105. Pivot with Purpose: Should You Revise Your Year End Goals?
You probably set yourself an annual financial goal back at the beginning of 2024, and here we are, coming into the final months of the year. Are you on track to hit your goals? Maybe you’re falling behind, or perhaps you’ve already surpassed your target and are wondering if you should raise the bar even higher.
Wherever you currently fall on the spectrum, now is the perfect time to assess your progress and determine if a goal revision is in order. Sometimes we need a little pivot or a reset, which might include adjusting your target to finish the year strong, and in this episode, I guide you through how to approach goal revisions in a way that supports your growth as a CEO.
Listen in this week as I show you how to master the art of goal revision. You’ll hear what the process of evaluating your current position entails, the factors to consider when deciding whether to adjust your targets, and how to make the most of the remaining months and position yourself for success in the year ahead.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
How to assess your progress towards your annual financial goals and determine if a revision is necessary.
The key factors to consider if you're already ahead of schedule on your goal.
Why you must ground your goals in data.
How to identify the reasons behind falling short of your targets and what to do about it.
2 reasons why I encourage you to adjust your goal if you’re currently falling short.
How to reset your goal in a way that feels attainable and motivating.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 105. Today I’m going to talk about when it is and isn’t time to revise your goals. Sometimes we need a little pivot, sometimes we need a reset, and as we close out the end of the year, now is the perfect time to check in with your business, that goal or goals you set at the beginning of the year, and make a plan which might include adjusting your target to finish the year strong.
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 am so glad to have you here as always, and so glad to be with you as always. Today what I want to talk about is a topic that was inspired by some coaching I’d been doing with clients recently by checking in with them on their annual business goals, their quarterly planning for the end of the year. And I thought this would be a really important topic to bring to the podcast so that you can all benefit from this coaching as well.
We’re going to be talking about if and when you should revise your goals once they’ve been set. So back at the beginning of 2024, you probably set a goal and now here we are coming into the final months of the year. And we need to explore, is this a time to reassess, reset, maybe pivot, and figure out how you want to finish the year?
Before we dive into this, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has left a rating and review for the podcast. It has meant so much to me. And honestly, when I check the page and see that one of you has left a review and a kind note, it just means the world to me. And I’m here to ask that if you have not left a rating and review, could you please do that? Now is really the perfect time.
I have been reviewing my stats for the podcast, looking at kind of where that growth has been throughout the year. And one of the things that I see so clearly is that you are all loyal listeners. You love tuning in. You do it consistently. You relisten to episodes. And I don’t want this podcast to be the best kept secret.
One of the ways you can really help me get The Interior Design Business CEO podcast in front of more designers is by helping me play the algorithm game. Meaning when you leave a rating and review, it tells the podcast platform that you’re listening on that people are liking this show, that it’s worth listening to. And it’s going to do its little backend data thing and put the show in front of more designers when they are searching for interior design business related content.
Because your rating and review is so valuable to me in helping spread the word about the show and reach more designers, I want there to be a great incentive for you to take the time. It really is only a minute or two that it takes to leave a rating and review. And when you do this, plus submit a quick form so I know how to reach you, you will be entered to win a private session with me.
You should know that I’m getting ready to send out some more, “Hey, you won” emails. So get your review posted and submit that quick form. I’m thinking I’m going to change up this giveaway soon. So if you want to have an opportunity to win a one-on-one session with me, get on it. The link to submit your name and email so I can get in touch with you is in the show notes. And then of course, all you have to do is leave that quick rating and review on whatever podcast platform where you listen.
Today, what I want to talk to you about is goal setting and specifically if you should ever change or pivot with your goal. Before we dive into that specifically, I do think it’d be helpful for you to have some context on my philosophy for goal setting.
What I typically advise my interior design clients to do is to set an annual financial goal and then use quarterly planning, their desired and decided upon client capacity, and their pricing and fee structures to guide the goal setting process. And then use actions and decisions and planning throughout the year to work toward that singular financial goal.
It gives a very clear focus of where you’re headed and also provides a filter for making decisions, utilizing resources, prioritizing projects and investments in your business. It becomes a North star. Really, really helpful. If you want to hear more on goal setting, there’s so many episodes you can look back to in the podcast feed, so definitely check those out.
Once you have that goal set, and likely you set it back at the beginning of the year, then you have to go about achieving the goal. And there’s going to be years in your business where you set that annual goal and you’re going to far surpass the goal. There’s going to be years where you’re moving along steadily and you’re right on track. And then there’s going to be years where you set a goal, maybe knowing it’s a big stretch or thinking you should be able to hit it, and for whatever reason, it’s looking unlikely at this point in the year.
