100. 100 Episodes Later: Top Lessons from Podcasting for Interior Designers
As I celebrate the 100th episode of the show, there are important lessons I've learned from this incredible journey of creating what has become a well-reviewed and established podcast. But these insights go far beyond podcasting; they are valuable principles you can apply to any new initiative, goal, or project in your interior design business.
Taking on a big project like this podcast has helped me become a better business owner, coach, and person. There have been challenges along the way, but they’ve allowed me to adopt new philosophies that have ultimately led to personal and professional growth, which is what we all strive for.
Tune in this week to learn my most powerful lessons from 100 episodes. You’ll discover why focusing on small wins and cumulative effort is key to achieving big things, how patience and commitment work together to help you stay the course, and why examining your beliefs about yourself is crucial for unlocking your next level of potential.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
Why big things are created one step at a time and how to focus on small wins.
How to balance patience and commitment to stay the course on long-term projects.
The importance of leveraging what's already working in your business in new ways.
How your beliefs about yourself impact every part of your business, for better or worse.
Why stretching yourself with new goals can uncover limiting beliefs you need to address.
How to give yourself permission to make your own rules as the CEO of your business.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 100. Today not only will we be celebrating the 100th episode of The Interior Design Business CEO podcast, I’m going to be recapping my top lessons from creating what has now become a well-reviewed and established podcast. But of course I’m going to take those lessons and apply them to how you can use them to create new initiatives, goals and projects in your very own 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. It is wonderful to be here with you. I have been on my summer slowdown and it feels like we are back in a little bit of a routine. It is at the time of me recording this the second week of school. And of course, if you want to hear more about the intentions I set and the how of my summer slowdown, definitely go back and check out episode 80 entitled Create Your Summer Slowdown. Of course, there’s summer in the title, but you can definitely take what I share and apply it to any time you want to take some away from your interior design business and create some more space for yourself and for your life.
But it feels like it’s been kind of a while since I sat down and created sort of the regular format podcast for you, and it feels good to be back. And it also feels a little weird and like I’m a little rusty and, you know, getting back in the groove, getting back on the bicycle, or whatever that saying is.
Anyways, I wouldn’t say I’m back to total capacity. And I don’t think I will be for a little while. I feel like I need some time to ease into things. But I have been serving my mastermind clients and my private clients.
So know that if you are on the private coaching waitlist or have been keeping an eye out for my emails announcing availability, it will be coming. I’ve just been really taking stock of what I want those relationships to look and feel like and want to have a little more space and a little more time to really design that in the new way that I’m going to be bringing it in for new clients.
As we settle into the fall, I do hope that you had a really wonderful summer. I know that we did. We had so many visitors. And at points, it felt like a lot for my very introverted self. But it was also great to see family and friends and share our cabin with them. We even went to Alaska for a week, which was an incredible adventure. And being with the kids felt like a really stable and steady energy this summer that I think we all really benefited from.
As the summer progressed and more and more episodes released, I knew that the 100th episode of the podcast was coming up. And I’ve definitely been thinking about it, what might be fun, what might be useful, what would you even want to hear about with the 100th episode. And what I ended up settling on is the lessons learned, because there’s been so many lessons and so many moments of growth, and I want to share that with you.
I love behind the scenes podcasts for some of the shows that I listen to, and this felt really appropriate from a, oh, that’d be fun to give them a behind the scenes of how my brain works, how this has evolved, what have been the challenges and what have I learned from those. But it’s also really appropriate because I am always working with my clients on the process of curious evaluation and taking lessons that you learn, whether you gain the results you want, the outcomes you want, or maybe things don’t go as planned, but taking whatever you can from those lessons and bringing them into the future.
Because I really believe that no matter what outcomes you experience from the efforts you put in, the only time you really waste time is if you don’t pause and take a moment to look at what are the lessons and insights and pieces of this that I am going to bring with? And what am I going to release? And how can I use that to help me better create what I want in the future?
What was really interesting for me in reflecting on the lessons is that they are lessons that I have learned in the past or philosophies that I hold. And they’ve really been reinforced with another big new undertaking in the business. There’s that saying of peeling the onion, right? You just keep taking layers and layers and layers off, which I kind of hate that expression. Who wants to peel an onion? So I kind of think of it as little nesting dolls, where you start to just integrate further and further, embody those lessons and continue to grow through that process.
But these lessons that I’m sharing are really ones that have been solidified for me and are just the lens in which I see the world. But there’s a deeper understanding and a deeper integration, and it’s because of the podcast. And I want to share these lessons with you as an example, giving you evidence of how I approach business projects so that you can use that same approach and the why behind the approach to support you in your own business growth, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been in this business for decades.
I think it can be really helpful to have evidence of a framework or perspective working for someone else as a way to help you believe these lessons will work for you in whatever you’re setting out to achieve. I think sometimes we hear things and we’re like, yeah, that sounds nice. Or, well, I mean, I guess it worked for them, but I don’t know about me. So I want to give you some more things to kind of have your brain latch onto and see how these frameworks and my perspectives and philosophies really do play out in the course of an extended project like this or an extended goal.
One of the things I want to highlight before we dive into the lessons is that with any goal, such as launching and committing to this weekly value that I create in the business through the podcast, it isn’t just about the 100th episode. It’s who I have become in the process of creating the 100 episodes as a person, as a business owner, as a coach. This project that I’ve taken on and will continue to take on, I get to take now those lessons learned and who I have become, the internal shifts as well, that person is going to go into the future.
