Interior design is demanding work, involving thousands of detailed decisions, project challenges and competing personalities. That can give rise to a lot of friction and stress. While you can’t eliminate every stressor, you can minimize them by establishing good project management practices and cultivating mental fitness.

In this episode, Gail talks with mental fitness coach Janine Aurichio. A self-titled “Joy Master,” Janine offers an approach she calls Life Styling that trains interior designers to build the capacity to respond to life’s challenges with a positive mindset rather than getting stressed or upset for breakthrough results in their life and business. “I believe our true nature and essence is joy,” she says.

Gail asked Janine why she chose to focus on working with designers. She said that after working in the industry for twenty years she has come to admire what designers do and bring to the world. “What they do is part science and part magic,” she said, adding “beauty is my core value.”

Janine said that from what she’s seen in her practice the biggest challenges for many designers are twofold. They have an internal challenge of maintaining command over their mind and mindset, in part because they have many demands on themselves and many distractions. In addition, they have an external challenge because they lack or do not utilize a well-oiled process for managing their projects and other aspects of their business operations.

“Good project management leads to more and better projects, more profit and more peace of mind,” she explained. It should be core to every interior design business.

As well, Janine identified what she sees as the three biggest mistakes designers make when managing their projects. A major one is that they think of the client as the center of the project rather than of the project itself. They are afraid to communicate truth to the client for fear of being reprimanded or even fired. They don’t have a plan for executing the project, or they have one but don’t follow it.

Janine went on to talk about how designers can better deal with their internal challenges by learning to manage their mindset. She described a four-step process that she teaches to rewire negative ways of thinking in order to develop positive intelligence. The goal, she said, is to achieve mental fitness, which she defined as your capacity to handle life’s challenges with a positive response or mindset.

Gail and Janine also discussed why good project management is so crucial to the success of a design business, the major types of “saboteurs” that contribute to negative thinking, and the steps designers can take to improve their mental fitness and boost creative flow. Get all the details by listening to the entire podcast.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s12e5-shownotes

Mentioned in This Podcast

Download the Drama-Free Projects Guide PDF here: https://www.yes2yum.com/drama-free

You’ll also find other resources that Janine mentioned on the podcast on her website.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdo1KPg4GJw

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

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Today we have Janine Arricchio on our podcast and her superpower is managing design projects. And her zone of genius is the inside job of managing your mindset for peak performance, thriving relationships, and maximizing happiness. And today we’re going to explore the outside in and inside out ways of creating drama-free projects. And wouldn’t we all love that? Welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Janine.

Thank you, Gail. It’s great to be here with you and your listeners, and I’m really grateful for the opportunity. it’s so great. I love your LinkedIn post or listing that says you’re a joy master. So tell us about how you came up with that title. Yes. Well, my coaching teacher actually gave me that title because I was always so curious and asking people about what brought them joy.

And maybe you’ve heard the expression teach what you need to learn. Well, I am a joy seeker and a studier of joy because number one, for a while there, I forgot how to be joyful. And number two, because I’ve also seen this as the case for many other people, including designers and folks in our industry. And I believe our true nature and our essence is joy. And so I want to help others remember that too, while also giving them.

really effective tools to help their businesses run better and smoother. Well, anytime you can be a good project manager and have a good mindset, think things go a lot better, right? Yes, indeed they do. Well, how did you find this path for yourself? What inspired you? Well, Gail, I think it found me kind of, and isn’t that just how things are a lot of the time? It certainly was not a direct path, but the short version is that I

had a very strong people pleaser or pleaser saboteur, especially as a younger person. And I made a lot of big, important decisions really to please my dad. And so that was as a young person. Fast forward several decades and many great experiences and also some not so great ones. Let’s just say I was ready for a change. I was really unhappy in what I was doing. And it was clear to me that

personal and professional growth was what I was here to do at this time, both for myself and then to teach others. I love that. Well, why do you work with interior designers? two reasons. I’d say one is because what designers do is part science and part magic. And I just relate to that so much. That’s also that’s been kind of a thread in my life. And another is that

Beauty’s been a threat in my life. Beauty’s my number one core value, for sure. And I fell in love with the design community after going back to school and then working in the industry for 20 years. And you all are the beauty makers and I believe beauty can help heal the world. And so I want to help designers keep bringing beauty into the world. And I know firsthand how challenging this business can be and how it can dampen your joy at times.

So to be their best and their happiness and their happiest, I want to help designers sort of rediscover that joy and support them in that journey. Well, speaking of challenges, which ones are the ones that you think are the biggest ones facing designers right now? Yeah. Well, you know, this is a complex business. so I, I, you know, we could talk about that could be a whole nother podcast, right? But of the two.

Biggest ones that I’ve witnessed that kind of relate to this conversation. One is an internal challenge and one is an external challenge. And the internal one you referred to earlier, I you were called it the, I call it the inside job. And that is about, maintaining command of your mind and having a positive mindset, sort of responding versus reacting and doing that. when things are challenging and stressful.

And then the external one is having a well-oiled process, especially for managing projects. And I’ve seen many firms that don’t even have a process. And if they do, sometimes they’re not using it and both are problematic. And, you know, I love the, recent episode on policies, process and procedures. I can tell you’re kind of a process nerd like I am. And it’s not the sexy part of the business, but it’s so important.

It really is. for a lot of people that you mentioned that there are many designers who really don’t do that. They don’t do project management per se. They just do what they think is part of it. And the thing that I think is so interesting is that our job is really that. That’s what we do every single day is we have to manage projects. So if we don’t have a system for it, then how do we run our business? I guess how do we

get them interested in it? How do we encourage them to really embrace project management? What’s in it for them? Gosh, well, it impacts everything. It creates structure that sort of holds things together, right? And gives people, you know, your employees or team members guardrails and on what to do next. It impacts the many relationships that we have that you have as a designer.

whether it’s your employees or team members or vendors, it impacts your peace of mind, your staff’s motivation and buy-in and ownership of the process and ultimately the quality of your output, which impacts your reputation and your ability to get other projects. So I’d say those are some really important reasons to care. so what’s in it for them is more and better projects, more profit and that peace of mind.

which I think we all want at the end of the day. Well, we do want that peace of mind. Sometimes we don’t have that when we’re up at two in the morning and thinking about all the things aren’t going right on the project. Yes. So as far as that goes, what are...

The Secret to Drama-Free Projects (Janine Aurichio)