5. The Power of Constraint
What goals are you working towards in your business? Whether you’re working towards income goals, building a team, or you just want to create more calmness and joy in your business, constraint is what’s going to allow you to start taking consistent action toward your goals, instead of getting caught up in the start-stop of doing something new.
If you cringed at seeing the word constraint, stick with me here. There’s a common misconception that limits or constraints are confining. But this is about focusing your time, energy, and attention in the right places, so you can create more abundance, freedom, and fun.
Tune in this week to discover how to use the power of constraint to create anything you want in your business. Narrowing your focus is going to help you move forward faster, so I’m showing you how to create a strong agreement with yourself to constrain your core projects, what this looks like in my business, and how to try on the idea of constraint for yourself in your own interior design business.
Want to learn how to hit any goal without stress and overwhelm? Join me on December 1st, 2022 at 11am CST for my workshop: Goal Setting for Busy Interior Designers. It’s only $27 and I’m teaching you my five-step proven process for setting and achieving your goals. Click here for more information and to sign up!
To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m giving away gift cards to Jayson Home, one of my favorite home decor sources. All you have to do to become one of the five lucky listeners to win is follow, rate, and review this podcast.
Please leave your honest feedback, and click here to learn how to enter!
What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
How so many people believe that constraint means slower progress.
Why overwhelm is a capacity issue, not an issue with your actual to-do list.
Some of the ways I see my clients setting their goals from a place of pressure and rushing.
How constraint will support you by giving you a framework, and freedom within that framework.
Why constraint leads to more fun, easy, effective action in your business.
Your role as the CEO of your business, and how to deal with the discomfort, disappointment, and self-doubt that comes up when you start saying no.
How to start applying constraint in your business, eliminating distractions as you work towards your goals, even when you have a lot going on.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
Enter the podcast launch giveaway by leaving a rating and review! Click here to learn how to enter.
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
Join me on December 11, 2022 at 11am CST for my workshop: Goal Setting for Busy Interior Designers.
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 5, this is the one where I’m showing how to use the power of constraint to create anything you want in your 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, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here. I don't know about you all, but it's definitely started to be winter here in Minnesota. We got our first snowfall yesterday. And I don't know, I was just laughing this morning, I don't know what it is with kids and snow. I love watching my kids delight in the snow. I take my dog, Olive, for a walk every single morning and we get out pretty early so we can get going before all the school things start and getting ready for the day.
And this morning, we were coming back and it's not even six o'clock, mind you, and both of my children are already outside playing in the snow and just having the best time ever shoveling the driveway and doing all the things. So yeah, tapping into their delight is something that is so helpful to remind me when the temperature starts to cool down and I'm a little less than thrilled about it.
So anyways, today we're going to talk about using constraint to achieve anything you want in your business. These could be tangible or intangible results. So it could be something like an income goal that you want to hit in your business, it could be bringing on a team. And then there's the intangible results, which is really how you're feeling and experiencing your business. And this could be that you want to feel more calm. It could be that you want to feel more joy throughout your day.
And I think both of those are equally important, and the process that I'm going to teach you is applicable to both of those things. The key piece here is that what we're talking about today is going to allow you to take consistent action, instead of being in that jerky start/stop pattern that so many of you are in when you decide you want to go after something, and then the actual doing of it gets you stuck.
I'm going to be talking about this specifically geared toward business, but this definitely applies to any new result you want to create in your life as well. So definitely apply the process either way. And if you bristled at the word constraint, I want you to stick with me. I think there's a really common misconception that limits or constraints are confining. And I used to think this too, so I totally get it.
But when I'm talking about constraint, I'm talking about focusing your time, energy and attention to create more of what you want. And your brain probably thinks that this means slower progress and less results when you have focus. But I'm going to share how this is simply not true. I want you to consider for a moment that constraining your focus using this principle I'm teaching you is actually going to create more abundance and freedom and fun for you.
Before we dive in I want to take a moment to highlight a member of the community forming around The Interior Design Business CEO Podcast because we are up and running with the weekly episodes at this point. And I love having the podcast out in the world. It's been so incredible to hear what you're taking away from the episodes and what you're looking forward to hearing more of.
