87: Your Business Reality Check Starts Here

In this kickoff episode of our two-part series, I’m taking you behind the scenes of the work most designers avoid: facing the truth about what actually happened inside your business this year. Before we can build your 2026 vision (that’s coming in Part 2!), we have to strip away the assumptions, the emotions, the “I think I made money here… maybe?” and look at the real data. I’m talking revenue, margins, client load, time spent, energy, alignment—everything. I know this work is uncomfortable. But this is the difference between running a busy, high-cortisol design business… and building a profitable, strategic, scalable one.

In this episode, I dive into:
• Why most designers avoid looking at their numbers—and why that avoidance keeps you stuck
• The “numerical autopsy” that reveals what actually worked in your business
• How assumptions lead to hustle… but truth leads to strategy
• The difference between being busy and being profitable, and the real markers of each
• The revenue vs. margin conversation designers desperately need to hear
• How to evaluate your client load, your time, and your emotional bandwidth
• The 80/20 rule for figuring out which actions created the majority of your results
• How to identify your dream clients and reverse-engineer where they came from
• What your marketing actually delivered this year (and what was just noise)
• The one thing you already know isn’t working… and why you’re still doing it
• What it takes to build capacity instead of just pushing your capability until it snaps

This episode is your permission—and your push—to stop guessing about your business and start knowing. Because when you know the truth, you can actually make decisions that move you toward clarity, profitability, and a business that finally feels aligned with who you are now.

Part 2 is coming next, and that’s where we’ll take everything you uncover today and turn it into a vision and action plan for 2026 that isn’t emotional, frantic, or based on old patterns—but strategic, grounded, and sustainable.

If you’re ready to stop avoiding your numbers and start leading your business like a CEO, this one is for you.

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Transcript

 Hello everybody. Welcome back to Success by Design. It is Katie here, and I am so excited to talk to you today because I'm your coach who's actually still in the trenches designing multimillion dollar projects while helping you. Other interior designers build a business that works for you instead of you working for it.

And today I'm thrilled, we're kicking off a brand new mini series. It's a powerful one, and it's all about designing results in your business in 2026. And. You know how we always get started around here, so let's do it. Two trues and a lie. Are you ready? Here we go. Number one, most interior designers have no idea which part of their business actually made money this year.

Or number two, the more busy you were in 2025, the more profitable you probably were. Or number three, your business won't grow in 2026 unless you let go of at least one thing you're currently doing. Okay? So take a guess. I'm gonna tell you at the end of the episode, which one is the [00:01:00] lie and the two Trues.

So settle in, grab your coffee. Your Stanley or that designer approves sparkling water that makes you so happy right now, I'm not gonna lie, it's the poppy cranberry Christmas edition because today we're doing the thing that 90% of designers I coach avoid. Like to the nth degree, it is the worst place that you want to hang out.

And today we're gonna hug the porcupine and talk about it. We're getting brutally honest about the truth of what happened to your business in 2025. Now, why do designers skip this part? I we're gonna dive into that. The reality is when you skip it though, it keeps you stuck. So when we talk about scaling and growth, you're never gonna scale and grow if we don't do this hard work first, and let's just name it, most of us designers do not want to look at numbers.

That's just a reality. You would rather rearrange a client's living room virtually on Saturday. For free, [00:02:00] then open up your QuickBooks and you'd rather do one more tweaking the proposal moment than analyze your profit margin. And you'd probably rather clean out your fabrics library. And girl, I've seen some of y'all's fabrics libraries.

Then ask yourself, did this actually work? And I get it because here's the reality reflection requires two things, honesty and responsibility. First of all, you're gonna have to name it. Once you name it, you're gonna have to do something about it, and that's not always a pleasant place to be. This is why people don't go to the doctor, right?

You might have to face the music of hearing something you don't want to hear. The same is true in your business, and I, for lack of a better way to put it, we're gonna perform a numerical autopsy on your business and see what's working, what's not, and what's going on deep inside the bowels of your business.

This is about that honesty and responsibility, and those are two really powerful tools [00:03:00] of entrepreneurship. But they're also going to require exact things, and that's gonna take you though from six figures or low six figures to high six figures in, into seven figures, because you can choose, you could either be the $98,000 a year designer who's exhausted.

Or you can take 'em $350,000 a year with clarity. It really is that simple. Or you might even be that $1 million designer with direction and boundaries and time to breathe. The key here is you get to decide, but it's more than just a decision. You have to know where you are, where you've been, and where you want to go.

