June 27, 2023
Don: Hello, it’s episode 83 and today we are talking about the importance of facing hard realities in your graphic design business. If you are the type of person who avoids the tricky things, this episode is for you.
[Intro Music]
Kris: Hello. Welcome back.
Don: Hello.
Kris: So today we want to pose a question to you. What are some of the hard realities that you have had to face in your design business?
Don: And looking back, how have you handled them?
Kris: Designers are often kind of shy and reserved and a little bit people pleasing. Not always, but we do see it a lot.
And what can come with the territory is not wanting to face hard things. So just let’s ignore this issue and magically hope it goes away.
Don: There are a few of us out there who have dug our head firmly in the sand at certain stages in our career. I’m sure.
Kris: So how have you handled them in the past? That’s what we wanna ask you, what is your tendency?
Don: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, we’ve got some examples where we were really proud of how we handled some situations, and then we’ve got some examples where, where red faced and hands are up, we could have handled it better.
Kris: Yeah. So first up, we’re going to just give you some examples of hard realities that you might face in a graphic design business. And you may be very familiar with some of these, or they might be new to you. You might not have thought about these before.
Don: Yeah. And you might not think that they are a hard reality, which is, could be a good thing, or could be a head and the sand thing. So let’s undress,
Kris: undressed [laughter]
Don: Let’s address some of these things.
Kris: Yeah. Okay. Well sometimes you gotta like, it’s, it’s almost like peeling away of the layers. Right? We’re gonna,
Don: that’s not clothes. We’re not getting undressed [laughter]
Kris: No,
Don: we’ll stop with that metaphor. Thanks.
Kris: Alright. So, uh, the first category that we wanted to talk about was just general hard realities with your business, the way your business is running. So addressing an aspect of your business that’s not working right, that’s a hard thing.
Like maybe one of your offerings is not working, or maybe your messaging isn’t working, or your branding’s not working,
Don: God forbid the branding’s not working. That’s a hard one to face as a design business when we realize that our branding isn’t as strong as it could be. That’s a hard. Thing to own up to and, and really understand that it’s gonna be worth the change. Often we get sort of stuck with something because we think, well, I, I’m married to it now.
I’ve, I’ve created it. I’m the designer. I’m walking the talk. But if it isn’t working for you, that’s one thing that really does need to be addressed straight away because it’s, it’s who you are. So these, these are the hard things we’re talking about. The really hard things people, hard things that you have to face.
Kris: Yeah. And just in a bit, we’re gonna talk about how the burying your head in the sand shows up, can look like, well I’m just not gonna show up on socials cause I’m too embarrassed or I’m not gonna reach out to clients. Cuz it’s that kind of bury your head in
Don: or, I don’t have a website yet, but that’s okay. And it’s not okay.
Kris: It’s not okay.
Don: We think, wow, there are so many times when we hear the, that designers have not got a website. Not because they don’t have the skillset, not because they don’t have the information to put on their, not because they don’t have the gorgeous talent to offer their clients, but because they are not happy with their brand yet.
So they’re really sort of, you know, pinching themselves off to what could be a really flourishing business because their branding’s not quite right.
Kris: Too hard basket. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So some more hard realities. So acknowledging that some aspects of being a business owner may not come naturally to you.
Don: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Having to face up your numbers, that’s a big one. So, Being that, you know, CEO and having that mindset of checking figures and checking numbers and metrics and tracking that can do our heads in a little bit. Yeah.
Kris: You can’t ignore that one and hope it’ll go away.
Don: So more needing to shift your focus into a different aspect of your business. You know, maybe you’ve tried invitations and it’s not really profitable. If it’s not working, something needs to change. It’s, it’s kind of that simple.
Kris: Yeah. Yeah. And similar to what we were talking about before, like, facing the hard reality that you have got to put yourself out there in order to get business, you’ve gotta be visible.
Don: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I was listening to a podcast the other day and it was, um, mention it. I can’t think of her name, but she said to unmute yourself, and it was really beautiful. It’s She’s a, an amazing, very controversial, actor, writer, playwright, poet, amazing human. And she, she’s her latest offering is Unmute yourself. So, as designers, we’ve gotta shine the light on ourselves. We’ve gotta make ourselves highly visible.
Kris: I love that. Unmute yourself. That’s so cool. Then we’ve got hard realities with systems. So not wanting to track your time.
Don: Hands up. That be me, Don here. Yeah. Just so it’s clear it’s not Kris. She’s great at that.
Kris: Oh, sometimes
Don: Yeah. Better at, better at knowing the value of it, I guess. I can be a little bit of a spoiled brat with that one sometimes, but, when I have done it and done it well, it’s powerful, so
Kris: Yeah. Yeah. not wanting to create the system, you know, you need to create, like recording an instructional procedure so you can grow and outsource and all the rest of it. But it feels too hard. I don’t have time. I don’t wanna, it’s that feeling. I don’t wanna do it. I know
Don: Yeah. There’s a lot of that, and we hear this all the time and we’ve said it ourselves. By the time I record and instruct someone else to do it, I might as well have done it myself. But we’re here to tell you. That you want to do that thing, that really hard system because you wanna be able to hand that off somewhere down the track.
So just to stop resisting that one, that’s a hard reality to face and we really want you to stop resisting that one because that one really can give you lots of momentum if you’re able to free yourself up.
Kris: Yeah. So another one is facing hard realities with client and supplier relationships. So what do you do? What is your reaction, your go-to response when a promising lead goes with another designer, for example.
Don: Mm-hmm. There is a next step that needs to happen. What do you do when that happens? Another one is when we have to speak to a client about a difficult situation, that these are really tricky conversations that we’d all rather not have. We’d, we’d love not to face it. We’d love to just, again, bury our head in the sand and hope it goes away, sweep it under the carpet. But there are going to be difficult conversations in It’s a reality.