And I think that’s really important to note is that when you take on something new, that is something internal in the business, a marketing approach, maybe taking on a different type of project, different type of scope, different type of client, whatever it is. Yes, you accomplish the thing, but so much of what you gain from that is there’s a new version of you that then is running your business going forward, which I think is just so cool. And it really then is this investment in your future. It’s not just about the accomplishment of one thing, you are investing in the future of your business because of who you have become.
As we dive into these lessons know that there’s kind of a lot of lessons in the lessons. I did my very best to try and consolidate these, but I realized I just had so much to say, but I also didn’t want this to go on forever and ever. So I will try to stay on topic. I’ll try and keep these as concise as possible and kind of reign myself in a little bit.
The first lessons are really about how I approach everything in my life and in my business. And it’s really one of the reasons why I’ve been able to start, complete, and continue on with initiatives and projects in my business in a really consistent way without a lot of that stop/start energy that I know some of my clients struggle with.
So lesson one is that big things are created one step at a time. Big things are created one step at a time. It’s really true. Just setting up this podcast, then coming up with the first three episodes, all the way to episode 100, there’s been so many, what I call mini-results along the way. Even just creating a template for myself in organizing how I want each episode to flow, that was a mini result. And it was one step at a time.
When you look at, oh, I created a template to say, this is how I’m going to structure the episodes, that has nothing to do with 100 episodes and it has everything to do with 100 episodes. If I had been worried about episode 100 when I got started, or even episode 20, I would have totally been stopped in my tracks by overwhelm and probably fear and pressure and self doubt. But I could focus on one tiny mini-result at a time.
This is really true of anything I’ve done in my business is I meet myself where I am and I start small. Instagram is another great example of this. I’m not active on the platform currently, but when I was, first, it started out with being just willing to put something on the grid with a quick note, right? I would snap a picture of something I saw. I’d write a little something.
But then I started to up-level the images. Then I started writing more. Then I started thinking about an actual strategy for Instagram. Then instead of posting one post per week, I went to three and eventually I was posting five days a week. If you go back in my feed you’ll see that there is an extensive backlog of very valuable content because I like to go deep, which is probably not the best thing for Instagram in terms of what people like to do and their attention span, but there’s so much that is there.
This bit by bit approach is cumulative effort and then creates cumulative success. And success can mean just doing the thing in whatever way you need to do it to get yourself started. That is really how you bring a big project or initiative to life. Of course it’s important to hold the vision of where you’re going and where you want to end up. That’s important. We want to have some direction, but we want to hold that lightly so that we can balance it with taking one mini-result or one micro step at a time.
We know where we’re headed, but we also can only go one foot in front of the other. And feeling like you have a doable pace that you progress at is so essential because you could take this concept of big things are created one step at a time and say, well, I’m going to just try and do one step, or like five steps maybe even, a day, and then I’ll end up there faster.
But again, if we’re trying to run before you’re even walking, you’re going to trip. And then of course, you don’t get to experience the impact of your efforts or the results compounding over time. So that’s another piece of this, is making sure that those big steps are paced in a way that feels doable for you.
For me, when I was starting this podcast, that meant a really long runway. I can’t remember the exact timeline now, but I think at least the setup of it, once I had done my research, kind of gotten into what is this going to be requiring of me and the business, I think I had at least three months to just get things set, record intros, get the first three episodes set. So it’s okay, right? I still made it to 100 episodes and there will be many more episodes to come. Giving yourself the space you need is a gift to that future and result. Okay?
So I want you to take this lesson in for yourself and consider where are you expecting yourself to be five steps ahead, especially if they’re five giant leaps ahead of where you are versus starting with one tiny step, then tiny step number two, and so on and letting that be enough.
The second lesson that I want to share with you kind of piggybacks on lesson one, and that is being willing to be patient, but committed to your results. So you want to stay the course with any big goal that you’re setting.
Anytime you do something new in the business, whether that’s trying a new form of marketing, hiring a new team member, restructuring your process or pricing, you don’t know how it will go until you do the thing. And you have to give it some time, enough time to collect data, evaluate, and decide the next iteration. It’s this balance of patience and commitment to the results.
With this podcast in particular, I was operating on a hunch, that was also paired with data, that I’d been collecting from watching my clients’ journey from initial awareness of my business to eventually coming to work with me as a client. And I could see that podcasting was a really consistent thread in all of my client’s journey to eventually working with me.
So this is one of my tangential lessons here, and that is you don’t always need a radically different approach. Often the best way to get more of the results that you want in your business is to leverage what’s already working in a new way. Let me explain that a little bit more before we return to the patience and commitment piece.
One of the things that I unintentionally did throughout the course of my entire career is build relationships. And I really believe that one of the best ways to build a business, whether that’s from the start or taking it to the next level is through relationship building. This is how I’ve really created so many opportunities for myself, whether that was back in my commercial interior design days, when I started and grew my residential business, how I’ve put in place a really strong team for our rental properties, and even my coaching business. To this day, it’s through relationships.
Through someone that I met at a conference, they introduced me to LuAnn Nigara. And then LuAnn invited me to be on the podcast. And through that experience, and then of course subsequent interviews that I had on her show and other podcasts that I’m sure you’re aware of, I was able to see that podcasting was a great way for potential clients to connect with me. It helped them understand my approach. They got to know me a little bit as a person, they could hear my voice. And it was a way for me to help them even before we had a conversation about working together.
And as I continued to be on more and more podcasts, what I found was that it was an excellent medium for me to both expand my reach, increase my visibility and create relationships, both with the podcast hosts and also with the designers who were tuning in.
And one other side note, if you aren’t asking your clients how they found you and why they want to work with you specifically, you are missing out on a goldmine of information that is going to help you better understand how to attract, serve, and retain your ideal clients, which that could be an entire podcast of its own. So if that’s one you want to hear about, let me know.
