When I finally defined and communicated my boundaries, most of my clients stopped feeling difficult. In fact, one even thanked me for having (and upholding) clear boundaries. They knew the expectations, and... they felt more confident in upholding their own.

If we don't help the systems that run our business evolve with us, then we become the system. Every process lives in our head, every handoff requires our involvement, and suddenly we're the bottleneck we were trying to avoid.

Ask yourself: if 10 people reached out this week, what would actually happen? Not in theory — in practice. Who responds, when, how? Where does someone go once they've expressed interest? What determines whether they move forward or quietly disappear?

You pick a platform, spend a weekend setting it up, and three months later it's collecting dust because it never quite clicked. The tool gets the blame. But usually the problem was that there wasn't a clear process to put inside it in the first place.

Most people start with the tool. They compare features, watch demos, read reviews. Then they set it up, use it for two weeks, and watch it become another digital graveyard.

The problem is that we're usually operating from the inside of the bottle when we're trying to read the label. You're too close to your own business to see exactly what the gap is — so you can't name what you actually need from a tool.

A tool sounds like the answer. It's tangible. You can sign up today. You can watch a tutorial and feel like you're making progress. But starting with the tool is backwards.