210: 3 Ways to go from Hobbyist to Interior Design Professional

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

Welcome to the podcast. Today we're going to talk about how to go from being a hobbyist to an interior design professional, or honestly, how to move from hobbyist to professional, regardless of what your business is. We're going to look at three main areas as we do that. One is mindset, one is boundaries, and one is intentionality. So, grab some pen and paper and start thinking about where you are showing up as a hobbyist and where would you like to show up more professionally?

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.

Welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to talk about something today that you've probably heard about, maybe you've even thought about and that is where is that leap from hobbyist to professional? Maybe some of you maybe never even think of yourself as a hobbyist. You thought I didn't start as a hobbyist, but maybe, just maybe, you had some what we would call hobbyist mentalities. A hobbyist mentality is actually just that. It's thinking that it is more in line with somebody who is performing a hobby than somebody who is trying to build a business and be professional. I know all about that because I've done that. When I first started, and many of you know my story, back in, I guess 2000, it was because my doorbell rang, my neighbors wanted me to make something for them like I'd done in my own home. And so, I just kind of started and I started, as I've shared, without good pricing. I started without a strategic plan, I started without any plan. I just started. And so, what happened was I was. If you were thinking of E-Myth Revisited, I was very much the technician. I was doing, doing, doing. But as far as having good business systems around me, I didn't have that. So, I knew how to do the task, but I didn't know how to run the business.

What happened was very hobbyist ideas came into play. Also, part of what I was trying to do was figure out how I could be flexible. Like, that was my big thing back in the day. If I work from home, I can have flexibility. I don't have to have the really tight structure that I had when I was in corporate. And that's the whole reason we started our own businesses is that we don't have to have a corporate mentality. But as the pendulum swings, it went from a corporate mentality all the way over to the other side. While it started off okay for me, it later bit me and didn't allow me the space and the opportunity and the money to grow the way that I needed it to grow. What I want to talk to you about today is a mindset or activities or things that we're doing that are more hobbyists, and if we really want to become professionals and what we're doing how we can swing that pendulum back the other way. We're not talking about ultimate control and like corporate marching to somebody else's drum, but about you creating your own beat in a way that supports where you want to go. And that's really where the freedom is, because it's the freedom to make the money doing the things you love in the timeframe that you want to do it. So, the three areas that we’re going to look at today are changing your mindset, creating boundaries for your business, and being very intentional.

Let’s start with the mindset of a hobbyist or somebody who's not, maybe working as professionally as they could / should for the outcome that they desire. Now, I'll start by saying this - there's nothing wrong with having a hobbyist mentality if you are in a hobby. So, there are hobbies that I have. I love to antique, so I have very hobbyist ideas when I go and antiquing, I'm doing it for fun. I'm doing it not necessarily to make money. I mean, do I want a good deal? Yeah. But at the end of the day, I'm doing it because it brings enjoyment. I love to paint. I love to do watercolors and acrylics. Well, am I great at it? Am I selling it and trying to make that my livelihood? No. I have much more of a hobbyist mentality with that. I love to read. Am I a book editor? No. Some people think I probably could be, but I really just enjoy the act of reading. I like to work out, but I'm not a trainer. So, there are plenty of things that I do that I have very much a hobbyist mentality about, but I cannot have a hobbyist mentality around coaching. I can't have that mentality around creating software with Metrique, I certainly couldn't have it with running a drapery workroom or any type of business or school and think that it's going to come out okay. Some of the things behind a hobbyist mindset are this. You do things for the pure enjoyment of it, you have a passion for it, you just like it, you enjoy it, and you're doing it for fun. There's also this freedom to explore without the worry of the outcome. So, you're not as tied to how it has to look. I mean, it's not that you don't care, but you're not selling it, many times. And so, it's a different approach. It's an approach to figure it out, it's an approach to explore, to see what it is, to try new methods, to do new things, but to do it in a very free and open environment. You're not doing it for either money or for a steady income. Certainly you might get paid for some hobbies, for things that you do on occasion, but you're not trying to build your whole livelihood on it because if so it's becoming a job or a career, it's not going to stay a hobby for long. You are willing to learn and improve and you know, have your performance increased as you go or not and be okay with mediocrity sometimes. Sometimes the beautiful part about a hobby is you don't have to be excellent. You can just enjoy it even if it's not something that you are stellar at. Usually, it's a lower pressure setting. So, you're not on a deadline trying to get stuff done in a certain way at a certain time, or it's a deadline or a pressure point that you have created on your own, not one that somebody else is creating for you. And a lot of times you don't have employees. Most of the time I would say in a hobbyist environment, you don't have employees. You are the employee.