So here's one of the reviews and this is from AprilLo and she titled it, “I feel like she's speaking directly to me.” She said, “I just discovered this podcast and I love it already. I relate to the overwhelm she discusses as I've got too many projects, loads of unread emails, and a small staff that's miraculously operating without any structure provided by me. As a creative entrepreneur I often just fly by the seat of my pants and I'm often racing to get prepared for the next meeting on my calendar.
I'm looking forward to learning tips and tricks to get out of this normalized state of anxiety. Even Desi’s voice is calming and she has really relatable stories. I already feel less alone in the state I'm in. Great content, I'll be following along.” Well thank you so much, AprilLo, I love that you're loving it.
And don't forget, everyone, I am having an amazing giveaway right now. You can do some shopping for yourself at Jayson Home when you head over to www.desicreswell.com/podcastlaunch, leave me a rating and review and submit your review to be entered. And I'll share more on that later in the episode. But get your review in so you get a chance to win and, of course, it helps me spread the word on the podcast.
Let's dive into using constraint for you. I think this is especially important as we head into the end of the year. You're thinking about what you want to wrap up and what you'll do next, and so this is the perfect time to apply this concept. We've talked before about how overwhelm is a mindset issue. It's also a capacity issue. And the way you're thinking about what you have to do is what creates the feeling of overwhelm, not the actual to-do list.
If you want to learn more about the mindset tools to free yourself from that feeling of overwhelm, episode two is definitely a must listen. But like I said, overwhelm also happens when there's a capacity issue. Essentially, there's only so many hours you have available to devote to your business or you want to devote to your business, and this includes your emotional bandwidth too.
When my clients are experiencing overwhelm, the most common thing I see is that they've taken on too much at once. And so there has to be a reduction in the number of things that they're trying to do themselves, and do themselves at that point in time. Because at a certain point, you can't mindset your way out of continuously being over capacity.
We talked about the capacity piece from the perspective of clients in episode four, so definitely check that one out as well. And now I want to talk about it from the perspective of all the things you do as a CEO to improve your business. What I see clients doing is setting their goals and to-dos for these back end projects from a place of pressure and rushing.
It could look like trying to establish every last system you need in your business at once. Or switching your project management, accounting and presentation software at the same time. It could also look like trying to pitch yourself to press, do five Instagram posts a week, and also be at a networking event weekly. As you can see, it's just trying to do a lot at once.
And a lot of times these are significant commitments in your business. And when you try and take them on all at once, you're going to end up stretching yourself very thin. And then you give up and then likely you blame yourself for not being disciplined enough. And this is where constraint comes in to support you.
The way that I love to think about this really is giving yourself a framework, and you have freedom within that framework. So you're putting on some little bumpers that are going to make everything you do more effective and more fun and more easy to follow through on. Essentially, they’re parameters that you set for yourself based on what you're working toward achieving in the business. And then within the parameters, there's lots of room for you to play.
In order to embrace this philosophy of freedom within the framework, you have to start making decisions about what's most important now and what can wait or possibly not even happen now or in the future. This is for the new things you want to implement in your business. I'm not saying you can only do three things ever and that's just all you can do.
Once you have a consistent routine or have closed out the implementation of a project, that's when you layer in something new. I want to give you an example here to just paint the picture of how this works. So I love plants, I'm not always the best at taking care of them. I do tend to over water, but I do love plants. And I want you to consider that you love plants as much as I do and you have one watering can of water.
So the watering can is essentially your capacity, the amount of water that you have in that given vessel. You also have some plants and these are your business projects. You really love plants too and you have three beautiful plants by the window and they each require a certain amount of water to be sustained and to grow.
But because you really love plants like I do, you want more plants. You keep heading to the garden center and you keep buying more plants. But the amount of water that fits in your watering can remains the same. And as you keep buying new plants, each plant has to get by with less and less water if you're trying to water them all at once.
What happens is eventually none of the plants have enough water because there's only so much to go around, just like your time, energy and attention, and those plants start to wilt and eventually die. This is what happens when you don't constrain your focus in your interior design business because you can't walk over to the faucet and refill yourself like you could with a watering can.
Think about this in comparison to if you kept to your original number of plants, you limited those plants to have what you could water based on that watering can. Those plants would be thriving from optimal care. And I want you to think about that in relation to the projects you implement in your business and the goals that you're setting.
