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You're listening to The Interior Perspective. I'm Nicole Fisher, interior designer, creative director, and someone who believes that the spaces we live in quietly shape how we think, feel, and move through the world. This season is a little different. It's just me sharing my perspective on design, home, style, motherhood, and the everyday decisions that make a life feel considered. This isn't advice. The Interior Perspective. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Welcome back to The Interior Perspective. Today I want to talk about something that's super important to me, and it's standards. Because after you understand growth, then you start to understand leadership. The next thing that quietly defines everything is what you tolerate, not what you say, not what you intend, not what you wrote about in a handbook, what you actually allow. Standards are not aspirational. They're part of operations. They show up in these small moments, the overlooked ones, the things you let slide because you're too tired, you're too busy, it feels easier to just do it yourself. And over time, those small moments become the culture. They become the norm. And I think people really misunderstand standards. They think standards are rules, expectations, something you communicate once and then everything, everyone kind of just follows suit. But that's not how it works. Standards are lived. They're reinforced with behavior, not necessarily language. If you say something, matters, but then you don't follow up on it, does it actually matter? If you say details matter, but then you're okay with accepting sloppy work, do then the details not matter? If you say communication is, you know, really important to you, but then you avoid these like really hard conversations, standards are not really what you say yes to, there's what you say no to, then most people don't have a standards problem. They have a follow-through problem. They know what good looks like. As leaders, we do this all the time. They can see it in the moment when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable. Sometimes you wanna let it go, and every time you let something go, you lower the standard quietly, incrementally, almost invisibly, until one day you look around and think, how the fuck did we get here? What is What is happening is you have one small compromise that happened at a time, and holding standards requires something people don't necessarily follow through with— energy, clarity, emotional discipline— because enforcing a standard usually means slowing down, correcting someone, um, creating like actual discomfort. And people want to avoid that. Most leaders want to avoid that. Most people, when talking to clients, they want to avoid that. They want to be liked. They want things to feel easy. They want to feel warm and cozy. They don't want to create this

unwanted tension. But you know what? Here's the trade-off: 3:27

short-term comfort creates this long-term dysfunction. And strong standards requires a willingness to really sit down in the short term and address this level of discomfort. And that's where it gets personal, because standards you hold externally are usually a reflection of the standards you hold internally. If you don't trust yourself, you hesitate, you second-guess, you're overexplaining everything, you let things slide because you're not fully anchored in what you believe is right. But when you trust your eye, your instinct, your judgment, all these things become so much simpler. These standards become something that is really clear, not necessarily easy, but clear. And you don't need to convince anyone. I, I myself struggle with this a lot as a leader because our job is not to create these, these perfect systems. It's to protect a standard. It's to protect how you expect things to be executed. And as my business coach will always say, You have to inspect what you expect. And it's so true. It's one thing to say it, but it's another thing to inspect it and make sure it's actually coming to fruition. And it often requires repetition. You are repeating things more than you should. You're catching things earlier and you end up being a little bit more consistent even when it's inconvenient for you because inconsistency is where trust just totally falls to the wayside. The, the standard depends then on the day, on the person or the situation. It's not like the blanket standard, and that's not what we're doing here. That's not what we want to be doing as business owners, as leaders, as someone who our clients look to as a pillar of trust. We wanna set these standards across the board so we can build within that. And, you know, as a leader, we have to know that strong teams don't— there's no guesswork here. They know, they know low standards don't show up immediately. They compound. They just, they just keep building on top, on top, on top of each other until you miss a bunch of stuff until you miss a bunch of timelines. You have miscommunication, you have this built-up, pent-up frustration, and eventually, the crazy part about it, if you really think about it, that's how turnover happens. The high performers do not stay when standards aren't high. Held. And as a business owner, as a leader, as a boss, it's up to you to make sure that those standards are being held so that your, your good, your rock stars can stay and maintain. And when you have people that come into your orbit that can't get on your level in terms of standard that you need to uphold to make this business a very, very successful one, then you have to know inside you're letting, you're letting that go because you're not losing the person. You're losing a person who isn't standing up to your standards and To me, it is one of the most vital, important attributes that I look for in any team member joining or remaining or staying, or whether they grow up or they grow out. And the firmer you are on these standards, the clearer you can be during these times of growth, during these times of transition, during these times of moving out people that just don't follow the same level that you need to follow as a business owner. So look at your work, look at your team, look at your life. Ask yourself, am I being, am I being super clear here? Are you, are you holding the standard across the board? And that doesn't just mean your employees. If you're a business owner, it doesn't just mean your employees. It means your your— everyone around you, everyone in your orbit. And honestly, the most important thing is to look inward. And are you holding the standard for yourself? Because every moment you choose not to do it, you're really— you're settling. You are settling into someone that I know is easy, but not the person you can be. So I want to, I want to leave you with that note of leadership, and I hope it empowers you to think about your own standards across the board in your business and in your life and within yourself. And let's make the hard decisions. Let's do it together. We will explore so much more about leadership and this idea in our next, next Substack. So I'll drop it in the show notes. Thank you for listening, and I will see you next time. Perspective doesn't always change things immediately. Sometimes it just gives you a different way to look. If this episode gave you that, I am So glad you're here. Until next time, thanks for listening to the Interior Perspective. I'm Nicole.