Now let's contrast that with the mindset of a business owner. Well, what are they thinking about? Business owners are usually prioritizing success and profitability, meaning, if they are really serious about it, they're not trying to run a business, in a way that they can just be kind of free flowing. Think of a Disney character roaming through the woods. They've got an agenda, they've got a plan, they have set outcomes for success that they want to attain. And maybe there is a dollar amount that they need to bring into the company or even bring into their home to show that they're profitable or so that they can provide for their family. Very different. Quite often you'll see businesses that have a mindset of efficiency. So how can they build processes? And they're trying to think of how can I elevate or how can I create a process that allows me to have the same outcome every time that we go into work, they have a very set vision and goals and missions and values. And here's the way we're going to do it and how we're going to do it and how we're going to achieve these goals. These are the values that we have when we're executing these tasks. They're thinking about things like resilience and perseverance. You know, how do I handle an upturn or a downturn in the market? How do I bounce back from maybe a bad client or a bad job or something that’s happened? They're thinking about longer term sustainability. They're thinking about taking risks, but they're thinking about it maybe differently than you would as a hobbyist. Their mindset is very much about mitigating risk while taking risk. So how do I mitigate unwanted risk and take very calculated risk? And then often they have employees or contractors or other people that are working with them to help them create the final product that they're looking to put out into the marketplace. So, you can see those are very different ways that they're coming at the work between more of that hobbyist mindset and a more professional mindset, because the outcomes that they want are very different. Take a minute and just ask yourself, where is what you're doing or the mindset or the thought process that you're having? Where are, maybe, aspects that align with being professional in your work and which ones are more aligned with hobbyists? And then throughout this entire podcast, the opportunity is to stop and ask yourself, is that serving you? Maybe. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. And here's the deal. You can be completely professional, and work part time. You can be completely professional and work 20 hours a week. It's just being professional in the time that you're working. So don't let the fact that you say, because I've done this and I've heard other people do it while I'm only working part time. Well, that's not a license to be a hobbyist when you want to be professional. It's just like if you went and you were a lawyer for 20 hours a week, I would expect to be treated as a professional lawyer and paid as such. And I would want the same for you, regardless of the business that you're doing.

