111. 5 Key Ingredients to Make 2025 Your Best Year Yet
Do you want to make 2025 your best year yet in your interior design business? Are you ready to set goals that will stretch you and help you achieve new levels of success?
As we wrap up the current year and look ahead to the next, now is the perfect time to reflect on what worked well, what didn't, and what you want to create moving forward. Goal-setting is an essential practice for any business owner who wants to build something significant that supports them financially, creatively, and fulfills their desire for growth. I can’t wait to share my goal-setting secrets with you this week.
Join me in this episode as I walk you through each of the five key elements of effective goal-setting. You'll learn the most common reason goal-setting falls flat, how to stop working against yourself and create a smooth path forward instead, and my roadmap for making your big goals a reality in 2025.
My annual goal-setting workshop, Create Your 2025 Roadmap, is coming to you soon! Mark your calendars for January 9th and 16th 2025, and click here to register.
If you're interested in working together one-on-one in the fall or winter, now is the time to put your name on the waitlist for private coaching. Click here to secure your spot!
What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
How to leverage what worked well in the previous year to set yourself up for success.
Why understanding what didn't work is critical for adjusting your approach.
The importance of creating a clear, emotionally compelling vision of the future.
How to set specific, tangible goals that give you direction and focus.
The power of breaking your big goal down into a simple, doable quarterly plan.
How to anticipate and plan for obstacles so you can stay on track.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 111. In this one we’re going to be talking about the five key things that really make a difference in achieving your goals next year. Whether you want to have better work/life balance, make more money, move into a studio space or get a project featured in your dream press, you’re going to want to listen in and put these five key ingredients into practice when you set your next big goal for your interior design business.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place. I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you are having an incredible week. As I’m sitting here recording this I’m wrapping out my Friday, this is the last thing I’ll be doing today. And I’m going to be getting packed up to go see Taylor Swift with my daughter.
I am so excited. We’ve never done a trip like this before. And what a trip it will be. So it was pretty fun to be able to surprise her with this experience. And I know it’s going to be one for the books. Or as I hear the new saying is a core memory, we’ll be making some core memories.
Okay, so what I’ve been thinking about lately is goal setting with coming into the end of the year. And I’ve been thinking specifically about what really sets you up for success in achieving your goals. I’ve been reflecting on what works for me, what works for my clients. And today, what I want to share are the five key things that I’ve been noticing. The five key things that you need to do that really make a difference when it comes to achieving or not achieving your goals.
These things that I’m going to be sharing are not complicated, but they are very impactful. You need to have some intention, you need to have some space to create this plan. But when you do, it makes such a difference. And of course, this has been on my mind especially because I’ve been preparing to get the marketing out and spread the word about Create Your 2025 Roadmap, which is the interactive goal setting workshop that I’ve got coming up at the beginning of January.
What we’re going to do in that workshop is you’re going to plan your year with my help. And we’re going to be diving deep into each of the steps that I’m sharing in today’s episode. And I’ll be walking you through it step by step on the call, so you’re not just going to know what to do, you will have actually done it for yourself and for your unique business.
And that’s really where change occurs. And you’ll be able to know that you have a clear path forward in the coming year, which just is such an incredible feeling. So I’ll be sharing more about how we can do that work together at the end of the episode so that you can join me.
The reason why I wanted to talk about these key elements on today’s show is because I think in general, goal setting, or just identifying a goal, doing a vision board, those types of things as a business practice, can be very helpful. It’s one piece of the puzzle. But I think it’s an incomplete way to really move throughout the years in your business if you’re committed to building something significant, that really supports you financially, creatively, and fulfills that desire for growth and evolution that we have as business owners.
And that’s a big part of why I created the roadmap workshop. I wanted to be able to provide you and other clients with a holistic approach to goal setting that is far more effective and also stress reducing because of the clarity it provides. When we feel uncertain or we feel confused about where we’re headed and what could get us there, it is so hard to take action. We’re working against ourselves instead of creating a smooth path forward and feeling like you’re really in the driver’s seat of your interior design business.
So today I’m going to share those five key things you need to hit your goals next year. And like I said, we can work on this together in Create Your 2025 Roadmap, but this episode is also going to give you a great start to this process.
