64. Big-Picture Planning for 2024
2024 is officially here, which means I’m spending time thinking about big-picture future planning for my business and those of my clients. This week, we’re specifically exploring the power of zooming out to a larger vision of your interior design business so you can zoom back in to create an actionable plan for 2024.
Many designers stop themselves from taking a broad view of their business, especially if the long-term vision isn’t crystal clear. We worry about how to set goals on a long-term scale, what should and shouldn’t be on our calendars, life happening, and the need for flexibility and space to pivot, and I’m guiding you through all of it on this episode.
Join me this week to discover what becomes possible when you first zoom out to consider the bigger vision for your business, and then zoom back in to create a roadmap for the year. I’m showing you what future planning for your business looks like, and walking you through a variety of questions that will help you paint a picture of your business in 2024.
I’m hosting a two-part goal-setting workshop at the end of January! Create Your 2024 Roadmap is where I’ll help you set your goal for the year and create a plan to help you achieve your big-picture goal. It’s only $87, including a guided planning session and a live coaching call with me, so sign up by clicking here.
If you want to learn how to slow down so you can speed up your results in 2024, we need to talk. I have a few spots left for Out of Overwhelm, starting in January 2024 so click here to claim one of the very limited spots in the program! Or if you’re unsure if it’s a good fit, click here to schedule a consult call with me.
What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
Why designers stop themselves from zooming out to look at the bigger vision for their businesses.
How considering the future of your business should be the first step in your yearly goal-setting.
What happens when you see the landscape of your business with possibility.
How zooming in to create a roadmap for the year makes achieving your goals inevitable.
What’s required of you to execute your plans for 2024.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 64. In this one we’re going to be talking all about big picture planning for your year and I’m going to use the concept of zooming out to a larger vision of your interior design business with zooming in to create an actionable plan for 2024 so you know what should be on your calendar and what should not.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you’re ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you’re in the right place. I’m Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let’s go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you are all doing well. This is the last podcast I’m recording in advance as I sign off for winter break. When I get ahead on recording like this, it’s always kind of hard for me to wrap my head around like, who am I even going to be in a month? What’s it going to be like here?
It’s probably going to be super cold in Minnesota. And I wonder what fun memories I’m going to have from my family trip that I’m about to go on. I’m sure I’ll be sharing some of those. And this is completely unrelated. But last night, my daughter and I made this new recipe. They’re kind of like these little, I don’t know, it’s like a cross between a cookie and a granola bar. They’re called Heavenly Hunk Copycats. And I guess this Heavenly Hunk thing is a thing. Maybe you already know about this, I don’t.
And I happened to see on Danielle Walker’s newsletter, she had shared this recipe. I love Danielle Walker, I have all of her cookbooks. And I, of course, then make things off her blog too. So I got this recipe and I was like, oh, that sounds really good. And we made them and they were so easy. And I just ate another one. I’m going to put the link for that recipe in the show notes and you can just thank me later.
Today I’m really thinking about big picture future planning and deciding what I want the future to look and feel like, even if it’s just a month from now, which is really what we’re going to be talking about today, is future planning in your business. And we’re going to talk about it farther out than one month, but zooming out to the larger scope is going to help you zoom in to the month, to the weeks, to the days.
This is goal setting, but on a much broader scale. And looking at your business and what you want to create in the future will actually help you so much as you dial in what your focus is day to day and throughout the coming year.
Before we dive in, a quick reminder that Create Your 2024 Roadmap is coming up. This is my goal setting workshop. It’s two parts where we’ll get to work together on the exact things I’m talking about today in this episode. I wanted to make this super accessible, so it’s only $87.
And that includes both the guided planning session with me, where you’re going to set your roadmap for the year so you know exactly what you’re working on and when. And it also includes a group coaching call with me where you can ask me your questions, get help with the plan and get coached on the obstacles and doubts that come up when you start to dream bigger.
