153. Protecting Creative Time, Boundaries, and My Summer Wins & Fails (Listener Q&A Part 2)
How do you protect creative time when you’re balancing a design business, family life, and a packed calendar? For designer CEOs, carving out dedicated time to create the vision for new projects isn’t just a luxury; it’s essential for project success and team clarity. In this follow-up to last week’s listener Q&A, I’m diving into the practicalities of defining and honoring creative time as part of your regular workflow, even while managing team delegation and project reviews.
Creative visioning is key to delivering exceptional results, but it can be hard to prioritize when you're constantly being pulled in different directions. I’m sharing strategies for scheduling and protecting that time, and why it’s vital to include it in your project fees and timelines. Plus, I’ll walk you through how to start seeing creative time as a non-negotiable business practice, not just something you “get to” when there’s time left over.
I’m also reflecting on my own summer slowdown, including what went right, what didn’t, and the lessons learned along the way. From perfectionism showing up in unexpected ways to finding powerful personal growth before summer even began, I’m pulling back the curtain on my experience. You’ll learn how to manage expectations, re-decide on your plans without guilt, and set boundaries that actually stick. Plus, I’ll share the phrase that’s helped me extend the same grace to myself that I naturally give to others.
If you've been thinking about working with me one-on-one, be sure to get on the private coaching waitlist! Click here to learn more about Design to Thrive and secure your spot to be the first to know when availability opens up.
What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
How to define creative time so it becomes actionable, not vague.
Why creative time should be built into project fees and schedules.
Questions to uncover the story you're telling yourself about creative time.
Practical ways to set yourself up for success with rituals and environmental changes.
How to recognize boundary issues with yourself or your team.
The personal growth that comes from preparing to scale back.
Why re-deciding isn’t failure, it's flexibility in action.
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152. Delegation, Productivity, and Deciding What's Next (Listener Q&A Part 1)
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you're listening to episode 153. This one, I'm going to be following up on last week's episode. I decided to split it into two parts to keep it a little bit shorter for you. And we're doing listener questions following the end of CEO Summer School.
Today's episode is going to dive into how to protect creative time for you as the designer CEO. This is such an important piece of the creative process, and ensuring the success of how you delegate to team members and what the project ends up being in its full potential. So I'm excited to answer that one. And I'm also going to be sharing some of the highs and lows and the wins and fails from my summer slowdown because I know some of you were wondering how that went.
I've got a lot to share, a lot of lessons learned. Spoiler alert, some perfectionism really popped up for me over the summer. So I'm going to dive into that, and it's going to be a good one.
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. I'm glad to be back here with you for part two in the listener Q&A. We did the last one just last week. I highly recommend you go back and check that one out. But of course, you don't need to have listened to it in order to listen to this episode.
If you didn't hear that one, what happened is, we wrapped up CEO Summer School. Those will live in the feed for you to reference if you missed any of those. And I sent out a call for questions, and I got some really good ones back. And today we're going to dive into the last one, plus a little bit of behind the scenes, peeking inside my own brain and my own business and my life to talk about how the summer slowdown went.
Before we go into answering those questions, let me tell you, I really loved recording this for you. And I would love to hear from you more. Let me know what you love about the show. What do you want me to talk more about? What's a problem you're bumping up against as you grow and evolve as a designer CEO? I can talk about that, but I need to know what you want. So the best way to do that is leave a rating and review, and I can get your message, and you're also supporting the podcast by boosting its findability through increasing those ratings and reviews.
The second thing is, I still have a few slots for strategy sessions available, at least at the time of this recording. You can go to desicreswell.com/resources and book your single session with me. I designed these to be super targeted to help you get the support you need when you need it and in a really laser-focused session. Once you book your appointment, I'm going to review the set of questions you submitted. It's very quick, and I'll come back with you before we meet live with some deep dive customized coaching prompts. That's going to allow us to start the coaching process before we even meet and also make it possible for us to really dive in during those 45 minutes and allow me to support you at the highest level.
Of course, if you have questions about any of this, you can always feel free to send me a message on Instagram @desicreswell. I'd love to hear from you.
Now we're going to wrap up part two of this listener Q&A. And if it's a little choppy just at the beginning, it is because I originally recorded this as one episode, but then decided to split it into two just to keep it a little more succinct. I know a lot of you listen to me driving between job sites or going to showrooms, and it's really nice when you can finish an episode in one session. That's why I decided to do that, but if it sounds like a little bit of a choppy transition, that is why. So now, let's dive in.
