Hello and welcome to episode 155 of Design Curious Podcast.
I'm your host and mentor, Rebecca Ward.
Today on the podcast, we are talking about getting that
breakthrough in your business. Maybe you're feeling stuck and
you know that your business and you as a designer could be
better, but you're not sure how to make that happen or when, or
you're just feeling overwhelmed. Well, here's the truth.
Your biggest business breakthrough probably isn't
hiding in your inbox or your To Do List.
It's going to come when you step away from the day-to-day grind,
get around the right people and give yourself space to think
bigger. If that intrigues you, you're
going to like today's episode. And so let's get into it.
You're now listening to Design Curious, the place where you,
Creative one, are here to learn about what it really is like to
be an interior designer. And I'm your host and mentor,
Rebecca Ward. If you're worried about how to
succeed in a creative career, if you're ready to learn your next
steps to become an interior designer, and if you want the
satisfaction of doing something you love every day, you are in
the right place. Grab a coffee, a notebook and
let's dig into today's episode. So we're going to break today's
discussion into three parts. First of all, why you need to
step out of your daily routine in order to get breakthrough in
your business. Then we're going to talk about
the power of proximity, who's around you, who you surround
yourself with. And then we're going to talk
about the value of time. So let's get started on that
discussion. First, we're talking about your
environment and why you kind of need to go away in order to make
change happen. When you're in your day today,
you have a routine, and routine is great.
You want routine, You want systems, You want to keep
following what you're doing. That's the right thing.
But rarely do you make time to evaluate and see, is this the
right thing or is this the best thing that I should be doing
right now? Because you're in that system
and in that routine. Research from the University of
Utah found that spending just four days away from your usual
environment, and especially without digital interruptions,
can boost your creativity by 50%.
That's crazy. So if you haven't taken a
vacation in a while, I am giving you permission right now to book
that four days away if you can, even if it's just going over to
the next town, going over to the beach or some destination not
too far away just to get you out of your usual environment.
New environments trigger your brain's default mode network,
which supports problem solving and innovation.
For me, travel is one of the things that my heart loves.
So in my full focus planner, I use the Wellness version of it
now and there is a heart check couple of pages at the beginning
that you do every quarter to see what is motivating you in your
life and what makes you happy. Where do you find the most joy?
And one of those things I consistently put in there is
travel, because I love to be in new environments, not for
extended periods of time, but for short periods of time up to
a week or maybe 2, just to travel.
I love seeing new architecture and studying what other
designers and architects are doing in other towns and cities.
I love the inspiration that nature provides too.
I always come back feeling inspired, feeling like my
creative juices are ready to go and very motivated to do the
best I can in my business and to improve it and make it better.
And also my craft. I want to be a better designer.
I've got ideas and most of the time with designers and with
creativity, you're not always inventing something that's new.
Your creativity is kind of like maybe baking or cooking.
You're taking all these parts and putting it together maybe in
a new way. And that, that's what I also
love and get inspired by food in really fine restaurants, is
because of the way they plate it, the way they put it together
or deconstruct something. They're taking all the same
ingredients that you might have at home, but presenting it to
you in such a unique way. And that's what you do with
design. Every designer has access to a
lot of the same materials, the same fabrics, the same
furnishings, but not everybody puts it together in the same
way. And so that's where your
creativity can get sparked. You can jump off of someone
else's inspiration, someone else's design.
And you say, you know, I love what they did here, but I would
love to change it and make this be a more floral pattern instead
of geometrics. And but what if we use the same
colors or we use black and white?
And so use it as a jumping off point to make something that is
your own and unique for your client, for your design.
And you might not get that inspiration if you're just stuck
in your office, in your Home Office, at your desk, on your
computer and in front of a screen all the time.
There's something about being immersed in that environment
that makes a change. And we've also seen the studies
about in Asia where doctors will prescribe people to go out into
nature. It's called a forest walk or a
forest bathing I believe. And they are healed.
They take in the beauty of the nature and it really does
something to your body. And so it's important that you
get out of your environment. You get into nature first of
all, but then you go to also places that are going to inspire
you, whether that's man made architecture or natural
architecture, maybe the Arches or some Grand Canyon or
something that nature has done that's really inspiring.
It doesn't always have to be a big trip like that.
You could just go to your local lake or your local mountain and
just take a day and spend some time with yourself and get
inspired. And that's also one of the
points of I had mentioned before, decided to start taking
personal retreat days quarterly. And that's part of The thing is
that I go somewhere else during the day, get out of my
environment so I can focus a little better, so I can get
inspired, have perspective. And it's really important to
change your environment to do that.
We all are very much aware as designers how much our
environment affects us. You know the expression like
physician, heal thyself. Well, designer, you need to heal
thyself. You have to also listen to what
you're preaching and think about your environment.
