Finding time to work ON your business

Growing a successful interior design business requires more than just serving clients—it takes dedicated time to work on the business, not just in it.

In this episode, Rebecca Hay shares why prioritizing business development is essential for long-term success and how interior designers can break free from the cycle of constant client demands.

She provides actionable strategies to help designers re-prioritize their time, build efficient systems, and create a strong foundation for growth. By making smarter investments in business operations, designers can scale sustainably and run a business that works for them—not the other way around.

For designers feeling overwhelmed by project management, marketing, and client demands, this episode provides a clear roadmap to reclaiming control, scaling effectively, and running a business with more ease.

Episode Highlights

1. The Hidden Cost of “Being Busy”
   Rebecca challenges the “busy badge of honor” and reveals how constantly working in your business—serving clients and handling day-to-day tasks—can actually hinder your growth. She explains why prioritizing time to work on your business is the key to scaling and avoiding burnout.

2. The Four Symptoms That Show You’re Stuck
   If you’re constantly repeating the same tasks, drowning in back-and-forth emails, reinventing the wheel for every project, or struggling to scale, this episode is a must-listen. Rebecca breaks down these four signs that your business lacks a solid foundation—and what to do about it.

3. The One Game-Changing Habit That Will Transform Your Business
   Carving out just four hours a week to work on your business can be a game-changer. Rebecca shares a simple yet powerful time-blocking strategy and a practical exercise to start streamlining your workflow today—because if you don’t make the time now, you’ll always feel stuck.

Episode Resources

• Learn more about Power of Process

Read the Full Transcript ⬇️

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;29;27

Rebecca Hay

When we’re running our business and we’re busy, we tend to wear that busy badge of honor. Like, I’m so busy, I don’t have time. I don’t have time because we prioritize serving our clients, which rightly so. Obviously, they’re the reason you’re in business. However, it can, down the road, actually hinder your growth. If you’re constantly working to serve your clients, and you never pay attention to the aspects that will help to build and strengthen your business.

00;00;30;00 – 00;00;32;26

Rebecca Hay

All right.

00;00;32;29 – 00;01;02;02

Rebecca Hay

I’m Rebecca Hay, and I’ve built a successful interior design business by trial and error, podcasts, online courses, and so many freaking books. Over the last decade, I’ve grown from an insecure student to having false starts to careers. And now I’m finally in the place where I want to be. Throughout my journey, it’s been pretty obvious that I’m passionate about business and helping other entrepreneurs do the same.

00;01;02;04 – 00;01;27;14

Rebecca Hay

Each week, I’ll share tangible takeaways from my own experience and the experiences of other badass women to help you build your confidence and change your business. Hey hey hey, it’s Rebecca, and you’re listening to Resilient by Design. Today I have a shorty episode for you. I just wanted to pop in here because it’s early in the year still, and I know a lot of us are already feeling the overwhelm.

00;01;27;17 – 00;01;51;16

Rebecca Hay

I can tell you that one of the biggest factors that improved my life in business was finding time to work on my business. And I know that when you’re in it and you’re running around and you’re running from project to project, it can be challenging, stressful to really carve out any time to work on your business. So today’s episode is for you.

00;01;51;17 – 00;02;10;28

Rebecca Hay

If you’re looking to find some time to work on your business, but you feel like it’s practically impossible finding time to work on your business. First of all, do you even have the time? Well, we all have the same number of hours in the day, so yes, it’s possible you have the time. You are just spending it doing other things.

00;02;11;01 – 00;02;36;10

Rebecca Hay

So the trick is then figuring out how to prioritize the time and what do you tackle first? I know when I was early in my design business journey, I constantly felt overwhelmed, stretched thin, and I was always stuck working inside my business. Like doing the things when I say working in your business versus on your business. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, let me just clarify.