All of these options are always on the table with goal setting and achievement in your interior design business. Often we are taught, or we have this perception that goals are very linear, year after year we should set a bigger and bigger goal and each year we should hit it. And then we set another big goal and then we hit it. But typically it doesn’t work that way in reality.
Just because you hit your goal last year, doesn’t guarantee you’ll hit it this year. Just because you didn’t hit your goal last year, doesn’t mean you won’t hit it this year. We can always use past evidence to inform possible future outcomes, but past evidence never guarantees future outcomes. That’s why it’s so important to set intentional goals, using any data you have and math and be tracking your progress so that you can be on the pulse of what’s happening in your business and be open to a potential pivot or revision if things are not looking as you anticipated.
The other thing I want you to remember as we’re talking about this is that there is the financial aspect of hitting a goal with paying yourself, being able to pay overhead, being able to invest in the business and in team members. And then there’s also another big part of goal setting, and that is really to give you intention and directional focus so that you’re clear on what you prioritize and what you let go of.
A goal is very much a commitment to yourself and a commitment you make to a future version of you that’s going to help guide your own personal development and inner growth as you step into becoming the person who actually is someone who can achieve that goal.
During this episode, I want to address what to consider when you’re tracking consistently to hit that goal, if you’re already ahead of the goal, meaning you’ve met or surpassed the financial goal and we’ve still got months of the year left, or if you’re not tracking to meet that goal and we’ve got some kind of gap to close or potentially adjust. We’ll also talk a little bit about if you only have a vague idea of where you fall on this spectrum and how to handle that.
All of these are really important opportunities to check in with the goal you set at the beginning of the year and decide how you want to proceed so that you’re supported as the CEO as we close out another year in business. I’ll add a quick note here that if you are listening to this episode at a different time of the year, so I’m recording and we’re headed into about the last two and a half months of the year, take what I share and use it to inform how you choose to set a future goal or reflect back on a previous goal setting cycle and you’ll still find this very helpful.
Before we can decide do I want to pivot or reassess or reset a goal, we have to know where you are on the goal achievement spectrum. You’re going to need to do a temperature check. Some of you might have looked at your finances very recently and know exactly where you stand. And some of you might need to gather some up-to-date facts and regroup, and you can definitely listen through the episode and then take what you learned from here to your desk and apply it.
And some of you might only have a vague idea of where you stand, so definitely listen and then schedule some time to reconnect to what that goal was in the first place and then use what I’m going to share to decide how you want to proceed in the coming weeks as we close out 2024.
As I mentioned when I was introducing this topic there’s lots of different places you could fall on that goal spectrum. The first scenario that I want to talk about is if you’ve already hit your goal and there’s still time left in the year. This is amazing, go celebrate. And I also know that this can bring up an opportunity to question, hey, should I maybe push the goal a little bit farther? Should I change it? Should I leave it as is?
What I often see with my high-achieving designer clients is that if they are on track or they are surpassing the goal already, they’re often wanting to increase the goal at this point. And that is definitely on the table as an option, but before you do I want you to ask yourself why you want to increase the goal.
If you set the goal based on your expenses, what you want to pay yourself, investments you want to make, and that’s all good to go, you have created a result that is in alignment with the intention you set at the beginning of the year. And so if you do want to change the goal what is going to be the why fueling the action of bumping up that number? We must be clear on this before we change anything.
That why could be that you set the margins tight when you set the goal in your budget and what you were expecting to bring in this year and you might be saying yeah it’d be kind of ideal to have some more money for myself or to reinvest in the business at the end of the year. You might see a few things you could do to increase cash flow without incurring a lot of expenses to make it happen and you might want to choose to increase the goal. Okay that’s very factual and there’s a sense of neutrality and intentionality to that.
Another thing could be that you just realize you underestimated yourself and our capabilities, and I highly suggest you learn from this. What were you believing about yourself and believing you had the capacity to create for yourself that resulted in you setting a goal that was too low? This is really good to know so that you don’t take those beliefs into the goal setting process in the coming year and then go on and underestimate yourself again.
Remember, one of the jobs of a goal is to help you grow into your leadership and stretch you, stretch your capacity and show yourself what is possible. And so once you understand the disconnect between your actual capabilities and your perception of what you can achieve, you might want to revise this goal just for fun to see how you might evolve in the process.
This is also a great time to work on identity and self-concept, which is one of my favorite things that I do with designers in private coaching. These reasons that we just explored those might be whys that you’re on board with and then you could potentially increase the goal.
