114. Empowering Beliefs and Powerful Questions to Reach Your 2025 Goals
Have you decided what you want for your interior design business in 2025? At the heart of building a practice you truly love—one that supports you creatively, financially, and personally—is the ability to make thoughtful decisions. As we wrap up this year, I encourage you to embrace your role as an empowered CEO and set the stage for a more intentional, fulfilling future.
The difference between wanting your vision and having your vision comes down to the decisions you make. Hoping something happens is passive, but deciding what you want and making a sustainable plan to support yourself is how you lead yourself as a CEO. It's a process that evolves over time, but it starts with getting clear on what you want and committing to making it happen.
In this episode, I share some powerful questions and beliefs to help you make decisions and pursue your goals with purpose in the coming year. Join me in reflecting on where you are undecided, where you may be straddling decisions, and what needs to happen for you to step into your next level as a designer CEO. Let's make 2025 a year of turning your wants into your reality!
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:
Why growing your interior design business is a series of decisions you must make as the CEO.
How to bridge the gap between wanting your vision and having your vision through decision-making.
The importance of deciding who you will become in the process of pursuing your goals.
4 powerful beliefs that will help you make decisions and achieve your goals.
How to identify where you are undecided or straddling decisions in your business.
Why coaching can be so beneficial for examining your beliefs about yourself and your capabilities.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 114. This is going to be a special episode to close out our year together. It’s both an invitation to empower yourself as the CEO of your interior design business as you step into 2025, and also a message from me as your coach who sees you in your highest potential and wants you to succeed.
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.
What I want you to consider in this space between one year and the next is what you really want, and more tangibly, what decisions need to be made in order to bring those desires to life. Growing an interior design business you love to run, a business that supports you creatively, financially, and allows you to be who you want to be in your personal life as well is really a series of decisions.
Business is decision making. You decide what you want, your vision. And if you want to spend a little time in this quiet transition between the new year, definitely go over and check out my business and life vision journal. It’s totally free, my gift to you. You can download that at desiid.com/vision. But you decide what you want. You decide how you want to go about moving toward that vision in the many possible ways that you could.
You’ll decide who or what kind of help you need to get there. You decide you're going to do those things, even when it’s hard, even when life happens, even when project timelines start to overlap and you’ve got to adjust your plan because things are a little too full. Even when you get off track and you kind of get distracted by something. We always have to decide to come back to what our commitment is to ourselves and what the business needs.
You’ve got to decide to be nice to yourself in the process and keep going until it is done. And it is most definitely a decision to decide who you will become in the process of going after these desires and going after these goals. And it’s your responsibility to decide what you want to believe about yourself and your capabilities. That is up to you.
What I really want you to hear is that as you picture your vision for 2025, the difference between wanting that vision and having that vision, it’s just decisions. Hoping something happens is very passive, it’s not how we get things done. Deciding what you want and making a sustainable plan to support yourself, that is leading yourself as the empowered CEO I know you are and you're meant to become in this coming year, because that is always an evolving process.
If you don’t decide who, what, and how, it will not get done. And let me be clear, I know I’m saying just decide, just decide, it’s all decisions. Yes, it is and I also know that decisions are hard. It can take courage, it can take radical self honesty, it can mean tough conversations and stepping into the unknown. So I know that making decisions can be a challenge.
And I also know that taking action on those decisions is not always easy. But those commitments of what you decide to be true for you and the way you want to go about things in your business, that is what is required to build your version of self-defined success. I want to give you a couple of questions to reflect on now as you listen, and I highly encourage you to take these to a journal for additional reflection if you are the writing type.
The first question is where am I undecided? Like what are all of those unmade decisions that need to be addressed? That could be the big picture vision that you hold for the year. It could be more day-to-day, but look for, where are you undecided?
The second question is where am I straddling decisions? This is a big one. Where are you having one foot in and one foot out, or one foot in one pot and one foot in another? Sometimes I like to think about this as straddling two mountain ranges. It’s very uncomfortable, but we’re trying to keep our options open, and what happens is we really don’t have any firm options then. So where are you straddling decisions?
And then what needs to happen in order to make a decision or make a series of decisions? These could be internal shifts, and I’m going to share some beliefs with you that are going to help with that, or they could be some external shifts where you need to get some information. You need to get some coaching. You need to look at some data in your business. But what needs to happen in order to make an empowered decision?
I mentioned I want to share some beliefs with you, and these are powerful beliefs that are going to help you make decisions and pursue your goals with purpose. The first belief is I know what I want. Now, often when I encourage designers to explore their vision or that big picture dream of theirs, sometimes there’s some resistance to this, or we want to say I don’t know. And that’s okay, but I want to invite you to consider that you probably do know. You probably have a pretty clear picture of what you want if you allow yourself to own it.