And when you skip that reflection process, you are gonna just build 2026 on top of the assumptions that you had in 2025, not the reality. Of actually what was in 2025 because assumptions lead to hustle. But the truth is gonna lead you to strategy. And today you are [00:04:00] choosing truth. And I know this isn't easy, which is why I'm so glad you're showing up for it.

But you have to know what is going on in your business. In fact, I remember when I was broke out of college, I think my first job paid $30,000. And I was always terrified of money, especially because I grew up extremely poor with a single mom. And so there was this fear factor that came with numbers. And I remember telling myself after I got my first job, every time I felt fear.

I was gonna go log into my checking account to see what was going on. Every time I felt fear, and I'm not gonna lie, there were some days when I was logging in once or twice a day just to see what was in my account, because I knew I had to get over the fear of looking at the numbers. If I had never done that in my personal life, I would've never been able to start a business a few years later and then do that in my business life and then grow my current company into a multimillion dollar

coast to coast firm. [00:05:00] The reality is you have to get to the point where your emotions are not tied to your numbers. They're data sets that you can then manipulate and make strategic changes off of. That can be hard. I'm gonna get a little spicy here because someone needs to say this in our industry. Busy is not a badge of honor.

Busy is not your goal and busy. Most importantly, it is not the evidence of your success. In fact, what I have found through talking to numerous interior designers throughout my coaching career is that busy is usually evidence that you are undercharging. You don't have boundaries, you have too many clients not taking turns, and that you probably need to raise your rate.

You may not have processes, and at the end of the day, and this one is so hard to say y'all, but it's so real. You are compensating for a deeper fear of slowing down. [00:06:00] You have gotten so used to being busy that because it feels familiar to you to be running on high cortisol levels, you just keep doing it.

And if you sit for a minute, you start freaking out. That requires reprogramming, which we work through. Uh, especially when we sit down to coach and talk about what's really going on under the hood of your business. Here's the difference, okay? Busy is gonna fill your calendar, but profitable is gonna fill your bank account, so you get to decide.

Do you like running on high cortisol and being busy all the time, or do you wanna get to the point where your bank account is filled, you're running, clearly you have the systems, the processes, and the people in the right place to yield the profitability. I realize that's a lot of peace, but it all works together.

Busy may make you feel important, but I'm gonna tell you, profitability makes you feel free, and there's nothing better than that feeling. Busy is also gonna lead to [00:07:00] burnout. I see you, you come see me. I've seen a lot of tears on my coaching calls because we are fried, we are tired, we know we're not doing it the right way and we want to change.

And that's why I so admire the vulnerability of tears when you come see me and you're like, this just isn't working. Or I can't break through this six figure mark. And I don't know why. And I'm so frustrated 'cause I'm trying so hard. I just wanna tell you, I see you. I know it's a lot, and we can figure it out together.

I do it every day because profitability is what is gonna build your business. When we can get you past the busy, and I'll tell you, there's some hallmark signs if you're like, well, am I running on busy? Yeah. Busy designers are easy to spot. First of all, you have completely chaotic schedules. You're skipping meals and you're literally running on the adrenaline every single day of, I just need to get through this install.

I just need to call this client. I just need to, and it's exhausting, but when you get to profitable, [00:08:00] what are the hallmarks that I'm seeing? Especially as we look at these six figure designers who are looking to scale to seven, they are figuring out their calm. They are clear, they are strategic, they're selective, which is why I'm always very humbled and honored when you choose me as your coach because you're not chasing work.

You are choosing work. And if you're not in that position, we should talk. The work can chase you, but you get to choose, and that's when you know as a CEO, you're in the driver's seat of your business. So how do we get from busy to profitable? The key is data. And I realize that is not sexy, but there's data that matters and there's data that doesn't.

And we're gonna start teasing out what you really need to be looking at. 'cause if we take data as a whole, it's a very overwhelming topic, especially for those of us that maybe don't have an MBA if you don't. Um, even as an MBA, I will tell you my two accounting courses were my least favorite of my [00:09:00] entire graduate career.

So if you are feeling that way. It's okay. We're gonna boil down to what really matters. I want you to think about your revenue. Where did your money actually come from? Not what you thought it came from, but what are does? What does your data show about where you were actually profitable? Is it service by service, package by package, client by client?

I want you to look at each one of those if you don't know how. You have my full permission to press pause at this very moment and call your CPA and make an appointment. You cannot set yourself up for success in 2026 if you don't even know where the money was coming from in 2025, and if it wasn't, if you have a year where you're saying, I didn't pay myself near what I should have made.