Kris: Yep. How do you face the hard reality of farewelling a relationship when you need to, you know, perhaps the supply has let you down, or you just wanna work with someone else. Um, they might not be a good fit for you. Um, they might not be aligned to your business, so you have to let them know.
Don: That’s right. They may not offer the service in a way that you need it. They may not offer the next level to the service that you need, and so you can’t take them with you and you don’t wanna be dragged back down by it. So you have to farewell.
Kris: Yeah. So another one is just say you are interviewing a service provider or somebody who’s gonna help you in your business.
Like it might be an accountant or a bookkeeper and you might be interviewing a few because you’re, you know, doing your research and you’ve got to tell the people you are not going with that. You’re going with somebody else. Yeah. So that’s a hard reality. And do your face up to it.
Don: Yeah. Or do you ghost them? Yeah. That’s it. We wanna know, we wanna know how you handle these things and like we said, we’ve got some strategies. So at the end, then another one might be when someone asks you to do something that is unreasonable. You know, it’s just downright not in your wheelhouse. Yeah. Or it’s asking you to work for free, perhaps
Kris: Yeah. Might be actually quite an outrageous request.
Don: Yeah.
Kris: Yes. But you think what, how could they ask that?
Don: We’ve had some of those requests, haven’t we, Kris?
Kris: I think everybody in business has those kind of requests,
Don: yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. We’ve had them in our design business and we’ve had, we’ve had them across the board. So there, there’s a really fine line, isn’t there?
Yeah. You know, you, you don’t have to respond to unsolicited inquiries. You don’t have to. There, there’s that, that’s the fine line. But you will come across people who will ask for something that is unreasonable, but it might be an education thing it would require a response. Yeah. So do you bury your head in the sand then, or do you ignore it?
Or would it be better for your business? Would it be better for your reputation if you actually responded? So that’s, it’s a little bit of a tricky one.
Kris: It is. Yeah. So there’s some of the hard things. I’m sure you can think of more hard things.
Don: Yeah.
Kris: So let’s talk about what we tend to do instead of facing hard things.
Don: Yeah. One of the big things that we do, and I think this is kind of universal, is avoidance. Yeah. Yep. Let’s just not go there. Let’s avoid responsibility altogether. Avoiding the hard task that we have to do, avoiding the confrontation. We don’t want confrontation so many of us out there absolutely hate confrontation.
It’s awful. Leaves us feeling wobbly and just downright awful. So we’ll avoid that as much as we possibly can.
Kris: Yeah. Yeah. So avoidance is, obviously, it’s underpinned by fear, especially in that situation where you’re avoiding confrontation, um, it’s the thing that we’re too scared to face. It’s the conversation you don’t wanna have with somebody. It’s the action that you don’t wanna take. So there’s that avoiding responsibility as well. So it’s not always conflict. It’s sometimes I, I don’t wanna be responsible for that.
Don: I’m avoiding that. Yeah, absolutely. So what we want is for you not to ignore the signs when you need to change something about your business or the way you are doing things.
Don’t ignore it. Don’t avoid it. Embrace it. Well, it’ll be hard to embrace it.But, don’t ignore it at the very, very least.
Kris: Maybe we’re asking too much there,
Don: Yeah. Maybe.
Kris: So don’t sit in the short term comfort of avoiding that situation so that can feel more comfortable to go, oh, I’m just gonna avoid, but it actually is an illusion. Because leaving difficult situations, unresolved, just avoiding them.
Avoid, avoid, avoid. That can have a really big, long-term impact on your business and even your mental health.
Don: That’s it. That’s like a mic drop moment. Your mental health. It, it is gonna impact on your business definitely, but also your mental health That wobbly feeling that I was talking about before. You know when your wheels fall off a little bit and you really feel uneasy, that doesn’t go away. And in fact it might sort of disappear a little bit occasionally, but then you’ll recall that avoidance or that thing that hasn’t been done yet or that conversation that wasn’t had.
And, uh, this is what happens for myself. I start to feel sick about it. I go, I go, oh, you know, and it comes back. It floods over me, so it doesn’t really go away. And that’s not good for your mental health. There is nothing better than facing the big scary thing and then putting that thing to bed.
So that you feel at least it’s resolved. You may or may not feel good about it, the situation, but you will feel good about the fact that you’ve actually addressed it.
Kris: Yeah. There’s nothing worse. Um, even 25 years later. Yeah. That icky feeling can come up and go, oh, why didn’t I handle that better?
Oh my goodness, I’ve, I’ve changed so much. Why did I do that? Then why didn’t I have the courage to have that difficult conversation when it needed to be had? Or why did I just completely ignore it and hope it would go away? Because like you said, It, it will still be there. It will dissipate into the background.
It’ll kind of dissolve into your subconscious. And then it will just reemerge every now and then.
Don: Rear it’s ugly little head
Kris: Yeah. So it’s gonna affect your self-confidence as well, because you feel really empowered and confident when you face the thing.
Don: Mm. You really do. And I think one of the things, uh, Kris and I have been talking about this when we were getting this podcast ready, but one of the things that happens is that when you leave something unresolved from 20 years ago, from 25 years ago, when it does rear its ugly head after, after a long period of time, you really do question your integrity.
And that that’s an awful situation to be in later, later, later down the track. We didn’t know that then. We’ve learned so much. We’ve got strategies around this now, again, that, we’ll, talk to you about it, but we, we don’t want you to be in that position where in, in many years time you can’t come back to it because one of the strategies that’ll give you a sneak peek into right now is you have full permission.
A day later, two days later, a week later, if you’ve handled something in a way that you’re not proud of, that you wish you had, have handled a different way, you have full permission to reach out to that person and say, Hey, I’m really sorry. I don’t, I don’t like how I handled that. I wish I had handled that differently.
Here it is. This is what’s happening, because you wanna get rid of that thing. You wanna get rid of that gremlin before you know it’s too late, like 20 years later is gonna be too late. You’re just gonna be taking that one with you because you know you’re not gonna tap on somebody’s door 20 years later and say, Hey, I wish I handled that, that situation better. They might not even be in business in 20 years.
