*cue fanfare and firework noises* This week is the 100th episode of The Extraordinary Business Book Club! I’ve seen this coming for a while – obviously – and have been beating my brain over what to do about it. After all, every week I have extraordinary, top-drawer guests on the show: should I try to find […]
Continue readingOn Wednesday I had lunch in London with a publishing friend who happens to be a member of the Tate. ‘Have you seen the Giacometti exhibition?’ she asked. I reminded her that I live in the sticks with small(ish) children and that my cultural life ended, or at least went on hold, c.2003. She took […]
Continue readingOne of my Mastermind group shared a link today to an article that hit home: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/your-money/free-yourself-of-your-harshest-critic-and-plow-ahead.html?_r=0. It’s by Carl Richards, aka Sketch Guy at the New York Times. He puts out a sketch and essay every week, knowing every time they’re going to be seen by millions of people, all of whom are likely to have […]
Continue reading11.:59 BST tonight is the deadline for the poor souls who’ve completed the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge but are still desperately ttitivating their proposals to be in with a chance of winning a publishing deal with Practical Inspiration Publishing. On the one hand, a deadline is marvellous because it focuses the mind. The dishwasher […]
Continue readingI’ve just spent a glorious evening at St James’s church, for the final evening of the Bramley and Little London music festival. There’s something magical about sitting in such an ancient, beautiful village church, especially one so familiar and dear to me, with flowers and foliage spilling from every ledge, listening to world-class music. Tonight […]
Continue readingI was talking today to the wonderful Joanna Pieters, host of the The Creative Life Show podcast, about the nature of creativity. She gifted me a beautiful phrase, when she described the creative act – writing, art, music, whatever – as ‘building a bridge in the air’. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s hard work, of course, […]
Continue readingToday’s Extraordinary Business Book Club episode features Christian Madsbjerg, author of a startlingly good book called Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm. His argument is that with all the talk about machine intelligence and big data, we need to recognise the irreplaceable role of human intelligence and intuition. And […]
Continue readingContinuing our explorations around Ely, yesterday we spent the morning at Wicken Fen, Britain’s oldest nature reserve. We took a boat ride through the narrow, shallow channel of water (‘If you fall in,’ said our guide, in the world’s most low-key safety briefing, ‘just stand up.’) It was tranquil and magical – dragonflies and damselflies […]
Continue readingA truly magical day: the first in-person meeting of my inaugural This Book Means Business Mastermind group. It’s a small group of four, all business owners with distinctive ideas and approaches, great expertise, and a vision for growing their business and transforming their visibility with the book they’re writing. We’re focusing on four areas of […]
Continue readingIt’s glorious today. My office window is wide open, and all day the cooing of wood pigeons, the rumble of trains and the rustle of the sycamore just outside have been my soundtrack. All soothing, gentle summery sounds. And then a bee got in. It was quite tense for a while – a large bee […]
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