Episode 211: What Have We Learned Along the Journey?

The Honest Designers Show

In this season finale, the hosts of The Honest Designers Show reflect on their personal and professional journeys as creative entrepreneurs.

Key takeaways

• Lisa describes building a 'facing fear muscle' by repeatedly performing tasks that cause anxiety.
• Tom shares how hiring a team serves as a tool for accountability to prevent his last-minute habits from impacting others.

Main topics

• Entrepreneurial self-discovery
• Overcoming procrastination

Notable quotes

Your facing fear muscle gets stronger and stronger as each thing that you do that's scary to you, you just do it anyway.

Conclusion

The episode provides an inspiring look at how resilience and self-awar

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) More and more of yourself gets defined by what you do as it succeeds. And what I've noticed, I have to step back a little bit and define myself by other things. And then you realize, what about when I sell the business? Or what about when I'm done with the business? Or when I retire? Then who am I? Speaker 1 (0:15) Your facing fear muscle gets stronger and stronger as each thing that you do that's scary to you, you just do it anyway. Speaker 4 (0:25) We're all creative people that own our own businesses. It's very much that thing of the buck stops with you and you have nowhere to go. You can't play victim and say, oh, it was the industry. It was the market. Whatever excuse you come up with, it doesn't matter. That's not going to make it any better. And that's just blaming external forces. Speaker 4 (0:51) Today we're talking about what we've learned along the journey. We're still relatively young in our creative careers, but going from struggling beginners to relative success has been a roller coaster of trials, tribulations and lessons learned. This episode we dive deep into our biggest takeaways from our careers so far. From learning more about ourselves, to channeling our true passions, embracing our weaknesses and learning what really works. Without further ado, let's get into it. Lisa, this was your genius idea for a finale episode for season two. So why don't you tell us what have you learned throughout your creative career about yourself? Speaker 1 (1:44) I actually thought this was going to be difficult to really think it through. We wanted to sort of like, you know, put pen to paper. It just spewed. I think I realized I've actually, yeah, learned a lot. The first and most important thing was... I will never become that business entrepreneur, kind of organized entrepreneur person that I've always longed to be. I just have to put that aside because that's just never going to happen. So I'm not very good at planning. I'm not very good at sticking to schedules. I'm not very good at batching work. Like everybody says, you know, you should batch your work. Speaker 4 (2:27) Have you basically just learned stuff that you're not good at? Speaker 1 (2:33) Because Speaker 4 (2:33) you and me both. Speaker 1 (2:35) Yeah. Actually, to be honest with you, I think that is my list is pretty much like a whole lot of stuff I'm not good at. There are one or two things that I've realized that I am good at, but generally, no. Yeah. So, you know, you always have these ideas. Like you think you're this organized person because I actually am quite organized when it comes to my files and my computer. doing client work if I ever had to do that. But when it comes to actually planning my business, I'm terrible. And I'm sure Ian can agree because I think he suffers from the same problem. Yeah, we always have these aspirations to like, I don't know, do things in batches and I'm organized for six months and what do I want to do for the whole year? Like let's plan month to month. It's just, you know, you start off doing that and it just never happens. It never kind of, you know. goes any way how about you guys and Speaker 3 (3:27) it's being okay with that isn't it lisa yes Speaker 1 (3:29) it's Speaker 3 (3:30) just being okay with yourself yes Speaker 1 (3:32) in Speaker 3 (3:32) that way i think for me it's a similar thing and um And actually, over the past year, I've been looking at some of the techniques for people with ADHD. Not that I have ADHD. I could, I don't know. But something, there was a video I watched on YouTube where this lady was talking about things that help her to get things done. Yes. And it really resonated with me because one of them was a deadline. And it had to be a deadline that was... So within the next week or two weeks. Speaker 1 (4:10) Yeah. Otherwise it's not going to happen. Speaker 3 (4:12) Yeah, it's not going to happen. If it's three weeks, nothing's going to happen. If it's two weeks, then maybe. If it's the night before, definitely. And the other one was to make it fun. If it's Speaker 1 (4:22) the Speaker 3 (4:22) night Speaker 1 (4:23) before. Sorry. It just meant a lot. Your whole life has to happen in one night. Speaker 3 (4:29) When me and Dustin, you know, had our boxing gloves on and we're doing the old with our products. back in the day, it would be like the night before the newsletter went out on that marketplace. And I'd be up till silly o'clock in the morning getting it done. But that's just how my mind and my process worked for me. And then I'd be knackered for the next couple of days, but I'd have it done. And that would follow the same pattern. It would be like, I need another product in three weeks. Nothing happened for the next week. I'd be so tired. And then... it would be slowly, slowly until about three days before. A majority of my products took three days, but it was like 24-hour days for three days. Yeah. And I'd have to, yeah, and that's just the case. And my wife got used to the fact that I'd