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 serious business. The first is sustained: the consistency of habits, decisions, and disciplines that compound, over time, into a business with momentum. The second is acute: the ability to show up well in a high-stakes moment - a client pitch, a fee conversation, a difficult meeting - when the outcome feels critical, and self-imposed pressure means there is a non-zero chance of underperforming.
This week's content addresses both. They are not separate subjects.
A designer who has built strong foundations but falls apart in the room has a performance problem. So does a designer who is excellent in meetings but has not done the structural work that makes those meetings worth having. Performance, in the full sense, is both.
1. This week on the blog
What the thriving designers have in common - and what to do if you're not there yet
There is a strange duality in the UK interior design market at the moment. Designers with full books and compelling projects are operating in exactly the same market as designers whose pipelines are thin and whose enquiries have slowed. The economic conditions are identical. So what accounts for the difference?
This week's post is a speculative checklist - not a criticism of those finding things harder, but my observations of what the thriving designers are doing that makes them relevant now, and hence, successful. Cross-reference it against your own business, and see what it tells you.
A quick note on the blog 👆 some readers might recoil from the list, and wonder how on earth one person can be all these things!?
The answer is, one step at a time, and the first step is business planning. Everything else can wait.
2. Webinar report: Sales & Client Acquisition pt I -Winning the Inner Game of Sales
The first of this month's Sales and Client Acquisition sessions took an unexpected turn into elite sports psychology - and it proved to be exactly the right lens for one of the most uncomfortable parts of running a design business: selling yourself and your fees under pressure.
The current market is making client pitches feel higher-stakes than usual. When enquiries are slow and work feels scarce, it is easy to walk into a meeting carrying the weight of needing the job - and that weight, as the session explored, is not neutral. Scarcity mindset narrows your attention onto securing the fee, which degrades the very quality of presence and connection that gives you the best chance of securing it.
The session drew on principles from applied sports psychology - including shifting from outcome focus to process focus, establishing pre-performance routines, using breathwork and sensory grounding, practising instructional self-talk, and conducting blameless self-mortems - and showed how each translates directly into the client meeting context. The recording is worth an hour of your time, particularly if any aspect of pitching induces anxiety.
Watch the recording on YouTube.
3. Coming up in Hothouse in April
Recipe For Success Business Bootcamp - starts on Tuesday morning It is not too late to join. If you have 2+ years' experience working professionally as a designer, and you've been considering it and have not yet confirmed, now is the moment. This is where the structural work gets done properly - strategy, positioning, marketing, business foundations - in five intensive weeks. It runs once a year.
Set your business up for success. Get in touch if you'd like to know more.
BIID Webinar: Time Management - Wednesday 22 April, 10.30am Next week I am presenting a webinar for the BIID on time management, which touches on the fundamentals of business planning as well. Details via the BIID.
Sales and Client Acquisition Part Two - Monday 28 April, 2pm The second Hothouse session this month moves from the psychological to the practical: business process and activities in client acquisition. If you attended the first session, this is the natural next step.
Access the webinar free, via the Hothouse group.
4. A warm welcome
Hothouse has a number of new members over the last couple of weeks, and I want to take a moment to welcome them properly. You have joined at an interesting time - a challenging market, a community in full swing, and a month focused squarely on sales and client acquisition.
Hothouse is a Facebook-based, free resource hub for interior designers. There are documents to download under the 'Files' tab in the group, and a backlog of business and tradecraft videos to watch on YouTube. Live webinars are linked to via the 'Events' tab.
We have a theme each month, and over time we build strength in both business and design practice. You can ask any questions in the group, and we will all do our best to help.
I hope you find your feet quickly, and I look forward to getting to know your businesses - you are most welcome here.
5. Notes from behind the consulting room curtain
My one-to-one bookings have increased noticeably in recent weeks. Designers are coming with immediate, specific problems to troubleshoot - a scope creep situation, a first discovery meeting, a client questioning fee structures or operating procedures. I help by building confidence, collaborating on planning client meetings, building business and marketing strategies, and boosting fee proposals. All of which ultimately show up on the bottom line.
Rarely a week goes by when I don’t find myself discussing money mindset with clients, and I’ll have something to publish on this shortly. It is a subject that sits close to the centre of many of the problems designers bring to me, and one I think deserves rigorous attention and support. Coming soon.
6. My Week in Hothouse
I mentioned the jaded feeling that crept in towards the end of Q1, which I dealt with it the only way I know how: a fairly direct conversation with myself, swiftly administered. It worked.
I am reporting this because it is relevant for this week's theme: performance. It's not only about what you do in front of clients. It is also about how you manage yourself when the motivation is not there. It's why I find tracking metrics is so powerful, you can't deny what's happening, there is nowhere to hide.
The YouTube jump (ten new subscribers in a week...and in fact it has jumped one more while I've been writing) is unexplained and pleasing. Something is working; heaven knows what 🤷♀️.
Behind the scenes, my digital marketing project continues its slow and deliberate progress, with me as the principal bottleneck. I recorded seven face-to-camera, teleprompter-assisted advertisements recently as a trial run. That worked, so tomorrow I record the remaining eighteen to complete the set. These will become Meta ads - I hope this is relevant to those of you exploring digital marketing as a vehicle for decoupled income, since this is precisely the kind of project I am building in real time and reporting on here. They will also help power sales of a new self-directed course launching in June, timed to coincide with Hothouse's summer focus on systems and processes. More on that when the moment is right.
The website is being overhauled. So is the social media presence. A new look is coming 🤞 soon. These things always take longer than expected.
And then there is Bootcamp, which begins in earnest on Tuesday. Every year I say the same thing, and every year it remains true: this is the most rewarding period of my working year. For five weeks, I work in close partnership with a group of designers who have decided that their businesses deserve a serious overhaul: designers who are not waiting for the market to improve, or for the right moment to arrive, but who are doing the structural work now. I find it consistently inspiring.
I will be less visible on social media during Bootcamp, for obvious reasons - though I am committing here to regular face-to-camera reports on each week's events.
Finally, we arrived back in Andalusia 6 days ago, and are here for the spring and early summer - the very best time to visit, IMHO.
Carpets of spring flowers will feature here shortly, you have been warned.
Final Thought
This week's blog post contains a checklist. It is a long one, and I would be surprised if any designer read it and found nothing to work on. It applies to my business too, and I don’t have a full set of ticks.
That is not a problem. That is the point.
Performance is not the state of having ticked every box. It is the practice of looking clearly at the boxes you haven't ticked - without flinching, without excuse, and without the kind of shame that turns a gap into a source of paralysis rather than a prompt for action.
The designers who thrive are not the ones who score highest on the checklist at any given moment. They are the ones who look at it honestly, own what they find, and get to work.
The gap is not evidence of failure. It is the work.
Wishing you a most excellent week ahead,
Julia
Founder - Hothouse
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