Freddie Edwards missed a clear growth window in late 2023: he had enough work to justify hiring but didn't act, and his client book collapsed as a result — from four clients, to three, to two, to one, to none. His advice is direct: don't work alone for extended periods, get into a shared professional office space, and build a team early. Working solo means you have nothing to benchmark yourself against and can't tell a serious problem from a minor one.
By late 2023, Dragonfly Projects had enough inbound work that bringing someone on made obvious business sense. Edwards chose not to hire. What followed was a steady erosion of the client book that left the consultancy with no active clients at all.
He doesn't frame this as bad luck. He frames it as a structural failure: solo consultants have no safety net when momentum stalls, because every relationship and every mandate sits with one person. When capacity runs thin, client service suffers — and referrals dry up along with it.
Edwards eventually hired in August of his fourth year of trading, bringing in Louisa Whittaker from Gardner and Theobald — someone with approximately 12 to 13 years of commercial occupier experience — and completing the process within two weeks. The deliberate choice was to hire someone more senior, more experienced, and with different strengths. That combination, he argues, is what a young consultancy actually needs. You can hear the full conversation on Listenly.
Edwards uses a specific analogy to explain the hidden cost of working solo: playing golf on your own. Without others around you, you have no way to benchmark your game. You can't tell whether a bad round is genuinely bad or just slightly off. The same dynamic applies in a professional context.
Isolated consultants struggle to distinguish significant problems from insignificant ones. Minor setbacks feel catastrophic; genuine risks can go unrecognised. The absence of a team — or even proximity to other professionals — removes the calibration that makes good decisions possible.
His practical recommendations follow from this: work in a shared office space with similar professionals, and hire a team earlier than feels comfortable. Not later, when the client book is already contracting.
"The reason why I set up Dragonfly wasn't actually just to be able to run my own business. It was the privilege of being able to become an employer. Business is all about looking after people and businesses, and it's also about looking after our own."
Freddie Edwards — Founder & Director, Dragonfly Projects.
Edwards founded Dragonfly Projects in 2022 after nearly eight years at Quartz Project Services, where he joined as a graduate and left as a senior project manager. Before construction, he read French at the University of Leeds and had considered teaching. His route into the industry came through a work experience placement organised via a sailing club connection — a detail that says something about the network-driven nature of construction consultancy. His parents ran their own business — a nursery school established in 1985 — giving him an early, direct model of what employer responsibility actually looks like in practice.
Freddie operated as a sole trader for three years before beginning to hire in August of his fourth year, primarily because managing a young family made solo working increasingly unsustainable — and the business had reached a size where growth required more than one person.
Dragonfly Projects specialises in construction project management across two distinct sectors: the commercial occupier office market and the residential developer space. The business has deliberately stayed within those two areas, with commercial occupier work accounting for roughly 75% of activity over the last four to five years.
The Circle Partnership deliberately allows participants to self-define what mid-level means to them rather than imposing an age or grade bracket — recognising that career progression looks different across individuals and organisations.
This answer comes from episode 51 of Pegasus Radio — a candid conversation about building a construction consultancy from the ground up.
Listen to the episode on Listenly