We definitely want to coach on those now, so you don’t spend time spinning throughout the year or procrastinating or in avoidance of actually getting in action and getting in motion. The two calls are January 26th and February 2nd. The link will be in the show notes to sign up with all the other details, and I really hope you do. I offered this last year and designers loved it, they’re still talking about it. And so I’m bringing it back and I want you to join me.
What we’re going to cover today specifically is how considering the bigger vision for your business or where you want to take your interior design business in the next three-ish years should be your first step in setting your yearly goal. What I want you to do is look ahead at the big picture of your interior design business. Not just what’s right in front of you on your desk at this moment, but let’s think bigger and longer term.
I call this zooming out, thinking about what your business will look like, what you’ll be doing, what types of clients you’ll be working with, how your business fits into your life. We want to start thinking on a broader scale. And not just thinking bigger, but longer term.
There’s a variety of questions I love to ask my clients around this to help us paint the picture. And I actually have a free download where I can walk you through creating this big picture vision for your life and business and I’ll link it in the show notes, it’s the Business and Life Vision Journal. You’re definitely going to want to check that out.
And I also want to have a little caveat here, and let me just say it’s fine if your big picture vision isn’t crystal clear. The business and life vision journal is definitely going to help bring clarity. And then, of course, if you join me for the 2024 Roadmap, you’re going to get so crystal clear on where you’re headed. But what I often see is that designers will stop themselves from taking the wider view if the big picture isn’t super clear.
It’s really just another place where perfectionism shows up with a thought process being, if I don’t know exactly what I want in the future or I don’t know exactly what I can do in that timeframe or what life is going to bring, then I’m not going to think about it at all or plan for it at all. But it doesn’t have to be this black and white. We can start to paint the vision and we can leave room for flexibility, for pivots, for life to happen, all of that.
So I don’t want you to be afraid of this process. I want you to lean into it. This is where you’re zooming out, you’re seeing the landscape and seeing what’s in front of you with possibility. And once you have that, then it becomes time to zoom in. So you zoom out to the bigger vision and then zoom back in to consider this coming year specifically.
When you start by zooming out in that like three-ish year range, you’re ensuring that the decisions and actions you take for this year are aligned with where you want to go. You’re going to be able to start to see what you might need to put in place to set yourself on a certain path, or you might see things that you’re doing now that just won’t work in the future. And you can start creating solutions now, being proactive instead of reactive.
You start to see what hires you might need to make, what investments will be key. If there’s any training maybe you need to get. Once you start zooming in, what you’re going to focus on during the year becomes very clear. And specificity and planning is a huge component of becoming a goal finisher. That’s what we ultimately want, we want to finish the goals, not just set the goals.
Zooming in to create a roadmap for the year is also helpful because it saves you from decision fatigue by making decisions ahead of time, this is a really important skill that I teach my clients. And decisions ahead of time literally opens up brain space that could easily be wasted on wishy-washy levels of commitment. And it helps keep you focused on your plan, not all of the shiny pennies you could chase.
So you have your big picture vision, the zooming out of those three-ish years, and then we’re going to zoom in to this coming year specifically. And that’s all what we’re going to do in Create Your 2024 Roadmap. And then I’m also going to teach you how to take that year-long vision and break it into a doable plan based on quarters.
The reason we do this is because then, each quarter you have a clear focus on what needle-moving activities in your business need to be put onto your calendar and what needs to be done alongside the client work. And then, of course, I help my clients break these projects down into really actionable, doable plans that are going to fit with their schedule, follow through and maintain that commitment throughout the year.
Often when I’m outlining these episodes and recording, I like to think about what you might be thinking when you’re listening. And I’m guessing some of you are thinking, “You’re expecting me to plan a whole year? I’m not even sure I have tomorrow under control.” Does that sound familiar? Then it’s even more important that you zoom out and then zoom in to create a roadmap.