This podcast is an example of identifying what was working in my business and leveraging that. But even though I knew guest podcasting was a way for me to bring in my ideal clients to my business, I also knew that creating my own show and using it in a similar way would take time to produce similar outcomes. This is where the patience and commitment comes back in. This is where staying the course is so important.
What I knew when I started this podcast was that it was going to be a significant investment, both in time and money. It continues to be. And I also knew that in order to see the return on my investment, I would need that patience and commitment. I decided that I would be willing to do the work before I started the show. I highly recommend that you do this as well with anything new that you’re taking on, especially in marketing. Decide ahead of time, how long you are willing to stay the course.
For me, I decided that I’d be willing to do the work and pay for the support, meaning my podcast producer, for at least a year before I was seeing the results I wanted to see. And you might be thinking, seriously, a year? Yes, seriously, a year. The year timeline meant that I needed to wait until I had enough financial resources to get this started.
So that patience started before I even started with the podcast, because I knew that I wanted to have an excellent podcast producer for you all to have an excellent listening experience. And I also wanted to make sure that I had a high level of support with this particular project, because I know how often technology tends to bring up overwhelm and frustration and tears for me.
The other reason I wanted to give myself this long runway for results was because I was able to give myself a circumstantial timeline that helped me take off the internal pressure, right? Because deadlines and calendars and all the things, right, they’re not the things that cause us anxiety. Like there’s the piece of that where, yes, you are over capacity and need to reduce commitment, streamline things. Yes, there’s those things. Those definitely need to be addressed.
And at the same time, just having a commitment doesn’t necessarily mean you need to feel a certain way about it. And so I knew that if I just gave myself a circumstance that felt very spacious, I could help with my mindset and create a better mindset experience, which would then keep me in motion. I didn’t have to feel like everything was riding on the first episodes, or even riding on this one marketing channel that had to work immediately.
For me, this was such a relief and it really helped me get into action and also continue to take consistent action with patience. I want to be super clear when I talk about the patience piece of this, I’m not meaning that I was passive about the podcast growth or just kind of like, well, whatever happens happens, right? No, I knew I was planning on having this produce a certain outcome within the ecosystem of my business. So I was definitely intentional and proactive, but what I wasn’t was graspy.
I want you to consider what consistent action looks like and feels like versus being graspy and anxious around your efforts and results. Likely that second approach is going to be driven by a lot of thoughts of, this has to work. This should be working already. I need to get this right. All of those are going to halt or stall your progress. The exact opposite of what you want. So instead of hurrying things along, you end up slowing yourself down.
And so I knew that if I gave myself a nice spacious timeline for myself to see the outcomes that I wanted, that was going to help me from an internal standpoint. Also, when I say I was not passive, patient commitment to results means you tweak as you go. You study what’s happening and make adjustments along the way.
Patience doesn’t mean you start something and go, I hope this works for forever without tracking results and using those results to inform your next steps. So it’s really a balance between patience and commitment. We know the end goal that you want to create, and you’re going to give it some time before you make any conclusions about your next step. And you’re also not going to expect something to perform for you like a trick pony.
One of the things you can do with this is balance the type of marketing in your business with the pieces that you’re starting as new so you have that time for the results to compound, and pairing that with the strategies that are already working for you. Right? So that’s another way to give yourself a circumstance where it’s not like you’re pulling the rug out from underneath you and now this other thing really does have to work.
For me with the podcast, part of being willing to let this take some time included continuing on with other marketing strategies as I got the podcast going. So continuing to pitch myself to do some of the other speaking engagements, podcasts, those types of things.
This podcast has really been great evidence for me to reaffirm my philosophy around taking action and consistency and commitment in my business. And I want you to see it as evidence for yourself of how that patient commitment pays off.
A couple of years ago, the majority of my clients would reference wanting to work with me because they heard me on someone else’s podcast. And now the majority of clients that reach out say it’s because of my podcast that they’re reaching out. If I hadn’t been willing to be patient with the timeline, I could have seen even just three months in and go, “Oh, well, this isn’t working” and quit. But I was committed to the end result of bringing more of my marketing to a platform that I own.
With this lesson number two, what I want you to consider is thinking about something that you’re undertaking in your interior design business, something new, or maybe it’s something you’ve been at for a while. And I want you to ask yourself, are you creating unnecessary frustration from expecting results faster than is maybe realistic or likely? Do you still have a high level of commitment to the reason why you started that thing in the first place? And can both of these pieces coexist in a way that allows you to take intentional action and keep moving forward as you learn more and more about what’s working and what’s not working?
These first two lessons were pretty focused on strategic action, but now we have to take a look at one of the biggest mindset lessons and internal shifts that has come up for me having produced this podcast for you. Lesson three is that your beliefs about yourself, meaning the story you tell about yourself to you will show up in every single part of your business for better or for worse.
Now, this is something that I truly believe. I know it to be true for myself, for the clients that I work with. And the way that this lesson showed up in the creation of the show and all that went into it was really surprising, and it’s one that I definitely had to share.
It’s such a prime example of giving yourself a goal for it to intentionally stir the internal pot and bring the unconscious beliefs that you need to address to grow yourself as the business owner, right alongside growing the business in the way that you really want it to succeed.
This belief that I unearthed didn’t come initially, it came more in maybe the middle of this podcast. But this belief was that I don’t make sense. The goal that brought this up was really a combination of being committed to the weekly episode schedule, paired then with my master coach project. And part of that project was cutting an additional five hours of work from my schedule per week.