The second belief I want you to practice is I can have what I want. That goes directly in support of what I was just saying about knowing what you want, right? We have to believe that we can have what we want often in order to allow ourselves to even explore what it is we really want. Not just that vision that we think we should have or that vision of what we see other people doing, but what is your unique vision? Even if it’s not what everyone else is doing or the exact way that someone’s doing it, or the expression of how the design is done, you can have what you want.
The other belief is I’m capable of getting what I want. Meaning you know how to be resourceful, you know how to get support when you need it, you know how to figure things out and problem solve. You are capable.
And the last belief I want you to practice when it comes to your 2025 goals is it’s done, because it can be. When you make decisions in your business about what you want, how you’re going to do it, and commit to doing those things, your goals really become inevitable.
Sometimes when we believe it’s done, our timelines can be a little bit off. It’s not to say it’s going to be done next week, or it’s definitely going to be done this year. That is certainly the intention and the way that I want you to plan, but it will get done. It absolutely will because you know what you want, you can have what you want, you’re capable of getting what you want, and that means it’s done.
And if there’s part of your brain that wants to reject these beliefs, I just invite you to get curious about why. Often it’s a protection mechanism or wanting to get into confusion around these because then we don’t have to take action or make decisions, right? Because when we’re in the in-between, when we’re undecided, we get to stall out.
And now, I know we often don’t think of stalling out as a beneficial thing. And intellectually it is not, but there is safety in stalling out. There is often safety in that discomfort of spinning our wheels. And so that might be why your brain is resistant to some of those beliefs that I just offered.
So I want you to look for ways that they might be true. You don’t have to just blindly adopt them just because I said so, but look at how could those beliefs be true for me? How have they been true in the past? What are areas in my life where they’re true, even if maybe it doesn’t feel true in my business?
And of course, coaching is so beneficial here. Looking at what it is you believe about yourself, about your goals, what is possible for you in this coming year. That is why I decided to offer my annual goal-setting workshop again, Create Your 2025 Roadmap. This is a retreat style space where I’m going to be guiding you through a series of questions and prompting you to make these decisions for your year and also work on your belief in yourself and your capabilities with my support.
Create Your 2025 Roadmap is going to be held January 9th and 16th. Like I said, there is a guided retreat style session where we’re going to be doing this work together. So this isn’t going to be me just spewing a bunch of information at you and then sending you off to do it on your own. We’re going to be planning your year in real time.
And then we’re going to have a live group coaching call, that’s the one on the 16th, where you can get my personalized feedback and also learn a ton from being in community with like-minded design peers. It’s only $87 to join, and you can sign up by going to desicreswell.com/resources and you’ll see it as one of the links on the page.
I want you to make decisions now and move from wanting to having what you want in 2025. There is energy in deciding, there is movement in deciding, and there is trust in deciding, trusting in you and in yourself as a designer CEO.
With that, I want to wish you all a wonderful, wonderful end to this year. Each one of you has been a very special part of my year as you continue to support the podcast by listening, sharing with others, and leaving your reviews. So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with me.
I’m going to be back next week with an episode where we’re going to revisit self-accountability, one of those decisions you can make to be accountable to yourself, just like you would a client. Until then, I am 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.
What I want you to consider in this space between one year and the next is what you really want, and more tangibly, what decisions need to be made in order to bring those desires to life. Growing an interior design business you love to run, a business that supports you creatively, financially, and allows you to be who you want to be in your personal life as well is really a series of decisions.
Business is decision making. You decide what you want, your vision. And if you want to spend a little time in this quiet transition between the new year, definitely go over and check out my business and life vision journal. It’s totally free, my gift to you. You can download that at desiid.com/vision. But you decide what you want. You decide how you want to go about moving toward that vision in the many possible ways that you could.
You’ll decide who or what kind of help you need to get there. You decide you're going to do those things, even when it’s hard, even when life happens, even when project timelines start to overlap and you’ve got to adjust your plan because things are a little too full. Even when you get off track and you kind of get distracted by something. We always have to decide to come back to what our commitment is to ourselves and what the business needs.
You’ve got to decide to be nice to yourself in the process and keep going until it is done. And it is most definitely a decision to decide who you will become in the process of going after these desires and going after these goals. And it’s your responsibility to decide what you want to believe about yourself and your capabilities. That is up to you.
What I really want you to hear is that as you picture your vision for 2025, the difference between wanting that vision and having that vision, it’s just decisions. Hoping something happens is very passive, it’s not how we get things done. Deciding what you want and making a sustainable plan to support yourself, that is leading yourself as the empowered CEO I know you are and you're meant to become in this coming year, because that is always an evolving process.
If you don’t decide who, what, and how, it will not get done. And let me be clear, I know I’m saying just decide, just decide, it’s all decisions. Yes, it is and I also know that decisions are hard. It can take courage, it can take radical self honesty, it can mean tough conversations and stepping into the unknown. So I know that making decisions can be a challenge.
