No matter where you are in your design journey, the skills and experience you’ve gained can be the perfect foundation for transitioning to interior design.
Our guest, Heather Lastiwka, has worn many hats in her career (including a stint at Earls—just like me! 😉) before taking the leap into running her own design business. She opens up about how burnout led her to rethink her path, why design has always been a part of her story, and how she finally made her dream a reality.
Heather also shares her brilliant real estate flipping strategy (seriously, I may have to steal her term “bounce buddy” for myself!) and how she leveraged Power of Process (POP) to set up her business for success—even if it took a few tries.
This episode is packed with practical advice for anyone considering a career change into design, proving that it’s all about Progress Over Perfection!
Episode Highlights
- From Corporate Burnout to Design Solopreneur – Heather shares how years in the corporate world led to total burnout and how she finally took the leap into her lifelong passion: interior design.
- Flipping at 19?! – Heather reveals her brilliant real estate strategy as a teenager—negotiating to improve a property in exchange for a share of the profit. A must-hear for anyone interested in flipping!
- The Power of Transferable Skills – How working in HR, hospitality, and construction gave Heather the unexpected tools she needed to launch a successful design business.
- Money Mondays & Future Fridays – Heather’s game-changing approach to time management that transformed her business and work-life balance.
- Progress Over Perfection – Why embracing this mindset (instead of striving for unattainable perfection) is key to growth as a designer and entrepreneur.
Episode Resources
- Learn more about Heather Lastiwka at her website.
- Learn more about Power of Process.
To add to your reading list
Read the Full Transcript ⬇️
00;00;00;03 – 00;00;16;05
Heather Lastiwka
My whole life I wanted to work in design and in real estate, and I thought, okay, this is what I have always loved to do. It’s always the part of me that gives me energy, either in my own home or helping my friends and family. And I thought, okay, I’m going to listen to that little voice that has been saying all along that that’s what you love to do.
00;00;16;08 – 00;00;21;07
Heather Lastiwka
And I just went for it. All right.
00;00;21;10 – 00;00;50;11
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;00;50;14 – 00;01;22;01
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 are listening to Resilient by Design. Today I interview Heather Le Stuka. Heather is a Power of Process alumni who left a very illustrious corporate career for launching an interior design firm, though she has over a decade of experience in H.R.
00;01;22;02 – 00;01;49;21
Rebecca Hay
We also worked as Earls Girl, so we have that in common. We share our experience actually working in a restaurant and how that parlays to running a design firm, but she has so much experience that she brings to the table, and yet she still decided that she needed to take power of process. And we talked today in this episode about a lot of different things, especially about that transition from corporate career to being a solopreneur or running an interior design firm.
00;01;49;23 – 00;02;21;11
Rebecca Hay
We talk about the skills that you have that sometimes you overlook or don’t even recognize are useful and transferable into running an interior design firm. Heather always loved design, had it all from a young age to go into design as a career, but just didn’t do it. She opted for the more secure, stable route in corporate until years later, in her 40s, decides it’s time I’m moving into design.
00;02;21;14 – 00;02;45;06
Rebecca Hay
She started investing in real estate with her first landlord at 19 years old, and her story that she shares here of what she did is so impressive actually gives me ideas of how I could potentially partner with someone for a flip. So thank you for that. Other. She negotiated to improve the property at just the cost of the materials, and in turn she got a share of the increased value once it was sold the following year.
00;02;45;07 – 00;03;11;23
Rebecca Hay
So smart. She flipped her own five properties while she moved into a full time corporate career. When raising a family began, real estate and design took a backseat, and then years later, fast forward to two years ago. Heather. She now has teenagers. To give you an idea of timeline, Heather left corporate and pursued her passion full time. Now serving clients with full service, value based design.
00;03;11;25 – 00;03;36;00
Rebecca Hay
Heather shares her experience going through power of Process and how she wasn’t able to complete the course the first go around because life got in the way. But the takeaways she has and how she’s come back year after year. I hope you enjoy this episode with Heather. Welcome to Resilient by Design. Heather, I’m very excited to have you here.
00;03;36;03 – 00;03;45;05
Heather Lastiwka
Thank you. I am also very excited to be here. I actually not even sure how I am even here, but that’s part of the story we’ll talk about later.
00;03;45;08 – 00;03;50;23
Rebecca Hay
I cannot wait to dive into all of those things. Before we do, can you just introduce yourself to our listeners today?
00;03;50;25 – 00;04;18;08
Heather Lastiwka
So I’m Heather Liska, and I am the owner and lead designer for Heatherington Properties, Inc. We’re based just outside of Edmonton in a beautiful little bedroom community called Beaumont. We literally say life is better in Beaumont. I have a really great extended team, a part time design associate, and a bookkeeper. We’re going to talk about that in a little while, and I’ve been doing this full time now for just over two years.
00;04;18;11 – 00;04;25;22
Heather Lastiwka
I made a career transition into this out of corporate. I’m a mom, mom of two kids. They’re probably that’s probably one of the most important parts.
00;04;25;23 – 00;04;44;13
Rebecca Hay
Wow. That’s amazing. And I love your career journey. So I want us to talk a little bit about that because I didn’t know all of the details. I mean, before when I first met you inside Power of Process. I didn’t know your story until like, I guess it was after the course had wrapped and we chatted and I was blown away.
00;04;44;20 – 00;05;00;27
Rebecca Hay
I think it’s so interesting. I think others are going to love it too. I also love your story because you are coming at this, you know, later in life. So to say like this is not your first career. You were doing something completely. You’ve done lots of things. Actually, we have a lot in common, which I think is really neat.
00;05;01;04 – 00;05;02;26
Rebecca Hay
Shout out to Earls.
00;05;02;29 – 00;05;09;16
Heather Lastiwka
Yeah, a couple earls girls here. This is how we age everyone fabulously.
00;05;09;16 – 00;05;10;28
Rebecca Hay
Of course.
00;05;11;00 – 00;05;18;22
Heather Lastiwka
I credit a good portion of the direction of my career to Earls. One, because they’re heavily process oriented.
00;05;18;22 – 00;05;20;10
Rebecca Hay
Oh yes.
