150. Build Momentum through Strong Decisions (CEO Summer School)
What if the key to moving your business forward isn’t having all the answers, but making the right decisions and committing to them? In this episode, we wrap up the CEO Summer School series by exploring why strong decisions are the wheels that drive your business. Every choice you make, from your fees and services to how you spend your time, shapes the trajectory of your business.
I break down what makes a decision strong versus weak, why commitment matters more than certainty, and how to stop straddling two mountains with one foot on each. You'll learn how to make choices that create momentum, use your decisions as a tool for learning and growth, and develop the self-leadership that allows you to steer your business toward your vision.
We also cover how strong decisions aren’t permanent—they’re opportunities for evaluation and adjustment. You’ll discover how to strategically redecide when needed, trust yourself even without evidence of future success, and ensure your decisions reflect your values and the version of yourself you want to show up as in your business.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
Why strong decisions create momentum while weak decisions keep you stuck.
How committed choices develop self-leadership and compound confidence over time.
The difference between redeciding strategically and being wishy-washy.
Key questions to ask to make sure your decisions align with your vision and values.
How self-trust allows you to act without needing certainty.
Using decisions as a source of data to inform future growth.
Why it’s essential to love your reasons before committing to a decision.
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140. Create Your Vision and Pursue it Boldly (CEO Summer School)
145. Stop Being So Hard on Yourself: The Power of Self-Compassion
148. Are You Solving the Right Business Problems? (CEO Summer School)
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you're listening to episode 150. In this one, we're rounding out the truths of the What I Know For Sure CEO Summer School series, and it's time to talk about decisions you make and the actions that unfold as you build the thriving business you're here to create.
In this episode, I'm talking about how you consistently move forward, get out of stuck points, and align your growth with next steps that are true to your vision, your values, and who you're becoming as a designer CEO. Let's dive in.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. It's wonderful to be here with you, and I have to say it was pretty wonderful to say episode 150. I can hardly believe we're here. A lot of you have been here since the very beginning, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming along for this ride with me. And for those of you who are newer, welcome, welcome.
It's been a lot of episodes at this point, and I want to just take a moment and celebrate that and celebrate you for tuning in and doing the work with me and learning and expanding. And if you have found what I'm sharing here valuable, I would be so appreciative if you'd take a moment to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
One of the things that I've been focused on in my own back end is helping this show get out to more designers. I want this to be widely listened to so that it can impact as many people as possible. And that podcast algorithm really does work. So, if you could take a minute, rate and review, tell me what you love about the show, why another designer should listen, that would be amazing. And you can consider that some good karma you're putting out into the world by helping somebody else find what they might need.
As we transition into today's episode, this is going to be the last truth I share in the What I Know For Sure CEO Summer School series. I've really loved creating this for you. It's been an interesting experience revisiting this series, but from a completely different lens. And of course, there's been other truths that I would love to share, but it is time to wrap up. And the ones that I've shared so far really have been the ones I've chosen to focus on, and I hope that they've made a great impact on you over these last few months.
Today I want to come back to a topic that I've certainly talked about on the podcast before, but it's from a new angle, and I want to present it in a different way. And that topic is decision-making.
When I was thinking about what is this truth, because I often think about how decisions are the backbone of any business. It's the backbone of any life well lived. It is how you move forward. It's how you get out of stock points. It's how you overcome challenges. And as I was thinking through, how will I share this as a what I know for sure truth, this is what came to me.
It is that strong decisions are the wheels of your business. Strong decisions are the wheels of your business. I'm going to talk you through that wording that came to me, but I want to give you a little context to why this is the one I wanted to wrap up with.
And that's because every truth that I've shared and, as I said, those elements that really make up your version of success, it's all rooted in empowering yourself to make decisions that are best for you as the person running this business, your team, if you have one, and the goals that you have from a holistic perspective.
Everything that you have in your business today is the result of a decision and a decision you've acted upon. The way that you structure and offer services, your design fees, what you do every single day, what type of marketing you engage in, what you share about your company, and how you work with others and on the platforms you use. It is what relationships you lean into and what relationships you choose to prune. All of these are decisions and decisions are actions. They are what you build your business on, and it's what you do day in and day out as a designer CEO.
If you didn't make decisions that you acted upon, you would not have a business, and you would have no reason to listen to this podcast. I think this is so clear when you look at you being a designer and working with clients. Your clients would not have a project if you didn't make decisions. And so it's the same thing in your business. You wouldn't have what you have today if you didn't make decisions and act on those.
And that is why decision-making is one of the most, if not the most, important skill sets you can develop as a designer CEO. And I want to call out making decisions is an actual skill set. It is something that you learn to do better and better and refine your own process for how you make decisions and how you act on those decisions, and then how you respond to whatever results occur because of the actions you've taken.