00;02;36;10 – 00;02;52;26

Rebecca Hay

Because when I first heard this term, I was like, what? I’m yeah, I’m working on my business. I’m out there, I’m sourcing. I’m like, no, no, no, that’s not what it is. When you work in your business, you are doing the customer service work, right? You could be sourcing fabric and tile. You could be working on floor plans.

00;02;52;26 – 00;03;09;29

Rebecca Hay

You could be on a job site. You could be doing a site measure. You could be working with your trades. You could be, I don’t know, putting together a presentation. You could be all of that. All of the things that you picture an interior designer does for clients is working inside your business. You’re in it. You’re doing the thing.

00;03;09;29 – 00;03;48;01

Rebecca Hay

You’re serving your clients. The difference between that and working on your business is when you work on your business, you are working on aspects of the business that are business development. It is not client service directly. I mean, indirectly, you’re obviously improving your business, but it is things like bookkeeping, reviewing the numbers, setting goals, outlining the steps that you take in your process, building out a process, creating documents that you might want to give to a client could be building out your website.

00;03;48;01 – 00;04;11;20

Rebecca Hay

It could be marketing, financial, whatever all of that type of task is working on your business, you are looking to further develop and grow your business from the inside, from behind the scenes and it could also be front line. It could be you showing up on Instagram, it could be you speaking at an event, but that is working on your business.

00;04;11;23 – 00;04;34;06

Rebecca Hay

What happens is when we when we’re running our business and we’re busy, we tend to wear that busy badge of honor. Like, I’m so busy, I don’t have my time. I don’t have time because we prioritize serving our clients, which rightly so. Obviously, they’re the reason you’re in business. However, it can, down the road, actually hinder your growth.

00;04;34;06 – 00;04;54;26

Rebecca Hay

If you’re constantly working to serve your clients, and you never pay attention to the aspects that will help to build and strengthen your business. This is something that I learned early on, and at first it was really hard for me to carve out that time because let’s face it, the goal is to have a successful, thriving business that makes money and brings me joy.

00;04;54;26 – 00;05;14;15

Rebecca Hay

It makes me feel like creative and remind, you know, gives me balance and all of that. So what I want to walk you through today in this short, short, concise episode. I promise I won’t talk too long is why you need to work on your business and let’s find a way to do it. So first of all, let’s talk about the realities of being an interior designer, right?

00;05;14;17 – 00;05;40;19

Rebecca Hay

You’re juggling client work. You’re sourcing your invoicing. You’re marketing, you’re doing project management. Maybe even you’re hiring. You’re managing maybe an assistant. And as your team grows, it can feel like there’s never enough time to work on the bigger picture, the bigger picture being your business itself. And so if you’re feeling like your business is running you. And what I mean by that is you show up and it’s like you’re responding, putting out fires, responding to emails.

00;05;40;24 – 00;06;05;02

Rebecca Hay

You’re not in charge. Everyone else seems to be in charge of your time, right? So if you feel like your business is running you instead of you running your business, that’s okay. You’re not alone. I would say this is the majority of designers, majority of really service based business owners. It’s so easy to fill your days with client work and constantly push the business growth to later.

00;06;05;04 – 00;06;27;02

Rebecca Hay

Here’s the thing though in my experience, later it isn’t going to come unless you make it come. You can keep putting it on the back burner. You could keep sticking your receipts into shoeboxes, but there isn’t eventually going to be a miraculous time where you’re going to say, oh, now I’m all organized. I have my books together. Like you have to take the steps.

00;06;27;04 – 00;06;48;16

Rebecca Hay

And so the reality of being an interior designer is that you are pulled in lots of directions. But if you can pause and take a step back to look at the big picture, chunk out parts of your week and month. So that you can tackle some of those bigger tasks that are helping your business to grow and to run better.

00;06;48;22 – 00;07;12;15

Rebecca Hay

You will benefit and so will your clients. Once you start to work on your business, you’re building out systems on the back end. You’re creating a process, something that then you can follow with every project. You know, there are hidden costs of not taking the time to establish a process, to work on the back end of your business.

