By Jeremy Cross
The three of us met in 2010 on the Henley Business School Executive MBA programme. After working together on projects ranging from a large South African charity (they are doing some awesome work) to a then Marlow-based start-up (my boys, haven't you grown?), we realised that not only did we like working together, we also we made for a pretty good team. And so, even after reading the Havard Business School article 'Don't Start a Company with Your Business School Pals', we decided two things:
1. We wanted to work together on something entrepreneurial after graduation
2. Although we had learnt a lot on the MBA about how to work well as an employee, there was no course on being a successful freelancer (which is ironically, often the reason people choose to do an MBA in the first place).
Now life gets in the way sometimes so about a year after the course finished - and three births, two house moves and one engagement - we were all in a position to commit some time out of our busy freelancing schedule. Based on Rob's first 4-day a week contract, we carved out some weekly '20 percent time', (made famous by Google) that we nicknamed '10freefridays' (we are now well over 60), and through some entrepreneurial experiments using Lean Start-Up, 'MasterFreelancer' was born.
We now run workshops for freelancers and are beta-testing an online offering, all in the service of helping them grow and secure better work.
1. We wanted to work together on something entrepreneurial after graduation
2. Although we had learnt a lot on the MBA about how to work well as an employee, there was no course on being a successful freelancer (which is ironically, often the reason people choose to do an MBA in the first place).
Now life gets in the way sometimes so about a year after the course finished - and three births, two house moves and one engagement - we were all in a position to commit some time out of our busy freelancing schedule. Based on Rob's first 4-day a week contract, we carved out some weekly '20 percent time', (made famous by Google) that we nicknamed '10freefridays' (we are now well over 60), and through some entrepreneurial experiments using Lean Start-Up, 'MasterFreelancer' was born.
We now run workshops for freelancers and are beta-testing an online offering, all in the service of helping them grow and secure better work.
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