It's the exact same thing, you take on less at once but it produces better results and actually more results in the long run. I know that feels really counterintuitive, but just keep sticking with me and let me show you what this could be like in practice.
In my business I have a strong agreement with myself that I focus on no more than one to three core projects per quarter. No more than that. For this last quarter it was executing on the plan for open enrollment to begin for my group program, Out of Overwhelm, which is coming December 1, mark your calendars. It was also getting the podcast up and running. And then delivering on a few PR opportunities that I had committed to in the previous quarter.
I've really been implementing and practicing the way that I set goals over the year and then quarterly for quite some time now. And so this is something that feels very second nature to me. But for you, you might be new to this process and just trying on the idea of constraint, so you might want to say that you're only going to select one thing to focus on per quarter. That is totally fine, let yourself be successful with trying this on. Practice the skill of constraint and you can always decide to do more.
And if you're feeling resistance to this idea right now, let me just normalize that it is totally common. Your brain is probably offering up things like I'll never make it to my goals, or it's going to take forever to finish anything. I don't have time to slow down. Basically, it's probably throwing a temper tantrum and it sounds a little dramatic in your head right now. Not a problem, you don't have to buy into that story it's offering.
I've seen this time and time again with clients and myself, that narrowing your focus in this way is what moves you forward more quickly and with more impact. This isn't the collective narrative that we all experience of more is better. But less truly is better and I'm trying to sell you on that idea. You might also not be sure what to focus on or feel overwhelmed by all the things you could do. So let's just talk about that for a minute.
Now, I want you to refer back to your vision that you have for your life and your business. We talked about that in episode one. Remember, you're going to use that vision as a priority filter to decide what is important. You can ask yourself what's going to make the most impact or move me closer to that vision? What would be easy and impactful to work on right now?
Maybe there's something that feels a little bit bigger and more intimidating that would move you closer to your vision. But why not start with something easy that you can start getting traction with right now? You want to identify your core one to three projects, again, start with one if this is new to you. And commit to seeing them through before you layer in more.
You might get a little impatient, or you might start to see the shiny pennies or glitter in the air, as one of my clients calls it. So it's your job as the CEO to bring yourself back to focus when that happens. You need to commit to yourself, your business, your clients and your family that you're going to see the impact of testing out the approach of constraint.
Decide right now what you need to say to yourself or what you need to remind yourself of when you're tempted to add in more or start dabbling in new things. I guarantee this is going to come up, so let's just address it from the get go. What I want you to remember is that distractions or those shiny pennies or the glitter, they don't happen to you, they are choices. They are usually unconscious choices, but they are still choices that you make. So decide now what you need to remind yourself of in order to stay focused.
Before we move on I want to take a moment here to tell you about the workshop I have coming up on December 1st, it's called Goal Setting For Busy Interior Designers and it's the kickoff to open enrollment for the January round of Out of Overwhelm. And this is where I'm going to teach you how to set and achieve your goals, even if you have a ton going on, which I know all of you do.
What you're going to learn in this 90 minute masterclass is the process I teach my clients in Out of Overwhelm when they define what they want to work on in the program. It's what I use in my own business and I break it down into a really simple way so you can start taking consistent action in the new year.
If you want to dive deeper into what we're talking about today, this is the place to do it and it's only $27. You can get all of the details and sign up by going to www.desiid.com/goal-setting-2022. The link will also be in the show notes and I would love to see you there.
Let's get back to what we were talking about. To constrain you are going to have to learn to say no to yourself, that is the truth of this. As the CEO of your business, you are not just managing a team, managing projects, managing clients, you are managing yourself, okay? You are the number one person that you manage. You're the first person you learn to manage, right? Before you even have a team or anyone supporting you, you have to manage yourself.
As the CEO of my business I have to learn to say no. And I've had to say no to myself quite a bit this past quarter. I've had some really exciting program ideas to support all of you in different ways bubbling up, and the fast action taker in me wants to get going. I want to do it all and I want to do it now. And so I see you, I see you. I get it. And I also know that the approach of constraint works and that I'm committed to it.
I can have that urge to go after all these ideas and still say no to myself. It can feel uncomfortable to say no to yourself. I know for me, when I have to say no to myself, I often have to allow for the experience of disappointment. Disappointment that there is only so much time in the day and I really can't do at all. And wanting to take action and knowing that it'll have to be happening at a later date.
