270: 4 Year-End Steps to Prepare Your Interior Design Business 

Michele Williams: Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is A Choice.

Hello and welcome to our podcast for October of 2024. This is going to be a reshowing, if you will, of our podcast that we did a couple of years ago, which is four year end steps to prepare your interior design business. I’m excited to talk to you about this and to put this back out there for you because it's the exact work that I am doing in my business right now.

One of the things that we're going to talk about in this podcast is starting off with a SWOT analysis. I know I've mentioned it many times, and for some of you it might be a new idea, but it's considering the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and perhaps trends that are happening around you or in industries similar to yours. What this allows you to do is kind of take that step back out of your business so that you can see what's happening. We also are going to talk to you about the time to set your goals, being very clear on what those goals are, setting a strategy, and then the goals behind it. I'm working on that in mine right now. The third one is we're going to talk about renewing and reviewing the energy levels that you have. You know, we only have so much energy, and so the question becomes, where is the best placement of that energy? I have grandchildren coming over the next couple of months, and I can promise you that my energy is going to start shifting, and I'm excited about that. So that means I've got to shift my energy around other places as well. And then lastly, we're going to talk to you about updating your offerings and your processes. Sometimes we think that we need to offer the same thing year after year, always in the same way and that's not the case. And so really think about what is it that you want to offer? How do you want to offer it? Who do you want to offer it to? This is some of the work that we do. Like I said, every single year. We certainly do it in our strategic planning event, which we just held in September. And I want to walk through and talk about this with you so that you have an opportunity to start doing the thing. Why do we do this in October? Well, we do it in October because when we start working through it and writing it all down, we need time to stress test what we're going to do. We also need time to think back through it and to modify it and maybe to fine tune it a little bit. That gives us that November and December timeframe to do that. So, with all of that said, I hope you enjoy the rerun of this podcast.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is A Choice.

Okay, so the podcast today is, like I've mentioned, a series to assist us in planning for the new year in our business. On the last podcast at the beginning of this month, we focused on the pre-planning process. So, make sure that you go back and listen to that if you haven't. We looked at things like creating space to do a company review, beginning with gratitude, reviewing your time and offerings and goals, and then identifying what a balanced life would really look like for you. Now we're going to focus on the next steps to doing a full review of your business and making the plan for the next year. If you have never done year-end planning, no worries. This is a year to begin. We can start right now.

The first thing that I would have you do, assuming that you've done all the pre-planning work, is start with a SWOT analysis. Some of you may be saying, what is a SWOT analysis? SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and trends. And we use this analysis to dissect our business to determine what's working, what's a strength, maybe what's not working and can be a weakness, and then to look for opportunities, threats, and trends that are happening. Recently, in my Designers Inner Circle workshop, I led my clients in the process of doing a SWOT analysis in a multitude of ways. Historically, I've normally seen it where people just did a SWOT analysis for the whole company, and we certainly did that. But I love to be able to pick up the framework and overlay it into all types of areas, including our personal lives. So, here's what we did.

First, we did a SWOT for our company. We thought of the company as a whole,  and we wrote down all of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Then what are the trends that we're seeing overall in our industry? Then we went back and we kind of took it from a different angle, and we thought, let's just do a SWOT for the owners. Maybe you're a single owner. Maybe there are multiples. Let's do a SWOT for the owners. What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and trends look like for us? Then we stood back and did it again for all of our employees or our team members, our vendors, our subcontractors. Taking an in depth look like this at each element in our business really provides us with information and helps shine a spotlight in an area we haven't looked at before. One of the members told me, she's like, I've never really seen my business this way. I've always tried to do a SWOT for the whole company, and it just felt overwhelming. But when I started breaking it down and looking at each individual area of my company, I started to see things more clearly. You can even do it like looking at the finances of your company. What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? I've done it looking at my marketing plan. What are my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? And so just stopping to even ask yourself those questions, really will help you in goal setting, which is what we're going to look at next.

Okay, assuming you've done your SWOT analysis, the next thing that I like to do is start looking to set goals. I personally am a fan of the book The Twelve Week Year by Brian Moran. And in this book, he describes breaking down each quarter into a mini twelve week year. And why does he do that? Because he knows, just like all of us, we do the procrastination thing. We wait until the very last minute to accomplish our goals. And there's no way that we can get some of these really big, hairy goals done in November for the end of the year. So, by creating quarterly goals which are more streamlined and individually focused, we have the ability to get four really big goals completed in a year with attention placed on each one. I use my SWOT analysis to take my list of goals that might come out of it and rank them and some of them, you're going to put them together. We're not talking about a list of 72 goals, we're really talking about what are the three or four things, and I would say, the bigger items that can really move your business forward in the next year. Then I start looking at what it will take to get that done. What are my human resource needs? What is the time needs, what are the money needs? And I start to put them in priority order each quarter. My main company focus is about one goal. So that means all additional time, money and resources goes to solving it. Using this process allows you to free up your mind and your resources from being focused on the other goals on your list. Most of us learned a long time ago that multitasking really isn't helping us get where we want to go much faster. By really dialing in on what's most important to my company, I can give it my best and actually get more done than when I used to be juggling a goal list of twelve things for the whole year. I just felt scattered and felt like I was never getting anything done, done well, or either done completely. So really, I'm digging in and looking at it through the twelve week year process has been life changing. I've probably done this maybe the last three or four years. And I really, really like it. So, try it. Choose one big goal each quarter. Make it SMART. Which means specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Detail it out. Know what it's going to take to get it done. And then the biggest part of it is just commit to doing it. Commit to keeping it at the top of the list and not letting other ideas or goals cause you to go on a rabbit trail and, you know, spend precious money and time and resources on the wrong thing.

