84. Overcoming Self-Doubt as a Designer: Why Confidence Is Your Real Growth Strategy

If you’ve ever looked at another designer’s success and wondered, “What do they have that I don’t?” - this episode is for you. I’m digging into the real mindset work behind scaling a design business - and it’s not about better clients, a bigger team, or even a new offer. It’s about confidence. Because growth doesn’t start when your circumstances change; it starts when you decide to trust yourself again.

I’m sharing how self-doubt sneaks in even when things are working, what it really means to lead with confidence, and the small mindset shifts that help you rebuild trust in your decisions, your design, and your direction.

In This Episode:

• The subtle ways self-doubt shows up in successful design businesses (and why you might not notice it)
• Why confidence — not strategy — is the foundation for sustainable growth
• How to rebuild self-trust when you feel uncertain about your next step
• The difference between making decisions from fear vs. from leadership
• How to recognize when it’s time to stop waiting for permission and start leading with clarity

You can have all the strategy, systems, and team support in the world — but if you don’t trust yourself to make confident decisions, your business will always feel harder than it has to. Confidence is what turns chaos into clarity. It’s what helps you lead your team, price your services, and make bold moves that actually move you forward.

If you’ve been stuck in the cycle of second-guessing, this episode will remind you: you already have what it takes. You just need to decide to believe it again.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey there, fellow designers. Welcome back to Success by Design, the podcast where we are talking about all things business and design. And most importantly, what I care about is building a business for you that works for you, not you working for it. And as always, we start off with two truths and a lie.

It's my favorite thing. So let's get started. Number one, you can be an incredible designer and still feel like you're failing a business. Number two, confidence comes naturally once you hit a certain level of success. Or number three, design school prepared you to run a profitable business. Yeah, all of these are great, right?

Because today's episode we're talking about. Stopping doubting yourself. This is so incredibly hard for some of you to do it. It's like kicking a really bad habit, and we're gonna talk about it because it's one I've struggled with too, and let's just call it out. It's doubt right? It's sneaky and it manifests in so many different ways, [00:01:00] especially if you're a people pleaser.

It could sound like, who am I to raise my rates? Or maybe I'm not quite ready to hire help or I really relate to this one. Um, other designers have it all figured out. What's wrong with me? I will never forget the feeling I had the first time I walked into High Point Market and I see. All these cute designers in cute shoes with cute handbags, and I'm like, oh, they look like they totally have their shit together, and I am.

Should I be here? Is this what I do? I started in color. I don't have my undergraduate degree in design. What am I doing here? It was the worst, most intimidating amount of doubt I have felt a long time in my career. So if this is something you can relate to, know that you're not alone. Maybe it's when you attend your local chapter of other interior designers and you're like, she's crushing it.

Why am I not? And I just wanna tell you, as someone who coaches designers every day who show up looking [00:02:00] great on our Zoom calls, by the way, no shade there. I'm just saying not everything is as it appears. So we're gonna talk about how to do this, but stop doubting, okay? Because. Let's talk about how being a designer and being a business owner are two totally different skill sets.

In fact, one of my best friends is an MD doctor, and her and I talk about this all the time in medical school and throughout her undergraduate and graduate journey, journey and Fellowship and all of these places. She had exactly one business class, one, and here she is and she can do incredible things with a human body, right?

But she didn't know how to ever run a business or how to choose what specialty to go into and why. Oh my gosh. Brain surgeons make so much more money than say, a general practitioner. I feel like when it comes to design, we never get that conversation either. Now, in all honesty and, and a fair defense of the design schools out there, it's getting better, but it's not there yet.

If you're an [00:03:00] old school designer, like I tend to be, having been in the industry almost 20 years. You for sure didn't get this. In fact, I got so frustrated I went and got my MBA because I was so irritated that I didn't know how to run a business. I couldn't read a p and l sheet, profit and loss for those of you that are asking that question.

