122. 3 Game-Changing Routines Every Interior Design CEO Needs
Do you ever feel like your interior design business is running you instead of the other way around? Are you constantly reacting to client demands and putting out fires instead of proactively working towards your goals? What if I told you that implementing just three key routines could transform the way you lead your business and create the success you desire?
In this episode, I'm sharing the essential habits and practices that have been game-changers for both myself and my clients in creating an interior design business that runs smoothly and supports the life you want to live. These routines will help you feel more grounded, intentional, and in control as the CEO of your business.
Get ready to discover how to bookend your week with purpose, schedule time for leadership and focused work, and track the data that matters most. I’m addressing some of the common obstacles that might come up as you implement these routines and giving you strategies to overcome them. If you're ready to step into your role as a designer CEO and lead your business with intention, this episode is for you!
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 bookending your week with intention and reflection is the most important routine you can establish as a business owner.
How to identify your priority for the week and realistically plan your time to make it happen.
The key questions to ask yourself during your weekly CEO check-ins to stay on track and proactively solve issues.
Why scheduling leadership and focus time is essential for keeping projects and your team moving forward.
How tracking key data points can give you valuable insights into your business and help you make strategic decisions.
Strategies for overcoming the "I don't have time" objection and honoring your commitments to yourself and your business.
How implementing these CEO routines will help you feel more grounded, supported, and in control in your business and life.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you're listening to episode 122. In this one, I'm going to be sharing the three essential routines that I highly encourage you to establish as a designer CEO to create the interior design business where you feel more at ease, act from intentionality rather than reactivity, and make consistent progress towards your creative and financial goals. We'll cover what I recommend you adopt as key habits and routines, why each of these are key elements to your success and also how to get started building these routines into your week because I know it can be a challenge. I promise these won't be complicated, overly time consuming and will be highly impactful.
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. As I'm sitting down to record, I was realizing I have not had an opportunity to tell you about my time in Las Vegas, where I was the host for a panel discussion in the Classic Home showroom at Las Vegas market. And it was just incredible. I have to tell you, one, I mean, the Classic Home showroom was just gorgeous. They've recently undergone a bunch of rebranding and resetting of the showroom. So if you don't currently source from them, definitely check them out. And I just have to say also, they were such a class act to work with everyone on the Classic Home team was just top notch, so professional and a delight.
And then on top of it, the panel was so fun. We had over 200 people registered for it, had a great crowd. My fellow panelists were so generous with their time and knowledge, and it was awesome. I wish you all could have been there, or even I was kind of thinking as we were doing the panel, I was thinking about how it's kind of like a live podcast with me interviewing people, And I thought, oh, that would be kind of fun. So I don't know, maybe someday.
And then I had so many wonderful connections outside of that panel discussion as well, which just made it an incredible trip. I got to meet one of my clients in person. I got together with Caitlin from Business of Home, got to meet the host of the Hot Young Designers Club podcast, got to see the lovely women from IDS, and then also see a couple of friends out there. So I was only there for a few days, but it was very jam packed.
And also very, very fulfilling to be out there. Before we dive into the three essential CEO routines, I believe you must adopt. I want to give a shout out and thank you to one of the listeners who left a review for the show.
Becoming Something left a review titled Fantastic Resource, and they said, "Desi is truly gifted at what she does. I love learning from her podcast. I feel empowered after each episode, ready to tackle my work with newfound clarity and purpose.
Thank you. Thank you, Becoming Something. I want you to know I so, so appreciate each and every one of you who has left a review. And If you haven't left a review for the show and you get benefit from it, if you love listening, if you could please just take a minute and leave a rating and review and also follow the show, that really helps me in terms of getting the podcast in front of new listeners.
All right, now it's time to dive into today's topic. So what are those key weekly habits or routines that you can establish to really help your interior design business run smoothly, create more efficiency, and keep your goals on track so that you ensure that you're proactive and not reactive throughout your week.
What I'm gonna share is really going to help you support your focus in the business, even among all the other things you have to do as a business owner with running your client projects so that you can really feel calm and grounded in the running of your day-to-day operations, which is going to of course create intentionality and purpose and focus as you move towards your goals.
As an interior design business owner, you have a lot to manage. I know this firsthand from back when I was practicing design. It is a career path that requires you to wear many, many hats. Even when you have a team, this is true. It changes over time as your business grows. And at the same time, there's still a lot of domains that you are in, even as you progress as a leader.
And I'm not gonna deny that moving your projects along takes time and effort. That's for sure a big part of the week. But we also have to remember, and I'm sure you've heard this phrase a million times, you need to work on your business, not just in your business to be successful, But it's true.
And you really need to schedule in that CEO time to focus on your business development and growth. But what I also hear is, yeah, I know I need to schedule in that CEO time. But what do I do with that time? I'm a little unclear, or I have some ideas of what I should be doing. But also, they're not specific enough. And then I see CEO time on my calendar, and I get overwhelmed. And I go, I'm just not going to do that. So you want to be clear on what you do to leverage that time that you carve out for yourself so that it has a big impact.
These CEO routines I'm sharing with you, I want you to kind of think of them like brushing your teeth regularly, versus waiting for the dentist to scrape off the accumulated plaque. There's a very proactive approach here. And just like with the dentist, it's a lot easier to just brush your teeth on a regular basis and make sure you've flossing, then try and go in and then have the dentist correct what hasn't been done for six months.
Instead of making those dramatic proclamations about what you're going to do or how you're going to do it, or how are you going to finally get on top of things and get organized when you finally have time, it's time to make leading your business as the CEO a priority and a regular part of your weekly routine. Just like brushing your teeth as part of your morning routine and your evening routine. What I'm gonna be sharing today just becomes part of who you are and what you do to lead your business.