You might also feel self-doubt when you learn to say no to yourself. You might be questioning are these the right things to focus on or am I doing enough? Which, by the way, you get to decide what enough is, we'll probably need to have another episode on that one.
You're always going to have more ideas than you ever have capacity for, and that really is a wonderful thing. I want you to get on board with that. Even if you have to say no or not right now to ideas, it's wonderful that you have the ideas in the first place. It's because you are a creative entrepreneur and it keeps you from being bored. So it's okay to have more ideas than capacity, and you can still say no to some of those ideas to honor your capacity.
Typically, when I notice clients are feeling resistant to saying no or not right now to themselves, it's usually one of two things. The first one being they're afraid that they won't get to it or that they will forget it. So put those ideas in what I call a parking lot. Write the ideas that you have down somewhere, it could be a Google document, a specific notebook, so that they have a safe keeping place for when you do have capacity. You can pull them out when the time is right.
I call it a parking lot because I picture my ideas as little vehicles in the parking lot. And I can park them and they've got their nice little spot to stay in. And then when they're ready to come out, I just back them out and I put them into motion.
The other thing that I notice when there's resistance to saying no or not right now is that you might be worried that when you say no, you're saying that the thing isn’t important. And I want you to know that it can absolutely still be important, it's just important at a later date.
It's not possible for everything to be of equal importance at the same time. If you continue to cling on to this belief that everything is important, you are setting yourself up for frustration and overworking, and ultimately delaying getting to where you want to go. Even though your brain tells you doing it all now would get you there faster, it doesn't work that way.
When you use constraint in your business, here's what's going to happen. You're going to feel much more calm, focused and in control. You're going to know what you should be doing on a daily basis because your actions can be defined by how supportive they are of the areas you're constraining around. You're also going to have way more confidence because you're becoming someone who is clear, who's decisive, and who follows through on what they say they're going to do.
You're going to implement so much more in your business and actually gain traction. When you take it one step at a time, you keep taking steps. This is how you make progress.
I want to recap this for you because this is such an important concept. Doing more at once doesn't speed you up, it slows you down. You need to stop believing this thought error. Focus on one to three core projects per quarter that are going to move the needle in your business. Bring those projects to completion and then layer in something new.
And lastly, get comfortable saying no to yourself. The byproduct of this, which I think is really fun, is learning to be comfortable with the discomfort of saying no to yourself actually makes it easier to say no to others. Which I'm sure is something we'll talk about in a future episode.
That's what I've got for you today, designers. In the next episode I'm going to be speaking on a topic that I have found is one of the key secrets to successful interior design business owners. And it's not something that others are talking about when it comes to business. I can't wait to dive into that topic. Until then, I'm wishing you a beautiful week. I'll talk to you in the next episode.
To celebrate the launch of the show, I'm going to be giving away gift cards to Jayson Home, one of my favorite home decor sources. I'm going to be giving away $50 gift cards to five lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review the show.
Now, it doesn't have to be a five star review, although I sure hope you love the show. I want your honest feedback so I can create an amazing show that provides tons of value. Visit desicreswell.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I'll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode.
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, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here. I don't know about you all, but it's definitely started to be winter here in Minnesota. We got our first snowfall yesterday. And I don't know, I was just laughing this morning, I don't know what it is with kids and snow. I love watching my kids delight in the snow. I take my dog, Olive, for a walk every single morning and we get out pretty early so we can get going before all the school things start and getting ready for the day.
And this morning, we were coming back and it's not even six o'clock, mind you, and both of my children are already outside playing in the snow and just having the best time ever shoveling the driveway and doing all the things. So yeah, tapping into their delight is something that is so helpful to remind me when the temperature starts to cool down and I'm a little less than thrilled about it.
So anyways, today we're going to talk about using constraint to achieve anything you want in your business. These could be tangible or intangible results. So it could be something like an income goal that you want to hit in your business, it could be bringing on a team. And then there's the intangible results, which is really how you're feeling and experiencing your business. And this could be that you want to feel more calm. It could be that you want to feel more joy throughout your day.
And I think both of those are equally important, and the process that I'm going to teach you is applicable to both of those things. The key piece here is that what we're talking about today is going to allow you to take consistent action, instead of being in that jerky start/stop pattern that so many of you are in when you decide you want to go after something, and then the actual doing of it gets you stuck.
