EP #28 | Are these Limiting Beliefs Holding You Back?

Welcome to the Designers Oasis podcast. I'm your host, Kate Bendewald, interior designer, mama, and CEO of a thriving interior design business, built on authentic word-of-mouth referrals. It wasn't that long ago that I stepped away from my corporate architecture job to build my own dream, one that would allow me more time with the people that I love, the ability to serve my clients at the highest level and to make a great living. It wasn't always easy, and I've made my share of mistakes along the way. Fast forward to today, and I've learned a thing or two. This podcast is for you - the inspired, creative, ambitious, and let's admit it,  occasionally overwhelmed interior designer who shares this dream of transforming lives by transforming homes. Join me and my guests each week as we walk through practical ways to build an interior design business you love, and help you transform your client's lives. You can do this. 

Alright, welcome back to the Designers Oasis Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Bendewald. I am so happy to be back with you today. Today we are talking about seven limiting beliefs and asking ourselves, is it? Is it possible that some of these limiting beliefs might be holding me back or keeping me from success? Or keeping me from going to that next level? Is it are these causing me to get stuck? Listen, everybody has limiting beliefs that creep in from time to time. These are those sneaky little thoughts that creep in and try to sabotage your progress. Left unchecked, they can wreak havoc on your potential. 

I hear a lot of limiting beliefs from the designers that I work with inside the designers Oasis membership. And today I'm sharing some of the common limiting beliefs I hear over and over again. And many of these are limiting beliefs that I've experienced as well over time. So we're going to examine seven of them today. And we're going to try to untangle them a bit. And the truth is, if you are feeling stuck in business, it might not be what it is that you're doing. That's the problem or what you're not doing, which might be the case, it could be that it's what you're thinking that has got you feeling stuck. So let's dive in. 

Okay, the first limiting belief that I hear so often is I need to have my processes all figured out here and air quotes before I can take on any clients. Well, the truth is that doing the process, the actual process, is exactly how you refine it and how you figure it out. You will always be refining your process. I tell designers all the time, you are never going to have all your ducks in a row, okay, you just gotta get going. You may find that some things work with certain clients or certain types of projects. And other times you may need to use a different strategy. But the only way that you're going to really understand that and get to know it is when you start getting in there and you start doing the work. Okay, you have to start somewhere. Remember that? I believe people are far more generous and gracious than we may give them credit for. So, you know, if you try something and it doesn't work, or it didn't turn out, like you hoped, don't feel like the world's gonna turn on you. It's okay. It's totally okay. You just say okay, well, that didn't work out. We're gonna move on and try something different. 

There's a phrase and it's really it's kind of cringy phrases, but sometimes it just make sense. And it's like, you don't know what you don't know, right? You don't know what's going to work or what's not going to work until you actually get in there and do the work. So you just gotta get go. Like, okay, doing the work is how you're going to figure it out. And you're always going to be refining. Okay? limiting belief. Number two is, I don't have some sort of immediate success, I should just quit, or do something different. Listen, I have a love hate relationship with social media. And the part that I hate is that it can feel like this little portal where you're just staring at everyone's success. And it all looks so effortless, and instantaneous. And like it all happened over night, we don't make a habit of showcasing our failures and our mistakes and the stuff that doesn't work. And so if you're placing your worth and your value on achieving some sort of success by this arbitrary deadline, that's a dangerous place to be hanging out. If something isn't working, you just have to pivot and try something new. overnight success is an illusion. And I know that we can give ourselves these, you know, deadlines of if I'm, if I'm not making X number of dollars by this date, or whatever, I should just try something different. And I look, yes, you need to be profitable at some point. And you need to find success in terms of financial sustainability, excuse me, right? That is the goal, because we want to be earning money that helps us to live and take care of those that we love. But I just want you to make sure that you're putting a realistic timeline on it, and that you're making the right kind of efforts and moves to get you there. And that your measure of success is based in reality. 