Alright, let's look next at boundaries. What are some of the boundaries that we might have? If we have more of a hobbyist mindset or hobbyist thought process, we might say yes to other people just to make them happy at our own expense because we're not as tied to the timing of what we're doing or how we're doing it. So, it might be much easier to go, "Sure, I'll do that!" I can remember a prime example when I was running my business, but looking at it more as a hobby, not even intentionally, unintentionally, and people would call and say, can I drop my kid off for a playdate with your kid? Even if I was in the middle of working, I didn't feel like I had the right for whatever reason to say I'm working right now. I looked at my work as it is so flexible that I can move it around however I need to. So, a lot of times it was at my own expense, I would move my work around, I would say yes to keep other people happy. The other thing that happens here is without a boundary; we have not set good boundaries on pricing. And so that means that we haven't thought through what the pricing has to cover. We haven't built in profit; we're not creating our pricing structures to cover all the things that it needs to and therefore we're not making a profit. Maybe we think, I've heard this before, shockingly, people didn't believe they deserved a profit. They felt like they got paid for what they did, why would they make a profit on top of it? It's just a hobby or it's just a part time job, or I'm just dabbling, or you know, fill in the blank for a whole bunch of reasons. But the truth of the matter is if we're doing this and we're doing it as a business; we deserve to make a profit. And when we have the opposite mindset, the mindset of a professional, we're certainly going to create a boundary to make sure that we're making a profit or we're not going to engage in the work. Another thing that you may see is working outside of your process to make other people happy or to please them. When we don't have professional boundaries around the processes that we have created, where we know we can control the outcome, then that very much becomes like a hobbyist boundary, which is, "Sure, I'll give that a try or we'll do it your way, or yes, I'll use your product instead of my product." or you can bring part of what you want or whatever it is. And I can tell you I've not met anybody yet who didn't tell me that every time they changed their process, they got bitten. And so the more that you have been in business, the more you're going to recognize that when you create a process, you're creating it not just to be regimented and not just to be difficult, but because you can control the inputs and the outputs to that process which allow you to have the outcome that you desire and that you are actually selling in the sales process to your client. Another thing that can happen when we don't have good boundaries is it creates stress. Stress that we said we would get something done, but we didn't get it done or we didn't protect the time. The same way I know when I did a lot of the work to kind of really sit back and take stock of my business. Back in 2002 or 2003, I started asking questions. Where am I calling myself a business but showing up as a hobbyist? Where are my boundaries? Looking more as a hobbyist and not looking as professional as I would like. Where is what I'm doing in business, not supporting where I want to go and what I want to be? And so, start thinking about where is the stress being induced by something that you're doing or a boundary that you're not setting versus thinking that a client is taking advantage of us? Because the truth is a client can't take advantage of us unless we allow it. Another thing that can happen without good boundaries and that are more hobbyist is a poor work life balance. It is easy when we are doing something that we love and that we're passionate about, to get so tied into it that we literally just let it take up time. I know quite often I've been doing things like that and I'm like, where did the time go? I forgot to come up and cook dinner, or I forgot to, you know, do something else that was on my calendar for the day because I got lost in the joy of what I was doing. Well, when you have a business, your time is your money. And so really thinking about what you're doing and how you're doing it and not letting your work encroach on your personal life, being able to set some boundaries of separation between those is really important. And then sometimes it's easy without good boundaries to feel very taken advantage of again, to feel like other people are taking advantage of the situation when really we gave them a really long leash and people are going to take what they have access to. And so really being able to set those boundaries is what's going to save us from ourselves as well as from, you know, bad ideas or bad intentions of other people. So, let's look at some more professional boundaries. What might those be? Here are some good boundaries from a professional standpoint, saying yes and no, appropriately. Meaning we understand the strategy, the mission, the vision, all of the things that we're trying to do and create so, we say our best yes and our best no that aligns with where we're trying to go and with what we have already stated that we do really well. Another thing that happens when we create those types of boundaries is overall stress is reduced. Meaning we're not just interjecting stress all over the place in an uncontrolled manner. Work has enough stress of its own. The last thing we need to do is interject more because we have no boundaries and no control over what's happening. If we don't have boundaries around even our employees or when they come to work or when things are done or calendars or when is work due and when do we communicate back with that client? We're constantly in a state of flux and not understanding. So, the more that we are putting these boundaries of time and place or money in place or goals in place, then stress can be reduced just in general, so that we only have to deal with the stress of the moment. Our work life balance can be very improved and very healthy. One of the first things we do as we are doing our strategic planning at Scarlet Thread is we ask ourselves, what is it that we need to do in the next year? Where are we going on vacation? What are we doing for time off? Where do we need time in our life? And we go ahead and put it on the calendar and then let the business take up the other time, if not, and we load up the calendar with all of the business needs first, rarely do we have time for our life. And so being very intentional about how we do that and setting the boundaries between the two, giving ourselves some separation, is something that we do when we're trying to have a more professional view of how our time is spent. The other thing that we do is we set boundaries on our productivity and our profitability. We say this is what we need to make and if I'm not making that, I don't want to engage this is how much time I have, or these are the days and times that I'm available. I can also remember always feeling like I needed to be available at every other person's idea and whim instead of learning how to be available when I was available and managing my own workload and being very intentional with what I was doing and when I was doing it. When I learned that I could say I'm not available on Friday the same way that my dentist did, it really opened up the world to me to say, wait a minute, what is the boundaries of what I'm doing and how am I doing it? And then these also build stronger relationships because people know how to plan on what you can and cannot do. You say what you can do, and you follow through on it. And that's so much better than having no boundaries where, sometimes we can't even be responsible for the things that we promised we would do, because the boundaries are so limitless that everything's on top of us, and we realize we can't do it all.