Here is the last designer question until I move into some of my summer wins and fails. I know you might be curious about that. This designer said, "I'm experiencing difficulties keeping creative time for myself to create the vision for new projects, amidst the delegation and review of my team's work that keeps projects underway." She's specifically asking for help around boundaries, time blocking, and mindset.
Okay, this is such a great question, and I guarantee that there's a lot of you listening who struggle with this as well. So, the very first thing that we want to do is look at how am I defining creative time? What does that mean to me? What's going to happen during this time? How much time do I want? Okay?
Because when it's left vague, and this is true of time blocking in general, right? If we just say, like, work on X project, or we are like, do drawings. Well, what does that mean? And vague definitions or vague tasks on our calendar can feel really big and really hard to wrap your arms around. And then what the brain wants to do is just do what's easier in the moment, not what's better for you long-term, and not do it, and you just skip ahead of it. Okay?
So we want to make sure that you understand what creative time means to you, how you ideally would like it to happen, knowing that maybe the ideal is not possible right now. Maybe it's in the future, or maybe it's something that could be massaged a little. And get clear on that first.
The second thing is, I want to ensure that you're building this time into your project fee and schedule. It could be there's a hurdle here of I want to do this, but also, I know I'm not getting paid for it, or we didn't account for this some way in moving the project along. And so I shouldn't be doing it, or I can't be doing it. So make sure it's in your fee, in your schedule in terms of, you know, how you pace out the project and overall timelines for you internally as the team, and also as you're communicating to the client so that you know that this creative visioning time is an essential value that you're providing to the client and that you're being compensated for it. And it's just part of planning to deliver the services.
Also, it's essential to your team, too, in case that's not clear as well. Because when you, as the designer CEO, are crystal clear on that vision of where we're headed, it's so much easier to delegate and give direction to the team. Okay? And that's going to help keep those projects underway, which is part of your concern.
Of course, we want to make sure that we're putting this time on the calendar. And this designer didn't say if she's currently putting it on the calendar and then just skipping it over, or she just isn't even bothering putting it on the calendar. But that is really important, is we need to see how this fits into the project timelines and just how your week is going. You can start to identify when it would be useful to do this in your week and in how you're communicating with team, along with what your energy is aligned, when you want to ideally be doing this work.
Maybe after a four-hour client meeting, you're done and you don't want to say, "Okay, then I'm going to expect myself to go back to the office and be creative for two hours." It's probably not going to happen, or at least in my experience, that's a really hard switch to make. Okay? So, thinking about where it goes, how it's going to fit in from a time blocking perspective.
Then I want you to start looking at this piece of mindset as well. What are you currently telling yourself? What's the story about creative time? Maybe it's that you can't have it. Get curious about why. Maybe you're telling yourself it's not important. Again, why? We need to know why your brain is telling this story. And you might need to do a little bit of work to sell yourself on why this is so essential to the success of your project. It's so essential that you have to honor this commitment to yourself, to your team, and to the client. Like it is as important as showing up face to face when you said, "Yeah, I'm going to meet you at 11 o'clock." Okay? So get clear on the value of this.
Maybe you're telling yourself I don't have time. And definitely question this. How do you have the time? How could I make this work? And another thing you could think about, too, is maybe there's a way that you're thinking this creative time needs to be done, and it's a way that doesn't align with the way that you want to run your business or just some way that doesn't appeal to you. So then, of course, you don't do it.
Lastly, I want to offer up a powerful question that is great for any type of roadblock. How can you set yourself up for success? Maybe this is having a ritual to help you ease into this time. This does not need to be elaborate. It could be that you have certain music that you play, you light a candle, maybe you go to a specific location in the office or offsite where there's less distractions. Think about what gets you in the headspace so that it's something you really look forward to and can sink into.
I also want to touch on boundaries. So, I'm curious where the boundaries are most blurred or ignored. Is this a boundary issue with yourself or is it with the team? And it might be both. But what I'm curious about is like, is this on your calendar and you're just skipping over it? Is it not on your calendar, and you're just hoping it will happen?
Those could be indications of boundary issues with yourself. And I'm also wondering, have you told anyone that this is what's happening, and you're hoping that the team reads your mind and will just leave you alone? You know, would be nice, but nobody can read your mind. You have to communicate.