00;05;20;12 – 00;05;46;23
Heather Lastiwka
What is really interesting about their model that I apply today as a business owner is they really understand who their target talent, population is. They know that they are capturing a group of young people, and their job as great talent seekers, is to find the people who have the potential for business ownership and leadership and nurture that and dig in deep to train them.
00;05;46;25 – 00;06;06;25
Heather Lastiwka
As a business owner, I still today think that that’s like probably one of our most important things is how do you find talent? And I just don’t think that it’s maybe in all the obvious places. Yes, school for sure. School is important, but I look for people who are like going above and beyond, outside of their box can think creatively, and I’ll teach them the technical stuff they might need.
00;06;06;25 – 00;06;09;20
Heather Lastiwka
Yeah, and Earl’s taught me that. Truly.
00;06;09;22 – 00;06;44;25
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. It’s so interesting. And I mean, I didn’t expect the conversation to go here, but I do think it’s worth talking about for those who are listening. This idea of process for me was first introduced when I worked at Earl’s because, as you say, they’re great at finding the right talent. But what they also are great at, and what they have the process for, is nurturing that talent and training their employees, and not only just training them on the do A to Z like do step ABCd first, and then you got a two minute drink order and like, you know, all the processes.
00;06;44;28 – 00;06;52;09
Rebecca Hay
But they also are really great at creating a sense of community and creating what would you call it. Like they have core values.
00;06;52;10 – 00;06;53;00
Heather Lastiwka
Culture, a.
00;06;53;00 – 00;07;15;11
Rebecca Hay
Culture. Exactly. And so and some people might call it a cult, but that’s what comes from culture. And it truthfully, and it is something that I guess for me, I never really understood how companies could operate like a well-oiled machine until I worked there. And so much that I. And you’ve seen this because you took power of process.
00;07;15;13 – 00;07;38;14
Rebecca Hay
But so much of my teachings, I go back to experiences that I had working in the restaurant in that particular chain, because they had everything outlined. They had everything that you would do from the moment a customer walked through the door to the moment they left was outlined and they taught it, and we served our clients following that same process.
00;07;38;18 – 00;07;58;14
Rebecca Hay
It needed to be repeatable. And it is the franchise model. And I’m not suggesting designers need a franchise, but there’s so much to learn from that. And that’s really what helped me to develop my course. And then I want to parlay this now, Heather, into your career, because I think it’s so interesting. We were both girls. Girls back in the day.
00;07;58;17 – 00;08;01;01
Rebecca Hay
I think we were both also the day leader, were we not?
00;08;01;02 – 00;08;21;18
Heather Lastiwka
Yeah, I love that experience. I was recruited straight out of girls. I was going to university at the time, I got my big girl job. As I sort of say, I was recruited by a group of executives who used to come in for lunch every Friday. Again, if this is early in your career and you’re what you think is stuck in a restaurant, don’t view it that way.
00;08;21;18 – 00;08;36;21
Heather Lastiwka
And I’m just going to go sideways for one second. I’m going to come back to this. So this is a book called gap in the game. Great book. Love that. It is a great book. It talks about how to turn every experience in your life into what you’re gaining from it, which is really like finding the learning, finding the nugget.
00;08;36;23 – 00;08;57;06
Heather Lastiwka
I highly recommend this book. It’s so valuable to changing your mindset and you’re not stuck anywhere that you are. You have these opportunities to be able to take away learning, figure out what you’re getting out of this, and some of it is about changing your character. Some of it is about opportunities. And that’s what happened for me, I wasn’t stuck, I felt great there and I learned a lot and I was grateful.
00;08;57;08 – 00;09;09;06
Heather Lastiwka
But I did get recruited straight out of that into an HR position. I worked for an organization that was all over the country and small, small, small communities doing retail. Some people might know it. It was sand stores.
00;09;09;08 – 00;09;10;15
Rebecca Hay
An right.
00;09;10;15 – 00;09;11;04
Heather Lastiwka
That’s right.
00;09;11;04 – 00;09;12;08
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, I remember those stores.
00;09;12;08 – 00;09;30;17
Heather Lastiwka
Surplus Army and Navy is actually what it stood for. But it did that for a series of years, and I learned how to do, training at a whole other level because I was doing a lot of training for girls. And then I moved from there into another retail, which was all up in the Arctic, called the Northern Stores, and I was working in essential skills training.
00;09;30;17 – 00;10;00;17
Heather Lastiwka
So literacy, largely literacy, and we were in Inuit communities like Kanga, Zulu, Durack and Iqaluit and Baker Lake. And again, I would highly recommend that Canadians find their way to northern Canada because it’s like two different countries, lots of travel all the way through. And then I moved into, construction and technology and after that into finance. And through the course of my corporate career, from the time I was 19 onwards, there wasn’t a day that I wasn’t leading people in some way.
00;10;00;19 – 00;10;19;20
Heather Lastiwka
And there’s been times when I did that really well and there’s been times that I did that really poorly and had to learn the tough way and the hard way. You know, that we we don’t take our people for granted and we have the best opportunity for success when everybody’s ideas are engaged and included. Ultimately, still, one person has to make good choices.
00;10;19;20 – 00;10;40;13
Heather Lastiwka
But but, you know, I skinned my knees in lots of places and did a lot of things that I would probably go back and do differently. But I think at this stage of my life, what’s been great about those experiences is recognizing that, you know, you can be resilient, like you come through them and you figure out who you are and what you stand for and what you’re willing to adapt.
00;10;40;15 – 00;11;04;29
Heather Lastiwka
And by the time I was leaving corporate permanently, which was three years ago now, I had reached total burnout, actually, like, literal like clinical burnout. I was in hospital for a little bit, and I was physically completely wrecked. I had wrecked my body. I was working 16 hours a day, traveling all over the place, sometimes never leaving a desk, sitting there for 16 hours straight.
00;11;04;29 – 00;11;29;10
Heather Lastiwka
Like all the thing. That’s when people talk about toxic work. They tend to talk about work environments. And I worked for a great company who actually set up really positive environments. For the most part, we’re a corporation, so, you know, no one’s perfect. But I, I was not good to myself, and I worked too hard for too long and didn’t take good rejuvenation time.
00;11;29;10 – 00;11;46;11
Heather Lastiwka
And I came to the end of that and realized, okay, I need to do some things differently. And and what do I really want to do in this next chapter? And hence here we are. So my whole life, from the time I was 19, I wanted to work in design and in real estate, and I didn’t talk about that yet.