The way that I’m going to teach you how to plan and Create Your 2024 Roadmap is going to be looking at the broader vision, narrowing it down to next year, and then identifying projects or initiatives that you’ll work on each quarter. When you know what you’re focused on for this quarter, this keeps you in the day to day. That’s what I was just talking about, this process is going to help you understand what you’re going to do tomorrow.
Equally as important, you’re also going to know what you’re not working on. This is another place where decisions ahead of time are showing up. This is what I’m doing, this is what I’m not doing. So you can be more grounded knowing you don’t have to do it all and it was an intentional decision to not do it all.
You might also be thinking, “But one year is a long time. What if I change my mind or something crazy happens and my plans need to change?” What I want you to remember is we are not sentencing you to your roadmap, it is your guide. There’s wiggle room. You will always have the ability to pivot and adapt plans if new information becomes available or something happens that really shifts your course.
What I find though, is that often plans don’t change nearly as often as we think they will. What I do see is that often the thought, “but the plan might change” is coming from resistance to commitment, because then you might actually have to do something that stretches you or puts you outside your comfort zone. And that’s, of course, where coaching and managing your mindset comes in because you can have a brilliant plan and do absolutely nothing with that plan. And so you need to know how to work with your mind and with your emotions to execute on the plan.
What I encourage you to do is to start thinking about that long-term vision. Zoom out in your interior design business, letting that marinate in the background, and then sign up for Create Your 2024 Roadmap so that you have the mindset and strategy to support zooming in on this current year.
Joining us for Create Your 2024 Roadmap is going to set you up for success with a proven planning process, while also having the support and accountability to get the plan done. The two-part workshop is only $87. I was actually thinking about this, what you could do in a year just based on this workshop alone, you could easily 10X this investment.
Plus, after we work on your 2024 roadmap, you’re also going to have the opportunity to apply that initial investment to the next round of To Do To Done, which kicks off in February. And with my support, you’re going to start and finish one of the projects you identify in Roadmap. This way, you can consider part of the plan you create with me, one of those needle-moving activities that’s going to move you closer to your big picture vision, you can just consider that check and done.
The link to sign up is going to be in the show notes, and I hope to see you there. That’s what I have for you today. I will be back next Wednesday with a brand new episode and I can’t wait to share that with you, as always. Until I’m in your ear again, I’m wishing you a beautiful week.
Have you ever wished I could be your coach? If so, keep listening. For a limited time when you leave a rating and review for the podcast you’ll be entered to win a one-on-one coaching session with me. I can answer your questions and coach you on your unique challenges.
All you have to do is scroll down to the bottom of your podcast app, tap the five stars and leave a review. Tell me your favorite episode, why you look forward to listening every week, or why another designer needs to check out the show. It won’t take long, and as a thank you for leaving a rating and review you’ll have the opportunity to win a private coaching session with me.
Just click the link in the show notes to submit your review so I know how to get in touch. I can’t wait to select a winner and it might be you. 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.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you are all doing well. This is the last podcast I’m recording in advance as I sign off for winter break. When I get ahead on recording like this, it’s always kind of hard for me to wrap my head around like, who am I even going to be in a month? What’s it going to be like here?
It’s probably going to be super cold in Minnesota. And I wonder what fun memories I’m going to have from my family trip that I’m about to go on. I’m sure I’ll be sharing some of those. And this is completely unrelated. But last night, my daughter and I made this new recipe. They’re kind of like these little, I don’t know, it’s like a cross between a cookie and a granola bar. They’re called Heavenly Hunk Copycats. And I guess this Heavenly Hunk thing is a thing. Maybe you already know about this, I don’t.
And I happened to see on Danielle Walker’s newsletter, she had shared this recipe. I love Danielle Walker, I have all of her cookbooks. And I, of course, then make things off her blog too. So I got this recipe and I was like, oh, that sounds really good. And we made them and they were so easy. And I just ate another one. I’m going to put the link for that recipe in the show notes and you can just thank me later.
