41. How to Manage Annoyances
We can all agree that running and growing an interior design business can be filled with some (or many) annoying parts. Whether it's learning new skills, stretching ourselves, or dealing with daily occurrences and tasks that create friction, we may end up spending precious time and energy wishing these challenges didn't exist.
We know that resisting and avoiding annoyances isn't the most productive use of our time. What can we do when we experience those humps that keep us stuck? Is it possible that we might be making the challenges in our business even more annoying? And what becomes possible when we learn to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept those obstacles?
Join me this week as I give you the answers to these questions. You'll hear why wishing challenges away isn't an effective strategy, how to begin accepting the annoyances in your design business, and why embracing them is the key to running your business with more ease.
If you never want to miss an episode of the podcast, make sure to follow the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you haven’t already, I would appreciate it if you left me a rating and review. As a thank you, I’ll send you a midweek pick-me-up in the mail. Simply screenshot your review and send me a message on Instagram here!
What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
What I mean by “annoying” in this context.
The parts of running and growing your business that might be annoying you right now.
What are making the annoyances in your business more annoying.
The power of anticipating, acknowledging, and accepting annoyances.
How to accept the annoyances in your design business.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
If you love what you’re learning on the show, I’d love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm
Follow me on Instagram!
Sign up to my Monday Mindset email list to get bite-sized insights on topics that you can use to set your week up for success!
Submit your questions for Ask Desi here!
Learn more about Henry Ford
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 41. In this one I’m sharing why resisting versus expecting annoyances in your business is actually what is making things kind of annoying.
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.
Welcome back to the podcast, it’s a pep talk day. I love creating these for you. I would love to hear if you love listening to them as well. You can always send me a message or leave a review on the podcast page. As I’m recording this, my daughter is about to turn seven and I was just checking the Amazon shipment for some of the party favors we’re still waiting on. It’s going to be a squishmallow themed birthday party.
So after we did this I started thinking, oh no, I bet she’s going to get a lot of squishmallows. I don’t know where we’re going to put these things, they’re so big. But if you have kids on the younger side of things, you probably have heard of how popular these are and I’m guessing you have some in your own home. So this weekend, my husband and I, we’re going to be wrangling 19 little girls at the trampoline park to celebrate her birthday. She’s so excited.
All right, today we’re going to be talking about dealing with the annoying parts of running a design business, or the annoying part of starting something new in your business where you can’t help but feel the friction. You’re going to learn how to make these things less annoying, but most importantly, how anticipating and accepting annoyances is actually what will get you unstuck, moving forward and have them be less annoying.
Before we dive into the pep talk I want to give a shout out to my friend Renee, who’s a very talented designer and also the host of The Only Girl On The Jobsite podcast. Renee left this wonderful review titled, “Must listen for interior designers.”
She said, “Desi is equal parts designer and therapist in the best of ways. Not only is she a proven interior designer, but she now wants to empower the rest of us to rein in our business by controlling the overwhelm we all suffer from. I learned something new from each episode.”
Thank you for taking a moment to write a review, Renee. Your words and this gesture means so much to me. Renee and I are actually going to be recording another podcast that’ll be aired on her show, so stay tuned for that. Or you can go check out my previous episodes on The Only Girl On The Jobsite.
And if you haven’t already, I would so appreciate it if you would leave me a rating and review. It really makes a difference in helping me spread the word about this podcast. And, honestly, it just makes my day to hear from you all.
All right, let’s dive into today’s topic. I think we can all agree that there are some annoying parts of running and growing your interior design business. If you listen to episode three where I share the coaching tool I teach all of my clients, you might remember that circumstances are neutral. The circumstance being your business or the tasks that you have to complete as a business owner.
These tasks or circumstances are neutral. It’s not until we assign meaning or have a judgment or a perception of these circumstances that we feel a certain way, and with this episode that feeling is annoyance. So technically, the things we do in our business are just tasks and projects and we can choose to think and then feel about them any way that we want. But after coaching so many clients and running my own business, what I really mean by annoying is that there are things that if we could get the results we wanted without doing those things, we probably wouldn’t do them.