You might want to go back to episode 129. It's on boundary mistakes, and that gives you how to set those boundaries, whether it's something, you know, with yourself or with the team. But you do need to make sure that you're communicating very clearly with yourself and with your team about what you're doing.
And again, I'll go back to that first question, where it was making sure that you're having those regular times to meet with the staff before and after these times. Whatever works for you, or throughout the week, you know your cadence best, so that they know that they have what they need, or they'll get it soon, so it's not as tempting to interrupt or hold things back.
Now let's round this out with a more personal question. Several of you emailed me throughout the summer asking how's my summer slowdown going or how did it go after the fact? And I mean, I could do a full episode on this, but I'll give you kind of some of the high-level wins and fails. I think it's important to acknowledge that it's going to be both. I'd say overall, it was amazing. There were so many times during the summer where I was so grateful to past me for the decisions I made. And of course, the best laid plans don't always go to plan, right? I had several things where it was just like, "Okay, I have even more going on than I thought I was going to have going on."
And we had a lot going on during the summer. We had visitors at our cabin every single weekend we were there, which was the majority of the summer. And if we weren't there, we were at lacrosse tournaments, swim meets. Oh my gosh, did we have a lot going on. Not to mention all of the life stuff. So as this was all unfolding, I kept just thinking, "Yep, this is the right choice."
Now, one thing that was kind of tricky towards the beginning of the summer, and this was such a great reminder of how words really do matter. The way you talk about things matters so much, the story you tell, right? Now, I kind of branded this as my summer slowdown. And it was a slowdown. I did significantly less work in the business.
The slowdown was in the business, though. And somehow in my brain, this story and like imaginative scene of me having a very relaxing summer where I'm just like laying around all the time, basking in the sun, walking the dog. Don't get me wrong, there was some of that. But like, there was a few weeks in where I thought, "Oh my gosh, I feel like there's absolutely nothing slow about this." There's so much going on. And yeah, I had to rightsize that because I was a little annoyed. I was like, "This is supposed to be my summer slowdown." And then I had to think, "Oh yeah, the business slowed down."
And, you know, things weren't like totally crazy in my personal life, but it was like, "Yeah, we've got a lot going on." These are all things we want to be doing. It feels good to be doing them. And there's like this contrast here of this imaginative place that I went to in my brain because of the way that I branded this summer, you know, internally, and it just did not align. So once I realized that, I was able to move forward, and that was great.
The other thing that was really interesting was, I was talking to a friend about this. I felt like the biggest transformation I've had personally happened from doing the work, the internal work that I needed to do in order to take this next level of time away from the business. And that happened probably around February, March, and into, you know, all the way through the rest of the summer. And that included having to be so frank and honest with myself around the fears that I had coming to the surface and working to coach myself to a place of acceptance and peace with what felt like kind of risky decisions.
The other thing that all of this pre-work brought up was further detaching my identity from the business. I can't remember where I've talked about this on the podcast. I'm sure it's come up. But for so much of us, work and what we put out into the world is a huge part of our identity. And letting go of that in an even greater fashion brought some stuff up for me. Because there's a part of me that likes to work, that loves being useful in this business, that is validated by the expertise that I share with my clients.
And so saying, "Yeah, I'm not going to do that for a while in the same way that I've been doing it," that brought up some feelings, right? And in some ways that's so freeing once you work through, and it can also be confronting because when we further detach from that work is worth or work is my identity paradigm, we're really saying what's going to fill in? Because there's less of that identity, and then what?
There was so much personal growth that came from this summer slowdown that was valuable to me. And I mean, I almost felt like I got everything I needed from a personal growth perspective before summer even started. And that was pretty cool. And it was such a reminder of why I'm always talking about when it comes to goals, that yeah, it's cool to achieve the goal, absolutely, and so much of the win is who you become in the process. Achieving the goal is so fun, and it's amazing, and of course, great for your business, and so much of the reward is who you become in the process.
One of the big fails that I had this summer though, was working more than I intended to. I track my hours, I set time parameters for what I wanted to devote to the business and to specific tasks in the business. And this was really interesting to watch unfold. And a lot of it had to do with perfectionism. And one of the things that was interesting was, I kind of wanted to get ahead in the business so that I had more downtime towards the end of the summer.
And perfectionism showed up in a big way in thinking that the decisions I had made, intentionally thinking that was what I wanted or what was going to support me, I kind of was making myself wrong. Of, well, I've thought about this differently now, I could see how this might actually work better for me, and now I'm mad at myself for not doing it the way that I said I was going to do.