be like not coming in until the early hours in the morning. Like she'd be like, what time is it? And I was like. Speaker 2 (5:28) two o'clock three o'clock Speaker 3 (5:30) um you know so and uh what was the other one uh the other one was i can't remember now uh Speaker 4 (5:39) well let me riff on that first one because i can relate so much everything i've done for most of my life has been last minute and i might have talked about this on the show before when i was at university every single one of my essays that was due i did in an all-nighter every single one for four years uh like literally staying up all night no sleep to the point uh the worst one was i had two essays due one day after the other so i did two all-nighters and didn't sleep for two nights um and then i ran and not just that this is how last minute it was i would run to the box where you hand it in and i would get there as they were locking the box every single time so It wasn't just like, oh, I left it till the last day. I left it till the last second. And I had it several times where I'd have to plead with them because they'd already locked the box and please open that. Otherwise, I'm going to fail. So this is like pure, you know, and like sprinting to the hand in office, nearly got hit by a car one time. Like, you know, this is how destructive this can be. And then that carried forward into my creative and professional life. So when I had client deadlines. I'd tell them I was working on it for three weeks and I'd do an all-nighter. And it was incredibly damaging for your physical and mental health and your stress. And then started design cuts after doing this with other projects. And I would pull together our early bundles in three days. And often it would only be ready 20 minutes before we launched it. I'm sure it looked very slick and professional to you guys, maybe not, but you know, the outcome would be incredible, but it was like down to the wire having a heart attack. And we, we did bundles every two weeks and we still do. So every two weeks I would literally feel like my heart was going to explode with stress because I was like, Oh no, I've really left it too late this time. I can't believe this. Like, what have I done? Oh, phew, we made it. But like just the adrenaline and it was terrible. Speaker 4 (7:48) My weird hack for this is that knowing myself, having that self-awareness, I am simultaneously a last-minute rushing idiot and a people pleaser. So by hiring a team around me, not only did it help, but I can put myself through that, but there's no way I'm going to sit and watch my team have heart attacks with me. And that was the only thing that forced me to hold myself accountable because I had to get on. I had to get on their wavelength rather than live on my own destructive wavelength. Speaker 1 (8:21) That's super interesting. So basically, you don't want to disappoint other people actually saved you from your bad habits, essentially. Wow, that's a good trick. I should try that. Speaker 4 (8:34) How about you, Dustin? Are you part of the Last Minute Club? Speaker 2 (8:37) I am. For me, I learned that really quick when I started the business. So I feel like I've lived with that forever. One that I've recently has really hit me and I feel like, you know, as you have a business, don't you feel like every year that you have it, new things emerge about yourself? This year was a really big year in the sense that my oldest daughter finally got to an age where I realized that I have to model the things that I want her to do. So, for example, we were worried that she was getting bullied. the beginning of this year and you know we talked to her teacher and we got advice and uh we gave her advice and coached her and then all of a sudden i started seeing like subtle forms Speaker 2 (9:31) of bullying happening in my own life with like a partner or someone, a customer, whatever, whatever it might be. And I realized, for instance, oh my gosh, I have to, I tell my daughter, you need to like call this behavior out and then you need to say like, that's not okay. And, but also like not be. Speaker 2 (9:55) mean or whatnot, you know, like Speaker 3 (9:57) basically Speaker 2 (9:58) behave how I was asking her to. And I realized how hard it was. Yeah. But like in like in the way I wanted her to. And that's obviously much harder. You know, you can't be passive aggressive. You can't do any of these things that you might kind of not even notice you're doing. But then when you when you think of what your child, you have them do and you try to do it yourself. It's very hard. And I remember it happened a couple of weeks ago. Someone did something that was just absolutely like not acceptable. It was so hard. But that's been a really big growing experience to realize, oh, well, she'll see me do that. Or reading. We started, you know, like reading every day or like with projects with work or cutting off work at the right time. You realize she watches me and she can sniff out hypocrisy like a hound dog. So Speaker 1 (10:45) you Speaker 2 (10:46) really realize, wow, I have to straighten up. Your Speaker 3 (10:50) kids are mini versions Speaker 2 (10:52) of you. Speaker 4 (10:52) I hate to hear that about your daughter. My dad always said nothing worse than a bully. Speaker 1 (10:58) Yeah. Right. Speaker 4 (10:59) Yeah. I Speaker 1 (11:00) should be in a school because I used to stand up for everybody that was bullied. And now that you've seen my little. Speaker 4 (11:07) Yeah. Speaker 1 (11:09) Yeah. At least it's Speaker 4 (11:10) terrifying people. It's Speaker 2 (11:12) not all cute bunnies anymore. Well, and that's what we had told her. So when we were talking about bullying, we said, if you see someone being bullied. and you stand up for them, you will not get in trouble at