And that's what led me to do it. So if you're sitting here and you're like, I have an impeccable eye for color, or I really have great taste in furnishings, but when I go to look at that p and l sheet. It's not a great moment because managing clients, setting up systems or figuring out what I should price myself at, it's not my happy place because really I don't know what I'm doing.

Let me just start by saying you're not doing anything wrong. This just means you're human and that you are still brave enough. To start a business, put a feather in your hat. You know, the immense amount of courage that takes to say, I don't have a business background, but I have a passion for what I do, and I'm gonna figure it out and I'm gonna show up.

I'm gonna listen to this [00:04:00] podcast. I'm gonna hire a coach who could really walk me through this. That takes so much courage. Most of us are never taught how to run a business, and that is okay. Or if you were taught how to business or how, how. Sorry, Angie, or if you were taught how to run a business, you weren't taught how to navigate that emotional rollercoaster that comes with entrepreneurship and especially client management.

So here you are, you've started your own design business. You've been at it for a hot minute. You're finding yourself wearing a dozen different hats on your best day. Maybe you're the creative director, you're the accountant, you're the marketer, you're the therapist when the crazy housewife calls and is having a meltdown, because the wallpaper was much larger print than she thought.

If you are feeling doubt in those moments, I just wanna take a second and tell you that is completely normal. And if you weren't, I would tell you, you were out of touch with your feelings in your emotional space. But I also wanna share this with you. Your lack of growth or that satisfaction is [00:05:00] not because you not talented.

You absolutely are. It is not because you're not amazing at what you do, it's because you've been trying to do it all without a roadmap, right? You've been trying to figure it all out on your own. And there's this expectation that just because you hung out your own shingle, you should know how to run your own business.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It's like, well, I have a logo and I have a name, and I have a storefront, and I turn on my lights. And somehow you're just supposed to know how to run a business is how this often feels right. Nothing could be further from the truth because designing a business takes just as much creativity and prowess.

As designing a beautiful room, we often think that creativity should automatically translate into this leadership and structure and strategy, and it just doesn't. And that's okay. Like let's think about it like your CPAI [00:06:00] adore my CPAI praise God for my CPAI in my worst nightmares would not be a CPA. But we wouldn't expect them to know how to design a space that we design, right?

So how do we expect ourselves to totally understand the finances or marketing or scaling, especially when we aren't educated in that background or have that experience? You just don't know what you don't know, which is become the mantra of my late forties. Tell me what I don't know. There's so much out there.

I don't know, because when I figured that out, that asking that critical question of tell me what I don't know. I am then in a position to be poised for growth because I've opened myself up to receive new information, new understanding, and most importantly, maybe a new perspective that I had never even considered in my wildest dreams.

So let this be an encouragement to you. You don't have to have all the answers right now. [00:07:00] I certainly don't, and any coach out there, business or design coach or whoever you're talking to who says they do, you should just run Forest Run, right? Nobody has all the answers, but we do have to be willing to learn and to take one step at a time and keep showing up.

And maybe you're feeling really overwhelmed right now. Maybe you feel like your business is just one never ending to-do list and your inbox is overflowing. You're not even sure where you're supposed to focus next. Okay? I want you to just take a deep breath with me. We're gonna slow this way down in a very big way.

Uh, literally, I want you to stop and inhale and exhale and stop expecting yourself to do all of this because you're not behind. I'm gonna tell you this right now. You are not failing. Instead, you are learning And the most powerful three letter, sorry, Angie, and the most powerful three letter word that [00:08:00] I have taught my kids and that I use with my coaching clients and I use with myself is yet, yet I may have an UN to do list yet.

I know it doesn't always have to be that way. I may not understand business finances yet. I can still figure this out. You are not far behind. You are not failing, you are learning. And that overwhelming feeling we get in the pit of our stomach, which sometimes happens to me if I haven't gotten through the end of my day the way that I want it to.

That says like, oh my gosh, I still gonna send that email and I forgot this one thing. And that like nagging anxiety. It's just your brain saying something really important. Hey, I'm trying to do something here. Without a new system, I don't have a system to support this. When I start realizing that it changes everything, because I [00:09:00] realize there's a way not to change my feeling, but to control it in a healthy and productive way.

