Hey, 

Have you ever found yourself torn between a reluctant ‘yes’ standing our ground with a potential relationship-straining ‘no’?

Who said running a business was easy?

Thankfully, I’ve found a two-word phrase that has gotten me out of more pickles than I can count;

Company Policy.

Now, you may be thinking, “Policies? Isn’t that for some corporation?”. But hear me out… Company policies — no matter the size of your agency — have two huge advantages you might not be considering:

1. They establish boundaries. Telling a client ‘no’ is hard — especially for people-pleasers. But policies? They act as your buffer, prevent you from becoming a ‘Yes Man’ and easing the sting of a denied request. They allow you to professionally and tactfully decline requests without it being personal.
2. They eliminate decision fatigue. As business owners, our days are filled with countless decisions. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ we wrestle with chips away at our focus, energy, and productivity. Policies streamline these decisions, and save your mental energy for things that really matter.

If I’ve convinced you that policies are important, then your next question is probably “How?”. Like with most things, I’ve found the simple approach the best:

1. Identify the situations that cause you stress. List the situations that cause you the most stress. Late payments, last-minute changes, clients texting you on the weekend — all of these great starting points.
2. Envision the idea outcome. For each situation, visualize the ideal outcome. What process would make things smoother? What outcome would instantly relieve your anxiety?
3. Turn those outcomes into your policies. Convert these ideal scenarios into your company policies. Keep them clear, concise, and leave no room for imagination.

Here’s an example of how I convey a policy to my client:

“My company policy prevents me from purchasing domains for clients. This ensures you always remain the rightful owner of your online presence. If you’d like, I can provide you with a list of our recommended vendors along with instructions on how to purchase the domain on your own”.

Notice the shift? No disappointment, no added responsibility. Just a professional response that honors both your time and your client's request.

You don’t have to write the entire company policy manual in a day, either. Just take the extra few minutes to tackle your next decision by crafting a policy instead of a one-off response.

Future-you is gonna love it.

The best time to delegate your design work was one year ago. The second-best time is now. Try Deer Designer today! Sponsored

🔥 Inside The Group 

Meta Description rewrites

It's frustrating when Google decides it will make its own meta description for your site (even when you explicitly set one!), but that doesn't stop them. The comments on this post have some great tips on how to avoid it as much as possible.

When you use an unlicensed font

Vicky recently outsourced some work and is now getting harassed for using an unlicensed font. How do you move forward at this point? 

Too old for web design?

I don't think Alex realized the beehive he was shaking with this post — but do you think you'll be doing web design forever? 

Are you using Full Site Editing?

With some major improvements on the horizon for FSE, I polled the group to see how many people are using it currently. The answer... Not a lot 😬 but there are a lot of hot takes in the comments.

$850 domain ransom

Melanie's client let their old web company purchase the domain on their behalf, and now they want $850 to cough it up. If you have any suggestions, drop a comment in this post... And please don't ever do this to your clients 😭 

📰 In Other News 

👉 Test, Build, & Deploy Websites with Ease!

Join us for this live webinar on Friday, July 28th as I interview the founder of InstaWP to learn about all the ways it can improve your workflow and save you time!

Checklist pre-order ends this weekend

If you missed the post or email, I'm doing a pre-sale for a collection of checklists I'm producing. This weekend will be the last chance to grab them at $25.

Award nominations open

The 2023 WP Awards nominations are open (not quite voting on things yet, just nominating things). If you have a favorite WP product, service — or even community — I'm sure a nomination would be appreciated!

🗒 Accessibility Weekly

This week, Amber is talking about PDFs...

PDF Accessibility

You can join in on the conversation about this topic here, or see all our past Accessibility Weekly articles.

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👋 Before You Go

If you're looking to take your CSS game to the next level, Kevin Powell has opened his new course, Beyond CSS, for enrollment.

There are modules on Sass fundamentals, adding Logic to your stylesheets, architecture and build tools, design systems and theming, and scalable solutions with a SSG & headless CMS.

If you're just dipping your toes into CSS, then you could take a look at Jonathan Jernigan's "CSS Made Easy" course, which is also available now!