The first time I went to New York on business, back in early 2001, I did the obligatory trip on the Staten Island Ferry from Battery Park then walked all the way up Manhattan, the beautiful Twin Towers to my left, up past City Hall, Bloomingdales, through the Theater District, Union Square, past our own […]
Continue readingI do love the ‘Best Bits’ episodes of The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcasts (Episode 60 went live yesterday). They take a long time to put together, but I don’t resent a moment of it: I get the chance to take a wide-angle view over the last 9 episodes, finding the parallels, the points of […]
Continue readingToday’s post is over at Birds on the Blog – and has set off quite a debate in The Extraordinary Business Book Club: do YOU write to music, and if so, what kind? https://birdsontheblog.co.uk/planning-your-writing-playlist/ ‘…creating your writing playlist is both an art and a science, and ultimately, since so much depends on the associations and […]
Continue readingYesterday I had a nice surprise: an endorsement out of the blue from Esther Nagle, who participated in the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge in January: I participated in Alison’s Business Book Proposal Challenge in January 2017 and emerged with a fantastic book proposal that I had considerably enjoyed writing. Alison is tremendously knowledgable about […]
Continue readingYou have to feel a little bit sorry for Ivanka Trump. She’s brought out a book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the rules for success. So far so good: there aren’t enough business books by women. Even if I did have a stab of unease at the title. (Here’s a useful rule of thumb: whenever a […]
Continue readingIt’s been a busy day. I’ve done NEARLY all my daily tasks (posting this blog is one more off the list), but one I haven’t yet done is my 5 minutes’ keyboard practice. And now there’s a problem: the whole of Bramley has been plunged into darkness by a power cut. Luckily my friend Sarah […]
Continue readingI’ve just come off a call with Orna Ross, novelist and founder of ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors: we were recording the interview that will go out on 21 July as Episode 71 of The Extraordinary Business Book Club, and it is a belter. I meant to talk about the future of publishing but […]
Continue readingIt’s time for another writing day – I met with my editor this afternoon and promised her Section 3 by 19 May. Which means I have to finish it. And since life doesn’t currently permit me the luxury of a beach hut in Antigua (which would be my preferred approach), I’m taking the second-best option: […]
Continue readingThe first podcast I ever listened to was Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn. It’s about writing, publishing, innovation, and business development. What’s not to like? It’s still the one I load up first on Stitcher before I go for a long run. And it was the one that most formed my thoughts about how to […]
Continue readingIf you’ve set up a small business, the messages targeted at you are all about growth. You read ‘inspirational’ stories of entrepreneurs who went from a standing start to a seven-figure business in two years (which personally I found intimidating rather than inspiring). It can seem sometimes as though seeking to grow is the inevitable, […]
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