88. Turn Your 2026 Vision Into a Design Business That Actually Works

Welcome back, designers! This is Part 2 of The Design Business Growth Blueprint, and today we’re shifting from the hard-number reality of Part 1 into something just as important -  building your 2026 strategy like a true CEO. Not from vibes, not from wishful thinking, and definitely not from “I just want to make more next year,” but from real data, real capacity, and real clarity about the life you actually want to live.
In this episode, I’m walking you through how I create strategic growth plans inside my own multimillion-dollar design firm, and how you can do the same. Grab your notebook and your favorite pen, we’re going deep.

IN THIS EPISODE, I BREAK DOWN:
• The difference between being a business owner running on feelings and being a CEO making decisions from data
• The four essential data categories every designer needs to evaluate before planning 2026: revenue + profit reality, time tracking, true capacity, and demand
• Why numbers don’t shame you — they reveal you — and how that clarity becomes your power
• How to evaluate where your time actually goes and why time, not money, determines your scalability
• Why your business should expand and contract like an accordion depending on the season of life you’re in
• The three must-haves for growing into high six figures and seven figures: repeatable services, pricing that reflects demand and capacity, and a proactive team plan
• The biggest traps designers fall into every year, feeling-based goals, vanity 
• Why the 2026 Business Blueprint Worksheet will help you set up a confident, strategic Q1

 This episode is all about stepping into your CEO era - not by hustling harder, but by grounding your decisions in numbers, capacity, clarity, and the reality of the life you’re building. As you look toward 2026, I want you to sit with one big question: What does your life need next year? When you honor that answer, everything else gets clearer.

If you want support building out your strategy, head over to fixmydesignbiz.com and grab the 2026 Business Blueprint Worksheet when you register for the masterclass. It will walk you through your data, help you find your gaps and opportunities, and give you the clarity you need to set goals like a CEO, not a business owner running on fumes.

I can’t wait to hear what your life is asking for in 2026. Send me a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn and tell me - I read every single one.

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Transcript

 Okay. Hey, designers. Welcome back to Success by Design, where we blend strategy, intuition, and a little bit of tough love, but also a whole lot of clarity to help you build a business that supports the life you actually want, not the life you feel trapped inside of. In fact, today we're talking about something that makes some of you, it's a very small percentage, but some of you light up and others immediately reach for your nearest emotional support.

Latte. I know I have mine. We're talking about building your 2026 strategy like a CEO, not a business owner. We are done with guessing. We're gonna be done with being vague, and we are done with the, I don't know, I just kind of wanna make more money next year. Yeah, this episode is all about turning your 2025 results into real data-driven decisions that guide your pricing, your time, your team, and your growth.

So I want you to grab your notebook, grab your favorite [00:01:00] pen. I know I have my favorite blue gel pen, and let's go. But first, you know what time it is. Two truths and a lie, and listen closely because the lie today will be revealed at the end, and it's a little bit sneakier than usual. Number one, you should be able to predict at least 70% of your 2026 revenue right now.

Yes, that's today if your business model is structured correctly. Number two, the number one reason designers don't scale past 250 to 500,000 is because they underestimate how much time their business actually takes to run. And you'll hear me say it over and over again. Time is your most valuable asset.

We're gonna deep dive that in a minute. Number three, feeling ready is the most important factor in setting your revenue goal for next year. Think about those really closely. Stick around to the end and we'll do the big reveal. So let's get started. What is it that successful CEOs do differently? Because designers tell me all the time, [00:02:00] Katie, I want to be more strategic, or Katie, I want to feel like the CEO instead of the designer and the bookkeeper and the salesperson, and the admin and the therapist.

And listen, I get it. I built a multimillion dollar. Coast to coast design firm. I'm still actively practicing in that business. I'm not coaching from the bleachers. I am on this field with you, and here is the simplest truth. CEOs don't make decisions from feelings. They make decisions from data. Another way to put this, there are business owners who make decisions from feelings, but CEOs drive data.

Now, don't get me wrong, because you've heard me talk about it a number of times. Do we honor intuition? Yes, absolutely. It's one of the greatest tools we have. I'm constantly teaching my daughters to trust their gut. What does your instinct tell you? You don't have to explain it to me, but what do you think is the right thing to do here?

I'm gonna be honest with you though. There's a catalyst to [00:03:00] intuition, and it works best when you give it something to work with. And that's why I wanna talk to you today about four data categories that are really gonna inform that 2026 strategy and help guide that intuition. The first one we're gonna talk about is revenue and profit reality.