The very first thing you have to do is integrate lessons from the previous year. You want to know what worked well, what supported you, and the actions you took that moved you closer to your goals in the last year, so that you can leverage that information and play to your strengths in the coming year.
There are things that you did well, those are behaviors and habits that you engaged in. There were ways that you showed up, the ways that you talk to yourself and the ways that you engage team members that really supported you and you want to know what those are. Do not let those go unnoticed because they’re going to be a key player in your success the coming year.
You also want to be clear on what didn’t go so well, and you want to understand why. It’s not just knowing what didn’t work, but we have to understand why something didn’t happen. Why it didn’t go the way that we planned. And sometimes this is our best guess, and sometimes we can hit the nail on the head. But we want to keep this judgment free and the self-blame at bay when we’re looking at what didn’t happen or what didn’t work.
And that means when you do that, when you keep that self-judgment and self-blame aside, your why can emerge and can actually become a critical part of your success in the next year in terms of knowing what behaviors to adjust, how to adjust your planning, maybe new support that you need in your business or new skills that you need to learn.
There is so much gold here if you take the time to dig in. It’s that saying, you cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results. And that’s why we have to integrate lessons. We have to figure out what happened and what we’re taking with us from those experiences before moving on.
And also, this is a great time to clear up any negatively framed stories that you’re telling about last year that you do not want to drag into the new year. There’s the facts of what happened, and then there’s the story that you’re telling yourself about those facts, about what you’re capable of, what you can and can’t do, what type of person you are, what’s possible for you.
We want to clear up those stories before we head into the next year so that they’re not stories that are creating mental weight, but are actually empowering you to move forward with confidence. After you’ve integrated the lessons, you need to create a clear vision for the future. You want to paint the picture of the coming year through your imagination and through dreaming bigger, expanding your vision of what is possible for you.
So what you want to do is you want to picture yourself at the end of next year and say, where do I want to see myself and the business? What will be different? What will be the same? Maybe how have you grown as a person or as a leader in your business? You can of course include personal elements of this vision as well.
And I really encourage you to connect to your goal emotionally. Part of doing that is connecting to your why. And if you go back to episode 63, I talk about the two why’s that you need in your business, and that’d be an additional resource for connecting to really that purposeful motivation. And the reason why we need this clear vision is we have to know where we’re going.
I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast. I’m sure you’ll hear it if you just pick an episode. I probably have talked to some extent about how we have to know where we’re aiming, whether that’s a vision, a result we’re headed, who we’re becoming. We have to set that destination and then the route becomes more clear. We could take lots of different paths to getting to that vision, but we want to have the end in mind when we’re making our plans for the coming year.
Once you have a clear vision in place, once you have painted that picture and you’re like, yes, that is what I’m moving towards, that’s when you want to set a specific goal. This is taking your vision and making it more tangible. Specificity is key. Lack of specificity or vague goals is really where I see most goal setting fall flat and means that the goal just simply is not going to happen.
I see this whether it’s planning out your day or it’s something grander like this year long annual planning that we’re talking about today. And that’s because it’s really challenging to work towards something if you don’t know what you’re working towards. This clear vision and the specific goal go hand in hand, it’s a matter of layering in the specificity and tangible outcome that you want to create.
What I recommend for the specific goal is a revenue goal for yourself in the business. And when you start with a revenue goal, then you’re going to flesh it out. You can always work backwards. I love to set a monetary goal because it becomes a very clear filter for how you spend your time and invest your resources in the business.
It never means that money is the only thing that matters to you or that you have a completely transactional business and you’re trying to get something out of your clients. No, it’s not that at all. It’s just giving you a very clear direction and it really informs what your capacity is, how you set your fees, the number of projects you take on, the things you invest in, all of those. It just makes planning for the year so much easier.
So you want to think about, like, what do you want to pay yourself for the year? What do you want to invest in? If you’re bringing in that amount of revenue and you want to pay yourself a certain amount and you want to have certain investments, what does that mean in terms of the number of projects or clients that you’re serving? What does that mean in terms of hours worked?
And you can also get really specific, too, around like, what does work-life balance look like for me? What does my team look like? What does my workday look like? The more specific you can get, both in just that financial goal and also in the vision, it’s so, so helpful again, because it gives you that clear direction.
