1167: What Would Lu Do?: When Your Business Starts Working… Now What?

Welcome to a well-designed business.

My name is Luanne Igarra and I'm so glad you found this podcast.

Together with my husband Vince and our partner Bill, we have grown our company Windowworks

from the ground up.

So I know and I understand the challenges you face in running your interior design business.

I also know that your talent alone isn't enough to ensure your success.

So on this podcast, we talk about strategies and practical steps to help you grow your business.

But make no mistake about it.

We have our share of fun here too, mixed in with those aha moments that I love so much.

This isn't fluff, nobody has time for that.

Whether you are a new interior designer or a seasoned designer, I am here to help you

create and to manage the kind of interior design firm that you dream of.

It's straight talk and it's action.

Are you ready?

Let's get started.

Hi, welcome to a well-designed business.

Today is part four in our 10-year birthday series and if you are listening in real time,

this week is over the top crazy special.

Why?

Because two days ago, February 15th was the actual 10-year birthday of this podcast.

How insane is that?

10 years.

And then today, in real time, is February 17th and it is the first official day of the

Chinese year of the horse.

Now, let me just tell you something right here.

I have never in my 63 years paid attention to what animal year it is.

I don't study it, I don't track it, I don't read about it, I'm not an armchair observer

or an expert.

But last December, when I heard that 2026 was the year of the fire horse and I saw the

graphic for this, the image for the fire horse, I can't explain it.

I felt it in my chest, it feels powerful, it feels energetic, it feels expansive.

I have no idea what it means astrologically, don't email me and tell me it doesn't mean

any of these things.

This is what it means to me, it feels like momentum, it feels like ignition.

And the fact that this 10 year birthday is in the same year of the fire horse, I mean,

come on, that just feels like magic, like kismet, like so much energy I just can't explain

it.

So, understand that this is what's rolling through me as I'm writing this series for

you.

Okay?

And today, we're talking about building our business, but we're also talking about building

it on purpose, building our house.

So, okay, so this is not just a look back.

Through the lens of the fire horse, it's also a look forward because when you hit a milestone

in your business, for me, it's 10 years, for you, it might be five, it might be 20.

In addition to celebrating what you built, you also need to decide how you're going

to lead it into the next era, right?

Now, in part three, I talked about the moment.

I realized that this podcast was no longer something I simply enjoyed doing.

It had become something I knew I was responsible for.

Others were relying on it, not just you, the experts, the sponsors, my team.

And when you understand this level of responsibility, the next question is unavoidable.

How do you build something that can actually live up to the expectation of yourselves

and others, right?

So today, I want to talk about what came next, not the excitement of growth, but the discipline

of building a well-designed business, whether we're talking about my business or yours.

At this stage of business, it's time to stop reacting to opportunities and start building

our business ecosystem on purpose.

Now, when I started, it was simple.

One room, one microphone, one conversation at a time, one clear promise to help you make

money, to be profitable.

I show up, I ask the questions, you learn how to run your business like a business.

And there were parts of this that were hard, straight forward as it was.

And I discussed them in the series in parts one, two, and three.

But for the most part, business at this stage is predictable in that a thing happens, you

take care of it, you go on to the next thing, right?

But then what?

Then it starts working.

And that's when things can get complicated.

And it's kind of what nobody really kind of prepares you for, right?

Because when your business starts working, it's not just about you and your own calendar

anymore.

Now, every yes affects your team, your trades, your vendors, and your client experience.

Not because anyone individual is asking for anything more or different.

But the overall demand on the business quietly increases.

And if you've been in business long enough to experience this, you know what I'm talking

about.

It's the moment when a project that started as one room turns into three.

All the time, it turns it turns into five, then the whole house and then the clients

as well, you're here.

And can we just do this one more space?

And at first, you're thrilled.

It means they trust you.

They like your work.

They want more of you.

More people want more of you, okay?

And by now, you're not giving that work away, right?

Someone at scope, you add an invoice.

That was yesterday's errors problems, okay?

This errors problems is you have that on lock, okay?

So that's not the rub.

The rub is this.

Your calendar is full, which in the previous error you prayed for.

But now the full calendar doesn't feel so good, not as clear and wonderful as you might

have expected, because parts of it, maybe lots of it, is starting to feel out of control.

Projects overlap in ways they didn't before.

Now instead of having one whole house project, maybe you have two or three.

