This week I'm writing about authority. Firstly, whether we step up and assume it, and secondly, how to stop it leaking out again as we deliver our services.
The blog is about stalling. You know what the next step is, you know how to take it, but something in your chest won't let you. There are three different blocks that create similar sensations, and misdiagnosis can keep you stuck by prescribing the wrong remedy.
Then a short piece on boundaries and how these help you maintain your hard-won authority. Boundaries are not a personality trait, they are the conditions under which you do your best work for your clients. They are decided in advance and written down, and I'm presenting ten of them.
And this week I've included a personal note, to explain why things around here have taken a slightly different shape for the last three months, to thank you for bearing with me, and to let you know that I will be moving house in mid-September, and the newsletter will thin out in the next two weeks, before returning to full strength for Q4.
1. This week's blogpost
Fear of Success: Why You Stall Before Stepping Up
You know what the next step is. You have known for months. And yet, strong physical or emotional resistance stops you from taking it.
This week's post separates three quite different blocks that produce similar sensations. Can't, which is a training problem and the easiest of the three. Mustn't, which is your self-concept defending itself against an outcome that would contradict it. And daren't, which is not a distortion at all but an accurate reading of a real social price, and which lands differently on women.
Each block needs a different remedy. Whatever you decide carries a cost: stepping up can come at a price, but staying stuck isn't free. It's up to you to choose whether to push through the resistance and, like much in business, being clear about your values can help with the decision.
2. Ten Things to Settle Before You Start
During a recent accountability group meeting, a subject surfaced that had had an impact on each designer's month. The subject was professional boundaries: how to express them, how restrictive they should be, what to include, and where to share them.
Anyway, here is a preliminary stab at the Top Ten:
1. How I work with you. One paragraph, in your own voice, on your process and how the client will experience it. This is where your values go, and it should sound like a person rather than a policy. Everything that follows is easier to accept once someone has read this.
2. Where we talk. Name the channel that carries the project, and say why. Something like: I will encourage you to communicate with me by email, so that every decision we make is written down and neither of us has to remember it. But please feel free to ring or message me if you are running late or the builder is standing in the hall.
3. When we talk. Publish your hours, and give the reason, which is not your convenience but to ensure the quality of your thinking. I read and answer email during the working day. Something that reaches me on Saturday will be answered on Monday, and it will be a better answer for having waited. Then hold to it. A boundary you break yourself is worse than no boundary, because it teaches the client that the document was decorative.
4. How decisions get made. This is the one that saves the most time. Put each stage in front of the client complete, with everything they need in order to decide, and ask for their response in one piece rather than in instalments. Please send your comments back together, if we could aim for [insert date], that will allow me to act on them as a whole, and keep the project timeline on track. You could say what happens when the five days pass, whether that is deemed approval, a place lost in your schedule, or a later delivery date, and be sure it is something you are willing to enforce. There are nice ways to express even the toughest message. And I always deliver tough message by phone or in person, before following up in writing.
5. What is included. Not a description of your service but a schedule of it, stage by stage. Then say plainly what sits outside: the day to day handling of the builder, anything that goes to the planning office, the ordering and chasing of furniture, whichever apply to you. Most disputes about scope are really disputes about an assumption nobody wrote down.
6. Changes of mind. Say how many times a scheme can be reworked and at which stages. Then draw the line that actually matters, which is between adjusting something you have presented and abandoning an agreed direction to start again. The first is included. The second is a new piece of work, and you will price it before you begin it.
7. New ideas. These will come, and you do not want to discourage them. You want to price them. Tell me, and I will let you know any consequences to the fee proposal, and you can decide. Never refuse outright when you can quote instead.
8. What I need from you. Decisions by the dates agreed, one voice on the client's side rather than three, and access to the property when you need it. Team roles and responsibilities agreed before collaborative work commences. Framed as the conditions of a good outcome, which is what they are.
9. Money. When invoices arrive, when they are due, and what happens if they are not paid. Uncomfortable to write and far more uncomfortable to raise for the first time three months in.
10. Your non-negotiable. One thing you will not do differently, whoever is asking. For example, that every project begins with a full analysis, because you can't make good decisions about a project that hasn't been properly considered. Say it early, say it once, and do not apologise for it.
None of this can be retrofitted. Once a project is running on unspoken terms, those terms are the agreement, and the moment for setting them has passed. As I finish the materials that will comprise the contents of The Interior Design Practice System, I'm building these in from scratch, not en masse, but in different early stage documents and client packs, so you know they've been said and you can gently point to them if necessary.
3. Business in a Box, September cohort
๐ฃ STARTING THREE WEEKS ON MONDAY ๐ฃ - first live session, Tuesday 22 September at 10am.