And if you're saying, well, it sounds like the same thing now, completely different. Revenue is what you had come into your business. Profit is what you took to your bank account in your business, your money you put in your pocket. I don't want you to go, well, I think I made No, no, no. This isn't about, again, feelings.

This is about what you actually made. If you're driving, don't worry. I have a beautiful worksheet that I have prepared for you that when you register for the masterclass coming up. You are going to get access to that worksheet in advance, and it's gonna help walk you through this idea. It's gonna talk about total revenue, total profit, the [00:04:00] profit you made on each service, how much revenue you made per project type, and what was the average revenue you made per client.

And if you're going, whoa, Katie, I have no idea about any of that. First of all, let me tell you, you are not alone. I get that a lot. But second of all, that's why I created this worksheet in this masterclass so that you can be in a position so you know where you're at. Because it's only when we know where we're at, that we can actually choose where we want to go.

And I get you and I see you, and you feel shame in your numbers. You're like, oh, I don't know. What if I look at that And that's not what I expected it to be. I'm gonna be really honest with you. Numbers don't shame you. They reveal you and once revealed, you can decide where you want to go from there. You are not stuck there, but you have to know where you are if you're ever going to leave it.

Alright, let's talk about time. Time is your most valuable asset. You'll hear me say it over and over again. You can make more money, you can hire more people, [00:05:00] you can take on more projects, but you cannot give you yourself as the CEO, not just the business owner, but as the CEO more time. And this is one that makes people feel uncomfortable.

But if you're really serious about scaling, I want you to track a week or two of your actual time. Where is the time sink? Where are you irreplaceable versus absolutely replaceable? Where is there inefficiency in your business? Because this is straight up, tough talk businesses grow or die based on time.

In fact, this leads to our third concept, which is capacity versus reality. And these go hand in hand your time plus your team's time equals your actual capacity. See, the reason why I said capacity versus reality, we have an idea of what we think capacity is. Reality is what's actually there. So if you don't know your [00:06:00] realistic capacity, you can't know your revenue ceiling.

Now, it's not to say we can't buy back time. We absolutely can, but again, we don't know if it's worth spending the money to buy back time until we know where we're at, until we know what our actual capacity is. When we look at your time as a CEO, not just a business owner, but the CEO and your team's time, I also want you to look at your demand data, and this really gets into marketing.

You have to know as you've positioned yourself for 2026, where your clients are coming from. Is it referrals? Is it Pinterest? Is it networking? Maybe it's LinkedIn. Figure out where they're coming from and double down on those areas and which projects are converting at the highest rate. Is there a reason why?

Is there a trend? Some of this is gonna be tangible, some of it's gonna be intangible, but we're starting to do the deep dive and most importantly, which clients pay your way. Which ones fight you on every single [00:07:00] invoice. Once we can start looking at these four areas where we're talking about your revenue and profit reality, we're talking about where you're spending your time, we're talking about your capacity, and then we talk about your demand.

We can start building your pricing, your hiring, your marketing, everything into your 2026 plan. I want you to also think about designing your business around your life. This was a huge one for me, and this is why many entrepreneurs launch their own business. They want a lifestyle not working for the man, as we've said for years, right?

But the reality is, somewhere along the way, this is easily lost, and I see you 'cause you come to my coaching practice and you ask for help, and I so admire your courage in doing so because it's so vulnerable. This is about remembering why you designed your own business. And this is something I've had to think about in my life over and over again because there have been [00:08:00] seasons of expansion.

Like the year we grew 15 x and there's been seasons of contraction. Like when I chose to have a baby in almost 35 and then the second baby at almost 38. And through raising little kids and going, hold the phone a minute because I gotta get these kids out the door to kindergarten and I never get to do this over again.

And then once they were saying, we're gonna grow into a national design firm, so cool to be able to do that. Because your business is an accordion, it should expand and contract as you need it to. In fact, it's been really interesting to me personally because lately my kids are, well, they're nine and 11, but lately they've been taking a lot more time, I felt like, than even when they were little.

And I was so frustrated. I said to my husband one day, I am like, I thought this was supposed to be getting easier, not harder. And then it reminded me of an article where I had to reread the headline from a few weeks ago in Parent Magazine where it said that so many parents are leaving the work. Force when their kids are not little, it's when they're tweens and [00:09:00] teens, because the amount of parenting that it takes to launch these kids is more than it ever has been before.

And when I reread that headline, I thought, no, this isn't right. And then I thought about it in my own life and I thought, yeah, this is right. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going anywhere, but just even feeling validated and then changing my time around to make sure that I'm there for those one hour end of day conversations that happen with my tween and take up so much time and emotional energy was so important to me.