It was easy when it was one, it's more complicated when it's two or three.

And you find you're answering the same question on three different projects, because you haven't

documented it yet.

All right, people want decision sooner.

Your workroom needs approvals that you're still thinking through.

You and your bookkeeper are asking, how come we have so much business, but where is the

money?

Right?

And every time you say, sure, we can do that, it affects more than just you.

For me, this moment showed up in the podcast in a very similar way that it shows up in

your business, like I just described.

And I have to say in hindsight, I still shake my head at this, because with as many years

of business experience I had, you would have think I would have no better.

But alas, I did not.

At this stage, in my business, sponsorship interests had been growing quickly.

And then it grew again, huge jump.

Just like that jump from single rooms to whole houses, and not just one, but many, right?

All of a sudden I had several six month sponsorship agreements and several 12 month sponsorship

agreements.

Sounds like a good problem, right?

Yes, revenue is coming in.

People want to align themselves in their products and their services with the show.

The business is working.

I thought so too, which is why I kept saying yes.

As I was signing sponsors and placing their promos into episodes, something shifted.

Now, there needed to be three or four promos in a single show.

And even as I'm recording the intro and putting two promos in it and the outro and putting

two promos in it, I'm thinking, are you serious with this, Lewand?

And I'm thinking, you're listening, thinking the same thing, right?

So instead of saying no to sponsors, because I have to have this come to Jesus moment,

right?

You know this feeling.

The work is good, you want it.

But all of a sudden you realize you're not managing it.

So I made a decision.

I added another episode.

I went to two, to from two episodes a week to three.

On paper, it made perfect sense.

More shows to place promos in still have, you know, five six six sponsors.

There's one promo in every intro, outro, same standards, no loss of revenue.

And now you get the benefit of three shows a week on how to run your business like a

business.

Sounds great, right?

Oh, yeah.

But here's what I didn't think about, how about energy, how about time, how about bandwidth,

how about sanity?

Because at the same time, I'm also putting out two episodes a week for window treatments

for profit.

That's five episodes every week.

And you know what I did?

I told myself this is just a busy season.

I can do this, we can do this.

I've done hard things before.

And you know, I could.

We could.

And we did.

Technically.

But I don't know if it took me months or a year, I don't even remember, but at some point

it became so crystal clear to me that this business was running me.

I was not running this business.

I was making decisions to protect revenue.

Yes, that's true.

But I wasn't making them in conjunction with protecting sustainability.

I was thinking short sprint instead of long game.

And you know this feeling, like I said, you're successful, you're book, you're saying

yes to opportunities, but you're exhausted in a way that doesn't feel energizing anymore.

That's the beginning of looking at burnout, okay?

And the sin of it is it's not from failure.

It is though, from saying yes before asking why.

The right question isn't, can I do this?

The right question is, why should I do this?

And if you get a yes, I should do this.

Then the next question is, how will I execute this?

Well, right?

Not just yes, okay, keep running.

Yes with a plan that you and your team can actually sustain.

So you get it.

At this stage, it isn't that the projects are wrong, right?

It isn't that you shouldn't be saying yes to larger scopes and more projects.

Just like for me, the issue is how we say yes.

And I can tell you that the most in demand firms do this differently.

They don't respond to growth by just putting the pedal on the gas.

They respond by structuring, they stage projects, they define start dates, they control intake.

They say things like, we'd be delighted to do this project with you.

Our first availability is three months from now or six months from now, okay?

Now when you first imagine saying this out loud, your stomach probably drops because

you think, oh my goodness, they won't wait.

They'll go somewhere else.

I can't risk that.

Well, that was exactly what I'm describing to you.

I think exact same fear.

If I don't say yes to the sponsor now, I'll lose the revenue.

If I don't start immediately, the opportunity goes away.

But here's what I learned and I want you to hear this.

I needed to sit down and assess the value of what I had built, not just the value to me,

but the value to those potential sponsors.

The result sponsors get from the show are real and significant.

And I had to trust that those results did not and would not vanish if I told them that

their sponsorship could begin in three months instead of tomorrow, just like in your business.

The value of your work doesn't disappear because it's scheduled thoughtfully.

Your client's project will be just as extraordinary if it begins in three months as opposed to tomorrow.

And here is the reframe that changed everything for me, hopefully it'll be helpful for you.

Can you schedule to do work based on when you can do your best work?