Kris: Well I think that’s what happens, that you might leave it a week and then you might leave it two weeks and then you’re thinking, oh my God, it’s been a month.
I can’t do that thing. But take Donna’s advice a month is okay. Yeah. You can still say, I’ve been considering this, I’ve been thinking about this.
Don: Reflecting on it. Yeah. And it’s not sitting well with me. And, and I just really want you to know X, Y, Z. Yeah.
Kris: Cuz In the getting ready for this podcast done, and now we’re talking about why this happened more in our twenties than it does now, because, yeah. We definitely have so many more like examples in, in our mind and in our business where we didn’t face the thing or we, we might have ghosted somebody or we didn’t tell them, that we weren’t gonna go ahead with them or whatever it was. But, we were talking about how there’s a lot of first times when you’re in business There’s a lot of things you’ve never had to face before.
And when you’re in your, your early stages of your business, no matter how old you are, we were in our twenties, so we we’re talking about twenties. But you’re finding your way and
You’re know across everything. Yeah. So the shutdown can occur. Yeah. Yeah. And if I just ignore this situation, it may go away.
Don: We’ve both been there. We’ve both been there and we’re betting a lot of our beautiful audience out there has been there as well. So it does feel better in the short term to avoid it, but in the long term it can really bite you in the bum and it can just stay with you. Like we were saying, it can stick with you and you don’t want that.
So we don’t want you to have any regrets.
Kris: Yeah. We don’t want you to be thinking, oh, if only I faced up to that thing, or if only I found out why that client didn’t go ahead with me. If only I ended that particular business relationship earlier.
Don: Yeah. Or if only I did my financial forecast last month. So facing up to all of these hard things are gonna benefit you, we promise. And it is scary. We get it, but we promise you that you’ll feel so much better about yourself when you do. Yes.
Kris: so all of that was avoidance.
Don: Let’s talk about ghosting.
Kris: Yeah. So we often hear about designers getting ghosted, right? It’s a classic conversation for designers. It’s all the memes and all that sort of thing. But graphic designers ghost people too.
Don: Yes, they absolutely do. For many reasons. Not wanting to disappoint is a really, really big one.
Not wanting to be the bearer of bad news, like I’ve chosen accountant A over accountant B, and also not wanting to say no, that people pleasing personality comes to the fore, not wanting to say no.
So ghosting is happening, designers are ghosting other people as well.
Kris: Yeah. is an avoidance strategy. Mm-hmm. But it’s more specific because it’s something that we put in a too hard basket and then we end up ghosting the person who needs a response, who needs to be informed of whatever the thing is.
And you can kind of hide behind it a little bit too. Like, ah, I decided not to be confrontational. I decided I, I didn’t wanna give them that bad news. I wanted to give, I wanted to make sure they had a lovely day, so I just thought I’d let it go.
Don: Yeah. No, that’s ghosting. We’re here to tell you that’s ghosting. So it might make you feel less guilty about it for a little bit, but then you’ll feel guilty for other reasons down the track like we were describing before.
Kris: Ghosting also equals burning bridges.
Don: Mm-hmm.
Kris: Because. It will have a ripple effect. Yeah. It will show that you are not professional. Yeah. And it’s just not good energy.
Don: It’s not good for your reputation at all. Yeah. Remember people talk. They do. So you wanna put your best foot forward all the time.
Kris: Yeah. No matter who it is. No supplier or client, no matter who it
Don: yep, So victimhood is the next thing that we’d like to talk about. Mm. This is a big, big one. So do you have a tendency to play the victim? You know, we are really asking a blunt question there aren’t we?I want you to really think about it.So victimhood is when we deflect accountability from ourselves and say, it wasn’t my fault, it was them. It was that person.
Kris: Yeah. When bad things happen, it can feel much easier just to blame somebody
Don: Yeah.
Kris: It wasn’t my fault. Yeah. Because if it’s not your fault, you don’t have to take accountability. Right. you don’t have to do anything about it.
Don: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like, nope, not me. That person did it. The printer’s fault.
Kris: Yeah.
Don: It’s that person. It’s the client’s fault. But that’s the thing where we go, oh, hang on a second. Am I being a victim about this? Or do I have a part to play in
Kris: Yeah. Yeah. And you might end up feeling like a victim for many different reasons.
It might be that you had a nasty client experience and, you know, let’s face it, clients can be nasty. Um, it might be that you had a bad supplier experience. Like Don said, they’ve completely stuffed up. They’ve made you look bad. Yeah. It’s terrible. you will always be able to justify your feelings.
Don: Mm-hmm.
Kris: And the other person’s behavior will always seem worse to you.
Don: Yeah. And people can be horrible. They can be in business. Because everybody generally is looking after themselves.
Kris: Well, I think that when you are blaming others and you’re being a victim, um, like we said, you will always be able to justify why you’re feeling that and the other party involved.
They’re gonna have their own story as well. Mm-hmm. And no one, I love this saying, it’s an oldie, but no one is a villain in their own story.
Don: Yeah. Love that. Nobody.
Kris: Yeah. So, what happens when you blame other people is that it sucks the energy out of you. It sucks the life out of you. Yeah. When you’re blaming, blaming, blaming, it’s precious energy that you could be putting to much better use.
Don: Oh, absolutely. And it’s not just people that we might be blaming. You could even be blaming the economy. You could be blaming the social media algorithms. You know, there’s so many things that you could blame and then be a victim of this space and time. So don’t deny yourself the opportunity to let things go. That’s what Kris and I would really love to land today. Yeah.
Kris: yeah. Cuz you might be the sort of person who just can’t stop thinking about the thing and it’s just swirling around and around in your head. And I really relate to that.
Just with those intrusive thoughts and they can spiral, you know, just, yeah. And it plays out and out and out. But I always think like, don’t let it live rent free in your head.