Now I want to talk about why you wouldn’t want to increase the goal or why I would have some serious hesitations around a revision. The first one is a big one, and that is if you’re moving the goalpost on yourself yet again. This is something I really want you to look out for.
If you’re moving the goal post in other areas of your life and skipping over accomplishments, never acknowledging or even downplaying your success and not letting a goal that you set and achieved be enough, it is for sure going to show up here. If that’s where the desire to revise the goal is coming from I highly recommend you do not increase the goal.
Your work moves from increasing financial goals to practicing being in sufficiency and practicing relishing in your accomplishments. I know that those are not the big flashy, “Oh, here’s my number, my big number, here we go” kind of results. But if you don’t learn how to do this, if you don’t learn how to let it be enough and not always move the goalpost on yourself you are always going to be chasing your next success and believing that you’ll feel better when...
I mean this is the classic if this, then that. If I get this goal, then I can relax. If I get this goal, then I can feel proud. We want to break that cycle and this is an opportunity to practice doing that for you. As the CEO of your interior design business, you want to learn to allow yourself to enjoy the journey just as much as the enjoyment of hitting the destination.
Similar in flavor to moving the goalpost is if you’re wanting to bump up the goal from a place of trying to prove yourself. Prove yourself to the world, to yourself, to some other nebulous other. This has more of an energy of force and conditionality on yourself which is very different than when I was talking about underestimating yourself and then learning to see yourself in a more true light in your true capabilities.
If either of those are true I highly recommend you practice being in success of your goal achievement or being right on track to hit it. This is also a great time to mention that you might not want to increase the goal because there are non-financial gains or areas of development you might want to focus on right now, knowing that your financial needs and desires have been met. As I’ve recommended, you always want to set a financial goal for your interior design business, and remember that hitting a specific number is not the only type of success that counts.
This could be a great time to decide to do some personal development, skill development, marketing where you’re not going to see a return this year but maybe next year, or cleaning up or implementing some back end initiatives and projects.
So that’s looking at goal revision from a place of you’ve already exceeded the goal and there’s time left in the year or you’re just right on track and you’re for sure going to hit it. Now what I want to talk about is if you aren’t on track to hit your goal. We’re going to cover why that could be and what to consider in deciding what to do next.
What to do next could definitely be a pivot, a revision, and a reset. Let’s talk about some of the reasons you might not be on track to hit your financial goal in your interior design business. We want to identify the why, again why you aren’t on track, because that’s going to give us very valuable information in how you decide you want to move forward and then also in how you set goals for the next year.
The first reason you might not be on track is just because you plucked the goal out of thin air. I mean this happens, right? I’ve done it in the past for sure and I’ve seen lots of designers do this where we set a goal without grounding in data or reflecting on your services, capacity, and financials, all those pieces that come together to meet that financial goal. If the number wasn’t grounded in some sort of past evidence or reality of what is, it would make sense that it might not be on track.
The second reason you might not be on track is because circumstances have changed. That could be in life, it could be in your business. Maybe you or your family member has gotten sick and have had to navigate an illness. It could also be on your team, maybe you had a key player who you really depended on leave the team and now you are in the rebuilding process with that. Or maybe you had a really big project put on hold. Different things happen and it very well could set your goal off track.
It could also just be that your priorities and values have changed, that’s the circumstance that has changed. You thought you valued one thing at the beginning of the year and were aiming your priorities to those values, and as you learned more about yourself as you engaged in the process of goal attainment you found that those things have shifted or maybe aren’t as true as you thought. And so maybe your goal and where you’re at with it has been a reflection of those changes.
Another reason you might not be on track is that you weren’t tracking your progress. You weren’t really learning along the way of what was working, what’s not working, how you need to pivot along the way, and so you’re getting kind of a reality check a little bit later in the year when it might be more of a surprise and you hadn’t given yourself opportunities to pivot and adjust course earlier on which could impact where you’re at right now.
Another reason you might not be hitting that goal is that you just simply underestimated the amount of time, money, and effort it would take to make the goal happen. Until we get into it, until we start implementing strategies and projects that are going to help support our goals we don’t really know what it’s going to take.
We can make informed guesses, we can look at past data, we can ask others what worked for them, and until we’re in the nitty-gritty of it we don’t really know. So there could just be an underestimation of what it would really take and now you’re finding, oh, I was kind of wrong about that. It makes sense that this is the way it is.
And the last reason, this kind of goes back to changing circumstances but the last reason is the goal was set as a should or someone else’s version of success and doesn’t reflect your why. This is that changing priority piece again but I wanted to call it out specifically with it being someone else’s race you’re trying to run. It’s really hard to maintain the motivation and emotional resilience that is required to go after setting big goals when they don’t align with your why.
