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 with its own challenges, mindset shifts, and growth opportunities.
My coaching is designed to help you level up, to elevate your business with intention, so you’re not simply drifting forward, but actively shaping the next stage of your business.
Wherever you are now – starting out or refining a mature practice – 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, there are several ways we can work together:
🌱 Hothouse (Free Membership Group)
A private Facebook group for practising interior designers. I check in regularly to offer input and answer business questions alongside our brilliant peer community.
💬 One-to-One Consultations
Book a focused session to tackle a specific challenge or explore a new opportunity in depth. Available via the Coaching page of my website.
📦 Blocks of Consultations
Ideal if you’re working toward a long-term business goal or want consistent support while establishing your studio and working with your first clients. Ask me about my ‘6 for the price of 5’ offer.
🚀 Business in a Box
A structured, supported 90-day programme designed to help you launch your new interior design business with clarity, confidence, and strong foundations. Learn more.
📈 Recipe for Success Bootcamp
My flagship business planning course, blending one-to-one coaching with peer group sessions. Designed to help you push up into the next tier of business evolution – with a clear plan, defined targets, and the momentum to grow. Drop me a line if you’d like to join the waitlist.
3. A Favour
Each week I send this newsletter off into the void - and honestly, I have no idea if it’s landing. Your feedback makes all the difference. Once you’ve browsed this copy, could you hit reply (or email me) and tell me: what in today’s edition did you find most useful or interesting? And what didn’t resonate?
Your thoughts will help me shape content that genuinely supports you.
4. 💡 AI as Your “Best Mate”
At a recent Bootcampers’ Board Meeting, designers shared how they’re really using AI day to day. From drafting tricky client emails to auto-building filing systems, the stories were inspiring – and surprisingly practical. One even called ChatGPT her “best mate.”
But these tools are shifting fast – the showiest new development name-checked this month only launched in June. It’s a constantly evolving subject, so this week's blogpost is news from the front line of AI adoption within interior design practice.
👉 Read how designers are making AI work for them
5. Premium Positioning and Superfans
I often talk about Veblen goods and services – those that become more desirable the more expensive they are. Price itself creates demand.
That’s the Balenciaga £775 😱 crumpled poly bag effect: the end user isn’t buying a bag, they’re buying into the brand. They’re superfans.
For interior designers, that’s the power of premium positioning and this week I reposted the '9 Attitudes That Attract Higher Value Clients' on Instagram. Premium positioning builds loyalty, shields you from bargain-hunting clients, and it may become your shield as AI agents start to make inroads in the budget end of the market.
6. Coming to Hothouse in September ✨
1. Business in a Box 🚀 Launching 15 September
This is the one I’ve been pouring my heart into. Business in a Box is my most ambitious project yet: a complete launchpad for new interior design studios.
Imagine walking into your business on day one and finding everything already set up: folders, templates, client documents, systems, naming conventions - all the admin and organisation already done. Add to that a weekly teaching session, where I walk you through how to use each piece, and live support to guide you whenever you need it.
That’s the package. It’s not just files - it’s a whole framework, plus teaching, plus support.
I’ve built the white-label design business myself from the ground up, so I know how much time, confusion and second-guessing this saves.
Honestly? I would have loved to have had this when I was starting out.
The first cohort is ready to roll, and I’m so excited for the journey ahead. If you’re a new designer, or you know one, this is a chance to fast-track years of trial and error and get straight into action. Find out more here.
2. The Big Push 🏁
In late September, we’ll commit to one bold, achievable goal for Q4. The Big Push is about finishing the year strong and stepping into 2026 from a position of confidence and momentum. More news in mid-September.
✨ September in Hothouse is about launch and lift-off: structure + momentum.
7. Practical Embodiment Habits for Designers: Learning to Listen to Your ‘No’
Every designer knows the sensation: a new idea lands in your lap and your whole body rebels. Your gut clenches, your breath shortens, your shoulders shoot up to your ears. The word “no” leaps into your throat before your mind has even considered the merits.
Sometimes that “no” is a gift. It’s your body’s early warning system - protecting you from misalignment or overwhelm. But sometimes, that same physical reaction is simply fear of the unfamiliar. It may be the very edge you need to lean into if you want to grow.