I'm going to be talking about this specifically geared toward business, but this definitely applies to any new result you want to create in your life as well. So definitely apply the process either way. And if you bristled at the word constraint, I want you to stick with me. I think there's a really common misconception that limits or constraints are confining. And I used to think this too, so I totally get it.
But when I'm talking about constraint, I'm talking about focusing your time, energy and attention to create more of what you want. And your brain probably thinks that this means slower progress and less results when you have focus. But I'm going to share how this is simply not true. I want you to consider for a moment that constraining your focus using this principle I'm teaching you is actually going to create more abundance and freedom and fun for you.
Before we dive in I want to take a moment to highlight a member of the community forming around The Interior Design Business CEO Podcast because we are up and running with the weekly episodes at this point. And I love having the podcast out in the world. It's been so incredible to hear what you're taking away from the episodes and what you're looking forward to hearing more of.
So here's one of the reviews and this is from AprilLo and she titled it, “I feel like she's speaking directly to me.” She said, “I just discovered this podcast and I love it already. I relate to the overwhelm she discusses as I've got too many projects, loads of unread emails, and a small staff that's miraculously operating without any structure provided by me. As a creative entrepreneur I often just fly by the seat of my pants and I'm often racing to get prepared for the next meeting on my calendar.
I'm looking forward to learning tips and tricks to get out of this normalized state of anxiety. Even Desi’s voice is calming and she has really relatable stories. I already feel less alone in the state I'm in. Great content, I'll be following along.” Well thank you so much, AprilLo, I love that you're loving it.
And don't forget, everyone, I am having an amazing giveaway right now. You can do some shopping for yourself at Jayson Home when you head over to www.desicreswell.com/podcastlaunch, leave me a rating and review and submit your review to be entered. And I'll share more on that later in the episode. But get your review in so you get a chance to win and, of course, it helps me spread the word on the podcast.
Let's dive into using constraint for you. I think this is especially important as we head into the end of the year. You're thinking about what you want to wrap up and what you'll do next, and so this is the perfect time to apply this concept. We've talked before about how overwhelm is a mindset issue. It's also a capacity issue. And the way you're thinking about what you have to do is what creates the feeling of overwhelm, not the actual to-do list.
If you want to learn more about the mindset tools to free yourself from that feeling of overwhelm, episode two is definitely a must listen. But like I said, overwhelm also happens when there's a capacity issue. Essentially, there's only so many hours you have available to devote to your business or you want to devote to your business, and this includes your emotional bandwidth too.
When my clients are experiencing overwhelm, the most common thing I see is that they've taken on too much at once. And so there has to be a reduction in the number of things that they're trying to do themselves, and do themselves at that point in time. Because at a certain point, you can't mindset your way out of continuously being over capacity.
We talked about the capacity piece from the perspective of clients in episode four, so definitely check that one out as well. And now I want to talk about it from the perspective of all the things you do as a CEO to improve your business. What I see clients doing is setting their goals and to-dos for these back end projects from a place of pressure and rushing.
It could look like trying to establish every last system you need in your business at once. Or switching your project management, accounting and presentation software at the same time. It could also look like trying to pitch yourself to press, do five Instagram posts a week, and also be at a networking event weekly. As you can see, it's just trying to do a lot at once.
And a lot of times these are significant commitments in your business. And when you try and take them on all at once, you're going to end up stretching yourself very thin. And then you give up and then likely you blame yourself for not being disciplined enough. And this is where constraint comes in to support you.
The way that I love to think about this really is giving yourself a framework, and you have freedom within that framework. So you're putting on some little bumpers that are going to make everything you do more effective and more fun and more easy to follow through on. Essentially, they’re parameters that you set for yourself based on what you're working toward achieving in the business. And then within the parameters, there's lots of room for you to play.
In order to embrace this philosophy of freedom within the framework, you have to start making decisions about what's most important now and what can wait or possibly not even happen now or in the future. This is for the new things you want to implement in your business. I'm not saying you can only do three things ever and that's just all you can do.