And as I was reflecting on this topic, it kind of came up because when I was leading the Create Your 2025 Roadmap goal setting workshop, someone was asking about, well, what's your schedule during the day? Can you tell me? And I think often that comes from a question of like, well, I just want to replicate what someone else does if it works for them. And there absolutely can be insights from sharing what someone else's routine is and how you might adopt that. But I think what's even more useful is thinking about what are the things that are done with a consistent cadence, because the day to day calendar can vary. But we also want to make sure we have these regular touch points with ourselves.
And that's really what I want to talk about today is how do you keep the business running smoothly while delivering to clients and also making consistent progress towards your goals for the year. And I really think it comes down to these three consistent touch points or routines that you can create on a regular basis. And I know I use for myself and also with my clients.
We're gonna talk about what these are specifically, what they look like in practice. And then I also wanna address the key obstacles that might get in the way of you carrying these things out because they're new things. And whenever we start something new, it can feel like a challenge. And that might be from a strategic standpoint of like, how do I actually fit this in, but also from a mental standpoint too. Our brain does not like change. So when we try and introduce something new, often its first response is to come up with reasons why it won't work or why we don't have time or why it's gonna be hard and why we should avoid it. Okay, so we wanna just know that those obstacles are gonna be part of the process and I'll address a few of the key ones.
The other thing I'll say before I go into each of these routines is that I highly recommend that you put time on your calendar for each of these. So that way you have that visual reminder of, yes, this is something I've committed to, I've decided it's important to me, and can plan around it. And if it needs to shift, you see, oh yes, there's that thing on my calendar. And I'm going to put something else there. So now I have to know, where is that CEO routine going to go?
The very first CEO routine, I want you to put in place. And of course, with any of these, you can always build on these, you do not need to do all three of them all at once. They can take variations, you can start small. So I'm going to give you it in the more full picture. But I want to just be clear before I dive in that this can look a variety of ways and feel free to meet yourself where you are.
Okay, so the first one is to bookend your week with intention and reflection.
This is one of those things where if I could just tell a designer what is like one thing you can do to radically change your life and your business, this would be it. And that's create a practice of intentionally entering into the week with a touch point for yourself to decide what's to come and reviewing the week to come, and then also giving yourself that point of reflection at the end of the week. These are essentially your CEO check-ins. You are the boss. You don't have somebody telling you what to do or giving you any kind of review. So you need to be your own reflection point.
And that's not to say don't get outside perspectives, absolutely, but this is something that you consistently can draw upon. Because if you don't run the business, if you don't look ahead and make decisions for yourself, if you don't look at what's working and not working for the business, somebody else is gonna decide for you. And I'm guessing that's not what you want.
So we want to look ahead and review the week before we dive in, before we sit down at the desk and start furiously answering emails, we want to review the week ahead and make decisions. You wanna look at the meetings, the deadlines, and then also your personal commitments that are on the calendar as well for that coming week. You wanna be looking at what time do I have available to do the project work, do things in the business, so that we're setting a realistic plan.
Another thing I start to look at is how can I group like with like, this is a strategy that I talk about in the interior designers get it done daily planner, it's a free resource, you can head over to https://desicreswell.com/resources and you'll see the link to get that sent straight to your inbox. But this really starts to help you think about how am I going to stack the roles and responsibilities and commitments that I have for the week? How can I put them together in a plan that is going to allow me to stay focused and minimize context switching, which is really doing different types of tasks in that ping pong or popcorn-y way throughout the week?
And then you're going to also want to be looking at what is my priority for the week. And also what can wait.
I noticed that this week with my own planning, I had written down what I wanted to be top priority for the week and started to think about how it was gonna all fit in. And I'm looking at and I don't actually have time for everything I wrote down. So now I have to figure out what can wait. And although I'm kind of disappointed because I wanted to get going on those things. I see that on my calendar, it actually is fine for me to wait a little bit. I don't need to create a sense of false urgency for myself and I can move it to next week.
A big part of reviewing your week ahead is making decisions ahead of time. Now, whether you subscribe to full on time blocking, or a looser format of deciding what you're doing when you're doing it approximately how long you're going to give yourself, wherever you fall on that spectrum, just making some decisions ahead of time about those pieces is going to give you the gift of clarity and mental peace outside of work hours and also during work hours too.
What this means is that when you're ready to work, you're ready to work. You know the plan instead of having to sit down at your desk going, now what? What should I do? What's the priority? Oh, this seems urgent. I'll just do that. Right? You've already made these decisions ahead of time. And it just saves you so much mental energy. And it's also going to help you navigate those times when you don't want to do things or there is something that's feeling kind of urgent, but you also know you committed to doing this thing in your business and you know that that's really important too. It can help minimize some of that mental drama.
I'm gonna give you some questions you could ask yourself as you have this intention setting at the beginning of the week. And of course, you can do this on a Monday, you could do it on a Friday afternoon, you could do it on a Sunday, just do it before you really get down and into the nitty gritty of your week so you don't get sucked in and go into reactive mode.
So the questions are, what's the number one thing I'm committed to getting done this week? You could pick one for a design project and one for your business. The second question is, do I notice any resistance to doing the above?
This is a really, really key question here. You want to know is the thing I say I want to do, something that you're fully on board with and committed and you're ready to go with it? Or do you have some resistance or hesitations or fear around it, whatever that looks like for you, you want to identify that so you can get ahead of your own brain to offset any procrastination and avoidance.