If you want to hear more about how I accomplished that goal, I did a two-part episode series on that and it’s episode 36 and 37. And I think it’s just titled how I cut five hours per week or something like that. But one of the episodes will cover the strategy behind reducing those hours. And then the other one covers the important mindset piece behind achieving that.
But I had this commitment, patient commitment, like I said, to this podcast. And then I also had a patient commitment to my master coach certification and the project that I needed to complete as a part of those requirements. And in learning how to make this goal inevitable for myself, this belief, “I don’t make sense” was creating all sorts of issues with over preparing, overthinking, second guessing, making too many revisions, all of it costing me a lot of time and energy.
Going back to lesson three about your beliefs about yourself will show up in every single part of your business for better or for worse. What’s interesting is I had done a lot of work to streamline my days. That’s the intro of this podcast, streamline your days for productivity and profit. And I certainly had done that. And stretching myself even farther than I thought I could go, brought up this really interesting belief that was still holding me back in a variety of ways.
Now that I’ve worked past that, I can look back at the past version of myself that believed I didn’t make sense and I can kind of laugh. I mean, I’ve done so many trainings. I know lots of you have attended them. Some of you have done my programs or worked with me one-on-one. I mean, I’ve written a chapter for LuAnn Nigara’s book. You don’t get invited to do that if you don’t make sense.
But this is one where if I had not had the goal of producing the podcast in less time, I’d still be dragging around that belief. And then the resulting impacts of that belief, just like dead weight. That’s why I was sharing earlier in the episode, the point of doing something that stretches you. There’s so much more to be gained than the thing you set out to create.
And so what I want you to do with this lesson number three is bring to mind something new that you’ve been trying to accomplish in your business. With that in mind, what is the narrative running through your head as you go up against the challenge or goal? What is the story that’s running through your brain?
I like to think of it as like that ticker tape. I guess this is super old. Well, maybe they still do it on news programs. Anyways, I’m picturing this building we have in St. Paul where there’s like a ticker tape that runs across with the latest news. But it’s like, that’s how our brain works, right? It’s just this running narrative.
So bring to mind something you’re trying to accomplish, that challenge or goal that you’re coming up against. And what is the story that you’re telling yourself about you, about your capabilities, about the effort that you’re putting in? And then I want you to think about how those sentences are making you feel.
If they’re on the negative end of the emotional spectrum, we want to definitely take a look at that because when you feel that way, whatever that emotion is that’s coming up, think about the impact that that has on your actions, the way you approach the goal or the challenge, the various efforts you put in. And then of course, how all of that is going to impact the results you’re producing.
Of course, sometimes we find that the story is serving us and that’s amazing. We should capture that as well. But often when we ask more of ourselves, we also find we have an opportunity to upgrade our identity to create a new level of business results. As I said earlier in the episode, that new version of you, that version 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, whatever it is, that gets to go with you. And that’s the beautiful part.
And that is what I’ve found while stretching myself for this podcast, and I know it to be true for the designers I worked with and for all of you. There is absolutely a need to take strategic action in your business. And I also believe that accessing your next level of potential, your leadership and the impact for you on the industry and your clients, requires looking at your beliefs and building the skill of self-inquiry and self-awareness so that you can challenge the stories that are holding you back.
And that brings me to the fourth and final lesson I’m going to share with you today. It’s another one brought to you by mindset and self-coaching. And that is the rules are all made up, and I’m the one who makes them up. As I was approaching this 100th episode, I noticed during some of my own self-coaching that I was telling myself that this milestone didn’t count. And I got curious about that.
As you know, this summer as a part of CEO Summer School, I chose to re-release past episodes as a way for you to revisit some of those concepts and bring to your attention some of the episodes you might’ve missed or forgot about so they were really in the forefront as we went through the summer school series.
Here’s what I noticed, as they were released, they got a new episode number, which continued to bring the count of the episodes closer to 100. I saw that I was taking this very intentional choice of releasing these episodes between the CEO Summer School series to support you, and then I started using it against myself. And I was robbing myself of the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishment with full appreciation for what I have created.
I forgot that I got to make the rules in my business. That happens periodically and then I need to remind myself, I make the rules. I’m the CEO. And if I want the re-airs to count, I can. If I decided I didn’t want them to count, they wouldn’t have to. If I want to celebrate this milestone at this time, I can because the rules are all made up. You can write them. You can break them. You can reinvent them. You can reimagine them. But in order to do so, you have to know what rules you’ve made up or written for yourself so you can take a look at, do you want to keep them or does something need to change?
So with this lesson, get curious and ask yourself, where in your business are you forgetting that often the permission you’re waiting for to write the rule the way you want to write it, to do it your own way is an inside job. It starts with you, you as the CEO.
I’m going to wrap it up there with those four lessons. Of course, there were many more and I kind of sprinkled some extras along the way, but let’s recap what these lessons are. So the first one is that big things are created one step at a time. Number two, stay the course by being patient, but committed to results.
Number three, your beliefs about yourself impact every single part of your business, so you better know the story. And number four, the rules are all made up and you’re the one who writes them.
Before we close out this 100th episode, I could not finish up without saying a huge, huge thank you to each and every one of you. Some of you have been with me since episode one, some of you are newer to the podcast, wherever you are in listening to this show and coming along for the ride, I have such appreciation and gratitude for you.
Even though my recording is very one-sided, meaning I’m just sitting here in my office recording this for you, I still feel this deep connection with you all. And I love, love, love when you share your insights and how this podcast is impacting you personally and professionally. Thank you to everyone who supported the show by sharing an episode, telling a friend and leaving a review.
