Welcome to your weekly nudge - part encouragement, part instruction manual, for building a resilient, rewarding design business that grows in tandem with your confidence.
This week we’re exploring the quiet magic of consistency: how structured follow-ups, simple systems, and calm professionalism can protect your energy and build trust. Because sometimes, success doesn’t arrive in a rush, it accumulates, quietly, behind the scenes.
1. 🌱 What is Hothouse?
Hothouse is a free professional development group for ambitious interior designers, built around the Hothouse Method of Business Growth: Design – Declare – Deliver.
✨ Design – we plan our businesses with care and creativity
✨ Declare – we set bold goals and targets in public
✨ Deliver – we track progress and celebrate results
Hothouse is for designers who want more than inspiration – it’s for those ready to take action.
At the heart of my work is a theory of interior design business evolution. Over time, practices move through four distinct tiers:
Tier One – startup
Tier Two – growing pains
Tier Three – maturity
Tier Four – stardom
Each stage comes with its own challenges, mindset shifts, and growth opportunities. My coaching is designed to help you move up through the tiers with intention - shaping your future, not just reacting to the present.
Wherever you are now, Hothouse brings structure, momentum, and community to help you get to the next level. 🌿
2. 💬 How to Work With Me
Whether you’re just starting out or ready to level up, here are the ways we can work together:
🌱 Hothouse (Free Membership Group)
A private Facebook community for practising interior designers. I check in regularly to offer input and answer questions alongside our peer network.
💡 One-to-One Consultations
Book a focused session to explore a challenge or opportunity. Head to the Coaching page of my website to book.
📦 Blocks of Consultations
If you’re aiming for long-term goals or want structured support while establishing your business, ask about my 6 for the price of 5 bundle.
🚀 Business in a Box
A 90-day programme designed to help you launch your interior design business with clarity, confidence, and systems that support growth. Get in touch to learn more.
📈 Recipe for Success Bootcamp
A flagship hybrid programme combining group accountability with personalised coaching, designed to help you move up a business tier with a solid plan and serious momentum. Waitlist open now – drop me a line if you’d like details.
3. 🧠 Systems Liberate Your Nervous System
So many of the challenges that designers raise with me in private consultation are repeats, not once-in-a-lifetime crises, but common patterns. The reason they want to talk about them is because of the ongoing mental toll - it accumulates.
That’s why systems matter. When you turn a recurring problem into a written policy or template, you stop the drain of emotional energy and reclaim time for creativity, visibility, or rest.
This week I shared this concept on Instagram:
The next time you catch yourself looping through the same scenario - rethinking how to onboard a client, how to say 'no' to working for free, or rewriting an email for the 12th time - stop. Write a script. Make a policy. Create a shortcut for your future self.
Consistency is a kindness... not just to your clients, but to yourself.
4. 📌 New Blog: How The Law Touches Your Design Business
This week’s blog was inspired by our recent webinar with commercial lawyer Meriel Pymont. I think we were all struck by how many strands of the law weave in and out of a design business - often in surprising places.
A quick question before you look: how many different pieces of legislation do you think affect your design practice? Brace yourself for the answer!
The blog is a reflection (not legal advice!) on the silent ways law underpins your studio’s operations.
5. 🌱 What Designers Are Asking: When Clients Go Quiet
Pipeline hygiene – When to stop chasing a ghost?
Here's something I hear every month: a designer shares their frustration at being ghosted after sending a proposal. You’ve put in the time, felt a connection, crafted the offer… and then nothing.
Instead of spiralling into self-doubt or frustration, treat ghosting as a workflow issue, not a personal failing.
⭐️ This is an excellent example of where a policy + email templates can save you hours of soul-searching, decision-revisiting, and letter-writing.
✅ Proposal Follow-up Cadence:
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Day 0 – Proposal sent
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Day 3 – Light nudge
(“Just checking this arrived safely, any questions let me know…”)
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Day 10 – Clarity note
(See template below)
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Day 21 – Polite close-down
(See template below)
After that, archive the enquiry, ensuring the client is added to your CRM system (we’ll cover that in a future issue), and move on. Your energy is finite. Boundaries protect your focus.
