The Extraordinary Business Book Club

'I'd done a lot of reps before I started writing the book, and that helped enormously.' Ollie Henderson would like to talk to you about work-life balance. Specifically, he'd like you to understand that you will NEVER reach a state of perfect equilibrium, so why beat yourself up about it? Instead, he'd like you to consider the idea of work and life as a flywheel, working together, moving you forward.  In this conversation, he shares some deeply personal insights about what that has meant for him, and also how he pivoted not just his work/life but his approach to writing as a way of exploring ideas and building community. If you're considering starting a newsletter, launching a podcast or writing a book in 2023, this is for you. 

'How can you get to more people beyond coaching courses and beyond webinars? Well, you write a book.' Bec Evans and Chris Smith met in a bookshop and have worked with books, writing and authors ever since. As co-founders of Prolifiko they coach writers to be more productive, and as co-authors of Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts they have made their experience and expertise available for anyone who needs it.  But writing about writing is perhaps the most cripplingly tricky kind of writing - and writing with your life partner is a make-or-break relationship strategy. In this week's conversation we unpick the personal and professional strands behind their writing journey, and the importance of Peggy, their labradoodle, in holding it all together. 

'Slow journalism for us was just a way of encapsulating that feeling that when you take your time, you can do something more quality.' In a media landscape dominated by the white-hot, reactive world of social media and rolling news, it can be hard to keep a sense of perspective. That's why a small group of editors decided to do something revolutionary: create a form of journalism that deliberately avoided breaking news, but instead focused on looking back to identify the real significance of events several months after they'd happened, once the dust had settled. Throw in high-quality production values and sophisticated infographics, and you have Delayed Gratification, the flagship publication of the slow journalism movement.  Independent publishing - of books or magazines - is famously financial precarious, and in this conversation we explore the bloody-mindedness and vision that lies behind it and the joy it brings to those brave and foolish enough to take it on, and why the world needs those brave fools so badly. 

'If you give your brain a question, it can't help but go looking for answers. That's how we are designed. And when you know that, you suddenly think, well, all my job is, really, is to come up with the good questions, isn't it?' In a gratifying plot twist, I become the guest on my own podcast as Grace Marshall asks me all the tough questions about my own new book, Exploratory Writing: Everyday magic for life and work.  How can one of our simplest, oldest technologies - the pen on the page - be the solution to our most pressing 21st-century problems? Discover why just 6 minutes of this deceptively simple off-line, off-grid, off-piste practice turns out to be a powerful tool for better thinking, creativity, and wellbeing, and even diversity and inclusion within organizations.  Plus some thoughts on the crippling embarrassment of being a publisher who can't nail the structure for her own book... 

'Your story is about you, but it's not for you. Someone, somewhere woke up this morning needing to hear your story to not feel alone.' For most of us, it's hard for us to see how our personal story fits into our professional life. But Mark Leruste believes that your personal story is the 'emotional glue' that makes sense of everything you do in the world, and people need to hear it.  In this fascinating conversation, we discuss not only how you find and own your story, but how you use it for good in the service of others as a business book writer. He also reveals how he designed his own book, Glow in the Dark, as a Trojan Horse for a much deeper message.... 

'We are designed for acute episodes of stress, but what we're not designed for is chronic episodes of stress. That's stress after stress after stress, and that's what most people are living with, day in day out.' Looking back, Sarah Sparks can see that her body was trying to tell her there was a problem. But she didn't listen: she kept on working crazy hours under immense pressure while trying to be the perfect new wife, and eventually her body stepped in to give her a message she couldn't ignore: she collapsed and was hospitalized with burnout.  Since then she's made it her mission to stop other people getting to that place, with her STOP model for combatting chronic stress. As she developed her model she realised the next logical step was to face her fear of writing: the result was an award-winning book. 

Ever wondered why people don't immediately shout 'Of course!' and shake you warmly by the hand when you share your new idea with them? It's because we find new ideas hard to take on board, especially when they contradict things we've believed up until now. So how as a writer can you help people get past that initial negative reflex and take your ideas on board?  Marketer Phil Barden experienced this for himself, when he discovered that everything he thought he knew about advertising was wrong. In this week's conversation he shares how what he learned about how decision science transformed his own approach to marketing, and also how you as an author can help your readers take your ideas on board more effectively. 

'How do I .. move from being a curator to a creator? That was a big shift for me, and I think I got there in the end.' People often talk about the value of the finished book - for the author and for the reader. Less talked-about is the value of the process of writing: the connections you make as you research and discuss the ideas, the deepening of your thinking, the shift that you make as an author from consuming and curating other people's opinions to setting out your own.  Joy Burnford has been a 'curator of confidence' for many years, researching how women in particular build and sustain confidence at work, and developing her own in the process. But she realised that this is only one part of the equation: no matter how confident the woman, if the system at work is stacked against her, she cannot make the contribution of which she is capable. And when that happens, everyone loses out.  A fascinating conversation on gender equality in the workplace, but also on how writing a book doesn't just change those who read it, but its author too. 

"Of course we want to predict, what's the world going to be like in 5, 10, 15 years? How can I, as a brand, put myself in an advantageous position to thrive in this hypothetical future? But through taking a human-based approach, we're going to ask a different, and I think complementary question: not what's going to change, but what's going to stay constant. And if humans are your primary customers, the most relevant constants are going to be the constants of human nature." The science of branding is undergoing a revolution as we begin to better understand the neurology of decision-making. Matt Johnson and Tessa Misiaszek interrogate this new world of branding with a ruthless focus on what the implications are for businesses. You might love your brand, but if it doesn't mean anything to your customers, sorry, it's not a brand.  As well as this fascinating insight into the frontiers of marketing, we discuss the creative conflict (and the cocktails) involved in writing a book from two different perspectives, the challenges that presents and the reasons why it's so worthwhile. 

We don't live in a perfect world. If you're hoping to write a business book, I bet there's something that's getting in your way. Not enough time, lack of focus, morning sickness, a global pandemic...  We can't get rid of these constraints, but we CAN get smarter about them, and maybe even turn them into superpowers.  Get inspiration from:  Kate Nash on working with rather than against physical disability;  Jenna Tiffany on the impact of the pandemic;  Lucy Cohen on using whatever way of writing works for you;  Jodie Cook on using time constraints for productivity and wellbeing;  Em Stroud on using time constraints for playfulness and creativity;  Bruce Daisley on the magic of TikTok for explaining complex ideas in just a few seconds;  Felicity Dwyer on creating deadlines and accountability to get things done;  Kara Tan Bhala on translating rigour into readability;  Ian MacRae on using the book proposal document to create clarity.