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 – startup, growing pains, maturity, 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. 🌱
👉 Join the Hothouse group here
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. Join here.
💬 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 12-week 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. Four Filters for Smarter Marketing
In last week’s marketing webinar, we explored how different businesses need different marketing strategies – and how my Four Filters can help you find the right path (I wrote about these in an earlier blog).
Depending on your practice, you’ll approach marketing very differently if you:
- Work with residential vs. commercial clients
- Attract more ‘left-brain’ vs. ‘right-brain’ personalities
- Operate in a major city vs. a settled community
- Are at Tier One/Two (seeking awareness and audience growth) or Tier Three/Four (elevating your profile via thought leadership)
The short version of the webinar is now live on my YouTube channel, while the longer version – exclusively in Hothouse – includes invaluable insights from designers already putting these ideas into practice.
👉 Watch the short version on YouTube
4. Why Embodiment Matters in Interior Design ✨
This week’s blog is my first dive into embodiment - a concept I believe will become increasingly powerful as we race alongside AI in shaping the future of interior design.
I explore three perspectives that every designer should be thinking about:
✨ Designing for transformation, not just transaction – clients don’t just want beautiful rooms (a dopamine/oxytocin fix), they want spaces that calm, support, and replenish - they want design for the body.
✨ Listening to your body – many of us are natural givers; tuning into embodied signals helps us recognise when we’re about to overdeliver and step back into healthier boundaries.
✨ Embodied presence as non-verbal marketing – your presence speaks volumes before you ever show a design. From client meetings to photoshoots, every touchpoint can carry embodied signals that position you as intentional and premium.
5. The Power of Telling Your Own Story 📖
Last week I met Annie Murray, the force behind Annie’s Fitness Steyning. Annie is 55 - two years younger than me - and in the past few years she has completely remade her life: giving up alcohol, sugar and ultra-processed food, retraining as a fitness instructor, and building a business around something she truly loves. She is the Real Deal!
Two years ago she had 200 Instagram followers. By the end of last year? Over 300,000. Today, 450,000.
Her “overnight success” was seven years in the making. Her clarity and discipline are inspiring – and she told me that her growth took off when she stopped talking about her clients, and started telling her own story.
"That lesson is powerful for interior designers. So often, we default to showing clients’ homes, clients’ projects, clients’ lives. But your audience is following you. They want to know your values, your vision, your inspirations, and your turning points."
When you tell your story, you give potential clients a reason to trust you and want to be part of your journey.
👉 What story could you tell about yourself this week that would help your audience connect with you?
Annie shared five tips that have contributed to her success:
- She’s clear on the keywords to serve the algorithm: “menopause,” “sugar-free,” “alcohol-free.”
- She doesn’t see the algorithm as an enemy, but as a puppy to be trained. She gave the example of posting, ‘Had a lovely dog walk this morning!’ Asking: how on earth would this help the algorithm connect her to her ideal client? She isn't looking to attract dog walkers.
- She creates three reels a week, each carefully thought through so the visual and the verbal perfectly support one another. For example, one reel sees her walk away from the camera, while in the text she talks about walking away from crutches like alcohol, sugar, etc.
- She reuses and repackages her best-performing posts, sometimes slightly new wording, sometimes new accompanying images. She knows what hits the mark.
- Pehaps most importantly, she refuses to sell out her trust by promoting products she doesn’t genuinely use. Trust is the most valuable asset in her business. She truly cares about every one of her clients.
For me, Annie is living proof that energy, quality, vision, and drive can create huge success - even in your fifties, even after a reinvention, even as a one-woman band.
6. Warming Up for the Big Push in Q4 🚀
October marks the start of something I call the Big Push - when a self-selecting group of designers commit to one bold business goal to hit before the year is out.
The idea is simple: choose a goal you wouldn’t otherwise have targeted, but that, if achieved, would genuinely move the dial in your business. Think of it as a sprint to the finish line - strategic, intentional, and game-changing.
NB - it does need to be realistic! We don’t want to set targets we’ll miss - so make it modest but meaningful.
To get you thinking, here are some questions:
- Sales & Marketing – Which part of your sales funnel needs the greatest push? Is it awareness, nurturing, converting, or mobilising past clients as your biggest fans?
- Systems & Processes – What’s the biggest bottleneck holding you back? Pricing? Client paperwork? Project management? Time planning?
- Mindset & Confidence – Where do you need to stretch yourself? Asking for money? Holding stronger boundaries? Handling tricky clients with more ease? Elevating brand positioning?
- Other Possibilities – Maybe it’s building a collaboration, launching a new service, or pivoting to a new sector?
I’ll be talking much more about this in September, once Business in a Box has launched - but I want you to start considering now:
👉 If you could make one thing happen by December that would truly shift your business trajectory, what would it be?
A number of people have already stepped forward, this is a club I really want to be part of 🚀 because this autumn, we’re going to make it happen. Together. In Hothouse - join here.
7. 🚀 Business in a Box - Launching 15th September
Stop polishing. Start doing.
Business in a Box is a 12-week programme designed to get your interior design business out of your head and into the market - fast.
It’s built for:
- 🎓 New graduates who feel paralysed by perfectionism and don’t know where to start.
- 🔄 Career-changers who bring experience from other fields but need the industry tools to hit the ground running.
- 🕰️ Stalled starters who set up months ago but never gained traction, and need structure and accountability to finally move forward.
Inside you’ll find a 'white label' design studio ready to brand as your own:
- A complete system of folders, files, templates, and guides covering proposals, pricing, client communications, and project tools.
- A clear roadmap for your first 90 days in business - what to do, in what order, and how to make it happen.
- Weekly live teaching (recorded if you can’t attend), answers to all your design practice questions, and a peer group to keep you accountable.
The point is simple: you don’t polish before you start - you polish by starting. Your first clients will give you the feedback you need to refine your unique approach, carve out your USP, and shape your business into something distinctly yours.
✨ Don’t wait to feel ready...nobody ever does! Start before you’re ready - and grow as you go.
💷 Price: £795
👉 Secure your place today – doors close 15th September
8. My Week In Hothouse 🌱
It’s been a busy season here, with personal priorities alongside work. I’ve kept things simple by pausing non-urgent projects so I can give my full focus to Business in a Box, my flagship programme, while also clearing time for family.
Sometimes the unexpected shows up in business (and in life), but staying clear on priorities keeps everything moving forward.
My Big Push will be on Meta Ads - perhaps with a side order of LinkedIn - I still believe that Meta will accelerate Instagram and mailing list growth, providing a boost in the final quarter of what has been an experimental year, and setting me up for a strong 2026. My goal for 2025 was to get my mailing list to 1,000 names - this was always a stretch goal...I haven't given up yet!
9. Final Thought ✨
In the same way that I push my clients to constantly refine and define their unique qualities, I’ve been looking closely at what sets my work apart from other design business coaches. Many competitors position themselves as inspirational or tactical – but what makes Hothouse different is the integration of personal evolution with business growth.
I don’t just help you market harder or manage clients better. I help you grow into the kind of entrepreneur who has clarity, confidence, and presence – someone who is uncopyable in the age of AI and unforgettable to clients.
That combination – strategy plus self-evolution – is the edge that keeps your business resilient, relevant, and future-proof. 🌟
I am so excited about the potential for the Big Push in Q4: the chance we all have to develop our businesses and line ourselves up for even greater growth and success in 2026!
Julia
Founder - Hothouse
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