The next place that I'd like for us to look at is intentionality. And if there is anything that I have learned about life and business, it is the more intentional we can be, not to say there aren't times that we can just kind of go with the flow, but the more that we can be intentional about who we're becoming, what we want to do, how we want to think, instead of just letting our natural selves run wild and take over, the more we actually get the desired outcomes that we want. And so, when we have more, I'm going to call it again, a hobbyist intentionality, which is a lack of intentionality or a lesser amount of intentionality, in many cases, what it does is it can invite confusion. I don't really know what I want. I don't know what the outcome is. Now, part of that is the joy of being a hobbyist, right? We're working without a desired outcome, and that's great, but that doesn't work for us when we're trying to run a business. I want to know the outcome that I desire for my clients. They want to know the outcome that is desired for them when we engage. Just like your clients want to know what the outcome is. What is going to be the final work product that's going to show up here? How do we know when we're done? And so, when we're not being very intentional with the work, with the timing, with the pricing, with all the things, it can get us confused. I'll give you another prime example. I can remember when I first started, simply because I didn't know how much it was going to cost to get a job done. So, I couldn't say to a client, this is going to cost you a thousand dollars or between $1,00 and $2,000 or whatever the amount was. I couldn't do it because I didn't know. So, what I would do is we would agree to what the outcome would look like. I would start working. By the time I went to give them the bill, I'm thinking they're going to think this is too much. I think it is not enough. But I can't give them the whole bill because I didn't tell them in advance. And so, then I'm getting into this spiral, this pricing spiral in my own mind of what I can and cannot tell them. And so, what it did was I ended up cutting down my prices, not charging for everything, not making the money that I needed to make for the work that I had done. And that was my own problem, I wasn't intentional about the process. I wasn't intentional about the pricing. I didn't have boundaries set around that. My mindset was always worried that they were going to think it was too much or not enough. And so, it just was not a recipe for success. Sometimes when we are not being intentional, we can give answers, but we don't know where they come from. So, in other words, we can adopt industry numbers or industry ideas, but we've not done the heavy lifting ourselves to understand what we're even saying or why we're saying it. And so, we're just kind of rotely saying something without that depth of understanding, so that when a customer pushes back on it, we don't have an answer for them. That starts to make us shaky and makes us feel like we don't know what we're talking about, and then I always say that's like blood in the water and the sharks start swimming. Not being intentional about what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it, all of the things can put us in a position where we get very unsure and very, have very much a lack of confidence in all of the things. It's also easy when we're being unintentional to chase shiny objects or to look for a new opportunity, even if it is not our dream. I told a group the other day, to turn off the Podcast. Now, I'm saying that while I'm sitting here, and that's not lost on me, the irony of that. But what I mean by that is listen to all of the podcasts to gather ideas, but at some point, we have to turn them off and we have to do what is right for us. We have to put some things into practice, and we have to go. Because there are so many ways to do different things in business, and the more we keep listening without creating our own action and moving forward, then we're always stuck or we're always changing and we're never being intentional about what we want. Learn to listen to yourself enough to know what you want so that you can put that into practice. Sometimes when we're not intentional, we're working, but we're not attaining. I see that over and over and over, with people that are doing what they need to do in the business, but they have no strategy, they have no vision. So, every year they're just doing more and more of the same, whether it gives them what they want or not. They just don't really know that sometimes there can be another way to do the work. The other thing is we don't know or see an end game; we don't have that vision. Again, we don't know what it is we're working towards, whether the end game is the next place on the horizon in our vision or whether it's towards the end of our career. And so really having something that we're trying to attain very clear on the vision and the goals and the tasks that need to be done help us stay connected, to our work, it fuels the passion, it fuels the excitement, because we're seeing that we are actually attaining something. Without intentionality, there can be very much a lack of focus and a lack of direction, and that lack of focus and direction then makes us kind of squirrely. It makes our vendors not know if they can trust us. It makes our employees or contractors go, I don't even think she knows what she's doing, or he's really off base. But talk to him on Monday, you'll get one answer, talk to him on Wednesday you'll get another. So, it makes us untrustworthy in many ways simply because we haven't put a stake in the ground for what we're standing for and what we're doing, which that then creates internal inconsistencies and unclear expectations for us, for our clients, for our vendors and subcontractors, and certainly for our team. We become very reactive instead of proactive. If I hear anything from business owners that call me, it's here's where I am. I want to be more proactive. I don't want to be behind the eight ball. I want to be in front of it. And so being intentional about what we do, having these mindsets that we talked about of a very professional mindset, creating good boundaries, all of those things start to move us into that very proactive stance instead of a reactive stance. We said it already, but I'll say it again, it creates an erosion of trust. If you're not being intentional, then we don't tend to stick with the same idea over and over. We can sway with the wind, and then that erodes trust, and people think that we don't know what we're doing.