💌 Day 10 – Clarity Note
Subject: Checking in on your design proposal
Dear [Name],
I wanted to check whether you’ve had a chance to review the proposal I sent through on [date]. I completely understand if you’re still considering options or waiting on other decisions, no rush at all.
It would simply be helpful to know whether you’d like me to keep this slot pencilled in while you decide, or if your plans have changed. Either way, thank you for letting me know, it helps me manage my schedule fairly for all clients.
Best wishes,
[Your Name]
💌 Day 21 – Polite Close-Down
Subject: Design proposal – next steps
Hello [Name],
As I haven’t heard back, I’ll assume the timing for your project isn’t quite right just now and will release the slot I’d been holding. Please don’t worry, if you’d like to revisit the proposal in future, I’d be delighted to pick things up again.
My schedule does fill a few [weeks/months] ahead, so when you’re ready to move forward, let’s reconnect early to secure time for you in the calendar.
In the meantime, wishing you all the best with your plans,
[Your Name]
The Takeaway:
👉 Don’t chase shadows.
👉 Have a policy, stick to it, and keep moving forward.
👉 Your consistency and calm are part of your brand.
In future newsletters, I’ll cover:
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🧩 CRM systems (client relationship management), and
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🧠 Strategies to reduce client ghosting
Stay tuned…
6. 🎓 Business in a Box - Halfway Milestone
This week, the Business in a Box designers will be introduced to this:
...a deceptively scary-looking marketing planner.
Why am I not worried about the panic it might provoke?
Because each designer has already done the thinking. With a solid business plan in place, they know exactly how their ideal clients behave - where to find them - which means marketing becomes focused, not frantic. Each designer will be crossing out the things they don't need to do.
We often feel we need to be everywhere, all the time. But the truth is: you only need to show up where your clients are actually looking.
So the real question becomes… where are yours? 💭
7. 💬 A FAVOUR?
Each week I send this newsletter off into the void - and I’d love to know it’s landing.
Could you hit reply and tell me:
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What did you find most useful or interesting in today’s edition?
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What didn’t resonate?
- What would you like me to write about in future?
Your feedback helps me shape content that truly supports you.
Thank you 🌿
8. 🌍 My Week in Hothouse - Turin Edition
As some of you know, my partner and I both work remotely - we’re digital nomads, and we often get around by swapping our home on www.homeexchange.com (where we just racked up our 100th swap!)
We still need to work (for income and for sanity), but at 58 and 65, we don’t take any of it for granted.
This week we moved HQ to Turin, where we’ll be based for the next month (full disclosure: Airbnb this time, we couldn't find a home-swap match).
Our lifestyle is by no means a perfect arrangement - there are serious family commitments to juggle, friendships to maintain from afar - but one thing I love about working away from home is the focus.
At home there’s always a chore goading you: the shopping, the washing, the maintenance list that never ends. Here, life is simpler. Fewer distractions, more time to think, write, plan, and dream. More hours in the day for work... even after sightseeing (aka exercise) is planned in.
So over the next few weeks, I’ll be catching up, restarting my Meta ads, and (if all goes to plan) maybe even getting a bit ahead 🤞
9.🪴 Final Thought - A Song!
There Was a Designer Burned Out from the Wheel
There was a designer who redrew the plan,
She redrew the plan - because she can.
She redrew by hand instead of CAD file,
And stayed up working a long, long while.
She wrote a proposal from scratch once more,
Though last week’s lived in the same old drawer.
She wrote the proposal to match the plan -
She redrew the plan because she can.
She chased the client for notes again,
Typed from her phone, out in the rain.
She chased the notes to fix the quote,
She wrote the proposal from scratch once more,
Though last week’s lived in the same old drawer.
She wrote the proposal to match the plan -
She redrew the plan because she can.
She sent an invoice she built anew,
Cut-and-paste chaos, line-item stew.
She sent the invoice to fund the grind,
She chased the notes to fix the quote,
She wrote the proposal from scratch once more,
Though last week’s lived in the same old drawer.
She wrote the proposal to match the plan -
She redrew the plan because she can.
🎵 Moral (chorus):
Don’t be the designer who burns for their art,
Reinventing each process part by part.
Make it once... then let it repeat 🔁,
That’s how calm and profit meet.
Wishing you an excellent, beautifully systematised week,
Julia
Founder - Hothouse
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