Don: I love that. When I heard that for the first time, that was such a cool quote. I’m not sure who said that, but you won’t be punishing the other person at all in that situation. The only person that’s really being punished is you. You doing your own head in. Yeah. So stop doing that to your beautiful self.
Kris: Reserve your energy for things that matter. The important things, the needle moving, things that could really get you ahead in business.
Because if you are just allowing your energy to be consumed by being a victim and this is not fair, and life is not fair and clients are awful, then you’re going to really be stunted in your growth and perpetuate that.
Don: Perpetuate, perpetuate. So
Kris: that’s a hard reality that you need to face.
Mm-hmm. And um, just as a little side note, if you are having ongoing client difficulties, it could be client management problem. Mm-hmm. And. As designers, it really is our job to project manage our clients so that things do flow well. And even managing bad behavior, there’s things that you can do. Um, and we have a couple of helpful podcast episodes if you wanna have a listen to number 60.
It’s the number one reason your client’s difficult. It might not be what you think it is. And number 45, design Business Boundaries. It’s all about client management. That one, we did a series on design business boundaries, but that particular one, number 45, that’s about clients. So have a listen to those.
Don: All right. We promised strategies. Let’s talk about some strategies.
Kris: We’re not gonna promise that these are easy.
Don: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Well said. Because, you know, it, it does take a little bit of courage to put some of these strategies in place. It all does really. We talk about courage in business all the time. In fact, it’s one of our values to be courageous because it does, it takes courage. It takes courage to stand in integrity, which is the first thing that we wanna say.
One of the strategies is to stay in integrity. And it takes courage to do that because we can be knocked from left to right by other people in the, the way other people run their businesses.
Kris: yes. And you, um, mentioned core values before which is courage is one of ours. Um, And we wanna pose the question to you. Do you have core values in your business?
Because in order to stay in integrity, you need to check in with them.
Don: Yeah, check in, feel it in your gut. Check in with your um, values and then make sure that when wobbly situations come up, what are you feeling? Does it feel like you’ve got the wobbles? Don’t ignore it.
Kris: You’ll know if your integrity’s at stake. Yeah. And there is really a fine line between, that feeling of, I know I’ve got to do this scary thing in your gut, like that gut feeling. And this is not right for me gut. You know? Cause we’re always talking about trust your gut and you don’t have to do things if your gut says no, but there’s this really fine line and if you check in with your values, that’ll help inform it.
Like, is this representative of courage in our instance? Yeah. Um, is this a loving response? one of our other core values is love. So checking in with those values and thinking about how would future you wish you had handled this.
Don: Yeah. Absolutely. We love that. We love playing that game.
Kris: Yeah. I’m always saying that to my daughter. Who’s 14. It’s like what would future you want?
Think about future you.
Don: I’m always saying that when I’m filing something, what would future me want this to be called?
And I think checking in with future self is, is a really good, a good strategy. So if you don’t stay in integrity, It can be this kind of evil poison that’s stewing and festering in your business. It really is. It’s, it really is toxic. Even if it’s not on the to-do list, it can swirl around impacting your mental health really. That’s the key thing that Kris and I want you to avoid and fast track you.
I mean, if you are just in business, and like we were saying before, it doesn’t matter if you were in your twenties or beyond. If you are new to business, this could be information that’s really powerful for you right now because it was when we were new to business, we just happened to be in our twenties, and we really want to fast track you from having any issues.
We want you to sort of step up and into integrity the whole time in your business.
Kris: Yeah. Oh, there’s, there’s examples in my twenties, where I didn’t let a supplier know I wasn’t going with them because of not wanting to disappoint and all the rest of the things that we said.
And I just cannot imagine doing that now. Like, that is just, it’s not in integrity with who I am. And it’s, it’s like, how did I do that? How well, how did I not do that? Like, I didn’t do the thing that I should have done.
Don: the dirty four letter F word. It was fear it. And that’s what it is. It’s it, it underpins all of this. We’re scared. We’re scared of being judged.
We’re scared of letting people down. We’re scared of, you know, the whole host of things that we talked about before. And, and really when you think about it, what I would be more afraid of is having to live with this thing for the rest of my life.
Kris: Exactly. There is one example where we were called out for not telling the person that we weren’t going with them and they really did question our integrity.
And I tell you now, it felt awful. It felt awful. So this is like 25 years later or whatever, and I still wish I’d handled it better. It’s still like, that was bad. That was bad. And, um, instead what we’d like you to do is, you know, have courage and say, I’m gonna be accountable for taking the action that needs to happen.
Don: Yeah. Beautiful. All right. The next strategy we have to share with you is learn how to say no. This is powerful.
Yeah. We, we taught this at university to our students. It was one of, it was one of the lessons that I love to teach, learn how to say no. And there are many ways you can say no.
Kris: Yes. here’s a great, example from Tim Ferriss. It was, on a podcast of his, we’ll link that in the, the full show notes. Um, and he received this rejection. So I thought that was really courageous of him too, to share like a re a rejection that he got.
Um, so it was beautifully said. It was short and just sweet and it was, I thought carefully about this as it’s clearly a wonderful opportunity, but I’m going to decline with gratitude.
Don: Just love it. When, I heard that on Tim’s podcast, I was like, oh my goodness. They are the words. They are the bomb. That’s what we all need to know. Mm-hmm. So we’re spreading the word, spread the word everybody. That’s the most perfect rejection.
Kris: And what’s so beautiful about it is that it’s so carefully considered. It shows that, look, I’ve been thinking
Don: Mm-hmm.
Kris: This decision was important to me. I’m not just being flippant here.
Don: The, I thought carefully about this is so beautiful and warm. And you feel seen. And you feel heard. Especially like it’s clearly a wonderful opportunity. You know, I’m missing out here is what the person’s saying, but I’m gonna decline with gratitude.It’s just perfection. Yeah. Nice
Kris: Yeah. Andeven if you wanted to tweak it a little bit, like, I’ve thought carefully about this, but it’s not aligned to my services or it’s not aligned to my business model, so I’m going to decline with gratitude. You know, there’s so many different, insert whatever you need to there, but it’s brilliant.