If you haven’t already listened to episode 62 where I talk about the two whys you need in your interior design business, I would definitely go check that out. And even if you’ve already listened to it, moving into the end of the year as you’re starting to think about the goal you set for this year but also what the goal is you want to set for next year, that’s a really great resource.
Now that you’ve identified why you’re not hitting your financial target you set for yourself, it’s time to decide what you want to do about it. This is very much a CEO habit that I encourage you to build, is to check the facts and decide what you want to do to move forward from a place of feeling like you are empowered and have choices.
Of course you don’t have to adjust your goal but I recommend that you do it for two reasons. The first is that you are able to give yourself a reset and give yourself a circumstance that feels attainable and is more representative of where you’re at. And what that does is that you’re not constantly then trying to measure up against something where you’re likely to tell yourself I’m failing, I’m behind, I can’t do this. We don’t want to give ourselves circumstances that are going to trigger a cascade of negative thoughts.
So if we have the opportunity to reset the goal and give ourself a circumstance where it’s more easily accessible to ourselves to have thoughts like I can do this, I’m getting closer, we want to do that. It’s very motivating and gives you energy as opposed to draining your energy.
The second reason that I’m going to recommend that you adjust your goal is that motivation piece that I just spoke to. When a goal feels so out of reach it’s easy to go into apathy or inaction, and then the goal no longer serves the purpose of growing and stretching you, which is one of the major reasons you want to set a goal in the first place.
If you’re deciding to revise or pivot with your financial goal for the year, this is how I suggest you do it. First you have to check in with the facts. We need to know exactly what is going on with the business. You do not want to have guesses or feelings making these decisions for you, so take a look or use the financial advisors that you have in your business to support you to understand what is your expected revenue coming in for the rest of the year? What are you going to collect?
And then you want to know what that specific gap is between where you are now and where you want to be based on the goal that you originally set. The first thing you want to check is could there be a way to close the gap? There very well might be and then maybe you don’t even need to revise the goal at all. And if you really don’t see a way that that gap could be closed, then I want you to look at what could you influence in terms of sales and collections within the business? Get into the spirit of possibility and use that to help you set a revised goal.
Your revised goal doesn’t have to be, oh, well, this is kind of what I’m on track for and so I’ll just do that. That could be absolutely in alignment with where you’re at and what you want to do and you also have the option of taking that goal and scooching it back, but not totally pulling it back. And that could be based on some of these possible outcomes that you could have influence over.
This is also a chance to look at what are the non-revenue opportunities that could be implemented this year to set you up for success with your goal next year? This goes back to what I was speaking of. There’s many ways to measure success and so maybe the financial goal is going to be less, but there’s other things that you’re doing to really set yourself up to make a leap in the coming year.
And of course with all of this you’re going to want to check in with yourself, with your own capacity, with your team’s capacity to implement these ideas and possibilities. Once you’ve reset the goal and you’ve decided on a new number, we have to commit to the new goal. You have to make a commitment that this is where it’s at and then make a plan for how you’re going to make these things happen.
It really is giving yourself a fresh start as you head into the year. And of course, if this is something you’d like support with, either for resetting right now or in the future, I am definitely here for you. Planning and executing on your plan is a learned skill, I want to emphasize this. You do not have to do this alone and even if you felt like I always set goals and then I lose track and I never follow through and I don’t know where to go or I have a really hard time reining my ideas in, those are all skill sets that you can develop as a CEO and is something that I work with my clients on on a regular basis.
So if you are interested in private coaching, there is a waitlist you can sign up for. Just head over to desiid.com/privatecoachingwaitlist and get your name on there. That’s how you can be the first to know when spots are available for private coaching and other opportunities that I might send out.
As I get ready to send you on your way, I really, really encourage you to take some time this week, check in with your goal and decide if it will stay the same or get a reset. And in doing that understand the why behind the revision and make a plan for how you are going to move forward. When you do this you’re giving yourself the opportunity to end the year strong with clarity on what happened this year so that you can confidently and intentionally set goals for next year.
And you’re also going to end this year in a much better place. Whenever we put attention on a problem we are aiming to solve, and in this case a gap or a potential range we want to step into for our revenue goal, we have the opportunity to grow and learn and develop ourselves.
I also want you to know that you should feel proud of what you have accomplished, whether that is if you have sailed past your goal or if you are ready to make a pivot. It really takes courage and dedication to set a goal in the first place and then to look at where you fall along that goal continuum. Not everyone sets goals, and you cared enough to do it in the first place and you’re caring enough now to tend to it and that in and of itself is reason to be proud.
