 Do you find yourself answering questions from audience members? They message you through, I don't know, Instagram, Facebook, email, or other ways. And you maybe feel obligated to respond to them. You're a nice person. So of course, naturally, you want to respond in a kind and helpful way. And maybe you do. And then you start to wonder, oh, I'm spending quite a bit of time and energy doing this. Is it leading to my business? You know, because, well, there are unlimited numbers of people in the world who want to pick your brain for free. And so, first of all, before I say anything, I really look forward to seeing your opinion about this. Those of you who have been in this kind of situation where you start to answer questions and you like, oh, it's a good use of my business time. If you're doing as a volunteer, that's wonderful, you know, you're doing good in the world, volunteering your energy without any expectation of return. And often without no return, that's expected at all, not in this life anyway. But when it comes to your business strategy, is it a good idea to do so? So, you know, what's interesting about this is that I have noticed that as I've grown my business and as I have somehow almost invisibly, so let me say, somehow I am invisibly communicating my boundaries. And so I actually get fewer requests for picking my brain for free than ever before. And yet I have more sales of my courses and programs than ever before as well. So whatever business strategy I'm using is working. Now, what I don't do, some people like they, when you message them and you get a, you know, robot answering back saying, oh, if you want to engage with George, please do this or please do that. I don't, I don't have any autoresponders, not on my email, which I know he's a heck out of me, folks, please stop, please stop all the autoresponders on your emails. Okay. It's like I email someone and then it's like they get something back, oh, you know, due to my, I check email 9am and 4pm each day. I'm like, BS, stop. That's, that's really silly. And it like clogs, clogs up everyone's inbox and it just makes me annoyed. It makes everyone annoyed. You know, makes more people annoyed than somehow making you seem credible and organized. BS, I'm more organized than you are and I don't have those kinds of autoresponders, right. Sorry, maybe some of you are more organized than me. Please teach me, but I'm pretty darn organized for someone with my, you know, with, with, with what's on my plate. So, I don't have those things. And yet, I'll tell you why I think my boundaries are strong. There may be some kind of law of attraction visible vibrations going out. I don't know. I'll set that aside as a possibility. I think it's because I promote my services, my offerings often. It's a weird thing to say that the more often and the more confidently you promote your stuff, the more your audience understands your boundaries. If you're not promoting on a frequently basis and you don't sound confident in your promotions, you use all kinds of marketing shenanigans. Well, then, you know, if there's an invisible sense of this person's it's this person's insecure. So, and it's a weird thing. It's like the more confident you are the more people respect your boundaries, right. The more insecure you are the more people just stomp on your boundaries and you don't know where your time and energy went. And so, the other thing that that might be helpful is on my orientation course. And I only put this this particular segment I'm going to show you on screen here. Let me go ahead and show you on the screen here. So on my course platform, I have this thing called watch the orientation videos. And one of my first orientation segments is basically don't email me. I don't like to answer questions via email when I answer questions I wanted to help multiple people not just you. You're not a one on one client. If you're one on one client obviously you're paying me just to help you. But if you're not a one on one client you're paying me to answer a question that helps a bunch of people, including a course a group member whatever it is right so for example, I say ways I dislike and ways I like for you to ask me questions. Right and so here and by the way I'm showing you this and I'll put this link below. Below this video as well I'm going to put this video on on YouTube so I'm further setting my boundaries with all of you YouTubers and whoever's watching this later. So basically, you know ways I dislike getting questions again private messaging and if I'm only answering you I'm, I'm not making great use of my time because I could be saying the same thing to probably 20 people have the same questions you why am I only answering you. Same thing with email. No, right, so instead come to my Q&A calls. You get you got to buy one of my courses right then you get Q&A calls for two months it's good for my business is good for my time. Otherwise, I don't want to, I don't want to do that. And, or comment underneath the lessons you bought a course, you come to any lessons I reply to the lesson that helps everybody, not just you, right, and the members of my, my groups. Obviously, you can ask me questions in a private forum. If I answer it that helps everybody else as well. Right. And so, essentially, again, I'll put this link below and the reason why I put the link below is because I made that particular segment publicly available to everyone who's like checking out my stuff. They might see that segment. Oh yeah, George has strong boundaries. Now, of course it always makes me think am I a jerk. Am I, am I not spiritual. Am I not loving and compassionate. Maybe, maybe. When it comes to my business time. I am a jerk. I don't mind being a jerk. I'm not a jerk. I know I'm whenever I reply back if someone is overstepping my boundaries I reply back nicely, but I reply back firmly, because if you don't do that. You get overwhelmed by the world. It's I think it's actually one of the core lessons for our souls and let's talk about spirituality here, right and being nice and loving and all united with the one. Right. It's like I feel like that's one of the lessons we're learning is limitation and constraints in this life otherwise why would there be constraints and limitations in this life constraints on our time on our energy and yet an onslaught as you get as you learn how to add more value to the world. You get more of this test of more people wanting your time this onslaught I mean I think about, I think about that scene. As always, you know, you could say, Jesus Christ superstar, or you could say the Bible, whichever, whichever scene you prefer. Heal yourselves you know which scene I'm talking about right when when Jesus is overwhelmed by all the lepers. Remember this scene from Jesus Christ superstar if you watch that show or you read the Bible. You know Jesus is overwhelmed by all the lepers and Jesus, like in a moment of frustration or the moment of spiritual spiritual wisdom says heal ourselves. He's kind of like saying I can't deal with all this coming at me the way I'm now I'm getting too religious and preachy here. The thing is coming back to whether or not you're spiritual or not spiritual or whatever you consider yourself. That's one of the core lessons of this life is how do we deal gracefully with constraints on our time on our energy on our attention, and therefore boundaries with our audience. One final question isn't as a good idea to have back and forth private conversations with your with your audience. I would say again, if you're in the volunteering mood and mode and that's okay. Part of my, you know, you could say hey my business has a nonprofit arm and a for profit arm. And my my nonprofit arm means I do spend a couple hours a week responding to people for free without with with no experience expecting them not to buy anything right that's the true charity right it's like you know I'm not hoping one day you'll buy something for me know I expect you not not I'm not going to tell them not to buy something but it's like zero truly zero expectation that they'll ever even benefit my business one bit that your nonprofit arm of your business you may want to carve out some hours for that you could you could you know and then you've got the for profit one is like okay and these times of my of my week and my day. I'm very grateful but firm with my balance and say hey you know what. These are great questions and honestly I love helping clients with this where I love having my group program where I help members with this drama group program by this course for me, come to my Q amp a call, or whatever it is you want to say gracefully. I would love to continue supporting you in this way or I have colleagues and friends I can refer you to. If you want to to engage with them in instead, but I really or or you can think of it as Oh, they're giving you prompts for content. Giving a prompt to kind of like you know that's a really great question. I'm going to put that as one of my ideas when I write a blog post or make a video you're going to see it on my Instagram or on my YouTube or on my LinkedIn or whatever. Thank you. Thank you for this is a very interesting question I have to think about this right so so in the early days before you have a lot of people doing this you could just see them as prompts for content and then, and then later on like me now whenever people email me privately a question. You know, if I can, I will just respond to say you know great question. I wrote about this here. Here's the blog post that that takes me not much time I'm not going to be like, Oh, you know, jerky with them is all come like you and a call when I have I have a if I something in mind I have a video about this or have a blog was I will let them know. But otherwise I'll say hey you know what. Thanks but I, I would like, oh here's my course on this, I go deep into this. Right so anyway hope this is helpful I really do look forward to seeing your opinion below how do you deal with this, whether you have a small audience or large audience I look forward to to hearing about thank you.