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Music. Welcome to design for the creative mind, a podcast for interior designers and creative entrepreneurs to run their business with purpose, efficiency and passion, because while every design is different, the process should remain the same. Prepare yourself for some good conversations with amazing guests, a dash of Jesus and a touch of the Woo, woo, and probably a swear word or two. If you're ready to stop trading your time for money and enjoy your interior design business, you are in the right place. I'm your host. Michelle Lynn, you Michelle.
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Hey, y'all welcome back to the design for the creative mind Podcast. I'm Michelle Lynn, and we are doing a solo episode today. I'm recording this in October, and wanted to share with you my interior design business review and planning. I think it's really important that at the end of every year, or let me rephrase that, it doesn't have to be at the end of every year. It just seems to be more comfortable as you wrap up the year to plan for the next one.
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That's what I'm doing right now for my ml interiors group design, business, review and planning. I actually have a guide, and I will share the link with you if you're interested. At the end, you can go and download it, but stick around now and listen to what it entails and some of the questions that I'll be posing to you, and what I'm doing about it in my own design firm. And then you can see if you really do want to download it, and if you hear pages turning in the background, it's because I literally printed this guide out so that I can fill it in. And that's what gave me the idea to record this quick, off the cuff podcast, because I like to share what I do in my design firm with you so you can potentially replicate it for me, it takes getting clear on the business that I want to have, and it has changed over the course of the years, my my my time and my financial freedom, my time freedom, my sanity, my other priorities. It has changed over the course of the decade plus that I've run this business and this review and planning guide. I have actually edited it over the years, and I use it myself, and I try to make it as direct and straightforward but also thought provoking in in the process, one of the first things that I think is really important for you to do, for all of us to do as business owners, is to really identify what our favorite elements of the business are. There's things that we have to do, there's things that we don't have to do, but finding joy in your job or in your business as much as possible.
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Now keep in mind, this is, this is still this is still work. Okay, as much as we love creating beautiful spaces, it's still work. But as the business owner, you have the opportunity to determine what it is that you want to focus your time on, like, what is your design genius? Or what is your genius? Your Genius is design. Your Genius is not going to be social media. Your Genius is not going to be accounting for sure, your genius may not even be in operations. You are. You could very well be a true creative and not strong in some of the other areas that you need to be in order to run a successful, profitable interior design business. So sit down and figure out what some of the some of your favorite tasks are, and then what are some things that you don't like to do.
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Write all of those down, because you're going to want to take a look and see who you need to hire in the future, or what you could potentially outsource immediately. These are the types of things that if you sit down and spend some uninterrupted time concentrating on your business, I call it your CEO day. You should have a CEO day at least once a month, because when you're in the middle of your design work, it's hard to think as a CEO, because really what you're thinking about is, you know, the beauty that you're creating is that rug still going to be available when I'm ready to purchase it because they are low on stock or dreaming of patterns and fabric schemes. I get it. I totally get it. Spending time intentionally on your business is imperative. Some things to ask yourself as well is, is there anybody on, say, social media or other designers that you just keep in touch with that maybe you need to mentally unplug from? Are you comparing them? Are you comparing yourself to them? Are you getting an unhealthy mindset?
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So as many things as there are that we need to improve on and potentially add to our business, there are also things that we need to remove, some other things that I ask, and this is in no way, shape or form going to be all inclusive today, because this review and planning guide. Let's see what do I have here? It has 12 pages, yeah, like 11 or 12 pages worth of questions. So you'd be falling asleep listening to me if I read them all to you. But I'm just pulling out a few that are jumping off the page onto my eyeballs. What projects brought you the most joy this past year? And what is it about these projects that you loved? What was the source of the project? And how can you invite more of that type of project into your life, and then you want to flip flop and do the same thing? What projects were the most creatively draining for you this past year?
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We all have, you know, a project or two each year that doesn't go as well as we would want it to. For whatever reason, the client goes off the reservation in a completely different direction. They don't give you feedback. You can't communicate with them. All of a sudden, their budget changes, their timeline changes, just whatever. But you also know that there's some that are just draining. So what was it about them? Maybe not the client, but what was it about the project that was emotionally draining? And then what could you have done differently to avoid that difficulty? And then you need to stop and ask yourself, are these the types of projects you're going to decline in the future as you mature in your business? It's a blessing to be able to know that you don't have to accept every client that calls you. I cannot tell you how much freedom that'll give you, but you have to be able to identify what works and what doesn't work in order for you to know what projects to accept and what projects not to accept. Now we also need to step into the realm of what projects over the past year generated the most income. And let me rephrase that, and I'm probably going to need to go change this in my free guide.