Lastly, let's look at intentionality. So, what can happen when we're intentional? What might that look like? Some of it is very much creating clarity and focus. It's saying, this is who we are, what we're doing, who we serve, how we serve them, where we're going and how we're going to get there. I don't know about you, but I'd rather work with somebody who knows that than somebody who says every day we're going to come in and try something new. It's that whole Jello to the wall thing and not knowing what sticks. That might be fun for a couple of days or a season, or trying something, but on the daily, repetitively, over and over again. Not knowing what you're doing or how you're doing it or constantly revising and changing a process just for the sake of revising it and changing it. That gets old really fast. And you never feel that sense of accomplishment. Having a very intentional, clear focus of what you're doing really creates grounding, it creates trust, it creates an environment where people can get behind it and kind of push that boulder uphill with you because they all know that they're pushing in the same direction. That allows your actions to become very purposeful, meaning you're not doing something just to take up the time. What you're doing now has a reason, and that reason is supported by the work. Your time starts to become managed effectively because you know what's most important. Therefore, you might be managing to a calendar or managing to milestones, and you know how to spend your time. And so, then we don't have as much wasted time or when we have downtime, which is different than wasted time, we can literally spend it doing down things, doing things that allow us to rejuvenate or to rest or to refresh our minds and bodies and spirits versus doing a bunch of crazy stuff all over the place, and then when we have downtime, we're just frenetically filling it with something else. When we are intentional, it allows us to make better decisions. We can make decisions based on our values, based on our vision. Is this getting me closer? How have I said I want my clients to feel? How do I make decisions that align with that? So very much aligned decision making, which makes you feel more confident in those. For many of them you have empirical data as well as that gut feeling, and then you don't second guess yourself as much. You start to attain goals when you think and work intentionally because the goals were set with something in mind. They were set as part of an overall strategy to reach an overall vision. And so, when we're doing that, we see the connections, we've connected those dots. We feel like the sum is working towards the whole. We feel like small movements, those micro movements are getting us somewhere versus spinning our wheels. And it's very different sense of purpose that we're getting from that work. It allows for sustainable growth. Meaning we're not just here one day and gone the next. We are building something that is sustainable. Sustainability shows up because we have sustainable processes, we have sustainable team dynamics, and we have sustainable profitability. All of those things are built to allow us to be here again when conditions shift or as time goes on, they become very value driven. So now we know what we're trying to do and put out into the world. And we know how we want to do it, how we want to show up, how we want to be seen, how we want to be thought of. So, it's not, well, they value this on Monday and this on Wednesday. These are the values that the company has all the time. And all that they do leads to that same thing. And then lastly, your customer satisfaction increases because your clients know what to expect. They know what they're getting, they know what it's going to cost, they know how the process is going to work. You know how it's going to work. So, you have this meeting of the minds in the sales cycle that starts at the very beginning and that culminates with a completed project. All of that makes for a much better outcome for you and for them.

As you can see, being professional in our work and in our business is more than just the things that we do. A lot of it, I would say 99.9% of it starts with how we think about ourselves and how we think about our business, how we put boundaries in place and how we work and plan with intentionality. I invite you to take a few minutes, take 30 minutes and sit down and just write down where activity is happening in your business. Whether it's your mindset, a boundary that is being pushed upon or a lack of intentionality that is not supporting where you want to go and where you want to grow in your business and then start putting some plans and places to address those. Just doing those small things is going to give you such a renewed sense of enjoyment in your business. Of joy, of excitement, of passion and all those good parts of the hobby as a hobbyist. We want to bring the good of that over, but we want to create an opportunity to sustain it. And if we don't put those professional ideas into place then there is no way that the passion can be sustained if we are not meeting customer expectations, we’re not doing things the same way all the time so we can’t promise what the outcome is, we’re not making money at it, and the passion is going to go away very quickly. You're not going to enjoy it and you're going to think it’s about losing the passion for the work when it’s really a loss of passion for the process and the mindsets and the boundary setting that is protecting the passion for the work. I just invite you to do some of that. It was eye opening for me to do initially and I constantly am thinking about it and doing it and tweaking for myself and for my clients, and I would love for you to take the opportunity to do that for yourself as you're doing that work. If you say hey, I'd really like some help looking at this or going through it, please check out our offers at scarletthreadconsulting.com. You can go to the ‘Work with Me’ page. We offer strategy sessions; we offer CFO2GO. If you're looking at it in the financials or what you need some boundaries around. If you're just looking at holistically, how do I create a plan for my business that's taking me where I want to go? Reach out for a discovery call and let's talk. I have multiple programs and plans. I'm sure one of them will fit you and we can see what we can do to support you as you become very intentional with a growth forward mindset, and boundaries that support you and where you want to go. Remember, choose to be profitable because profit doesn't happen by accident. Profit is a Choice. Is proud to be part of the designtwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening and stay creative and business minded.