00;11;46;12 – 00;12;04;06
Heather Lastiwka
There’s a phase of life where I was doing that and I thought, okay, this is what I have always loved to do. It’s always the part of me that gives me energy, either in my own home or helping my friends and family, because I’ve done lots of that. And I thought, okay, enough’s enough. Like, I’m going to listen to that little voice that has been saying all along that that’s what you love to do.
00;12;04;08 – 00;12;06;12
Heather Lastiwka
And I just went for it.
00;12;06;14 – 00;12;39;00
Rebecca Hay
Okay, I love your story because how many listeners right now can relate to that feeling that pull. I know that many of the designers who listen to this podcast have left corporate or are still actually working corporate, dreaming of the day when they don’t do that full time anymore. So I love that you’ve shared that and that feeling that it was like this nagging, like you always wanted to do it, and it sounds like you kind of ignored it for a while because you were in this sort of rat race.
00;12;39;07 – 00;12;55;20
Rebecca Hay
This is my life. This is my job, this is practical. There may have been thoughts of, well, running into interior design firm that seems a little bit, I don’t know, fluffy. And can I even make money doing that? And or maybe not. I don’t know. What held you back from making that transition sooner.
00;12;55;22 – 00;13;17;11
Heather Lastiwka
Well, I grew up in Winnipeg like I graduated in 1993. I’m 49. I turned 50 in a month and a half. The birthday is crazy. It’s crazy. And in Winnipeg, I mean, there were interior designers when I was graduating from high school, but they were serving a group of people who, frankly, in the way I grew up, were like, I have another world.
00;13;17;13 – 00;13;18;22
Rebecca Hay
Like ultra luxury.
00;13;18;22 – 00;13;34;25
Heather Lastiwka
Ultra luxury. Yeah. No, I mean, lots of people would think, like, is there even ultra luxury in Winnipeg? But there is, but it’s a pretty small market. And so like my exposure was very, very minimal. And, you know, there was no HGTV in those days. I know, shocking. No one can remember those days. But there was none of that.
00;13;34;25 – 00;13;56;29
Heather Lastiwka
And so it just it didn’t seem like an accessible career is a good word to use. U of M has had a great design degree program for forever. Interesting, but I just didn’t feel like I could do that. I didn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t visualize it. And so I pursued it for fun in investment properties. When I was 19, I moved out.
00;13;57;01 – 00;14;17;16
Heather Lastiwka
I really wanted to live in a certain neighborhood. It was really important to me. I loved character homes at that time, and I really wanted to be in that neighborhood. And like, that wasn’t really a neighborhood that easily rented out. And for those of you who are from Winnipeg or know it, it’s River Heights. Beautiful neighborhood. So I drove up and down streets to find houses that were for sale because we had no online listings then.
00;14;17;18 – 00;14;20;20
Rebecca Hay
If it existed, it was only for real estate agents, probably. Right.
00;14;20;26 – 00;14;40;14
Heather Lastiwka
I didn’t even know. And this how far back we are. So I drove up and down and I called real estate agents and I said, you know, this house has been listed for a long time. Is the homeowner willing to rent it out? And I’m coming with two guys, and both of them work for Home Depot. We will be willing to renovate or update the house for a reduced rent.
00;14;40;16 – 00;14;53;16
Heather Lastiwka
Well, somebody took us up on it. I negotiated that we would receive a portion of the return profit at the end of that year when they relisted it, and we did it and we got a return, and I was hooked like, that was that was it. I was like, okay.
00;14;53;18 – 00;15;18;26
Rebecca Hay
Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop here for a second, because this is a unique idea I have never heard of before. I’m going to ask all my real estate investor flipper friends like, have you done this? Wow. At the age of 19, you had such a business mind to come up with this idea, and then you had the nerve or the balls or whatever you want to call it, to actually approach realtors with your harebrained idea.
00;15;19;00 – 00;15;19;10
Heather Lastiwka
Yeah.
00;15;19;17 – 00;15;29;12
Rebecca Hay
And someone said, yes, like, look at you being an entrepreneur early on, maybe without realizing it. What a brilliant idea.
00;15;29;14 – 00;15;37;05
Heather Lastiwka
I mean, to think it was purely selfish, like I wanted to live in River Heights. I mean, you know, I was 19 and that’s where I wanted to live. And, you know, I’m going to make it happen. I was your.
00;15;37;05 – 00;15;38;01
Rebecca Hay
Motivation.
00;15;38;01 – 00;15;59;25
Heather Lastiwka
That was my motivation. Now, I was raised by two entrepreneurs, and I did not appreciate that until much later in my life that the way we were steeped as kids was with owner mentality. And like, you eat what you kill. I hate that saying, but basically you’re you have to hunt, you got to go after life. It’s not coming to your front door.
00;15;59;25 – 00;16;18;17
Heather Lastiwka
Yeah, that was how I grew up. I did not know that consciously until much later. Yeah, but I try to teach our kids that today. My husband is an entrepreneur as well. So they’re growing up in a similar, you know, environment. But at the time, that’s just what I, you know, I was going to go do, however I could do it, but yeah.
00;16;18;17 – 00;16;36;02
Heather Lastiwka
And like, I was hooked. I’m like, okay, you can make improvements to a property and you can make some money. Now in Winnipeg, it was difficult to make money on property at that time. It was a very flat market still not, you know, super high skyrocketing. But we got a little bit, got a little bit of money and I parlayed that little bit of money into the second rent property.
00;16;36;02 – 00;16;57;15
Heather Lastiwka
And then by that point I already had proof of, you know, output. And then I got into flipping. I bought my own house shortly after that. We flipped that, and then we did five more after that, and then we moved to Alberta and I had kids and we stopped propane. So those first sort of ten years in my 20s, that’s where I kind of got my feet wet around.
00;16;57;17 – 00;17;12;19
Heather Lastiwka
I have some instinct for this. I know how to figure out what the market likes, and then I turn it into some version of design. Now we know flipping is not the same as designing for clients. I really know that now. So I do these.
00;17;12;19 – 00;17;13;04
Rebecca Hay
Last two.
00;17;13;04 – 00;17;14;04
Heather Lastiwka
Years. Oh, don’t.