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But what projects generated the most income, what projects generated the most profit? Don't guess, or don't just go based on your gut, thinking that your favorite project was incredibly profitable. Go get your numbers and confirm you should be able to run a profit and loss, or at least a project profitability report in your software. If you can't, then that's something that you probably want to put on your list for 2025, or for the upcoming year. Whatever you're listening to this, it should be something that you put on your list. How's that? Another thing would be is, did you have a financial goal? Did you have a financial goal for the year? Did you hit it? Did you exceed it, did you not hit it? And In either instance, what contributed to you hitting it or not hitting it? And what are you going to what are you going to plan for the following year? Another question that is very strategic to ask yourself is, do you set aside enough of your income for taxes? Y'all, do you have an accountant for guidance? If not, you need to get one. And if you are struggling with your finances and understanding them, I would highly recommend listening to my friend Michelle.
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Her name is Michelle Williams. She was on our podcast recently. Go back and listen to that episode. Okay, so having somebody to guide you with your accounting is is key, and it's not just somebody who's going to reconcile your books at the end of every month. It's somebody who can share with you your insight to your profit and loss statement. Again, as you're going through your finances, you want to take a look at your specific recurring monthly expenses, and then take a look at exactly what those are, and see if there's anything that you do or don't need to be paying for. So for example, I just found after after looking a little bit more closely at my QuickBooks expense, because I have QuickBooks for one business, for my design for the creative mind, and then I have design docs for ml interiors group.
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So I saw a monthly recurring fee for QuickBooks, and thought it was acceptable, and then I drilled down into it and realized that not only am I paying for the subscription for QuickBooks, but I'm paying for merchant service, merchant services that I haven't used in probably four years, if not longer. So I wrote down on my planner. Call QuickBooks merchant services, because they don't let you do it online. Call them and get it canceled. Go through and take a look. This is a great. Time of year to do that so that you're not paying you. Can you remember the gym membership that you used to have, and you were paying like, $34 a month for it, or $79 a month, or whatever, for for the longest time, and then you were like, holy crap
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, I forgot I was paying for that. I either need to use it or I need to cancel it. It's the same thing with your business subscriptions. Um, another question to ask yourself is, were there any investments that were either financial or of your time that did or did not give you a measurable return? If you have something that did give you a measurable return? So for example, maybe you did a show house, and you're you got leads from it, and they said you saw here blah blah blah at the blah blah blah show house that was so wonderful. Okay, great. Then you know that that's working. Is there anything that you did that you didn't get a return from? You don't have to necessarily say, I'm not going to do that again.
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Whatever that is, however you might take a look and see, is there something that I could have done that was more strategic, to capture the interest of my leads, or to capture more leads, whatever that looks like. These are the questions that oftentimes you think, Oh, I'll think about that the next time that opportunity comes up. But if you did not give yourself the chance to look back over the last 12 months and truly analyze these situations that present themselves. You need to be able to analyze it without emotion, so you're reviewing what you've done, and you're planning for the future when it's uninterrupted and you have the time. Oh, man, if you have the time, you can go through and look at your business objectively when you're hurried or rushed to complete or accept an event that you had done previously, but you don't really, you don't know if it was successful or not, then you're going to repeat potential mistakes, or you're going to make decisions based on ego, rather than making decisions based on the best interest of your business, to be quite frank.
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Okay, I hope that makes sense other things, and this is what I'm asking. This is what really what I'm focusing on right now is what are the major tasks that currently make up my days? For those of you who don't know, I have based like, three and a half businesses, and I'm really trying to get my arms around them and figure out where my time is. So I have my interior design firm, ml interiors group. I have this coaching platform designed for the creative mind, where I have my paid and free like this podcast coaching that I love to do for interior designers. I also have studio works, which is a co working space for creatives, for interior designers in the Dallas Fort Worth area. And then I am co founder of a software called sidemark, which is a incredibly powerful CRM marketing, social media, all the things software. And then I have a six year old at home, so I am highly overstimulated right now, and I'm really trying to get my arms around the major tasks that currently make up my days, and this is something where you can sit down and write them in order in the amount of time that they take.