You are protecting the very results that they're expecting and you're promising, right?

When we protect the outcome, everyone wins.

You win, the client wins, your team wins, your trade wins.

And yes, sometimes some won't wait.

That's okay because if they don't understand or believe that your work is waiting

for and you say yes when you shouldn't, you're probably not going to deliver your best

work anyway, right?

So get understand this.

You say yes because you don't want to disappoint them.

You don't want to lose the job, but in the process of doing it not when you have the time

and energy and bandwidth to do it, you disappoint them anyway.

And you lose the referrals and the repeat business anyway.

So how crazy is that?

This became my decision criteria.

I do my best work always.

Not my fastest, not my most frantic, my best because that standard pays dividends long

after any sponsorship is over.

And that was my shift moving from how do I do everything?

How do I fit everything in to how do I build this so that it is sustainable?

It's excellent and it's aligned with the long game.

And this is the moment when I knew I had crossed into a different level of responsibility.

Not because I was doing more, but because I was finally designing how the business works.

So the answer isn't work harder.

It is to work differently, not more for more sake, structured, intentional, strategic.

And the first step is always clarity.

What is this opportunity?

Where does it belong?

How will I execute it?

For me, the podcast will always be the front door of the house I'm building.

That was non-negotiable.

It's where you meet me.

It's where ideas are introduced.

It's where curiosity turns to trust.

But here's the thing.

The front door is just the entry point.

You don't build a house and stop at the foyer.

So I had to continue.

What does this look like?

When someone walks in, they need somewhere to go.

And as I built the business in this stage, these are the things that I was thinking about.

Listening is not the same as implementing.

You can hear a great idea.

You can agree with it.

You can feel energized by it.

But eventually, you're going to hit the moment where you think, all right,

but how do I actually do this in my business, right?

And that's where it can stall.

It can, you know, peter out.

You can listen and get all jazzed up, but not take action.

And so power talk Friday was the next step in my trajectory.

It was built to solve this problem, not from more content.

It was created for access, small rooms, real proximity, direct conversations.

You are in a room with me with the power talk Friday experts that you've come to trust

with your peers who are building businesses with the same challenges that you have.

It's where you raise your hand and say, how do you actually structure your proposals?

How do you price this?

When did you hire your first employee?

What do you actually say when a client pushes you back?

Not theory, not posturing, real answer specific to your business?

Okay.

I wanted to be intentional about that.

Who is in this room, the size of the room, the level of conversation.

Because when the room is small in the stakes are real, the growth is real as well.

But that isn't the whole answer.

Because conversation and peer-to-peer review and one-on-one conversation

with experts solves immediate problems.

But it doesn't replace education.

And we could see here that something else was happening.

Tons of information from the show, from the conferences, from books,

but we could see you were stitching it together yourself.

And when education is cross stitched together without structure,

it's going to leave gaps.

So the next iteration in building my house in my business was Lou University.

In this industry, there are no shortage of places to learn design, style, trends,

you know, all the things, all the pretty, as I say.

But where do you learn to run a profitable business?

Lou University exists because the business side of this industry needed structure.

Not random advice, not try this, but teaching with structure.

Just like design is taught, because talent isn't the problem in this industry.

Business literacy is.

And that gap was too important to ignore.

So now layered in is Lou University.

Then the next level is education takes you far, but only so far.

At some point, some of you are asking, how do I actually do this?

Is this the right business model for me?

Am I compensating myself correctly?

Is this team structure properly?

Do I even want to keep growing this way?

Okay, this is not a classroom question.

That's not a question that you ask with 10 people in a room.

This is a CEO question.

And that's when the chairman of the board program became necessary and made sense.

Chairman of the board is my private one on one advisory partnership for

business owners who are ready to operate at the next level.

It was built out of lived experience of my lived experience, because back about 18

months after I started the podcast, many, many, many of you started emailing me saying,

hey, do you do coaching?

And you know, when enough people ask for a certain thing, you start to say, hey, why

don't I do that thing, right?

So I started with group coaching, 12 smart, capable business owners in one Zoom room.

And it was valuable, but it wasn't precise.

Everyone was at a different stage, different blind spots, different resistance points.

It was good, but it wasn't transformative for everyone.

And that doesn't work for me, me personally.

I know group coaching works.

I've been a part of group coaching.

This is not a knock on group.

It's a knock on me.