And if you’re someone who has a lot of resistance to setting a specific goal, or maybe you’re noticing that you want to avoid my suggestion of getting specific, I’m going to do an entire podcast on this topic actually, because it is so common and I see it come up a lot with my clients. So I want to, first of all, just normalize if you have any resistance or you’re noticing that you’ve avoided setting a specific goal in the past. That’s completely normal, and I’ll of course share why that is in an upcoming episode.
There’s lots that I want to say about that. So I’ll just table it for now. If you’re not already subscribed to the podcast, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss that one, because I’m going to be offering you some other perspectives and helping you mentally get on board to set that specific goal for the year.
Once you know what your specific goal is, then you want to make a simple and doable plan. This is where specificity is showing up again. I always say with any type of planning, again, whether that’s planning out your day, your weeks, simple and specific, that’s what you need to focus on. With this step of making a simple and doable plan, this is where you take that big goal, that financial goal, and you break it down into clear projects and steps. You create a roadmap for the year.
I personally like to plan in quarters, identifying the one to three things I’m going to focus on for the quarter that are outside of the normal day to day operations or marketing that I already have set up and running that are going to help me achieve that year-long goal that I’ve set.
There’s a couple of things that I want to note here. The first thing is that I want you to key in also on that word doable. So when you make your plan, when you figure out, okay, so this is what I’m going to focus on in quarter one, I’m going to earmark these projects for quarter two, or maybe quarter three, you want to keep in mind your actual life and those lessons learned from earlier.
So if there was something that came up for you in lessons learned around the planning process or being able to execute, now is a good time to check in again with those lessons and apply them in your planning process. Let’s say last year you completely overestimated what you had capacity for, or you picked really complex projects that actually had so, so many steps, there was no way you could have the brain space to do all of them at once. Let’s learn from that so we don’t repeat that same pattern in the planning for the next year, that’s simply not helpful.
The second thing I want to call out is that I do modify this approach to quarterly planning just a little bit, especially around the new year. When we do the Create Your 2025 Roadmap, we are going to be doing the goal setting process at the beginning of January. And I actually really love to plan that way with doing the planning kind of after I’ve settled into the new year for the first quarter. It gives me some time and space over the time I take off over the holidays to just reset, regroup, have some space to think and dream about what I want to do in the next year in a more spacious way.
However, I also really like to have a plan for when I’m just reentering after time off. What I like to do is have almost a little bit of a supplemental or extended quarterly plan for December, meaning my last quarter of the year plan actually goes through the first couple weeks in January, so that way I know exactly what’s happening and what needs to be done for the business when I come back, and then can really engage in the goal setting process for the next year. Or kind of like creating a mini plan in December for those January items.
So you can approach it a couple different ways, but I really find that it’s nice to come back and plan the year after having had some space and a little time for the last year to settle.
The last thing you need to do that’s really going to make a key difference in achieving your goals for next year is to identify what is going to hold you back. Obstacles are just an inevitable part of the goal setting and goal achievement process. We know there’s going to be obstacles, we know there’s going to be things that don’t go our way or don’t go as planned or as we hoped, and we can do our best to get ahead of these.
We want to know what’s going to potentially hold us back so we can solve for those ahead of time. And many of those things can actually just become part of our planning process. When you’re looking at what’s going to hold you back, I really want you to consider those internal and external obstacles. Internal meaning what are the ways that you self-sabotage or second guess yourself? Or if you have kind of this common excuse loop over why you don’t do things or do things, we want to identify those so we can coach on them and help you get out of your own way from a mindset perspective.
And then there’s those external things like time constraints or just lack of clarity that would be a sign to dial in your plans even more, or even just if something feels hard or you don’t have the skill set. If that’s the case, you could maybe sign up for a little training, you could work with a coach, you could figure out someone who could help. If it’s the time constraints, maybe the solution is you need to say no to certain things that you’ve been saying yes to.
There’s always solutions available to you, but we want to know what the obstacles are so we can put the solutions in place ahead of time, or make a plan to make those solutions happen for us. It’s such a supportive way to go about goal setting. It makes the path ahead much more smooth, and that way when those obstacles that you don’t anticipate pop up, because that happens of course, you at least have cleared the path a little bit for yourself by anticipating some of these challenges ahead of time.
Okay, so those are the five key things that I wanted to share with you today that truly have such a profound impact on your ability to hit your goals in your interior design business. I want to recap them here, and of course you can go back and listen to this episode and go step by step. Or I would love to do this work with you in January in Create Your 2025 Roadmap.