Yeah, I see you. Go call your accountant again. Let's figure out where you're making money and where you're losing money, so we know how to reprogram and rechart your course for the coming year. I also wanna talk about [00:10:00] profit margin because revenue can be a vanity metric. If I say I have a multimillion dollar firm, I could be taking home $30,000 a year.

Now that's not the case at all, but I have met designers who are making three or 400,000 a year. And literally me taking home $30,000. If that's where you're at, call me. Because revenue is a vanity metric. The reality is margin is where we see maturity. Margin is a grownup business. Your margin is tells you everything you need to know about how profitable your business is.

If you're not sure what that number is, let's talk because you should be making. Money. You are not in this to be a nonprofit organization, and that's okay. You're providing an exceptional service every time, or at least that should be the goal. So I want you to look at which office or which offers were [00:11:00] actually worth your time, where you got the margin you were looking for and which were secretly costing you money.

You may have had revenue, but it wasn't giving you margin. I also want you to think about your client load. How many clients did it take to hit the revenue that you wanted? Sometimes it only takes a couple really great clients. Sometimes it takes 10. And think about that. In the toll it took on, you would do you do that number again next year?

A lot of you come to me and you're like, I have plenty of clients. That's not the problem, Katie. The problem is I'm on the overwhelm realm. I'm on the cortisol spike, and I'm dying out here. When you say that to me, I literally, the next question you'll hear me ask every time is, what are you charging?

Because if your demand is that high, you need to raise your rates because there's only so much supply of you and you've got an overwhelming demand from clients. [00:12:00] The lever you get to pull in between those two is your charge. What are you charging? And I want you to think about that client load that you had in 2025.

Does that number light you up inside or does it make you feel overwhelmed and want to go take a nap because you were physically exhausted? If you're having too many clients, we need to start elevating on the client ladder and getting you up to higher value clients. I want you to also think about your time spent.

Where did your hours go? And this is why if you are not using a time tracking software, you are leaving money on the table. You are undercutting yourself, I guarantee you, and you're also not realizing what's taking the majority of your time. Even if you don't wanna do this week after week, month after month, which is how I often feel when it comes to monitoring my calories and macros.

I want you to just track one week. Your mind will be blown at what is taking your time. And as we talked about on the last episode, that 20 [00:13:00] minutes of being a CEO every week, use your 20 minutes to see where your time went, and then calibrate one thing around that that you can change to make a better use of that time.

I want you to also think about your energy. Which projects made you so excited that you were dying to delve in every day, and which ones really did make you feel like I am changing things and making a difference in this difference in this client's life? Yeah. Creativity and intuition are business metrics too, and I want you to think about them that way.

Just because they're intangible doesn't mean that they're not just as valuable. And finally, I want you to think about your alignment. Was the client aligned with the designer? You are now not the one you were three years ago, not the one when you started your business. And I want you to think about that and write down that truth.

As long as you're not driving in the car listening to us today. Make a middle note if you are, but I really want you to write that down unfiltered. [00:14:00] No one else is gonna see it but you. But you need to sit down and think about. Are my clients aligning with who I have become because you are becoming, you are growing, you are changing, and your clients need to do the same.

. I want to ask you something, something real. What is one thing in your business. You already know isn't working, but you're still doing it anyway. I don't even need to know your reason why you're still doing it. In fact, you may I roll at yourself and go, I can't believe I'm still doing this, but I'm doing X.

That's great. DM me your answer. Find me on Instagram, find me on LinkedIn. I read every one of those and I respond personally, and I promise I won't judge you because I have been there. In fact, it can be really hard to admit those things for me. There In my business, especially early on, I was trying to be all things to all people, and I was still doing all of my accounting and bookkeeping.

Worst idea ever. I'm gonna tell you all, praise God. My income does [00:15:00] not depend on me being a brilliant accounting person, 40 to 60 hours a week, I would die. I would be homeless probably to be completely frank with you, but I needed to get real with myself and say, this isn't my happy place. This isn't making me money.

I need to stop doing this and find someone else to do it. Also, I'll tell you one thing that I was doing in my business that wasn't working was working with residential clients. I am not a residential designer, as you know, if you've been around here for two hot minutes, is I am very direct and we will do the hard work.

And then we will see the results, but residential design involved a lot of emotions day in and day out, and marital counseling when we couldn't agree on paint colors and on and on. And I just felt myself shriveling up and dying on the inside. When I finally was brave enough to switch over to commercial design, that lit me up.