Don: Yeah. What a beautiful starting point. Yeah. And also sometimes you can blame the policy. So you could say, thanks for thinking of me, but I have a policy of dot, dot, dot
Kris: not doing, this kind of project, for example, it could be, I don’t do rebrands. Some designers don’t like to do
Don: Rebrands. Some don’t. Or, I only take on four projects a month and I’m at capacity. Yeah. I have a policy of.
Kris: Not taking on ad hoc projects.
Don: Not taking on ad hoc projects. There you go. So there’s lots of ways that you can have legitimate policies that you’ve thought about as a ceo, as a part of your business plan.
Lean on those. Yeah. You’ve already got them. You’ve got these policies. They’re, they’re in your business strategy. Extract them and use beautiful words to top and tail that to make the person feel seen and heard. Yeah. And, and then that is also beautiful for your reputation. You will be held in high esteem as an authority in the industry and somebody that they will want to work with in the future. If it was appropriate, Yeah. If you’ve said flat, no, well then they’ll just be let down really beautifully.
Kris: Yeah. And it’s like, I’m really grateful, thank you for thinking of me, all those lovely things.
Ashton: I was in the academy in the first round. And I honestly still use everything. I learned every single day in my business from the templates to the wisdom that Kris and Donna have, everything has been super helpful. Plus you get a really cool community of graphic designers on top of that, that know exactly what you’re going through.
So you never feel alone if you’re thinking about joining, I would 100% do it because it’s probably going to be one of the most valuable resources you invest in.
[Back to the episode]
Don: Next one.
Kris: Next strategy is to practice standing up for yourself. So this is something we really want you to do. Like you’ve gotta stand up for yourself. So there will be times where you will need to call people out.
You will need to implement a boundary. And you can always do this with respect and kindness. Like we’re saying before about the, no, sorry, like thank you, but no. sometimes you’re gonna have to be a little bit more firm. Like there is gonna have to be a little bit of a, a confrontational kind of feeling to something because you’re gonna have to say, that’s not correct.
That’s not right. What you’ve done there. And what we recommend to do is stick to the facts. Give yourself a little pause and grace. Don’t let emotions override, and become really reactive in this situation. So you could even say, I’ve gotta give that some more thought. I’ll get back to you if you feel like, oh, my brain is just like, what?
Don: Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you find you’re starting to hit boiling point. Yeah. And you’re starting to get really angry about something and you have to implement a boundary that somebody may be pushing and pushing and pushing. Don’t be reactive. Don’t, don’t let the frustration show, like Kris said, stick to the facts.
Just come back to that. Come back to the contract. Come back to what’s expected. Beautifully and clearly articulately. End with kindness. Point out what has to happen, and then allow that to happen in the moment, if you like. If you can gather yourself, if you can pause enough to gather yourself, but if you can’t come back to it the next day, always allow yourself an exit strategy.
Kris: Yeah. Something that I’ve noticed about myself is whenever I’ve been confronted by something or somebody sent an email that’s just outrageous or whatever it is, um, this fire builds up in me and I just want to respond straight away.
Like I just, and it comes, it’s just this crazy response. So if you’re anything like me, you really do need to not respond straight away. Yeah. And just calm the farm.
Don: Yeah.
Kris: Just get it into perspective. Maybe wait that 24 hours for the response And address it then when you are not in that reactive state.
Don: Yeah, definitely. And just allow yourself to say, I’m feeling like I can’t continue the conversation right now. If it’s in person, let’s talk about this tomorrow and give yourself permission to exit the conversation in that moment.
So it’s, you might not have the grace of an email where, where Kris is able to sort of put her brakes on and go, ah, okay, I’ll stop. Uh, when you’re in a conversation, if you feel that sort of sense of, um, you know, where you’re starting to get really ticked off and you’re starting to really want to react, just step away.
Just say, I’d like to gather my thoughts. I’d like to take on board what you’ve said and I’ll come back to you tomorrow.
Kris: Jeez. These are becoming life hacks as well. What you need to be doing this with your, yourparents and..
Don: the Christmas party. Absolutely. That’s right. So, um, yeah, I think it’s, it’s really important that we really protect ourselves, protect our mental health, you know. And acknowledge that sometimes we will have to say farewell to a relationship. There will be times, you know, where it’s so toxic that the, the client or the supplier or whatever relationship it is that you have to have the courage to say, this is not good for me. We are not in alignment. You know, it doesn’t make them bad or you bad, it’s just that you are not a good fit.
Kris: That is standing up for yourself so, if you’ve got a toxic client and it’s just an ongoing relationship, that’s the act of standing up for yourself by getting out of it. You’ve got to be an advocate for yourself.
Don: Mm-hmm. I love that, Kris love that. Be an advocate for yourself. Unmute yourself. Now I’m gonna have to find out who said that
Kris: I’m Googling it, Don.
Don: Oh no. You know who it was? Your beautiful Astrology people. I was listening to them in the car, Kris. And they were interviewing someone.
Kris: It is! Yeah. Okay. So, just googling, unmute yourself. There’s quite a few things coming up here, so that’s interesting, but we just figured it out. it is the Chart Your career podcast.
It’s an astrology podcast.
Don: I love that you figured that out so quick, Kris.
Kris: And it is a beautiful podcast i if you wanna listen to that. It’s about astrology, but it’s so much more than that. So much more.
Don: Yeah. Okay. And the guest was Ann Randolph. So catch that one. Unmute yourself. Love it. And I really embraced it the minute I heard it.
Kris: Oh, I’m just Googling. And there’s a book. It’s got lots of good ratings. this is just slow. This I know we’ve gotten really sidetracked, but it’s called unmute Yourself. Speak Up to Stand Out, and it’s by somebody called Nancy Medoff. So that might be an interesting read as well.