Next is a review of your energy. What do I mean by that? Here's what I'm saying. There are people and tasks and things that we need to do that drain us of energy, and some that excite us and give us more energy. Maybe you've heard of it when we talk about it in terms of the introvert and the extrovert, some people are energized by people, some people are drained by other people. But what I really like is really trying to determine what excites me and energizes me in the workplace, because my goal is to focus on bringing more of that into my life. There could be work that energizes and excites me. Books or knowledge, opportunities and people. And so, knowing what makes me feel alive and creative helps me recognize it because I've identified it. And then I see it and can recognize it more quickly when I'm out about. Conversely, being aware of my energy being depleted helps me say no to the things and the people and the opportunities that are not in my best interest. Maybe it doesn't align with my values or my goals or my why, or maybe it's just something about their personality or something about the delivery method of a product or service that just feels overwhelming and draining. We all know it and we can recognize it, but we don't always give it voice. We kind of push it down and just power through. The more that we learn to listen and to hear ourselves, the better off we're going to be. I've shared it before, but a great book that I read in 2019 really gave me the freedom to see this and experience this letting go in a different way. It's called Who's in Your Room by Misner, Emory and Sapio. And in the book, we're offered the idea that everything that comes into our mind never really leaves. It's like it's a steel trap. So, they talk about your mind as being a room and that every single person who's ever entered that room can never leave. One of the quotes that caught my attention was this, “the quality of your life depends upon who is in your room”. Would you have made different choices had you known that anybody who came into your room was going to be in it forever? This is exactly why we can still remember the third grade taunts from, you know, the person down the hall who called us names or did whatever, it's in our minds. Working through this book and really thinking about more than just people because it's mostly written about who is in your room as a person, I started using the same framework again and going back and looking at my services and my offerings to my clients, along with my ideal clients. I tried to look at what was everything that I was saying yes to and if it didn't move me forward, which is what the book calls an engine, and instead it held me back, known as an anchor, and I started learning to say no as much as I could. I started changing things. I just am in my office way too much. I'm in my business way too much for me, to be creating areas that are draining to me and so are you. So, as I mentioned in prior podcasts, there may have been clients, products and services, as well as vendors in my past that were engines at the time, but now have become anchors. So, I've chosen to do a bless and release with those and moved on and you can do that, too. I will tell you, this is a really deep exercise, but very empowering. So go back and think about what energizes you and what drains you.

Lastly, I would say update all of your offerings and processes. So based on what you have just figured out and analyzed and had brought to your attention through the SWOT analysis, setting your goals and doing the energy exercise, what I want you to do is think about all of that and go back and update your offerings and processes. What are you doing? What are you no longer doing? What are the processes that need to shift or change. Perhaps you want to change a vendor line or bring on something entirely new. Maybe you no longer want to charge by the hour or do one room projects. Or maybe you hate making cornice boards and you just learn to say no more. It doesn't matter what it is. Make sure that the majority, if not all, of your products and services and processes are done in a way that moves your company forward with energy instead of draining it, because that's miserable. So, it's not enough to do all this work and recognize it. We have to go as far as actually making the updates or taking it off the offering list, which means going all the way back and making sure that you change your website, you change your welcome packet, you change all the collateral that says you used to offer it if you're not going to do it. Create the plan for the business that you want. Okay, that's enough for this one, because this is really a lot of work.

Just doing these four things can take you a good, I don't know, day, or if not more, based on how you have to comb through and think through information. In our next podcast, we're going to be doing our final review. We're going to look at HR, finances, and marketing. So, keep going with me as we work every day to create the business we desire. If you want to do this in community and to have access to me while working through it, please reach out and let's talk. You can find out more at my website, scarletthreadconsulting.com, on the Work with Me page. You can also sign up for a discovery call, and I'm happy to chat with you. I would love to help you be intentional about your business because profit doesn't happen by accident.

Thank you so much for listening to this again. You know, I could just about rerun this podcast every single year because the information is always relevant. When I get stuck in anything, whether it is a part of my company, whether it's the offerings that I have, whether it is something I want to go do, or marketing or whatever, we stop and do a SWOT analysis. What's working, what's not working, what can we change? How can we see this differently? What is our competition doing? What's happening in the industry or in the world at large? It just gives us a broader view of what we're doing in our business here at Scarlet Thread Consulting.

One of the things that we love to do is to work with busy professionals who want to build their businesses and who really want to do business well and so our goal is to step in and help you craft that very clear strategic plan and then to craft a very clear financial plan that aligns with that so that everything in your business is working in the same direction. If you need help with that, we would love for you to check out the Work with Me page, on our website at scarletthreadconsulting.com. Hop in there and sign up, I think we might have some 15-minutes slots. Let's just talk and see what we can do to help you do that. We also offer our CFO2GO offering which allows us to come in, help you get the financials created, or make sure that they are all set up in a way that's going to support you with financial goals and KPI's, and then how to monitor to that. And then lastly, we have Metrique Solutions, which is a financial dashboard that allows you to see quickly what's happening in your company. As we get ready to move into 2025, I want to offer you an opportunity to do all three. We have a few slots open for 2025 where we're taking on just a few clients, where we are going to help you not only set up your strategy, set up your financials, and monitor to them, but we're going to provide some of that CFO oversight for you as well. If you are interested in talking about one of those few slots, again, jump into our Work with Me page and check it out. Otherwise, we would love to have you continue listening to the podcast and share it with a friend. I'm sure there's somebody out there that needs to hear exactly what we're talking about today. Choose to be profitable in all that you do, because profit doesn't happen by accident.

Profit is A Choice. Is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening and stay creative and business minded.