So I shifted at that point to one on one coaching, but it was like a block of six hours,

a block of five hours, flexible cadence, a few thousand dollars.

And here's what I learned when the investment is light, the commitment is light.

By the third or four session, I found that we were circling the same issues from the

first and second and third at a session.

And it's not because the people I was working with weren't intelligent.

And it's not because they didn't want to change.

But I really believe it was because there wasn't enough at stake to require change, okay?

And I am only interested in coaching people who are ready to do the work, not thinking

about doing the work, who one day will do the work, you know, it's just how I'm wired,

right?

So I stopped.

I stopped doing this.

And for several years, I didn't coach at all.

Then I realized something important.

There was a need for a different kind of advisory, not day-to-day troubleshooting, but strategy,

vision, designing the company you imagined for yourself when you started it.

And it had to require real consideration before someone said yes.

It had to be long enough and deep enough to create actual transformation.

That was my requirement.

Like I needed to spend enough time that I know the person if they are motivated can make

the change.

And so now that's what the chairman of the board is.

Each year, I take just five business owners.

We work together privately, not five together, me individually, with each of them for full

12 months.

There are eight structured strategy sessions throughout the year.

And in between those sessions, you have 100% direct access to me.

So when something happens in real time, you don't wait for a quarterly check-in.

You reach out, okay?

Because you know, the thing is leadership questions really show up on a convenience schedule.

That's just a simple track, truth of it, right?

So in the chairman of the board, we examine the company itself, not project execution,

not design details, the business we look at is the model profitable, is the team structured

properly?

Compensating yourself properly.

Is it aligned with your goals?

What needs to stop?

What needs to scale?

What needs to be rebuilt?

It's focused.

It's personal.

It's discipline.

And the thing is, what I didn't anticipate when I had created it was the relationship

doesn't end after 12 months.

Once you operate at that level together with someone, you don't go back to guessing, right?

When you've had access to an answer, when you're down the road, you don't want to be like,

well, somebody has the answer, but I can't ask them.

So this week, in fact, three former chairman of the board members reached out, one with

a client situation, one with a progress update, and one asking for an introduction to a resource.

And I've encouraged them for years.

The problems are fewer as you go through, especially after you spend a year like this, but

they know my door is open, right?

Because when you've had this CEO conversation consistently, and with discipline and accountability,

everything in your business changes.

You change.

You expect more from yourself, okay?

Now, as I'm continuing to build the rooms in my house, right?

Last year, I saw another need, not everyone needs private advisory partnership, but every

serious business owner at some point eventually needs access.

After a decade of interviewing experts every single week and more than four decades running

my own other business, I realized something I have access.

If I hit a wall, I don't spin.

I literally think who is the person I know that knows more about this than me?

And I call them an operation strategist, a compensation expert, a branding authority,

a lawyer, a leadership coach, I have a virtual rolodex rolling around in my head.

And what I know is that that's a privilege.

Most business owners don't have that.

At least you don't normally get it for many years, right?

It is an accumulation of all of the relationships that you've built over years.

So what do you do instead?

Crowdsource?

You ask in Facebook groups, you ask your peers, you throw a question into Google or now

chat GBT and hope the answer is right?

And listen, sometimes you get cold.

Sometimes in that Facebook group, the leader of the group weighs in.

And then I know when you know you're incapable of hands.

But what happens most of the time?

You really don't know who's answering.

You don't know what their experience is.

You don't know what the scale is that they've operated at.

You don't even know if their advice fits the level and the model that you are running,

right?

It's not that community is bad.

It's just that discernment becomes critical.

Not all advice carries the same weight.

And at a certain stage in business, you need to know exactly who you're listening to and

have access to the right advice at the right moment.

And boardroom for creatives is built to solve that.

It's not coaching, it's not education and curriculum.

It's curated, vetted access to experience experts.

The same caliber of people, the actual same people I call when I need real help and real

answers.

Okay?

It's a room for business owners like you asking bigger questions.

Is it time to restructure compensation?

Do I bring in a COO?

Is this the right strategy for growth?

How do I protect my margin when I'm scaling my business?

These are company shaping decisions and they deserve better than guesswork.

Boardroom for creatives is the newest room in my business house.

And it's being built right now as you're listening February 2026.

The foundation is in place.

Right now there's just me and my three core experts on the site literally in real time.

