- What is Hothouse?
Hothouse is a free professional development group for ambitious interior designers, promoting the Hothouse Method of Business Growth: Design; Declare; Deliver.
Design – we plan our businesses
Declare – we set goals and targets in public
Deliver – we measure and watch our businesses grow
Hothouse isn’t about theory, it’s all about action. Whatever stage your business – startup, lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight – Hothouse is here to help you thrive, and push your business up to the next level.
Hothouse brings structure and momentum to help your business grow. 🌱
2. May Intentions and Focus
May has been a full-on month of Bootcamp – an intense five-week masterclass for design entrepreneurs, levelling up their businesses.
To keep things ticking over, we welcomed expert guests and explored smart strategies to help you thrive.
Now looking ahead to June, I’m planning the next phase for Hothouse. Read on 👇 and please send me your thoughts - what would be most helpful?
3. Business in a Box – Starts 8th September!
I mentioned last week that I’m building something I wish I’d had when I started out: a ready-made toolkit for newly qualified designers who want to launch their businesses before they feel ready.
It’s called Interior Design Business-in-a-Box, and it’s a shortcut past the overwhelm and confusion about the services to offer, what to say, how to price, how to onboard clients - it’s all mapped out, so they can get moving instead of spiralling into perfectionist procrastination.
You can start anytime - the content is self-directed but the support is live.
The course will include:
✅ A 90-Day Action Roadmap – weekly steps to launch your studio…not someday, but NOW!
✅ Business Foundations Pack – services, pricing, branding, payments, DIY website, compliance basics.
✅ Marketing Jumpstart Kit – Instagram bio, post prompts, website copy, and more.
✅ Client Communication Toolkit – emails, scripts, proposals, and onboarding.
✅ Organise Your Studio – folder structures, coversheets, systems to work like a pro.
✅ Resource Library – red flags, finding your first 3 clients, and all the essential documents needed to manage clients through your residential interior design practice.
✅ Mindset Boosters – confidence guides, imperfect action trackers, and rally cries.
✅ Templates & Canva Goodies – services menu, Insta posts, welcome pack, fee proposal.
PLUS:
✅ Hothouse Community Access – to ask me questions, get support, stay motivated.
It’s on pre-order at the moment (it launches on 8th September). For anyone who wants to get in early, there’s an early adopter price of £495 - a one-time deal that won’t be repeated. If you know a designer who’s just starting out, or someone you’d love to see take the leap, feel free to point them my way - find out more here.
4. Content Stacking – Smarter Content, Less Stress
Feeling stuck on the content treadmill? This week’s blog introduces content stacking – a way to spin one small part of a project into multiple posts. 🐇✨
Think of it as pulling rabbits out of a hat – a creative, energy-saving way to stretch ideas across platforms without reinventing the wheel every time.
5. Insights from Pink Storm Social
This was an exciting week for me, I had the first of two consultations with Camilla Richardson (Milla) of Pink Storm Social - she is helping me with Instagram as I work to build my profile and followership. The session was packed full of insights and recommendations, and some general tips, for example:
HASHTAGS: they are still useful – but keep them focused.
Cluster 3-5 around a theme. For example:
✔️ Good = #bathroomdesign #spabathroom #dreambathroom
❌ Bad = #tilepattern #bathroomdesign #fluffytowels
The algorithm is much cleverer now, it knows what you're posting about, don't confuse it with scattergun tagging. A single hashtag is better than too many.
6. About You – Let’s See You!
Do you have an ‘About Me’ highlight or pinned post on Instagram?
Milla left me with a long to do list - 🥵 - and one of the first tasks I ticked off was adding an ‘About Me’ highlight. I haven’t spoken about my background before - it felt pretty narcissistic - but the positive response was really quite overwhelming. It was also very nice to chat to people who I hadn’t been in touch with for a while.
Click here if you want to see how I did it.
7. My Week in Hothouse
After a enegetic, creative, and intensive 5 weeks, Business Bootcamp wrapped up last week – we'll be kicking off monthly board meetings in June. I am very excited to chase down goals with this lovely group of designers in the coming months.
Meanwhile…
My social media? It's a shambles.
And Hothouse? Sad and neglected.
My growth tracker? In the red 👆.
But here’s the thing: it’s fine. Some seasons are about planting, not harvesting. It's not who starts, it's who stays! Time to knuckle down again...watch this space!
8. Your Input, Please!
Help shape what comes next in Hothouse - There have been requests for a session on CDM, and I’m really interested in exploring sales methods and strategies (with our very particular clientele in mind). There is always business planning - we have barely touched on this - and yet it informs EVERYTHING! Or, how about raising your profile?
Also - heads up - in the final quarter of this year, I would like to assemble a crack team of entrepreneurs, determined to improve their business by focussing on specific performance metrics - the key performance indicator most likely to shift their business.
What would you like us to cover? Let me know! In Hothouse, or DMs in Insta or LinkedIn. Or email me: [email protected]
9. Dates for May
ALL JOINING LINKS IN HOTHOUSE!
🔹 Race Day 3 – 27th May, 9.30–3.00pm – content stacking edition.
🔹 Bootcampers’ Board Meeting – 30th May, 9.15am, by invitation only.
10. Final Thought
My new course - Interior Design Business-in-a-Box was inspired by the graduate designers who joined Hothouse in January.
Confronted with starting absolutely everything from first principles - with no IRL portfolio (and including marketing) - is overwhelming. Especially in a profession famous for its perfectionism.
Just start. Pretty soon you'll be lapping wannabe designers who are still stuck in the starting blocks. Because done beats perfect, and momentum beats waiting for the stars to align.
Warmly,
Julia
Founder - Hothouse
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