And then another question I love to ask is how will I be thinking and feeling at the end of this week? So this really helps you tap into your future self. You want to picture the week having gone, not necessarily exactly as you wanted it to, right? Because there's no perfect week and there's always gonna be bumps in the road. But you can think about, when I committed to that one thing for this week, and I did it because I said I was going to do it. And I know it's important to this business. How am I going to be thinking and feeling at the end? Am I going to be proud of myself? Am I going to feel relief just knowing yep, I did that thing I'd been kind of putting off or dreading. Right?
So picture yourself that future version of you having finished the week with intentionality and how you used your time and effort, and soak that up, and remind yourself of that feeling as the week progresses. So that's the first part of the bookend. Set your intentions for the week.
And then at the end of the week, you want to have a point of reflection. And this is where you evaluate and celebrate. I personally usually do this on a Saturday, but again, you could do it whenever is good for you. And the questions that I always ask myself are what am I celebrating? What's going well or went well? What didn't go so well? And what lessons am I taking with me? What are my clear next steps?
This ensures you are recognizing your progress, right? Because we can so easily get into the weeds of the week and feel like we got nothing done until we actually reflect back on it and go, oh yeah, I actually got a lot done or things really did go well. And it also helps to make sure you're identifying any issues that are coming up so that you can proactively solve for them instead of letting them drag week after week.
I'm using the word bookend here intentionally because checking in with yourself, checking in with your business and your team, it really does begin to act like an actual pair of bookends, holding the books upright. If you picture that on the bookshelf, this habit is going to hold your week together. It is so, so important. So if you do one of these, I would strongly suggest pick this one and get this habit going.
In the interior designers get it done daily planner that I mentioned before, there are questions similar to this, there's a bit of a different angle in there. But if you haven't downloaded that to get those reflection questions about planning out your day, highly, highly recommend doing that. Again, that's https://desicreswell.com/resources and you'll see it as one of the links. So many designers tell me they download this free resource and say it's an absolute game changer. So if you haven't done that, please go over and do that. And then you can thank yourself later.
Bookending your week with intention and reflection, that was kind of a lengthy one. So know that the next two are a little bit more concise, but that one is just, like I said, I cannot stress the importance of that enough.
All right, the second designer CEO routine I want you to implement is to schedule times for focus and leadership. Of course, you could be scheduling these times during your weekly intention setting. These are two types of time blocks that you absolutely must have in your weekly plan. You wanna schedule time to delegate. Think through what can I get off my plate? What information do my team need to have in order to be successful and minimize the amount that they need from me back and forth?
You need to have time to give direction and answer questions at the start of the week and at regular intervals, depending on the size and structure of your team. And what this does is it really helps your team be proactive and more self-sufficient. And it also gets you in the mindset of looking ahead and thinking, what could I have someone else do? And saves you time from interruptions because the team member also knows they have your full attention at these various intervals. And it also prevents them work from being held up because you didn't get the team member what they needed, because you are all being proactive at this point. So schedule that leadership time for sure.
And this can be if you have a big team or if you have contractors. And if you don't have any team at all, I highly suggest that you think about this from a personal lens. Maybe there is something you can delegate personally that's gonna help you free up mental space and actual time in your week.
You also need to schedule focus time where you're going to work on a needle moving project in the business. In episode 73, I talk about quarterly planning. That episode's called The Magic of a 90 Day Plan. And that's going to really help you know and decide what to do during your focus time.
We have to constrain what we're working on per quarter, and then we're going to break it down into manageable tasks. And then we're going to chip away at it during this focus time. These focus periods really become like steps on a staircase to your goals. With each focus session that you complete, you're taking a step on the staircase.
If you are looking at a set of stairs, I want you to picture this, the staircase representing where you are now at the bottom and then where you want to go the top. If you had to go from the bottom to the top of the stairs with no steps, you would have no way to get up there. But if you're given the option to use each tiny little step, the path forward is very clear and much easier. And you don't even need to be a pole vaulter to get up. That was the image that just came to my mind. You fling yourself to the top. We know that doesn't work.
So give yourself some focus periods during the week. It really can become part of just what you do. And it could even start with 30 minutes. 30 minutes makes a difference when it starts to stack just like those stairs do. Even just a couple hours a week as you're creating this space in your calendar, it's gonna give you so much progress and build momentum, while you also still have plenty of time to keep that client work moving along.
The third and final CEO routine that I want you to implement is updating key data points. Now not every client of mine does this weekly. If you want to do it every other week, once a month, kind of depends on the tracking, but you want to have this routine of looking at your data.
You wanna know what you're moving toward in the business and with projects. Remember, we're always working on creating results. We're not just doing to do. And data points are gonna give us insight into are we moving in the right direction or have we hit a roadblock or is there something new we need to try?
Data points are definitely gonna include tracking and billing your time. So make sure you're writing that down. You can use an app like toggle or harvest. I personally use toggle and I have a lot of clients who use harvest as well. And just making sure that you're putting your time in the appropriate place so that you are billing it if you bill hourly or you're having data to refer back to for those flat fees.
This is also a great time to update project timelines, your deadlines and deliverables. I think a color-coded spreadsheet with different phases of the projects can be really useful, but however you do it, you wanna be noting what you need to adjust or update or shift, whether that is in your own production, meetings, things that you need to ask for from team members or contractors or need to have back by certain dates, you wanna have that all in one spot and have it be something you're keeping a pulse on. And then of course, this is a great time to communicate to the client and team as needed based on what you've updated for yourself.
Now, a lot of times when we're talking about data points, the term KPIs comes up, key performance indicators. I don't know why, but I just really dislike that phrase KPI. It just sounds so businessy to me. Like, I don't wanna know about my KPIs. So I just call it data points. But that's another phrase you might be hearing, you can call it something else. You don't have to call it data either. Maybe that sounds too boring for you. Call it something fun that you enjoy. But the key point here is that you just want to know what you're measuring, what's the target, and what is success according to the data.