Don: All right, back onto it. So you might need our nicely said scripts. That could be a strategy for you for when things are getting a really, really tough and you need to stand up for yourself.
Kris: .Yeah. Oh, we should call them that. We should call them the standing up for yourself scripts.
Don: Yes. That’s it. We should name change coming up. Um, so we can do hard things as well. Kris, we can change on the names of things, but you may, you may need that because you just to have a measured, considered proactive response, ready to go where you can feel your blood boiling a little bit, and then you can reference the scripts and have a beautiful, articulate, kind response ready to go.
So check those out. They’re in our shop. Yeah. And we’ll link it in the show notes.
Kris: Yeah. We’ve actually got free scripts as well, so if you don’t have those, go and get them. Yeah.We’ve got a series of scripts, specifically about when clients request changes.
Don: yep
Kris: So just go to, um, design and prosper.co/free, and you can see that particular freebie with our other ones. all sorts of goodies
Don: Yeah, absolutely. So, another thing that you can do, another strategy is to acknowledge to yourself that this situation is hard. Sometimes we try and pretend that it’s not, you know, we gotta get it out in the light.
We’ve gotta really shine that big spotlight on it.
Kris: Yeah. Because it’s linked to avoidance, right? We’re gonna avoid it, it’ll go away. But if you get it out, that’s the awareness that you may need. You know, awareness is everything. yeah. The minute you recognize that behavior, you can do something about it. Like, I see what’s going on here.
I see you avoidance. I see you. I’m about to ghost somebody.
Don: Kris and I have got the benefit and luxury of having each other as well, and we are able to shine the spotlight on things for each other and we go, okay, there it is. I see you. Do you see that? And we can help each other out with things like that.
But you can do this for yourself. You just need to have that first step, which is awareness.
Kris: Yeah. And write down some stuff. So write down, why don’t you wanna face this? What is the very worst thing that could happen? If I face this?
Don: Yeah, absolutely. So if you’re struggling to have a hard conversation with somebody, what we’d like you to do is ask yourself why? Why are you afraid of this? And what are you afraid of?
Kris: Yeah. Because if I have this conversation, what’s gonna happen? Cuz sometimes we catastrophize things in our minds and the actual thinking about it is much worse than the actual doing of the thing.
That’s true in so many aspects of life, when we are worried and worried and worried about something, is so much worse. The feeling of worry is so much worse than the actual taking action. if you write out a plan for your worst case scenario, it’s like, oh, okay.
Don: Yeah. It’s actually not that bad, And then if you have that worst case scenario going into the conversation and it lands way short of that, you’re like winning.
That’s nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. So it’s a powerful strategy to, to employ.
Kris: and what that does is it rewires your brain so that your brain starts to see situations differently in the future and, and goes, oh, that wasn’t so bad. I did that thing. I’ve done that already. And the, the big boogie man in the back of your, your brain in that subconscious isn’t as likely to shut you down.
yeah. And maybe that’s part of the reason why we are able, like Donna and I are able to face up to very challenging things and, you know, it could be our age, but it’s probably cuz we’ve rewired our brains to be able to do so. But we wanna fast track you Yeah. and, and we know that some of you are our age as well, but, you know, it’s just a practice
Don: Yeah, it is. It’s absolutely a practice.
So another strategy is to get support. Get support people. Yes. We really would love you to do that. You do not have to do this alone. So often we go into our business as an entrepreneur or solopreneur, and we think we are it. This is it.
I’ve gotta make all of these decisions. I’ve gotta do all of the hard things, and I’ve gotta do it all alone. You don’t, you don’t get support. So get a coach. Do I need tailored one-to-one coaching? We’ve had coaching in our businesses from their infancy, from our twenties. We highly value coaching.
Kris: Yeah. And we’ve actually had pauses where we haven’t had coaching and we think, oh no, we’re right. We’re right. But then we realize, and even though there’s two of us, and we’ve always been in business with other people as well, we get to a point where we’re like, oh my goodness, we need a coach.
Don: Yeah.
You need support and accountability, you know? To help you shine the light. Kris and I, I, like I said, have that luxury of shining the light for each other, but often, even we, get to a point where we’re not shining the light on that tricky little gremlin.
You know, we need to bust through a block that we’ve got, that we’ve each got, or that we are each weighing into. And, a coach will shine the light. A coach will hold you accountable to do what’s in integrity with you, because you’ll have briefed your coach. Remember, your coaches are working for you and with you, and they’ll hold you to your values.
They’ll, they will stand beside you and help you through this.
Kris: Yeah. We’ve had our coach say, so why aren’t you being consistent? Yeah.
Don: And
Kris: we’re like,
Don: oh. Oh.
Kris: okay. And then when you have somebody you’re checking in with regularly, you don’t wanna be asked that question again. Yeah.
Don: Or you wanna prove that we got this, we can do it.
Kris: We can be consistent. We can tell you that we wouldn’t have released our podcast as early as we did if we didn’t have a coach.
Yeah. Because she really pushed for it into, we knew we wanted to do it. But we kept sort of pushing it off a bit and pushing it off and it was like, okay, when’s the deadline? All right, this is the deadline. We’ve gotta do it. So that’s the sort of thing that a coach can do for you, hold you accountable.
It’s so hard to do it for yourself. Yeah. Like we do it for our coaching clients. It’s like, right, this is your deadline. You’ve gotta do this. I dunno why we have a lot of trouble doing it for ourselves. We need somebody who’s looking from the outside in having an objective
Don: Well, it’s like exercise as well, like getting a personal trainer. You’ll take yourself for a walk or take yourself for a run or do whatever. You get a personal trainer and you will be pushed to the best that you can be in that moment. You’ll be pushed harder than you’ve ever been pushed because you are there with someone running beside someone and they hold you accountable to actually try hard to extend yourself.