They are things that are just outside of our zone of genius, things we don’t find naturally fun, where we have to kind of pump ourselves up to do them. That’s what I’m talking about today. I’m also thinking about the friction you feel when you’re implementing something new or stretching yourself in some way in your business. And this is really around having to develop a new skill or remember to do something you wouldn’t normally do.
We often have thoughts about those things that generate the feeling of dread or resistance or annoyance. Thoughts like, this is going to be hard or I really wish I didn’t have to do this. Or why me? Why do I have to do this? I want to give you some examples of what these tasks and projects might be. These are all things I coach my clients on, so I’m guessing there will be at least a few of these where you find yourself nodding your head thinking, yep, annoying.
This could be taking the time to really sit down and think through and write out your process, or develop a system or a template that’s going to help you in your business. It might be planning or tracking or entering your time. Or it could be learning how to effectively delegate instead of hoping people read your mind. It might be having a bunch of lackluster interviews before you can find that dream employee. Or it might be reminding clients you don’t communicate outside of normal business hours. Don’t you just wish they’d remember?
With some of these we just think, oh, I really wish I didn’t have to do this. And often, at first, with things that are new to us or we’re implementing something new, they are going to slow us down in some way, and so that annoys us too. And most often that slowdown is temporary until we get into the routine or rhythm and then we start getting the benefit. But we do kind of have to work through that little bit of annoyance at the start.
What I see so often with clients is that there’s a lot of time spent wishing that this wasn’t the reality. So much time is spent on resistance to what is. There are things in your business that you will have to do that you don’t want to do, or things that will slow you down temporarily before they allow you to speed up.
Instead of using your time to get over this hump of things you don’t want to do or things that have a little bit of friction to start, you end up spending time in avoidance and wishing that there wasn’t that initial friction or that internal experience of annoyance or dread.
So I want you to consider what would be a more productive use of your time, learning to accept and expect annoyances, or things that feel challenging or like friction and just get on with it so you can use that time to complete the task or project? Or spending that time in avoidance or maybe dread or resistance. I mean, really, that’s a trick question. Of course, it’s going to be more productive to just get on with things. And the best way to do that is to expect and accept that there are going to be things that you don’t want to do.
What I really want you to consider is that when you anticipate, acknowledge and accept the annoyances in your business, whatever they are for you, you can run your business with more ease and be more effective in reaching your business goals much more quickly. And, of course, then your experience becomes better too.
I want to share a story I recently read about Henry Ford, who is, of course, the creator of the ultimate in efficiency, the assembly line. Now stick with me, I am absolutely not suggesting that you turn yourself into an assembly line or that you should be an assembly line worker. You all expect too much robotic behavior from yourself as it is, that’s not the point. I do want to use the story though to illustrate something for you.
When Henry Ford started manufacturing vehicles they were all put together by hand. And by one person, meaning each person would get a part, they’d bring it to their work station, they’d assemble that, then they’d go get another part and then bring it back. So there was one maker for one car. These cars were well assembled, but having one person build the entire car made the manufacturing process lengthy and very expensive.
Now we all know how this ended, Henry Ford figured out the assembly line and made it an incredibly efficient way to produce products. But when he had the idea for the assembly style manufacturing, there were so many kinks to work out. He had to get the speed of the conveyor belt just right. There was the coordination of the individual makers to work as one. There were a lot of mechanical breakdowns. And then there was having to stop the entire line when the process was out of sync before he figured out how to get it in sync.
These were all probably pretty annoying to Henry Ford. Would it have been great if everything went smoothly right from the get go? Of course, except that rarely happens. If Henry Ford hadn’t been willing to accept those annoyances and slowdowns as part of the process, we would not have the modern day vehicle manufacturing process that we have today.
It’s the same thing in your business. You’re growing, you’re building a bigger vision, you’re taking steps to execute that vision, and the sooner you accept the annoyances, the sooner you’ll get into action and reap the rewards. Hopefully I’ve sold you on this concept and now you’re thinking, okay, I’m on board. How do I accept annoyances? I’m going to tell you.
