The Extraordinary Business Book Club

In some ways every week on the Extraordinary Business Book Club we're talking about the results of a book-writing experiment - and many books are themselves the results of fascinating experiments in business and life. In this Best Bits episode we don our white coats and safety glasses and head fearlessly into the laboratory to watch the magic happen in the company of some of our most recent researchers...  Anne Janzer on how her marketing career proved the lab in which she refined her writing experiments Zoë Routh on starting early and the endocrinology of writing in flow Rob Hatch on the research findings of a long-term newsletter experiment Elvin Turner on introducing user experience research into writing for explosive results Cath Bishop on narrative fusion - bringing together different strands of experience in the white-hot heat of the writing lab Rita Clifton on distilling ideas, the Wall of Content and the application of the seat of the pants to the chair Gayle Mann on the importance of finding your own best way to conduct your writing experiment Shuhrat Ashurov on the alchemy of stories and a lifetime of experimenting with storytelling.     

Cath Bishop has performed at the highest standard in three very different fields: sport, international negotiation, and business coaching. An Olympic medallist and world champion herself, she has seen first hand the intense highs and lows of competition - how it serves us as humans, and how it doesn't.  We are as a culture obsessed with winning. The word has seeped through our language across sport, politics, business, education... we accept without question that to come first, to beat the competition, is the outcome we celebrate. It's not working out too well for us, even for the winners themselves. In The Long Win, Cath explores a different way of looking  at success: how could we reimagine 'winning' to work better for us as people, as a society, and as inhabitants of the planet? Fascinating insights too into the hard work of shaping such a complex, wide-ranging argument, and tips on keeping your focus as you write. 

"We are bombarded every single day by buzzes and dings and notifications... I wanted to help people find some simple ways to reclaim the power of their decisions instead of reacting all the time, to take a breath or to set up some simple rules and systems that they could use to make better decisions for their life, for their business." Rob Hatch had been training to write a book for nine years without knowing it, as he built up not only a loyal readership for his weekly newsletter (all now poised to buy his book on launch day) but also his own writing practice. In this conversation we talk about making technology work for us rather than against us, finding your people, seeking out critical feedback and some super-practical tips to help you regain control of your most precious resource of all - your attention.

"Some days it feels like an emotional connection with the people who need to hear it. And those are good article days... it's a great pleasure when people write back saying, Oh, that just hit the mark for me today. That was exactly what I needed to hear. Did you write it just for me? And I'm like, No, I wrote it for me, but I'm glad it helps you." Zoë Routh has been writing all her life, but she still wrestles with imposter syndrome, titles, and days when it just feels like a chore. Luckily for us, she's learned a lot of really useful stuff about how to deal with all of that, and she shares it generously in this week's conversation, along with some insights on dealing with difficult people and what happens when we get outdoors.

The best business books include powerful stories that get across key points in a memorable, engaging way. What if we could make those stories accessible to more people, more easily? That's the vision that prompted Shuhrat Ashurov to create Storypack, a microlearning app that gives people in business access to a library of stories from business books and also encourages them to add their own.  Shuhrat talks about how he personally recognised the power of story-based learning, the difficulty of getting people on board in the early stages, and the way he and the team have worked with authors to extract the various types of stories in their book from the context of the book so that they can stand alone and reach more people, more easily.  Whatever the future for business books, this is surely a part of it. 

'Failure can be quite a deceptive word... misadventures feels like a much more forgiving word that allows you to go off and try stuff.' Gayle Mann and Lucy-Rose Walker have supported thousands of entrepreneurs in their work with Entrepreneurial Spark and beyond, and if there's one thing they've learned it's that the reality of being an entrepreneur is very different from the version portrayed on social media.  By encouraging entrepreneurs to share their misadventures and how they coped, they hope to end the conspiracy of silence: you're not alone, and you will get through this.  They also learned a huge amount about writing a book and hosting a podcast along the way, which they share with hilarious frankness here!

"Being open to the journey of innovation of your own book is really important..." Someone told Elvin Turner as he prepared to write his first book to expect two things: first, that he would have a ton of new ideas, and second, that as he forced those ideas onto the page, they would simplify, and simplify, and simplify.  Turns out they were right, and Elvin revelled in the 'IP generator' that his book Be Less Zombie turned out to be.  In this fascinating conversation we talk about zombie companies and the importance of embedding innovation, but also about how that process plays out in writing. And we also muse on just how late a manuscript has to be before it's REALLY late...  

Imposter syndrome gets a bad rap, but it can be rocket fuel, says Rita Clifton. 'It's a drive, you know, go with it and use it.... you worry that you're not going to be good enough, and you stretch yourself. That's when you grow most.' As well as talking about her own extraordinary career, from a working-class family to Cambridge and then on to top roles at Saatchi & Saatchi, Interbrand and more, plus a portfolio of non-executive directorships for businesses and environmental groups, she talks about how writing has become a passion and how she goes about it.  A deeply satisfying conversation, full of inspiration and also practical tips for working and writing better. 

Q: What do you get when you throw together a bunch of people all working on different business writing projects into a 2-week virtual retreat?  A: Lots, it turns out.  If you're listening to this podcast you already know how valuable writing is for your business, but that doesn't mean it's easy. In this special episode, eight participants in the most recent Practical Inspiration Virtual Writing Retreat share what they learned over the two weeks. Discover why writing doesn't always look like writing, simple tools to get you unstuck and clarify your thinking, the power of focus and the pull of distraction, and why precommitment works. 

'Writing is a way of doing something physically while thinking deeply, it's a container for deep thought in your life. If you think about it that way, it's a really wonderful thing to make time for in your life.' Anne Janzer's mission is to 'help people spread important ideas by writing'. In this conversation we talk about why that matters and what it looks like in practice. What IS the process of writing? Spoiler alert: it starts long before the actual writing. Inspiring, energising and relentlessly practical.