Are you struggling to start your business, or worried about returning after a break, with interior design practice changing so rapidly.
Business in a Box comprises twelve weeks of live group work, led by me, to take you from a business with no real shape to a coherent offering built on a plan you have written yourself. A description of what you do. A fee structure you can say out loud without flinching. Documents worth sending. A settled answer to where the next client comes from. And your marketing plan already rolled out. All by mid-December.
This cohort also receives The Interior Design Practice System in full, included in the fee: fourteen modules, with a full suite of behind the scenes templates and spreadsheets, and the entire client-facing suite, from first enquiry through fee proposal, onboarding and presentation to handover and snagging, all professionally written and ready to carry your own branding, supplied for InDesign, Canva and PowerPoint.
It is the part of setting up that most people spend two years assembling badly. You will start the course already holding it.
Starts Monday 21 September. Twelve places. Join the group.
4. Coming Up in Hothouse
๐ The Interior Design Practice System launch. September 2026. Boundaries come built in. Last week I was working on installation, and ensuring this is included as part of fee calculation. Formerly White Label Studio. Find out more here.
๐ Monday 21 September - Business in a Box opens. Twelve weeks' live group work, led by me, to get your new or pivoting business up and running by year end - first live session, 10am Tuesday 22 September. Join the group.
๐ Wednesday 23 September, 11am - Branding and Marketing Webinar, with Peter Burch of March Branding. Peter will share how to take the most exacting approach to establishing your brand and website - not forgetting that your website is the engine of your business. The link to join this free, live webinar will be in the Hothouse group.
5. My Week In Hothouse
This week I'm sharing an annual personal post. Please skip if you are here for business tips. Normal service resumes in September.
Your fifties are quite something. Most of us experience significant change: physically, emotionally, mentally, socially. Since my mid-fifties I've been pretty fixated on my 60th birthday. My expectations of this (very unreasonably) have always been binary: either it would be fantastic, or it would be just awful. Two years ago - turning 57 - I decided to shoot for fantastic.
For it to be fantastic, I knew that there were changes I needed to make, and that they wouldn't happen if I attempted more than one change at once. So I made a three-year plan. I have always thought three years is a sweet spot - near enough to feel like it's your future at stake, far enough out to feel like anything is still possible.
In year one (turning 57) I gave up alcohol. In year two (last year, turning 58) I gave up added sugar. Year three started yesterday (my 59th), and instead of quitting this year, I'm taking up - in this case, the gym.
Over the course of the next 365 days, I just need to put a coloured dot (representing one gym visit) in each of the 144 squares of this basic chart, and I will deliver my 60 year old self the gift of a flat, toned, tummy.
Alongside all of this I have been building my business, and I have to say that the personal changes and business growth have reinforced and amplified one another, resulting in quite a different 'me' two years on. I am not who I was.
I have written here about the strong connection I feel with my older self, and this near-decade of stock-taking has affected more than just my diet and fitness. I have her long-term security to worry about, she relies on me. And it had got to the point where I could not look her in the eye. So, with great sadness, earlier this year, I had to admit that I couldn't take care of her interests responsibly within my long-term relationship. That was three months ago.
I moved 'home' to Edinburgh, and am living with my mother. In the middle of September, after a 3-month+ notice period, I get my own flat back. I intend to pimp it to within an inch of its life, sell it next spring, and move to the part of the city I want to live in for the next few years. I have been networking with owners of properties I have my eye on. I have found a financial adviser. We have talked about pensions, and there is a sketch plan. It is not a thrilling plan. But it does now mean that 70-year-old Julia is somebody's responsibility, and that somebody is me.
I used to be a digital nomad, the photos were a feature of this column, and I hope to resume this once everything else is settled - bear with. The business was designed to make this achievable.
Two years ago I was spinning my wheels and nervous about the future. I am not going to tell you that this is all now resolved, because it isn't. I am 59, I live in my mother's spare bedroom, and my own flat is going to be a great deal of work. But there is a plan, it has dates on it, and I have faith in it because I trust myself: look - I am delivering on the one I made in August 2024.
Final Word
I know many of my clients have a crazily busy September ahead. I sympathise: next month my new course launches, I move house, and Business in a Box starts on 21st.
I will continue to publish throughout, the next two issues may be lighter, but I'll be back with a bang, and a Big Push to guarantee us wins for ahead of the year end. I have a plan to restart social media posting - which also provided light relief in this newsletter. I am looking forward to the coming months.
I hope you've enjoyed some downtime in the last few weeks, and are buoyed up with back-to-school energy ๐
I will see you next week,
Julia
Founder - Hothouse
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