So once I caught a hold of that, and it didn't take too long, fortunately, I did decide, yeah, actually, I want to be working more hours than I originally said per week because I want to front-load some of this work. And I'm so glad that I did. I think it gave me some really nice space away from content creation, some more flexibility in my weeks in August, with us traveling. And oh my gosh, did I get sick after our trip in August. Oh, I, that's part of why I haven't recorded a podcast in so long. Well, or why I'm glad I haven't had to, because I sounded so awful. I was so squeaky. I mean, it's terrible. So thank goodness, I was ahead of things.
And it goes to that idea of re-decision. You can always re-decide. And I liked why I was re-deciding, and I didn't have to be mad at myself for it. I do think it was interesting, just all the different ways that perfectionism came up for me during the summer. And in some ways, you could call that a fail. I also see it very much as a win.
It goes back to that episode on scaling is an inside job, where I talked about how our personal development and our business development is very much an upward spiral of we have often these things that come around. They're elements of the same obstacle, and we're just encountering them in different ways and looking at them differently, and being able to overcome them with greater depth and grow through that process.
And you know, the podcast in particular really was something that some perfectionism came up around. It's part of some of the times where I was taking longer on the podcast than I wanted to. And I think in reflection, it was a lot to do with the topic that I chose, where I was putting a lot of weight on these are the truths of business. So like, "Okay, I've really got to nail this." And, you know, I was able to release some of that pressure, which was really helpful.
Perfectionism also started showing up even more in my life, and it was coming from this thought of like, "I'm working less, so I should be able to do even more for our family." And basically my brain told me, "Well, I'm not doing as much in the business, so now I have to be even better at handling it all. I have to handle even more than I've ever handled." And that was putting me in a real lose-lose situation. It was really hard to live up to that expectation. And thank goodness for being able to see that, so I could move out of that space.
And one of the things that I've delighted in is coming up with this phrase of “be my own Desi.” And what I mean by that is how am I going to take care of and account for and give my own self grace in the same way that I would for someone else in my family? And this is something I've been doing now for several months, and it's been a really fun project. It doesn't mean I don't expect anything of myself, but it also means I don't have to expect the weight of the world either.
So this is, I mean, definitely one of those things where it's a lesson that I keep learning, and of course, I'm moving beyond it, but it pops up then, and I have to bring myself back to some of those basics and get to fully up-level in a whole new way.
All right. So I'm going to leave it there. That is what I have for you today. Couple of reminders, make sure you leave a rating and review. Tell me what you love about the podcast, what you want to see more of, or hear about. I'd love to hear from you that way.
And then also, now's the time to book that one-on-one session with me, where you can bring your question to me, just like these designers who submitted for this episode brought me a question, except we'll have the benefit of going back and forth, and that support ahead of even the session. So that way, we dial it into exactly what you need, and I'm able to offer it to you right now when you need it. That link's in the show notes, but again, it's desicreswell.com/resources.
I'm going to be back next week with a brand new episode, and in that one, I'm going to be sharing a pep talk on how to get yourself going with that thing you just don't want to do. We all have those tasks we drag our feet on, myself included, and this is a way around that procrastinatio,n so you can just get on with your life and get it done. Until then, 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.
Today's episode is going to dive into how to protect creative time for you as the designer CEO. This is such an important piece of the creative process, and ensuring the success of how you delegate to team members and what the project ends up being in its full potential. So I'm excited to answer that one. And I'm also going to be sharing some of the highs and lows and the wins and fails from my summer slowdown because I know some of you were wondering how that went.
I've got a lot to share, a lot of lessons learned. Spoiler alert, some perfectionism really popped up for me over the summer. So I'm going to dive into that, and it's going to be a good one.
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. I'm glad to be back here with you for part two in the listener Q&A. We did the last one just last week. I highly recommend you go back and check that one out. But of course, you don't need to have listened to it in order to listen to this episode.
If you didn't hear that one, what happened is, we wrapped up CEO Summer School. Those will live in the feed for you to reference if you missed any of those. And I sent out a call for questions, and I got some really good ones back. And today we're going to dive into the last one, plus a little bit of behind the scenes, peeking inside my own brain and my own business and my life to talk about how the summer slowdown went.