I went to Google and I Googled what is the definition of a skill. And Merriam Webster said that it's the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance. Knowledge can certainly be experience or data you have to draw upon from your years in business or years of past experience, and it's also knowledge of yourself. This is the piece I'm adding. The dictionary did not add this in, but I'm going to add it in because you have to know yourself to know what works best for you and take action accordingly.
The other thing that's important to see here is that the more you make decisions and the more you adapt to the outcomes that they create, and the better you get at decision making that pulls from your experience of what's happened out in your business and in the world and your experience of yourself.
When I say that strong decisions are the wheels, I want to break this down into two pieces. The first being, what do I mean by a strong decision? To me, personally, strong has a feeling of commitment, and that feels really grounded and solid and steady for me. It sounds like this is what I'm doing and this is what I'm not doing, or I'm headed this way, I'm not going that way. I'm opening this door, I'm closing this door.
And I love the idea of a door, too, because when you make a decision, you really have to make a choice. That's why a lot of people put off making decisions because they don't want to close one door. And of course, we can always reopen doors. We could leave it a crack open, but I think it's good to say this is what I'm doing and commit to it with a strong decision. Of course, you can always make a choice without commitment, but then you're waffling. You're going in circles. You're revisiting the decision over and over again, questioning if it was the right one. And so you're using energy but not actually getting anywhere.
When I think of what is the opposite of strong, it's weak. So, you could make a weak decision, one where it's wobbly and you're not so sure and you're not going to be committed to it and spend a lot of time trying to balance yourself in that instability, or you could make a strong decision and feel that grounded energy that I was describing.
These can be bigger decisions, like your fee structure, maybe where you're continually tweaking the way that you bill out your time, or set your fees without giving yourself a chance to see what comes from executing that plan. But even if you picture what it's like to start your day without a clear plan, meaning without clear decisions, you do not get nearly as much done as you would if you said to yourself, this is the most important thing, or these are the three top things that I'm going to do, I'm going to do them in approximately this order. If I have a snafu, I know what's going to get shelved or rearranged and think through what the day is going to look like.
When you go into it with a weak set of decisions or no decisions at all, you end up getting much less done, and you feel exhausted by the time you wrap up. The other thing that happens in the absence of a strong decision is you start to experience this internal divide, and it takes a lot of you and your mental bandwidth and your energy to manage that disconnect.
At some point last year, I can't remember exactly what I was working on deciding, but what I noticed was I was experienced something like what I was just describing to you. And the image that came to me was me standing on two mountains. And I had one foot on one mountain and another foot on another mountain, and I was straddling that landscape. And it was like one foot was planted in one decision, and one foot was planted in a different decision. You know, it was like, am I here or am I there? And I wasn't getting to enjoy either place that I had rooted my foot.
So it's like hopping over onto one mountain. You get to feel stable and secure for however long you want to stay there. And one of the things even that I think about with this is a lot of times we think about decisions as like I want to make the right decision or this feels like the best decision, this feels like the worst, or good or a bad, right? We put these binary labels on it.
But often in our business, we're talking about two good decisions, two great decisions. And even when we have multiple options that we'd like to pursue or that could work out beautifully for us, we spend so much of our time worried about what could have been or what could be, instead of just making the most of the decision that you do make.
There is that internal straddling taking place when it's not even like you're feeling torn between a good and a bad choice, but it's just like, hey, we're in a great position and we've got multiple options that we are attracted to and going all in on one of them and enjoying that fully and making the most of it. And so this is why this strong piece of this truth is so important. It's about making the most of the decisions you make to create momentum and keep you going, and it's also about the experience of making those decisions and living in whatever unfolds from it, and being able to be present and enjoy what is happening.
And of course, you've always got the time to redecide, and I'll talk about that later, but we don't want to start with indecision in making decisions, right? We can make a decision, and it can have that flavor of the week or the wobbliness, and we don't want to be there. And so that is why strong is essential.
Now I want to talk about the wheels piece. Why are strong decisions the wheels that drive you towards success? This imagery, which a lot of times when I'm thinking through concepts or even just working with my clients, images often come to me just like that mountain one that I shared. But when I was considering how I wanted to phrase this truth, what came to mind was a lacrosse example. My son, he's going to be twelve this fall. He's gotten really into lacrosse in the last few years. And that means I'm having to learn what all of these things are that parents yell from the sidelines.
And one of these things is someone will get the ball and they'll kind of break away on the field and be running. And the parents will start yelling “Wheels, wheels”. And I'm like, why are they yelling wheels? I just, I don't understand this. Finally, it clicked because I try and ask some, but I don't want to pepper everyone with too many questions, and they're like, oh my gosh. I need a vocabulary list for the lacrosse sidelines. That's a tangent. But what wheels means is that it's like time to turn it on, you go. And that is what it means when you make a committed decision. It is go time. And I'm not talking about reckless, uninformed decision-making.