So I'm just going to tell you a quick story and give you an example, my daughter, so we live at on a corner lot. And we live in an intersection that certain times of day can be kind of busy. And one year they did a lemonade stand and it was the middle of summer it was on a weekend. And they they had you know, great success. And so all of a sudden, they decided that they wanted to be doing this the selling something on this corner all the time. And one weekend, they wanted to do an art sale. So they had their prolific artists. They also had some art that my mom had made and some friends made. So these three girls, my daughters and a friend got together and they set up there a little stand on the corner. And then they just started expecting people to come right. They had this like this one little bite of success. And so they just assumed that it was always going to be like that. And so after a little while, you know, I kept an eye on him. And after a little while one of them came up and they were like, nobody's coming to our art sale. Where is everybody? And I was like, well, and she mentioned like, last time it felt so easy, right? Why is this not happening for us? And I said, Well, what have you done to let people know that you're out there? And she's like, ooh, we need a sign. Yeah, we need a sign. So she so she, the girls gets a poster board together and they make a sign. And they put that up and they stand out there. And you know, every car comes by there waving some art or whatever, and trying to get people to pull. And I'm thinking to myself, well, I don't know if this is going to work. But it's a good lesson for them to learn. Well, we'll see what happens. 

They came back and they're like, the sign isn't working, what? What's going on? And I was like, Well, what else have you done to let people know that you're out there? And they're like, oh, we should we should put on music. And that'll get people's attention. And so I was like, I'll try that. So they they got their little, little music player and got out there cranked up the music, and they were out dancing and holding their sign and every drive by then, you know, try to get their attention and just try to get people to stop and come by their art. And and I think maybe they had maybe somebody stopped at some point. But again, they came back and they're like, Mom, it's not working. Why is nobody buying her art? And I was like, Well, what else? Have you tried to let people know that you're? You're out there selling art. And they were like, well, we need to tell people and I was like, that's a good idea. They were like, well, we should go knock on door to door and sell art. It's like Nope, we're done. I can go into the door selling art. They're like, Well, can you tell text your friends text our neighbors and let them know that we're out there? And I was like, sure I could do that. And so I sent a text to about four or five of our neighbor friends and I said hey, no obligation to buy anything but I wanted you to know that. The girls have an art stand out this this afternoon. Andif you have time and want to stop by and peek at it there, they'll be here for about an hour or so. And lo and behold our neighbors started coming over and They bought art. In fact, one neighbor gave them like $20 for a scribble they had on a piece of paper, and I was like, You guys, this is unrealistic, but good for you. So in any case, the point was the point of the story was that they didn't have success in like this instant success. And then they tried something. And that didn't work. And then they tried something else. And that didn't work. And I didn't give them the answer, I made them keep trying to think about different ways that they could try to gain visibility, right. And finally, they landed on something that ended up working for them. 

So the point is, if you don't have immediate success, it doesn't mean that you're a failure, that what you have planned or your vision isn't going to work, it just might mean that your tactics or strategies or methods that you're trying right now aren't working. And you might need to try something different. So give yourself some time and give yourself a realistic, a realistic timeframe and be willing to try different things. 

Okay, so limiting belief number three is, I can invest in my business once I reach insert milestone XYZ milestone, and this could be any number of milestones, or, you know, just simply saying, I can't afford to invest in my business. Well, my friend, I am here to tell you that you have to invest in your business at every stage. You can't bootstrap it forever. Don't get me wrong. I am all for bootstrapping, I certainly have done my fair share of bootstrapping. But at some point, you have to be willing to invest, whether that's in coaching, or education, or hiring or in new software. And there's all different, there's all kinds of ways you might invest in your business. The point is that it's investing is money that you spend initially, that is going to come back to you or pay dividends 510 100 fold over a period of time. And then the designer choices membership, we have the CEO toolkit, and I show designers how to plan for investments in their business at the outset of each year. And what that basically entails is deciding what it is you're going to invest in what it is that you want, or you need, doing some research to understand what is it going to cost? What are those initial investment cost, and then building a revenue plan around your your year that supports including those investments. So if you are just getting started, maybe you start with a small investment, the ones that are the most critical, something that's going to help you get better, faster, more proficient, or something that is going to help you gain more visibility, maybe that's marketing or paid ads, and so on. If you are further along in business, and as you grow, maybe those investments cost more, that's when you start to invest in things like hiring a PR firm or joining a mastermind or paying for professional rebrand. But the relationship between your experience and your success is real is relative to your investment. 

