Hi there! John Garner here to guest-write for the blog this week. I wanted to take some time at the end of Women’s History Month to talk about the secret to our success: the talented female designer-entrepreneurs who are building their own renovation businesses with Freemodel. I wish I could say we were feminist visionaries from the start! Alas, the reality is that we accidentally discovered our “secret” and then later came to embrace it fully.

We love to say “We thought we needed guys with tool belts and it turns out that we needed women with iPads.”

When Freemodel started back in 2020, we partnered with my sister, Susan, an interior designer and her husband Kevin, a general contractor. We expected Kevin would manage our renovation projects and Sue would help with design. After our first few jobs, we realized that Sue was more than capable of managing the projects herself from selecting finishes to managing subcontractors, including her husband (just like she does at home ;). So after that, Susan took over as our first project director and the rest is history! Looking back at this time, we love to say “We thought we needed guys with tool belts and it turns out that we needed women with iPads.”

There is a huge, mostly female pool of talented, hard-working designers who are too often under-compensated and underappreciated. Freemodel partners with these designers and provides them with the resources and support they need to succeed as renovators. While Freemodel’s contribution is important, it’s our project directors who really make us shine. We are consistently inspired by their warm relationships with agents and clients, beautiful designs, and perseverance to get the job done right even when things don’t always go as planned.

When we first described how she and Freemodel would work together, she said “So, I get to have all the fun and you do all the $#!+ work?” Yep!

Freemodel’s mission now is to recruit, empower, and celebrate our project directors, because they are the lifeblood of our company. As of this month, we have over 100 project directors in the “Freemodel family,” more than 90 of which are women. We are able to attract the best and most experienced designers because we offer them what they can’t get in a typical job: autonomy to run their own business, creative control over their designs, and the ability to make a great living on their own terms.

I admire all of our team members because they are self-starters and in the driver's seats of their careers. Many of our designers have told me Freemodel is their dream job. I always respond, “You’re not my employee. You’re my partner!” I think Lara Richmond, one of Freemodel’s first and best project directors, said it best. Lara had owned her own design firm and had also been a District Manager at Ethan Allen. When we first described how she and Freemodel would work together, she said “So, I get to have all the fun and you do all the $#!+ work?” Yep!

The happy coincidence of our project directors “having all of the fun” is that it also results in the best service in the renovation industry. We say that each of our local designers is the “CEO of the project”. She meets the agent in person, collaborates on design, drafts the scope, picks the finishes, hires her trusted subcontractors, and inspects the work. The project director is the single point of contact who has the responsibility and authority to make sure things go right. Over time, the project director and agent become trusted business partners and sometimes even friends as well.

As I mentioned, women and female entrepreneurs are truly at the heart of Freemodel’s foundation and success. But to all of our project directors—female and male—I want to say “Thank you” from me and everyone at Freemodel. Thank you for joining us on this journey. Thank you for your warmth and enthusiasm. Thank you for your optimism about what we are creating together. Freemodel would not be the company that we are today without your skill, artistry, and leadership. And women have played a huge part in that.