And if you haven’t already left a review, that really would mean the world to me. It is one of the top ways you can help me sustain the show and also share these tools and concepts with fellow designers who could benefit. The podcast review giveaway is still happening, so if you’ve missed the details on that, all you have to do is leave a rating and review of the podcast and then submit a quick form so I know how to get in touch with you so that when I select winners, I have a way to reach out.
And last, but certainly not least, thank you so much to my incredible podcast team who helps bring this show to you tear-free every single week.
Next week, we have an interview with my client Campbell Minister, and I’m so excited to share her with you. Campbell is a brilliant business woman. She’s an incredibly talented designer and just an all-around gem of a woman. And she will be here sharing it all with you and having a wonderful conversation that we are excited to bring for episode 101.
Until then, I’m going to wish you a beautiful week, and I will talk to you all soon.
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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. It is wonderful to be here with you. I have been on my summer slowdown and it feels like we are back in a little bit of a routine. It is at the time of me recording this the second week of school. And of course, if you want to hear more about the intentions I set and the how of my summer slowdown, definitely go back and check out episode 80 entitled Create Your Summer Slowdown. Of course, there’s summer in the title, but you can definitely take what I share and apply it to any time you want to take some away from your interior design business and create some more space for yourself and for your life.
But it feels like it’s been kind of a while since I sat down and created sort of the regular format podcast for you, and it feels good to be back. And it also feels a little weird and like I’m a little rusty and, you know, getting back in the groove, getting back on the bicycle, or whatever that saying is.
Anyways, I wouldn’t say I’m back to total capacity. And I don’t think I will be for a little while. I feel like I need some time to ease into things. But I have been serving my mastermind clients and my private clients.
So know that if you are on the private coaching waitlist or have been keeping an eye out for my emails announcing availability, it will be coming. I’ve just been really taking stock of what I want those relationships to look and feel like and want to have a little more space and a little more time to really design that in the new way that I’m going to be bringing it in for new clients.
As we settle into the fall, I do hope that you had a really wonderful summer. I know that we did. We had so many visitors. And at points, it felt like a lot for my very introverted self. But it was also great to see family and friends and share our cabin with them. We even went to Alaska for a week, which was an incredible adventure. And being with the kids felt like a really stable and steady energy this summer that I think we all really benefited from.
As the summer progressed and more and more episodes released, I knew that the 100th episode of the podcast was coming up. And I’ve definitely been thinking about it, what might be fun, what might be useful, what would you even want to hear about with the 100th episode. And what I ended up settling on is the lessons learned, because there’s been so many lessons and so many moments of growth, and I want to share that with you.
I love behind the scenes podcasts for some of the shows that I listen to, and this felt really appropriate from a, oh, that’d be fun to give them a behind the scenes of how my brain works, how this has evolved, what have been the challenges and what have I learned from those. But it’s also really appropriate because I am always working with my clients on the process of curious evaluation and taking lessons that you learn, whether you gain the results you want, the outcomes you want, or maybe things don’t go as planned, but taking whatever you can from those lessons and bringing them into the future.
Because I really believe that no matter what outcomes you experience from the efforts you put in, the only time you really waste time is if you don’t pause and take a moment to look at what are the lessons and insights and pieces of this that I am going to bring with? And what am I going to release? And how can I use that to help me better create what I want in the future?
What was really interesting for me in reflecting on the lessons is that they are lessons that I have learned in the past or philosophies that I hold. And they’ve really been reinforced with another big new undertaking in the business. There’s that saying of peeling the onion, right? You just keep taking layers and layers and layers off, which I kind of hate that expression. Who wants to peel an onion? So I kind of think of it as little nesting dolls, where you start to just integrate further and further, embody those lessons and continue to grow through that process.
But these lessons that I’m sharing are really ones that have been solidified for me and are just the lens in which I see the world. But there’s a deeper understanding and a deeper integration, and it’s because of the podcast. And I want to share these lessons with you as an example, giving you evidence of how I approach business projects so that you can use that same approach and the why behind the approach to support you in your own business growth, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been in this business for decades.
I think it can be really helpful to have evidence of a framework or perspective working for someone else as a way to help you believe these lessons will work for you in whatever you’re setting out to achieve. I think sometimes we hear things and we’re like, yeah, that sounds nice. Or, well, I mean, I guess it worked for them, but I don’t know about me. So I want to give you some more things to kind of have your brain latch onto and see how these frameworks and my perspectives and philosophies really do play out in the course of an extended project like this or an extended goal.
One of the things I want to highlight before we dive into the lessons is that with any goal, such as launching and committing to this weekly value that I create in the business through the podcast, it isn’t just about the 100th episode. It’s who I have become in the process of creating the 100 episodes as a person, as a business owner, as a coach. This project that I’ve taken on and will continue to take on, I get to take now those lessons learned and who I have become, the internal shifts as well, that person is going to go into the future.
And I think that’s really important to note is that when you take on something new, that is something internal in the business, a marketing approach, maybe taking on a different type of project, different type of scope, different type of client, whatever it is. Yes, you accomplish the thing, but so much of what you gain from that is there’s a new version of you that then is running your business going forward, which I think is just so cool. And it really then is this investment in your future. It’s not just about the accomplishment of one thing, you are investing in the future of your business because of who you have become.
As we dive into these lessons know that there’s kind of a lot of lessons in the lessons. I did my very best to try and consolidate these, but I realized I just had so much to say, but I also didn’t want this to go on forever and ever. So I will try to stay on topic. I’ll try and keep these as concise as possible and kind of reign myself in a little bit.
The first lessons are really about how I approach everything in my life and in my business. And it’s really one of the reasons why I’ve been able to start, complete, and continue on with initiatives and projects in my business in a really consistent way without a lot of that stop/start energy that I know some of my clients struggle with.
