93. Stop Client Emergencies From Hijacking Your Strategic Business Time as a DFY Online Service Provider

You've blocked Friday afternoon for CEO time. No client calls, no urgent requests—just you, your laptop, and that business strategy you've been putting off for weeks. Then your phone buzzes with a Slack notification: "Can you fix this ASAP?" Your CEO time is gone again.

If you've ever felt the crushing disappointment of having your strategic thinking time hijacked by someone else's emergency, this episode is for you. It's not that you're bad at time management—your business is structured to pull you into reactive mode every single time you try to think strategically.

In this episode, I share the story of Anna, a virtual assistant and homeschooling mom who transformed from feeling like she had six bosses to becoming the CEO of her own business using one simple boundary shift: protected Monday CEO half-days.

Key Points Covered:

✨ Why your business structure rewards reactive behavior over strategic thinking

✨ The hidden cost of constant context switching on your productivity (hint: it takes 23 minutes to refocus after each interruption)

✨ How to define what truly constitutes an emergency in your business

✨ The 3-step CEO Time Shield you can implement this week

✨ The exact script to communicate new boundaries without losing clients

✨ Why protecting CEO time attracts better clients who respect your expertise

Anna's Results:

• Launched her first email marketing campaign in months within 3 weeks
• Created the framework for her new core offer after putting it off for over a year
• Reduced working hours by 6 hours per week
• Raised rates by 40% and launched a fully booked core offer within 6 months

If you're tired of watching your business dreams get pushed to "tomorrow" because today is always too chaotic, this episode will show you how to finally reclaim your strategic thinking time.

Challenge: Pick one 90-minute time block this week, turn off all notifications, and work on one strategic project for your business. That might just be the beginning of finally feeling like the CEO of your own business.

💫 Ready to stop being everyone's emergency responder? DM me "EXPANSION" to learn how we can create boundaries that actually stick.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
• 1:10 The Struggle of Balancing CEO Time
• 2:26 Transforming Your Business with Boundaries
• 6:52 Implementing the CEO Time Shield

Transcript

[00:00:00] Introduction and Episode Overview

[00:00:00] Andrea Elibero: Andrea here, your host and passionate business coach and scaling strategist for soulful service providers and coaches. Welcome to another episode of Solepreneur Scaling Stories. Have you ever wanted to look behind the curtain of your fellow entrepreneur's business to see what actually went into scaling it?

[00:00:22] Well, you are in for a treat 'cause that's exactly what we are doing here. In each episode, we will be uncovering the truth of the lessons and the stories behind what it truly takes for sold entrepreneurs to scale their businesses intentionally. I'm hoping that their stories will help you to unlock the true potential of your business so you can create your own soulful, abundant, and aligned laptop lifestyle through intentional scaling.

[00:00:46] So whether you're just starting out on your scaling journey or you're a seasoned entrepreneur seeking inspiration, this episode has something incredible in store for you. Are you ready to rise, grow, and create a business that fully supports your dream life? Well, let's dive in. [00:01:00] Before we begin, make sure to hit that subscribe buttons.

[00:01:03] You never miss an empowering episode filled with real stories and soulful insights.

[00:01:10] The Struggle of Balancing CEO Time

[00:01:10] Andrea Elibero: So you have finally done it. You blocked out Friday afternoon for CEO time. No client calls, no urgent requests, just you, your laptop, your jasmine green tea, and that business strategy that you have been putting off doing for weeks. You're actually excited about this. You're gonna map out your Q2 marketing plan, maybe even draft up the framework for that premium package that you've been thinking about.

[00:01:37] And your phone buzzes. Oh, there's a slack notification. Hey, the checkout link on this course page isn't working, and we launch in two hours. Can you fix this? ASAP? Your stomach drops. You know this is going to take at least an hour to troubleshoot suddenly your CEO time. The time you desperately need to actually grow your business is [00:02:00] gone again.

