118: 4 Year-End Steps to Prepare Your Interior Design Business

FinancialSystems & Strategies
Written By Michele Williams
4-year-end-steps-to-prepare-your-interior-design-business.png

118: 4 Year-End Steps to Prepare Your Interior Design Business

with Michele Williams

This podcast is part of a series to assist you in planning for the new year in your business. We are going to jump in and talk about a SWOTT analysis, goal planning, how to preserve our energy, and how to say no.

Topics Mentioned: 

  • Planning

  • SWOTT analysis

  • Goals

  • Energy

Listen to the Episode

118: 4 Year-End Steps to Prepare Your Interior Design Business WITH MICHELE WILLIAMS This podcast is part of a series to assist you in planning for the new year in your business. We are going to jump in and talk about a SWOTT analysis, goal planning, how to preserve our energy, and how to say no.

This podcast is part of a series to assist you in planning for the new year in your business. On the last podcast at the beginning of this month, we focused on the preplanning process. Creating space to do a review, beginning with gratitude, reviewing your time, offerings, and goals, and identifying what a balanced life would look like for you. Now we are going to focus on the next steps to doing a full review of your business and making the plan for the next year.  

If you have never done year-end planning, no worries. This is a great year to begin. 

1. Start with a SWOTT analysis.  

What is a SWOTT analysis? SWOTT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and trends. We use this analysis to dissect our business to determine what is working and is a strength, what is not working which could be a weakness and to find opportunities and threats. 

Recently, in my Designers’ Inner Circle Workshop, I lead my clients through the process of doing a SWOTT analysis in a multitude of ways. We can pick up this framework and overlay it onto all types of areas, including our personal lives.  

Here is what we did. First, we did a SWOTT for our company. Think of the company as a whole and note all the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as well as trends. Then we broke it down and considered just us as the owners. What would our personal business SWOTT look like? We also completed a SWOTT for our employees or team members, and our vendors. This in-depth look at each element in our business can provide us with information and shine a spotlight in an area we have not looked at before. You can even drill down to do a SWOTT for each vendor or employee separately.   

The information in a SWOTT will help you in goal setting which comes next. 

 

2. Set your goals. 

I am a fan of the 12-Week Year by Brian Moran. In this book he describes breaking down each quarter into a mini 12-week year. Why? Because we often wait until the last minute to accomplish our goals and there is no way we can do them all in November of a year. So, by creating quarterly goals which are more streamlined and individually focused, we have the ability to get 4 really big goals completed in a year with attention placed on each one.  

I use my SWOTT to take my list of goals that might come out of it, and rank them. I consider what they will take with regard to human resources, time and money. Then I put them in priority order. Each quarter my main company focus is that goal. So that means all additional time, money and resources goes to solving it.  

Using this process allows you to free up your mind and resources from being focused on the other goals on your list. Most of us learned long ago that multi-tasking did not help us get anywhere faster. By really dialing in on what is most important to my company, I can give it my best and actually get more done than when I was juggling a goal list of 12 things all year. That just made me feel scattered. 

Try it. One BIG goal each quarter. Make it SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound). Detail what it will take to get it done. Then commit.  

3. Review your Energy. 

There are people and tasks that drain us of energy and some that give us more energy. When I really note what excites and energizes me in the workplace, I can focus on bringing more of that into my life. It could be work, books or knowledge, opportunities, people. Knowing what makes me feel alive and creative helps me recognize it more quickly when I see it. 

Conversely, being aware of my energy being depleted helps me say no to those tasks, people and opportunities that are not in my best interest. 

I have shared before, but a great book I read in 2019 really gave me the freedom to see this and experience this letting go in a different way. It is “Who’s In Your Room” by Misner, Emery and Sapio. 

In the book, we are offered the idea that everything that comes into our mind never really leaves. It is like a steel trap. They are in our room. One of the quotes that caught my attention was this, “The quality of your life depends upon who is in your room.….Would you have made different choices had you known that anybody who came into your room was going to be in it forever?” 

Working through this book and thinking about more than people, really looking at my services and offerings to my clients, along with my ideal clients – everything that I was saying YES to. If it did not move me forward, which in the book is called an engine, instead it held me back, known as an anchor, I said no. 

As mentioned in prior podcasts, there may have been clients, products and services as well as vendors that in my past were engines and now are anchors. I choose to do a bless and release with those and move on. And you can to. This is a deep exercise, but so empowering.  

  

4. Update all offerings and processes. 

Now is the time to review the SWOTT, Goals and Energy exercise and to really commit to the work you and your team will do the next year.  

Perhaps you want to change a vendor line, or bring on something entirely new. Maybe you no longer want to charge by the hour or do one-room projects. Perhaps you hate making cornice boards and you are saying “no more.” It doesn’t matter what it is, make sure that the majority, if not all, of your products, services and processes are done in a way that your company is moving forward with energy instead of being drained slowly every day you come to work. That is miserable. Create the plan for the business you want. 

 

We will be doing our final review of HR, finances and marketing in the next podcast. Keep going with me as we create businesses we desire. 

If you want to do this in community and to have access to me while working through this, please reach out and let’s talk. You can find out more at my website, www.scarletthreadconsulting.com on the Work With Me page. Sign up for a Discovery Call and let’s chat. I would love to help you be intentional about your business, because profit doesn’t happen by accident. 

Key Thoughts:

  • The first thing that I would have you do, is start with a SWOTT analysis. Michele (01:35)  

  • Choose one big goal each quarter, make it SMART. Michele (06:14)   

  • Go back and think about what energizes you and what drains you. Michele  (10:12)  

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References and Resources:

Michele Williams
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