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And what I'm doing is I'm noting approximately how much time per day. This is also going to help me, and I hope it helps you get organized, because then when you see that you're doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that every day. Well, can you consolidate your days? Can you do a little bit of this and a little bit more of this, and a little bit more of this on Tuesdays, and then a little more of that, and a little more of that, and a little bit more of that on Wednesdays, consolidating your time so that you're not getting interrupted and your and your your mind isn't going in so many different directions. I'm not practicing what I preach right now, but I'm getting my arms back around it, because I do know that it works. It has worked for me fabulously in the past. Imagine trying to bake a cake without a recipe. You kind of know what the ingredients are, but you don't know how to put it all together. After lots of hard work and trying different combinations, all you are left with is a sticky situation and a stomach ache. Babe running an interior design business can feel exactly that same way.
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That is why I created the interior design business bakery. This is a program that teaches you how to bake your interior design business cake and eat it too. If you don't want to figure out the hard way and you want guidance to follow a recipe that has already been vetted, someone that has already been there and done it and will help you. Do it too. Then check out the year long mentorship and coaching program, the interior design business bakery. If your interior design business revenue is below 300,000 or if you're struggling to make a profit and keep your sanity, this is the only program for you. You can find that information at designed for the creative mind.com. Forward slash business. Dash bakery, check it out. You won't regret it.
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But when you're going through those tasks, you also want to take a look that say, and say, Am I doing that because it's making me money, or it's moving me towards making me money? Or am I doing that like what you might look at some things and say, Well, why am I doing that? Does it need to be done at all? Are you doing it because you think you're supposed to do it? Or is it something that you can even outsource? No, you don't have to solve and figure out the How to any of this right now, but put a star next to it, and you can go back and figure those details out later. Right now, you're looking at a higher level. You're not getting directly into the operations.
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And then you could ask yourself, How can you restructure your business to allow you to do more of what you love and more of what is profitable. That's where I'm at right now. How can I restructure my businesses so that I can do what I know I'm called to do and make money doing it? Where I really found some great benefit to this exercise is, oh gosh, years ago, when I really didn't have processes and procedures that are that were really solid in my design business, the question that helped me was, what activities create a bottleneck in my workflow, or what can I streamline or standardize to make it work better. Can I create a repeatable process in order to streamline these activities? If you don't have repeatable processes and procedures in your business? Well, here's here's a friendly plug for my design for the creative mind, interior design, business, bakery.
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This is my signature program where I teach you the entire kit and caboodle, the entire recipe to launch your business five years into the future and create multiple six figures of revenue. It's the processes and the procedures and, oh, by the way, you know what? I'm not going to give you another gratuitous plug. I'll tell you at the end of today, some of the different things that we've come up with recently and ways that we can work together, but nonetheless, processes the key to a successful business in the long run. Here's another thing I'm working on. Y'all, what does an ideal work day or work week look like for me? I personally, I was just raised in an era, so I think I'm Gen X, right? Yeah, I am Gen X, and it was always first went into the office and last one to leave. For those of you who know my story, you know that I had worked in corporate America prior to launching my interior design business, and hard work was, was what was just like ingrained in me, probably a lot of my colleagues and peers in the in the same age group.
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I think this millennials, the millennials now have a much better grasp on a work life balance and what's really important, and it's taken me until I'm 5454 today, and I have a six year old child to really stop and say, What? What really matters? What really matters, getting to the office, first, leaving last. Does that? Does that make a difference to my team? Do my team look at me and judge when I get there and when I leave? You know, in the past, I really felt that some of my former employees did that, and now I really, I don't if this is my business. So y'all, this is your business. What does an ideal work day or work week look like for you? I am not here to impress my colleagues at ml interiors group.
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I am here to lead them, to guide them, and to provide a paycheck to them if they're going to sit back and judge the time I spend in the office, it's none of my business, and I hope I can pass that on to you as well, because it's a lesson that I'm learning late in life. And you don't have to put in a lot of hours to be successful. You want to work smart, not necessarily long, okay, so you do have to work hard, but you don't have to work long. Oh, my goodness, that is a lesson that I really hope this time next year. Or I can share with you that I have conquered it, but it has been ongoing. We are on I'm just cruising through this. I'm kind of skimming. I'm on page nine. If you like these, if you like these questions, if you like the thought of doing this for your business, you can go to design for the creative mind, forward, slash,
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Review Guide and just download it. Schedule a day, at least half a day, for you to spend time digging into these questions. Some of them, you're going to have to come back to, because there, I'm hoping that some of the content is something that you wouldn't have thought of before, and you're going to need to give it some thought. It's thought provoking. And by the way, this review and planning guide, I do my best to get to it every year. After a few years, there's some things that are just naturally occurring in the in my thought process, so all of the questions are not as relevant, but then there's also questions that I forgot about and need to review, or sometimes it's just going back to the basics and simplifying things. What else? What else is another one? Have you surveyed your recent best clients about where you may be able to improve your services, processes, deliverables and so forth, and if not, how can you implement a survey as quickly as possible?
