Hello 🧮
Numbers can feel like someone else's territory - the domain of accountants and people who were good at maths at school and, like most of the designers I work with, my instinct is to keep a respectful distance.
But this week, I'd like to suggest a different relationship.
Numbers, used loos...
Hello 👋
In Hothouse we are building up to a big June topic - Systems and Processes. Perhaps not the sexiest subject, but one designed to save you from the overwork that comes from a lack of structure.
When every client inquiry is handled slightly differently. When the fee proposal process starts ...
Hello 👋
Bootcamp started this week, and work is under way. The first round of one-to-ones is complete, and what strikes me is how much clarity sits just beneath the surface. We are working through governing values and early-stage business plans: the foundational layer from which everything else f...
Hello 👋
Performance is a word that tends to get borrowed by the wrong conversations - the motivational ones, the ones that mistake intensity for substance. In Hothouse this week, I want to use it in a more precise sense.
There are two kinds of performance that matter to a designer running a serio...
Hello 👋
There is a number that keeps appearing in my work at the moment. Three years.
It is the period that business research consistently identifies as the threshold at which a new business (or a pivoted one) begins to perform. It’s also the horizon at which big change becomes imaginable without...
Hello 🐣
And Happy Easter - this feels like a good moment to talk about growth.
Around here, we take the view that meaningful change is rarely sudden and never effortless. It takes time and consistent application, and it works best when it is built on a plan that is deliberate and intentional. I c...
Hello 👋
This week's theme is communication - and it is one that runs through almost everything we do as design professionals, usually without us realising it. Every document you send, every meeting you run, every caption you post on Instagram is a communication act. The question is: is it doing w...
Hello, and happy first day of spring 👋
Yesterday was the last day of winter and I spent the afternoon on a journaling retreat. While we waited for the group to assemble, a lamb was born in the neighbouring field.
I’m writing this on Saturday - this morning is the spring equinox. The year has tipp...
Hello 👋
This week's newsletter arrives on Mothers’ Day and hot on the heels of International Women’s Day, so it seems fitting to recognise that the majority of designers I work with (and, I suspect, a significant proportion of you reading this) has obligations that also make substantial claims on...
Hello 👋
This week as Hothouse shifts to focus on marketing, I want to report on my own business, because I practice what I preach.
I have spent the past two years applying the same sustained, deliberate pressure to my own business that I ask you to apply to yours - designing, declaring, deliverin...
Hello 👋
March. The final month of Q1, and the month I've set aside - in Hothouse, in my programmes, and in my heart - for, drum roll...MARKETING & BRAND EXPRESSION.
But I want to begin not with strategy, not with tactics, and not with a to-do list. I want to begin with something I notice constant...
Hello 👋
And welcome to this week's newsletter.
There is a concept that sits at the heart of everything we do here, and this week's newsletter makes it unusually visible. It is the idea of the gap.
Not failure. Not falling short. Simply the distance between where you are right now and where your b...
This newsletter keeps members of the Hothouse interior design business accelerator informed about news and forthcoming events
Receive my quick-to-read weekly newsletter...
Sign up for the Hothouse Newsletter: find out what's coming up, and keep up with recent webinars, blogposts, videos, and other events - all focused on excellence in interior design practice.