No, not at all. You can absolutely pause, you can tune into yourself, you can allow yourself space. But then, when it's time to move, you move. Even if you think about this lacrosse example, when my son has the ball and he's doing one of those breakaways, he's not just running willy-nilly across the field. No, he's deciding where he's going. He's looking at where other people are, and he is thinking through what is the best path for me? What's the most direct path, and I'm going to take that. And that's the exact same thing in your own decision-making process.
As you develop this skill, how quickly can you get yourself to a decision, get yourself on board so that you're committed? And then how committed can you be to that decision, especially as you're in the early stages and you don't have a lot of evidence that it's necessarily the right way to go. That can be a moment when you feel really wobbly, and you have to come back to that feeling of being committed and being strong in your process. It's that combination of efficiency and determination to follow that decision. That's really what produces results that you can evaluate and leverage for the next set of decisions. Because all decisions are, they're data.
In episode 148, we talked about making sure you're solving the right problem. And part of identifying what's at the root that you need to address is having data to call on, whether that is actual hard numbers or experiential pieces that you've been taking note of and observing what's been happening in the business.
Without decisions, you don't get any of those learnings, and the learnings is what helps you evolve into that next stage of growth that you're looking for. You're always going to know more after taking some sort of action from a firmly rooted place for a period of time than if you stay put in a phase of business that really you want to outgrow or a challenge you want to overcome. Thinking your way through it only will take you so far. Absolutely give thought to what you do or don't do and how you proceed, and we can't think our way to a result.
In order to make strong decisions, what that requires of you as the designer CEO is being clear on your vision. We talked about that in episode 140 of CEO Summer School. It's titled Create Your Vision and Pursue It Boldly if you want to go back and listen to that, so that you know where it is you're headed. And that's really important to give you direction. Again, we don't want to just run wildly on that lacrosse field like I was saying, we want to know where we're going. And it's also really important to know what your values are. Knowing what is important to you and why, so that you are making decisions in alignment with what matters most to you and your version of success.
The other piece here that must be developed is a high level of self-trust. When we're ready to progress to that next stage of business, you're entering into a future where you don't have evidence that you can do it or that it all works out. So you have to have trust in yourself that you're going to sustain your efforts, that you can handle the outcomes, that you can call on people when you need it, and know when that is to get support. There's so much trust involved in being able to make a strong decision.
That's another thing that really does have to be cultivated throughout your years in business, and it starts with your relationship with yourself. I spoke to all of that in episode 144 and 145, where I talked about scaling being an inside job, and also when I talked about stop being so hard on yourself, that was 145. And we dove into self-compassion and kindness towards yourself because we have to be kind to ourselves in order to trust ourselves.
Not every decision is going to land the way that you want. That's just a given. And if you're making decisions that go against the grain or maybe someone's questioning your choices, you really have to have your own back and remind yourself why you made the decision you did, why it's important to you, and be the one who builds yourself up and the one that celebrates you when it's successful right off the bat and celebrates yourself when it doesn't work out and you say, I'm going to pick myself back up and try again, I'm going to try this other thing, and I'm going to keep on going.
Which brings me to, if strong decisions are the wheels of your business, which way are you driving? That's why the vision piece is important and values too, is you want to make sure that you're headed somewhere that you want to be.
I want to give you some examples of questions you might want to ask yourself in your decision-making process. The first one is, am I becoming more of me? I think for a lot of us, business is an expression of ourselves, of who we want to be in the world and what we want to contribute. And we want to make decisions and fulfill our vision in a way that allows us to be more of ourselves and the gifts that we bring to our clients and the world.
Another question you can ask is, am I moving toward my vision or away? Another way you could put this is, am I moving towards what I want or what I don't want? I had an episode on that, too. As I'm going through, I'm like, oh, I spoke to these in little bits and pieces throughout the entire series, but I think this is such a great visual of if I decide to do this, am I stepping towards what I want? Am I walking away from it? Am I hiding from it? Great questions to ask yourself.
Another one would be, does this put me in conflict or alignment with what I value most? This speaks to what you value in the business and how you want to be in integrity with the business you run, but also what you value in your personal life as well. And let me share with you my very favorite question when I'm making a strong decision. Before I really commit to something, I always want to know, do I like my reasons? And I want to investigate why I'm choosing to move forward in such a way and what emotions or stories are my decisions coming from.
