Martin Bjergegaard and Jordan Milne

On February 7, entrepreneurs Martin Bjergegaard and Jordan Milne, the authors of “Wining without losing”, gave a talk at the Digital October center as part of the Knowledge Stream project. The book contains experience from many businessmen who all have one thing in common: they don’t want to waste their lives at work.

Martin Bjergegaard from Denmark set up his first business when he was just 18. Having studied, and with experience in management, Martin founded the Rainmaking startup incubator in 2006 with his three best friends. They had created eight successful companies in the space of six years with an annual turnover of $50 million. Rainmaking currently has offices in London, Copenhagen and Berlin. Since 2010, Martin Bjergegaard has been preoccupied with another brainchild, the BetterNow service for raising donations for charity.

Despite his tight work schedule, Martin still finds time to take eight weeks off every year to travel and spend time with his family and friends. When he returns to work he tries his best not to spend more than 45 hours per week behind his desk.

Canadian Jordan Milne invented a quick way to earn from property at the age of 19, in just four months he had already paid for his university tuition. However, he didn’t stop at just one university and went on to study at six in total. His diploma in entrepreneurship from the University of Cambridge make him only one of nine people in the world with this qualification.

He currently works at the Rainmaking incubator, he is also vice president in charge of business development at an online art gallery, global sales manager at a sunglasses manufacturer, co-founder of the eCamb startup accelerator and advisor to Emot.io.

Jordan lives in Toronto and works with an online entrepreneurship community with over 8,500 members in his spare time. Milne gets itchy feet easily and likes to go on spontaneous trips. He has lived in France, the U.S.A., Australia, Denmark and Great Britain.

When Jordan Milne and Martin Bjergegaard first met, they realized that they both had one thing in common: they like business but also want to live balanced lives. They found like-minded people from around the world and asked them how they manage to work in business but save some time for themselves. The results of this research went into “Wining without losing”. The Russian edition was released shortly after. The book is waiting to be published in a further 30 countries.

Martin Bjergegaard flew to Moscow in person and coauthor Jordan Milne appeared via video link from Toronto to present the findings of their work to their Russian readership. They shared their business experience and methods of improving work efficiency, which allowed them to take more time off.