Whilst you’re keen to get your aesthetics business up and running, and you might feel (at least initially) that you have to treat everyone who books in with you. Even if your spidey senses are tingling. You really don’t. And the quicker you establish, communicate and enforce your boundaries, the better it is for you and your business.

Knowing your personal and professional boundaries, communicating them clearly to your patients and enforcing them will help you achieve a version of work/life balance that works for you and prevent you from becoming resentful and burnt out.

It sounds easy, right? 

But years of indoctrination in the NHS means that the attitude of servitude persists even once you have branched out on your own with your aesthetics business. There is often a general reluctance, inability and awkwardness regarding setting business boundaries that needs to be overcome in order to not become disillusioned and resentful of your business and patients.

By setting boundaries in your aesthetic business, your expectations and policies are communicated clearly with your patients so that they respect you, your time and expertise.

There are three steps to ensuring your boundaries remain intact:

Know your boundaries

Communicate them clearly

Enforce them consistently

Let’s dive in…

1. Know your Boundaries 

Make a list of the things that might/already annoy you about your business/patients.

It might be answering late night text messages. It might be tardiness. Not confirming appointments. Whatever it is, within this list of things that p*** you off are your business boundaries!

Don’t wait to get irked when people are stomping all over your boundaries…figure them out, communicate them and stick to them.

Some common boundaries for aesthetic practitioners include:

• Availability - when are you available? How do you want people to book in? When are you available to be contacted?

• Communication - how do you want people to contact you? Do you have different channels for booking queries, general enquiries and emergencies?

• Paperwork - how do you want patients to complete their paperwork? Do you want questionnaires to be completed ahead of the appointment? Or are you happy for this to be done in clinic?

• Late cancellations & no shows - what will you do when people late cancel or no-show? Will you charge a fee? Or just let it slide?

• Right to refuse treatment - not everyone who books in with you will be suitable for treatment, nor will you wish to treat them…how will you deal with this?

• Discounts & offers - what discounts, if any, are you happy to give? For what reasons? And to whom?

Unfortunately, most aesthetic practitioners only discover a boundary when it’s been crossed one too many times!

2. Communicate your Boundaries Clearly

It’s all well and good knowing what your boundaries are, but if you don’t share them with your patients and potential patients, they’ll unwittingly trample all over them!

To avoid that, you need to communicate your boundaries clearly. Luckily, there are a myriad of ways you can do this:

• Verbally - the most obvious way! Tell them…although it’s helpful to confirm what you say with written information

• Website - have a section of your website devoted to your policies

• Social media - have your policies in an Instagram highlight, set your autoresponders to funnel patients to relevant information, create and pin reels/posts that make your boundaries clear

• Automations - including certain boundaries in your booking flow or confirmation emails ensures patients have the right information at the right time

• Printed materials - printed leaflets handed to patients with relevant information reinforce your boundaries

3. Enforce your Boundaries Consistently

This is where many aesthetic practitioners lose their nerve.

You’ve decided what the boundary is, you’ve communicated this to your patient…then…the patient crosses that boundary and you bottle it!

Worries about losing patients, not getting great feedback or just the hassle of enforcing the boundary sometimes means that practitioners take the route of least resistance and waive the late cancel fee/book the serial late arriver in again/knock £20 off the treatment/allow the patient to arrive without confirming their booking/filling in their forms.

Every boundary not enforced is watering that seed of resentment

The good news is, once you’ve enforced your first boundary, the others come more easily and you’ll realise that actually, your patients were mostly unaware that they were crossing boundaries at all!