Why did Freddie Edwards move from sole trader to employer — and what finally pushed him to hire?
Freddie Edwards ran Dragonfly Projects as a sole trader for three years before making his first hire in August of his fourth year of trading. Two forces converged to make solo operation unsustainable: managing a young family left him with no margin, and being fully utilised on delivery meant there was simply no time for business development. His client base eroded from four clients down to zero. Rather than patch the model, he reset the business entirely — and chose to bring people on board ahead of the revenue to justify it, accepting a break-even period in order to build a quality team from the start.
"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 ProjectsThe reset Edwards describes was deliberate, not reactive. Once client numbers had declined to zero, he recognised that the sole trader model had a structural flaw: full utilisation on delivery and business development are fundamentally incompatible at 100%. His response was to hire ahead of demand rather than wait for the pipeline to recover first. The first employees included someone more senior and more experienced than Edwards himself, and someone with complementary strengths — a consciously uncomfortable choice that he describes as the right one.
By the time of this episode, Dragonfly Projects had grown to a full-time headcount of four, with a five-year revenue target of £3 million. Among the early hires was Louisa Whittaker, recruited from Gardner and Theobald with approximately 12 to 13 years of commercial occupier experience — a process completed within two weeks. The speed and seniority of that hire reflects the deliberate approach Edwards took to team-building: prioritise quality over comfort, accept the short-term cost, and build infrastructure before growth demands it. You can hear the full conversation on Listenly's Pegasus Radio page.
About Freddie Edwards
Freddie Edwards founded Dragonfly Projects in 2022, having spent nearly eight years at Quartz Project Services — entering the firm as a graduate and leaving as a senior project manager. That progression gives him a direct and unusually complete vantage point on what it takes to grow from junior professional to business founder in construction consultancy. Before the industry found him, Edwards studied French at the University of Leeds and considered a career in teaching; his route into construction came through a work experience placement arranged via a connection at his sailing club, an origin story that speaks to the network-driven nature of the sector he now operates in. He grew up working on building sites as a teenager, which gave him an early, practical familiarity with the construction environment long before it became his profession. At Dragonfly Projects, Edwards has focused the business tightly on two sectors — the commercial occupier office market and residential development — and has built the team and culture around the belief that employers have a responsibility to the people who work for them, not just to the clients they serve.
See also
Dragonfly Projects specialises in construction project management across two distinct sectors: the commercial occupier office market and the residential developer space.
The Circle Partnership deliberately allows participants to self-define what mid-level means to them rather than imposing an age or grade bracket.
The co-founders, supported by the host's recruitment experience, identify poor line management as the single most commonly cited reason people leave jobs in the construction sector.