[00:02:02] If you've ever felt that crushing disappointment of having your strategic thinking time hijacked by somebody else's emergency, this episode is for you. Because it's not that you're bad at time management. It's not that you don't care about growing your business, it's that your business is structured to pull you into reactive mode every single time.

[00:02:23] You try to think strategically instead. 

[00:02:26] Transforming Your Business with Boundaries

[00:02:26] Andrea Elibero: So today I am sharing why client emergencies always seem to happen during this protected CEO time and the simple boundary shift. That one of my clients used to finally protect her strategic thinking time, even as a homeschooling mom with a really, really demanding schedule.

[00:02:44] So this realization hit me when I was working with, we'll call her Anna, a virtual assistant who homeschools her three kids. When we first started working together, she told me something that I honestly hear a lot. She said, I have these ideas for marketing my business, but I literally never have uninterrupted time [00:03:00] to actually sit down and put them into practice to even think about them further, anything like that.

[00:03:05] Because every single day something comes up with a client that needs immediate attention.

[00:03:12] Now, Anna wasn't new. She's been in business for two years. She had good clients, a steady income, around $4,000 a month or so, and at the same time, she felt like she was really running in place. She said, I know I need to be marketing myself consistently, but I can't even find the time to plan what that would look like, let alone actually do it.

[00:03:33] Does this sound familiar to you? The breaking point for her came when she tried to work on her website copy during her kids' quiet time. That sacred 90 minutes when homeschooling parents actually get to think, and she spent the entire time instead dealing with a client's Instagram scheduler malfunction.

[00:03:52] On our call, she said to me, I am working harder than ever, but my business isn't actually growing. I'm just [00:04:00] maintaining everybody else's business while mine stays stuck. So here's what's really happening. When your CEO time keeps getting interrupted and why willpower alone is not going to fix it. Your business is actually structured.

[00:04:15] Um, that's a lie. Your business structure rewards reactive behavior. So think about it. When you drop everything to fix that broken link, what happens? Your client is grateful. They tell you you're amazing, and you feel needed and valuable. When you protect your CEO time and let that quote unquote emergency wait until tomorrow, silence, or worse, maybe you get a passive aggressive message, oh, I guess I'll figure it out myself.

[00:04:42] Something like that. Your business has accidentally trained both you and your clients that being reactive gets rewarded while being strategic actually gets ignored. The other thing is that you're treating all requests as. Equal urgency, a broken [00:05:00] checkout link two hours before launch. That actually is urgent.

[00:05:03] A typo and a blog post that publishes next week, not an urgent request. When everything comes to you through the same channel, whether it be slack, email, or text at the same time, your brain can't tell the difference between these things. Every notification feels like an emergency, so we respond to everything like an emergency.

[00:05:22] This is natural. Anna had told me that I realized I was treating a request to schedule a social media post with the same urgency as a website being down. No wonder that I felt frantic all of the time. Now, here is a big one. You don't have protected communication boundaries. Most VAs and O OBMs that I know are available for communication all day every day.

[00:05:46] Your clients can reach you at 7:00 AM with some random thought at noon during your focused work time at 9:00 PM when you're trying to spend time with your family. Okay. Without communication boundaries, every moment becomes fair game for interruption, including [00:06:00] your CEO time. So here's what, in our conversation, Anna eventually realized, she said, I kept wondering why I could never think strategically, but how could I?

[00:06:10] My brain was always in putting out fire helper mode, waiting for the next request. In addition to this, there's also a cost of constant context switching. There is research from the University of California, uh, Irvine that shows that it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption.

[00:06:31] So when you're deep in strategic thinking about your Q2 marketing plan and that slack notification comes in,

[00:06:37] even if you ignore it, your productivity is now shot. Your brain is now split between what was I working on and what if this is really urgent. So it really pulls you out of what you were doing, and that's why even a quick message can derail your entire CEO session.

[00:06:52] Implementing the CEO Time Shield

[00:06:52] Andrea Elibero: So here is how Anna completely transformed her ability to think strategically without working more hours or losing any [00:07:00] clients. And it was her Monday, CEO, half day. So here are the steps we went through. Step one was that she defined what true urgency means to her. So we sat down and created a clear definition of what actually constitutes an emergency in her business for her clients, right?