So those initial early day investments might be small, but it's taking a little bit of a step of a leap of faith, if you will, and hoping that it works, right. You want to research your investments and make thoughtful decisions, right and not just investing in everything that you see, right, that's not sustainable. But having some thought and some strategy around it, building a revenue plan around it. But then as you grow and as you you know, gain more success and earn more money, then you can start to invest in some of those things that might cost more maybe a complete, professional, professionally designed brand and website isn't affordable for you right out of the gate. Maybe you start out with buying a template that you can apply to your website and then down the line if you think you need to have a professional help you with it, doing it that way. But the the relative investment, think about it just as being relative to your experience. And as you grow, you can afford to invest more but I want you to get into the habit of being willing to invest in yourself willing to invest in your business early on because your growth and your success is dependent on it you can't do it all yourself right you can't figure it all out yourself and we need others to help us in our business to grow and to be successful.

Okay, moving on limiting belief number four that may be causing you to stay stuck or broke is I can't afford to make mistakes. This limiting belief will most definitely keep you stuck. The reality is you will make mistakes, you're likely to make lots of mistakes. I have a podcast episode, which I'll be sure to link to in the show notes that was about these business mistakes that I learned the hard way. So I'm trying to share what some of those mistakes might have been. But this is called analysis paralysis, you are so caught up in the fear of making mistakes that you can't get any traction or make a move.

Now, I also have an upcoming podcast on perfectionism. So if this sounds like you, stay tuned for more on this topic, but I am a recovering perfectionist myself. So I have some thoughts on this. But here's the deal. This is why we charge what we charge we charge enough to not only pay ourselves, but to also have some coffers built up so that if we do make a mistake, and it might cost us a little bit of money, that in the end, that's not going to break us right. And we can think of paying for a mistake as as business development money, right? Like, if something happens, you don't want to fuss over it. You just get it taken care of and your clients have an exceptional experience. And you can all move on and you're not hemming and hawing over mistakes. Also, we have insurance in our business and insurance in business can help pay for maybe heftier mistakes that were omissions or oversights. I hope you never have to rely on that. But it's nice to have it. In case you ever do. I have told every designer who has worked for me and who has been responsible for any kind of purchasing, I've told them this. Say look, I want you to be scrupulous when it comes to putting together final orders and cross checking everything crossing your T's dotting your eyes, that's really important. 

In fact, I hire based on that skill, because it's a very important skill to have. But at the end of the day, and I will just say that a lot of the things that we do purchase an order on behalf of our clients may be custom, right, so they can't be returned. And there's a lot of detail and moving parts and pieces involved. And I've had designers who've just gotten so stuck on like making sure that everything was right that, you know, I check in a couple of weeks later. It's like why is that not ordered? Well, it's because they were hung up on being afraid of making a mistake. So what I tell them is that uh yes, I want you to be scrupulous. If you feel like you need a second set of eyes come asked me or somebody else in the team. But at the end of the day, if a sectional accustomed sectional arrives, and it's left facing instead of supposed to be right facing or it's in the completely wrong upholstery fabric. Look, we'll just get another one, we'll just order the right thing and get it in place. Of course, we're going to stop or we're going to figure out, okay, what happened here, what went wrong, and we're going to take a look back and kind of examine it because we need to learn from that we need to use it as an opportunity to learn so that we avoid those mistakes in the future. But at the end of the day, like it's okay, nobody died, nobody was hurt. It's an inconvenience. 

