The Extraordinary Business Book Club

No matter how many you've seen, there's still something a bit special about a new year: however 2019 panned out for you, 2020 is a blank canvas waiting for you to create something that matters. But how do you translate your big goals and aspirations for the year into the day-to-day actions that will turn them into reality?  In this episode I share my personal goal-setting strategy, which I've refined over the last few years and which I use with my clients too to get clarity, balance competing priorities, ensure accountability, and make time for the important tasks amidst the daily clamour of the urgent ones.  Your goals are a reflection of who you are and the dent you want to make in the universe: if you don't put in place a system to make them happen, you're cheating both yourself and the universe. 

I set myself a tough challenge for 2019: read 100 business books in the year. It was a close thing, but I hit my target (if we allow manuscripts as well as published books, and I don't see why we shouldn't). In this week's episode I've picked out the 10 titles that that have particularly stood out for me and which I'd recommend to anyone who cares about good business books, in the order in which I read them. 

Audio books are big news. But they're also expensive and complicated to produce - or are they? Determined to find out for herself, Karen Williams published her latest book Becoming An Authority audio first (in fact it doesn't even exist yet as a print or ebook).  She discovered a huge amount about the process along the way, including how to write in a way that makes it easier to read aloud, the importance of movement, and how to get an audiobook out across all the different channels, and she generously shares it all here and in the accompanying resources. 

Writing a book is hard work. One of the best things about this podcast is that so many guests reveal the brilliant, extraordinary, sometimes hilarious strategies that got them through the hard yards of planning and writing and out the other side.  This is one of those podcasts.  From smart public transport hacks to testing concepts out on her mother, Helen Winter tells us exactly how she turned her idea for The Business Analysis Handbook from a twinkle in her eye to an award short-listed book - and how she came out of the the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge with a proposal that had three publishers calling her up within a week! 

This week saw the first ever Practical Inspiration author day. More than 40 authors at every stage of the journey - from just signed up to three years post-publication - to share stories and tips and to support each other.  There were workshops on overcoming procrastination and marketing your book, and a wealth of practical (and inspiring, naturally) ideas, from setting up your writing habit to launching successfully and integrating your book with your website.  If you were there, you'll know just how energising and useful this day was. If you weren't, here's a taste of the brilliantly practical learnings we took away with us. And maybe next time, you can be there too. 

There's never been a more entrepreneurial age. The barriers to entry for setting up a business have crumbled over the last decades while our sense of purpose and desire to be in control of our lives have sky-rocketed.  But what does it take to be successful in this new world? Richard Hall and Rachel Bell interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs and discovered that those who succeed aren't afraid to experiment in small ways, learn, adapt, trial and rethink where necessary.  In this conversation they also share how they set the pace for each other as they wrote the book and why their complementary skill-sets helped when it came to marketing. 

'It's tempting, especially when you're a consultant, to not share anything. Because you're worried that what you do, what you talk to your clients about, is your secret sauce... it took me about a year or so to realise that that's completely untrue.' Jono Bacon has written a few books now, and every time he's learned how to do it better. In this conversation he shares all that learning generously, and reveals how open-source philosophy and the power of people have informed not just his career, but his approach to writing a business book.  Accent-spotters will have particular fun with this... 

"Half of the reason I decided to do this book was to learn... what does it take to write a book? Not only the process that you go through but what is the personal journey I am going to have to go through to become the person that can write this book? And it turned out to be as expected very difficult, lots of ups and downs..." Buster Benson is incurably curious, and luckily for the rest of the world, he's also generous and creative in sharing his journey. In this conversation we talk about the power of writing as a daily practice, how he had to learn to draw after deciding he wanted an illustrated book, and of course why learning to disagree well expands and improves your world, the topic of his book Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement. 

When you write business books for a living, writing your own brings an unexpected problem: 'Sometimes I thought it was quite outrageous, in fact: Hang on a minute, nobody's paying me to do this, how can that be?' But Ginny Carter discovered that she was richly rewarded as she took herself through the process she works through with her clients - articulating the knowledge, expertise and insights that would otherwise remain unexpressed.  In this conversation she lifts the lid on how she went about putting her own book together, and reveals two of her top tips: how to 'seed' your business into your book, and how to use the 'even if' structure to solve the reader's real problem. 

Writing a business book is a delicate balancing act between being fully yourself and being fully in service of your reader. How do you "do you" to the max, without tipping over into self-indulgence or over-sharing?  In the last few episodes of The Extraordinary Business Book Club we've explored this question from a number of angles. In this Best Bits episode, discover: Karen Skidmore on how writing a book deepens and shifts your own thinking Andrew Hill on curiosity, clarity and curation Nancy Youssef on the vulnerability involved in telling your own story  Chris Hirst on the discipline of what to include and what to leave out   Norm Laviolette on writing in your own way and owning your material Marianne Cantwell on recognising that what worked for you won't work for everyone Kelly Glover on pitching your message to fit the audience.