I really want you to take with you that if you are in a position where you are resetting your goal, it’s a sign of resilience and leadership to take stock of where you’re at and adapt as best you can to be where you want to be in the future. Next week I’ll be back with a brand new episode and in that one I’m going to be answering a listener’s question about project hiccups and how to handle the emotional roller coaster when things go wrong. It’s going to be a good one, so make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast so that you don’t miss it.
And while you’re doing that, leave that rating and review, submit your info, and we could be having a private coaching session very soon to discuss a challenge you’re facing in your own business and create a solution that you can confidently move forward with. Until next Wednesday, I am wishing you a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you soon
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Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you’re ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you’re in the right place. I’m Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let’s go.
Hello, designer. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so glad to have you here as always, and so glad to be with you as always. Today what I want to talk about is a topic that was inspired by some coaching I’d been doing with clients recently by checking in with them on their annual business goals, their quarterly planning for the end of the year. And I thought this would be a really important topic to bring to the podcast so that you can all benefit from this coaching as well.
We’re going to be talking about if and when you should revise your goals once they’ve been set. So back at the beginning of 2024, you probably set a goal and now here we are coming into the final months of the year. And we need to explore, is this a time to reassess, reset, maybe pivot, and figure out how you want to finish the year?
Before we dive into this, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has left a rating and review for the podcast. It has meant so much to me. And honestly, when I check the page and see that one of you has left a review and a kind note, it just means the world to me. And I’m here to ask that if you have not left a rating and review, could you please do that? Now is really the perfect time.
I have been reviewing my stats for the podcast, looking at kind of where that growth has been throughout the year. And one of the things that I see so clearly is that you are all loyal listeners. You love tuning in. You do it consistently. You relisten to episodes. And I don’t want this podcast to be the best kept secret.
One of the ways you can really help me get The Interior Design Business CEO podcast in front of more designers is by helping me play the algorithm game. Meaning when you leave a rating and review, it tells the podcast platform that you’re listening on that people are liking this show, that it’s worth listening to. And it’s going to do its little backend data thing and put the show in front of more designers when they are searching for interior design business related content.
Because your rating and review is so valuable to me in helping spread the word about the show and reach more designers, I want there to be a great incentive for you to take the time. It really is only a minute or two that it takes to leave a rating and review. And when you do this, plus submit a quick form so I know how to reach you, you will be entered to win a private session with me.
You should know that I’m getting ready to send out some more, “Hey, you won” emails. So get your review posted and submit that quick form. I’m thinking I’m going to change up this giveaway soon. So if you want to have an opportunity to win a one-on-one session with me, get on it. The link to submit your name and email so I can get in touch with you is in the show notes. And then of course, all you have to do is leave that quick rating and review on whatever podcast platform where you listen.
Today, what I want to talk to you about is goal setting and specifically if you should ever change or pivot with your goal. Before we dive into that specifically, I do think it’d be helpful for you to have some context on my philosophy for goal setting.
What I typically advise my interior design clients to do is to set an annual financial goal and then use quarterly planning, their desired and decided upon client capacity, and their pricing and fee structures to guide the goal setting process. And then use actions and decisions and planning throughout the year to work toward that singular financial goal.
It gives a very clear focus of where you’re headed and also provides a filter for making decisions, utilizing resources, prioritizing projects and investments in your business. It becomes a North star. Really, really helpful. If you want to hear more on goal setting, there’s so many episodes you can look back to in the podcast feed, so definitely check those out.
Once you have that goal set, and likely you set it back at the beginning of the year, then you have to go about achieving the goal. And there’s going to be years in your business where you set that annual goal and you’re going to far surpass the goal. There’s going to be years where you’re moving along steadily and you’re right on track. And then there’s going to be years where you set a goal, maybe knowing it’s a big stretch or thinking you should be able to hit it, and for whatever reason, it’s looking unlikely at this point in the year.
All of these options are always on the table with goal setting and achievement in your interior design business. Often we are taught, or we have this perception that goals are very linear, year after year we should set a bigger and bigger goal and each year we should hit it. And then we set another big goal and then we hit it. But typically it doesn’t work that way in reality.
Just because you hit your goal last year, doesn’t guarantee you’ll hit it this year. Just because you didn’t hit your goal last year, doesn’t mean you won’t hit it this year. We can always use past evidence to inform possible future outcomes, but past evidence never guarantees future outcomes. That’s why it’s so important to set intentional goals, using any data you have and math and be tracking your progress so that you can be on the pulse of what’s happening in your business and be open to a potential pivot or revision if things are not looking as you anticipated.