00;07;12;18 – 00;07;39;05

Rebecca Hay

Some of those symptoms, I would say their symptoms of not having things ironed out on the back end are really clear. So I’m going to walk you through some of the symptoms. So if you’re like, well that might be me. I feel like I’m pretty organized. Here are some telltale systems that share or tell you or tell me that you haven’t fully fleshed out your business model.

00;07;39;05 – 00;08;06;17

Rebecca Hay

You’re back and you’re not working on business development. There’s four. First, you’re repeating the same tasks manually over and over again. Have you ever responded to a new client email or a new inquiry and organically written the whole email? My hand is in the air. I don’t even know. I’m embarrassed to say how many years I did that because I was so busy.

00;08;06;20 – 00;08;26;29

Rebecca Hay

I wasn’t thinking, oh, I should keep this canned email response in my email provider first. I didn’t even know that was a thing that you could do. I wasn’t even thinking, I’ll keep it in a Google doc or even keep it pinned to a board. I was just like, well, I don’t really have the time to look for the last email I sent to a new client inquiry, so I’ll just start typing it.

00;08;26;29 – 00;08;45;17

Rebecca Hay

It’s faster if I just type it. Guilty if you’re nodding your head. Yep, we’ve been guilty of this. So if you are, repeat. That’s just one example of a manual task or a task that I do manually over and over again. Or I did. If you were finding that you’re repeating the same tasks over and over again, that is a symptom that you don’t have a streamlined system in your business.

00;08;45;18 – 00;09;08;27

Rebecca Hay

Number two, it’s relates to the example I just shared, getting stuck in endless back and forth emails, back and versus the client back and forth. What about this? They have a question and you reply. Then another question, then you reply. Or with a vendor and maybe you’re trying to figure out pricing on, you know, you didn’t create a purchase order because you don’t have that system set up in your business because you, you know, one day you want to figure that out, but right now you’re just too busy.

00;09;08;27 – 00;09;23;22

Rebecca Hay

So I’m just going to email the furniture guy and say, like, how many yards do I need? Great, awesome. And he’s going to write back and say, well, what’s the repeat? Great. And then you’re going to email back and say, well, the repeat is this okay, awesome. Is it a railroaded fabric? Right? I didn’t think about that. Let me find out I’ll get back to you.

00;09;23;22 – 00;09;47;15

Rebecca Hay

Okay. It’s railroaded. But you know what? Can we make the chair arms three inches instead of four? You get it? If you’re getting stuck in endless back and forth emails, that is a symptom that you do not have a organized, streamlined system in your business. This is something that if you can carve out the time to work on your business and build out, it will save you time in your day to day and it will save your team time as you grow.

00;09;47;15 – 00;10;13;23

Rebecca Hay

Number three, another symptom that you’re not working on your business to build out a process. And really, that foundation is you might feel like every project starts from scratch even though you’ve done it before, meaning that you land a new design project. I’ve done a kitchen before, but it still feels like I’m kind of reinventing the wheel. Well, this kitchen’s different anyways, so where should I start?

00;10;13;23 – 00;10;34;00

Rebecca Hay

Okay, I’ll do the plans and then. Okay, let me make sure I let them know about this thing and then that thing. Does it feel like Groundhog Day with every project? That’s because you haven’t taken the time to build out maybe a template on how it’s going to run or establish a step by step system that you can follow with every kitchen design.

00;10;34;02 – 00;11;00;10

Rebecca Hay

The last symptom that you haven’t taken the time to work on your business to build out process foundations is you’re struggling to scale, you’re struggling to grow. And scale doesn’t necessarily mean I want to be McDonald’s or Brian Glattstein or Kelly Whistler, or fill in the blank or Joanna Gaines scale just might mean growing your revenue, growing the project size.