Before we go into answering those questions, let me tell you, I really loved recording this for you. And I would love to hear from you more. Let me know what you love about the show. What do you want me to talk more about? What's a problem you're bumping up against as you grow and evolve as a designer CEO? I can talk about that, but I need to know what you want. So the best way to do that is leave a rating and review, and I can get your message, and you're also supporting the podcast by boosting its findability through increasing those ratings and reviews.
The second thing is, I still have a few slots for strategy sessions available, at least at the time of this recording. You can go to desicreswell.com/resources and book your single session with me. I designed these to be super targeted to help you get the support you need when you need it and in a really laser-focused session. Once you book your appointment, I'm going to review the set of questions you submitted. It's very quick, and I'll come back with you before we meet live with some deep dive customized coaching prompts. That's going to allow us to start the coaching process before we even meet and also make it possible for us to really dive in during those 45 minutes and allow me to support you at the highest level.
Of course, if you have questions about any of this, you can always feel free to send me a message on Instagram @desicreswell. I'd love to hear from you.
Now we're going to wrap up part two of this listener Q&A. And if it's a little choppy just at the beginning, it is because I originally recorded this as one episode, but then decided to split it into two just to keep it a little more succinct. I know a lot of you listen to me driving between job sites or going to showrooms, and it's really nice when you can finish an episode in one session. That's why I decided to do that, but if it sounds like a little bit of a choppy transition, that is why. So now, let's dive in.
Here is the last designer question until I move into some of my summer wins and fails. I know you might be curious about that. This designer said, "I'm experiencing difficulties keeping creative time for myself to create the vision for new projects, amidst the delegation and review of my team's work that keeps projects underway." She's specifically asking for help around boundaries, time blocking, and mindset.
Okay, this is such a great question, and I guarantee that there's a lot of you listening who struggle with this as well. So, the very first thing that we want to do is look at how am I defining creative time? What does that mean to me? What's going to happen during this time? How much time do I want? Okay?
Because when it's left vague, and this is true of time blocking in general, right? If we just say, like, work on X project, or we are like, do drawings. Well, what does that mean? And vague definitions or vague tasks on our calendar can feel really big and really hard to wrap your arms around. And then what the brain wants to do is just do what's easier in the moment, not what's better for you long-term, and not do it, and you just skip ahead of it. Okay?
So we want to make sure that you understand what creative time means to you, how you ideally would like it to happen, knowing that maybe the ideal is not possible right now. Maybe it's in the future, or maybe it's something that could be massaged a little. And get clear on that first.
The second thing is, I want to ensure that you're building this time into your project fee and schedule. It could be there's a hurdle here of I want to do this, but also, I know I'm not getting paid for it, or we didn't account for this some way in moving the project along. And so I shouldn't be doing it, or I can't be doing it. So make sure it's in your fee, in your schedule in terms of, you know, how you pace out the project and overall timelines for you internally as the team, and also as you're communicating to the client so that you know that this creative visioning time is an essential value that you're providing to the client and that you're being compensated for it. And it's just part of planning to deliver the services.
Also, it's essential to your team, too, in case that's not clear as well. Because when you, as the designer CEO, are crystal clear on that vision of where we're headed, it's so much easier to delegate and give direction to the team. Okay? And that's going to help keep those projects underway, which is part of your concern.
Of course, we want to make sure that we're putting this time on the calendar. And this designer didn't say if she's currently putting it on the calendar and then just skipping it over, or she just isn't even bothering putting it on the calendar. But that is really important, is we need to see how this fits into the project timelines and just how your week is going. You can start to identify when it would be useful to do this in your week and in how you're communicating with team, along with what your energy is aligned, when you want to ideally be doing this work.
Maybe after a four-hour client meeting, you're done and you don't want to say, "Okay, then I'm going to expect myself to go back to the office and be creative for two hours." It's probably not going to happen, or at least in my experience, that's a really hard switch to make. Okay? So, thinking about where it goes, how it's going to fit in from a time blocking perspective.
Then I want you to start looking at this piece of mindset as well. What are you currently telling yourself? What's the story about creative time? Maybe it's that you can't have it. Get curious about why. Maybe you're telling yourself it's not important. Again, why? We need to know why your brain is telling this story. And you might need to do a little bit of work to sell yourself on why this is so essential to the success of your project. It's so essential that you have to honor this commitment to yourself, to your team, and to the client. Like it is as important as showing up face to face when you said, "Yeah, I'm going to meet you at 11 o'clock." Okay? So get clear on the value of this.