Nobody likes to lose money, we want to avoid those kinds of mistakes as often as possible. But you can't let fear of making mistakes, keep you frozen, whether that's another example is a lot of the designers that I work with. I'm a big fan of dubsado dubsado is what we use for Client Onboarding, it helps you know that that form that people fill out on their on our website to book a call with us. It's scheduling, it's sending proposals and contracts and invoices and used correctly. Um, you can set up these workflows where one step leads to the other and it's a very seamless process for your, your client. And it's makes an incredibly good first impression on your prospective clients. But they work best when you put these workflows together. And so often I talked to designers who are still piecemealing their client process with dubsado because they're Ready to turn on those workflows? Because they're afraid that an email is going to send be sent out accidentally that it's incorrect or whatever? And I just remind them, yes, that's gonna happen. It happened to me, right? And so what happens is, you know, you want to try to get it set up the best, you can maybe put a little blurb at the bottom of each email that goes out that says, you know, something to the effect of like, does something not look right here, something looks off, just email us, let us know, we'll take care of it, or we'll see what's going on. But that definitely happened, especially when I was first setting up my automations, for my workflows in dubsado. And there's other software that does this too, right. So maybe you use something like 17 hats, or I forget what some of the others are. But the point is that, I would simply say, you know, if I got an email, they're like, Oh, we got this, but the link doesn't go to anything or something like that. You know, it's a little embarrassing, but we just say, gosh, you know, technology is great when it works. And when it doesn't, you know, it's, it's no fun, let's get that figured out. Well, we'll, here's the lake, right. And you just brush it off, and you move on, people are forgiving, but, you know, there's, there's this idea of just like having to have everything be so buttoned up and so perfect, which can keep you frozen, and for making mistakes. 

And I will tell you right now, this is something I'm trying to tell myself right now as we speak, because I'm in the middle of working on putting together a new program. And I wanted to have longevity, right? I want it to be something that I don't have to come back and kind of do over again and anytime soon. And so, you know, sometimes I find myself getting stuck in not making progress, because I'm overthinking. Hello, I'm about like the world's biggest overthinker of you know exactly what it's going to look like, it's going to feel like what's, what's the the framework going to be. And so, you know, these are things that we constantly need to be exercising at every stage of business. So just remember that you, you can't let that fear of making mistakes keep you from just moving forward and making progress and just know that you're gonna make up right, it's just, it's just gonna happen. 

Okay, um, another limiting belief that I find very shocking, but it's actually very common. And that is, I can't charge for my services until I have a few projects under my belt. who listen, giving away your services for free. At any stage of business, is not a good habit to get into. Even if you're just starting out, I want you to get into the habit of charging for your services charging your value, you you need to start to embody this belief that your time and expertise, even if it's somewhat limited, has got to be worth something, right. It's this idea that it's worth nothing at all is shocking to me. So I want you to think about that 10% Edge rule, if you know just 10% more than the person you are helping, you are worthy of getting paid for your time and your effort. And yes, the the value, the amount that you charge should be commensurate with your experience level. And the more experience you get that figures should increase over time. But the idea of doing a project for free, even if it's for a friend or family member, I think is one that I really want to challenge you on. If that's something that that's somewhere where you are. Maybe you're not charging a lot at first, maybe you start with a modest, flat fee for working for a friend or family member just to get that experience, right? Yes, you're gonna get some experience, right. And that is part of the exchange. But also, you are giving away your time and you need to charge for your time and your experience. But, you know, we know how long these projects can go. Things often take longer than we realize or we anticipate or maybe the scope changes and they decide they want more. So how long are you going to work for this person for free and charging nothing? Forever, right? So I want you to get in the habit of charging something, it's a good muscle to build. But the exchange of experience alone isn't enough, I think you're wise to start to charge your value from from day one. Okay. The next limiting belief that may cause you to feel stuck is once I do X insert that milestone once I do this, I'll feel confident enough to really start to put myself out there. 

Okay, so once again, arbitrary milestones are just going to get in your way. Here's some examples. Once I have a professional website built or Once I get published, or once I reach x number of followers, or once I get a client, that's not a personal friend or someone that I know, or once I make X number of dollars, these are all sort of these arbitrary milestones that may be causing you to get stuck in an inaction. So confidence is a muscle, yes, you will have experiences that are going to ding your confidence from time to time. But confidence comes from inside. And it's when you flex that muscle that your confidence will begin to grow. Well, how do you flex your confidence muscle, you do it by taking chances, taking chances on yourself trying new things, things that feel hard or scary or doing things before you feel ready. Okay, and I got my little air quotes up there. You don't have to get it right, you just have to get going. So if you have found yourself leaning on some sort of milestone that might be arbitrary as your metric for you know, okay, now I can really go for it. Now I can really get out there and tell the world what it is that I do and who I serve and all that you might be holding yourself back. So I want you to get out there and start to really just showcase who you are and what you do, right out of the gate, right? Because there's someone out there that needs that thing that you have. And if you're not getting out there and talking about what it is that you do. You're you're not only, you know, losing the opportunity to help people who might need what you have, but you're not doing yourself a service either. So avoid those arbitrary milestones as a way to kind of get yourself out there. 