So lesson one is that big things are created one step at a time. Big things are created one step at a time. It’s really true. Just setting up this podcast, then coming up with the first three episodes, all the way to episode 100, there’s been so many, what I call mini-results along the way. Even just creating a template for myself in organizing how I want each episode to flow, that was a mini result. And it was one step at a time.
When you look at, oh, I created a template to say, this is how I’m going to structure the episodes, that has nothing to do with 100 episodes and it has everything to do with 100 episodes. If I had been worried about episode 100 when I got started, or even episode 20, I would have totally been stopped in my tracks by overwhelm and probably fear and pressure and self doubt. But I could focus on one tiny mini-result at a time.
This is really true of anything I’ve done in my business is I meet myself where I am and I start small. Instagram is another great example of this. I’m not active on the platform currently, but when I was, first, it started out with being just willing to put something on the grid with a quick note, right? I would snap a picture of something I saw. I’d write a little something.
But then I started to up-level the images. Then I started writing more. Then I started thinking about an actual strategy for Instagram. Then instead of posting one post per week, I went to three and eventually I was posting five days a week. If you go back in my feed you’ll see that there is an extensive backlog of very valuable content because I like to go deep, which is probably not the best thing for Instagram in terms of what people like to do and their attention span, but there’s so much that is there.
This bit by bit approach is cumulative effort and then creates cumulative success. And success can mean just doing the thing in whatever way you need to do it to get yourself started. That is really how you bring a big project or initiative to life. Of course it’s important to hold the vision of where you’re going and where you want to end up. That’s important. We want to have some direction, but we want to hold that lightly so that we can balance it with taking one mini-result or one micro step at a time.
We know where we’re headed, but we also can only go one foot in front of the other. And feeling like you have a doable pace that you progress at is so essential because you could take this concept of big things are created one step at a time and say, well, I’m going to just try and do one step, or like five steps maybe even, a day, and then I’ll end up there faster.
But again, if we’re trying to run before you’re even walking, you’re going to trip. And then of course, you don’t get to experience the impact of your efforts or the results compounding over time. So that’s another piece of this, is making sure that those big steps are paced in a way that feels doable for you.
For me, when I was starting this podcast, that meant a really long runway. I can’t remember the exact timeline now, but I think at least the setup of it, once I had done my research, kind of gotten into what is this going to be requiring of me and the business, I think I had at least three months to just get things set, record intros, get the first three episodes set. So it’s okay, right? I still made it to 100 episodes and there will be many more episodes to come. Giving yourself the space you need is a gift to that future and result. Okay?
So I want you to take this lesson in for yourself and consider where are you expecting yourself to be five steps ahead, especially if they’re five giant leaps ahead of where you are versus starting with one tiny step, then tiny step number two, and so on and letting that be enough.
The second lesson that I want to share with you kind of piggybacks on lesson one, and that is being willing to be patient, but committed to your results. So you want to stay the course with any big goal that you’re setting.
Anytime you do something new in the business, whether that’s trying a new form of marketing, hiring a new team member, restructuring your process or pricing, you don’t know how it will go until you do the thing. And you have to give it some time, enough time to collect data, evaluate, and decide the next iteration. It’s this balance of patience and commitment to the results.
With this podcast in particular, I was operating on a hunch, that was also paired with data, that I’d been collecting from watching my clients’ journey from initial awareness of my business to eventually coming to work with me as a client. And I could see that podcasting was a really consistent thread in all of my client’s journey to eventually working with me.
So this is one of my tangential lessons here, and that is you don’t always need a radically different approach. Often the best way to get more of the results that you want in your business is to leverage what’s already working in a new way. Let me explain that a little bit more before we return to the patience and commitment piece.
One of the things that I unintentionally did throughout the course of my entire career is build relationships. And I really believe that one of the best ways to build a business, whether that’s from the start or taking it to the next level is through relationship building. This is how I’ve really created so many opportunities for myself, whether that was back in my commercial interior design days, when I started and grew my residential business, how I’ve put in place a really strong team for our rental properties, and even my coaching business. To this day, it’s through relationships.
Through someone that I met at a conference, they introduced me to LuAnn Nigara. And then LuAnn invited me to be on the podcast. And through that experience, and then of course subsequent interviews that I had on her show and other podcasts that I’m sure you’re aware of, I was able to see that podcasting was a great way for potential clients to connect with me. It helped them understand my approach. They got to know me a little bit as a person, they could hear my voice. And it was a way for me to help them even before we had a conversation about working together.
And as I continued to be on more and more podcasts, what I found was that it was an excellent medium for me to both expand my reach, increase my visibility and create relationships, both with the podcast hosts and also with the designers who were tuning in.
And one other side note, if you aren’t asking your clients how they found you and why they want to work with you specifically, you are missing out on a goldmine of information that is going to help you better understand how to attract, serve, and retain your ideal clients, which that could be an entire podcast of its own. So if that’s one you want to hear about, let me know.
This podcast is an example of identifying what was working in my business and leveraging that. But even though I knew guest podcasting was a way for me to bring in my ideal clients to my business, I also knew that creating my own show and using it in a similar way would take time to produce similar outcomes. This is where the patience and commitment comes back in. This is where staying the course is so important.
What I knew when I started this podcast was that it was going to be a significant investment, both in time and money. It continues to be. And I also knew that in order to see the return on my investment, I would need that patience and commitment. I decided that I would be willing to do the work before I started the show. I highly recommend that you do this as well with anything new that you’re taking on, especially in marketing. Decide ahead of time, how long you are willing to stay the course.
