Boutique Hotel
Red Hotel
A historic Main Street building reimagined as a landmark boutique hotel; stone, steel, and warm light on the corner of a small town.
A Builder's Guide To
Build Cool Stuff.Serve a Lot of People.Create Lasting Wealth.
Radical Hospitality is the blueprint for building boutique hotels and meaningful businesses that create unforgettable experiences, impact communities, and transform your legacy.
Available September 2026
Zeke Freeman
Architect, Developer, Podcaster, Author
Real-World Blueprints
Proven frameworks to go from idea to opening—and beyond.
People-First Approach
Create places that serve guests, teams, and communities well.
Design That Matters
Thoughtful spaces that honor nature, local culture, and craft.
Create Lasting Wealth
Build businesses that are profitable, scalable, and built to last.
This book is a real-life toolkit full of real stories, strategies, and inspiration. For anyone flirting with a bold idea, Zeke will help you take a strong swallow of reality alongside a deep breath of motivation.
— Bobby MikulasKinship Landing
The Book
Start where the movement started.
Radical Hospitality is a field guide for the builder in you — part philosophy, part playbook, part invitation. Written for the ones with more ideas than time, and more conviction than certainty.
240
Pages
12
Chapters
1
Big idea
∞
Applications
Available September 2026
The Philosophy
Radical means root.
Radical comes from the Latin radix — root. Long before the word got hijacked to mean extreme, it meant something much simpler: going back to the foundation. First principles. What actually holds.
That's not just a definition we liked. It's the whole idea behind Root Architecture & Development. From the beginning, our core philosophy has been that strong buildings start with strong foundations, and strong communities start the same way. You can't fake either one. You can only build them, slowly, from the ground up.
Somewhere along the way, we recognized something that changed how we build for good. We live in the most connected generation in history, and the loneliest one on record. That's not a coincidence, it's a design failure. And it's one we're equipped to fight. We're not just building buildings. We're fighting loneliness; with creativity, bricks and mortar, hospitality, and community.
That's Radical Hospitality. Not a style. Not an amenity list. A root system, strong enough to hold something up when the storm comes.
And it's one you and I, as builders, are equipped to fight — along the way we just might find that we can:
- BUILD COOL STUFF.
- SERVE A LOT OF PEOPLE.
- CREATE LASTING WEALTH.
The Podcast
Conversations with the people building what's next.
Long-form talks with architects, operators, investors, and pastors on the craft of building things worth building.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
- 053Purpose Beyond Profit: Bruce O'Neal on MANNA Worldwide and Mango Tree Coffee1 hr 20 min
- 052North & South Padre Island:The Next Big Hospitality Market with Tiffany Zhou and Chris Kilcullen1 hr 6 min
- 051Scale Faster with Direct Bookings and Group Stays with Tim Ensmann53 min
- 050Turning Chalets and a Roadside Motel into a Hygge‑Inspired Boutique Hospitality Brand with Kerri Gibson57 min
- 049How to Sell Your Short-Term Rental for Greater Value with Tyler Coon48 min
- 048Designing Spaces That Pay You Back w/ Ishita Lalan53 min
The Work
Real projects. Real places. Real people served.
Cabins & Basecamp
Lost Fork Basecamp
A row of modern timber cabins tucked into the pines, a quiet basecamp built for slow mornings and long days outside.
A-Frame Retreat
Spirit Mountain
An A-frame perched above the treeline; a small, soulful place designed to remind guests what stillness feels like.
About the Author
Zeke Freeman.
Zeke Freeman is an architect, developer, and the host of the Radical Hospitality Podcast. Born and raised in East Texas, Zeke built his career at the intersection of design and development, believing from the beginning that the best buildings don't just serve a function, they tell a story. He is the principal of ROOT Architecture and Development, LLC, a practice he founded in 2012 focused on boutique hospitality, adaptive reuse, and the kind of projects that take longer than they should and matter more because of it. Before founding ROOT, he honed his craft at some of the country's finest architecture firms, including Lake Flato Architects and OZ Architects. Just as importantly, he brings a practical, no-nonsense approach to design rooted in where he came from, rural East Texas, where things were built to last and beauty earns its keep from simplicity.
Zeke's work spans the full arc of hospitality development, from concept and design through entitlement, financing, and construction. His most recent project, the Red Hotel in Morrison, Colorado, sits adjacent to Red Rocks Amphitheatre and represents over three years of development, thirty-one bank rejections, and an unwavering conviction that the right project is worth the wait.
When he's not building, Zeke is a husband to Amy and father to Nate and Titus. He is an avid Colorado outdoorsman, climber, trail runner, snowboarder, and fly fisherman who believes the mountains have as much to teach about building as any studio.
Zeke Freeman
Architect, Developer, Podcaster, Author
Resources
Tools for the builder in you.
Articles, templates, calculators, and playbooks: everything we wish we'd had when we started. Free. Always.
GuideThe Radical Hospitality Starter Kit7 principles for creating places people remember. Download the free guide and discover a different way to think about hospitality, from designing meaningful arrivals and shared spaces to building a business that serves the people behind it.Open →WorkbookThe Sacred Delay Workbook [Free Download]Turn delay into clarity, stronger strategy, and one grounded next step.Open →GuideThe $1M Presale FrameworkLearn the strategic framework to presell your hospitality project before you break ground.Open →WorkbookThe Hospitality Developer’s Vivid Vision Workbook [Free Download]A practical planning workbook to help you define the concept, guest, experience, financial picture, team, and next steps for your property.Open →
Invest With Us
Own a piece of remarkable places.
We invest in hospitality, adaptive reuse, and community-forming real estate: patient capital deployed into places that improve their neighborhoods and compound over decades.
- Long-hold, patient capital
- Real assets in real communities
- Design-led, operator-driven
- Accredited investors only
Join the Movement
One letter, once a week. Nothing you'll regret opening.
Field notes on building, hosting, investing, and creating a life that outlives you. Written for the builder who dreams of places that matter.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Read by 12,000+ builders.