So this could look like, I want to go after this thing, but I'm going to decide not to because I'm feeling insecure, or I'm telling myself that's not for me in some way. I do not like that reason. It might be a reason to not do it right now if it's something you need to get support with and work through, but I don't think it's a good reason to have a final decision of you're just going to close the door on that dream.
Another example might be decisions you make around your working hours and how much capacity you have in the business. Let's say that you want to work more part-time hours, and that, of course, is going to cause some challenges at times. People are going to want to meet when you've decided you are not going to be in the office. And you might absolutely love a reason of I want to be there for my kids at this stage, I want to pursue some other interest that's going to help me in some way. Whatever it is, and you might really love your reason, and it's important to love your reason because, as I said, people will push back on this decision, and you're going to have to be convicted and going, yep, I chose this for a reason. I'm sticking with it.
For all of you listening, I really encourage you to take a moment now and think about what is a decision that you're kind of wobbly on or avoiding or feeling like I'm one foot in and one foot out, and use one of these questions to explore how you want to move forward.
And if you aren't aware of this, you can always find a transcript of the episode in Apple Podcasts that actually creates it in the app, but I've also got the transcripts for everything on my website. So you can always go to desicreswell.com and go to the podcast tab. There's a post for each episode. So if you want to go through and, you know, copy and paste these questions or take them back to the office, do a little bit of journaling around something you're considering, it's amazing what can happen with a little bit of reflection. So use those questions, and I'd love to hear how you use them and what comes of it. You can always send me a message.
Before we wrap up, I want to clarify something that might be coming to mind for you. And that is, well, okay, so if we've made this strong decision and they're the wheels and we're on this path and we're committed, what happens when I don't want to be on that path anymore, or I get new information that indicates maybe I need to take a left turn or gently curve to the right. Yes, absolutely. You might not want to be driving on the same path forever. That's a given. However, strong decisions are not the same as permanent decisions. They are simply decisions that you are committed to for a period of time before you evaluate and decide again.
So while a strong decision can be long-lasting, they don't have to be. You always are invited to redecide, but redeciding is a set point and an opportunity for evaluation and reflection, and a new level of commitment. Redeciding is not being wishy-washy and indecisive. At these moments of redecision, you can say, yes, I still want what I have, and I'm going to keep going with it. I like that path. I'm going to continue to pursue it. Maybe I tweak and level up the way that it's going, but overall, that's the direction I'm headed, and I'm good with it. Or you can go, yeah, this isn't working very well, or I've got some new information that would indicate I need to make a new decision. That's all good. But just check in with yourself and use the questions that I shared a bit ago to examine the why behind your next steps.
Sometimes these moments of redeciding are given to you. Maybe it's someone's contract needs to be renewed. It is a client who comes back for additional services, or it's part of your annual review of the business. And sometimes they can be really anything you want. And I don't think that there is a standard at this many days, this many weeks, this many months period that I can give to you. It really is individual to you and what it is that you're pursuing that helps inform what those periods of redecision should look like. So you're going to have to take a look at what makes sense for you and your business. But what I want you to be clear on here is that we're not always just changing things day by day, or even changing things as soon as you make a decision. It doesn't have to be that. Of course, if it makes sense for you, go for it, and you can decide and move on.
What this really is about is continuing to check in with yourself, being observant of yourself and what's happening in the business, and then taking action from those insights and giving yourself opportunities for clarity and connection with yourself and your goals so that you can make sure you're going on the path that you want to be on.
One of the things that results from making these strong decisions repeatedly is the level of self-leadership that you develop. And that is learning when you want to listen to your internal compass, when you want to get an outside perspective or input, and often what the combination of the two looks like.
The script has never been written for your business, and that's amazing, and it can be frustrating. And it requires you to lead yourself. You're the CEO, and so the more times that you're able to have the courage to commit fully to a decision and hold yourself through the ups and downs that come from those actions, you learn to show yourself that you are not just the leader of the company, you're the leader of yourself. And this creates so much self-confidence, that type of confidence that comes from inside of you, where you're able to hold yourself in high regard, independent of the actual circumstances. Yes, of course, you hope to have the best results all the time, and there's going to be the natural flow and ebb and up and down of running this business.
So, in practicing strong decision making, allowing yourself to drive those wheels along in the business, you're going to create self-leadership, and you're going to create confidence. And that just continues to compound. They simultaneously increase, and you have a cycle then that reinforces your identity of someone who can grow, of someone who can expand and make decisions that align with the life and business that you really want to live and that you want to have for yourself.
So that is the last truth in the What I Know For Sure CEO Summer School series. Strong decisions are the wheels of your business. Take a moment now or even come back to this, listen again, and reflect on how you can use this truth in your business, whether it's a simple decision that you need to make today about how you're going to spend your time, or it's something bigger about the next strategy that's going to uplevel your business. This will apply either way.