[00:07:18] Their website's completely down. A payment processing link is broken during a launch. An email system is not working during a campaign, things like that. Anything else important but not urgent? Anna had said after this that once I had this list, I realized 90% of what felt urgent to me was actually just immediate.

[00:07:37] And there is a difference after defining what urgency actually is. In step two, we created protected Monday, CEO half days. Anna carved out every Monday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM as sacred. CEO time. This wasn't random at all. She chose Monday because one, her kids had activities in childcare that morning.

[00:07:59] It [00:08:00] was before clients expected immediate responses for the week. It gave her a strategic start to each week instead of diving straight into reactive mode, and she felt the freshest at this time. She tried previously to do it on Fridays, but by Friday she was beat and she did not have anything in her to like really give it her all to her own business.

[00:08:21] So during these four hours, she was completely unavailable for non-emergency client communication. Everything was silenced. She didn't have anything with her, and this was her time. And step three of this, which is really important, is communication office hours. So instead of being available all day, every day for immediate responses to client messages, Anna created specific windows, and this was at 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM daily.

[00:08:46] That's when she went in and responded to all of her clients. That's it. She batched all non-urgent client communication into these windows, and she told her clients for urgent matters Slack me in their emergency slack [00:09:00] channel, and for everything else, I'm going to respond during my communication windows.

[00:09:05] And these are the things that helped really to change her business and gave her her own CEO time back because within three weeks she had launched her first email marketing campaign in months. She created the framework for her new core offer that she had been meaning to develop for over a year. She reduced her total working hours by six hours a week, and she started feeling like the CEO of her business again instead of an employee with six bosses.

[00:09:33] And here's the thing that really surprised her, is that her clients didn't fire her. They actually started respecting her time more. The boundaries made her seem more professional, not less available. Six months later, she had raised her rates by 40% and launched this core offer, and it was booked solid with clients who respected her process from day one.

[00:09:54] So what can we do right now? I wanna give you something that you can implement this week as you're listening to [00:10:00] this. You don't have to completely restructure your business to start protecting your CEO time. You can start with what I call the CEO time shield. Three simple boundaries that create immediate protection for your strategic thinking time.

[00:10:14] So here's what they are. Boundary number one is emergency definition. So right now, or when you are not driving or something, write down your definition of a true emergency in your business. Keep it to three to five situations max. Everything else is important work that can wait for your designated response times, and you're going to communicate this to your clients as well, so everybody's on the same page.

[00:10:40] Everybody knows what to expect. Boundary number two is a protected CEO block. Choose one recurring block each week, even right now if it's just 90 minutes. That is completely sacred for strategic work. Turn off your notifications, even put your phone in another room and guard this time like your business depends on it.

[00:10:58] Because it [00:11:00] does. Boundary number three is communication windows. So instead of responding to client message messages all throughout the day, batch them into specific windows. Start with just two windows daily.

[00:11:13] If something else feels overwhelming or you know, whatever kind of works for you. Find out what works for your schedule and for, you know, how you've been working with your clients, and most importantly, communicate this to your clients.

[00:11:25] Now, how do we do this? Because this can be the scariest part in a lot times. The key here is confidence. Don't apologize for having boundaries present them as part of your professional process. So the thing that we had scripted for Anna. Was that she sent out this message to give you, and also, by the way, this is in her welcome packet in her contract like this is now with new clients that they know this from the jump.

[00:11:50] To give you my best strategic thinking, I check messages during specific windows at 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM for urgent matters. Feel free to message me in our emergency slack channel. [00:12:00] This system allows me to be fully present for your projects when we're working together. Now notice with this that she's not telling them I need time to work in my business.

[00:12:08] I need my CEO time. No. She led with the benefit to them, not her need for her own boundaries and why this works. Protecting your CEO time is strategic. It's not selfish, it's not unprofessional. And this is why, because you make better decisions when you're constantly in reactive mode. You make decisions based on urgency, not.

