When I talk about running a calm business, I know how it can sound. Soft, a bit fluffy.
Maybe calm feels a bit ‘woo’, the opposite of ambitious, not what you’d expect when you think about how to run a profitable interior design business? Or something you can only have when you’ve been in business for decades?
I’m here to challenge that. Calm isn’t the reward for a healthy business. It’s part of what makes the business healthy in the first place. Calm is how to run a profitable business without burning out. This makes calm a commercial issue, not a soft, fluffy one.
Your time and energy are the asset
When we talk about a profitable interior design business, we often skip over the fact that YOU are central to the success of your business. It’s your experience, your judgement, and your ability to hold a project steady that can determine how well your business does.
You run on time and energy, and both of these are finite.
So, when your energy is flagging and there’s no clear space left in your calendar, you’re not just tired, you’re running your main asset into the ground and risking burn out. Your work gets slower, decisions get harder, mistakes creep in – and these all have a cost.
This is why Limits — the third out of four pillars in my CALM method — is key. Limits refers to how you manage that finite resource which is your time and energy. It’s the boundaries you put in place around when you’re available to clients, how many projects you take on, when you take a holiday.
These boundaries aren’t just there to protect your evenings, they protect the thing that your whole business depends on – YOU!
When you ensure that you get the rest and replenishment you need, guard your time and energy with smart boundaries, and listen to what your body is telling you – you’re not being soft, you’re being commercial.
You’re protecting your ability to deliver, and sustain yourself, long-term – which ensures you get paid and have a profitable interior design business.
Backing yourself to charge what you’re worth
If Limits is about protecting you as the main asset in your business, Mindset is what you believe about yourself.
So many brilliant designers undercharge and it’s often because a limiting belief gets in the way. Maybe they believe that they’ll be found out, that they’re not good enough to charge more, that they should just be grateful for the work. These are damaging beliefs that can cost you money.
Mindset gremlins
But it’s not just about pricing, when I work with interior designers, I see gremlins turn up all over the business:
- “I should be able to do this all myself” — so you never get help, and you become the bottleneck in your own design studio.
- Perfectionism — so a proposal that was ready on Tuesday doesn’t go out till Friday, and the angst and self-doubt is time wasted and momentum lost.
- Fear of failure — so you don’t put your prices up, don’t pitch for the bigger project, don’t back yourself for the work you actually want.
Working on your mindset can be the difference between a profitable interior design business and one that keeps you busy and broke. This makes mindset work – the fourth pillar in the CALM method – a sensible commercial decision, not a nice to have.
What I’ve seen is that when interior designers back themselves to charge properly, lead projects and run their business with confidence, they go from being a great designer to also being a great business owner.
Why I bang on about this
If you look around the interior design space, you’ll find plenty of people teaching you to do more. More marketing, more content, more systems, more hustle. What you won’t find much of is anyone telling you that your rest and your mindset are business strategy.
It’s not that any of those other things is inherently wrong – there’s good advice there. However, ONLY focusing on the business, whilst ignoring the human running the business, is a mistake. It’s why I developed the CALM method and made it the core of what I teach.
If you only work on the “business bits” you’ll end up overwhelmed at best and burnt out at worst. Neither is good for your business. You’re not a machine.
The whole picture: the CALM method
Limits and Mindset are the second half of my CALM method. I covered the first half — Clarity and Aligned Action — in my last blog which you can read here.
If you want a real look at where your business is, sit with these:
Clarity
- Do you know what type of business you’re building?
- What are the gaps between where you are now and where you want to be?
Aligned Action
- Do you know what’s bringing you clients and making you money?
- Are you just doing “busy work” or taking only the intentional action that makes a difference?
Limits
- Are you leading your business?
- How well are you managing your time, energy and boundaries?
Mindset
- What have you decided you’re capable of?
- And when did you decide that?
That last question is my favourite. Generally, the beliefs holding us back were decided years ago either by a much less experienced version of us or by someone else. And we never revisit them. Most of the time these beliefs are not based on any evidence at all, and yet we carry them around with us like they’re our truth.
If you’re an established interior designer and you want to work through all four pillars with support then you’ll love the CALM programme. Read more about it here.