And if you want my support in developing that level of self-leadership that I just talked about and increasing the confidence in your ability to run your business through coaching, let me know. You can find all the information on desicreswell.com/coaching. That's where you can learn about Design to Thrive private coaching partnerships, where I really combine this mindset work with the emotional capacity work and the strategy that it takes to run a thriving business.
I'm going to be back next week with a brand new episode. In that one, I'm going to be talking to Melissa Oholendt of Oho Interior. She was named one of House Beautiful's next wave designers just recently, and we're going to be talking about client relationships, social media, and so much more. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss that episode. It is so good. I actually just recorded it before I hopped on to do this one, a little out of order.
So until then, I'm wishing you a beautiful week. Make sure you're following along so you don't miss that interview with Melissa and all that's to come on the Interior Design Business CEO podcast. I'm wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
In this episode, I'm talking about how you consistently move forward, get out of stuck points, and align your growth with next steps that are true to your vision, your values, and who you're becoming as a designer CEO. Let's dive in.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. It's wonderful to be here with you, and I have to say it was pretty wonderful to say episode 150. I can hardly believe we're here. A lot of you have been here since the very beginning, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming along for this ride with me. And for those of you who are newer, welcome, welcome.
It's been a lot of episodes at this point, and I want to just take a moment and celebrate that and celebrate you for tuning in and doing the work with me and learning and expanding. And if you have found what I'm sharing here valuable, I would be so appreciative if you'd take a moment to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
One of the things that I've been focused on in my own back end is helping this show get out to more designers. I want this to be widely listened to so that it can impact as many people as possible. And that podcast algorithm really does work. So, if you could take a minute, rate and review, tell me what you love about the show, why another designer should listen, that would be amazing. And you can consider that some good karma you're putting out into the world by helping somebody else find what they might need.
As we transition into today's episode, this is going to be the last truth I share in the What I Know For Sure CEO Summer School series. I've really loved creating this for you. It's been an interesting experience revisiting this series, but from a completely different lens. And of course, there's been other truths that I would love to share, but it is time to wrap up. And the ones that I've shared so far really have been the ones I've chosen to focus on, and I hope that they've made a great impact on you over these last few months.
Today I want to come back to a topic that I've certainly talked about on the podcast before, but it's from a new angle, and I want to present it in a different way. And that topic is decision-making.
When I was thinking about what is this truth, because I often think about how decisions are the backbone of any business. It's the backbone of any life well lived. It is how you move forward. It's how you get out of stock points. It's how you overcome challenges. And as I was thinking through, how will I share this as a what I know for sure truth, this is what came to me.
It is that strong decisions are the wheels of your business. Strong decisions are the wheels of your business. I'm going to talk you through that wording that came to me, but I want to give you a little context to why this is the one I wanted to wrap up with.
And that's because every truth that I've shared and, as I said, those elements that really make up your version of success, it's all rooted in empowering yourself to make decisions that are best for you as the person running this business, your team, if you have one, and the goals that you have from a holistic perspective.
Everything that you have in your business today is the result of a decision and a decision you've acted upon. The way that you structure and offer services, your design fees, what you do every single day, what type of marketing you engage in, what you share about your company, and how you work with others and on the platforms you use. It is what relationships you lean into and what relationships you choose to prune. All of these are decisions and decisions are actions. They are what you build your business on, and it's what you do day in and day out as a designer CEO.
If you didn't make decisions that you acted upon, you would not have a business, and you would have no reason to listen to this podcast. I think this is so clear when you look at you being a designer and working with clients. Your clients would not have a project if you didn't make decisions. And so it's the same thing in your business. You wouldn't have what you have today if you didn't make decisions and act on those.
And that is why decision-making is one of the most, if not the most, important skill sets you can develop as a designer CEO. And I want to call out making decisions is an actual skill set. It is something that you learn to do better and better and refine your own process for how you make decisions and how you act on those decisions, and then how you respond to whatever results occur because of the actions you've taken.
I went to Google and I Googled what is the definition of a skill. And Merriam Webster said that it's the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance. Knowledge can certainly be experience or data you have to draw upon from your years in business or years of past experience, and it's also knowledge of yourself. This is the piece I'm adding. The dictionary did not add this in, but I'm going to add it in because you have to know yourself to know what works best for you and take action accordingly.
The other thing that's important to see here is that the more you make decisions and the more you adapt to the outcomes that they create, and the better you get at decision making that pulls from your experience of what's happened out in your business and in the world and your experience of yourself.
When I say that strong decisions are the wheels, I want to break this down into two pieces. The first being, what do I mean by a strong decision? To me, personally, strong has a feeling of commitment, and that feels really grounded and solid and steady for me. It sounds like this is what I'm doing and this is what I'm not doing, or I'm headed this way, I'm not going that way. I'm opening this door, I'm closing this door.