Kris: Yeah. Even having an exercise buddy or a walking buddy. And this is, The next point. join a community. Yeah. Like join a community to get support And you’re more likely to take responsibility. Be accountable. Do the thing that you need to do because you’ve got people who are, supporting you in a loving and nurturing environment like the academy, like the design in Prosper Academy.
You know, that’s, that’s gold. It is gold when you don’t feel alone. Yeah. And where you can feel supported.
Don: Yeah. And in the academy, you’ll not only get that beautiful support, but you’ll also be given all of the systems and procedures that you need to put in place. So you’ll be armed with the ways to negate the tricky situations to avoid them all together.
So not only will you be leveling up with regard to business processes, you’ll be leveling up with having a community that’s holding you accountable. So it’s a, beautiful
Kris: Yeah. Yeah. You could reach out to fellow designers and say, look, I need an accountability buddy. I need an accountability partner.
Or maybe somebody in your town, let’s go and have coffee let’s go and have dinner. Let’s go and you could even go for a walk with them, with a fellow designer and, and just connect.
Don: that’s what Kris and I did in, in our businesses in Earl in the early days, we’d catch up for coffee, we’d compare systems, we’d talk about the great things in our businesses.
We’d talk about the woes, the things that were challenging us. We’d help each other out and, you know, yeah, we were competitors, but we were also wanting to see each other succeed. And we’d both had that belief that there is enough for
everyone. Yeah. And we kind of feel like that’s the same sort of energy that’s happening in the Academy Facebook group. Yes. It’s such a beautiful, supportive, connected community where everybody is sharing, sharing their, their wins, sharing their woes. It’s so exciting. Sharing their challenges, those tricky situations.
It’s really beautiful. So that might work beautifully for you.
Kris: Even in the q and a sessions, in our mentoring sessions, um, the chat is going off with people’s ideas and it’s like, oh God, that’s a good idea.
You know, it’s just such a beautiful thing. And, and there’s free Facebook groups as well. There’s free groups out there. It might be a business, business to business kind of Facebook group, or it might be a graphic design specific one.
Don: Yep. We’ve got ours, we’ve got a freebie one.
Kris: we’ve got our Design and Prosper podcast community Facebook group.
Don: Yeah. Come and join us.
Kris: Yes
So, um, just as a side note, and it’s an important side note, is that the situation could be more traumatic than just, um, surface level, and it might need a deeper level of healing.
So if you are not facing up to something and it’s consistent, you might have been taught from a really young age to avoid confrontation at all costs because it wasn’t safe to do any sort of confronting. So staying small, staying invisible, staying quiet, that could be a generational pattern. Even so you may need to talk it out with a therapist or healthcare professional. We love energetic healers as well.
Don: Yeah, absolutely. You might have a spiritual advisor you trust, whatever, someone you can help, someone who can help you work through this.
So, yes, we encourage you to get some help. Get the right help. Whatever help you need. You know, your business, your way, your beautiful mind, your way.
Kris: Yep. And we are here for you. We’d love to help you.
Don: Yeah, absolutely.
Kris: All right. We’ve got some hard questions. Mm-hmm. Hard questions. We want you to ask yourself.
Don: Yeah. They, they are really, really hard. Okay. So sometimes the hard thing we have to face is whether we have what it takes to run a graphic design business. And not so much we as the person, but we as the personality do we have the personality?
We’re not talking about talent here. I’m sure all of you have great talent, but being a C E O type is definitely a type. So we want you to ask yourself, do I have the personality type to be a c e O? You know, you just might not have that personality type, and it’s okay. Because you, you can say, okay, here I am.
This is, this is the type of person I am, and I’ll never fit this round peg into that square hole. It’s not gonna happen. And I’m gonna make myself feel bad and gonna make myself feel like a failure time and time and time again when it’s just not a part of my genetic makeup.
Kris: Yeah. And in terms of personality types as well, there’s an interesting little survey you can do. there’s a few out there. They’re, business archetypes or money archetypes, and one of them is a ruler, right. And. I am a ruler in terms of how I approach business and money, and that means I’m a control freak, right?
So even having that awareness can be really interesting to shift and go, okay, this is part of my personality. This is how, this is my go-to. How can I address this? How can I look at this and do things differently based on that awareness. So if you wanna take, one of those money archetype quizzes, go and have a look at Denise Duffield Thomas’s it can be really interesting
Don: So interesting. So interesting. Definitely. Yeah. Now, another hard question is, am I flogging a dead horse with his business? Yeah. You know, it’s like, oh my goodness. Isn’t that an awful saying?
Kris: It’s an awful saying. There’s so many awful sayings like that, like ways to skin a cat and kill two birds with one stone. Where have these come from?
Don: so awful.
Kris: Throwing a baby out with the bath water. I don’t know why they’re all just coming to me right now, but Anyway,
Don: awful. That saying is awful. Awful. I wanna scrap it from our lives
Kris: Yes. Okay. the point is, is your heart just not in it? Is it like you’ve tried everything, it’s just not working, you’re miserable, you know? Is it time to release?
Don: Yeah. Is it time to release? will you be happier? Purely being a creative, being, working on projects where you do not have to do the metrics on the figures. You do not have to do all of the costings. You do not have to liaise with the client.
You are going to flourish as a creative director. A creative, being a creative, a high level designer for someone else. Yeah. There’s no shame in that.
Kris: No shame Yeah. Because we’re not just gonna say that building a business is for everyone because it’s not Yeah.
You know, obviously as business strategists Yeah. And consultants, we, we really want you to be in business. Yeah. But it isn’t for everyone.
Don: No. We we’re all different and we have different needs. We have different family circumstances, we have different levels of stress in our life. We have different mental health, you know, all of the things.
And it’s perfectly fine. You know, if you are sitting there going, oh my gosh, it feels so much lighter. Just the thought of not having all of that side of the business to worry about. Yeah. Then listen to your gut, you know, and allow yourself to follow your dreams. And your dreams might be to work with someone else, collaborate with someone else, and purely do the design
Kris: Well, that might be the thing. It might, that’s one of the hard questions. Do I need to get somebody else on board, for my business to be successful? Do I need to partner up?
