The Extraordinary Business Book Club

How can I start running when I absolutely hate running? What's your one big, albeit lesser known, tip for writing your first book? Have you tried smoked chili peanut butter yet? When I put out the call for questions for this quadricentennial episode, I could never have imagined the response. From the playful to the profound, these questions have got me thinking and I hope they, and my answers, wil...

"You have to get in front of what you're writing. You have to look at it and you have to type a key. If you don't, it's just not going to happen." Errol Doebler knows a thing or two about discipline. He's been a Naval Surface Warfare officer, Navy SEAL officer, FBI special agent and SWAT operator before founding his leadership consulting firm Ice Cold Leader, which is also the name of his new book...

"We've been innovating forever, before digital formats came along.. . in a way we have some of the natural abilities we need. We need to remember that and not be too scared when new things come along." Publishing is an industry that runs on creativity and intellectual property. So how are book publishers responding to the challenges and opportunities of generative AI? Can the book, one of our olde...

'It's an uncomfortable struggle to land that title of the book, land that sharp, sticky center of the life brief, but it is so worth it.' As a brand strategist, Bonnie Wan knows how to put together a creative brief that makes meaning out of mess, that goes straight to the essence of what a company is really about. So when she reached a moment of crisis in her own life, she reached instinctively fo...

"The vast majority of business owners would happily spend 99% of their time creating and recreating and tweaking and iterating on the product side of things, because we know how to do that, we feel of service when we do that. But in order to help people, or to do the work that you love, you have to also talk about it." For many small business owners, 'selling' feels deeply uncomfortable. So too of...

'It's the stories we respond to in life. It's people's stories we respond to, and then... you can tease out the lessons. You don't go for the theory head on.' There are many, many books about creativity: what it is, how to do it, what steps to follow. When journalist and arts administrator Sir John Tusa turned his attention to the topic, he took a rather different approach. His book is dedicated t...

"If you're thinking about writing a book... that's a gorgeous, sexy goal, but it's very unlikely to happen as long as it stays an outcome, a goal, in that form. But if you start to ask yourself, Okay, what's the process that's going to lead to that outcome? Then it starts to get real.' When you tell people you're a publisher, you discover pretty quickly that a significant proportion of the populat...

'Sometimes it's just writing to get it out... you can almost interrogate it more. You can hold it in your hand and you can explore it and you can look at it and then maybe it becomes something or maybe it doesn't.' Having a good idea is a great place to start when you're writing a business book. But it's only a start. Then comes the real work: testing that idea out, articulating it clearly, and -...

Kathryn Bishop, CBE and Gillian Camm are seasoned members of both private and public sector boards. And they've learned that effective governance comes down not to rigid structure and process but to one of the most ancient human skills of all: conversation. Conversations on the right topics, with the right people, in the right way.  So it made sense of course to structure the book around the vario...

'That book that's for everyone is for no one, right?' Naren Aryal is laser-focused on the business of publishing for business. In this week's episode he talks to me about how Amplify Publishing Group developed from a single title to one of the world's leading business imprints, the unique goals and expertise of business authors, and why it's so important that you're clear on the target market for...

"Business books are unique because they are in that sweet spot between business activity and creative endeavour, that's why I love them so much, that's why I do this podcast, that's why you're here. It's a beautiful thing." Too often, people see writing a business book as something comletely different from business itself. It's not. In this best bits episode, I draw together the choicest insights...

"I started where I think a good marketer should start, by asking some people to read the book and give me their feedback." Luan Wise, a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing with over 20 years of experience in B2B and B2C sectors, is an expert on all things social media. She's also become something of an expert on writing and publishing business books over the last few years, and in this...

'If I'm not doing my own writing, I'm not properly thinking.' You'll be familiar with the idea of visual identity in branding: but what about verbal identity? John Simmons, director at Interbrand, recognised that the language you use as a business is just as important - if not more so - as the logo, colours and fonts.  He also realised that most businesses were doing this badly.   In this week's t...

"Unless you have a way to differentiate, then you don't really have any sort of justification for putting out yet another book." There's not much Josh Bernoff doesn't know about writing business books. And he knows that differentiation is everything. Whether it's your unique perspective or a groundbreaking solution, finding your distinctive edge makes all the difference.  He also encourages author...

Ginny Carter, experienced ghostwriter and award-winning author in her own right, discovered when judging the self-help category for the Business Book Awards that authors were consistently making the same mistakes. The answer was obvious: write a great self-help book explaining how to write a great self-help book! In this super-practical episode, Ginny pinpoints three critical missteps often made b...

'The problem that you have here, it's not a writing problem. It's a thinking problem.' When Adrian Hornsby faced the challenge of how to convey complex business information in a way that resonated with readers, he drew on his background in writing fiction for theatre to bring dense business concepts to life. But he quickly learned that using a story to convey information was the exact reverse of w...

'Motivation is what drives your choice of what to do, and also how hard you try and how long you keep trying for.' With a wealth of experience in coaching and training leaders from top multinational companies like Airbus, Google, and Audi, Catherine Stothart has developed a deep understanding of what motivates individuals and teams. U nderstanding these needs can help managers create the right con...

"Oh, this is why people write books. This is actually quite addictive, this feeling that you've produced something and it is having an impact." Katie Lewis and Matthew Stafford are the co-founders of 9others, a unique community that brings together founders and entrepreneurs to find answers to the questions that are keeping them up at night. These conversations have brought some unexpected benefit...

'I thought it was going to be a 20% update and I think the content has changed by about 80%.' This might sound familiar to anyone who's sat down to update their book. But this conversation isn't just for you if you're considering a second edition: Karen Williams is talking about her bestselling Book Marketing Made Simple, and this conversation is packed with insights and ideas for marketing your b...

'We need, at the moment, mavericks. We need people of independent thought, courageous, wanting to do things differently, but we need to do that in service of others.' Mavericks write their own rules. Modern mavericks write their own rules of success.  Ed Haddon, author of The Modern Maverick , helps people think more deeply and more courageously about what success means to them. What really matter...

In a sense writing a business book – any book, really – is quintessentially about finding and using your voice. You're talking across time and space to a reader for a conversation that lasts for hours; admittedly a bit of a one-sided conversation, but it's not possible to talk to someone for tens of thousands of words without them having a sense of your voice in their head. So how can you use that...

When Lucy Ryan's research revealed that midlife women were walking out of corporates in droves at the same age that the men around them were stepping into senior leadership positions, she knew it would make a great PhD topic. There was a massive data gap, and a clear benefit to organizations in understanding why one of their most valuable talent pools was quietly disappearing. Yet as she searched...

'There's all this academic, peer-reviewed, time-tested academic evidence as to how we should invest, and yet we have a whole industry that is trying to get us to do more or less the very opposite.' Today more than ever, if you want a comfortable retirement, it's up to you to put the thinking and the work in. And the sooner the better. Financial journalist Robin Powell has made it his mission to co...

"In everything we write, we choose a voice." Poets and novelists talk a lot about their writing 'voice', but nonfiction writers, and especially business book writers, can write a full manuscript without giving it a thought. Which is a shame, because as Anne Janzer - copywriter, ghostwriter and business book writer - knows more than most, being intentional about your voice is one of the most powerf...

"When we're talking about Do Deal, we're really talking about the verb of how you deal with people... as an ongoing kind of living thing." Richard Hoare didn't set out to become an expert on negotiation. In fact his first attempt at negotiation, when he was offered a poorly paid first job in the music industry involved, he admits, no negotiation at all. But after a career at the top of legal servi...