And if you're stuck in the day today, if you're not feeling
inspired, then you need to get out of there, do something new
and not stay at your desk. Your desk is designed for
execution, not imagination. If you want vision, you need to
be in a setting that sparks it. And the best part is, it's not
just about where you are, but it's also about who you are
with. So that brings us to the next
part, the power of proximity and who is around you.
Jim Rohn is famous for saying you're the average of the five
people you spend the most time with.
Who are your top five people? You could pull up your phone,
maybe they're your favorites in your text contacts, the people
that you're talking to the most, but who are you surrounding
yourself day-to-day with? What is their mindset?
Are they as motivate? Are they business owners?
Are they designers? Are they inspiring to you?
Take a moment to think about that because if they are not
going places in life and you want to go places, you might
need to change who you're spending most of your time with.
Not saying you can't be friends with them, but I'm just saying
spend more time with the people you want to be like.
Harvard Business Review found that people in high performing
peer groups improved their results by 15 to 20% simply by
being exposed to better ideas and higher standards.
And this is the reason why I am part of a mastermind group of
designers. We get together in person now
every 12 months and some destination around the world.
And every six months we'll have a three day summit essentially
to review each other's financials, go over our business
goals and exchange ideas. And then we also meet monthly to
pinpoint topics that we might need help with currently in our
businesses or for some education to learn.
And this group has influenced so much the way that I have run my
business in the last five years since we started meeting.
The ideas I've gotten from them have been infused into the way
that I run my business now and it's only improved for that.
And I love when we get together. I'm always pushed to do better,
pushed to be better. Having a support group around
you of like minded individuals who are supporting and
encouraging you is exactly what you need to go through.
Owning a business, running a business, being the best
designer you can be. You can't do this alone.
No man's an island. Proximity creates access to
knowledge, encouragement and opportunities.
I don't love networking per SE. We talked about before being an
introvert, like going to networking events locally, like
for my Chamber of Commerce, of which I am a member.
I always had that feeling before I go, I kind of want to just
stay home or I just want to stay at the office and not actually
go and talk to a bunch of people I don't know and businesses that
might not be of any benefit. However, after I go, I'm always
so grateful because I love making connections.
I am very much a connector as well and I love finding out how
I can connect someone with another person that might have
nothing to do with me, but I'm meeting the need that they have
because I know someone that they might need to know.
That might happen for you. The more you're out there
networking with designers, contractors, architects or
people outside of your industry, the more you will have
connections and the more you will have opportunity.
If I didn't have my networking events, I wouldn't have known
when I was starting out my business that I needed a certain
amount of insurance. Like I had to set up my books a
certain way. I talked about this in the
mindset shift series That is really important to have those
people around me so that I could learn and be like, oh, I'm
actually not doing this right. So I knew the right person to
ask. And even if that person wasn't
my long term solution, like I might have switched insurance
agents or switched banks, Oregon, switched bookkeepers,
that got me started in the right direction of what to look for.
Sometimes people are in your life for a season to mutually be
beneficial to each other and then you can move on.
So if you get overwhelmed at the thought of having to have like
hundreds of new friends, that's not what I'm saying here.
I'm saying surround yourself with people who are like mine.
So reach out to your local design groups.
Think about joining a mastermind, Go to retreats or
even conferences. The furniture markets usually
will have learnings and places where you can meet and greet
people. I'm going to say right now that
if you're in the Sacramento area, I'm talking about this
because I'm coming up with a solution for you.
We have a retreat coming up in November, 13th and 14th, and I
want you to be there because you need this.
You need to change your environment.
First of all, even though we're keeping it in the Sacramento
area. But you're going to get out of
your office and you're going to go to a new place and you're
going to surround yourself with designers and with people who
are maybe farther ahead of you in systems or mindset who can
share ideas with you. That is going to push you to
breakthrough to get to that next level.
If you're not satisfied with the way it is running right now,
then this retreat is going to push you to the next level.
I cannot express how important it is to be surrounded by the
people that you want to be like and then also getting out of
your usual routine in order to make that happen.
OK. So if you want to reach a higher
level business, you need to be in the same room, the room where
it happens as the people already operating there having candid
open conversations about what is actually working.
Now you might be saying your hesitation might be like I can't
take two days out of my work week to go to this retreat
specifically that I'm planning for you or any retreat or any
mastermind group. I told you I take 3 days every
six months to meet with my group.
When we meet in person, it's I'm usually gone for a week, a week
and a half because I might be going Australia or Boston or
someplace like that. Next we're going to Canada and I
want to make sure I have enough time to visit the place that I'm
traveling to as well. So I'm taking time off of my
business. How am I doing that?