00;17;14;04 – 00;17;36;13
Rebecca Hay
We all know we are the, I think the biggest, the biggest joke. Whenever I talk to designers or about my ski club and I, there’s a contractor there, a couple of them and we, we chat and yeah, everyone’s dream, they always say to me, I would like to just eliminate the client. Like literally. But like flipping right now is actually very challenging in this market or to my city in Toronto.
00;17;36;15 – 00;17;45;00
Rebecca Hay
And these are people who maybe used to flip, but they’re like, I can’t flip because I can’t. There’s not really enough money in it right now. But it’s so interesting. It’s so true. It’s not the same.
00;17;45;00 – 00;18;12;21
Heather Lastiwka
No, it’s not the same. There’s pros and cons to both actually. Right. Because when you’re flipping, you’re having more fun in a way, because you don’t have to work to someone’s brief or to someone’s needs. But you also do have to work to a little more vanilla typically. So that you’re appealing to a larger audience. Now, that changes once you’re up in the million plus, because people are looking for more unique, more interesting or personalized homes.
00;18;12;21 – 00;18;27;20
Heather Lastiwka
In those cases, it also changes once you have a brand or a name, because people know now that they can expect that your brand or your name when your product comes back out onto the market, they’re like, it’s by a designer. Know who?
00;18;27;23 – 00;18;28;16
Rebecca Hay
These parents.
00;18;28;22 – 00;18;31;21
Heather Lastiwka
Yeah. So then they value that. But in the regular market they don’t.
00;18;31;27 – 00;18;56;00
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, I think this is great. So you have early experience flipping homes. So you have design chops. You know how to run a job site. I imagine you get the ins and outs of the construction industry, and then you have this incredible, illustrious career in H.R. You’re really, like, fine tuned and, dialed in on process and training and customer service.
00;18;56;02 – 00;19;06;05
Rebecca Hay
So this sounds to me like the perfect storm for starting your own design firm. And yet you still decided to take power of process.
00;19;06;07 – 00;19;06;24
Heather Lastiwka
Yes.
00;19;06;26 – 00;19;19;22
Rebecca Hay
Which I think is amazing. And I would love to know. Start by telling us, I guess. Where were you at with your interior design business before you decided to take power of process? What were the biggest challenges that you were facing?
00;19;19;29 – 00;19;40;12
Heather Lastiwka
I hadn’t even incorporated yet, and you don’t have to be incorporated, obviously, to run a business, but I hadn’t started an actual business. I just knew by that point that it’s what I wanted to do. I started by doing color consultations, literally color consultations, a small, small, tiny little portfolio. And I thought, this will be a good way to get my feet wet in interacting with clients.
00;19;40;12 – 00;20;01;14
Heather Lastiwka
And even, you know, can I read them? Can I understand them? And I was about six months into that when I felt like I do have the ability to do more because the conversations were naturally leading into design recommendations, even though I wasn’t actually getting paid for that at that time. But I felt fearful that I didn’t have formal training.
00;20;01;17 – 00;20;06;09
Heather Lastiwka
I thought, like, where do I go? And so I started looking for formal training.
00;20;06;11 – 00;20;10;16
Rebecca Hay
Formal training with design or formal training with running the business.
00;20;10;16 – 00;20;27;27
Heather Lastiwka
Not just with design. That’s what design. Okay, yeah, because I had run businesses before and so I wasn’t worried about the business aspect. I looked into design certificates and, you know, I started asking people who I knew who were in industry. I started talking to, you know, trade partners, and I just talked to anybody I could talk to and ask them if they had any recommendations.
00;20;27;27 – 00;21;04;14
Heather Lastiwka
And I got a recommendation from a friend of mine who’s parents ran a contracting company, and she said, you should check out Rebecca. Hey, she sent me your Facebook group initially, which no one no longer exists. And when I was in there, people were talking about this course called Power Process. I registered right away when I saw it, because I have a desire for process, and I know how important it can be, and I know how great it can be for the people who are in it, because it simplifies the work, and it makes the work more fun to do when you can just not spend your energy on, like, reinventing the wheel all the
00;21;04;14 – 00;21;29;17
Heather Lastiwka
time. I didn’t do very well at completing my own modules. In the first round I got three modules in and then I landed this huge project, my first big, huge project, and I thought, okay, thank goodness that this is self-study. I can come back to it at any time, thank goodness, because otherwise I would have wasted the funds and I wouldn’t have been able to do it because I needed to divert my energy to this first big project.
00;21;29;17 – 00;21;48;15
Heather Lastiwka
It was crucial for my business. And then thank goodness that as an alumni, we can come back in and we can be part of the next round or however later down the road, how many? And we can listen to the next round and be participants again, because then I did it again in the second round. Okay. So like I don’t learn very well the first time.
00;21;48;17 – 00;22;07;23
Heather Lastiwka
So then the second round I was like great, I’ll just refresh myself on modules one, two and three and I’ll pick up a module for. And I got module four done and another big project, and I focused in on that again. But I kept thinking, I know I need to come back to it. So I was listening to your podcast in the middle, and then finally this fall, three times a charm.
00;22;07;23 – 00;22;32;29
Rebecca Hay
People like that love it. But you know what, Heather? I think I’m glad that you’ve shared this journey that you had taking the course, because it’s not uncommon. There’s the live component of the course, and I do only do it twice a year because I do. There’s something magical. And I think you agree about coming together with other women, let’s face is mostly women when men are welcome, but it’s mostly women who are all striving towards the same goal.
00;22;32;29 – 00;22;53;22
Rebecca Hay
They’re working through the material together, and we have live study halls on zoom that I lead, where you’re able to ask questions and share with each other, and there’s something so powerful about that. But I can see it, and I know from my own life, life can get in the way like two, for example, you can land a big project that’s frickin awesome.
00;22;53;22 – 00;23;13;28
Rebecca Hay
I get that your attention is diverted from the course that you had every intention of signing up for and following through on, but that’s why everything is recorded. So the modules are prerecorded and they’re in your portal to watch at any time. And then if you missed a live call, that call is recorded and saved. So I love that you came back to it.