Yes, I feel this nagging pit. Okay, why am I feeling this nagging in the pit of my stomach? That tells me that I don't have a system that's working well, that's capturing what I need captured before my day ends. Maybe I just need to put a 30 minute block on the end of my day whereby I can just sit and think for a minute of what I've missed throughout the day and what I really need to do to put a bow on the end of my day so I can go into my evening successfully.

The truth is systems and support can be learned. You can learn all of this. You don't have to live with that horrible pit that sits in the seat of your stomach. And that's why I love coaching designers at this stage, because you don't have to stay in that chaos. You have the ability to move forward with intention, and it starts by acknowledging that overwhelm.

I love what my therapist says. [00:10:00] Feelings are real, but it doesn't mean they're true. And I would add an appendix to that. It doesn't mean they can't be changed, right? Because you can have the feeling, you can put a system in place and a process and get the right coach in there helping you and then you could change the outcome.

I wanted to take just a minute and share with you some of my biggest moments of self-doubt. Throughout my entire career. There was so much self-doubt. The first time I showed up to do a color consultation with a cardboard box and those three fan decks, and I was gonna color someone's house. I will never forget that feeling.

And then what was crazy is when they referred me to their friends. But there is so much doubt in that moment. There was so much doubt the first time I showed up to a multimillion dollar home and walked in and thought, they are trusting me with this space. That is an immense responsibility, and I was absolutely terrified to take it on.

Would I be [00:11:00] able to do it? Would they be happy with the result? Would the client be easy to work with? These are all the doubt thoughts that came into my head. And then three years after doing residential. So much doubt about stepping into the commercial space. These are multi multimillion dollar projects, and everything I'm doing to them is either going to increase or decrease that value.

And not only that, but now all of a sudden we have investors involved who have bought this property and they're expecting a return on their investment. So how do I make sure I'm doing right before them and then every day they're waiting on me to create or design something. It's costing them money because.

Those are times when they can't raise the rents yet because they don't have a final deliverable. Well, that creates an immense amount of doubt and insecurity if ever there was some, and then the time I went to buy insurance. You wanna talk about doubt. I don't know for any of you that have done it, but the amount of things you [00:12:00] have to think of that can go wrong when you're in buying insurance is horrible.

It should come with literally a bottle of wine because you have to think about all the ways your business can fail and then insure against that. Oh my gosh. You wanna talk about creating doubt? It's right there. Also, let's talk about the first time I got a letter from the IRS. Yeah. That happened there.

It's happened a lot. It doesn't mean I don't have a good business. When you're running a business, there's tons of things that are being done financially, and sometimes the IRS misses stuff. Yeah. In fact they've even given us some money back because they've missed stuff. But the first time you get a letter in your mailbox that says, IRS, I literally thought I was gonna be the next housewife of where Ed ever headed off to prison.

It was absolutely terrifying and created so much doubt of why am I doing this? Should I even be doing this? Do I, what did, what went wrong? What mistake did I make? Instead of thinking. This [00:13:00] is probably a paperwork issue that needs to be worked through, which is what it actually was, but in that moment, it was absolutely filled with doubt and fear.

Here's the interesting thing. You can either choose to sit in that space and decorate your pit of fear and doubt and paralysis, or you can build yourself a ladder out of it, right? And so what I decided to do is every time I felt that fear or that doubt, I would sit in that place and then figure out what was real versus what was true, and then move on from there.

And now it's become a challenge when I feel that creeping in and it's, it is, it's a gut feeling. Doubt is very, very tangible in my body. I sit with her for a moment and then go, oh, I recognize you. You're an opportunity in disguise. Because now I have the ability to build a system. I have the ability to call up our team.

I have the ability to change the outcome, and [00:14:00] that is a very different place to be in.

Do.