So with marketing, this could be tracking leads and inquiries, could be your audience growth on @Instagram or website traffic. With sales, it might be the number of discovery calls you're having or conversion rates for consultations. For your financials, it might be revenue and profit or your cash flow. Those are all great things to track.
And again, meet yourself where you are, you could pick just one thing to track to get in this habit of looking at your numbers. Because this is a very black and white way to know, am I on track with where I want to be. Instead of having that sort of vague feeling of, oh, I'm behind, or things are great, but maybe they're not actually that great. Just give yourself some math to look at makes it so much easier. And then of course, look for trends. If there's trends that are happening with your numbers, take a look, see what you need to respond to, further look into, or tweak in terms of your strategy.
So those are the three key routines I want you to begin folding into your weeks as a designer CEO. I'm gonna recap them here. The first is bookend your week with intention and reflection. The second is schedule leadership and focus time blocks. And then the third is update your key data points. Pick one, meet yourself where you are, and then run with it. And I'd love to know how that goes or if you hit any roadblocks.
And I wanna address a couple of objections as I record these and outline them. I'm often thinking, okay, so the designer that's listening to this on the other end of their AirPods or in their car, they're probably thinking, what? And how can I speak to that?
So the first thing you might be thinking is, I don't have time, I don't have time to do these things. And I, of course, don't know your exact calendar. Of course, with my private clients, we get into the nitty gritty of when could we make this work? How do we make it work? But there is some limitation to me being in your ears as a podcast listener.
So if you're thinking, though, I don't have time, that might be true in terms of you might be just completely overscheduled. And I also want you to consider you might be wrong about that. Often our brains just tell us we don't have time or we're spending time on things that are just not very relevant to our goals. We're spending time spinning, we're spending time procrastinating, and actually there is time, but we just haven't decided how we're going to intentionally use that time. And this would be your invitation to do so.
And also know that it's totally normal to have to kind of play with how you're going to fit this into your weekly cadence, because you probably haven't been in the habit of doing it. So of course, it's not going to have just like a standing appointment slot available for you right off the bat. That's expected. So you do have to create that for yourself.
As I said before, play with putting in a recurring time block in your calendar for even just one of these pieces, even just a piece of one of these routines. Show yourself that it's accounted for and how you can make it work. It is that visual reminder that you're prioritizing these routines. And then of course, if you need to shift it, you can, but just don't delete it. Give yourself the opportunity to see that you can create time and space for this.
And the other thing that I'll remind you is this doesn't actually have to take a lot of time. Scheduling in time to bookend your weeks with intention and reflection, you could spend about 15 minutes for each of those. That's not that much time. Updating your data, maybe that could be an hour depending on how in the nitty gritty you're going with it. But you could start small and just do one little piece.
Those focus blocks and times for delegation, those are gonna make you more efficient. So they're actually going to save you time. And it's really time that needs to be spent on the business regardless. So you're gonna wanna make that available to yourself.
For so many of the designers I work with or engage with, "I don't have enough time," it's just a knee-jerk thought. It's just a really well-practiced sentence in your brain. And I know that you can create time. You either have it, and you just haven't intentionally decided how to use it, or there's some kind of fluff that can be eliminated and you can make the space.
With practice, you will start to see that this can be part of your routine and begin to build around it. So give yourself a chance to experience proving yourself wrong with that thought, "I don't have time." The other thing that you might be wondering about, thinking about going, "I can't do this because I skip over this time," right?
I mentioned that at the beginning, often we put CEO time on our calendar and then we just don't do it. And I hear you with this. You're not in the habit of honoring your commitment to the business and to yourself. But the only way that you're going to become the person who honors their commitments to themselves is to start doing it. So just because you typically skip over this time doesn't mean you will forever skip over this time. It doesn't mean that you're not capable of honoring that commitment. It just means that you haven't practiced doing what you say you're going to do.
And I'm going to give you a heads up, it's probably going to be uncomfortable to do this. And I'm also going to tell you it is so worth it. With these different things that you're going to build into the week, you might have to remind yourself, actually, you probably will have to remind yourself quite often, that these are not just another thing that you have to do.
I want you to connect to why you're doing these things and how each of them support the business and the life that you want. This is another great time to check in with that future self and see how if you implemented these activities, if you implemented these routines, how did they help you get where you want to go? Give yourself that evidence of your future self to see yes, this is so supportive. This is very important to the health and wealth of my life and my business.
In the moment, your brain's gonna default to immediacy and urgency and what feels easy, which is just doing what you've already done and you're gonna have to put some effort into correcting that pattern. So just get going, tell yourself you can do this one thing, whether it's just testing out a little snippet of what I share here, committing to five minutes of focus, or whatever it is that feels doable and build from there.
It's giving yourself concrete points to reference that when you follow through, that when you make this time, the business is better off because you've dedicated yourself to these routines. Lastly, what I'll just say is that I want you to remember that these practices compound over time.
So as your repetitions and the number of times you engage with these routines grows, you're gonna see more and more of an impact in how your operations run, the goals you're able to achieve, and also how you feel internally as the CEO experiencing your days. You're going to start to feel more in control of your time and your finances and your future. If that's not motivating, I don't know what is.
I also feel like it is so grounding to have these routines during our week, these things that we can count on and create stability for ourselves in a business that has a lot of moving parts and changes that happen just constantly. And you're gonna feel more supported by yourself and by your team and by the business, which gives you more mental freedom outside of work because of the intention you put into these practices.