The first is you need to anticipate them. Come to terms that this is part of running your business. And the second piece is to acknowledge that you don’t want to do the thing or wish it was different. There’s nothing wrong with you and you can normalize your own experience. Blaming or judging yourself about how you should want to do it or it should feel easier, never will get you anywhere. It actually ends up keeping you stuck in avoidance, and then you’re just annoyed and avoiding.
And the last piece of this is actively reminding yourself why you do want to do this thing. Our brains are wired to be efficient, meaning they’d rather do what they’ve always done. That’s going to be the easiest path of least resistance. So we have to remember why we want to do the thing. I find it really helpful to connect whatever it is you’re thinking is annoying to the bigger purpose or a bigger goal in your business.
For example, if you accurately manage and track your time, you will for sure be more profitable. You might not want to have that notebook that you have to jot your time down or have the software that you put it into, but once you get in the routine, once you get over that initial friction, once you let go of that annoyance, you’re going to be able to do it and it’s going to have a huge impact on the amount of money that you’re making.
Another example is if you’re willing to go through a new hire missing the mark at first and having to maybe re-explain some things or walk them through your process another time, you’re going to end up creating a support team you can lean on to step away and free you up to do what you do best. It will absolutely be worth it. But in the annoying phase of getting started, your brain is not going to recognize this. That’s why it’s so important to keep reminding yourself why you want to do the thing.
Once you accept that annoyances are part of running a business, they actually get a lot less annoying. Ironic, right? You might even start to enjoy these things. You might start to see yourself as skilled in the business. You’re going to start seeing the impact of taking action and implementation, and that is so rewarding and a great source of internal motivation, something I talked about on episode 16.
So let me recap that. To accept annoyances we have to anticipate them, acknowledge and normalize your experience for yourself and then actively remind yourself why you do want to do the thing. All right, that’s what I have for you today.
Before I sign off and send you on to the rest of your week, I want to remind you to sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Mindset. Not only is this a special note from me to you that designers consistently tell me they look forward to receiving in their inbox every single Monday, it’s how you’re going to get the latest and greatest of what I’m offering in terms of free workshops and other ways to work with me.
This fall I have a really fantastic opportunity coming up where you’re going to be able to dive into the sprint productivity method I shared in Episode 38, with my coaching support. Stay tuned for that and sign up for Monday Mindset, the link will be in the show notes, so you’re the first to know when that program is available. And until then I’m wishing you a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
I’m going to make the bold assumption that you enjoyed today’s topic. Let’s make sure you never miss an episode; follow the show now wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you’d make the time to leave me a rating and review. This is how I know what you’re loving so I can share more of it.
And it’s also how you can help others find The Interior Design Business CEO. As a thank you for leaving a rating and review, I want to send you a little midweek pick-me-up in the mail. Simply screenshot your review and send me a message on Instagram, @DesiCreswell. I’ll talk to you next 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.
Welcome back to the podcast, it’s a pep talk day. I love creating these for you. I would love to hear if you love listening to them as well. You can always send me a message or leave a review on the podcast page. As I’m recording this, my daughter is about to turn seven and I was just checking the Amazon shipment for some of the party favors we’re still waiting on. It’s going to be a squishmallow themed birthday party.
So after we did this I started thinking, oh no, I bet she’s going to get a lot of squishmallows. I don’t know where we’re going to put these things, they’re so big. But if you have kids on the younger side of things, you probably have heard of how popular these are and I’m guessing you have some in your own home. So this weekend, my husband and I, we’re going to be wrangling 19 little girls at the trampoline park to celebrate her birthday. She’s so excited.
All right, today we’re going to be talking about dealing with the annoying parts of running a design business, or the annoying part of starting something new in your business where you can’t help but feel the friction. You’re going to learn how to make these things less annoying, but most importantly, how anticipating and accepting annoyances is actually what will get you unstuck, moving forward and have them be less annoying.
Before we dive into the pep talk I want to give a shout out to my friend Renee, who’s a very talented designer and also the host of The Only Girl On The Jobsite podcast. Renee left this wonderful review titled, “Must listen for interior designers.”