You should have a business that allows you to do that or to do something similar as it pertains to your life if you're trying to expand when you're in a contraction season. You're going to feel like you're drowning, and if you try to contract when life is pulling you forward, you're gonna feel really stuck and frustrated.

So I want you to narrow this whole conversation down to one big question you have to sit with. What does your life need next [00:10:00] year? That we can go a lot of places with, and that's totally fine. What I don't want you to do is go, well, what does the market need? Or, well, what do I think I should do? Or, well, what is everyone else doing?

No, no, no. This is about your family, your energy, your finances, your creativity, your brain and your soul. Now, maybe next year is your scaling year. Maybe next year is your simplification year. Maybe next year is your efficiency year, or maybe it's your visibility year. It does not matter. The one thing that matters here is designing your business around your life, and that is not a sign of weakness.

That is a CEO move that makes you the boss, babe, and not a business owner. This is the wisdom we're seeking out. All right, designers, I wanna hear from you. What is one thing your life is asking for in 2026? Is it more time, [00:11:00] more structure, more revenue, more help, more white space, more creative challenge?

Hit me with your best shot. Dm me on Instagram or on LinkedIn. I read these, I respond to them. I love hearing where you're at, and I respond to each one personally. So please reach out. I would love to hear from you. All right. I wanna talk about growth. A simple, strategic, scalable, high si, six figures and seven figure business, and it has to be sustainable or doesn't last not, I wanna hit a million because it sounds so cute, but actual seven figure thinking.

And there's three things you're gonna need to do this, and you'll hear me say it over and over again. A repeatable service structure. This is why I am the princess of processes. If your services reinvent themselves, every project scaling is going to be impossible. You are going to fall flat. Good CEOs create containers for their expertise and pull on them and build systems around them.

This is one of my [00:12:00] favorite things to coach to because if you don't have this, you will hit a scaling wall. Also, you're going to need a pricing model that reflects your demand. Your capacity, you see as a CEO in your business. You know that there are three things you can change, demand, capacity, and price, right?

It's the classic case supply, demand, and cash, because if your demand is high, but your capacity is low, that tells me your pricing is too low. And by the same token, if your demand is low and your capacity is high, we either have a messaging problem or visi visibility problem that we need to sort through.

Each of these is so incredibly important, and when we start figuring out how these three interact, we can begin building the business that you really want to see. Hit those high sixes and sevens. Alright, let's talk about a team plan. This is so important. Not I'll hire when I'm drowning. You've [00:13:00] heard everybody say it.

When someone's drowning, what's the last thing you do? Jump in the water to save them. That is not the time in your business to try to come up with a plan of how you're gonna stop drowning. Instead, you should be saying, here's what my business needs to grow, and here's who can help get me there. That is so incredibly valuable because now we're not in a life or death fight, fright or freeze situation.

Right. Instead, we're saying we're gonna make strategic initiatives that are gonna set us up for long-term success that will allow us to grow in a meaningful and sustainable way. Doesn't that feel so much better? Yeah. In fact, there's a great book about this that I wanna share with you. It's by a couple of authors named Dan Sullivan and Dr.

Bi Benjamin Hardy, and the book is called The 10 x is Easier than two x. And it explains how focusing on just the 20% of work that actually drive results is the difference between burnout versus breakthrough. [00:14:00] So incredibly important to have the right team around you. Okay. I wanna talk to you about the big traps that I'm seeing in my coaching practice that designers fall into when they begin planning for a new year.

The drop that it's a huge one. The first one that I see is feeling based goals. I want to feel more successful. I want to feel busier, which you know is not the answer. And we have talked about that on this show. Busy does not mean profitable. I want to feel profitable. Well, I'm gonna break it to you.

Feelings don't build businesses. That isn't how this gets done. Now don't get me wrong, feelings can drive change, but change needs strategy and processes and systems to back it. Trap number two, I see random revenue goals. Designers will tell me they wanna hit 500,000 or 750,000 just because I call these vanity metrics.

Why? Just because you're making $750,000 doesn't mean you're taking home any [00:15:00] money at all, or maybe 30,000. It doesn't mean you're actually making a livable wage. The reality is, if you don't have math and you don't know where you're really at as far as your revenue, and you don't have alignment to a strategy and you haven't looked at your capacity, it's all gonna fall apart.

This is why creating a solid business plan is so incredibly important. And then the final one is, this is kind of an interesting one that I was thinking through as I was putting together this episode. Some of you don't leave Margin for life. Yeah. The trap is, is if I'm really running my business and I'm doing a good plan for the year, I'm all in on my business and I'm fighting for it.