Don: Yeah, absolutely.
Kris: Where somebody can fill the gaps with whatever deficiencies I’ve got. Yeah. With the skills that I have to run a business. Because running a design business isn’t about design skills as we know. There’s just so many other aspects to it.
Don: We love that whole approach of, okay. I don’t like doing that. We’ve got a whole, we’ve got a whole system inside the academy where we look at the things you love, and love to do the things I hate and have to do and, you know, it’s a whole system. And the thing is, what we want you to do is go, okay, the things that I really hate to do but have to do, that’s all outsourceable. You know, we can outsource those things or I can get someone in with those strengths and focus on what I wanna focus on. It’s still my business. I’ll still run the business my way, but that person will be coming in and doing all of the things that I don’t like to do.
And that’s absolutely possible just because you are the c E O. It doesn’t mean you have to do all of the things as long as, as the CEO you know, what they need to be doing and how to read the reports. You know, you need to, you need to be looking at, you still need to look at the numbers to make sure your business is profitable.
Kris: yeah, and looking at where your strengths lie and um, you know, finding out what’s missing, but also making sure that you are not doing things just because you have it as a strength.
Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you should be doing it, because sometimes we’re miserable doing the things that we’re good at. Unfortunately.
Don: Absolutely.
Kris: So, yeah. Do you need to outsource certain aspects of your business to be successful?
Yeah, Just facing the fact and accepting that. You can’t be good at everything. Just accepting that is just, it could be one of those aha moments that you have and you go, okay, I accept it.
Kris: I accept it, and I’m gonna try and get some help. A lot of designers will throw themselves into the creative process or another task that makes themselves feel more comfortable. Like, this is my lane. This is feel great. I’m enjoying this project. I’m gonna keep myself really busy, busy, busy
Don: doing, doing, doing. That’s it. I’m doing the doing. I’m in the job doing the doing. And rather than facing the fact that their business actually isn’t profitable or sustainable, they’re spending hours and hours and oodles of time on projects because they’re happy in that space, but they’re not earning any money.
Kris: Yeah. And I can tell you now that, um, if you do throw yourself into the creative process and that’s your favorite thing to do, it won’t feel like your favorite thing to do when you’re not profitable.
Don: Yeah. You’ll be resentful, you will get fatigued, you’ll have burnout. So, you know, you might have to ask yourself some really serious questions. Do I need to level up? Yeah. Do I need help? You know, whether it’s via some training or some coaching, you know, what do I need to do to fill the gaps in my business?
Yeah. Where are the gaps? What are the gaps? Where are the bits that I really don’t wanna be doing?
Kris: Yeah. So Donna and I, we are eternal optimists when it comes to graphic designers being in business. And if your heart is saying, yes, yes, I am an entrepreneur, yes, I do have what it takes to be the ceo.
Um, you know, you started this for a reason. You have your own business because you had a dream. Mm-hmm. So what is that dream? Yeah. And we do want you to exhaust every avenue before throwing in the towel. Yeah. And so there’s lots of strategies here, you may need help.
Don: You may need help. Yeah. And that’s okay. You know, being a CEO is hard work. So, you know, we don’t feel like we’ve glossed over this at all. I think we’ve really highlighted that, that it can be really hard and it’s not for everybody. And it’s certainly hard if you are doing it all on your own. So you, you, you just might need some help. So if you need help with taking action, hop on a free call with us.
We will help you with accountability. We’ll help you be brave and face up to the hard things in your business. You know, we can be a part of your team and we want you to thrive.
Kris: We do. Yes. So, doing this, learning how to face up to all these hard things, it, it is trial and error as you journey along in your life.
It’s, you know, you’re gonna do it well. Sometimes you’re not gonna do it well other times. But facing those hard things might not be as scary as you think. Actually doing a hard thing and a scary thing might be getting on a call with us or saying, yes, I do need coaching and going ahead with it. Investing in it.
Don: Yes.
Kris: It’s scary as well. Yeah, I know that we have felt scared. Yeah. You know, whenever we’ve decided, okay, we’re gonna go through, we’re gonna do this program or we’re gonna do this, um, we’re gonna do this coaching because
Don: it’s an investment right? And you don’t wanna waste money. No. You want this to be a profitable thing. We actually put, um, roi, go rot, return on investment goals on our coaching. We’re like, okay, we’re investing in coaching. We’re just embarking on some coaching at the moment. What, what’s the strategy? What do we wanna get from this?
Yeah. You know, it, it’s, it’s hard. Yeah. It’s hard to show up. Yeah. Spend the money and then show up every day in a coaching environment, when you wanna make it work.
So we get that, that we get that. It’s hard, but it’s so empowering.
Kris: It is so empowering. I love that. I love the fact that you can invest in something and commit to it, say, for six months, and you go, okay, I’m investing this amount of money. My goal is to 10 x that investment in that six months.
I’m gonna have, you know, just say it was a $5,000 investment, I’m gonna have $50,000 as a result of that. So that’s an interesting way to look at it as well. It can help you to take accountability and even having that goal will help you to, you know, not waste the opportunity.
Don: yeah, absolutely. That’s right.
Kris: So, as we said earlier, facing the hard thing may not be as scary as you think, and often it’s the thinking and the stewing and the spiraling that feels so much worse. So if you feel like there is an undercurrent of fear in your business, um, and it’s showing up in your design business, we’ve also done a podcast about that.
So it’s episode 53 when Fear Rears its head in your graphic design business. So check that one out too, because. It’s time. It’s time to face the reality.
Don: Yes. Yeah. So let’s face reality together. You know? Let’s put our big pants on and let’s do it.
Kris: Yes. Okay, everybody, hope you have a beautiful week, and until next time,
Bye!
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