She said, “Desi is equal parts designer and therapist in the best of ways. Not only is she a proven interior designer, but she now wants to empower the rest of us to rein in our business by controlling the overwhelm we all suffer from. I learned something new from each episode.”
Thank you for taking a moment to write a review, Renee. Your words and this gesture means so much to me. Renee and I are actually going to be recording another podcast that’ll be aired on her show, so stay tuned for that. Or you can go check out my previous episodes on The Only Girl On The Jobsite.
And if you haven’t already, I would so appreciate it if you would leave me a rating and review. It really makes a difference in helping me spread the word about this podcast. And, honestly, it just makes my day to hear from you all.
All right, let’s dive into today’s topic. I think we can all agree that there are some annoying parts of running and growing your interior design business. If you listen to episode three where I share the coaching tool I teach all of my clients, you might remember that circumstances are neutral. The circumstance being your business or the tasks that you have to complete as a business owner.
These tasks or circumstances are neutral. It’s not until we assign meaning or have a judgment or a perception of these circumstances that we feel a certain way, and with this episode that feeling is annoyance. So technically, the things we do in our business are just tasks and projects and we can choose to think and then feel about them any way that we want. But after coaching so many clients and running my own business, what I really mean by annoying is that there are things that if we could get the results we wanted without doing those things, we probably wouldn’t do them.
They are things that are just outside of our zone of genius, things we don’t find naturally fun, where we have to kind of pump ourselves up to do them. That’s what I’m talking about today. I’m also thinking about the friction you feel when you’re implementing something new or stretching yourself in some way in your business. And this is really around having to develop a new skill or remember to do something you wouldn’t normally do.
We often have thoughts about those things that generate the feeling of dread or resistance or annoyance. Thoughts like, this is going to be hard or I really wish I didn’t have to do this. Or why me? Why do I have to do this? I want to give you some examples of what these tasks and projects might be. These are all things I coach my clients on, so I’m guessing there will be at least a few of these where you find yourself nodding your head thinking, yep, annoying.
This could be taking the time to really sit down and think through and write out your process, or develop a system or a template that’s going to help you in your business. It might be planning or tracking or entering your time. Or it could be learning how to effectively delegate instead of hoping people read your mind. It might be having a bunch of lackluster interviews before you can find that dream employee. Or it might be reminding clients you don’t communicate outside of normal business hours. Don’t you just wish they’d remember?
With some of these we just think, oh, I really wish I didn’t have to do this. And often, at first, with things that are new to us or we’re implementing something new, they are going to slow us down in some way, and so that annoys us too. And most often that slowdown is temporary until we get into the routine or rhythm and then we start getting the benefit. But we do kind of have to work through that little bit of annoyance at the start.
What I see so often with clients is that there’s a lot of time spent wishing that this wasn’t the reality. So much time is spent on resistance to what is. There are things in your business that you will have to do that you don’t want to do, or things that will slow you down temporarily before they allow you to speed up.
Instead of using your time to get over this hump of things you don’t want to do or things that have a little bit of friction to start, you end up spending time in avoidance and wishing that there wasn’t that initial friction or that internal experience of annoyance or dread.
So I want you to consider what would be a more productive use of your time, learning to accept and expect annoyances, or things that feel challenging or like friction and just get on with it so you can use that time to complete the task or project? Or spending that time in avoidance or maybe dread or resistance. I mean, really, that’s a trick question. Of course, it’s going to be more productive to just get on with things. And the best way to do that is to expect and accept that there are going to be things that you don’t want to do.
What I really want you to consider is that when you anticipate, acknowledge and accept the annoyances in your business, whatever they are for you, you can run your business with more ease and be more effective in reaching your business goals much more quickly. And, of course, then your experience becomes better too.
I want to share a story I recently read about Henry Ford, who is, of course, the creator of the ultimate in efficiency, the assembly line. Now stick with me, I am absolutely not suggesting that you turn yourself into an assembly line or that you should be an assembly line worker. You all expect too much robotic behavior from yourself as it is, that’s not the point. I do want to use the story though to illustrate something for you.