00;11;00;10 – 00;11;29;20

Rebecca Hay

It can look different to different people. If you’re struggling to scale because you are reinventing the wheel every time, and so you’re constantly spending your energies thinking about what’s next, it’s going to be almost impossible to scale. So think about it how much time are you spending chasing emails, fixing miscommunications, or even re explaining how you do things to your clients every minute or every hour that is spent on these things?

00;11;29;27 – 00;11;51;21

Rebecca Hay

Is a minute or an hour that you could be using to grow your business. There’s so many things that we do inside our business that we don’t need to be doing over and over again. There could be a system for that. There could be a PDF to communicate that. There could be verbiage on our website. There could be a system with your accountant like it goes on and on and on.

00;11;51;23 – 00;12;15;13

Rebecca Hay

These are missed opportunities. If you keep running like a hamster on a wheel, you’re not going to have time to market your business properly, have time to show up on Instagram or rewrite the website. Copy or reach out on LinkedIn. Fill in the blank right? You’re not going to have time to do that because you’re drowning in administration like admin.

00;12;15;16 – 00;12;36;08

Rebecca Hay

Even if you have help. The other missed opportunity is you. You could possibly be turning down great projects without realizing it, because you don’t have the bandwidth to show up and really sell to that new potential client. Or maybe you’re turning projects away because you have too many projects that aren’t running smoothly, or maybe as efficiently as they could run.

00;12;36;11 – 00;12;57;03

Rebecca Hay

And then the last missed opportunity there is that you can’t raise your rates confidently because you’re stuck in inefficiency. And so many of you, I know, should be raising your rates by having a more streamlined business model that is efficient. It gives you the confidence to charge more money. It just does. And that’s what I hear all the time from designers who’ve taken power of process.

00;12;57;03 – 00;13;19;17

Rebecca Hay

Because now that they feel like they have that backup, like, oh, I feel professional because this is how it’s done. And I can tell my clients that. So what if I want you guys to imagine, like, this is powerful, an important message. What if you had time to design and grow your business? Investing in time to grow your business is not about adding work to your plate.

00;13;19;17 – 00;13;48;19

Rebecca Hay

It’s about removing friction. And it feels hard at the beginning. There is resistance, the wants. You take time to work on systems and you have a clear client work flow, automated steps, a structured onboarding process. You’re going to free up your time for creativity, strategy and scaling your business. You’re going to be a better designer because you’re not going to be stressed about all the itty bitty shitty administrative work for me.

00;13;48;19 – 00;14;13;10

Rebecca Hay

I can tell you that once I established really recurring time to work on my business through taking courses, which forced me to do that and time blocking, which I’ll share in a minute. I actually wasn’t trying to be very creative. It’s like, this feels like a bad thing to admit, but I just I’m a very productive person and I value efficiency.

00;14;13;10 – 00;14;31;01

Rebecca Hay

And I just wanted to check off all the boxes and get through the day. And I didn’t want tasks to go on to the next day. And so if I had chunked out maybe an hour or two hours to source anything materials for a project, I would end up running out of time to do it, and I would try to squeeze in the sourcing in a short period of time, and then sometimes I would just not phone it in.

00;14;31;01 – 00;14;47;19

Rebecca Hay

That’s not a good way to describe it, but I’m sharing this because I feel like somebody can relate. I’d say, you know, what? Do I really need to go to the store? I’ll just go online and see what they have instead of saying, I really kind of wanted to design something custom for this, I would look at my calendar and say, I just don’t have time.

00;14;47;19 – 00;15;11;18

Rebecca Hay

You know what? This is going to work. It’s really nice. I’ll do something more custom or unique or outside the box with the next project, because literally I just wanted to check off the boxes and I wasn’t giving myself time to enjoy the creative process. Once you established process and systems where your client onboarding happens seamlessly, project timelines are crystal clear.

00;15;11;25 – 00;15;33;22

Rebecca Hay

You’re spending your time on those creative, high level decisions. Instead of chasing emails and checking off to do lists. That is a strong business foundation. That’s what happens when you have that foundation. And the hard truth is, if you don’t make the time, you’ll always be stuck. So if you don’t make the time for it now, is it ever going to happen?