Learning to tell the difference is one of the most powerful skills a designer can develop. Below are three practical embodiment habits, linked to the pillars we’ve been exploring, that will help you pause, discern, and choose wisely.
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1. Embodied Design Insight - Noticing the Body’s Yes and No
- Habit: Before you dismiss an idea or opportunity, take one minute to scan your body. Where do you feel tension? Where feels open?
- Why it matters: This is your 'somatic marker' in action - a storehouse of past experiences encoded as physical cues. By mapping your bodily responses over time, you begin to distinguish between protective wisdom and limiting fear.
- Practice tip: Keep a short journal. Each time you feel an embodied no, jot down: the trigger, the body sensation, and what happened when you did/didn’t follow through. Patterns will emerge.
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2. Somatic Self-Audit - Reframing the Freeze
- Habit: When your body locks up, practise a micro-reset: soften your jaw, drop your shoulders, expand your breath into your ribs.
- Why it matters: According to Polyvagal Theory, your nervous system often can’t tell the difference between 'real threat' and 'growth discomfort.' A reset moves you back into safety, so you can assess with clarity.
- Practice tip: Ask yourself: “Is this unsafe - or just unfamiliar?” That one question can transform a reactive 'no!' into a reflective pause.
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3. Embodied Branding - Choosing How You Show Up
- Habit: Practise delivering a considered 'yes' or 'no' with your whole body aligned - grounded stance, steady breath, deliberate tone.
- Why it matters: Clients (and colleagues, and partners) don’t just hear your decision; they feel it. (Ever delivered a 'no' that could have been misconstrued as a 'maybe'?) An embodied delivery projects confidence and clarity, even when you’re stretching into new territory.
- Practice tip: Try this in low-stakes contexts: decline a small offer or request while staying calm and open. Build the muscle of boundaried, embodied communication.
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The Designer’s Takeaway
Embodiment habits aren’t about silencing your body’s ‘no.’ They’re about listening to it wisely.
Sometimes the no is a true signal of misalignment - honour it.
Sometimes it’s the nervous system confusing novelty with danger - soothe it.
And sometimes, it’s the edge of your next chapter - lean in.
The more fluent you become in your body’s language, the more you’ll design, decide, and lead with confidence.
8. 🌱 My Week in Hothouse
Every so often, a Hothouse member ventures to ask me: “Julia, what’s in it for you? It’s free - what do you get back?”
It’s a fair question. Hothouse has been a huge personal challenge for me - a leap of faith and an ongoing commitment to something experimental, by no means guaranteed to succeed.
But the truth is, Hothouse has given me at least as much as I’ve given it. In Business in a Box, I tell new designers: “Start before you feel ready. Learn by doing. The market’s feedback will shape your business offering.” That’s exactly what Hothouse has done for me.
If I had waited for the market to come to me, I wouldn’t have had a fraction of the experience I’ve gained this year.
Looking back on the last eight months, here’s what I’ve learned:
✨ My brand identity: I’m not just teaching designers how to grow a business - I’m showing them how to grow into their best selves, at any age, in a world that’s shifting fast.
✨ My USPs: I combine lived reinvention, future-focused strategy, and a holistic approach that marries personal growth with business growth. I model what I teach.
✨ My ideal clients: They’re not ‘just’ interior designers. They’re founders of design businesses - ambitious, curious, positive entrepreneurs who want to step into leadership of their own brands.
✨ My direction forward: I’m building everything around that Founder identity - Business in a Box as a starter kit, Bootcamp as the founder’s transition, Hothouse as the accountability hub.
☝️ The value of this ☝️...enormous!
This autumn, as I prepare for Q4, I’ll be taking all of these learnings into a Meta Ads campaign, chasing my stretch goal for 2025 of 1,000 names on my mailing list by the end of the year.
I can hardly believe the transformation in my own business since I started Hothouse - simply by following my heart, surrounding myself with people who lift me up, and daring to talk about the subjects that I find fascinating.
That’s the real magic of Hothouse: we design, we declare, we deliver - and the growth surprises all of us... me included!
9. Final Thought
I’d love your help - hit reply and tell me what part of this week’s newsletter you found most useful (or least!). Your feedback shapes what I share next.
With very best wishes
Julia
Founder - Hothouse
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