Today I’m really thinking about big picture future planning and deciding what I want the future to look and feel like, even if it’s just a month from now, which is really what we’re going to be talking about today, is future planning in your business. And we’re going to talk about it farther out than one month, but zooming out to the larger scope is going to help you zoom in to the month, to the weeks, to the days.
This is goal setting, but on a much broader scale. And looking at your business and what you want to create in the future will actually help you so much as you dial in what your focus is day to day and throughout the coming year.
Before we dive in, a quick reminder that Create Your 2024 Roadmap is coming up. This is my goal setting workshop. It’s two parts where we’ll get to work together on the exact things I’m talking about today in this episode. I wanted to make this super accessible, so it’s only $87.
And that includes both the guided planning session with me, where you’re going to set your roadmap for the year so you know exactly what you’re working on and when. And it also includes a group coaching call with me where you can ask me your questions, get help with the plan and get coached on the obstacles and doubts that come up when you start to dream bigger.
We definitely want to coach on those now, so you don’t spend time spinning throughout the year or procrastinating or in avoidance of actually getting in action and getting in motion. The two calls are January 26th and February 2nd. The link will be in the show notes to sign up with all the other details, and I really hope you do. I offered this last year and designers loved it, they’re still talking about it. And so I’m bringing it back and I want you to join me.
What we’re going to cover today specifically is how considering the bigger vision for your business or where you want to take your interior design business in the next three-ish years should be your first step in setting your yearly goal. What I want you to do is look ahead at the big picture of your interior design business. Not just what’s right in front of you on your desk at this moment, but let’s think bigger and longer term.
I call this zooming out, thinking about what your business will look like, what you’ll be doing, what types of clients you’ll be working with, how your business fits into your life. We want to start thinking on a broader scale. And not just thinking bigger, but longer term.
There’s a variety of questions I love to ask my clients around this to help us paint the picture. And I actually have a free download where I can walk you through creating this big picture vision for your life and business and I’ll link it in the show notes, it’s the Business and Life Vision Journal. You’re definitely going to want to check that out.
And I also want to have a little caveat here, and let me just say it’s fine if your big picture vision isn’t crystal clear. The business and life vision journal is definitely going to help bring clarity. And then, of course, if you join me for the 2024 Roadmap, you’re going to get so crystal clear on where you’re headed. But what I often see is that designers will stop themselves from taking the wider view if the big picture isn’t super clear.
It’s really just another place where perfectionism shows up with a thought process being, if I don’t know exactly what I want in the future or I don’t know exactly what I can do in that timeframe or what life is going to bring, then I’m not going to think about it at all or plan for it at all. But it doesn’t have to be this black and white. We can start to paint the vision and we can leave room for flexibility, for pivots, for life to happen, all of that.
So I don’t want you to be afraid of this process. I want you to lean into it. This is where you’re zooming out, you’re seeing the landscape and seeing what’s in front of you with possibility. And once you have that, then it becomes time to zoom in. So you zoom out to the bigger vision and then zoom back in to consider this coming year specifically.
When you start by zooming out in that like three-ish year range, you’re ensuring that the decisions and actions you take for this year are aligned with where you want to go. You’re going to be able to start to see what you might need to put in place to set yourself on a certain path, or you might see things that you’re doing now that just won’t work in the future. And you can start creating solutions now, being proactive instead of reactive.
You start to see what hires you might need to make, what investments will be key. If there’s any training maybe you need to get. Once you start zooming in, what you’re going to focus on during the year becomes very clear. And specificity and planning is a huge component of becoming a goal finisher. That’s what we ultimately want, we want to finish the goals, not just set the goals.
Zooming in to create a roadmap for the year is also helpful because it saves you from decision fatigue by making decisions ahead of time, this is a really important skill that I teach my clients. And decisions ahead of time literally opens up brain space that could easily be wasted on wishy-washy levels of commitment. And it helps keep you focused on your plan, not all of the shiny pennies you could chase.