I'm of course here to help you with the additional level of personalized support in building this business and routines that really support where you want to be in the coming year through private coaching. You can go to https://desicreswell.com/coaching to learn all about my Design to Thrive private coaching partnerships and get on the wait list. The wait list is who gets the first notice of any openings before anyone else. So if you're thinking about working with me one-on-one, that is the place you wanna be.
And then one last time about the Get It Done Daily Planner. Definitely go download that if you have never done that, or pull it out if it's been a while since you used it. It's going to have the five best tips for saving time five hours a week, including that strategy of grouping like with like that I mentioned, it's gonna help you plan your day, and it's gonna give you some additional reflection questions. That's at https://desicreswell.com/resources.
I'm gonna be back next week with a brand new episode. And I'm actually going to have a guest, Nancy Ganzekaufer. And we're going to be collaborating on a podcast episode that is all about leveraging your time to maximize your profit. This is going to be less of an interview and more of a dialogue with some actionable strategies that you're gonna be able to implement after you listen. Be sure to subscribe and follow the show so you don't miss out on that one. 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. As I'm sitting down to record, I was realizing I have not had an opportunity to tell you about my time in Las Vegas, where I was the host for a panel discussion in the Classic Home showroom at Las Vegas market. And it was just incredible. I have to tell you, one, I mean, the Classic Home showroom was just gorgeous. They've recently undergone a bunch of rebranding and resetting of the showroom. So if you don't currently source from them, definitely check them out. And I just have to say also, they were such a class act to work with everyone on the Classic Home team was just top notch, so professional and a delight.
And then on top of it, the panel was so fun. We had over 200 people registered for it, had a great crowd. My fellow panelists were so generous with their time and knowledge, and it was awesome. I wish you all could have been there, or even I was kind of thinking as we were doing the panel, I was thinking about how it's kind of like a live podcast with me interviewing people, And I thought, oh, that would be kind of fun. So I don't know, maybe someday.
And then I had so many wonderful connections outside of that panel discussion as well, which just made it an incredible trip. I got to meet one of my clients in person. I got together with Caitlin from Business of Home, got to meet the host of the Hot Young Designers Club podcast, got to see the lovely women from IDS, and then also see a couple of friends out there. So I was only there for a few days, but it was very jam packed.
And also very, very fulfilling to be out there. Before we dive into the three essential CEO routines, I believe you must adopt. I want to give a shout out and thank you to one of the listeners who left a review for the show.
Becoming Something left a review titled Fantastic Resource, and they said, "Desi is truly gifted at what she does. I love learning from her podcast. I feel empowered after each episode, ready to tackle my work with newfound clarity and purpose.
Thank you. Thank you, Becoming Something. I want you to know I so, so appreciate each and every one of you who has left a review. And If you haven't left a review for the show and you get benefit from it, if you love listening, if you could please just take a minute and leave a rating and review and also follow the show, that really helps me in terms of getting the podcast in front of new listeners.
All right, now it's time to dive into today's topic. So what are those key weekly habits or routines that you can establish to really help your interior design business run smoothly, create more efficiency, and keep your goals on track so that you ensure that you're proactive and not reactive throughout your week.
What I'm gonna share is really going to help you support your focus in the business, even among all the other things you have to do as a business owner with running your client projects so that you can really feel calm and grounded in the running of your day-to-day operations, which is going to of course create intentionality and purpose and focus as you move towards your goals.
As an interior design business owner, you have a lot to manage. I know this firsthand from back when I was practicing design. It is a career path that requires you to wear many, many hats. Even when you have a team, this is true. It changes over time as your business grows. And at the same time, there's still a lot of domains that you are in, even as you progress as a leader.
And I'm not gonna deny that moving your projects along takes time and effort. That's for sure a big part of the week. But we also have to remember, and I'm sure you've heard this phrase a million times, you need to work on your business, not just in your business to be successful, But it's true.
And you really need to schedule in that CEO time to focus on your business development and growth. But what I also hear is, yeah, I know I need to schedule in that CEO time. But what do I do with that time? I'm a little unclear, or I have some ideas of what I should be doing. But also, they're not specific enough. And then I see CEO time on my calendar, and I get overwhelmed. And I go, I'm just not going to do that. So you want to be clear on what you do to leverage that time that you carve out for yourself so that it has a big impact.
These CEO routines I'm sharing with you, I want you to kind of think of them like brushing your teeth regularly, versus waiting for the dentist to scrape off the accumulated plaque. There's a very proactive approach here. And just like with the dentist, it's a lot easier to just brush your teeth on a regular basis and make sure you've flossing, then try and go in and then have the dentist correct what hasn't been done for six months.
Instead of making those dramatic proclamations about what you're going to do or how you're going to do it, or how are you going to finally get on top of things and get organized when you finally have time, it's time to make leading your business as the CEO a priority and a regular part of your weekly routine. Just like brushing your teeth as part of your morning routine and your evening routine. What I'm gonna be sharing today just becomes part of who you are and what you do to lead your business.
And as I was reflecting on this topic, it kind of came up because when I was leading the Create Your 2025 Roadmap goal setting workshop, someone was asking about, well, what's your schedule during the day? Can you tell me? And I think often that comes from a question of like, well, I just want to replicate what someone else does if it works for them. And there absolutely can be insights from sharing what someone else's routine is and how you might adopt that. But I think what's even more useful is thinking about what are the things that are done with a consistent cadence, because the day to day calendar can vary. But we also want to make sure we have these regular touch points with ourselves.
And that's really what I want to talk about today is how do you keep the business running smoothly while delivering to clients and also making consistent progress towards your goals for the year. And I really think it comes down to these three consistent touch points or routines that you can create on a regular basis. And I know I use for myself and also with my clients.