The five things are, number one, integrate the lessons learned. Take a look at what did and didn’t happen and understand why. The second thing is to create that compelling vision. Connect emotionally and through your imagination of where you’re headed and who you’re becoming. The third thing is to set your specific goal. Get very clear on what you’re setting out to achieve, so that way, number four, map out a simple doable plan becomes so much easier. And then number five, identify your obstacles or what’s going to get in the way so you can smooth the path forward for yourself.
When you do these five things, you are just going to have so much more clarity in your business, which is going to lead to more consistent action. Clarity is consistency. When we’re confused, we don’t take action. So this is key. The other thing that happens is you stay focused. You are going to hear about other things you can do, you’re going to listen to podcasts and think, oh, I should do that. But you’re going to already have had this roadmap laid out, and so you’re going to stay focused on your plan and move the needle forward on your commitments.
You’re also going to know what support you need, when you’re going to need that support, and if that support is skills or people. One of the things that I love about approaching goals in this way is that it really helps my mind calm down and stop the spin because I don’t have to do it all at once. I can see how if I take consistent action and I follow my plan, I don’t have to do it all at once. It’s like a mental resting place for my ideas and projects that I know I want to complete, but not right now.
I’ve seen this so many times with myself, I’ve seen this so often with my clients. And I know that when you leverage these five elements in your goal setting process, you are going to be so much more likely to achieve your goals, those goals that are going to have you feeling proud and accomplished and successful at the end of the year.
As I said earlier, I really want to invite you to join me to do this work together with not just me, but also a group of like-minded peers. And that is going to be in Create Your 2025 Roadmap. This is a two-part coaching workshop. It’s going to be interactive, and it includes a guided goal planning session, along with a follow-up group coaching call.
So I’m going to take you through each of these five key elements here that I shared on the podcast, and you’re going to do the work with my support on our planning call, which is going to happen Thursday, January 9th, from 10:30 to 12:30pm Central. And then a week later, we’re going to come together for a group coaching call on January 16th, from 11am to 12pm Central, where you’re going to be able to ask me your questions, get support, learn from your peers, and make sure that you’re feeling really settled in what you’ve got planned for the upcoming year.
Create Your 2025 Roadmap is only $87. And if you want to join us, which I highly recommend that you do, you can go to desicreswell.com/resources and I’ll have the workshop linked on that page for you to easily sign up. Of course, if you have any questions about the workshop, how it works, how to participate if you aren’t going to be able to be there live, I’m more than happy to answer those. You can always send me a DM on Instagram, I’m @desicreswell, I’m more than happy to answer that.
Just so you know, if you can’t make both sessions live, there will be a replay, so not a problem. And you’ll also have the opportunity to send in your questions ahead of time for me to answer them and then you can listen to them in the recording.
All right, that’s what I’ve got for you this week. I will be back next Wednesday with a brand new episode. And until then, I’m wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place. I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you are having an incredible week. As I’m sitting here recording this I’m wrapping out my Friday, this is the last thing I’ll be doing today. And I’m going to be getting packed up to go see Taylor Swift with my daughter.
I am so excited. We’ve never done a trip like this before. And what a trip it will be. So it was pretty fun to be able to surprise her with this experience. And I know it’s going to be one for the books. Or as I hear the new saying is a core memory, we’ll be making some core memories.
Okay, so what I’ve been thinking about lately is goal setting with coming into the end of the year. And I’ve been thinking specifically about what really sets you up for success in achieving your goals. I’ve been reflecting on what works for me, what works for my clients. And today, what I want to share are the five key things that I’ve been noticing. The five key things that you need to do that really make a difference when it comes to achieving or not achieving your goals.
These things that I’m going to be sharing are not complicated, but they are very impactful. You need to have some intention, you need to have some space to create this plan. But when you do, it makes such a difference. And of course, this has been on my mind especially because I’ve been preparing to get the marketing out and spread the word about Create Your 2025 Roadmap, which is the interactive goal setting workshop that I’ve got coming up at the beginning of January.
What we’re going to do in that workshop is you’re going to plan your year with my help. And we’re going to be diving deep into each of the steps that I’m sharing in today’s episode. And I’ll be walking you through it step by step on the call, so you’re not just going to know what to do, you will have actually done it for yourself and for your unique business.
