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Earlier this year, I was offered the opportunity to host this year's RIBA Guerrilla Tactic’s conference for small practices for 200 architects at 66 Portland Place, the RIBA’s headquarters in London. One day, eight speakers, four Q&As, a workshop for all 200 attendees, and then a Roundtable at the end with the Steering Committee - and I was bricking it.

Creative business that see their service as a product will give your studio a competitive edge. Moving to this way of thinking has profound effects on a creative business both from an operational and a marketing point of view. And despite popular belief, instead of stifling creativity, systems actually create space for more innovation.

What do you do when you're stuck trying to move into different sectors, but your current projects don't quite fit the bill to help you make that switch? Here are three solutions to get yourself out of the chicken-and-egg vortex.

The challenge around decision making is really about deciding what to do next, then taking action and doing it. While it seems so simple and straightforward, for so many of us, we can live and work for months in inaction. The reason we do this is because we're afraid. We worry over the what-ifs and the myriad of potentialities that could happen if we make the wrong decision. But not choosing is still a choice. Not deciding keeps us, and our businesses, in a state of limbo, until something external makes the decision for us.

Building a thriving design studio is a far more creative venture than the work it produces. A creative business should not be in a cycle of getting work, delivering work, billing for it; rinse, and repeat. A creative business is a dynamic organism that requires an equal marriage between the commercial and the creative. Both are as important as the other.