you strive for fluid structure because life is going to life and you need to be able to flow with it.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Life is going to life, which means we need a lot of permission for a lot more flexibility. Yes. Rate to have you here. Thank you for listening, and we hope this supports you as much as I think it supported all of us, as always.