Hello 🤕
This week’s issue is lean.
I’m resolutely committed to publishing, however, having been quite unwell for a few days, the following is stripped down to the bare minimum. Leaving me with more time for lying around and resting. Thank heavens for Wimbledon 🎾.
A few days off has been a real tonic - I feel my energy levels rising again, and I plan to bounce back next week with a fully-formed issue #79.
1. This Week’s Blog - The Designer Said We Needed It
Friends of mine spent years building a business. Seven days a week for many of them, at real personal risk, until eventually they sold it for a sum that most of us only dream of. They are among the smartest people I know, and the most socially-aware. But it does make me smile that whenever conversation turns to rich and poor, they place themselves, without a flicker of hesitation, bang in the middle at “normal”.
This isn’t delusion or false modesty. We genuinely come to think of ourselves as average, partly because the comparison always runs upward (there is always someone with more, so everyone gets to be ordinary relative to somebody), and partly because who we are is formed in the years of graft, not in the moment the money lands. They were normal for the decades that built them. The self-image had set long before the sale.
It turns out this instinct, the need that some wealthy individuals have to be reasonable, ordinary sort of people, has been studied. Maybe you recognise these traits from clients that you've served?
This week's blog is about my own encounter with a quite different couple, clients this time rather than friends: super-wealthy, a brief for restraint, and the thing they wanted but couldn't say out loud.
2. From the Group
Despite being on a go-slow, I haven't missed out on rewarding conversations with clients in one-to-ones this week. As ever these have been wide-ranging: from recognising when it’s time to go it alone, and summoning the courage to back yourself: to clearly seeing your unique proposition, and owning your niche with pride: to scrutinising the conversion of clients at different stages of the design process, and developing a strategy to increase this intentionally a specific crunch point.
And in the Hothouse Facebook group too I’ve enjoyed good, practical chatter with members: tips on running preliminary meetings; software workarounds that save real time; and approaches to presenting fee proposals that actually land. Have a scroll through this week's posts, and if you've got something you'd like to share yourself, please don’t hold back, I’d love to chat to you there.
3. Coming Up in Hothouse
With apologies for postponing at short notice, the AI webinar - integrating AI into your systems and processes - is back on the calendar for Thursday 16th July at 11am UK.
This is a meaty one, and I want to manage expectations.
This isn't an introduction to AI. If you aren't already using AI in some form in your practice, this session will make limited sense to you: in order to deliver the somewhat dense content, it's aimed squarely at designers ready to put the technology to serious use. I'll be assuming experience using AI.
The core of the session is practical: how to set up AI to produce your fee proposals and other complex client-facing documents on your behalf. Not a template, not a shortcut around the thinking, but a properly configured system that can do the drafting once you've briefed it well: comprehensive briefing in, competent document out.
Afterwards I’ll give away the step-by-step guide on how to do this, and the session will touch upon fees and charging, and how to estimate these.
I’m afraid there won’t be time for introductory AI questions.
If that sounds relevant to how you already work, or how you want to work, you'll find the link to join the webinar in the Hothouse group on Facebook.
4. My Week in Hothouse (KPIs)
Just the numbers this week. If I were to write a reflection, I'd write about being a one-man-band, and the frustration of having illness knock you out for a week.
This week it has given me comfort to think that, come December, an unplanned for week off in July won’t have made a meaningful dent.
5. A Note From Me - Are you ready to launch?
If you recently qualified as an interior designer and then simply began, without ever quite deciding on the business you were building, this is for you. Or, if you are sitting on the sidelines unsure what first steps to take. maybe worrying about getting it right, or overwhelmed with the scale of the thing?
Business in a Box is my twelve-week course, and I lead it personally. It runs from 21 September to 11 December, live online, with a cohort capped at twelve designers. We meet every Tuesday morning at 10am for ninety minutes, and the course runs on two tracks.
Track One: All the business and marketing planning that genuinely benefits from live peer feedback, so that by Christmas you have your business, your service offering and your marketing plan not just written down, but running.
Track Two: A complete walk-through of the systems and processes an established practice needs to thrive, with the exact method and every resource you need to put it in place. All the client-facing templates required to manage clients smoothly, all the operational documents to run your business professionally. All the 'how-to' that comes from 25 years running a design business, and teaching the business of design.
Plus a supportive peer group to keep you buoyed and motivated - interior design practice can be so isolating.
If this sounds like the intention your business has been missing, If you want to start 2027 with your business established on a firm footing, there's an early bird offer live on my website now, and I'd genuinely welcome a conversation with anyone weighing it up. Numbers are filling. Don't dally.
Final Thought
Hothouse is all about consistent performance, and meeting your own commitment to minimum viable product, this is mine.
Next week is a new week, I'm looking forward to it - I hope to see you at the AI webinar, as ever, the link to join is in the Hothouse group.
See you in the group,
Julia
Founder - Hothouse
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