When Henry Ford started manufacturing vehicles they were all put together by hand. And by one person, meaning each person would get a part, they’d bring it to their work station, they’d assemble that, then they’d go get another part and then bring it back. So there was one maker for one car. These cars were well assembled, but having one person build the entire car made the manufacturing process lengthy and very expensive.
Now we all know how this ended, Henry Ford figured out the assembly line and made it an incredibly efficient way to produce products. But when he had the idea for the assembly style manufacturing, there were so many kinks to work out. He had to get the speed of the conveyor belt just right. There was the coordination of the individual makers to work as one. There were a lot of mechanical breakdowns. And then there was having to stop the entire line when the process was out of sync before he figured out how to get it in sync.
These were all probably pretty annoying to Henry Ford. Would it have been great if everything went smoothly right from the get go? Of course, except that rarely happens. If Henry Ford hadn’t been willing to accept those annoyances and slowdowns as part of the process, we would not have the modern day vehicle manufacturing process that we have today.
It’s the same thing in your business. You’re growing, you’re building a bigger vision, you’re taking steps to execute that vision, and the sooner you accept the annoyances, the sooner you’ll get into action and reap the rewards. Hopefully I’ve sold you on this concept and now you’re thinking, okay, I’m on board. How do I accept annoyances? I’m going to tell you.
The first is you need to anticipate them. Come to terms that this is part of running your business. And the second piece is to acknowledge that you don’t want to do the thing or wish it was different. There’s nothing wrong with you and you can normalize your own experience. Blaming or judging yourself about how you should want to do it or it should feel easier, never will get you anywhere. It actually ends up keeping you stuck in avoidance, and then you’re just annoyed and avoiding.
And the last piece of this is actively reminding yourself why you do want to do this thing. Our brains are wired to be efficient, meaning they’d rather do what they’ve always done. That’s going to be the easiest path of least resistance. So we have to remember why we want to do the thing. I find it really helpful to connect whatever it is you’re thinking is annoying to the bigger purpose or a bigger goal in your business.
For example, if you accurately manage and track your time, you will for sure be more profitable. You might not want to have that notebook that you have to jot your time down or have the software that you put it into, but once you get in the routine, once you get over that initial friction, once you let go of that annoyance, you’re going to be able to do it and it’s going to have a huge impact on the amount of money that you’re making.
Another example is if you’re willing to go through a new hire missing the mark at first and having to maybe re-explain some things or walk them through your process another time, you’re going to end up creating a support team you can lean on to step away and free you up to do what you do best. It will absolutely be worth it. But in the annoying phase of getting started, your brain is not going to recognize this. That’s why it’s so important to keep reminding yourself why you want to do the thing.
Once you accept that annoyances are part of running a business, they actually get a lot less annoying. Ironic, right? You might even start to enjoy these things. You might start to see yourself as skilled in the business. You’re going to start seeing the impact of taking action and implementation, and that is so rewarding and a great source of internal motivation, something I talked about on episode 16.
So let me recap that. To accept annoyances we have to anticipate them, acknowledge and normalize your experience for yourself and then actively remind yourself why you do want to do the thing. All right, that’s what I have for you today.
Before I sign off and send you on to the rest of your week, I want to remind you to sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Mindset. Not only is this a special note from me to you that designers consistently tell me they look forward to receiving in their inbox every single Monday, it’s how you’re going to get the latest and greatest of what I’m offering in terms of free workshops and other ways to work with me.
This fall I have a really fantastic opportunity coming up where you’re going to be able to dive into the sprint productivity method I shared in Episode 38, with my coaching support. Stay tuned for that and sign up for Monday Mindset, the link will be in the show notes, so you’re the first to know when that program is available. And until then I’m wishing you a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
I’m going to make the bold assumption that you enjoyed today’s topic. Let’s make sure you never miss an episode; follow the show now wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you’d make the time to leave me a rating and review. This is how I know what you’re loving so I can share more of it.
And it’s also how you can help others find The Interior Design Business CEO. As a thank you for leaving a rating and review, I want to send you a little midweek pick-me-up in the mail. Simply screenshot your review and send me a message on Instagram, @DesiCreswell. I’ll talk to you next 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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