The other thing I want you to remember as we’re talking about this is that there is the financial aspect of hitting a goal with paying yourself, being able to pay overhead, being able to invest in the business and in team members. And then there’s also another big part of goal setting, and that is really to give you intention and directional focus so that you’re clear on what you prioritize and what you let go of.
A goal is very much a commitment to yourself and a commitment you make to a future version of you that’s going to help guide your own personal development and inner growth as you step into becoming the person who actually is someone who can achieve that goal.
During this episode, I want to address what to consider when you’re tracking consistently to hit that goal, if you’re already ahead of the goal, meaning you’ve met or surpassed the financial goal and we’ve still got months of the year left, or if you’re not tracking to meet that goal and we’ve got some kind of gap to close or potentially adjust. We’ll also talk a little bit about if you only have a vague idea of where you fall on this spectrum and how to handle that.
All of these are really important opportunities to check in with the goal you set at the beginning of the year and decide how you want to proceed so that you’re supported as the CEO as we close out another year in business. I’ll add a quick note here that if you are listening to this episode at a different time of the year, so I’m recording and we’re headed into about the last two and a half months of the year, take what I share and use it to inform how you choose to set a future goal or reflect back on a previous goal setting cycle and you’ll still find this very helpful.
Before we can decide do I want to pivot or reassess or reset a goal, we have to know where you are on the goal achievement spectrum. You’re going to need to do a temperature check. Some of you might have looked at your finances very recently and know exactly where you stand. And some of you might need to gather some up-to-date facts and regroup, and you can definitely listen through the episode and then take what you learned from here to your desk and apply it.
And some of you might only have a vague idea of where you stand, so definitely listen and then schedule some time to reconnect to what that goal was in the first place and then use what I’m going to share to decide how you want to proceed in the coming weeks as we close out 2024.
As I mentioned when I was introducing this topic there’s lots of different places you could fall on that goal spectrum. The first scenario that I want to talk about is if you’ve already hit your goal and there’s still time left in the year. This is amazing, go celebrate. And I also know that this can bring up an opportunity to question, hey, should I maybe push the goal a little bit farther? Should I change it? Should I leave it as is?
What I often see with my high-achieving designer clients is that if they are on track or they are surpassing the goal already, they’re often wanting to increase the goal at this point. And that is definitely on the table as an option, but before you do I want you to ask yourself why you want to increase the goal.
If you set the goal based on your expenses, what you want to pay yourself, investments you want to make, and that’s all good to go, you have created a result that is in alignment with the intention you set at the beginning of the year. And so if you do want to change the goal what is going to be the why fueling the action of bumping up that number? We must be clear on this before we change anything.
That why could be that you set the margins tight when you set the goal in your budget and what you were expecting to bring in this year and you might be saying yeah it’d be kind of ideal to have some more money for myself or to reinvest in the business at the end of the year. You might see a few things you could do to increase cash flow without incurring a lot of expenses to make it happen and you might want to choose to increase the goal. Okay that’s very factual and there’s a sense of neutrality and intentionality to that.
Another thing could be that you just realize you underestimated yourself and our capabilities, and I highly suggest you learn from this. What were you believing about yourself and believing you had the capacity to create for yourself that resulted in you setting a goal that was too low? This is really good to know so that you don’t take those beliefs into the goal setting process in the coming year and then go on and underestimate yourself again.
Remember, one of the jobs of a goal is to help you grow into your leadership and stretch you, stretch your capacity and show yourself what is possible. And so once you understand the disconnect between your actual capabilities and your perception of what you can achieve, you might want to revise this goal just for fun to see how you might evolve in the process.
This is also a great time to work on identity and self-concept, which is one of my favorite things that I do with designers in private coaching. These reasons that we just explored those might be whys that you’re on board with and then you could potentially increase the goal.
Now I want to talk about why you wouldn’t want to increase the goal or why I would have some serious hesitations around a revision. The first one is a big one, and that is if you’re moving the goalpost on yourself yet again. This is something I really want you to look out for.
If you’re moving the goal post in other areas of your life and skipping over accomplishments, never acknowledging or even downplaying your success and not letting a goal that you set and achieved be enough, it is for sure going to show up here. If that’s where the desire to revise the goal is coming from I highly recommend you do not increase the goal.
Your work moves from increasing financial goals to practicing being in sufficiency and practicing relishing in your accomplishments. I know that those are not the big flashy, “Oh, here’s my number, my big number, here we go” kind of results. But if you don’t learn how to do this, if you don’t learn how to let it be enough and not always move the goalpost on yourself you are always going to be chasing your next success and believing that you’ll feel better when...