So you have your big picture vision, the zooming out of those three-ish years, and then we’re going to zoom in to this coming year specifically. And that’s all what we’re going to do in Create Your 2024 Roadmap. And then I’m also going to teach you how to take that year-long vision and break it into a doable plan based on quarters.
The reason we do this is because then, each quarter you have a clear focus on what needle-moving activities in your business need to be put onto your calendar and what needs to be done alongside the client work. And then, of course, I help my clients break these projects down into really actionable, doable plans that are going to fit with their schedule, follow through and maintain that commitment throughout the year.
Often when I’m outlining these episodes and recording, I like to think about what you might be thinking when you’re listening. And I’m guessing some of you are thinking, “You’re expecting me to plan a whole year? I’m not even sure I have tomorrow under control.” Does that sound familiar? Then it’s even more important that you zoom out and then zoom in to create a roadmap.
The way that I’m going to teach you how to plan and Create Your 2024 Roadmap is going to be looking at the broader vision, narrowing it down to next year, and then identifying projects or initiatives that you’ll work on each quarter. When you know what you’re focused on for this quarter, this keeps you in the day to day. That’s what I was just talking about, this process is going to help you understand what you’re going to do tomorrow.
Equally as important, you’re also going to know what you’re not working on. This is another place where decisions ahead of time are showing up. This is what I’m doing, this is what I’m not doing. So you can be more grounded knowing you don’t have to do it all and it was an intentional decision to not do it all.
You might also be thinking, “But one year is a long time. What if I change my mind or something crazy happens and my plans need to change?” What I want you to remember is we are not sentencing you to your roadmap, it is your guide. There’s wiggle room. You will always have the ability to pivot and adapt plans if new information becomes available or something happens that really shifts your course.
What I find though, is that often plans don’t change nearly as often as we think they will. What I do see is that often the thought, “but the plan might change” is coming from resistance to commitment, because then you might actually have to do something that stretches you or puts you outside your comfort zone. And that’s, of course, where coaching and managing your mindset comes in because you can have a brilliant plan and do absolutely nothing with that plan. And so you need to know how to work with your mind and with your emotions to execute on the plan.
What I encourage you to do is to start thinking about that long-term vision. Zoom out in your interior design business, letting that marinate in the background, and then sign up for Create Your 2024 Roadmap so that you have the mindset and strategy to support zooming in on this current year.
Joining us for Create Your 2024 Roadmap is going to set you up for success with a proven planning process, while also having the support and accountability to get the plan done. The two-part workshop is only $87. I was actually thinking about this, what you could do in a year just based on this workshop alone, you could easily 10X this investment.
Plus, after we work on your 2024 roadmap, you’re also going to have the opportunity to apply that initial investment to the next round of To Do To Done, which kicks off in February. And with my support, you’re going to start and finish one of the projects you identify in Roadmap. This way, you can consider part of the plan you create with me, one of those needle-moving activities that’s going to move you closer to your big picture vision, you can just consider that check and done.
The link to sign up is going to be in the show notes, and I hope to see you there. That’s what I have for you today. I will be back next Wednesday with a brand new episode and I can’t wait to share that with you, as always. Until I’m in your ear again, I’m wishing you a beautiful week.
Have you ever wished I could be your coach? If so, keep listening. For a limited time when you leave a rating and review for the podcast you’ll be entered to win a one-on-one coaching session with me. I can answer your questions and coach you on your unique challenges.
All you have to do is scroll down to the bottom of your podcast app, tap the five stars and leave a review. Tell me your favorite episode, why you look forward to listening every week, or why another designer needs to check out the show. It won’t take long, and as a thank you for leaving a rating and review you’ll have the opportunity to win a private coaching session with me.
Just click the link in the show notes to submit your review so I know how to get in touch. I can’t wait to select a winner and it might be you. 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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