Once you have a consistent routine or have closed out the implementation of a project, that's when you layer in something new. I want to give you an example here to just paint the picture of how this works. So I love plants, I'm not always the best at taking care of them. I do tend to over water, but I do love plants. And I want you to consider that you love plants as much as I do and you have one watering can of water.
So the watering can is essentially your capacity, the amount of water that you have in that given vessel. You also have some plants and these are your business projects. You really love plants too and you have three beautiful plants by the window and they each require a certain amount of water to be sustained and to grow.
But because you really love plants like I do, you want more plants. You keep heading to the garden center and you keep buying more plants. But the amount of water that fits in your watering can remains the same. And as you keep buying new plants, each plant has to get by with less and less water if you're trying to water them all at once.
What happens is eventually none of the plants have enough water because there's only so much to go around, just like your time, energy and attention, and those plants start to wilt and eventually die. This is what happens when you don't constrain your focus in your interior design business because you can't walk over to the faucet and refill yourself like you could with a watering can.
Think about this in comparison to if you kept to your original number of plants, you limited those plants to have what you could water based on that watering can. Those plants would be thriving from optimal care. And I want you to think about that in relation to the projects you implement in your business and the goals that you're setting.
It's the exact same thing, you take on less at once but it produces better results and actually more results in the long run. I know that feels really counterintuitive, but just keep sticking with me and let me show you what this could be like in practice.
In my business I have a strong agreement with myself that I focus on no more than one to three core projects per quarter. No more than that. For this last quarter it was executing on the plan for open enrollment to begin for my group program, Out of Overwhelm, which is coming December 1, mark your calendars. It was also getting the podcast up and running. And then delivering on a few PR opportunities that I had committed to in the previous quarter.
I've really been implementing and practicing the way that I set goals over the year and then quarterly for quite some time now. And so this is something that feels very second nature to me. But for you, you might be new to this process and just trying on the idea of constraint, so you might want to say that you're only going to select one thing to focus on per quarter. That is totally fine, let yourself be successful with trying this on. Practice the skill of constraint and you can always decide to do more.
And if you're feeling resistance to this idea right now, let me just normalize that it is totally common. Your brain is probably offering up things like I'll never make it to my goals, or it's going to take forever to finish anything. I don't have time to slow down. Basically, it's probably throwing a temper tantrum and it sounds a little dramatic in your head right now. Not a problem, you don't have to buy into that story it's offering.
I've seen this time and time again with clients and myself, that narrowing your focus in this way is what moves you forward more quickly and with more impact. This isn't the collective narrative that we all experience of more is better. But less truly is better and I'm trying to sell you on that idea. You might also not be sure what to focus on or feel overwhelmed by all the things you could do. So let's just talk about that for a minute.
Now, I want you to refer back to your vision that you have for your life and your business. We talked about that in episode one. Remember, you're going to use that vision as a priority filter to decide what is important. You can ask yourself what's going to make the most impact or move me closer to that vision? What would be easy and impactful to work on right now?
Maybe there's something that feels a little bit bigger and more intimidating that would move you closer to your vision. But why not start with something easy that you can start getting traction with right now? You want to identify your core one to three projects, again, start with one if this is new to you. And commit to seeing them through before you layer in more.
You might get a little impatient, or you might start to see the shiny pennies or glitter in the air, as one of my clients calls it. So it's your job as the CEO to bring yourself back to focus when that happens. You need to commit to yourself, your business, your clients and your family that you're going to see the impact of testing out the approach of constraint.
Decide right now what you need to say to yourself or what you need to remind yourself of when you're tempted to add in more or start dabbling in new things. I guarantee this is going to come up, so let's just address it from the get go. What I want you to remember is that distractions or those shiny pennies or the glitter, they don't happen to you, they are choices. They are usually unconscious choices, but they are still choices that you make. So decide now what you need to remind yourself of in order to stay focused.
Before we move on I want to take a moment here to tell you about the workshop I have coming up on December 1st, it's called Goal Setting For Busy Interior Designers and it's the kickoff to open enrollment for the January round of Out of Overwhelm. And this is where I'm going to teach you how to set and achieve your goals, even if you have a ton going on, which I know all of you do.
What you're going to learn in this 90 minute masterclass is the process I teach my clients in Out of Overwhelm when they define what they want to work on in the program. It's what I use in my own business and I break it down into a really simple way so you can start taking consistent action in the new year.