We're gonna talk about what these are specifically, what they look like in practice. And then I also wanna address the key obstacles that might get in the way of you carrying these things out because they're new things. And whenever we start something new, it can feel like a challenge. And that might be from a strategic standpoint of like, how do I actually fit this in, but also from a mental standpoint too. Our brain does not like change. So when we try and introduce something new, often its first response is to come up with reasons why it won't work or why we don't have time or why it's gonna be hard and why we should avoid it. Okay, so we wanna just know that those obstacles are gonna be part of the process and I'll address a few of the key ones.
The other thing I'll say before I go into each of these routines is that I highly recommend that you put time on your calendar for each of these. So that way you have that visual reminder of, yes, this is something I've committed to, I've decided it's important to me, and can plan around it. And if it needs to shift, you see, oh yes, there's that thing on my calendar. And I'm going to put something else there. So now I have to know, where is that CEO routine going to go?
The very first CEO routine, I want you to put in place. And of course, with any of these, you can always build on these, you do not need to do all three of them all at once. They can take variations, you can start small. So I'm going to give you it in the more full picture. But I want to just be clear before I dive in that this can look a variety of ways and feel free to meet yourself where you are.
Okay, so the first one is to bookend your week with intention and reflection.
This is one of those things where if I could just tell a designer what is like one thing you can do to radically change your life and your business, this would be it. And that's create a practice of intentionally entering into the week with a touch point for yourself to decide what's to come and reviewing the week to come, and then also giving yourself that point of reflection at the end of the week. These are essentially your CEO check-ins. You are the boss. You don't have somebody telling you what to do or giving you any kind of review. So you need to be your own reflection point.
And that's not to say don't get outside perspectives, absolutely, but this is something that you consistently can draw upon. Because if you don't run the business, if you don't look ahead and make decisions for yourself, if you don't look at what's working and not working for the business, somebody else is gonna decide for you. And I'm guessing that's not what you want.
So we want to look ahead and review the week before we dive in, before we sit down at the desk and start furiously answering emails, we want to review the week ahead and make decisions. You wanna look at the meetings, the deadlines, and then also your personal commitments that are on the calendar as well for that coming week. You wanna be looking at what time do I have available to do the project work, do things in the business, so that we're setting a realistic plan.
Another thing I start to look at is how can I group like with like, this is a strategy that I talk about in the interior designers get it done daily planner, it's a free resource, you can head over to https://desicreswell.com/resources and you'll see the link to get that sent straight to your inbox. But this really starts to help you think about how am I going to stack the roles and responsibilities and commitments that I have for the week? How can I put them together in a plan that is going to allow me to stay focused and minimize context switching, which is really doing different types of tasks in that ping pong or popcorn-y way throughout the week?
And then you're going to also want to be looking at what is my priority for the week. And also what can wait.
I noticed that this week with my own planning, I had written down what I wanted to be top priority for the week and started to think about how it was gonna all fit in. And I'm looking at and I don't actually have time for everything I wrote down. So now I have to figure out what can wait. And although I'm kind of disappointed because I wanted to get going on those things. I see that on my calendar, it actually is fine for me to wait a little bit. I don't need to create a sense of false urgency for myself and I can move it to next week.
A big part of reviewing your week ahead is making decisions ahead of time. Now, whether you subscribe to full on time blocking, or a looser format of deciding what you're doing when you're doing it approximately how long you're going to give yourself, wherever you fall on that spectrum, just making some decisions ahead of time about those pieces is going to give you the gift of clarity and mental peace outside of work hours and also during work hours too.
What this means is that when you're ready to work, you're ready to work. You know the plan instead of having to sit down at your desk going, now what? What should I do? What's the priority? Oh, this seems urgent. I'll just do that. Right? You've already made these decisions ahead of time. And it just saves you so much mental energy. And it's also going to help you navigate those times when you don't want to do things or there is something that's feeling kind of urgent, but you also know you committed to doing this thing in your business and you know that that's really important too. It can help minimize some of that mental drama.
I'm gonna give you some questions you could ask yourself as you have this intention setting at the beginning of the week. And of course, you can do this on a Monday, you could do it on a Friday afternoon, you could do it on a Sunday, just do it before you really get down and into the nitty gritty of your week so you don't get sucked in and go into reactive mode.
So the questions are, what's the number one thing I'm committed to getting done this week? You could pick one for a design project and one for your business. The second question is, do I notice any resistance to doing the above?
This is a really, really key question here. You want to know is the thing I say I want to do, something that you're fully on board with and committed and you're ready to go with it? Or do you have some resistance or hesitations or fear around it, whatever that looks like for you, you want to identify that so you can get ahead of your own brain to offset any procrastination and avoidance.
And then another question I love to ask is how will I be thinking and feeling at the end of this week? So this really helps you tap into your future self. You want to picture the week having gone, not necessarily exactly as you wanted it to, right? Because there's no perfect week and there's always gonna be bumps in the road. But you can think about, when I committed to that one thing for this week, and I did it because I said I was going to do it. And I know it's important to this business. How am I going to be thinking and feeling at the end? Am I going to be proud of myself? Am I going to feel relief just knowing yep, I did that thing I'd been kind of putting off or dreading. Right?
So picture yourself that future version of you having finished the week with intentionality and how you used your time and effort, and soak that up, and remind yourself of that feeling as the week progresses. So that's the first part of the bookend. Set your intentions for the week.
And then at the end of the week, you want to have a point of reflection. And this is where you evaluate and celebrate. I personally usually do this on a Saturday, but again, you could do it whenever is good for you. And the questions that I always ask myself are what am I celebrating? What's going well or went well? What didn't go so well? And what lessons am I taking with me? What are my clear next steps?