And that’s really where change occurs. And you’ll be able to know that you have a clear path forward in the coming year, which just is such an incredible feeling. So I’ll be sharing more about how we can do that work together at the end of the episode so that you can join me.
The reason why I wanted to talk about these key elements on today’s show is because I think in general, goal setting, or just identifying a goal, doing a vision board, those types of things as a business practice, can be very helpful. It’s one piece of the puzzle. But I think it’s an incomplete way to really move throughout the years in your business if you’re committed to building something significant, that really supports you financially, creatively, and fulfills that desire for growth and evolution that we have as business owners.
And that’s a big part of why I created the roadmap workshop. I wanted to be able to provide you and other clients with a holistic approach to goal setting that is far more effective and also stress reducing because of the clarity it provides. When we feel uncertain or we feel confused about where we’re headed and what could get us there, it is so hard to take action. We’re working against ourselves instead of creating a smooth path forward and feeling like you’re really in the driver’s seat of your interior design business.
So today I’m going to share those five key things you need to hit your goals next year. And like I said, we can work on this together in Create Your 2025 Roadmap, but this episode is also going to give you a great start to this process.
The very first thing you have to do is integrate lessons from the previous year. You want to know what worked well, what supported you, and the actions you took that moved you closer to your goals in the last year, so that you can leverage that information and play to your strengths in the coming year.
There are things that you did well, those are behaviors and habits that you engaged in. There were ways that you showed up, the ways that you talk to yourself and the ways that you engage team members that really supported you and you want to know what those are. Do not let those go unnoticed because they’re going to be a key player in your success the coming year.
You also want to be clear on what didn’t go so well, and you want to understand why. It’s not just knowing what didn’t work, but we have to understand why something didn’t happen. Why it didn’t go the way that we planned. And sometimes this is our best guess, and sometimes we can hit the nail on the head. But we want to keep this judgment free and the self-blame at bay when we’re looking at what didn’t happen or what didn’t work.
And that means when you do that, when you keep that self-judgment and self-blame aside, your why can emerge and can actually become a critical part of your success in the next year in terms of knowing what behaviors to adjust, how to adjust your planning, maybe new support that you need in your business or new skills that you need to learn.
There is so much gold here if you take the time to dig in. It’s that saying, you cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results. And that’s why we have to integrate lessons. We have to figure out what happened and what we’re taking with us from those experiences before moving on.
And also, this is a great time to clear up any negatively framed stories that you’re telling about last year that you do not want to drag into the new year. There’s the facts of what happened, and then there’s the story that you’re telling yourself about those facts, about what you’re capable of, what you can and can’t do, what type of person you are, what’s possible for you.
We want to clear up those stories before we head into the next year so that they’re not stories that are creating mental weight, but are actually empowering you to move forward with confidence. After you’ve integrated the lessons, you need to create a clear vision for the future. You want to paint the picture of the coming year through your imagination and through dreaming bigger, expanding your vision of what is possible for you.
So what you want to do is you want to picture yourself at the end of next year and say, where do I want to see myself and the business? What will be different? What will be the same? Maybe how have you grown as a person or as a leader in your business? You can of course include personal elements of this vision as well.
And I really encourage you to connect to your goal emotionally. Part of doing that is connecting to your why. And if you go back to episode 63, I talk about the two why’s that you need in your business, and that’d be an additional resource for connecting to really that purposeful motivation. And the reason why we need this clear vision is we have to know where we’re going.
I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast. I’m sure you’ll hear it if you just pick an episode. I probably have talked to some extent about how we have to know where we’re aiming, whether that’s a vision, a result we’re headed, who we’re becoming. We have to set that destination and then the route becomes more clear. We could take lots of different paths to getting to that vision, but we want to have the end in mind when we’re making our plans for the coming year.
Once you have a clear vision in place, once you have painted that picture and you’re like, yes, that is what I’m moving towards, that’s when you want to set a specific goal. This is taking your vision and making it more tangible. Specificity is key. Lack of specificity or vague goals is really where I see most goal setting fall flat and means that the goal just simply is not going to happen.