So I want you to think about this. This is a really like deep place to be. 'cause it means we might be acknowledging where we're not great in our businesses and I'm still learning things in my business. Stop expecting yourself to just know and think everybody else is doing it perfectly and they're cute little shoes at High Point Market and has it all together.

Girlfriend, I'm here to tell you that is not real. But you do need to start moving forward in an intentional way and giving yourself grace along the way. You don't know what you don't know, and that's all right. It's okay to hang out in that space, but now you are ripe to do something about it. You get to pick.

Now that you know how you wanna move forward with the acknowledgement that you may need help in that area. And if you think, like I said, that I have this all figured out, I don't, that's why I still have coaches I work with because we're all on a journey. And [00:15:00] when we can say, help me fill in the gaps, who do I hire first?

Or maybe I'm thinking about launching a new service. Is that a good idea? Or, Ooh, this is a tough one. Saying no to a client that just isn't a good fit for you. Ooh, that's tough stuff. But when you do, you are in a position where your business is once again working for you rather than you working for it.

Okay? So let's talk about what you can do right now to move forward in your business. And I want you to grab a sticky note. If you're driving, just say it out loud with me. I know your kids are gonna be in the backseat going, what is going on up there? My kids do it all the time. I want you to write this down.

I am learning. That's it. That's your action step for today. Because when you shift that inner dialogue that we all have, and sometimes it drives me nuts, but when you change it from, I should already know this, or everybody else has it together to I am learning, all of a sudden everything changes. Because when you're operating [00:16:00] from the standpoint of I'm learning, you're giving yourself permission to ask for help, you're giving yourself permission to book a problem solving call with me, free of charge.

You're giving yourself permission to join an organization. That involves design in your area. You're giving yourself permission to be a mentor and to have a mentor. And more than anything, you're gonna find yourself having this emotional space, this space that allows for growth instead of guilt that you should have this all figured out.

So whether your next step, once you write on that sticky note, I am learning. Maybe your next step is to book that problem solving Call or join that design community, or finally start documenting your processes. Whatever it looks like, just remind yourself. Learning is an active verb. This isn't a one time isolated event.

I have learned. Did you ever hear anybody say that? No. We're all learning. It's an ongoing process whereby we are trying to all figure it out [00:17:00] in one degree or another. There's still things I'm figuring out in my business. Oh my gosh, there are still new problems that arise every single day that we need a new system to address.

Or maybe it's, um, more what I like to call a human problem and that someone on our team is really struggling. Why is that? How do we work through that with them? We are all learning and we all should be learning because when you bring learning into the equation, guilt goes away. So I wanna go back as we wrap up this episode to our two truths and a Lie.

First of all, we said you can be an incredible designer and still feel like you're failing at business. Number two, confidence comes naturally once you hit a certain level of success. And number three, design School prepared you to run a profitable business. I hope by now it's a no brainer and that you know that.

E, whether you did or did not go to design school, whatever you did, you probably were never prepared to run a profitable business. You learned how to either create beauty or maybe your undergraduates degree is in [00:18:00] something completely different. It's okay that you never learned how to build a business because business is a skill and the great news about skills is they can be learned.

So I want you to stop doubting yourself. Hear me deeply and truly, you are already doing hard things every single day. I hear from you. I sit on Zoom calls with you. I encourage you along the way, and I see the mountains you are climbing, especially in this economic environment. It is insane, right? We have no idea where the economy is at.

You are already designing spaces that are changing how people feel, and now I want you to design a business that does the same for you. That's why if you are feeling like this, like hits home with you, I really want you to join me for a 15 minute problem solving session. Bring me your best, hardest problem that you are working through or struggling with, or just feeling downright defeated by, and let's get on a call and talk about it.

Let's talk [00:19:00] about that feeling, whether it's doubt or overwhelm, and let's start identifying what we can do to shift, move forward, and gain the clarity and confidence you want. Because you don't have to do this alone, and you certainly don't have to have it all figured out. Remember the powerful word yet, you just have to start.

And until next time, remember, your business should be working for you, not you working for it, and I would be honored and humbled to help you get there. Have a great week.