a note from my desk....
September Has Always Felt Like a New Year to Me
There's something about September that has always felt like a fresh start.
Maybe it's years of September being the start of our homeschool year.
New schedules. New routines. New notebooks. Getting everyone organized and settling back into a rhythm after the freedom of summer.
Even now, I still feel it.
September arrives and suddenly there's this sense of Okay. We're back. What are we doing next?
And I know I'm not alone.
For some of you, the kids are heading back to school this week and you're returning to more regular office hours.
For others, summer travel is winding down, clients are coming back from vacation, projects are picking up again and Q4 suddenly doesn't feel very far away.
There's an energy to September that January doesn't quite have for me.
January asks us to start something new.
September invites us to get back to work, but perhaps a little differently.
And I think that's worth paying attention to.
Because it's very easy to return to the office and immediately fill every available hour with client work.
The emails are waiting.
The projects need attention.
The proposals need to go out.
There are orders to place, meetings to schedule and decisions to make.
Before we know it, that little bit of breathing room we thought September might bring has disappeared.
So before that happens, I want to encourage you to do something differently this year.
Put yourself and your business on the calendar, too.
Let's dive in! 🌊
This Week Inside the Method
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This Week's Blueprint
📐Look Back Before You Move Forward
Before filling your fall calendar, think about the last few months.
What worked?
What felt harder than it needed to?
Where did your business consistently require too much from you?
Maybe you were constantly answering emails after hours.
Maybe projects were living in your head.
Maybe your invoicing fell behind.
Maybe your calendar was so full of client work that there was never any time left to actually run the business.
Don't rush past those things.
They're information.
📐Decide What Deserves Your Capacity
A new season doesn't automatically mean you need to fill every available hour.
Maybe the kids being back in school gives you more working hours.
That doesn't mean every one of those hours needs to become another client appointment.
What if some of that newly available capacity became CEO time?
Time for your numbers.
Your systems.
Your marketing.
Your planning.
Your own professional development.
More capacity doesn't always have to mean more clients.
Sometimes it can mean building a better business.
📐 Put CEO Time on the Calendar First
We've talked a lot over the past several weeks about foundations, client experience, operations and leadership.
But none of those things improve simply because we know they're important.
We have to make time to work on them.
If CEO time only happens when client work is finished, it probably won't happen very often.
So this September, try reversing the order.
Schedule the time first. Protect it. Then build around it.
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This Week's Workshop
🛠️ Do a September Reset
Give yourself 20 minutes this week and answer these three questions:
What do I want MORE of in my business this fall?
What do I want LESS of?
What needs to CHANGE for that to happen?
Don't overthink it.
Maybe you want more profitable projects and fewer small ones.
More uninterrupted design time and fewer meetings.
More evenings to yourself and fewer client emails after dinner.
More CEO time and less reacting.
Choose one change you can make in September rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.
🛠️ Create Your CEO Appointment
Open your calendar.
Find 60–90 minutes next week and block it.
Not:
“Work on business if I have time.”
An actual appointment.
CEO TIME — DO NOT BOOK
Use that time for the thing you've been saying you need to get to:
Review your numbers.
Document a workflow.
Update your pricing.
Look at your capacity.
Plan Q4.
Fix the process that's driving you crazy.
The specific task matters less than creating the habit of giving your business some of the same protected attention you give your clients.
And if you'd like some company for your first September CEO Date...
I've already put one on the calendar for you.
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Join Me for Some Dedicated CEO Time
Tuesday, September 8 at 11 AM ET
Next Tuesday, I'm hosting my free live Thoughtfully Designed™ Business Workshop: The 5 Blueprints to Build an Organized, Profitable Business That Supports the Life You Actually Want.
And I intentionally scheduled it during the workday.
Because this isn't another webinar I want you squeezing into your evening after you've spent the entire day taking care of everyone else's projects.
Working on your business IS work.
Now that many of us are settling back into the office and into our fall routines, I want you to give yourself an hour of dedicated CEO time.
We'll look at the five areas of your business:
📐 Foundation — what you're building and why
🏡 Experience — what it feels like to work with you
⚙️ Operations — how the work actually gets done
👩💼 CEO — how you lead, decide and protect your capacity
📈 Growth — how you grow intentionally and sustainably
You don't need to have everything figured out before you come.
That's the point.
Bring a notebook, your favourite beverage and the willingness to step away from client work for an hour and look at your business as a whole.
Tuesday, September 8 | 11 AM ET | LIVE ONLINE | FREE
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CEO Reflection
☕As you head into this new season, ask yourself:
If I don't want to run my business this fall exactly the way I ran it last spring, what needs to change?
Not someday.
This September.
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📐 Keep Building
I've always loved the feeling of September.
There's still warmth in the air, but you can feel things beginning to shift.
And maybe that's why it feels like such a natural time to take stock.
We don't need January 1st to decide that something can be different.
We don't need a brand-new business.
And we certainly don't need to change everything at once.
Sometimes we simply need to look at the season ahead and intentionally decide how we want to move through it.
So before your fall calendar fills up, give your business a little room on it too.
Because a thoughtfully designed business isn't built in the leftover hours after all the client work is done.
It's built when we decide it's worthy of our time, too.
I'll be setting aside that time next Tuesday.
I hope you'll join me. 💛
Marsha
Helping interior designers build businesses as thoughtfully designed as the homes they create.