Maybe you're telling yourself I don't have time. And definitely question this. How do you have the time? How could I make this work? And another thing you could think about, too, is maybe there's a way that you're thinking this creative time needs to be done, and it's a way that doesn't align with the way that you want to run your business or just some way that doesn't appeal to you. So then, of course, you don't do it.
Lastly, I want to offer up a powerful question that is great for any type of roadblock. How can you set yourself up for success? Maybe this is having a ritual to help you ease into this time. This does not need to be elaborate. It could be that you have certain music that you play, you light a candle, maybe you go to a specific location in the office or offsite where there's less distractions. Think about what gets you in the headspace so that it's something you really look forward to and can sink into.
I also want to touch on boundaries. So, I'm curious where the boundaries are most blurred or ignored. Is this a boundary issue with yourself or is it with the team? And it might be both. But what I'm curious about is like, is this on your calendar and you're just skipping over it? Is it not on your calendar, and you're just hoping it will happen?
Those could be indications of boundary issues with yourself. And I'm also wondering, have you told anyone that this is what's happening, and you're hoping that the team reads your mind and will just leave you alone? You know, would be nice, but nobody can read your mind. You have to communicate.
You might want to go back to episode 129. It's on boundary mistakes, and that gives you how to set those boundaries, whether it's something, you know, with yourself or with the team. But you do need to make sure that you're communicating very clearly with yourself and with your team about what you're doing.
And again, I'll go back to that first question, where it was making sure that you're having those regular times to meet with the staff before and after these times. Whatever works for you, or throughout the week, you know your cadence best, so that they know that they have what they need, or they'll get it soon, so it's not as tempting to interrupt or hold things back.
Now let's round this out with a more personal question. Several of you emailed me throughout the summer asking how's my summer slowdown going or how did it go after the fact? And I mean, I could do a full episode on this, but I'll give you kind of some of the high-level wins and fails. I think it's important to acknowledge that it's going to be both. I'd say overall, it was amazing. There were so many times during the summer where I was so grateful to past me for the decisions I made. And of course, the best laid plans don't always go to plan, right? I had several things where it was just like, "Okay, I have even more going on than I thought I was going to have going on."
And we had a lot going on during the summer. We had visitors at our cabin every single weekend we were there, which was the majority of the summer. And if we weren't there, we were at lacrosse tournaments, swim meets. Oh my gosh, did we have a lot going on. Not to mention all of the life stuff. So as this was all unfolding, I kept just thinking, "Yep, this is the right choice."
Now, one thing that was kind of tricky towards the beginning of the summer, and this was such a great reminder of how words really do matter. The way you talk about things matters so much, the story you tell, right? Now, I kind of branded this as my summer slowdown. And it was a slowdown. I did significantly less work in the business.
The slowdown was in the business, though. And somehow in my brain, this story and like imaginative scene of me having a very relaxing summer where I'm just like laying around all the time, basking in the sun, walking the dog. Don't get me wrong, there was some of that. But like, there was a few weeks in where I thought, "Oh my gosh, I feel like there's absolutely nothing slow about this." There's so much going on. And yeah, I had to rightsize that because I was a little annoyed. I was like, "This is supposed to be my summer slowdown." And then I had to think, "Oh yeah, the business slowed down."
And, you know, things weren't like totally crazy in my personal life, but it was like, "Yeah, we've got a lot going on." These are all things we want to be doing. It feels good to be doing them. And there's like this contrast here of this imaginative place that I went to in my brain because of the way that I branded this summer, you know, internally, and it just did not align. So once I realized that, I was able to move forward, and that was great.
The other thing that was really interesting was, I was talking to a friend about this. I felt like the biggest transformation I've had personally happened from doing the work, the internal work that I needed to do in order to take this next level of time away from the business. And that happened probably around February, March, and into, you know, all the way through the rest of the summer. And that included having to be so frank and honest with myself around the fears that I had coming to the surface and working to coach myself to a place of acceptance and peace with what felt like kind of risky decisions.
The other thing that all of this pre-work brought up was further detaching my identity from the business. I can't remember where I've talked about this on the podcast. I'm sure it's come up. But for so much of us, work and what we put out into the world is a huge part of our identity. And letting go of that in an even greater fashion brought some stuff up for me. Because there's a part of me that likes to work, that loves being useful in this business, that is validated by the expertise that I share with my clients.