I see this whether it’s planning out your day or it’s something grander like this year long annual planning that we’re talking about today. And that’s because it’s really challenging to work towards something if you don’t know what you’re working towards. This clear vision and the specific goal go hand in hand, it’s a matter of layering in the specificity and tangible outcome that you want to create.
What I recommend for the specific goal is a revenue goal for yourself in the business. And when you start with a revenue goal, then you’re going to flesh it out. You can always work backwards. I love to set a monetary goal because it becomes a very clear filter for how you spend your time and invest your resources in the business.
It never means that money is the only thing that matters to you or that you have a completely transactional business and you’re trying to get something out of your clients. No, it’s not that at all. It’s just giving you a very clear direction and it really informs what your capacity is, how you set your fees, the number of projects you take on, the things you invest in, all of those. It just makes planning for the year so much easier.
So you want to think about, like, what do you want to pay yourself for the year? What do you want to invest in? If you’re bringing in that amount of revenue and you want to pay yourself a certain amount and you want to have certain investments, what does that mean in terms of the number of projects or clients that you’re serving? What does that mean in terms of hours worked?
And you can also get really specific, too, around like, what does work-life balance look like for me? What does my team look like? What does my workday look like? The more specific you can get, both in just that financial goal and also in the vision, it’s so, so helpful again, because it gives you that clear direction.
And if you’re someone who has a lot of resistance to setting a specific goal, or maybe you’re noticing that you want to avoid my suggestion of getting specific, I’m going to do an entire podcast on this topic actually, because it is so common and I see it come up a lot with my clients. So I want to, first of all, just normalize if you have any resistance or you’re noticing that you’ve avoided setting a specific goal in the past. That’s completely normal, and I’ll of course share why that is in an upcoming episode.
There’s lots that I want to say about that. So I’ll just table it for now. If you’re not already subscribed to the podcast, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss that one, because I’m going to be offering you some other perspectives and helping you mentally get on board to set that specific goal for the year.
Once you know what your specific goal is, then you want to make a simple and doable plan. This is where specificity is showing up again. I always say with any type of planning, again, whether that’s planning out your day, your weeks, simple and specific, that’s what you need to focus on. With this step of making a simple and doable plan, this is where you take that big goal, that financial goal, and you break it down into clear projects and steps. You create a roadmap for the year.
I personally like to plan in quarters, identifying the one to three things I’m going to focus on for the quarter that are outside of the normal day to day operations or marketing that I already have set up and running that are going to help me achieve that year-long goal that I’ve set.
There’s a couple of things that I want to note here. The first thing is that I want you to key in also on that word doable. So when you make your plan, when you figure out, okay, so this is what I’m going to focus on in quarter one, I’m going to earmark these projects for quarter two, or maybe quarter three, you want to keep in mind your actual life and those lessons learned from earlier.
So if there was something that came up for you in lessons learned around the planning process or being able to execute, now is a good time to check in again with those lessons and apply them in your planning process. Let’s say last year you completely overestimated what you had capacity for, or you picked really complex projects that actually had so, so many steps, there was no way you could have the brain space to do all of them at once. Let’s learn from that so we don’t repeat that same pattern in the planning for the next year, that’s simply not helpful.
The second thing I want to call out is that I do modify this approach to quarterly planning just a little bit, especially around the new year. When we do the Create Your 2025 Roadmap, we are going to be doing the goal setting process at the beginning of January. And I actually really love to plan that way with doing the planning kind of after I’ve settled into the new year for the first quarter. It gives me some time and space over the time I take off over the holidays to just reset, regroup, have some space to think and dream about what I want to do in the next year in a more spacious way.
However, I also really like to have a plan for when I’m just reentering after time off. What I like to do is have almost a little bit of a supplemental or extended quarterly plan for December, meaning my last quarter of the year plan actually goes through the first couple weeks in January, so that way I know exactly what’s happening and what needs to be done for the business when I come back, and then can really engage in the goal setting process for the next year. Or kind of like creating a mini plan in December for those January items.
So you can approach it a couple different ways, but I really find that it’s nice to come back and plan the year after having had some space and a little time for the last year to settle.
The last thing you need to do that’s really going to make a key difference in achieving your goals for next year is to identify what is going to hold you back. Obstacles are just an inevitable part of the goal setting and goal achievement process. We know there’s going to be obstacles, we know there’s going to be things that don’t go our way or don’t go as planned or as we hoped, and we can do our best to get ahead of these.