I mean this is the classic if this, then that. If I get this goal, then I can relax. If I get this goal, then I can feel proud. We want to break that cycle and this is an opportunity to practice doing that for you. As the CEO of your interior design business, you want to learn to allow yourself to enjoy the journey just as much as the enjoyment of hitting the destination.
Similar in flavor to moving the goalpost is if you’re wanting to bump up the goal from a place of trying to prove yourself. Prove yourself to the world, to yourself, to some other nebulous other. This has more of an energy of force and conditionality on yourself which is very different than when I was talking about underestimating yourself and then learning to see yourself in a more true light in your true capabilities.
If either of those are true I highly recommend you practice being in success of your goal achievement or being right on track to hit it. This is also a great time to mention that you might not want to increase the goal because there are non-financial gains or areas of development you might want to focus on right now, knowing that your financial needs and desires have been met. As I’ve recommended, you always want to set a financial goal for your interior design business, and remember that hitting a specific number is not the only type of success that counts.
This could be a great time to decide to do some personal development, skill development, marketing where you’re not going to see a return this year but maybe next year, or cleaning up or implementing some back end initiatives and projects.
So that’s looking at goal revision from a place of you’ve already exceeded the goal and there’s time left in the year or you’re just right on track and you’re for sure going to hit it. Now what I want to talk about is if you aren’t on track to hit your goal. We’re going to cover why that could be and what to consider in deciding what to do next.
What to do next could definitely be a pivot, a revision, and a reset. Let’s talk about some of the reasons you might not be on track to hit your financial goal in your interior design business. We want to identify the why, again why you aren’t on track, because that’s going to give us very valuable information in how you decide you want to move forward and then also in how you set goals for the next year.
The first reason you might not be on track is just because you plucked the goal out of thin air. I mean this happens, right? I’ve done it in the past for sure and I’ve seen lots of designers do this where we set a goal without grounding in data or reflecting on your services, capacity, and financials, all those pieces that come together to meet that financial goal. If the number wasn’t grounded in some sort of past evidence or reality of what is, it would make sense that it might not be on track.
The second reason you might not be on track is because circumstances have changed. That could be in life, it could be in your business. Maybe you or your family member has gotten sick and have had to navigate an illness. It could also be on your team, maybe you had a key player who you really depended on leave the team and now you are in the rebuilding process with that. Or maybe you had a really big project put on hold. Different things happen and it very well could set your goal off track.
It could also just be that your priorities and values have changed, that’s the circumstance that has changed. You thought you valued one thing at the beginning of the year and were aiming your priorities to those values, and as you learned more about yourself as you engaged in the process of goal attainment you found that those things have shifted or maybe aren’t as true as you thought. And so maybe your goal and where you’re at with it has been a reflection of those changes.
Another reason you might not be on track is that you weren’t tracking your progress. You weren’t really learning along the way of what was working, what’s not working, how you need to pivot along the way, and so you’re getting kind of a reality check a little bit later in the year when it might be more of a surprise and you hadn’t given yourself opportunities to pivot and adjust course earlier on which could impact where you’re at right now.
Another reason you might not be hitting that goal is that you just simply underestimated the amount of time, money, and effort it would take to make the goal happen. Until we get into it, until we start implementing strategies and projects that are going to help support our goals we don’t really know what it’s going to take.
We can make informed guesses, we can look at past data, we can ask others what worked for them, and until we’re in the nitty-gritty of it we don’t really know. So there could just be an underestimation of what it would really take and now you’re finding, oh, I was kind of wrong about that. It makes sense that this is the way it is.
And the last reason, this kind of goes back to changing circumstances but the last reason is the goal was set as a should or someone else’s version of success and doesn’t reflect your why. This is that changing priority piece again but I wanted to call it out specifically with it being someone else’s race you’re trying to run. It’s really hard to maintain the motivation and emotional resilience that is required to go after setting big goals when they don’t align with your why.
If you haven’t already listened to episode 62 where I talk about the two whys you need in your interior design business, I would definitely go check that out. And even if you’ve already listened to it, moving into the end of the year as you’re starting to think about the goal you set for this year but also what the goal is you want to set for next year, that’s a really great resource.
Now that you’ve identified why you’re not hitting your financial target you set for yourself, it’s time to decide what you want to do about it. This is very much a CEO habit that I encourage you to build, is to check the facts and decide what you want to do to move forward from a place of feeling like you are empowered and have choices.
