What is Hothouse?
Hothouse is a private group for entrepreneurial interior designers who want to grow their businesses with intention, consistency, and confidence.
We set monthly goals, track our progress, and support each other as we move forward – whether we’re chasing new clients, refining our messaging, building our brand, or tightening up our finances.
Every member sets their own targets and metrics, and the group acts as an accountability hub to help keep things on track. It’s positive, practical, and rooted in real-world ambition.
April Intentions and Focus 🌸
The focus this month – by popular demand (thank you, poll voters!) – is:
💥FEES AND CHARGING💥
This newsletter is packed with resources and ideas to help you get stronger and more confident in this vital aspect of your practice...more below.
Meanwhile, my own goals for April are:
• To make this month’s Bootcamp the best yet, with new insights (including personal branding and recession-proofing) and stronger-than-ever support for a group that will work together for at least eight months. This support will be so valuable in the coming months, given how wobbly the world currently looks...
(There are still a couple of places on April's BOOTCAMP - sign up here📍)
• To get Meta ads back up and running by the end of the month, this is to continue growing my contact list
• To launch a new course across Skillshare, Udemy and my website
💡 I've put it here so I'm held accountable - do you want to benefit from maximum accountability this month? Post your goals for the month in the group - which targets could you set yourself to drive your business hardest up the value chain?
Join Us! It’s Free
If you know an interior designer who’d benefit from this kind of focus and momentum, share this newsletter, or send them this link to join.
💻 New on the Blog – What Value-Based Charging Really Means
After months mulling it over, I’ve written a post about value-based charging – this concept is often mentioned by ‘six-figure coaches’, but rarely backed up with substance.
I unpack what it is (and isn’t), when it works, and when it’s just another marketing buzzword. Spoiler: It can work brilliantly – but only when you really know what you're doing and the structure of your service supports it.
(PS - for any heavy users of AI reading this - isn't GPT-4's new image generation capability just fab! 👆)
👉 READ THE BLOG: Find out if Value Based Charging is right for you.
🗓️ This Month’s Twin Webinars on Fees & Charging
Webinar One: Tuesday 8th April at 10am UK
✔️Pricing Your Design Work With Confidence
We’ll talk about the options for charging your services, and I’ll share my free Hourly Rate Calculator to help you price from a place of logic and confidence - no guestimating round these parts! ALSO: strategies to help you raise your rates over time.
Webinar Two: Tuesday 15th April at 1pm UK
✔️Structuring Proposals That Win Clients
This will include the first outing of my ‘Client Multiplier’ theory – which links to the 'red flag' client list I shared on Instagram this week (see below). PLUS - lessons I learned the hard way - steps you can take to avoid bad outcomes!
📩 Drop me a message if you’d like to attend either of these free sessions or get access to the recordings.
🚩 Red Flag Clients (and the fees they help refine)
A light-hearted carousel this week: awarding names to the kinds of clients who - ahem - help you grow by testing your boundaries and revealing where your terms and pricing need tightening.
🎨 Personal Colour Analysis & Brand Relevance
This week I had my colours done – online by @curateyourstyle - it was inspiring and surprising. Regular readers know the emphasis I place on distinct personal branding: I too want to show up consistently and confidently across all platforms. Now, I do know that personal branding is more than just brand colours - it's about the connection that you make with your ideal clients - but, given we work in design, optimal appearance really matters too.
Anyway, this experience sparked two memories:
1. Leading colour training days at KLC, when every time, without fail, students’ mood boards ended up echoing their own clothes – a reminder of how our instinctive palette shapes our style.
2. Listening to an excellent episode of The Great Indoors podcast with guest Karen Haller (author of The Little Book of Colour) who advised creating homes that align with your clients' personal colour palettes.
Inspired by these memories I made a quick reel to share the relevance of these insights for interior designers.
📽️ Click here to watch the reel.
🔥 My Week in Hothouse
I hit my 1,000 Instagram follower goal (yes, three days late – but who’s counting?) 🎉
Not because I posted randomly, but because I’ve had a strategy, a plan, and I’ve stuck to it. That’s the power of structure. And, the power of Race Day - which will be back on 17th April.
I’m throwing myself into Q2. In my planning I expect results to really accelerate in Q3, so there is still time for learning. One key shift I’ve made this week is investing in expert coaching – not only for the advice, but because there's something powerful about paying for your own development – it forces you to value it.
🌍 A Word on the Wider World
It has been a bewildering week and we might be heading into a difficult patch economically, but that doesn’t mean we have to shrink back. On the contrary – this is the moment to strengthen your foundations and sharpen your offer.
Here’s where to focus in a slowdown:
• Double down on personal branding - with less work to go round, actively position for a place on the winning side.
• Repackage services to be accessible, lower risk, and modular.
• Present yourself as an expert – calm, knowledgeable, reassuring.
• Keep marketing, but tailor the tone to suit the climate.
• Sharpen your messaging: value, longevity, investment.
• Recessionary periods are when the smartest businesses sharpen their tools – while others retreat, you can use the quieter spell to invest in your own development, refine your systems, and emerge stronger, clearer and more compelling than ever. The groundwork you lay now will pay dividends when momentum returns.
The opportunities are there – if you know where to look. I'll be focusing more on this in coming months.
🚀 Bootcamp is Nearly Here!
We kick off 22nd April and run until 22nd May. And for the first time, the course is structured for the cohort to work together until the end of the year with monthly meetings. We’ll plan your business, set your goals, and see them through.
📌 Read this Instagram carousel to discover the business frustrations that drive designers to sign up.
DM me or email to chat about whether it’s right for you.
📍 Or simply book here.
🧾 April Events
📅 Tuesday 8th April @ 10am – Webinar One: Pricing Your Design Work
📅 Tuesday 15th April @ 1pm – Webinar Two: Structuring Proposals That Win Clients
📅 Thursday 17th April @ 9.30am – Social Media Race Day 2
📅 Tuesday 22nd April @ 10am – Bootcamp Launches!
📅 Friday 25th April @ 9.15am – Bootcampers’ Board Meeting (by invitation)
💬 Final Thought - My 'Evangelista' Moment
A year or two into running my design practice, I was so fed up with badly behaved clients that I was ready to take what felt like a huge gamble: get tough, and start charging scary (to me) amounts of money. What did I have to lose? I was on the verge of quitting anyway.
And that was when the magic happened. Overnight, it seemed, clients fell into line. They also didn't flinch at my much higher fees. Meetings I expected to be troublesome went without a hitch. At the time it seemed to me that the tougher I got, the more I charged, the more they liked it. As I transitioned from famine to feast, I had to admit that I had been enabling bad behaviour, encouraging it even with my porous boundaries, lax processes and faltering reactions. My lack of confidence.
That poor first client under the new regime! He was a real sweetheart: he didn't deserve to be the The One.
In teaching we call this sudden breakthrough realisation a threshold concept, something you really can't grasp until you've experienced it personally, and once the penny drops, you can't unknow it.
IT'S A FACT: Clarity and conviction attract better clients. There’s huge power in perfecting your business proposition and pricing.
You’re doing clients a service by charging properly. You’re signalling professionalism, self-worth, and value.
Join us this month to find out more.
👯♀️ Know another designer who needs this support? Invite them in. Hothouse is open, and it’s free.
Don't forget to let me know if you want to join the webinars, see you in there,
Warmly
Julia
Founder, Hothouse.
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