And I love the idea of a door, too, because when you make a decision, you really have to make a choice. That's why a lot of people put off making decisions because they don't want to close one door. And of course, we can always reopen doors. We could leave it a crack open, but I think it's good to say this is what I'm doing and commit to it with a strong decision. Of course, you can always make a choice without commitment, but then you're waffling. You're going in circles. You're revisiting the decision over and over again, questioning if it was the right one. And so you're using energy but not actually getting anywhere.
When I think of what is the opposite of strong, it's weak. So, you could make a weak decision, one where it's wobbly and you're not so sure and you're not going to be committed to it and spend a lot of time trying to balance yourself in that instability, or you could make a strong decision and feel that grounded energy that I was describing.
These can be bigger decisions, like your fee structure, maybe where you're continually tweaking the way that you bill out your time, or set your fees without giving yourself a chance to see what comes from executing that plan. But even if you picture what it's like to start your day without a clear plan, meaning without clear decisions, you do not get nearly as much done as you would if you said to yourself, this is the most important thing, or these are the three top things that I'm going to do, I'm going to do them in approximately this order. If I have a snafu, I know what's going to get shelved or rearranged and think through what the day is going to look like.
When you go into it with a weak set of decisions or no decisions at all, you end up getting much less done, and you feel exhausted by the time you wrap up. The other thing that happens in the absence of a strong decision is you start to experience this internal divide, and it takes a lot of you and your mental bandwidth and your energy to manage that disconnect.
At some point last year, I can't remember exactly what I was working on deciding, but what I noticed was I was experienced something like what I was just describing to you. And the image that came to me was me standing on two mountains. And I had one foot on one mountain and another foot on another mountain, and I was straddling that landscape. And it was like one foot was planted in one decision, and one foot was planted in a different decision. You know, it was like, am I here or am I there? And I wasn't getting to enjoy either place that I had rooted my foot.
So it's like hopping over onto one mountain. You get to feel stable and secure for however long you want to stay there. And one of the things even that I think about with this is a lot of times we think about decisions as like I want to make the right decision or this feels like the best decision, this feels like the worst, or good or a bad, right? We put these binary labels on it.
But often in our business, we're talking about two good decisions, two great decisions. And even when we have multiple options that we'd like to pursue or that could work out beautifully for us, we spend so much of our time worried about what could have been or what could be, instead of just making the most of the decision that you do make.
There is that internal straddling taking place when it's not even like you're feeling torn between a good and a bad choice, but it's just like, hey, we're in a great position and we've got multiple options that we are attracted to and going all in on one of them and enjoying that fully and making the most of it. And so this is why this strong piece of this truth is so important. It's about making the most of the decisions you make to create momentum and keep you going, and it's also about the experience of making those decisions and living in whatever unfolds from it, and being able to be present and enjoy what is happening.
And of course, you've always got the time to redecide, and I'll talk about that later, but we don't want to start with indecision in making decisions, right? We can make a decision, and it can have that flavor of the week or the wobbliness, and we don't want to be there. And so that is why strong is essential.
Now I want to talk about the wheels piece. Why are strong decisions the wheels that drive you towards success? This imagery, which a lot of times when I'm thinking through concepts or even just working with my clients, images often come to me just like that mountain one that I shared. But when I was considering how I wanted to phrase this truth, what came to mind was a lacrosse example. My son, he's going to be twelve this fall. He's gotten really into lacrosse in the last few years. And that means I'm having to learn what all of these things are that parents yell from the sidelines.
And one of these things is someone will get the ball and they'll kind of break away on the field and be running. And the parents will start yelling “Wheels, wheels”. And I'm like, why are they yelling wheels? I just, I don't understand this. Finally, it clicked because I try and ask some, but I don't want to pepper everyone with too many questions, and they're like, oh my gosh. I need a vocabulary list for the lacrosse sidelines. That's a tangent. But what wheels means is that it's like time to turn it on, you go. And that is what it means when you make a committed decision. It is go time. And I'm not talking about reckless, uninformed decision-making.
No, not at all. You can absolutely pause, you can tune into yourself, you can allow yourself space. But then, when it's time to move, you move. Even if you think about this lacrosse example, when my son has the ball and he's doing one of those breakaways, he's not just running willy-nilly across the field. No, he's deciding where he's going. He's looking at where other people are, and he is thinking through what is the best path for me? What's the most direct path, and I'm going to take that. And that's the exact same thing in your own decision-making process.