And I'll tell you what, it lit up our profitability as well as a company. [00:16:00] Okay, so once you've gathered the data, we've made the appointment with the CPA, or we know where we're at. We've gotta separate the noise from those needle movers. And so here's what I want you to look at. I love the 80 20 rule. I apply it to so many different things in my own life, primarily my eating and snack habits.

But it also works in your business, which 20% of your actions produced 80% of your results. Let me give you a couple examples to help explain, maybe it was raising your minimum, maybe it was using a real process instead of winging it on every project, maybe it was finally saying no to those low budget time sucks.

And maybe it was outsourcing your drafting, your procurement, your accounting, something like that. Which 20% of your actions produced 80% of your results? And I want you to think about. Once you find that, what wins? Can you repeat? And which ones felt like random luck? That's a really important question because if you can [00:17:00] get a process going around your wins, guess what?

They do repeat themselves. And the ones that feel like random luck, I would tell you. Sit back and take a second look. Look under the hood of your business and see, was that random luck or what? Why did that feel like random luck? What actions precipitated that result? I also want you to think about capacity versus capability.

Did you grow your capacity or just stretch your capability until it snapped? Because capacity is sustainable, but if you're just running on capability, you are going to burn out your human and you will eventually reach your limit, which is different than capacity. When you're controlling your capacity and you're looking what is actually doable, that becomes sustainable.

But if you're like, I've got it. I'm totally capable, I can handle this, and you keep piling that on, guess what? Then we get to burnout

 when we think about our clients, which I want you to do as well as [00:18:00] we really start mining down what happened to us in 2025. Think of one to three names of clients who were absolutely dream clients. What made them dream clients? And then I want you to think about how did they come to you? Because this isn't luck.

Again, we're gonna turn this into a process. Once you know that you can create a process around attracting more of them. Was it your messaging? Was it where you were volunteering your time? Where did they find you? And start showing up more there. And then we're gonna look at marketing. You gotta have the return on investment in marketing.

It always. Kills me When businesses start suffering and the first thing they do is cut off marketing. 'cause they say, oh, there's not a quantifiable ROI. I wanna tell you, there's a very quantifiable ROI, and we're gonna talk about that. What brought in those clients? Look at your posts and what was just posting to post.

Right? Sometimes we feel like we have to do that. That's the [00:19:00] worst idea ever. You need to understand who your ideal client is and how to reach them and what that looks like. And I'll tell you right now, the designers who grow year over year are the designers who study their own behavior. The way a designer studies a space, you've gotta approach it with curiosity.

You're gonna approach it with observation. Here's the hard stuff. You gotta be willing to edit it, and you gotta be willing to elevate. If you can do that for your business, like you do that for a space, all of a sudden everything changes. All right. Here's the emotional part. I've saved the hardest part for last.

We're climbing a mountain today, folks, you've gotta let go. This is the emotional part, and here, this is so much harder than knowing the numbers, but you've gotta let go of the version of your business. They got you here, but it's not gonna get you there. Oh, this gets real. So that may mean retiring a service that feels safe, but is keeping you small.

Maybe it means raising your minimums. [00:20:00] Maybe it's releasing those clients that drain and suck the life out of you. And maybe it also means owning that you've outgrown a certain price point. And not only is that okay, that's great. Maybe it means stepping fully into leadership instead of hiding inside design work that feels comforting but isn't your future.

I remember when I had to do that and start letting go of some of that design components that I loved, but that also didn't allow me to grow. Now, it's not to say I still don't review them, make changes to them, and I'm not involved in them. I very much am, but the 80% of the work I let someone else do, and then I come in for the final 20.

I tell my own coaching clients this all the time. The business you're dreaming of requires a different version of you than the business you're running. And not only is that okay, I wanna encourage you to evolve. Your business is not only allowed to evolve with you, it should. And that is that accordion model I talk about of [00:21:00] expansion and contraction, because both are really powerful.

So you're gonna reflect, that's your contraction. Then you're gonna build strategy. That's your expansion. Both are necessary and both are beautiful and both are part of growing. As a CEO designer, I want to see that for you. Remember our two truths and a lie. Most designers have no idea which part of their business made money.

The more busy you were in 2025, the more profitable you probably were. Your business won't grow unless you let go of something you're currently doing. Which one of those is the lie? I hope you can call it out. No problem. At this point in the episode, the more busy you were in 2025, the more profitable you were.

Yeah. That's not the case because being busy does not make you profitable, but now you know exactly what to do instead. Right. Alright. I hope that this helps. I want to see you next week back for the second part of this mini series where we're gonna dive in [00:22:00] deeper and really figure out how to build the business that you need for 2026 and one that works for you rather than you working for it.

Until next time, take care.