00;23;14;03 – 00;23;39;17
Heather Lastiwka
Yes. One I think there’s lots of content out there that’s free. That’s great. When you’re in a stage where you maybe need to access every resource you can at limited funds, you should you should maximize it. But also there’s something self accountable when you have to spend money on a course, it makes you hopefully. It’s not like going to the gym is for me like I pay for the gym and then I never go, stop doing that, stop doing that to myself.
00;23;39;20 – 00;23;59;22
Heather Lastiwka
But this was not like that. Which is I. It’s a passion that I was interested in. Probably everybody who’s listening. It’s a passion that they’re interested in. They’re not stuck. They want to. I just really love Rebecca that you you create enough accountability in the cost and the value is fully worth it. Like, I know it’s not a sales podcast, but for me, it was transformative.
00;23;59;25 – 00;24;15;27
Heather Lastiwka
Being able to apply those templates when I was in the project, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and as soon as I was in the project, I started to run into the things that I needed to know. And so then I could go back to the modules and go, okay, now what do I do about this? And I would then open that module.
00;24;16;01 – 00;24;36;28
Heather Lastiwka
I would self find my way through that. I maybe wouldn’t have done my actual like homework exercises, but I at least could refer to the content. But by the time I was finishing and I actually was attending all the lives and I was meeting all the people I made, I don’t know, I would say there’s probably 4 or 5 of people who I like had really connected with, you know, you could you could see that you’re like a kindred spirit on the video.
00;24;36;28 – 00;24;51;05
Heather Lastiwka
And so I reached out and connected. So I’ve made some great connections outside. So now I have bounce buddies, you know, that you can like bounce ideas with and say, I’ve got this project and I’m struggling to figure it out. That part is way beyond the value of like the material.
00;24;51;08 – 00;25;05;19
Rebecca Hay
Okay, a bounce buddy. Hold on. I’m writing that down. That is the cutest term for like an accountability partner or what have you. A bounce buddy I like I love it, you’re bouncing ideas off of them. I love that.
00;25;05;24 – 00;25;28;16
Heather Lastiwka
I think creative work isn’t really intended to be done in isolation, or at least it certainly isn’t for me. I have really found that that has been one of the most challenging parts. It’s so much better now that I have even these part time people who are in my team with me, because I can. I just have that little bit of a, you know, talk this out loud with me.
00;25;28;18 – 00;25;36;21
Heather Lastiwka
And so, yeah, and then outside of my team, right, who think really differently than me, who are not inside of my esthetic, whatever. It’s been helpful.
00;25;36;24 – 00;25;56;09
Rebecca Hay
I think sometimes when we start our own business, we’re on our own, we’re solopreneurs, and we think, well, I can just bounce ideas off my husband or my sister or my mom or my friend who’s a school teacher or works corporate or what have you. And they may care about you and they may want to help you, but they aren’t in it the way you’re in it.
00;25;56;09 – 00;26;16;25
Rebecca Hay
And so, you know, there’s you know, the experts always say like, be careful who you get advice from, because you might be in a sticky situation with a client and you might ask someone for like, how do you how would you handle the situation? But that person is not a designer. That person is not running design projects. That person has no experience doing exactly what you do.
00;26;16;25 – 00;26;49;24
Rebecca Hay
And so yeah, though the advice could work, it could also not. And they may not understand all the nuances. And then you have to explain it all. And so it’s having a bounce buddy to use your terminology. Heather is is a game changer. And it is something that I as soon as you said there about 4 or 5 people you connected with, I just kind of smiled because I hear this from all of our pop alumni, everyone who shows up to the lives in the Facebook group because we have a private Facebook group for the duration of the course, ends up finding people that are either from their city doing similar types of projects.
00;26;49;28 – 00;27;08;13
Rebecca Hay
Maybe they’ve been in business for the same amount of time. Maybe they’re just starting out just like you. Maybe they’ve been in it 20 years. You find your people to connect with, and then they end up connecting on WhatsApp or doing their own zooms. And literally, like you said, bouncing ideas off each other. So it’s it’s so much more than just a course.
00;27;08;13 – 00;27;29;28
Rebecca Hay
And I love hearing that from you that that’s been your experience too. I have a question for you. Over the three times that you’ve come back in to work on the course, what would you say was a turning point for you or an moment while you were taking the course? Could you share if there was some specific insight that helped transform your business approach.
00;27;30;00 – 00;27;51;20
Heather Lastiwka
To things you say right from the beginning progress over perfection. I actually have that on the left side of my office over here. I have put it out onto a flowchart paper, and it sits at the top of the project planning charts, because I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, and I did not recognize that in myself until later in life.
00;27;51;20 – 00;28;12;12
Heather Lastiwka
But, especially on client delivery items, you know, getting my laundry done. Yeah. I’m not a perfectionist, but when it comes to client delivery, I have such high expectations for what that experience should be for a client because they’re handing over their most intimate spaces, and they’re giving us, frankly, almost the highest level of trust next to a marriage counselor.
00;28;12;12 – 00;28;32;09
Heather Lastiwka
Like, we know details about their homes and their life that no one else does. And so my expectation for perfection is really high. But it was holding me back. It was holding me back for making the career transition to because I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to deliver at the level that we see in magazines and whatever.
00;28;32;11 – 00;28;40;15
Heather Lastiwka
And I’ve stopped letting that be a comparison because the client hired me. They didn’t hire. They didn’t.
00;28;40;15 – 00;28;42;01
Rebecca Hay
Hire Rebecca. Hey.
00;28;42;03 – 00;29;01;03
Heather Lastiwka
I like it better myself. And it’s Rebecca’s designs all the time. But in this instance, right? I mean, like, they hired you, or in that case, they hired me. But. So this progress over perfection, I have now applied in so many parts of my life, and I’m sure I had heard it before, like I know I had heard it before, but it really stuck.
00;29;01;07 – 00;29;22;21
Heather Lastiwka
And then every time, every time we were on the live, you would talk about it and you would say, gosh, okay, it’s fine. You haven’t done your homework assignment. It’s fine. You’re here. Progress. Like it really trenched in. So amazing in whatever volume you said it, it hit me. It is now like our mantra progress over perfection. Just get that one thing selected today.
00;29;22;24 – 00;29;40;25
Heather Lastiwka
Just do one progress or perfection. And then the next was time blocking. Time blocking is the most transformative thing. And I used to do it in corporate. I didn’t have a choice because we would be back to back to back to back to back to back to back 14 meetings all 14 hours if I did not time block.
