Joining me today is Melanie Lockert. Melanie is the author of the book, Dear Debt, based on her long-standing blog. She is also the podcast host of Mental Health and Wealth. Melanie was successful in paying off $81,000 in student loan debt and she has chronicled her journey on her blog and in her book. Today our focus will be all about debt and how to manage it.

Joining me today is Pamela Durkin. Pamela has spent over 30 years in the high-end design business serving both residential and commercial clients. She continues to practice design and also teaches other designers how to be magnetic and attract the best clients through her In Demand Designer Program. We are talking today about networking, ideal clients, and how to make an impression from the beginning.

Today we are going to talk about leadership. As many of us are growing our teams, we should consider how our role, and perhaps that of some of our team, is shifting into more of a leadership focus and not simply executing details.

Joining me today is Katie Menon of Stephenson House in Edmonton, Canada. Katie has had impressive growth and has been willing to take some risks to do things, perhaps, before their time. Listen in as she shares her business trajectory.

On the podcast today is Katie O’Brien. Katie is a brand and website designer for the interior design industry. We are going to talk about the 5 website essentials that are needed, how to tell if you have outgrown your website, and the most common portfolio mistakes that people make. Enjoy!

Have you created a Profit First strategy and implemented it – then left it alone? Are you still confident in the percentages you have allocated? Is your system and process growing with the evolving financials and needs of your company? If you are not sure, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s talk about how to review your profit first strategy and how to tweak it to make it work for your business today.

Scott Beebe is the founder and head coach of My Business on Purpose and he's the host of the My Business on Purpose podcast. He loves to liberate small business owners from the chaos of working in their business and helps to get their lives back by assisting them in articulating and implementing intentional vision mission values, systems and processes.

For years I have been asked to write a book. And while I have co-authored a book and enjoyed that process, I felt like there was something else I was supposed to put out into the world. Today I want to introduce you to Metrique Solutions. A software application that will help you make financial decisions in your business in just minutes a month. On this episode I will share with you the origin of Metrique Solutions along with the problems it solves. I am excited – so let’s get to it.

As owners, we build and build and work and work on our business. But what happens when we need to step away for a time? Can the business move on without us? What if we are out for a hot minute and someone needs to step in on our behalf, have we established a company that they can move into? On the podcast today, we will look at the areas we need to consider for continuity of service if we, the owner, need to take a sabbatical.

Today I'm bringing you a replay of a podcast that we launched in the first few months of our podcast back in 2018. This particular podcast was in response to a question that Tracy Taylor emailed and asked me about how she could figure out her financials backwards. I work with my clients to create a top-down and a bottom-up model of their financials. And on this episode, you will hear Tracy and I work through her numbers, I want you to really listen in for some actionable takeaways so that you can look at your business financials backwards.

I am so excited to have Carol Lang, of Carol Lang Interiors in NJ, on the podcast with me today. Carol is an excellent designer who has really learned to create her own path forward in this industry. We will be sharing her journey of discovery to clarify what she wants out of her business, and how that work is iterative and ongoing. I hope you enjoy!

On the podcast today with me, again is Kelcee Sparks. And she is the Director of Operations and Success for Scarlet Thread Consulting. You might remember that Kelcee and I did Episode 168, together on how to hire an operations person for your design firm. And in that episode, if you haven't listened you may want to go check it out. We discussed operations, building trust, working within your zone of genius and process, we really focused on what an operations person did and why you might need one. Today, we're going to go a little bit deeper. And we're going to really focus on the details of being ready, creating the first steps to move in the direction of hiring an operations person, we're going to talk 30-60-90 day plans. And we're also going to talk about creating a hybrid, so that sometimes the person may be in the office, and sometimes they may be working remotely. And so I hope that you gather a lot from this and are able to put it into practice.

Do you currently create a budget for your new year and then manage to it? If so, you are going to enjoy this podcast. If not, I ask that you listen with an open mind and perhaps are swayed to begin this process of financial management. Either way – let’s talk about budgets and how to manage to them effectively in your firm.

Joining me on the podcast today are Paige Risley and Beth Moffatt of We Recruit Well, both of these women have worked in the online space, both in positions of being virtual assistants. And now they have pulled together their resources and created a company, We Recruit Well, where they help place online resources for your company. And so we're going to talk today about what that process looks like, how to be prepared for hiring, and how to make sure that you are matched with the correct person.

Joining me on the podcast today is Peter Lang, owner of the designer CPA, Peter and I both have a heart for supporting this industry with good financial practices and understanding. And today we're going to talk about what we see as kind of the lifecycle, if you will, of bookkeeping and bookkeeping needs and the overwhelming hole and desire in the industry to have better bookkeeping practices. So I hope you enjoy the podcast and are able to see where you fit in the bookkeeping trajectory.

Each year we go through a process of setting our financial goals for the following year, or at least we should. And I don’t use the “should” word without consideration. Many of us hate to be told what to do, so my hope is that in this podcast you understand the why behind it and you decide for yourself that you ‘should’ create financial goals.

With me today is Rachael Bozsik, an international speaker and the “go-to” elite personal branding coach for high achieving interior designers. Rachael has been featured in Forbes, Glamour, at Harvard Business School, Oprah’s Leadership Academy and more. Our conversation today will focus on building out your niche, your authority and your visibility to attract your ideal client and keep your pipeline full.

Welcome to 2022! This year we are going to focus on metrics in our companies. Identifying what metrics are, what we need, and how to go about monitoring them. Last year it was all about strategy – and this year all about how to make the strategy work. Listen in for tips and tricks that will help you determine if you are still on task or not.

I am so excited to welcome Ceil DiGuglielmo of the Sew Much More podcast back to share the podcast with me continuing a 4-year tradition of reviewing our year and preparing for the next. Ceil is the owner of the custom drapery workroom, Sew Much More, a podcast by the same name, the owner of the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library, and the publisher of the Drapery & Design Digital Digest. Enjoy listening to us dig into the challenges and shifts that happened in 2021 and find out what books are on our holiday reading list.

Can we just talk for a few minutes about what it means to end the year well? Does it mean to have every job go our way? Does it mean to make more money than ever? Does it mean to barely get through it but still be standing? On today’s podcast we are going to chat about ending the year well – defining that – and using the little time we have left to do it.