As you develop this skill, how quickly can you get yourself to a decision, get yourself on board so that you're committed? And then how committed can you be to that decision, especially as you're in the early stages and you don't have a lot of evidence that it's necessarily the right way to go. That can be a moment when you feel really wobbly, and you have to come back to that feeling of being committed and being strong in your process. It's that combination of efficiency and determination to follow that decision. That's really what produces results that you can evaluate and leverage for the next set of decisions. Because all decisions are, they're data.
In episode 148, we talked about making sure you're solving the right problem. And part of identifying what's at the root that you need to address is having data to call on, whether that is actual hard numbers or experiential pieces that you've been taking note of and observing what's been happening in the business.
Without decisions, you don't get any of those learnings, and the learnings is what helps you evolve into that next stage of growth that you're looking for. You're always going to know more after taking some sort of action from a firmly rooted place for a period of time than if you stay put in a phase of business that really you want to outgrow or a challenge you want to overcome. Thinking your way through it only will take you so far. Absolutely give thought to what you do or don't do and how you proceed, and we can't think our way to a result.
In order to make strong decisions, what that requires of you as the designer CEO is being clear on your vision. We talked about that in episode 140 of CEO Summer School. It's titled Create Your Vision and Pursue It Boldly if you want to go back and listen to that, so that you know where it is you're headed. And that's really important to give you direction. Again, we don't want to just run wildly on that lacrosse field like I was saying, we want to know where we're going. And it's also really important to know what your values are. Knowing what is important to you and why, so that you are making decisions in alignment with what matters most to you and your version of success.
The other piece here that must be developed is a high level of self-trust. When we're ready to progress to that next stage of business, you're entering into a future where you don't have evidence that you can do it or that it all works out. So you have to have trust in yourself that you're going to sustain your efforts, that you can handle the outcomes, that you can call on people when you need it, and know when that is to get support. There's so much trust involved in being able to make a strong decision.
That's another thing that really does have to be cultivated throughout your years in business, and it starts with your relationship with yourself. I spoke to all of that in episode 144 and 145, where I talked about scaling being an inside job, and also when I talked about stop being so hard on yourself, that was 145. And we dove into self-compassion and kindness towards yourself because we have to be kind to ourselves in order to trust ourselves.
Not every decision is going to land the way that you want. That's just a given. And if you're making decisions that go against the grain or maybe someone's questioning your choices, you really have to have your own back and remind yourself why you made the decision you did, why it's important to you, and be the one who builds yourself up and the one that celebrates you when it's successful right off the bat and celebrates yourself when it doesn't work out and you say, I'm going to pick myself back up and try again, I'm going to try this other thing, and I'm going to keep on going.
Which brings me to, if strong decisions are the wheels of your business, which way are you driving? That's why the vision piece is important and values too, is you want to make sure that you're headed somewhere that you want to be.
I want to give you some examples of questions you might want to ask yourself in your decision-making process. The first one is, am I becoming more of me? I think for a lot of us, business is an expression of ourselves, of who we want to be in the world and what we want to contribute. And we want to make decisions and fulfill our vision in a way that allows us to be more of ourselves and the gifts that we bring to our clients and the world.
Another question you can ask is, am I moving toward my vision or away? Another way you could put this is, am I moving towards what I want or what I don't want? I had an episode on that, too. As I'm going through, I'm like, oh, I spoke to these in little bits and pieces throughout the entire series, but I think this is such a great visual of if I decide to do this, am I stepping towards what I want? Am I walking away from it? Am I hiding from it? Great questions to ask yourself.
Another one would be, does this put me in conflict or alignment with what I value most? This speaks to what you value in the business and how you want to be in integrity with the business you run, but also what you value in your personal life as well. And let me share with you my very favorite question when I'm making a strong decision. Before I really commit to something, I always want to know, do I like my reasons? And I want to investigate why I'm choosing to move forward in such a way and what emotions or stories are my decisions coming from.
So this could look like, I want to go after this thing, but I'm going to decide not to because I'm feeling insecure, or I'm telling myself that's not for me in some way. I do not like that reason. It might be a reason to not do it right now if it's something you need to get support with and work through, but I don't think it's a good reason to have a final decision of you're just going to close the door on that dream.
Another example might be decisions you make around your working hours and how much capacity you have in the business. Let's say that you want to work more part-time hours, and that, of course, is going to cause some challenges at times. People are going to want to meet when you've decided you are not going to be in the office. And you might absolutely love a reason of I want to be there for my kids at this stage, I want to pursue some other interest that's going to help me in some way. Whatever it is, and you might really love your reason, and it's important to love your reason because, as I said, people will push back on this decision, and you're going to have to be convicted and going, yep, I chose this for a reason. I'm sticking with it.
For all of you listening, I really encourage you to take a moment now and think about what is a decision that you're kind of wobbly on or avoiding or feeling like I'm one foot in and one foot out, and use one of these questions to explore how you want to move forward.
