I am writing this at the tail end of what can only be described as an essay crisis, and tomorrow the essay gets handed in. On Monday 28 September, the Interior Design Practice System launches.
It is 80 lessons across 14 modules, and it follows the stages of the design process from first enquiry t...
It is another short issue this week, and next week too.
In the next fortnight I will be focusing on client work. Business in a Box opens tomorrow, with our first live session on Tuesday. The Interior Design Practice System launches a week on Monday. I am running a CPD for the BIID on Thursday, a...
Hello 🚚
I am moving house this weekend, and this is the thin issue I warned you about.
So: the dates, the numbers from my week, and nothing else. Normal service resumes for Q4.
I committed to publishing every Sunday, not to publishing at full strength every Sunday. It's days like today that matt...
This is the first of two shorter newsletters, this week and next week.
Behind the scenes I'm moving house, and I'm fastidiously restricting all activities to their allocated time boxes in my calendar.
This week's business mainly concerns a gaping hole in the design process that I fell into while...
This week I'm writing about authority. Firstly, whether we step up and assume it, and secondly, how to stop it leaking out again as we deliver our services.
The blog is about stalling. You know what the next step is, you know how to take it, but something in your chest won't let you. There are t...
Hello 🐇🐢
Two changes have reshaped our profession in the last few years. One is artificial intelligence, it sits in the headlines and forces us into continual development. The other has crept over us more subtly and it is this: marketing has stopped being something a design practice does alongsid...
Hello 🏆
This week’s theme is standards and how to gauge acceptable, because benchmarking has come up twice in the last few days in different guises.
The first time it was technical. I’ve been writing the snagging material for The Interior Design Practice System, and researching the NHBC standard...
Hello ☀️
Usually the summer is quiet, but five designers booked appointments for advice last week. Every one arrived with a version of the same question: what should I do next? Between them they left with five different answers: no two could have shared a meeting.
? One needed to be visible befor...
Hello 👀
To you, and to a new month. It's the middle of the third quarter, and today we are turning our attention to the woefully neglected. Here are two items for starters.
The first is the chunk of your life that you've deleted from your cv. Tt's the subject of this week's blog, and a choice mo...
Hello 🏋️♀️
This week's theme was inspired by a question someone asked me a few weeks ago: is a first meeting with a prospective client the moment to bring out the Very Good Bag? My answer was yes. It was also, I now think, only half right, and the missing half turns out to be the interesting par...
Hello ☀️
My accountability groups are thinning out temporarily, from here things fragment a little, as they should: summer deadlines and summer holidays rise up the order, and we regroup in September with the back-to-school energy that I like to grab and capitalise on, even thought it’s quite som...
Hello 🤕
This week’s issue is lean.
I’m resolutely committed to publishing, however, having been quite unwell for a few days, the following is stripped down to the bare minimum. Leaving me with more time for lying around and resting. Thank heavens for Wimbledon 🎾.
A few days off has been a real t...
This newsletter keeps members of the Hothouse interior design business accelerator informed about news and forthcoming events
Receive my quick-to-read weekly newsletter...
Sign up for the Hothouse Newsletter: find out what's coming up, and keep up with recent webinars, blogposts, videos, and other events - all focused on excellence in interior design practice.