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I'll tell you. Side mark, there's a gratuitous plug y'all for that software side, Mark, you can go to my side mark.com, okay? You can create a survey, if nothing else. You can send it to him via email. But it's also great. It's a great reason to take your to take a previous client out for coffee, or to, Hey, can I swing by and bring you some treats or something? And I've just got a few questions that I'd really like to ask you. Your clients love you, and the really good ones will take 15 minutes out of their day to give you feedback, so you want to share with them. I'm, you know, I'm working on improving my business.
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I'm putting new systems into place. I I'd like to ask you a few questions. And hell, it doesn't even have to be in person. It could just be schedule. Scheduling a phone call, a 15 minute phone call, a zoom. Don't make it complicated. Don't make it complicated. Get those results, and then what can you do to make some of those changes? Or have you already adjusted some things? It's really eye opening when you are vulnerable enough to ask your past clients, what could I have done better? Okay, what else do we have here? Is there anything missing from your services that people are asking for? What is the best thing that could happen to your business in the next year, and what are three steps that you can take to move that goal closer? And what is the worst thing that could happen to your business in the next the next year? Here's what I'm going to suggest the worst thing that could happen to your business this year.
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You play that scenario all the way out, like, go down that bunny trail that your brain wakes you up at three in the morning and just like repeats on an endless loop, write it all out like your business burns down. Your business is just burning down. Your best staff. It starts in fighting like whatever that looks like. Rip that piece of paper up and know that that scenario is no longer a consideration. Yeah, I know sounds a little woo, woo. It's a great practice. Other things would be, how will you define success in the future? You know, is it is it your boundaries? Is it your quality of life? Is it your finances? Is it all of the above?
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Are you being a business owner or business operator? These are the types of questions that are thought provoking and need to be asked, but oftentimes we're so busy in the trenches, you know, we got to keep up with social media. Oh my gosh. I need to go back and reply to that email. I just signed that client. Yippee. Let's celebrate. All of these types of things are important, but it's also important for us as business owners to stop and review what we've liked, what we haven't liked, what works, what doesn't work. Keep doing what's working. Stop doing what's not working, and plan for the next year. Because if you don't plan, then you're just waking up every morning and probably responding to your emails and letting your inbox and your bank account run your business. And that's not the way to do it. Babe, that is not the way to do it. So if you liked the idea, or if you like the idea of the content that I just shared again, go over to dub, dub, dub designed for the creative mind.com
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forward slash, Review Guide, and I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you. You can download it, print it out, or however it works best for you, edit it electronically. Just make sure you take some time, and if not my review and planning guide, then take some time and do it on your own. Okay, so next is, if you think that this freak. Content is good on this podcast. Imagine what you get with the when you work with me in one of my mentorship or coaching programs. I'm now calling it a pantry, because we have multiple options and ways that you can work with us based on where you are in in your business and your ability to invest so it's a pantry because I like a good thing.
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Okay, first of all, there's the interior design business bakery. It's a 12 month signature program with the entire recipe to launch your business five years into the future and into as multiple six figure revenue without trading your time for money. I've taken the key ingredients from the interior design business bakery, and just like the title, it's like the diet version of the bakery, there's not as much content. It's still the key ingredients. You'll still get it taken care of, and it is lower in your investment. The Sugar and Spice society is a six month program that'll help you generate some revenue so that you can invest in your next level of coaching so you can go from sugar and spy society to the key ingredients to the bakery. It's a path that's pretty easy to take.
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And for those of you who are working to increase your interior design knowledge, like the actual design knowledge and skills, there's no business included in the design from scratch program, but I compiled a bunch of information that I wish I would have known when I launched my interior design business, some areas where I felt ill prepared, some vocabulary I had no clue was and so I felt like Boo Boo the fool in front of clients and just the likes of it. So head on over to design for the creative mind. Grab your review and planning guide, and then also check out the other ways that we can work together. And for now, choose to be great today. Do that. Do that every day. Hey, y'all, if you love the show and find it useful, I would really appreciate it if you would share with your friends and followers, and if you like what you're hearing. Want to put a face with a name and get even more business advice, then join me in my Facebook group, the interior designers business launch pad. Yeah, I know it's Facebook, but just come on in for the training and then leave without scrolling your feet. It's fun. I promise you'll enjoy it. And finally, I hear it's good for business to get ratings on your podcast, so please drop yours on whatever platform you use to listen to this. We're all about community over competition, so let's work on elevating our industry one designer at a time. See you next time you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