Just a moment, I'm gonna tell you to hold the phone because you are human and you are beautifully made, and you have to have a margin for your life because we only get one turnaround, this sun, right? Life is not optional and I will tell you right now that when you make time for yourself to be [00:16:00] human, your business will do better.

Your CEO plan is stronger. When you acknowledge realities that exist, when you don't pretend about what may or may not be, or that you are the Energizer Bunny who can go, go, go, go, go, and never stop. Now, don't get me wrong, there have been seasons in my life when I have known that I am in a hard core unsustainable sprint.

But you know what? There is identifiable in every one of those stages. End date. It is for a strategic period of time. It is to say for the next three months, we are going to drill down and drill down hard on this, but then there's an end date. In fact, I see some of you. You enjoy that adrenaline rush, so you wait till the last minute to work on something, then you rush through it, and then you rinse and repeat on your next project.

But in the midst of all that, and after the 10th, 15th, 20th, 30th time. You feel [00:17:00] miserable and I see you and I get it. It's not how your adrenal system was designed to handle life. You are human. Give yourself time to be that and your designs will actually improve. And I also want you to think about building a plan around fear instead of clarity being one of the worst decisions you can make.

That's a business owner move, right? Fear says, I can't change that. Well, I can't change it. There's tariffs. I can't change that. The geopolitical situation is a dumpster fire at the moment. I can't change that. Pricing is changing from all my vendors. Yes, I hear you and I see you, but I also wanna speak clarity into that situation.

I want you to do the classic get out marker and draw a circle around yourself. What can you control your capacity? You can influence demand based on your pricing. You can start building your systems and processes, so they account for tariffs and the fact that vendors are gonna raise prices during the year.

I'm [00:18:00] so proud to say that the last year of my business, we did not go back to any of our clients on projects that were multi-year projects and raise rates because we had accounted for tariffs along the way. We had accounted four price increases in our original quote. And if there was really gonna be a hike that we foresaw coming, we put things in the warehouse.

There are ways to do it, but all of it requires strategy. And I hope you're taking that away. This is not a feeling conversation. This is a strategy conversation. Alright, I wanna set up your Q1 with you. That you can feel confident in, which is why I wanna get you this Business Blueprint Worksheet for 2026.

So I want you to head over to fix my design biz.com. It's fix my design biz BI z.com. And over there you're gonna have an opportunity to register for this masterclass. When you register, you are going to get this [00:19:00] worksheet. It's gonna help you know where you actually are, what your numbers actually mean.

What levers you get to pull on this supply demand profitability machine, what your 2026 goals should be, not what they feel like. 'cause remember, business owners use feelings, CEOs use data and how we're gonna integrate that into your plan next year because you should be crystal clear on how many clients you're taking, what revenue is already secured.

If your pricing is changing, because most clients expect price hikes at the beginning of a new year. Now is your chance. Where your visibility efforts are going and what we need to do to support your business needs. This worksheet is gonna show you exactly where your gaps are, and by the same token where all your opportunities are that you may or may not be seeing.

All right, let's get down to two truths and a lie. Are you ready? The first one we said is you should be able to predict 70% of your revenue. That is true. If you do not [00:20:00] feel that today, you need to set up a call with me. Number two, designers underestimate time demands. That is true. I see you. You are brilliant designers.

Time not talent is your limiter. So how do we build a team to get you your time back so you can be the CEO and not just be a business owner? And then number three, feeling ready is the most important factor in setting goals. And I hope you know that's the lie because feeling ready is not optional strategy.

Is critical. You may or may not feel ready. That's okay. That's life. In fact, this is what I tell my kids. Do life scared half the time. I still do life. Scared. If you're not on the edge of pushing yourself to try new things, do new things, get out of your shell, guess what folks? You're not moving forward.

Change is never comfortable, but you gotta get moving to get where you wanna go. I wanna be honest with you, if this episode [00:21:00] lifts something, sorry. Let's try that again, Angie.

Okay. I wanna be honest with you, if this episode lit something up in you, if you're starting to see how much more strategic and spacious your business should feel, I want you to book a free 15 minute problem solving session with me. It is strategic, it's specific, it's powerful. You get to bring one challenge, and I'm gonna start bringing you clarity, strategy and next steps.

In fact, you're gonna find the link in the show notes, and I want to connect with you because this isn't selling you on some package or system or sales call. This is about beginning to march towards the journey of getting you the solutions that you and your business deserve, especially as we embrace the new year.

I want you to think about intention, data, courage, and confidence, and if you feel you need help on one or maybe all of those, that is why I am here, because remember, your business should be working for you, [00:22:00] not you working for it. Until next time, take care.