If you want to dive deeper into what we're talking about today, this is the place to do it and it's only $27. You can get all of the details and sign up by going to www.desiid.com/goal-setting-2022. The link will also be in the show notes and I would love to see you there.
Let's get back to what we were talking about. To constrain you are going to have to learn to say no to yourself, that is the truth of this. As the CEO of your business, you are not just managing a team, managing projects, managing clients, you are managing yourself, okay? You are the number one person that you manage. You're the first person you learn to manage, right? Before you even have a team or anyone supporting you, you have to manage yourself.
As the CEO of my business I have to learn to say no. And I've had to say no to myself quite a bit this past quarter. I've had some really exciting program ideas to support all of you in different ways bubbling up, and the fast action taker in me wants to get going. I want to do it all and I want to do it now. And so I see you, I see you. I get it. And I also know that the approach of constraint works and that I'm committed to it.
I can have that urge to go after all these ideas and still say no to myself. It can feel uncomfortable to say no to yourself. I know for me, when I have to say no to myself, I often have to allow for the experience of disappointment. Disappointment that there is only so much time in the day and I really can't do at all. And wanting to take action and knowing that it'll have to be happening at a later date.
You might also feel self-doubt when you learn to say no to yourself. You might be questioning are these the right things to focus on or am I doing enough? Which, by the way, you get to decide what enough is, we'll probably need to have another episode on that one.
You're always going to have more ideas than you ever have capacity for, and that really is a wonderful thing. I want you to get on board with that. Even if you have to say no or not right now to ideas, it's wonderful that you have the ideas in the first place. It's because you are a creative entrepreneur and it keeps you from being bored. So it's okay to have more ideas than capacity, and you can still say no to some of those ideas to honor your capacity.
Typically, when I notice clients are feeling resistant to saying no or not right now to themselves, it's usually one of two things. The first one being they're afraid that they won't get to it or that they will forget it. So put those ideas in what I call a parking lot. Write the ideas that you have down somewhere, it could be a Google document, a specific notebook, so that they have a safe keeping place for when you do have capacity. You can pull them out when the time is right.
I call it a parking lot because I picture my ideas as little vehicles in the parking lot. And I can park them and they've got their nice little spot to stay in. And then when they're ready to come out, I just back them out and I put them into motion.
The other thing that I notice when there's resistance to saying no or not right now is that you might be worried that when you say no, you're saying that the thing isn’t important. And I want you to know that it can absolutely still be important, it's just important at a later date.
It's not possible for everything to be of equal importance at the same time. If you continue to cling on to this belief that everything is important, you are setting yourself up for frustration and overworking, and ultimately delaying getting to where you want to go. Even though your brain tells you doing it all now would get you there faster, it doesn't work that way.
When you use constraint in your business, here's what's going to happen. You're going to feel much more calm, focused and in control. You're going to know what you should be doing on a daily basis because your actions can be defined by how supportive they are of the areas you're constraining around. You're also going to have way more confidence because you're becoming someone who is clear, who's decisive, and who follows through on what they say they're going to do.
You're going to implement so much more in your business and actually gain traction. When you take it one step at a time, you keep taking steps. This is how you make progress.
I want to recap this for you because this is such an important concept. Doing more at once doesn't speed you up, it slows you down. You need to stop believing this thought error. Focus on one to three core projects per quarter that are going to move the needle in your business. Bring those projects to completion and then layer in something new.
And lastly, get comfortable saying no to yourself. The byproduct of this, which I think is really fun, is learning to be comfortable with the discomfort of saying no to yourself actually makes it easier to say no to others. Which I'm sure is something we'll talk about in a future episode.
That's what I've got for you today, designers. In the next episode I'm going to be speaking on a topic that I have found is one of the key secrets to successful interior design business owners. And it's not something that others are talking about when it comes to business. I can't wait to dive into that topic. Until then, I'm wishing you a beautiful week. I'll talk to you in the next episode.
To celebrate the launch of the show, I'm going to be giving away gift cards to Jayson Home, one of my favorite home decor sources. I'm going to be giving away $50 gift cards to five lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review the show.
Now, it doesn't have to be a five star review, although I sure hope you love the show. I want your honest feedback so I can create an amazing show that provides tons of value. Visit desicreswell.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I'll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode.
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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