[00:12:31] Protect A CEO time lets you think long-term, not just about today's crisis. Another thing is that you attract better clients. Clients who respect boundaries from the beginning are usually clients who value strategic thinking over immediate availability. These are clients who will pay premium rates for your expertise, and also they respect you and they understand that you have other things going on and.

[00:12:54] They appreciate that it's really important for you to work on your business as well, and they want you to grow [00:13:00] and succeed. And the third thing is that you actually get to grow your business. The marketing plan, you keep putting off the premium package you've been meaning to create, the rate increases you know you deserve.

[00:13:10] These things only happen when you have protected time to actually work on them. And this is what Anna had said, she said, I realized I was so busy helping everybody else grow their businesses that I never had time to grow my own. And the reason that I wanted to talk about this was that this is not an isolated thing with just my clients.

[00:13:28] I actually saw

[00:13:30] on threads, two different posts in the same week. One of them was talking about how do I, you know, if I have a full client load, how do I get anything else done? How do I do these things I've been wanting to do? And there was a, a plethora of responses from other service providers who had.

[00:13:46] Agreed, and they were going through the same thing, and there was some people said, I don't sleep. I work on the weekends. I do it like it takes me six months to get something out. It was a lot of responses like that. The second thread that I saw was from another [00:14:00] service provider who had said, it is as of this recording, it is July.

[00:14:04] This woman said, I am booked out through October, but I'm not earning enough money to sustain myself and I have no space to change this. What did I do wrong? So you can see that without having any sort of protected time and just really pushing her schedule to, or pushing her hours with her client work to the max, she was not able to actually implement anything that was gonna help her get out of this mess that she's in.

[00:14:36] So that's where the inspiration for this came from. So I really hope that you're able to take some of this information and implement it, because you don't have to be those people that I saw on threads. And if you are listening to this and thinking, well, that sounds amazing, but I don't know if I could actually implement this with my current clients, like those threads people.

[00:14:54] I want you to know that that feeling is exactly why this works. The clients who would be upset by [00:15:00] professional boundaries are usually the ones keeping you stuck. In reactive mode anyways, so creating protected CEO time and actually sticking to it with these things that I just mentioned as the first step is literally the first thing that I work on with every single client inside of my program expansion, because you cannot build.

[00:15:21] A scalable strategic business when you are constantly putting out other people's fires and forgetting about yourself, because in expansion, we don't just create these boundaries, we rebuild your entire business structure. So that strategic thinking time is protected automatically. And as Monday, CEO, half days weren't just about time management at all.

[00:15:42] They were about completely transforming how her business operates and all of the things that we put into place. It only took her a couple of weeks to. Get it all set up. So it's not things that are not, that are impossible to do. They're really, really simple. And if you are tired of [00:16:00] watching your business dreams get pushed to tomorrow because today is always too chaotic and you want support creating the kind of boundaries that actually stick.

[00:16:07] DM Me expansion, my links are below, and I will share exactly how we can work together to make this your reality. So here is what I request for you for your homework for this week. Pick one 90 minute time block this week. Block off all notifications. Put your phone in another room and work on one strategic project for your business.

[00:16:30] It might feel uncomfortable. You might worry about missing something urgent, but I promise you that the world will not end if you are unavailable to respond for just 90 minutes. And that 90 minutes, it might just be the beginning of finally feeling like the CEO of your own business instead of everybody else's emergency responder.

[00:16:50] Anna started with just Monday mornings. That one decision changed everything. So what is your Monday morning going to be? 

[00:16:59] [00:17:00] Thank you so much for joining us today. I really hope you found inspiration and insights from today's episode. You know, scaling your business intentionally and from the inside out is a transformational process, but I'm here to support you every step of the way. Head on over to dancing leaf solutions.com/resources for free tools to help you do just that.

[00:17:24] And thank you again for being a part of the Solepreneur Scaling Stories community. Your presence and dedication to growth inspiring me every day.