For me, I decided that I’d be willing to do the work and pay for the support, meaning my podcast producer, for at least a year before I was seeing the results I wanted to see. And you might be thinking, seriously, a year? Yes, seriously, a year. The year timeline meant that I needed to wait until I had enough financial resources to get this started.
So that patience started before I even started with the podcast, because I knew that I wanted to have an excellent podcast producer for you all to have an excellent listening experience. And I also wanted to make sure that I had a high level of support with this particular project, because I know how often technology tends to bring up overwhelm and frustration and tears for me.
The other reason I wanted to give myself this long runway for results was because I was able to give myself a circumstantial timeline that helped me take off the internal pressure, right? Because deadlines and calendars and all the things, right, they’re not the things that cause us anxiety. Like there’s the piece of that where, yes, you are over capacity and need to reduce commitment, streamline things. Yes, there’s those things. Those definitely need to be addressed.
And at the same time, just having a commitment doesn’t necessarily mean you need to feel a certain way about it. And so I knew that if I just gave myself a circumstance that felt very spacious, I could help with my mindset and create a better mindset experience, which would then keep me in motion. I didn’t have to feel like everything was riding on the first episodes, or even riding on this one marketing channel that had to work immediately.
For me, this was such a relief and it really helped me get into action and also continue to take consistent action with patience. I want to be super clear when I talk about the patience piece of this, I’m not meaning that I was passive about the podcast growth or just kind of like, well, whatever happens happens, right? No, I knew I was planning on having this produce a certain outcome within the ecosystem of my business. So I was definitely intentional and proactive, but what I wasn’t was graspy.
I want you to consider what consistent action looks like and feels like versus being graspy and anxious around your efforts and results. Likely that second approach is going to be driven by a lot of thoughts of, this has to work. This should be working already. I need to get this right. All of those are going to halt or stall your progress. The exact opposite of what you want. So instead of hurrying things along, you end up slowing yourself down.
And so I knew that if I gave myself a nice spacious timeline for myself to see the outcomes that I wanted, that was going to help me from an internal standpoint. Also, when I say I was not passive, patient commitment to results means you tweak as you go. You study what’s happening and make adjustments along the way.
Patience doesn’t mean you start something and go, I hope this works for forever without tracking results and using those results to inform your next steps. So it’s really a balance between patience and commitment. We know the end goal that you want to create, and you’re going to give it some time before you make any conclusions about your next step. And you’re also not going to expect something to perform for you like a trick pony.
One of the things you can do with this is balance the type of marketing in your business with the pieces that you’re starting as new so you have that time for the results to compound, and pairing that with the strategies that are already working for you. Right? So that’s another way to give yourself a circumstance where it’s not like you’re pulling the rug out from underneath you and now this other thing really does have to work.
For me with the podcast, part of being willing to let this take some time included continuing on with other marketing strategies as I got the podcast going. So continuing to pitch myself to do some of the other speaking engagements, podcasts, those types of things.
This podcast has really been great evidence for me to reaffirm my philosophy around taking action and consistency and commitment in my business. And I want you to see it as evidence for yourself of how that patient commitment pays off.
A couple of years ago, the majority of my clients would reference wanting to work with me because they heard me on someone else’s podcast. And now the majority of clients that reach out say it’s because of my podcast that they’re reaching out. If I hadn’t been willing to be patient with the timeline, I could have seen even just three months in and go, “Oh, well, this isn’t working” and quit. But I was committed to the end result of bringing more of my marketing to a platform that I own.
With this lesson number two, what I want you to consider is thinking about something that you’re undertaking in your interior design business, something new, or maybe it’s something you’ve been at for a while. And I want you to ask yourself, are you creating unnecessary frustration from expecting results faster than is maybe realistic or likely? Do you still have a high level of commitment to the reason why you started that thing in the first place? And can both of these pieces coexist in a way that allows you to take intentional action and keep moving forward as you learn more and more about what’s working and what’s not working?
These first two lessons were pretty focused on strategic action, but now we have to take a look at one of the biggest mindset lessons and internal shifts that has come up for me having produced this podcast for you. Lesson three is that your beliefs about yourself, meaning the story you tell about yourself to you will show up in every single part of your business for better or for worse.
Now, this is something that I truly believe. I know it to be true for myself, for the clients that I work with. And the way that this lesson showed up in the creation of the show and all that went into it was really surprising, and it’s one that I definitely had to share.
It’s such a prime example of giving yourself a goal for it to intentionally stir the internal pot and bring the unconscious beliefs that you need to address to grow yourself as the business owner, right alongside growing the business in the way that you really want it to succeed.
This belief that I unearthed didn’t come initially, it came more in maybe the middle of this podcast. But this belief was that I don’t make sense. The goal that brought this up was really a combination of being committed to the weekly episode schedule, paired then with my master coach project. And part of that project was cutting an additional five hours of work from my schedule per week.
If you want to hear more about how I accomplished that goal, I did a two-part episode series on that and it’s episode 36 and 37. And I think it’s just titled how I cut five hours per week or something like that. But one of the episodes will cover the strategy behind reducing those hours. And then the other one covers the important mindset piece behind achieving that.
But I had this commitment, patient commitment, like I said, to this podcast. And then I also had a patient commitment to my master coach certification and the project that I needed to complete as a part of those requirements. And in learning how to make this goal inevitable for myself, this belief, “I don’t make sense” was creating all sorts of issues with over preparing, overthinking, second guessing, making too many revisions, all of it costing me a lot of time and energy.