We want to know what’s going to potentially hold us back so we can solve for those ahead of time. And many of those things can actually just become part of our planning process. When you’re looking at what’s going to hold you back, I really want you to consider those internal and external obstacles. Internal meaning what are the ways that you self-sabotage or second guess yourself? Or if you have kind of this common excuse loop over why you don’t do things or do things, we want to identify those so we can coach on them and help you get out of your own way from a mindset perspective.
And then there’s those external things like time constraints or just lack of clarity that would be a sign to dial in your plans even more, or even just if something feels hard or you don’t have the skill set. If that’s the case, you could maybe sign up for a little training, you could work with a coach, you could figure out someone who could help. If it’s the time constraints, maybe the solution is you need to say no to certain things that you’ve been saying yes to.
There’s always solutions available to you, but we want to know what the obstacles are so we can put the solutions in place ahead of time, or make a plan to make those solutions happen for us. It’s such a supportive way to go about goal setting. It makes the path ahead much more smooth, and that way when those obstacles that you don’t anticipate pop up, because that happens of course, you at least have cleared the path a little bit for yourself by anticipating some of these challenges ahead of time.
Okay, so those are the five key things that I wanted to share with you today that truly have such a profound impact on your ability to hit your goals in your interior design business. I want to recap them here, and of course you can go back and listen to this episode and go step by step. Or I would love to do this work with you in January in Create Your 2025 Roadmap.
The five things are, number one, integrate the lessons learned. Take a look at what did and didn’t happen and understand why. The second thing is to create that compelling vision. Connect emotionally and through your imagination of where you’re headed and who you’re becoming. The third thing is to set your specific goal. Get very clear on what you’re setting out to achieve, so that way, number four, map out a simple doable plan becomes so much easier. And then number five, identify your obstacles or what’s going to get in the way so you can smooth the path forward for yourself.
When you do these five things, you are just going to have so much more clarity in your business, which is going to lead to more consistent action. Clarity is consistency. When we’re confused, we don’t take action. So this is key. The other thing that happens is you stay focused. You are going to hear about other things you can do, you’re going to listen to podcasts and think, oh, I should do that. But you’re going to already have had this roadmap laid out, and so you’re going to stay focused on your plan and move the needle forward on your commitments.
You’re also going to know what support you need, when you’re going to need that support, and if that support is skills or people. One of the things that I love about approaching goals in this way is that it really helps my mind calm down and stop the spin because I don’t have to do it all at once. I can see how if I take consistent action and I follow my plan, I don’t have to do it all at once. It’s like a mental resting place for my ideas and projects that I know I want to complete, but not right now.
I’ve seen this so many times with myself, I’ve seen this so often with my clients. And I know that when you leverage these five elements in your goal setting process, you are going to be so much more likely to achieve your goals, those goals that are going to have you feeling proud and accomplished and successful at the end of the year.
As I said earlier, I really want to invite you to join me to do this work together with not just me, but also a group of like-minded peers. And that is going to be in Create Your 2025 Roadmap. This is a two-part coaching workshop. It’s going to be interactive, and it includes a guided goal planning session, along with a follow-up group coaching call.
So I’m going to take you through each of these five key elements here that I shared on the podcast, and you’re going to do the work with my support on our planning call, which is going to happen Thursday, January 9th, from 10:30 to 12:30pm Central. And then a week later, we’re going to come together for a group coaching call on January 16th, from 11am to 12pm Central, where you’re going to be able to ask me your questions, get support, learn from your peers, and make sure that you’re feeling really settled in what you’ve got planned for the upcoming year.
Create Your 2025 Roadmap is only $87. And if you want to join us, which I highly recommend that you do, you can go to desicreswell.com/resources and I’ll have the workshop linked on that page for you to easily sign up. Of course, if you have any questions about the workshop, how it works, how to participate if you aren’t going to be able to be there live, I’m more than happy to answer those. You can always send me a DM on Instagram, I’m @desicreswell, I’m more than happy to answer that.
Just so you know, if you can’t make both sessions live, there will be a replay, so not a problem. And you’ll also have the opportunity to send in your questions ahead of time for me to answer them and then you can listen to them in the recording.
All right, that’s what I’ve got for you this week. I will be back next Wednesday with a brand new episode. And until then, I’m wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
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