00;29;40;28 – 00;30;15;02
Heather Lastiwka
But when I got into solopreneur shit, I didn’t have somebody coming into my calendar. And so therefore, like I didn’t realize that was an external force for me before that forced me to do that. And I completely abandoned the habit. So now I do money Mondays and Future Fridays, Money Mondays. It’s all about the accounting and the finance and the invoicing and the reviewing and the analysis and making sure that I’m on top of the details because I wasn’t I let my whole first year go by without doing a single thing in my bookkeeping.
00;30;15;04 – 00;30;38;23
Heather Lastiwka
Don’t do that to yourself. Then once I got money, money’s in, because you had said that was something that you actually did. And I was like, I’m adopting that immediately. And that really helped me. Then I realized, okay, I’ve now got like the book ending happening and I’m focused on clients Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and sometimes Saturday. But I’m not working on my business.
00;30;38;26 – 00;30;59;16
Heather Lastiwka
I’m just in it. I’m operating it, I’m the designer and I’m operating the business. So I’m like, in it, who’s building the website, who’s posting the social media, who’s learning, who’s reading a book, who’s going to a podcast to get more interest? No one. The only one that’s going to do that is me. But there was no time for it.
00;30;59;19 – 00;31;19;27
Heather Lastiwka
So now Fridays, it’s Future Friday doesn’t mean I’m like religious about it. Like, sometimes I have to take a meeting here or there, but I am almost religious about it. I protect that day. I take courses, the team and I take courses if we have. We just took, you know, basic CTU with Benjamin Moore on color foundations last Friday.
00;31;19;27 – 00;31;39;25
Heather Lastiwka
Like even just basic stuff that just gets us out of the client mindset and into the stretching our mindset so that we can think differently about the work and feel refreshed every day and gives us a little bit of nourishment. And then finally, I turned on my website. As a result, two and a half years in, I still had no website.
00;31;39;25 – 00;31;41;12
Heather Lastiwka
I literally turned it on last week.
00;31;41;20 – 00;32;04;27
Rebecca Hay
I love this, I love this so many Mondays. I talk about, as you know, and I love that I will say I love this Future Fridays. I think it’s just fun to have a little play on words. It makes it more enjoyable. But for anyone listening, what I like about that is I feel as though at the end of the week and I mean everybody’s different, but at the end of the week I used to try and do Finance Fridays, right?
00;32;04;29 – 00;32;28;03
Rebecca Hay
Food. That’s cute too, but I don’t feel like doing numbers on a Friday. And more often than not, I would maybe sleep in or I’d want to go on a coffee date, or I’d leave early for the weekend. And so that always got pushed. Because numbers are not my personal passion year, but future Fridays. Whether you’re on to something because I love division, I love goal setting.
00;32;28;03 – 00;32;49;26
Rebecca Hay
I love working on my business. Like I love that aspect of it. So to have that at the end of the week when it’s kind of like a fun Friday activity. And I love that you’re doing that with your team. Like that’s a great time to, to do the Q two, maybe even go to a lunch and learn or do something like that to, to better your knowledge or for you to work on anything new.
00;32;49;26 – 00;33;08;17
Rebecca Hay
But it’s like your website. You’re right. Because designers often get overwhelmed because there’s so much to do, because you’re wearing all the hats. Even if you have an assistant, you still end up wearing all the hats responsible for everything. And a lot of the things in your early years of business, you can’t delegate to an assistant.
00;33;08;19 – 00;33;11;08
Heather Lastiwka
Well, I didn’t I didn’t have an assistant until months ago.
00;33;11;14 – 00;33;14;19
Rebecca Hay
Unless you have the money to outsource to a professional.
00;33;14;22 – 00;33;15;13
Heather Lastiwka
Right.
00;33;15;15 – 00;33;19;28
Rebecca Hay
And a lot of us don’t when we’re starting out. So I love that. That’s a great tip.
00;33;20;03 – 00;33;33;24
Heather Lastiwka
Here’s what I found too. I also was doing finance on Fridays. I didn’t have the fun play on words. But here’s the problem. Now you send out an invoice to a client on Friday afternoon. So guess when the questions start coming in?
00;33;34;00 – 00;33;34;27
Rebecca Hay
Oh no.
00;33;35;00 – 00;34;03;06
Heather Lastiwka
Weekend. And so now you’re setting yourself up. And I felt like it’s so obvious when you say it out loud. But I thought, no, I’m. And I don’t want my client ending the week and going into what is their restful time, thinking about the thing that stresses them out the most, which is the money. So if I could send it out on like a Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning or whatever, then all during the week they have time to respond and have to ask questions or send the funds or say, oh, I have to send it to you transfers or whatever.
00;34;03;06 – 00;34;19;22
Heather Lastiwka
All the transactional things. If they didn’t get to it to the weekend, I don’t feel the responsibility to be responding on the weekend because I sent it on Monday, but if I send it Friday, I feel a responsibility to respond on Saturday morning. And so I that little tiny change makes a huge difference.
00;34;19;22 – 00;34;40;28
Rebecca Hay
100%. And that applies to, as you know, I teach Inside Pop about sending weekly progress updates to your clients and how I used to send them on Fridays. And I stopped doing that for that exact reason because sure, I can say I’m doing air quotes here. For those who aren’t watching on YouTube, I can say I don’t check my email on the weekend, but I do.
00;34;41;00 – 00;35;00;26
Rebecca Hay
I check things to. I might not want to respond to it, but now if I get, let’s say, a million questions from a client or something that feels urgent, or they’re upset about something, or I get pushback. I read that email on a Saturday morning or a Friday night after, you know, I put the kids to bed or I’m out for dinner.
00;35;00;28 – 00;35;13;11
Rebecca Hay
And then I feel immediate anxiety, and I carry that with me through the weekend. Now, not everyone’s as sensitive as I am, but I would rather avoid that so that I can join my weekend. So I love that. That’s so true.
00;35;13;13 – 00;35;37;02
Heather Lastiwka
We send our progress reports out on Thursday morning, because we’ve had enough of the week that we know we’re progress is up. Then they have time Thursday and all day Friday to be able to interact or respond if they need to, because I I’m exactly the same as you. If I receive something that feels like just that little hint of there’s something here that they’re worried about or they’re concerned about or they don’t like, whatever, I get it.