Okay, and the last limiting belief that I find keeps people stuck is this feeling of selling my service services is icky is an icky feeling, or selling isn't for me, right? I think there's this misconception that selling is somehow about convincing people, we get that vision of the iconic sort of used sales, sales used car salesman, or someone coming in knocking on your door to pitch you something that you don't need. Remember, prospective clients are coming to you because they have a need a need that you can help them with, maybe you're trying to understand the investment, or excuse me, maybe they're trying to understand their investment and what they can expect in working with you. And it's a need that you can help them with.

 Selling is helping. And if you can frame it in that light, I think the idea of selling will be much more palatable, you have the solution to their problem, you know how to help them get past that Pinterest fatigue, you know how to help them make the most of their space, you know how to take them through a process that is going to help them have a business or a home that is more functional, more beautiful, reflects who they are and their family values and culture or you know, whatever the case may be. And if you aren't willing to shed light on that to them and show them how you work, show them paint the picture of the other side of working with you, you're doing them a disservice and you're not helping them. So maybe you are working with somebody, and the investment is more than what they originally thought that's okay, it's your job to paint the picture. And to not only help them see the results of working with you, but also to remind them of the cost of not working with you. That is making time money, losing time losing money and making mistakes, right without the help of a professional. They're they're bound to experience some some big challenges in their own project. You know, so the point is, you've got to be able to share how you can take them through this process and paint the picture of the other side and paint the picture of the cost of not working with you. And you know, at the end of the day, once you do that, and you and you you do it honestly and authentically. You're gonna have people who maybe the investment was more than what they had originally thought that they're going to think to themselves, you know what this, this person has what we need, they can help us and it's going to be so much better than we ever could have done on our own. I think it's worth the investment. And you know what, you're gonna have people who are just like, gosh, this just isn't for me. I don't quite have this in my budget, and they're gonna find somebody that is the right person, but you have to be willing to sell your services and to share with them the way that you work and what you can do for them, and how you can help them achieve it, and then let them decide for themselves. But, you know, leaving, leaving that information, or being modest about what it is that you can do to help somebody is a disservice for your clients just as much as it is for you to. 

And I'll just wrap up with this thought. So Daniel Pink is one of my favorite authors. And one of the books that he's written is called To Sell Is Human. And he makes this statement, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it's, he says that selling is isn't about depriving someone of something of money, right. But rather, it's to leave them better than you found them. So I think if you can think of it in terms of like, we're not taking their money, we're exchanging money for expertise. And it's an exchange of services, and you're there to help them. So remember, this limiting beliefs are always going to sneak up on you, they're always going to be creeping their head around the corner and challenging you and finding ways to cause you to feel stuck. And my, my hope for you today is that you will just continue to be mindful when they start to creep in and ask yourself, Is this real? Or am I using this as an excuse or a crutch or something? When really, I can just, I can just get going on this right now. And and I think that once you start to flex that muscle of recognizing limiting beliefs, as they're happening, you'll be far more equipped to, you know, challenge them and say, Nope, you know what, that's not actually true. And I don't really need to do that, or, Yes, I really need to get started on this or whatever the case may be. But it is a muscle, you'll get much better at it over time. 

Alright, that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining me today. I will see you next time. Bye for now. 

Thank you so much for letting me spend part of this day with you. If you're loving this podcast, please share it with a friend who you think might also love it. Or perhaps you can take just 30 seconds to open your podcast app and leave us a five star rating. And if you have just an extra minute, go ahead and leave a review. This helps me so much and it helps other designers like you to find the podcast. It also adds fuel to my motivation to keep making great episodes just for you. However you choose to help, please No, I appreciate you so very much. Thank you, my friend. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I'll see you next time