But the invitation process is in motion now to bring in the additional vetted experts

to this room.

Understand, this is not a directory.

You can't just give me money and be on here.

This is curated access.

It's curating that takes time.

And if you go today to boardroomforcreatives.com, you'll see the beginning of it.

Like I said, it's just me and the three of us there.

Okay?

A few months from now, you will see the full expression of what I'm describing.

Okay?

Either way, what most matters is the purpose behind it.

Boardroom for creatives exists.

So when you need a real answer, you have a place to go.

Not crowdsource, not listening to 40,000 episodes of my podcast or any other to get a specific answer.

Right?

Now, why am I telling you all of this?

Not so you can see what I have built, but so that you can see the pattern.

Because you are building a house too.

Maybe you started designing one room, one service, one offer.

Maybe it was consultative design, maybe it was styling, and then it started working.

And someone suddenly said, can you handle a reservation?

Can you source all of the furniture?

Can you manage the build?

And you said, yes.

And you realize, wait a minute.

What exactly am I doing there?

Okay?

Maybe you executed a particular thing three, four, five times.

And then you said, I don't really like doing it.

Like I did with the individual short-term coaching.

Okay?

So we want to look for patterns, look for the things that feel like the next right opportunity

and explore them and do them, but then evaluate them, right?

So when an opportunity appears, test it, learn from it, and then decide, not react

decide.

Okay?

I can tell you this.

New University didn't launch as a fully built into institution, right?

There were two classes.

They were very intentional.

Process for interior design pros and process for window treatment pros.

But they were tests.

We refine, we improve, we formalize.

Okay?

Just as I said, chairman of the board exists because I learned what kind of coaching I did

not like to do.

Board room for creatives exists because I recognize the gift, the power, the luxury of

the kind of access I have in my own life that we've built over all these years.

Each room started as an insight, but insight isn't enough.

It has to earn its place in your home.

It must solve a real problem.

It has to have support and structure around it has to fit in the house.

This is how your business matures.

Not just by adding rooms because you can, but by building what strengthens you, the foundation

of you, the foundation of your business, okay?

That's how you go from being the occupant in your house and the architect of your house,

right?

Now, as you're listening to this, where in your business are you reacting instead of deciding?

Where are you saying yes without defining why?

Are you repeating something that actually doesn't serve you anymore?

And where is there a gap that keeps showing up quietly asking you to build something new,

right?

Could be something knocking at your door, knocking over your shoulder saying, hey, this

is your next thing.

This is your next thing.

Don't ignore that either, right?

Because building the house on purpose doesn't mean you never experiment.

It just means it doesn't stay accidental.

One room becomes two, two becomes five, and eventually you step back and ask, does this

house function the way I intended?

And when you are deciding, noticing, choosing, asking why instead of only asking, can I?

The answer to this question you're looking for is a resounding yes, okay?

That was this phase for me, okay?

Creating the architect instead of the occupant.

And so I would love for you to just take a moment before you get back to your busy day

and your busy business and your busy life and just reflect on these couple of things.

Is anything in my experience relate to where you are now, okay?

Take that moment to check in with yourself and say, what houses am I building in my house?

What rooms am I building in my house, right?

Now in the final part of this series, I'm going to talk about what happens next.

Once you've built this house that works, this business that works, once you've designed

it with intention, now how do you protect it?

How does it evolve?

How do you lead it into the next decade without losing the standards that were so clear

to you at the beginning, right?

Because building is one part of it, leading what you've built is another.

Now, one more thing before I go.

If you happen to be listening in real time on Tuesday, February 17, 2026, today at 1 p.m.

Eastern, I am hosting a live Zoom conversation, pre-rex for success for Lou University.

It feels so right that we're having this conversation in this week of reflection and

forward movement and this particular Zoom is about that.

It's about looking at the five areas of your business, operations, sales, leadership,

finances and marketing and really trying to get a little bit of a handle on it for yourself

if you have gaps in some or all areas, okay?

So I would love to see you at the Zoom.

I hope you're there.

The link will be in the show notes.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Decide to be excellent.

Thank you for joining me today.

This podcast is a production of Luan Nigara Inc.

If you want to know more about me, my books or Luan University, go to LuanNigara.com.

And if you are interested in having window works help you with your next window treatment

or awning project in the New York, New Jersey metro area, go to windowworksnj.com to learn

more.

Have an excellent day.