00;35;37;02 – 00;35;43;19
Heather Lastiwka
I start feeling this anxiety around I’m not serving them and I’m like, I know. So yeah, it helps.
00;35;43;24 – 00;35;45;20
Rebecca Hay
That’s a whole other podcast episode.
00;35;45;23 – 00;35;46;06
Heather Lastiwka
It is.
00;35;46;07 – 00;35;51;17
Rebecca Hay
It’s a whole hour. Why do we feel the need to people please our clients all the time?
00;35;51;20 – 00;36;10;07
Heather Lastiwka
I mean, we’re in a very personal business, so I think that’s part of it. Right? It’s a very personal business. And so we care about our clients. It says we care about their experience. And I frankly won’t ever change that about myself. But what I do have to do is work at how I’m carrying it, because it’s not healthy to turn that into something negative for yourself.
00;36;10;15 – 00;36;40;28
Rebecca Hay
And what I can say I’ve learned, if we go back to the Earls example and we talk about process, it’s about setting up a system a way of doing things that sets boundaries not just for your clients, but for yourself. Especially if you are someone who cares so much. You want to please everybody. You take things personally. If you’re at all like that, having structure in your business is going to help protect you from that.
00;36;40;28 – 00;36;42;11
Rebecca Hay
Yes. Hands down.
00;36;42;14 – 00;37;05;08
Heather Lastiwka
Yes. Also, if you’re ADHD like I am your structure, it helps you be productive and it gives you a feeling of accomplishment. It’s the opposite of what I told myself forever, that I just need to be fluid. And I don’t know, I need the fluid for sure, but I do that in the design work. But in the business, I create structure for myself that allows me to stay on track.
00;37;05;10 – 00;37;28;03
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, it is somewhat counterintuitive because I’m like you, and that I always used to think like, I don’t like routine. I don’t want to have the structure to my day. I want to be able to just like, do what I want, but actually it ends up causing more anxiety because then certain things don’t get done. And then instead of enjoying your time, which is supposed to be like fabric sourcing, all you’re thinking is about all the other things that you haven’t done.
00;37;28;03 – 00;37;49;14
Rebecca Hay
And when are you going to find time to do those things? And instead of just being in the moment and enjoying the design process, you are overwhelmed with everything else. And so by having structure, having a system that you follow, by following process in your business, so clients know what to expect every step of the way, giving yourself that breathing time you will actually.
00;37;49;14 – 00;38;12;11
Rebecca Hay
And this is what I found worked for me. And I don’t know if you’ve experienced this. As I started being more creative, I started taking the time to come up with more unique designs. Before I had a process, I felt rushed in everything I did and so I would just phone it in. I hate to say it or I hate to admit it, but there were times where I would phone it in and say, oh, that’s good enough.
00;38;12;18 – 00;38;23;03
Rebecca Hay
Okay, that’ll be fine because I don’t have the time to go to that other store that I really wanted to go to that’s out on the outskirts of town. So you know what? This will be fine if it’s in the budget. It’s, you know, it’s not the dream that I had, but it’ll be okay.
00;38;23;06 – 00;38;24;09
Heather Lastiwka
It’s good enough.
00;38;24;12 – 00;38;43;23
Rebecca Hay
Good enough. And yes, there are going to be times where that’s going to happen. But once I established process and I had a system and a routine, it was like, oh my God, I have a whole morning just to work on this design. Okay, well, let’s really think about this. And oh, I remember I saw that thing when I was on that trip and I was in Krakow.
00;38;43;26 – 00;38;48;22
Rebecca Hay
Maybe I could do something like it was just boom, such a change for me.
00;38;48;24 – 00;39;19;20
Heather Lastiwka
It’s true, because you’re now not spending all the energy recreating the wheel each time on the doing part. Instead, you’re spending the energy and the creativity. I can’t, I won’t say that we’re there. I mean, literally last night I was working with somebody online who’s helping me to just, like, create documents because I don’t I can’t I can’t create documents like, there’s people who do that who are really good at it, graphic designers, just admin people who actually really enjoy that work.
00;39;19;20 – 00;39;42;03
Heather Lastiwka
And I said, I have like five pages of standardized things that we have to have, like checklists for. And, you know, and I don’t have it like it’s not anywhere but so so I’ve at least done the work on what needs to be standardized. And in our most critical, repeatable things, we have those things documented now. And now we’re getting into the next level.
00;39;42;06 – 00;39;56;25
Heather Lastiwka
So again, progress over perfection where I was two years ago compared to where we are today, like, I mean, we’re not even in the same business, which is back to we’re in the game. We’re not in what we haven’t yet got done. I’m not worried about what we haven’t yet got done. It’ll get done.
00;39;56;28 – 00;40;07;17
Rebecca Hay
You’re going to spend your entire life learning and adding and changing. And yes, it will never be perfect and unfortunately, it’ll never be done.
00;40;07;20 – 00;40;08;14
Heather Lastiwka
True.
00;40;08;17 – 00;40;17;20
Rebecca Hay
So you got to just live in it. Okay. This has been such a good conversation. Heather, before we wrap up today, I would love for you to share a last nugget of wisdom with our listeners.
00;40;17;27 – 00;40;42;12
Heather Lastiwka
Two things. If you have not yet made the leap into what you want to do, if that’s you, there’s a couple things I would say to do during the time that you’re in right now, which is really think clearly about what transferable skills you already have. Because I think I was holding myself back because I didn’t have design skills, which obviously to do this work we have to have design skills.
00;40;42;12 – 00;41;05;23
Heather Lastiwka
That’s obvious, but I was discounting all the skills that I did bring to the table. So if you’re a designer and you’ve gone to school and you’ve learned how to be a designer, the thing you have to learn how to run your business. For those of us who were in businesses in some way, whether we’re employees or leaders or whatever, we have tons of skills that we bring to the table and we need to honor and value them.
00;41;06;00 – 00;41;28;02
Heather Lastiwka
If you’re working in an area where you have to time manage and you have to coordinate people and you have to put project and implementation together, I guess what that applies in this world, way more than you might think it does. You can’t execute a design if you do not have the ability to do project management, and you don’t have to be certified in project management, you just have to know how to do that.
