Just Following Up with Samantha Flynn, Founder of Juniper PR

I know that this is going to sound counterproductive or most advice will probably be go into a room and lock yourself away and ground yourself.

But the reality is, especially as an entrepreneur or somebody that is, even if you're not an entrepreneur, you're at a big box agency or any other agencies, a million different fires, you're running teams.

I have found a lot of success in scheduling my time to think and process and download.

And so what I would recommend is blocking out time and figuring out when your brain is the best.

So for me, I'm an early bird.

I am great.

I'm an early riser.

So 5.30 to 8 in the morning, I get so much done.

I sit here.

I go through my emails.

I think I schedule that time out.

But what I would say is that I try to do that once or twice a week.

But depending on whenever your schedule is, obviously, it's not something that we can do every day.

But my biggest tip would be sit down and schedule your time to process where you're not taking calls, block it off on your calendar, and then protect that time.

Make sure that if clients are coming in, I think in the PR industry, we obviously it's a client industry and we want to jump and say how high.

There's some discernment that needs to happen on what is okay, what needs to happen right now and in this moment, and what can work around my scheduled time.

So that would be my tip would be you have to schedule it in and be intentional about taking that time or else, for me at least, I never really get to process enough clarity and I'm kind of just feeling like I'm in the rat race.

Yeah, I love how you said protect that time because I think it's so easy, even if you do get into the habit of blocking it on your calendar to kind of say, oh, that's an easy one to relinquish, right? Because it feels like free time, but it's really not.

So what other tips would you have for like protecting it? Like what other ways could people just really give themselves permission?

Thank you.

have to train people how to treat you and train clients how to treat you.

And the best way to do that is to stick to your boundaries.

And there is a little bit of a tension when you go from being a senior account executive or not the person that's in charge of creating the schedule, right? If somebody says, these are the client meetings, then you join the client meetings.

But I would say, especially as you're onboarding new clients or sharing your policies and procedures, just really setting the boundaries and the rhythms from the jump.

And it can be in a professional way, in a friendly way, right? But it starts with you and it starts with just being consistent on what clients can expect from you.