The power of pricing, positioning, and being ready for high-end clients
Last chance to book Bootcamp for 2025! Find out more...
What is Hothouse?
Hothouse is a free professional development group for ambitious interior designers. We’re here to set targets, build habits, and stay accountable. The goal? Clear, confident, commercial progress, made week by week.
Each month we focus on a different business theme, supported by tools, teaching, and live events. Hothouse isn’t about theory, it’s all about action. Whether you’re recalibrating your brand, building your pipeline, or raising your rates, Hothouse is here to support the doing.
Design entrepreneurship is a creative act: Hothouse brings structure and momentum to help your business grow. 🌱
Join Us! It’s Free 💬
If you’re not already in the group, join here to get access to events, resources, and support.
💷 Webinar One – Pricing With Confidence
Last week, we ran the first of two April webinars on fees and charging, you can watch the replay here.
We explored fee models, and value-based charging (and, you can read an earlier blog about this here).
I also shared why I’m still firmly in the hourly-rate camp, and how to position your business to raise your rate over time. How to rise to the top in interior design practice.
🧾 Webinar Two – Structuring Proposals That Win Clients
Coming up: Tuesday 15th April at 1pm (UK time)
In this follow-up session, I’ll walk through:
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How to calculate your fee proposal clearly and confidently.
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How to present it with clarity and conviction.
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Mistakes I’ve made, and what I’ve done to avoid them since.
The link to join the webinar is in the Hothouse group on Facebook (look under the Events tab).
Got a specific question you'd like covered? Let me know and I’ll try to include it.
🧮 Hourly Rate Calculator
Have you used the free calculator (well...Excel spreadsheet) yet?
It will help you work out the minimum hourly rate you need to cover costs and make a proper profit. Ideal for sense-checking your pricing approach.
👥 Blog: How to Sell to HNW Clients
This week’s blog post is all about selling to high-net-worth individuals. I talk about the advantages of understanding your clients’ professional life, and how that insight can help you win trust and secure larger budgets.
If you’ve ever felt like you don’t 'speak their language', this one’s for you.
📅 Race Day Returns – Thursday 17th April
It’s our second Social Media Race Day, and everyone’s invited. From 9.30am–3pm UK time, we’ll kick off together, and then wind down in Zoom, creating as much content as possible for the month ahead.
Missed the first round? Catch up with the prep webinars here - first time out we focused on your brand content pillars.
This time, I'll be working on my brand voice, see more on this below...any questions? Drop them into Hothouse, let's chat there.
The link to join Race Day will also be under the Events tab in Hothouse.
🎯 Book a Strategy Slot (During Race Day)
I think we'll be a very small group this time (it is the day before Good Friday!), so I've opened up free slots if you’d like to discuss:
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Your posting strategy
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Content pillars
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Or brand voice…
...these 15-min slots are available during Race Day for in-depth chats. They will take place 'in public' in the Race Day Zoom room - think of them as live coaching moments, so bear in mind that others may be present as we talk.
🗣️ Your Brand Voice (with AI)
This week, I’ve been exploring my brand voice using GPT-4 - and it was revelatory. I created a ‘mini brand handbook’ by asking the AI to analyse my tone, and compare it to major brands. The result? Insightful and very usable.
If you’d like to do the same, here’s a prompt to get you started:
"Prompt: Create My Mini Brand Voice Handbook
I’d like you to analyse the tone and voice I’ve been using in my past conversations with you, and create a Mini Brand Voice Handbook for me.
This should be a clear and detailed guide that captures my writing style, personality, language choices, tone of voice, and the emotional effect I create when I communicate.
Please include:
- A short summary of my brand personality
- A breakdown of my voice and tone
- Key language characteristics (sentence length, vocabulary, punctuation, etc.)
- Stylistic preferences and patterns I tend to use
- Any distinctive phrases or expressions I repeat
- My preferred tone compared to examples of what wouldn’t suit me
- A list of better-known brands or voices that feel tonally aligned, with notes on what we have in common
You can draw on our past chats for reference. If you need more examples, just ask me."
And, here's an optional line to include if you haven’t written much with AI yet:
"I haven’t written very much with you yet, but I can give you some samples or describe the tone I want to achieve. Please help me shape it clearly and define how it could come across in writing."
Let me know how you get on!
April Intentions and Focus 📌
This month, by popular demand, we’re focusing on Fees and Charging. Whether you’re refining your process, raising your rates, or trying to finally get your proposals into shape, this is the month to tackle it.
My goals for April are:
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To make this round of Bootcamp the best yet, with new materials and a focus on deeper collaboration.
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To get my Meta ads back online and start growing my contact list again.
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To launch a new course on Skillshare, Udemy, and my website by month-end
📌 Pinterest Planning – May Webinar
Reminder: we’re meeting Kat Dooney of Stripe Social on Wednesday 7th May at 1.30pm for our Pinterest for Designers webinar.
To get the most from this:
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Set up a Pinterest BUSINESS account now.
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Start uploading one project image per day.
By May, you’ll be ready to turn Pinterest into a client magnet.
💬 My Week in Hothouse
This was a tricky week - you can see last weeks metrics 👆are thin - we ended our spring digital nomad quarter and returned home - travel like this always wipes out a day or two.
However, Race Day has shifted something in my mindset. My social media content feels easier to produce and more aligned, and my business vision is getting clearer.
I still have Meta ads to reboot - I believe this will unlock mailing list growth again, it did before - but I’m beginning to see real progress in terms of business growth, and the structure of Hothouse (with this newsletter, and the consistent tracking of metrics) is what’s keeping me moving forward.
I recommend this approach - this consistent approach to intentional growth with accountability built it - Bootcampers, we'll discuss this in the classroom!
📆 Dates for April
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Webinar Two - Fees and Charging – Tuesday 15th April @ 1pm
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Race Day 2 – Thursday 17th April, 9.30am–3pm
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Bootcamp Launch – Tuesday 22nd April @ 10am
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Bootcampers’ Board Meeting – invitation only, for Bootcamp graduates, Friday 25th April @ 9.15am
🌱 Bootcamp: Last Call! (You'd be mad not to!)
Recipe for Success Bootcamp runs 22 April – 22 May.
A powerful five-week programme, including:
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5 x 1:1 sessions with me
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Deep work on your business strategy, brand, pricing, and services
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And - an extra bonus - monthly support through 2025
A small number of places remain.
Contact me if you’d like to discuss fit or format, or discover more here.
FINAL THOUGHT 💭
On Monday, I’m launching Mindset Monday across Insta, LinkedIn and more. This is because mindset and confidence are core pillars of Bootcamp and Hothouse - I believe that these are the single most important aspects of your performance when it comes to long-term commercial success.
In Bootcamp we take inspiration from writers like Tim Urban, who speaks of being “kind to your future self.”, for example, in spring time he tucks $100 into his winter coat pocket before storing it, ready for his future self to find in the autumn.
This is a good lens for business development, too. Think of every small investment you make now - in your knowledge, your pricing, your systems - as a note tucked into a winter coat pocket. One day, when you least expect it, your future self will find it and be very grateful.
💌 Share the love
If you know a designer who’d benefit from the resources and encouragement here in Hothouse, invite them to join (link here). All are welcome, and the bigger the brain trust, the better the journey.
With best wishes and 🐣 HAPPY EASTER 🥚!
Julia
Founder - Hothouse and Bootcamp
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