An online course to start your company: How one week in Albania shaped our year
I love how sometimes, you can have a little experience which shapes so many subsequent experiences. This year has been a little like that for us, and it started with a week in Albania…
A week in Albania
Earlier this year, Jim was invited by our pal Kushtrim to help out on a project in Albania. It was run by the United Nations Development Programme and funded by our friends at Swiss Contact and the aim of it, was to help a group of people turn their ideas and dreams into businesses.
With me being in Brighton and Jim in Berlin, we tended to work a lot together on the shaping and building of flux but less on client projects which we typically did separately with our cells network. So this would be a good opportunity to work together on a live project. Additionally, amongst all the more corporate work we were, we also wanted to do something a bit more useful for the world as we started to question more and more the value of helping big corporations.
Oh. And we both love the Balkans.
So we went…
So we went, but we didn’t really expect it to go this way. We had an awesome week working with some wonderful people. From a young developer who’d started building some neat software, to a woman setting up a smoothy delivery company, to a dude setting up his own rabbit farm.
It was so rewarding working with people who had chosen to be there and who were about to take what sometimes can feel like a big risk, by going it solo. It was so rewarding in fact that the other work we were doing with big businesses started to feel less rewarding. So much less rewarding that we started pointing flux in a different direction, the new direction was to focus on people not companies, on customers not clients. To go from few people paying lots, to lots of people paying little by making the knowledge we’ve gained over years working with big companies, more accessible.
And the first iteration output of this shift is our new online course focussed on helping more people do what this awesome group in Albania did back in March, start their own businesses.
Making knowledge accessible to more people
It’s called Dream Hackers and it’s goal is to take you from idea to launch through a no-nonsense online course. No jargon, no bull. Just real, down to earth stuff to help you take that idea the step further into starting your own business and maybe going your own way.
We opened for a pre-launch last week with a $100 off for our first 50 customers (you can read more and sign up here) and it’s exciting. Actually, to use a more boring word, it’s interesting. It’s interesting because from my perspective, I was just going to Albania to do some fun work with my pal. 6 months later, it’s become our job. We’re still working with some amazing existing clients and companies to change their cultures and ways of working. But mostly, this is our job at the moment.
So all this to say that… sometimes you do something because it seems like a fun thing to do and 6 months later, it has become ‘what you do’.
Take care.
Jon