00;41;28;02 – 00;41;58;17
Heather Lastiwka
If you are at home with your kids and that is your full time gig, you are coordinating cats all day, every day, school and this and that. All these things like do not discount what you are already doing as what is valuable into what this next thing will be. Because in design you are managing vendors and you are managing providers and you are managing logistics and you are managing maybe your design associate and you’re like, there’s so many cats that you got to hurt.
00;41;58;19 – 00;42;20;25
Heather Lastiwka
You have the skill to be able to do that. When you are doing it with all these different inputs like don’t, don’t box yourself into the box that you live today and that those skills don’t come with you. They really do. And then the last thing that I would say is the same authors just happens to be, but the same authors who wrote this book I’ve been talking about also wrote who, not how it is so valuable.
00;42;20;25 – 00;42;40;13
Heather Lastiwka
If you want to be a business owner and you want to grow a business, if you want to be on your own, that’s great too. You can run a good, profitable business on your own. But when you think about how you want to scale, literally just make a list. What are all the things you think you need to do in a business, and then don’t think about you doing all of them.
00;42;40;14 – 00;43;00;28
Heather Lastiwka
Think about who you know that you can deploy to, or that you can seek advice from. It doesn’t just mean you have to delegate or that you have to hire. Go seek advice. And that would be my last thing is your network is more important than anything else. Your network is more important than your social media. Your network is more important than a website.
00;43;01;01 – 00;43;18;19
Heather Lastiwka
Your people will put you into the contact of other people, whether it’s to do the work of the business or whether it’s to get you some clients. My entire business is built off of people telling other people that I could do this work for them, because I didn’t have a I didn’t have a website. That’s what I would say.
00;43;18;21 – 00;43;20;05
Heather Lastiwka
Go to your people.
00;43;20;07 – 00;43;53;06
Rebecca Hay
So that’s like for nuggets. I love them all. Thank you so much. It’s 100% sure everything that you’re saying, what I think is the most impactful nugget that you just shared, Heather, that I don’t believe has really been shared in this capacity before on the podcast is this idea that if you are considering making this transition or starting a side hustle as a designer, or maybe you have it as a side hustle and are looking to make it full time, do not discount your life skills.
00;43;53;06 – 00;44;17;13
Rebecca Hay
The skills that you have, because I can tell you that running an interior design firm is 80% business and people skills and 20% design chops. Yes, some of the most talented designers I know are not that successful, and some of the most successful designers I know are just okay.
00;44;17;15 – 00;44;20;09
Heather Lastiwka
Yeah, that’s the category I put myself in.
00;44;20;12 – 00;44;41;04
Rebecca Hay
Don’t say that. And we’re always improving, whether it’s on the business side or the design side. There’s lots of room to grow and learn. Yeah, but I do see those who come to design as a second or third plus career. They just take off. They take power of process, and then they realize, oh my gosh, I can do this.
00;44;41;07 – 00;44;43;26
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. You just gotta believe in yourself.
00;44;44;02 – 00;45;04;21
Heather Lastiwka
You do. You have to believe in yourself. And every project you get does start to give and add confidence to you, right? Like that’s a reality because you you get connected to that client and that client. You learn the intricacies of what they need, and their feedback automatically gives you some confidence. But you have to you have to be there before you have to talk.
00;45;04;24 – 00;45;10;11
Heather Lastiwka
You have to self-talk the confidence into yourself that you can do this because you can, you can.
00;45;10;17 – 00;45;24;09
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, I love it. Oh my gosh, Heather, thank you so much for being my guest today. Thank you for sharing your experience inside the course and power of process and where you’re at with your business. I’m excited for everybody to follow you and watch your journey. So where can everyone find and follow you?
00;45;24;12 – 00;45;50;08
Heather Lastiwka
You can find us at heatherington. Underscore properties on Instagram and same Heatherington properties on Facebook. I am almost 50, and I know that many people in my age group are really good at social media. I not so much, but it is up there and then Heatherington Group okay is our brand new website and it is a work in progress as well.
00;45;50;14 – 00;45;56;28
Heather Lastiwka
Yeah, we’re excited and I love to follow other people, so I learn from other people as well, and I can’t wait to be able to make connections with others.
00;45;57;01 – 00;45;57;24
Rebecca Hay
Awesome.
00;45;57;27 – 00;45;58;26
Heather Lastiwka
Thank you for having me.
00;45;59;04 – 00;46;22;02
Rebecca Hay
Thank you. That was such a good conversation. In fact, Heather and I stayed on for an extra half an hour chatting about life. Truthfully, I was sharing my experience. This idea of the death of the ego where when you leave your previous career behind, it can be really challenging. And if you’re listening to this and you’ve done this, you can relate.
00;46;22;04 – 00;46;57;22
Rebecca Hay
This idea of, I’m known for being the like VP of HR at this big company, or I’m known for being the go to marketing guru in this space and industry. I speak at conferences, and you have so much of your identity tied up in your corporate or other life. For me, for the last decade or so, it’s been as an interior designer in Toronto, running, building, growing a prominent interior design firm with incredible projects, a team.
00;46;57;22 – 00;47;18;12
Rebecca Hay
My identity has been so tied to that that this transition into coaching, into my online business has taken a few years for me to really let the ego go and say, it’s okay to kind of feel like I’m starting again, because I know it’s for me. My intuition is pulling me into it. Anyhow, we went real deep with that off air.
00;47;18;12 – 00;47;35;07
Rebecca Hay
I’m sorry that we didn’t record it. It would have been interesting, but that was the the gist of it, which was our takeaway from this conversation. And so I hope you enjoyed this conversation, especially if you are someone who maybe doesn’t value the skill set that you bring to the table, and maybe you’re waiting for the time when you can go back to school.
00;47;35;07 – 00;47;59;25
Rebecca Hay
Or maybe you’re waiting for something or someone to come and help you. It’s progress over perfection. You will figure it out. You have got this, and if you are ready to take power of process, if you are ready to really get your business organized so that it can be a thriving, exciting and fun career, you are not going to regret joining us inside Power of Process.
00;47;59;27 – 00;48;21;02
Rebecca Hay
It is here twice a year. It is here now. I would love for you to join us inside pop. Just go to rebecca.com/power of process to find out more. And I hope you have a really great day. I’ll see you soon.
