The Extraordinary Business Book Club

'If you've got something that's important, meaningful to you, that needs to be heard, why not say it on one of the biggest platforms?' Have you thoughts about giving a TEDx talk? If so, you've probably got lots of questions. How do you apply, for a start? How do you put together a TEDx-worthy talk? How on earth are you supposed to do it without an autocue? And perhaps most fundamentally of all, given the huge amount of time and energy involved: why do it in the first place?  In this episode I draw on the wisdom and experience of a wide range of TEDx speakers and particularly Catherine Sandland, the fabulous speaking coach at TEDxNorthwich, to answer all these questions and more.  The red dot is waiting... this is where you begin your journey. 

'Writing is a form of figuring it out. And in fact for me, sometimes it's essential. It's like, what do you think about this? I don't know, I haven't written about it yet.' Dan Pink has written quite a few books, and they've done pretty well. So how does he do it? It's about showing up, he says, especially on the days you don't want to, and it's also about curiosity, hunches, thinking onto paper, and structure. (The structure REALLY matters.) Discover too why regret is such a positive force for good, and why feeling better doing necessarily make us do better.  (But you certainly won't regret the time you spent on this.)

'We don't compromise rigour and intellectual honesty, but we try to make it as accessible as possible.' I don't know what you and your life partner achieved in lockdown. Eric Lonergan and Corinne Sawyers wrote a book.  They brought their complementary skillsets - Eric in economics and monetary policy, Corinne in climate and sustainability - and produced Supercharge Me: Net Zero Faster, a call to action for policy makers and individuals alike to embrace the challenge and indeed the opportunities of reimagining our world more sustainably.  They also discovered a way of writing together that preserved those individual perspectives while creating a unified argument. And a lot of it happened over the dinner table... 

'The basic failure of strategy work is a failure to define the challenge that you're trying to meet.' Richard Rumelt is one of the world's leading authorities on strategy. He's also a keen rockclimber, and it was climbing that gave him the inspiration for his new book: The Crux.  In this wide-ranging conversation we talk about why strategy is such a controversial concept in business, and also why writing is such an important discipline for business thinkers. 

Do you make a difference? Or do you make excuses?  Tim Bradshaw has done many remarkable things in his life, from military training to endurance events, and when I spoke to him he had just returned from a relief mission to Ukraine.  He's simply living out his mantra: #BecauseICan. And it turns out that writing a book was the adventure that took him further out of his comfort zone than any that had gone before...  Ready to be challenged? 

"We all want to grow our business. And we often do that by spending quite a lot of money... But the reality is in front of us, we have all the new clients we need." Graham Eisner perfected his technique for asking clients for referrals without embarrassment on either side at Goldman Sachs, and has been teaching business owners how to do it to grow their business ever since. At its heart, his method involves a simple but profound shift in mindset: a belief that people genuinely want to help. It turns out this is an incredibly helpful mindset when it comes to marketing your book, too - and Graham generously shares his pro tips in this energising and practical conversation. 

'You cannot go into PR without building relationships.' Louise Third has embraced this principle in the planning and writing of her book PR on a Beermat, first by partnering with the originators of the beermat idea to develop it for PR, by writing collaboratively with partners, and by involving journalists and other media professionals to share their expertise in her book.  In this fascinating conversation we talk about PR, the role of a book as part of a business's storytelling, visual thinking, self-publishing and more. Energising and inspiring listening. 

'I think it's kind of a miracle. How can a human mind... all by itself, come up with an idea it never had before? You know, in a dialogue, I can understand how I can get a new idea from you, but how can I get a new idea from myself? That's amazing.' So much of writing is about trust - trusting yourself, that you will find something worth saying; trusting that the words will come and that others will find something of value. If you can't trust yourself to take that first step, you'll never write anything.  Peter Elbow knows this from experience. Having been shut down by a supercilious tutor at university he ended up dropping out of graduate school, simply unable to write the papers he was required to submit. But what he discovered in the process was to transform his own writing and that of the thousands of people he's taught it to since then - free-writing.  What's more, he discovered that free-writing isn't simply a tool for getting unstuck, it produces writing with more energy and clarity. This episode might just change your life. 

'Accountability is... probably the most empowering concept you have to live the life you want to live, when you understand it.' When we speak about accountability in business, very often the context is negative. It's about consequences and blame. But if we see accountability as ownership, it's a radically different, more empowering concept. That's what Brian Moran and Michael Lennington discovered, and they drew on their long-standing accountability to each other as business and writing partners to bring out the full significance of that understanding in their new book.  This week's conversation is not only a fascinating rehabilitation of a tricky term, but also a masterclass in writing collaboration. 

Put an author in front of schoolchildren and you can guarantee that before too long, one of them will ask: 'Where do you get your ideas?' It's a good question, and one that's just as important for business book writers. In this week's 'best bits' episode we look back over recent conversations to see, well, where DO authors get their ideas?  (So if someone asks you that question from now on, you can tell them: The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast.) With insights from: Cathy Rentzenbrink, Robert Kelsey, Jinny Uppal, John Howkins, Christian Busch, David Grayson, Helen Beedham and Catherine Stothart.