The Profit is a Choice Podcast

Part of the Design Podcast Network

Owning every choice in your business is not for the faint of heart. Each Monday, join Michele Williams, strategic profitability coach for the interior design industry as she interviews guests who are taking control of their business one decision at a time to increase their profits. If you are an entrepreneur who wants to make money while working in your passion, this is the podcast for you.

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245: Investing in Yourself to Build Your Business

Joining me on the podcast today is Amanda Scotto, principal designer and owner of AMA Designs and Interiors in New Jersey. Amanda is a client of mine, and she is going to be sharing her journey starting with where she began, some of her early successes and pivots that she's had in her business, and challenges that she's encountered. She is very transparent, and freely shares with us, giving us an opportunity to learn about resilience, planning, and raising our hand when we need help. It was an awesome conversation and I invite you to listen in.

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240: Where to Start With Creating Processes 

Joining me on the podcast today is Kelcee Sparks with Elite Ops. She has been with us on previous podcasts where we are answering the questions that you all have sent in and today, we're focusing on processes. We are going to answer questions on how to get started, how to organize and structure your process, where to put your processes, who will help write the processes, and even discuss the importance and the mindset behind a process. Today’s podcast has lots of good information and we thank you for joining. 

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239: Creating a Vision for Your Life and Business

With me on the podcast today is Kathy Geffen of Kathy Geffen Designs and Fine Tune Coaching. Kathy has had an amazing 25-year career in corporate America doing all types of organizational management, started a drapery workroom in 2015, and has recently launched Fine Tune Coaching. We’re going to have a great conversation about what it's like to overlap with different areas of business, what makes it so important to be connected to your goals, and to be able to organize them in a way that they can be achieved. There is really great information in this podcast, and I hope you enjoy it.

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233: How to Remove Summer Stress

Every year around this time when my kids were young, I would be thinking about how we would handle our summer plans. Which camps were they going to and when? How could I have a more relaxed schedule at work while moving projects along but also being mom? Maybe you don’t have kids, but do want a more relaxed summer schedule – no matter what, listen in to this episode originally recorded in 2019. The lessons in time management and project expectations still apply. 

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231: Q & A with Michele

Today I have with me Kelcee Sparks, who is with Elite Ops Support. She has a team of people that support designers and other industries with operational support, VA support, and she also provides operations support for me personally. She's going to ask me some questions today so that we can share a little bit more information on some of the questions that you all have been sending in and have asked. Enjoy the podcast.

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229: The Journey of Buying a Business

With us on the podcast today is Julie Murphy. Julie is the Owner of Designer Draperies of Boston, a full service to the trade workroom. She began as a home-based business in 2006. In 2014 she purchased Designer Draperies of Boston and merged the 2 businesses. She has tripled the size of her team as well as sales since transfer of ownership. She attributes her growth and continued success on 3 things: Quality, Effective Communication and Exemplary Customer Service. 

Today we will focus on her journey to make a business acquisition – the highs and the lows.  

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224: Delegating to Free Your Time

Joining me today on the podcast is Dominique Deraiche, with Designer Elite. She is a co-founder of Designer Elite, which provides Operations and Support for interior designers. Dom and I are going to have an awesome conversation on how to get help, how to determine when we're in overwhelm, and how to ask for support and delegate without dumping. Enjoy.

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223: Functional Fitness for the Health of your Body and Business

Joining us on the podcast today is Barbi Burris. Barbi is the owner of Full Well Fitness and has a signature program the Well Stretched Life. She is a Christ follower, a flight attendant, a certified fitness instructor - she does all the things. She knows what it's like to have a very busy life and to try to work in being fit at the same time. And you know, that's the life that many of us have, we're really, really busy. We need to take care of ourselves. Our conversation today is going to be centered on how we can take fitness and put it into our life in doable doses and why that's so important. Welcome to the podcast.

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217: Aligning Your Values with Your Daily Actions

Today we're going to be talking with Sandra Halling. And Sandra describes herself as a recovering corporate consultant turned anti-hustle, pro-equity, productivity coach. We're going to be discussing all about listening to ourselves, having an awareness, and then creating some opportunities to protect ourselves while we're also building our firms. And so it was just such an awesome fun conversation, but also one that helps you think deeply about caring for yourself caring for your business so that you can care for your clients. So enjoy the podcast, and I'm excited to have Sandra with us. 

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214: How to Easily Create a Strategic Plan for Your Design Firm

This week we're rerunning episode 131 of the Profit is a Choice podcast, “How to easily create a strategic plan for your design firm.” This is an awesome topic that we processed through a couple of years ago. And I will say to you, it is still relevant and it's something that we work on and focus on in Scarlet Thread Consulting all the time. So, I want to encourage you as you wrap up this year, and get ready for next, that you take the time to consider your strategic plan, what it might look like, and how you can improve upon it from moving forward.

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213: Is Your Workplace Toxic?

Do you know how to define a toxic workplace? Are you the one bringing the discord into the office or is someone else? Maybe you are looking for a job and want to know what to steer clear from. Today, we are going to talk about what makes a workplace feel yuk – and how to spot areas for improvement.

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208: How to Use Niching and Systems to Grow Your Business

Today on the podcast we have Carolyn Boldt. Carolyn is passionate about holistic health and wellness and has crafted a business that focuses on designing in these industries. There are so many good takeaways in this podcast and Carolyn really has a heart to share and teach. Listen in as she shares the journey to focus on a niche that she loved and how it has prompted a different way to scale.

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207: Developing Perseverance in Your Firm

Can we just talk about perseverance? Perseverance is defined as doing something despite the difficulty or delay in achieving success. With all the things happening in our world and industry over the last two years, I would say that most of us are living in this space right now. Listen in to today’s episode where we discuss how we can keep going, even when the road seems long ahead of us.

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201: How to Rethink Your Business

Today we are airing an episode that we launched in 2020. Many of us are seeing changes in buying patterns, budgets, and selections. While the details are different from where we were in early 2020, the rethinking our business part is the same. In this podcast we will examine how to dissect our businesses so that we can analyze them and perhaps put them back together again in a different way. Really knowing the pieces and parts, as well as what we're great at, or core competency, helps us to determine the best ways that we can show up and then serve our ideal client. Let’s focus on how to be nimble in an ever-changing world. How to grow and scale while maintaining our flexibility, which is not always easy. That will allow us to maneuver through any change. I hope you enjoy.

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196: Creating and Documenting the Procedures in your Design Firm

With me on the podcast today is Owen McNab Enaohwo. Owen is the CEO and Co-founder of SweetProcess, an easy-to-use software that enables company executives and their employees to collaborate together to quickly document and/or improve their standard operating procedures, processes, and policies. We will dig in to where to start, how to monitor and improve processes and how to engage your team in the collaboration.

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