And if you aren't aware of this, you can always find a transcript of the episode in Apple Podcasts that actually creates it in the app, but I've also got the transcripts for everything on my website. So you can always go to desicreswell.com and go to the podcast tab. There's a post for each episode. So if you want to go through and, you know, copy and paste these questions or take them back to the office, do a little bit of journaling around something you're considering, it's amazing what can happen with a little bit of reflection. So use those questions, and I'd love to hear how you use them and what comes of it. You can always send me a message.
Before we wrap up, I want to clarify something that might be coming to mind for you. And that is, well, okay, so if we've made this strong decision and they're the wheels and we're on this path and we're committed, what happens when I don't want to be on that path anymore, or I get new information that indicates maybe I need to take a left turn or gently curve to the right. Yes, absolutely. You might not want to be driving on the same path forever. That's a given. However, strong decisions are not the same as permanent decisions. They are simply decisions that you are committed to for a period of time before you evaluate and decide again.
So while a strong decision can be long-lasting, they don't have to be. You always are invited to redecide, but redeciding is a set point and an opportunity for evaluation and reflection, and a new level of commitment. Redeciding is not being wishy-washy and indecisive. At these moments of redecision, you can say, yes, I still want what I have, and I'm going to keep going with it. I like that path. I'm going to continue to pursue it. Maybe I tweak and level up the way that it's going, but overall, that's the direction I'm headed, and I'm good with it. Or you can go, yeah, this isn't working very well, or I've got some new information that would indicate I need to make a new decision. That's all good. But just check in with yourself and use the questions that I shared a bit ago to examine the why behind your next steps.
Sometimes these moments of redeciding are given to you. Maybe it's someone's contract needs to be renewed. It is a client who comes back for additional services, or it's part of your annual review of the business. And sometimes they can be really anything you want. And I don't think that there is a standard at this many days, this many weeks, this many months period that I can give to you. It really is individual to you and what it is that you're pursuing that helps inform what those periods of redecision should look like. So you're going to have to take a look at what makes sense for you and your business. But what I want you to be clear on here is that we're not always just changing things day by day, or even changing things as soon as you make a decision. It doesn't have to be that. Of course, if it makes sense for you, go for it, and you can decide and move on.
What this really is about is continuing to check in with yourself, being observant of yourself and what's happening in the business, and then taking action from those insights and giving yourself opportunities for clarity and connection with yourself and your goals so that you can make sure you're going on the path that you want to be on.
One of the things that results from making these strong decisions repeatedly is the level of self-leadership that you develop. And that is learning when you want to listen to your internal compass, when you want to get an outside perspective or input, and often what the combination of the two looks like.
The script has never been written for your business, and that's amazing, and it can be frustrating. And it requires you to lead yourself. You're the CEO, and so the more times that you're able to have the courage to commit fully to a decision and hold yourself through the ups and downs that come from those actions, you learn to show yourself that you are not just the leader of the company, you're the leader of yourself. And this creates so much self-confidence, that type of confidence that comes from inside of you, where you're able to hold yourself in high regard, independent of the actual circumstances. Yes, of course, you hope to have the best results all the time, and there's going to be the natural flow and ebb and up and down of running this business.
So, in practicing strong decision making, allowing yourself to drive those wheels along in the business, you're going to create self-leadership, and you're going to create confidence. And that just continues to compound. They simultaneously increase, and you have a cycle then that reinforces your identity of someone who can grow, of someone who can expand and make decisions that align with the life and business that you really want to live and that you want to have for yourself.
So that is the last truth in the What I Know For Sure CEO Summer School series. Strong decisions are the wheels of your business. Take a moment now or even come back to this, listen again, and reflect on how you can use this truth in your business, whether it's a simple decision that you need to make today about how you're going to spend your time, or it's something bigger about the next strategy that's going to uplevel your business. This will apply either way.
And if you want my support in developing that level of self-leadership that I just talked about and increasing the confidence in your ability to run your business through coaching, let me know. You can find all the information on desicreswell.com/coaching. That's where you can learn about Design to Thrive private coaching partnerships, where I really combine this mindset work with the emotional capacity work and the strategy that it takes to run a thriving business.
I'm going to be back next week with a brand new episode. In that one, I'm going to be talking to Melissa Oholendt of Oho Interior. She was named one of House Beautiful's next wave designers just recently, and we're going to be talking about client relationships, social media, and so much more. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss that episode. It is so good. I actually just recorded it before I hopped on to do this one, a little out of order.
So until then, I'm wishing you a beautiful week. Make sure you're following along so you don't miss that interview with Melissa and all that's to come on the Interior Design Business CEO podcast. I'm wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
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