Because I have first of all valued that the time away, I put
a lot of value on that time away, put a lot of value on
being with the people that are going to make the change happen
that I want to see. But also I understand that I
don't always have to be working in my business for 50-60 hours a
week. I don't even work in my business
40 hours a week right now. It's exactly the way I designed.
If we go back to the first episode in the Mindset Shift
series, I talked about how I design a career that supports
the life that I want to live. Research shows that productivity
drops sharply after 50-5 hours a week, meaning that more work or
working more hours doesn't equal more output.
It drastically declines after a certain amount of time.
Got to cut yourself off first of all, because you're doing not as
good work, you're not as creative, but then you're only
working in your business and you're not working on your
business. But you've heard this expression
so many times. All the coaches out there right
now are going to say this to you.
You got to work on your business and not just in your business.
The most profitable design firms aren't necessarily working more
hours. They've intentionally built
pricing processes, boundaries to deliver high value design in
less time. I know it sounds crazy, but it's
possible. I didn't think it was possible
for the longest amount of time. I hassled a lot.
But now I find that the way that my pricing is that we capture
all of our time when we're doing our hourly time as well.
That was a big part of it, creating boundaries, the time of
day that I'm meeting with people, and that just made it so
much better. My profitability went up and my
work hours went down. So it is possible.
I'm here to tell you that it is. So you can dream for it and it
can happen, but you have to make time to work on your business to
make it happen, which is what I eventually learned that I had to
do. For the longest time, I didn't
seek out coaching. I didn't go to conferences.
But once I started doing that, the more I realized I need that
and I make time for professional development, quite a lot of it
in my work near. And it's also really important
to pause to review your numbers, review what your client mixes,
the type of projects you're working on, your service
structure, and how to create that business that supports your
life like we talked about in the Mindset Shift series.
So I highly encourage you to take these words to heart and
think about signing up for the Thrive Retreat in November with
me and Kathy Tonks and Sierra Collins.
I'm going to have both of those ladies on the podcast in a few
weeks to talk about in more detail this retreat.
Even if you're not in the Sacramento area and you want to
travel, you want to take those four days that I talked about to
maximize your creativity by 50%, then I'd say it's definitely
worth it. You can find more information
about the retreat in the show notes.
I'll leave a link for you to find that, but it is exactly
what this podcast is talking about.
It's the right environment, it's the right people, and we're
going to give you the right strategies to help make those
big shifts in your business without burning out.
Some highlights from the tree that I know we're going to go
into detail in a few weeks, but we're going to have some
breakout sessions with yours truly and the other ladies.
Talk about mindset shifts and also business practices.
We'll have Q&A. We can get your most burning
questions answered in that time. You're going to be surrounded in
a beautiful environment away from your desk by other like
minded designers who you might be able to create a support
group with. You could do a follow up group
with them, which would be wonderful.
Yeah, you're going to be away from your emails and away from
job site visits and whatever you might have going on, but that
stuff can wait. This is so important.
The workshops, the sessions on streamlining and pricing and
scaling, it's all going to come together for you.
You're going to be so inspired and you're going to jump back
into your work a new designer. OK?
So if you have been stuck in the weeds and you're ready for
clarity and connection and a plan that gives you more freedom
and income, then I encourage you to join us.
And if you can't join us, then I encourage you to reach out to me
and we can talk about if my design mentor is a good fit for
you or some other retreat or location that might, I might be
able to suggest to you just to get you going.
And as always, reach out to me if you have a different pain
point that I didn't bring up today that is maybe holding you
back from attending these things.
And breaking out of your environment and being around
people who are going to lift you up.
So I'd love to hear from you. And let's get you on the
shortcut to working less. Get you in the room where it
happens, because you know that it's not going to be happening
at your desk. So hopefully you've learned that
stepping away from your desk has a huge ROI when it's
intentional, when you're surrounded by the right people,
and that you're just going to have a boost in creativity when
you're taken out of your environment.
Designers are always on, right? Or always like thinking about
our clients or on client calls or on site visits, sourcing.
Doing admin and I know that the idea of stepping away feels
impossible. It's not.
I've done it. Lots of other designers that are
doing it too. Part of the purpose of this
podcast is to introduce you to concept and ideas that maybe you
haven't before. I like to think of it as like if
I were in my career 15 years ago and I just kind of had my head
in the sand, I was just doing whatever I would want to be
hearing all of this. And so that's why I'm telling
you this. Hopefully you've enjoyed it.
Don't forget in the show notes, we have a lot of great things
for you. And I look forward to seeing you
at the Thrive Retreat. And also next week, we'll have
another great episode for you. And until then, stay creative.
Thanks for listening. If you love this episode, please
leave a rating and a review. This helps me reach other
curious creatives like you. If you have a topic request or
would like to contact me, simply head over to my website
awardesigncom or e-mail me at podcast at awardesign com.