Of course you don’t have to adjust your goal but I recommend that you do it for two reasons. The first is that you are able to give yourself a reset and give yourself a circumstance that feels attainable and is more representative of where you’re at. And what that does is that you’re not constantly then trying to measure up against something where you’re likely to tell yourself I’m failing, I’m behind, I can’t do this. We don’t want to give ourselves circumstances that are going to trigger a cascade of negative thoughts.
So if we have the opportunity to reset the goal and give ourself a circumstance where it’s more easily accessible to ourselves to have thoughts like I can do this, I’m getting closer, we want to do that. It’s very motivating and gives you energy as opposed to draining your energy.
The second reason that I’m going to recommend that you adjust your goal is that motivation piece that I just spoke to. When a goal feels so out of reach it’s easy to go into apathy or inaction, and then the goal no longer serves the purpose of growing and stretching you, which is one of the major reasons you want to set a goal in the first place.
If you’re deciding to revise or pivot with your financial goal for the year, this is how I suggest you do it. First you have to check in with the facts. We need to know exactly what is going on with the business. You do not want to have guesses or feelings making these decisions for you, so take a look or use the financial advisors that you have in your business to support you to understand what is your expected revenue coming in for the rest of the year? What are you going to collect?
And then you want to know what that specific gap is between where you are now and where you want to be based on the goal that you originally set. The first thing you want to check is could there be a way to close the gap? There very well might be and then maybe you don’t even need to revise the goal at all. And if you really don’t see a way that that gap could be closed, then I want you to look at what could you influence in terms of sales and collections within the business? Get into the spirit of possibility and use that to help you set a revised goal.
Your revised goal doesn’t have to be, oh, well, this is kind of what I’m on track for and so I’ll just do that. That could be absolutely in alignment with where you’re at and what you want to do and you also have the option of taking that goal and scooching it back, but not totally pulling it back. And that could be based on some of these possible outcomes that you could have influence over.
This is also a chance to look at what are the non-revenue opportunities that could be implemented this year to set you up for success with your goal next year? This goes back to what I was speaking of. There’s many ways to measure success and so maybe the financial goal is going to be less, but there’s other things that you’re doing to really set yourself up to make a leap in the coming year.
And of course with all of this you’re going to want to check in with yourself, with your own capacity, with your team’s capacity to implement these ideas and possibilities. Once you’ve reset the goal and you’ve decided on a new number, we have to commit to the new goal. You have to make a commitment that this is where it’s at and then make a plan for how you’re going to make these things happen.
It really is giving yourself a fresh start as you head into the year. And of course, if this is something you’d like support with, either for resetting right now or in the future, I am definitely here for you. Planning and executing on your plan is a learned skill, I want to emphasize this. You do not have to do this alone and even if you felt like I always set goals and then I lose track and I never follow through and I don’t know where to go or I have a really hard time reining my ideas in, those are all skill sets that you can develop as a CEO and is something that I work with my clients on on a regular basis.
So if you are interested in private coaching, there is a waitlist you can sign up for. Just head over to desiid.com/privatecoachingwaitlist and get your name on there. That’s how you can be the first to know when spots are available for private coaching and other opportunities that I might send out.
As I get ready to send you on your way, I really, really encourage you to take some time this week, check in with your goal and decide if it will stay the same or get a reset. And in doing that understand the why behind the revision and make a plan for how you are going to move forward. When you do this you’re giving yourself the opportunity to end the year strong with clarity on what happened this year so that you can confidently and intentionally set goals for next year.
And you’re also going to end this year in a much better place. Whenever we put attention on a problem we are aiming to solve, and in this case a gap or a potential range we want to step into for our revenue goal, we have the opportunity to grow and learn and develop ourselves.
I also want you to know that you should feel proud of what you have accomplished, whether that is if you have sailed past your goal or if you are ready to make a pivot. It really takes courage and dedication to set a goal in the first place and then to look at where you fall along that goal continuum. Not everyone sets goals, and you cared enough to do it in the first place and you’re caring enough now to tend to it and that in and of itself is reason to be proud.
I really want you to take with you that if you are in a position where you are resetting your goal, it’s a sign of resilience and leadership to take stock of where you’re at and adapt as best you can to be where you want to be in the future. Next week I’ll be back with a brand new episode and in that one I’m going to be answering a listener’s question about project hiccups and how to handle the emotional roller coaster when things go wrong. It’s going to be a good one, so make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast so that you don’t miss it.
And while you’re doing that, leave that rating and review, submit your info, and we could be having a private coaching session very soon to discuss a challenge you’re facing in your own business and create a solution that you can confidently move forward with. Until next Wednesday, I am wishing you a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you soon
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