And so saying, "Yeah, I'm not going to do that for a while in the same way that I've been doing it," that brought up some feelings, right? And in some ways that's so freeing once you work through, and it can also be confronting because when we further detach from that work is worth or work is my identity paradigm, we're really saying what's going to fill in? Because there's less of that identity, and then what?
There was so much personal growth that came from this summer slowdown that was valuable to me. And I mean, I almost felt like I got everything I needed from a personal growth perspective before summer even started. And that was pretty cool. And it was such a reminder of why I'm always talking about when it comes to goals, that yeah, it's cool to achieve the goal, absolutely, and so much of the win is who you become in the process. Achieving the goal is so fun, and it's amazing, and of course, great for your business, and so much of the reward is who you become in the process.
One of the big fails that I had this summer though, was working more than I intended to. I track my hours, I set time parameters for what I wanted to devote to the business and to specific tasks in the business. And this was really interesting to watch unfold. And a lot of it had to do with perfectionism. And one of the things that was interesting was, I kind of wanted to get ahead in the business so that I had more downtime towards the end of the summer.
And perfectionism showed up in a big way in thinking that the decisions I had made, intentionally thinking that was what I wanted or what was going to support me, I kind of was making myself wrong. Of, well, I've thought about this differently now, I could see how this might actually work better for me, and now I'm mad at myself for not doing it the way that I said I was going to do.
So once I caught a hold of that, and it didn't take too long, fortunately, I did decide, yeah, actually, I want to be working more hours than I originally said per week because I want to front-load some of this work. And I'm so glad that I did. I think it gave me some really nice space away from content creation, some more flexibility in my weeks in August, with us traveling. And oh my gosh, did I get sick after our trip in August. Oh, I, that's part of why I haven't recorded a podcast in so long. Well, or why I'm glad I haven't had to, because I sounded so awful. I was so squeaky. I mean, it's terrible. So thank goodness, I was ahead of things.
And it goes to that idea of re-decision. You can always re-decide. And I liked why I was re-deciding, and I didn't have to be mad at myself for it. I do think it was interesting, just all the different ways that perfectionism came up for me during the summer. And in some ways, you could call that a fail. I also see it very much as a win.
It goes back to that episode on scaling is an inside job, where I talked about how our personal development and our business development is very much an upward spiral of we have often these things that come around. They're elements of the same obstacle, and we're just encountering them in different ways and looking at them differently, and being able to overcome them with greater depth and grow through that process.
And you know, the podcast in particular really was something that some perfectionism came up around. It's part of some of the times where I was taking longer on the podcast than I wanted to. And I think in reflection, it was a lot to do with the topic that I chose, where I was putting a lot of weight on these are the truths of business. So like, "Okay, I've really got to nail this." And, you know, I was able to release some of that pressure, which was really helpful.
Perfectionism also started showing up even more in my life, and it was coming from this thought of like, "I'm working less, so I should be able to do even more for our family." And basically my brain told me, "Well, I'm not doing as much in the business, so now I have to be even better at handling it all. I have to handle even more than I've ever handled." And that was putting me in a real lose-lose situation. It was really hard to live up to that expectation. And thank goodness for being able to see that, so I could move out of that space.
And one of the things that I've delighted in is coming up with this phrase of “be my own Desi.” And what I mean by that is how am I going to take care of and account for and give my own self grace in the same way that I would for someone else in my family? And this is something I've been doing now for several months, and it's been a really fun project. It doesn't mean I don't expect anything of myself, but it also means I don't have to expect the weight of the world either.
So this is, I mean, definitely one of those things where it's a lesson that I keep learning, and of course, I'm moving beyond it, but it pops up then, and I have to bring myself back to some of those basics and get to fully up-level in a whole new way.
All right. So I'm going to leave it there. That is what I have for you today. Couple of reminders, make sure you leave a rating and review. Tell me what you love about the podcast, what you want to see more of, or hear about. I'd love to hear from you that way.
And then also, now's the time to book that one-on-one session with me, where you can bring your question to me, just like these designers who submitted for this episode brought me a question, except we'll have the benefit of going back and forth, and that support ahead of even the session. So that way, we dial it into exactly what you need, and I'm able to offer it to you right now when you need it. That link's in the show notes, but again, it's desicreswell.com/resources.
I'm going to be back next week with a brand new episode, and in that one, I'm going to be sharing a pep talk on how to get yourself going with that thing you just don't want to do. We all have those tasks we drag our feet on, myself included, and this is a way around that procrastinatio,n so you can just get on with your life and get it done. Until then, 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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