Finding Balance in Service-Based Businesses: The Art of Serving Without Overextending

Service-based businesses often thrive on the passion their owners bring to the table. Yet this passion can sometimes tip over into a dangerous cycle of overextending oneself in the pursuit of client satisfaction. Why do service-based business owners do this? What are the key factors that contribute to this unfortunate situation? And how can the business owners who find themselves in this place reestablish a sense of balance between serving their clients and serving their own well-being?

Passion for the Work

What is the reason for your work? How did you decide this is what you wanted to spend your life doing? For service-based business owners, the entire purpose of our work is to meet a need for someone else. They feel an emotional connection with our work and often feel a desire to go above and beyond to take care of our clients. They have unique skills to meet those needs and feel accomplished when they can care for other people.

Client Expectations and Satisfaction

Client satisfaction is a key element of service-based work. The overall success of a service-based business is judged by whether or not the client’s needs are met. Having repeat customers and building business by referrals are their main sources of business growth. Knowing this, it can be easy to fall into a trap of over-commitment and over-service to clients.

Competitive Advantage

Service-based businesses are often in highly competitive markets. Striving to keep up with what everyone else is doing in your niche or trying to make sure they do whatever it takes to keep the client happy and keep them from going elsewhere can lock them into a trap of overwork. Knowing the competitive landscape is important, but it should not come at the cost of personal health.

Fear of Negative Reviews

In a service-based business, appearances matter. They get most of their business through referrals, and people rely heavily on the opinions of others. Their public image can make or break whether or not a client wants to work with them. Sometimes they fall into living in fear that if they don’t do what a client wants, they won’t receive good recommendations, or they might even post a bad review online. The Internet is a cold place, and having blanket negative reviews out there can be intimidating.

Insecurity and Imposter Syndrome

The goal of service-based business owners is to help others, and they may feel guilty for taking care of themselves. Sometimes they want to minimize their personal element, which diminishes them as individuals. They can feel insecure about the value they provide. Once those feelings take over their thoughts, they tend to overcompensate by giving more to clients than what was agreed upon or paid for. 

Lack of Clear Boundaries

Often, service-based business owners do not set or enforce clear boundaries regarding what their service includes. This lack of boundaries can lead to scope creep, where the amount of work continues to grow, often without appropriate compensation.

So what is the solution?

Well, first we need to know our worth and understand our value, and make sure that we truly are being compensated for that. Overwork leads to burnout, and burnout leads to resentment. Resentment is a dangerous place to be when trying to serve others in a business. At that point, we might as well not be working at all. Setting boundaries and understanding that taking care of ourselves and making sure that we are properly compensated and valued is the best way to serve the client. This takes a mindset shift from caring means over serving to caring means doing the right thing and taking care of yourself so that you can better serve the client.