Me And My Partner: 'One of the first decisions we made was not to get an office'

BRIAN QUINN

I'd best describe myself as an entrepreneur by accident. I've been involved in several companies that were entrepreneurial, on the production and editorial side. But I realised that I was not going to achieve some of the ideas I had - not just about wealth but about building a business - unless I took more of an entrepreneurial role myself.

I knew immediately that James was the right person to go into business with. I've worked with a lot of cartographers, but none can match James's combination of skills. He is an excellent cartographer technically, which is essential, but he's got the breadth of vision to be able to see the bigger picture. Often quite literally, as he'll be dealing with huge map image files and fitting them together in minute detail. I trust him and his abilities implicitly.

One of the first decisions we made was not to get an office. That is a mistake I've made before. You get an office and it immediately becomes like some terrible tyrant which needs to be fed with money every month. With an office, the first two things you tend to do is: (1) employ people to put in it and (2) buy equipment for them. Suddenly you've got £5,000 a month going out and you don't know quite how it's happened. We were lucky in that we had almost all the equipment we needed already and we both had home offices, so we thought, why bother changing that set-up? The other permanent employee works from home, too, and for the rest we use a team of freelancers and sub-contractors.

James looks after the cartography, the production and the technical side and I'm responsible for the sales and marketing, which I'd never done before Cassini. Although I'd worked in publishing for nearly 20 years, I knew nothing about how the industry was structured, how book distribution worked, about getting a product to market. I had to learn very quickly. It is exhilarating, actually. Knowing that you have the total support of the people you are working with, and a product that people want to buy. It gives you the confidence to persevere and to not be afraid of making mistakes.

James and I understand enough about each other's roles to appreciate the challenges we both face and to be able to make constructive comment. But having either too much or too little knowledge of what the other partner is doing can be dangerous. It means you either can't engage with what they are doing, or you start treading on their toes. I feel that we have just the right amount.

We talk three or four times a day. We also have a set weekly chat on Tuesday mornings. We'll plan in advance what we need to talk about that week, otherwise we'd end up rambling on for hours.

Trust is absolutely vital, particularly as we don't physically work together. We are totally dependent on sharing some sort of common timetable and trusting that the other person will have done what you need them to do by the time you need them to do it. It is something that you have to work at. We've managed it through a mixture of good luck and hard work.

JAMES ANDERSON

I've always wanted to do my own thing. As a teenager I couldn't understand why you would slog your guts out in a job to line someone else's pocket. That's why I went straight into freelance cartography after finishing my training and, a little later, turned the freelance business into my own small cartography company.

It was through the freelance work that I met Brian. He commissioned me to work on an atlas he was putting together at a previous publishing company. The project went well and we worked together on quite a few things over the next few years, getting to know one another in the process.

We would have daily conversations for hours at a time discussing and arguing about the products we were working on. And we would get to discussing other ideas and projects that we would like to work on if we ever got round to setting up our own business.

When Brian came to me with the historic maps idea I immediately thought, yes, let's give it a shot.

It was an easy decision to work with Brian. We both have the same vision about where we want to go and how we want to get there. We find it very easy to bounce ideas off each other and develop off-the-cuff remarks into potential products.

In the beginning it was hectic. We were both trying to do bits of everything without any clearly defined roles, apart from the very broad definitions of me as the cartographer and Brian as sales and marketing director. We learnt together about everything that was involved in running a business and our roles gradually became more defined. I look after the whole production and operational side, from cartography to managing the sub-contractors, while Brian is in charge of actually selling the maps and distributing them. I don't envy him at all. It's not something I could do, but I think he took to it very well and surprised himself by actually enjoying it. He enjoys the challenge because it is something he hasn't done before.

That sums up Brian. He is very flexible and versatile. He can turn his hand to most things. And if he thinks he can't do something, he won't try to bluff it. He'll hold up his hands and say, "I don't think I can do this".

Not sharing an office means that our communication tends to be quite focused. There's not much idle banter or chit chat. We say exactly what we need to say and let each other know what we're expecting from each other. We speak three or four times a day at least and there'll be dozens of e-mails flying back and forth.

One of my biggest fears is that I have to take on an office and turn up between 9am and 5pm everyday. We both love working from home. We can still do 70 hours a week, but it is far more flexible. I don't think the company would work so well if we all had to get our pencils out at 9am and leave at five.