I’m Miserable! – Protecting Your Personal Brand With Boundaries.

Have you ever found yourself miserable in your job or with working on a project for a particular client? Maybe you are dealing with that right now. Let’s face it, when we are miserable with what we are doing, the quality of work goes down and we are on edge all the time.

I know two people that got hired at the same company because they specialized in graphics and web design. That is what they were hired to do and that is what they did… at least in the beginning.

After a while they both found themselves miserable in their jobs. After taking a closer look I realized why they did enjoy working for their employer anymore and why they were on edge and ready to snap.

After examining their daily workload, I saw that they did very little web design, they spent most of their time coding HTML, PHP, and webmaster stuff, which they didn’t not specialize in. They also did a lot of odds and ends that needed to be done, without a lot of focus on doing graphic design.

And Here Is Why That Happened…

I recently ran across an article written by Abby Kerr, someone whom I have seen throughout the Twitterverse and have come to respect. Her article was about another blog post someone else had posted about how boundaries were a bad thing. You can check her post out here.

I bring this up because boundaries, or a lack of them is part of the issue with the two web designers we are talking about. I get how the majority out there don’t like rules and being told what to do. But, there are healthy boundaries in life that we need to appreciate. It’s extremely important to have a well defined personal brand, as well as corporate. When you have a well defined brand, you know what you are about, you know what you specialize in, and you know what you offer to your target market.

When you truly get that, setting boundaries protects your brand from getting watered down or confused. When someone isn’t clear about their brand, it can be very easy for them to end up doing something for a living that makes them miserable. If the two web designers I mentioned had boundaries in place, they would have been able to protect their brand and not allow other tasks that they didn’t specialize in or need to be doing. When you set boundaries, it gives you the control to say “no” to certain projects, tasks, and even to your not so perfect clients.

If you are a lawyer, you are not going to offer your clients dental work. If you are a high class chef, you aren’t going to get talked into being a waiter. If you are a coach or consultant, should you also try to offer SEO and web site services? Sometimes we compromise because we see easy money, but when it comes down to it, we end up not being very happy.

Action Steps:

– Make a list of tasks you are doing in your job or for your clients that you don’t specialize in or find stressful.

– Figure out if these tasks you have taken on can be outsourced or out-tasked to someone else.

– If it is not possible to have someone else do them, then complete those tasks with integrity and quality and then don’t do them ever again.

– Make it very clear to your clients or boss the areas that you specialize in and how you want to provide them the best value as possible. And if you are doing these other “not so great” tasks, you won’t be able to provide them the value you are capable of.

In The Comments:

Are you currently miserable with what you are doing? Tell me what you are going to do about it. And, have you dealt with this in the past, what did you do?

Until next time, keep moving forward!