3 Strategies to Fit Your Interior Design Firm into Your Life

If you are like me, your task list grows daily from either new clients, new ideas, or work that has piled up over time. Welcome to business ownership. Much like homeownership, we are never really done. 

While I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I have found some success in scheduling and managing my time to allow me to live the life I want while running the business I desire. This is always a work in progress, but I thought I would share how I do this. You will be able to hear this theme in many of my podcast episodes where my guests talk about living the life they want. What I find interesting, though, is that we start our business to live the life that we desire, but quickly, we find that we are always working and not living. So how do we keep the tension between these two areas in a safe place? I know, like many of you, I LOVE what I do. And often it does not feel like work to me – it feels like creativity or expression. I love assisting and helping people and my creative mind never turns off. If I am not careful, I can work and create until I am exhausted. I know because I have done this many times over my 21 years of business ownership. All while working for the greater good of my clients and at the expense of my sanity and health.

Here are the 3 strategies that have helped me gain greater control of my life and business and can help you scale your interior design business as well.

1.     Block off all personal time on my calendar as soon as I know it.

At the beginning of each year, I go to my work calendar (or a personal Google calendar that is linked to my work calendar), and I mark off every day I want to take off – for any reason. In 2021 I took off time for my son’s wedding. This meant time to travel for the wedding showers, time to host one, time before the wedding for preparation and time for rest. I also added in time off for my birthday, anniversary, summer vacation as well as doctor’s appointments I knew about or anything else. Then, as an ongoing effort, I always review my monthly calendar at the beginning of each month to add in any new personal information. As soon as I know I need family or personal time – it goes on the calendar. This allows me to get my life scheduled first. By connecting my personal calendar with my work calendar in Google, I can always see on my phone or computer what I need to work around when out and about.

 2.     Identify what is important to me in my life and create space for it.

I can remember when I was working non-stop to make the holiday cutoff for my clients when I was making custom draperies. It seemed my fall holidays were non-existent. I was stressed, neglected celebrations with my family, and sometimes ignored all invites so that I could work crazy hours. I am not even kidding when I tell you that I wore a necklace with the words JOY and bracelets with the words LOVE, KINDNESS and PEACE so that I could somehow make myself feel these things. I had not created the space in my own life to have these show up as a natural byproduct. My husband asked me why I scheduled so much during the busiest season. And it happened more than just one year, I am sad to say. Eventually, I was able to identify what I wanted to do with my family, how much time and energy and focus that would take, and then to build in the ability to do these things with moderation. 

What is important in your life? Make space for those things. Is it travel, cooking, relaxing, reading a book, serving others outside of work? Whatever it is, it does not happen consistently by accident. We must plan for it. 

 3.     Set boundaries around work and life.

This leads me to the boundaries. In the prior example around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, I had very lax boundaries. I would let the window treatments and furnishings for other people take up all the time I had and not have a celebration with my own family. This was not their fault – it was mine. 

I learned to create boundaries around work and life. My life was scheduled, and then I scheduled my work. This allowed me to fit in work – not fit in my life. Make no mistake, I saved A LOT of time for work. I did not have the idea that I could make millions by working 2 hours a week. But I also did not think I could have time for family if I worked 7 days a week. There has to be a balance, and it may be different for each of us and in different seasons. 

I made a promise to my husband, if he did not go on vacation with me and my business, I would not take my business on our family vacation with the two of us. He agreed. And I held to my promise. I did not work at all on my vacation.  This separation was planned and plotted. Creating healthy boundaries around business and life have made a huge impact on my ability to be present with both.

My boys knew when I was working. They did not interrupt very often, and when they did it was important. Likewise, I learned to spend time with them without being on my phone all day or answering emails. 

Consider which boundaries you need to be able to live well and run your business well. 

While I wish I could tell you I learned these lessons early on and over-night, I did not. These strategies have been hard fought for and continue to be a fight. Now that we are empty nesters, I find that working longer hours is easier – and that is not always better. There is no one running in from the school bus to get my attention.  No one is begging for a snack or dinner on the table. It is easier to get lost in my office behind my two very large computer screens. 

I place lunch as an appointment on my calendar because my health needs to be considered as part of living a great life. Because if I don’t, it is easy to fill that time working with someone else. To manage my business calendar, I use time blocking and time chunking. The more organized I can be with my time and efforts at work, the more time I have to schedule for my life. If you have team members, encourage them to let you know all desired time off early in the year. The sooner the better and put it on a calendar. Leverage this knowledge and manage your work and projects around this calendar. 

As you focus on what is critical to end or begin your year, consider how you want to live your life these next 3 months. Do you want to be stressed out and cramming in everything – or do you want to work with ease? Be honest about the life you want and the business you want. Fit your business into your life not your life into your business.

Please check out the 7-Figure case study on my website at www.scarletthreadconsulting.com and see how we made tweaks for Lauren that paid off with huge dividends. You can do this too. Build profitable structures into your life because profit doesn’t happen by accident.