This ensures you are recognizing your progress, right? Because we can so easily get into the weeds of the week and feel like we got nothing done until we actually reflect back on it and go, oh yeah, I actually got a lot done or things really did go well. And it also helps to make sure you're identifying any issues that are coming up so that you can proactively solve for them instead of letting them drag week after week.
I'm using the word bookend here intentionally because checking in with yourself, checking in with your business and your team, it really does begin to act like an actual pair of bookends, holding the books upright. If you picture that on the bookshelf, this habit is going to hold your week together. It is so, so important. So if you do one of these, I would strongly suggest pick this one and get this habit going.
In the interior designers get it done daily planner that I mentioned before, there are questions similar to this, there's a bit of a different angle in there. But if you haven't downloaded that to get those reflection questions about planning out your day, highly, highly recommend doing that. Again, that's https://desicreswell.com/resources and you'll see it as one of the links. So many designers tell me they download this free resource and say it's an absolute game changer. So if you haven't done that, please go over and do that. And then you can thank yourself later.
Bookending your week with intention and reflection, that was kind of a lengthy one. So know that the next two are a little bit more concise, but that one is just, like I said, I cannot stress the importance of that enough.
All right, the second designer CEO routine I want you to implement is to schedule times for focus and leadership. Of course, you could be scheduling these times during your weekly intention setting. These are two types of time blocks that you absolutely must have in your weekly plan. You wanna schedule time to delegate. Think through what can I get off my plate? What information do my team need to have in order to be successful and minimize the amount that they need from me back and forth?
You need to have time to give direction and answer questions at the start of the week and at regular intervals, depending on the size and structure of your team. And what this does is it really helps your team be proactive and more self-sufficient. And it also gets you in the mindset of looking ahead and thinking, what could I have someone else do? And saves you time from interruptions because the team member also knows they have your full attention at these various intervals. And it also prevents them work from being held up because you didn't get the team member what they needed, because you are all being proactive at this point. So schedule that leadership time for sure.
And this can be if you have a big team or if you have contractors. And if you don't have any team at all, I highly suggest that you think about this from a personal lens. Maybe there is something you can delegate personally that's gonna help you free up mental space and actual time in your week.
You also need to schedule focus time where you're going to work on a needle moving project in the business. In episode 73, I talk about quarterly planning. That episode's called The Magic of a 90 Day Plan. And that's going to really help you know and decide what to do during your focus time.
We have to constrain what we're working on per quarter, and then we're going to break it down into manageable tasks. And then we're going to chip away at it during this focus time. These focus periods really become like steps on a staircase to your goals. With each focus session that you complete, you're taking a step on the staircase.
If you are looking at a set of stairs, I want you to picture this, the staircase representing where you are now at the bottom and then where you want to go the top. If you had to go from the bottom to the top of the stairs with no steps, you would have no way to get up there. But if you're given the option to use each tiny little step, the path forward is very clear and much easier. And you don't even need to be a pole vaulter to get up. That was the image that just came to my mind. You fling yourself to the top. We know that doesn't work.
So give yourself some focus periods during the week. It really can become part of just what you do. And it could even start with 30 minutes. 30 minutes makes a difference when it starts to stack just like those stairs do. Even just a couple hours a week as you're creating this space in your calendar, it's gonna give you so much progress and build momentum, while you also still have plenty of time to keep that client work moving along.
The third and final CEO routine that I want you to implement is updating key data points. Now not every client of mine does this weekly. If you want to do it every other week, once a month, kind of depends on the tracking, but you want to have this routine of looking at your data.
You wanna know what you're moving toward in the business and with projects. Remember, we're always working on creating results. We're not just doing to do. And data points are gonna give us insight into are we moving in the right direction or have we hit a roadblock or is there something new we need to try?
Data points are definitely gonna include tracking and billing your time. So make sure you're writing that down. You can use an app like toggle or harvest. I personally use toggle and I have a lot of clients who use harvest as well. And just making sure that you're putting your time in the appropriate place so that you are billing it if you bill hourly or you're having data to refer back to for those flat fees.
This is also a great time to update project timelines, your deadlines and deliverables. I think a color-coded spreadsheet with different phases of the projects can be really useful, but however you do it, you wanna be noting what you need to adjust or update or shift, whether that is in your own production, meetings, things that you need to ask for from team members or contractors or need to have back by certain dates, you wanna have that all in one spot and have it be something you're keeping a pulse on. And then of course, this is a great time to communicate to the client and team as needed based on what you've updated for yourself.
Now, a lot of times when we're talking about data points, the term KPIs comes up, key performance indicators. I don't know why, but I just really dislike that phrase KPI. It just sounds so businessy to me. Like, I don't wanna know about my KPIs. So I just call it data points. But that's another phrase you might be hearing, you can call it something else. You don't have to call it data either. Maybe that sounds too boring for you. Call it something fun that you enjoy. But the key point here is that you just want to know what you're measuring, what's the target, and what is success according to the data.
So with marketing, this could be tracking leads and inquiries, could be your audience growth on @Instagram or website traffic. With sales, it might be the number of discovery calls you're having or conversion rates for consultations. For your financials, it might be revenue and profit or your cash flow. Those are all great things to track.
And again, meet yourself where you are, you could pick just one thing to track to get in this habit of looking at your numbers. Because this is a very black and white way to know, am I on track with where I want to be. Instead of having that sort of vague feeling of, oh, I'm behind, or things are great, but maybe they're not actually that great. Just give yourself some math to look at makes it so much easier. And then of course, look for trends. If there's trends that are happening with your numbers, take a look, see what you need to respond to, further look into, or tweak in terms of your strategy.