00;15;33;25 – 00;15;53;08

Rebecca Hay

The longer you wait to invest that time in your business, the more overwhelming and chaotic things become. And also the more set in your ways you become or your team becomes. And if you’re waiting for a time when it’s going to be slower, right? The slow season, I’m going to figure it out. I have bad news for you.

00;15;53;10 – 00;16;18;09

Rebecca Hay

There is never going to be a perfect time. It’s like the shoe boxes of receipts that I kept year after year. And I’m like, one day I’m going to sit down. I’m going to come up with a system to keep track of my expenses. Like that one day didn’t even come until I finally made the decision. Okay, enough is enough for Becca, the designers who get ahead, the ones who you see exploding with projects and killing it are the ones who carve out the time.

00;16;18;09 – 00;16;53;07

Rebecca Hay

Now, even when things are busy. So the first step is schedule time in your week, even if it’s only an hour. My recommendation is you schedule that time earlier in the day. This is just my personal opinion, but what I found with my personality is by the end of the day, I am tired. Or more often than not, the tasks that I was working on during the day went long because let’s face it, most of us are terrible at anticipating how long a task is going to take and things come up.

00;16;53;09 – 00;17;11;27

Rebecca Hay

Block an hour once a week at the beginning of the day for you to work on something. Maybe it’s an online course, maybe it’s tackling your bookkeeping. Maybe it’s I just want to review my numbers from last year. I don’t care what it is. It really doesn’t matter at this point if you’ve never spent any time working on your business.

00;17;12;00 – 00;17;41;15

Rebecca Hay

It’s about developing the habit and holding yourself accountable for yourself. Because this is what happened to me at the beginning. I’m like, yeah, I’m going to do like Friday mornings. I’m going to do like Finance Fridays. But like, let’s be honest, it just never happened because somebody needed me or I needed to go to site or I, you know, wanted to tweak the car drawings because I wasn’t happy with the layout and I would always eat into the time I had allotted for myself because, I mean, what am I going to get out of myself?

00;17;41;17 – 00;18;10;29

Rebecca Hay

Oh my God, I just realized this is not a short episode guys. All that to say, you can make the time. I hope you now see the power of what can be done. When you do take the time to work on your business, you’re leaving so much on the table by continuing to do the busy work, I want you to write down a list, let’s say ten areas of your business that you want to work on in the next few months.

00;18;11;01 – 00;18;28;13

Rebecca Hay

And then I want you to slowly go through your calendar block off an hour a day if you can do more. That’s my preference. But I’m trying to make this bite sized so you can do four hours a week. I think that’ll be amazing. I think everyone can find four hours a week. You can spread it out or I like to do a large chunk.

00;18;28;15 – 00;18;45;22

Rebecca Hay

That’s what I recommend for power of process is like take 3 to 4 hours a week to work on the course material. I think it’s really impactful because if you do the work, you’ll see the results. But set aside four hours a week so that you can start tackling your list. And if you don’t know what to put on that list, start with a process.

00;18;45;24 – 00;19;06;29

Rebecca Hay

How do you run a project from start to finish? Spend time figuring that out and getting it on paper. One of the most impactful things we can do is take what’s in our brains and just type it into a Google doc, or use sticky notes. I love sticky notes. Put all the things you’re doing on a sticky note, stick it on the wall and start putting things into sections.

00;19;06;29 – 00;19;22;01

Rebecca Hay

Start to get a clear idea of like, what am I doing? What can be streamlined? And of course, power of process is coming back soon so you guys can check that out when the time comes, because I will be there to help you get things set up. But in the meantime, carve out that time to work on your business.

00;19;22;01 – 00;19;34;21

Rebecca Hay

It will be a game changer. All right, thanks for listening. I’ll see you soon.