Going back to lesson three about your beliefs about yourself will show up in every single part of your business for better or for worse. What’s interesting is I had done a lot of work to streamline my days. That’s the intro of this podcast, streamline your days for productivity and profit. And I certainly had done that. And stretching myself even farther than I thought I could go, brought up this really interesting belief that was still holding me back in a variety of ways.
Now that I’ve worked past that, I can look back at the past version of myself that believed I didn’t make sense and I can kind of laugh. I mean, I’ve done so many trainings. I know lots of you have attended them. Some of you have done my programs or worked with me one-on-one. I mean, I’ve written a chapter for LuAnn Nigara’s book. You don’t get invited to do that if you don’t make sense.
But this is one where if I had not had the goal of producing the podcast in less time, I’d still be dragging around that belief. And then the resulting impacts of that belief, just like dead weight. That’s why I was sharing earlier in the episode, the point of doing something that stretches you. There’s so much more to be gained than the thing you set out to create.
And so what I want you to do with this lesson number three is bring to mind something new that you’ve been trying to accomplish in your business. With that in mind, what is the narrative running through your head as you go up against the challenge or goal? What is the story that’s running through your brain?
I like to think of it as like that ticker tape. I guess this is super old. Well, maybe they still do it on news programs. Anyways, I’m picturing this building we have in St. Paul where there’s like a ticker tape that runs across with the latest news. But it’s like, that’s how our brain works, right? It’s just this running narrative.
So bring to mind something you’re trying to accomplish, that challenge or goal that you’re coming up against. And what is the story that you’re telling yourself about you, about your capabilities, about the effort that you’re putting in? And then I want you to think about how those sentences are making you feel.
If they’re on the negative end of the emotional spectrum, we want to definitely take a look at that because when you feel that way, whatever that emotion is that’s coming up, think about the impact that that has on your actions, the way you approach the goal or the challenge, the various efforts you put in. And then of course, how all of that is going to impact the results you’re producing.
Of course, sometimes we find that the story is serving us and that’s amazing. We should capture that as well. But often when we ask more of ourselves, we also find we have an opportunity to upgrade our identity to create a new level of business results. As I said earlier in the episode, that new version of you, that version 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, whatever it is, that gets to go with you. And that’s the beautiful part.
And that is what I’ve found while stretching myself for this podcast, and I know it to be true for the designers I worked with and for all of you. There is absolutely a need to take strategic action in your business. And I also believe that accessing your next level of potential, your leadership and the impact for you on the industry and your clients, requires looking at your beliefs and building the skill of self-inquiry and self-awareness so that you can challenge the stories that are holding you back.
And that brings me to the fourth and final lesson I’m going to share with you today. It’s another one brought to you by mindset and self-coaching. And that is the rules are all made up, and I’m the one who makes them up. As I was approaching this 100th episode, I noticed during some of my own self-coaching that I was telling myself that this milestone didn’t count. And I got curious about that.
As you know, this summer as a part of CEO Summer School, I chose to re-release past episodes as a way for you to revisit some of those concepts and bring to your attention some of the episodes you might’ve missed or forgot about so they were really in the forefront as we went through the summer school series.
Here’s what I noticed, as they were released, they got a new episode number, which continued to bring the count of the episodes closer to 100. I saw that I was taking this very intentional choice of releasing these episodes between the CEO Summer School series to support you, and then I started using it against myself. And I was robbing myself of the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishment with full appreciation for what I have created.
I forgot that I got to make the rules in my business. That happens periodically and then I need to remind myself, I make the rules. I’m the CEO. And if I want the re-airs to count, I can. If I decided I didn’t want them to count, they wouldn’t have to. If I want to celebrate this milestone at this time, I can because the rules are all made up. You can write them. You can break them. You can reinvent them. You can reimagine them. But in order to do so, you have to know what rules you’ve made up or written for yourself so you can take a look at, do you want to keep them or does something need to change?
So with this lesson, get curious and ask yourself, where in your business are you forgetting that often the permission you’re waiting for to write the rule the way you want to write it, to do it your own way is an inside job. It starts with you, you as the CEO.
I’m going to wrap it up there with those four lessons. Of course, there were many more and I kind of sprinkled some extras along the way, but let’s recap what these lessons are. So the first one is that big things are created one step at a time. Number two, stay the course by being patient, but committed to results.
Number three, your beliefs about yourself impact every single part of your business, so you better know the story. And number four, the rules are all made up and you’re the one who writes them.
Before we close out this 100th episode, I could not finish up without saying a huge, huge thank you to each and every one of you. Some of you have been with me since episode one, some of you are newer to the podcast, wherever you are in listening to this show and coming along for the ride, I have such appreciation and gratitude for you.
Even though my recording is very one-sided, meaning I’m just sitting here in my office recording this for you, I still feel this deep connection with you all. And I love, love, love when you share your insights and how this podcast is impacting you personally and professionally. Thank you to everyone who supported the show by sharing an episode, telling a friend and leaving a review.
And if you haven’t already left a review, that really would mean the world to me. It is one of the top ways you can help me sustain the show and also share these tools and concepts with fellow designers who could benefit. The podcast review giveaway is still happening, so if you’ve missed the details on that, all you have to do is leave a rating and review of the podcast and then submit a quick form so I know how to get in touch with you so that when I select winners, I have a way to reach out.
And last, but certainly not least, thank you so much to my incredible podcast team who helps bring this show to you tear-free every single week.
Next week, we have an interview with my client Campbell Minister, and I’m so excited to share her with you. Campbell is a brilliant business woman. She’s an incredibly talented designer and just an all-around gem of a woman. And she will be here sharing it all with you and having a wonderful conversation that we are excited to bring for episode 101.
Until then, I’m going to wish you a beautiful week, and I will talk to you all soon.
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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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