So those are the three key routines I want you to begin folding into your weeks as a designer CEO. I'm gonna recap them here. The first is bookend your week with intention and reflection. The second is schedule leadership and focus time blocks. And then the third is update your key data points. Pick one, meet yourself where you are, and then run with it. And I'd love to know how that goes or if you hit any roadblocks.
And I wanna address a couple of objections as I record these and outline them. I'm often thinking, okay, so the designer that's listening to this on the other end of their AirPods or in their car, they're probably thinking, what? And how can I speak to that?
So the first thing you might be thinking is, I don't have time, I don't have time to do these things. And I, of course, don't know your exact calendar. Of course, with my private clients, we get into the nitty gritty of when could we make this work? How do we make it work? But there is some limitation to me being in your ears as a podcast listener.
So if you're thinking, though, I don't have time, that might be true in terms of you might be just completely overscheduled. And I also want you to consider you might be wrong about that. Often our brains just tell us we don't have time or we're spending time on things that are just not very relevant to our goals. We're spending time spinning, we're spending time procrastinating, and actually there is time, but we just haven't decided how we're going to intentionally use that time. And this would be your invitation to do so.
And also know that it's totally normal to have to kind of play with how you're going to fit this into your weekly cadence, because you probably haven't been in the habit of doing it. So of course, it's not going to have just like a standing appointment slot available for you right off the bat. That's expected. So you do have to create that for yourself.
As I said before, play with putting in a recurring time block in your calendar for even just one of these pieces, even just a piece of one of these routines. Show yourself that it's accounted for and how you can make it work. It is that visual reminder that you're prioritizing these routines. And then of course, if you need to shift it, you can, but just don't delete it. Give yourself the opportunity to see that you can create time and space for this.
And the other thing that I'll remind you is this doesn't actually have to take a lot of time. Scheduling in time to bookend your weeks with intention and reflection, you could spend about 15 minutes for each of those. That's not that much time. Updating your data, maybe that could be an hour depending on how in the nitty gritty you're going with it. But you could start small and just do one little piece.
Those focus blocks and times for delegation, those are gonna make you more efficient. So they're actually going to save you time. And it's really time that needs to be spent on the business regardless. So you're gonna wanna make that available to yourself.
For so many of the designers I work with or engage with, "I don't have enough time," it's just a knee-jerk thought. It's just a really well-practiced sentence in your brain. And I know that you can create time. You either have it, and you just haven't intentionally decided how to use it, or there's some kind of fluff that can be eliminated and you can make the space.
With practice, you will start to see that this can be part of your routine and begin to build around it. So give yourself a chance to experience proving yourself wrong with that thought, "I don't have time." The other thing that you might be wondering about, thinking about going, "I can't do this because I skip over this time," right?
I mentioned that at the beginning, often we put CEO time on our calendar and then we just don't do it. And I hear you with this. You're not in the habit of honoring your commitment to the business and to yourself. But the only way that you're going to become the person who honors their commitments to themselves is to start doing it. So just because you typically skip over this time doesn't mean you will forever skip over this time. It doesn't mean that you're not capable of honoring that commitment. It just means that you haven't practiced doing what you say you're going to do.
And I'm going to give you a heads up, it's probably going to be uncomfortable to do this. And I'm also going to tell you it is so worth it. With these different things that you're going to build into the week, you might have to remind yourself, actually, you probably will have to remind yourself quite often, that these are not just another thing that you have to do.
I want you to connect to why you're doing these things and how each of them support the business and the life that you want. This is another great time to check in with that future self and see how if you implemented these activities, if you implemented these routines, how did they help you get where you want to go? Give yourself that evidence of your future self to see yes, this is so supportive. This is very important to the health and wealth of my life and my business.
In the moment, your brain's gonna default to immediacy and urgency and what feels easy, which is just doing what you've already done and you're gonna have to put some effort into correcting that pattern. So just get going, tell yourself you can do this one thing, whether it's just testing out a little snippet of what I share here, committing to five minutes of focus, or whatever it is that feels doable and build from there.
It's giving yourself concrete points to reference that when you follow through, that when you make this time, the business is better off because you've dedicated yourself to these routines. Lastly, what I'll just say is that I want you to remember that these practices compound over time.
So as your repetitions and the number of times you engage with these routines grows, you're gonna see more and more of an impact in how your operations run, the goals you're able to achieve, and also how you feel internally as the CEO experiencing your days. You're going to start to feel more in control of your time and your finances and your future. If that's not motivating, I don't know what is.
I also feel like it is so grounding to have these routines during our week, these things that we can count on and create stability for ourselves in a business that has a lot of moving parts and changes that happen just constantly. And you're gonna feel more supported by yourself and by your team and by the business, which gives you more mental freedom outside of work because of the intention you put into these practices.
I'm of course here to help you with the additional level of personalized support in building this business and routines that really support where you want to be in the coming year through private coaching. You can go to https://desicreswell.com/coaching to learn all about my Design to Thrive private coaching partnerships and get on the wait list. The wait list is who gets the first notice of any openings before anyone else. So if you're thinking about working with me one-on-one, that is the place you wanna be.
And then one last time about the Get It Done Daily Planner. Definitely go download that if you have never done that, or pull it out if it's been a while since you used it. It's going to have the five best tips for saving time five hours a week, including that strategy of grouping like with like that I mentioned, it's gonna help you plan your day, and it's gonna give you some additional reflection questions. That's at https://desicreswell.com/resources.
I'm gonna be back next week with a brand new episode. And I'm actually going to have a guest, Nancy Ganzekaufer. And we're going to be collaborating on a podcast episode that is all about leveraging your time to maximize your profit. This is going to be less of an interview and more of a dialogue with some actionable strategies that you're gonna be able to implement after you listen. Be sure to subscribe and follow the show so you don't miss out on that one. 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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