And I also know that taking action on those decisions is not always easy. But those commitments of what you decide to be true for you and the way you want to go about things in your business, that is what is required to build your version of self-defined success. I want to give you a couple of questions to reflect on now as you listen, and I highly encourage you to take these to a journal for additional reflection if you are the writing type.
The first question is where am I undecided? Like what are all of those unmade decisions that need to be addressed? That could be the big picture vision that you hold for the year. It could be more day-to-day, but look for, where are you undecided?
The second question is where am I straddling decisions? This is a big one. Where are you having one foot in and one foot out, or one foot in one pot and one foot in another? Sometimes I like to think about this as straddling two mountain ranges. It’s very uncomfortable, but we’re trying to keep our options open, and what happens is we really don’t have any firm options then. So where are you straddling decisions?
And then what needs to happen in order to make a decision or make a series of decisions? These could be internal shifts, and I’m going to share some beliefs with you that are going to help with that, or they could be some external shifts where you need to get some information. You need to get some coaching. You need to look at some data in your business. But what needs to happen in order to make an empowered decision?
I mentioned I want to share some beliefs with you, and these are powerful beliefs that are going to help you make decisions and pursue your goals with purpose. The first belief is I know what I want. Now, often when I encourage designers to explore their vision or that big picture dream of theirs, sometimes there’s some resistance to this, or we want to say I don’t know. And that’s okay, but I want to invite you to consider that you probably do know. You probably have a pretty clear picture of what you want if you allow yourself to own it.
The second belief I want you to practice is I can have what I want. That goes directly in support of what I was just saying about knowing what you want, right? We have to believe that we can have what we want often in order to allow ourselves to even explore what it is we really want. Not just that vision that we think we should have or that vision of what we see other people doing, but what is your unique vision? Even if it’s not what everyone else is doing or the exact way that someone’s doing it, or the expression of how the design is done, you can have what you want.
The other belief is I’m capable of getting what I want. Meaning you know how to be resourceful, you know how to get support when you need it, you know how to figure things out and problem solve. You are capable.
And the last belief I want you to practice when it comes to your 2025 goals is it’s done, because it can be. When you make decisions in your business about what you want, how you’re going to do it, and commit to doing those things, your goals really become inevitable.
Sometimes when we believe it’s done, our timelines can be a little bit off. It’s not to say it’s going to be done next week, or it’s definitely going to be done this year. That is certainly the intention and the way that I want you to plan, but it will get done. It absolutely will because you know what you want, you can have what you want, you’re capable of getting what you want, and that means it’s done.
And if there’s part of your brain that wants to reject these beliefs, I just invite you to get curious about why. Often it’s a protection mechanism or wanting to get into confusion around these because then we don’t have to take action or make decisions, right? Because when we’re in the in-between, when we’re undecided, we get to stall out.
And now, I know we often don’t think of stalling out as a beneficial thing. And intellectually it is not, but there is safety in stalling out. There is often safety in that discomfort of spinning our wheels. And so that might be why your brain is resistant to some of those beliefs that I just offered.
So I want you to look for ways that they might be true. You don’t have to just blindly adopt them just because I said so, but look at how could those beliefs be true for me? How have they been true in the past? What are areas in my life where they’re true, even if maybe it doesn’t feel true in my business?
And of course, coaching is so beneficial here. Looking at what it is you believe about yourself, about your goals, what is possible for you in this coming year. That is why I decided to offer my annual goal-setting workshop again, Create Your 2025 Roadmap. This is a retreat style space where I’m going to be guiding you through a series of questions and prompting you to make these decisions for your year and also work on your belief in yourself and your capabilities with my support.
Create Your 2025 Roadmap is going to be held January 9th and 16th. Like I said, there is a guided retreat style session where we’re going to be doing this work together. So this isn’t going to be me just spewing a bunch of information at you and then sending you off to do it on your own. We’re going to be planning your year in real time.
And then we’re going to have a live group coaching call, that’s the one on the 16th, where you can get my personalized feedback and also learn a ton from being in community with like-minded design peers. It’s only $87 to join, and you can sign up by going to desicreswell.com/resources and you’ll see it as one of the links on the page.
I want you to make decisions now and move from wanting to having what you want in 2025. There is energy in deciding, there is movement in deciding, and there is trust in deciding, trusting in you and in yourself as a designer CEO.
With that, I want to wish you all a wonderful, wonderful end to this year. Each one of you has been a very special part of my year as you continue to support the podcast by listening, sharing with others, and leaving your reviews. So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with me.
I’m going to be back next week with an episode where we’re going to revisit self-accountability, one of those decisions you can make to be accountable to yourself, just like you would a client. Until then, I am 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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