![]()
‘The majority of people think their life would be better if they were more creative, but they don’t know how.’
There are lots of books on creativity out there, but surprisingly few at its intersection with everyday business, what Sue Unerman and Kathryn Jacob call ‘pragmatic creativity’. So they developed a series of practical techniques and structured approaches for fostering creativity in every business situation, organized metaphorically by the seasons of the year.
This is the third book they’ve written together, so I ask them about the secret of a happy, productive ‘writing marriage’, and also the role of their agent, Clare, as encourager, giver of advice and accountability partner. It’s a fascinating insight into the role of collaboration in creativity, and the interplay between structure and adaptability.
If you’re committed to fostering innovation and inclusivity in your own professional and creative life, this one’s for you.
BrainLabsDigital site: https://www.brainlabsdigital.com/
Sue’s blog: https://sueunerman.com/
Sue on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-unerman-7945058/
Kathryn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-jacob-obe-757a156/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: http://proposalchallenge.com/
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Substack: https://extraordinarybusinessbooks.substack.com/
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
Vote in the getAbstract Readers Choice Awards: https://journal.getabstract.com/en/international-book-award/
Alison Jones: I’m here today with Sue Unerman and Kathryn Jacob, which is delightful. So, Sue was Chief Transformation Officer at media agency WPP and is now Chief Strategy Officer at Brain Labs.
She blogs at www. sueunerman.com
And Kathryn Jacob is CEO of Pearl & Dean. She sits on the Development Board of RADA. She’s Global President Elect of the SAWA, and together, they are the authors of The Glass Wall, published 2016, Belonging, published 2020, and their most recent book, A Year of Creativity: 52 smart ideas for boosting creativity, innovation, and inspiration at work.
So first of all, welcome to you both. Very good to have you here.
Sue Unerman: Thank you for inviting us.
Alison Jones: And I’m so interested in writing marriages. So this is obviously a really successful one, three books in, here you both are still smiling. So I’m going to ask, I’ll ask you first Sue, , ?
Sue Unerman: I think there’s two things that I’d say. One is planning is super important. So the writing bit is almost the last bit. The planning bit is the most important part. You know, what are we going to say? How are we going to say it? And then the second most important thing is to find your soulmate which is slightly trickier to find unless you, you know, you’re lucky enough to sort of have the kind of relationship that Kathryn and I have had for a while.
So that we, understand each other, but we don’t duplicate each other’s thoughts, we build on each other’s thoughts and we both know, I think, that any pushback that we might give to each other comes from a place of, you know, love and desire to make things better. So it’s a very, very safe writing relationship.
And I know a lot of writers get kind of like really stressed by criticism. And I understand that. And it’s, you know, when somebody redpens you, I mean, we’ve both had this, it’s like, what, what’s this? But between each other, it’s not like that at all.
Alison Jones: That’s interesting. So the ability to put your ego at the side, I imagine, is really, really huge and the trust in that relationship.
Sue Unerman: Yes. I mean, people talk about psychological safety a lot. And I suppose, you know, Kathryn is absolutely a place of psychological safety for me and vice versa, I think.
Alison Jones: Do you want to add anything to that, Kathryn?
Kathryn Jacob: Yes, I think from my point of view, , we are very different people. I’m very extrovert. Sue is an introvert. I think we’re a different side of the same coin. We have the same values.
That’s really important. And if I, if there’s something that I say to Sue, I think this is important that, you know, we talk about it. Sue will say, yes, absolutely, you know, and this is the way that we could approach it. Or, could we do that? And for me, it’s just enormous fun.
I just love how Sue’s brain works and how she takes things and goes, but it could be that, or it could be this. And, the way that Sue approaches things is different to the way that I do it, but I always learn something. And I was talking to someone last week and they said the thing that they loved about our books is that you could sense that we enjoyed writing them. I know that sounds really, and I don’t know how we did it, but there is that sense of it’s not a, Oh, you do this and I do that, and you did. And depending on, what’s going on in our various lives, sometimes Sue works harder on the book than I do, most of the time actually, because, you know, and other times I’m doing a bit more.
But it is that thing about, it’s that, it’s the joy of coming together and what we create together. And actually the books are just a kind of a side hustle on it. I mean, my greatest joy is just hanging out with Sue, talking about the work that we’ve done.
Alison Jones: It’s just an excuse, isn’t it? It’s just an excuse to spend a bit of time together.
Nothing wrong with that.
Kathryn Jacob: It’s a flimsy excuse. Luckily at this moment, you know, supported by the lovely people at Bloomsbury Business, for us just to hang out and go, yes, and that’s another thing. Yes.
Alison Jones: And there’s something really lovely and pleasing about the idea of having that sort of creative, I was going to say friction. I mean, you haven’t talked about friction at all, but that way you bounce off each other and build on each other’s ideas seems to be particularly well suited to a book on creativity and innovation.
So just tell us a little bit about, I mean, maybe I’ll stick with you just for a moment, Kathryn. How did that idea come about?
Kathryn Jacob: I think because both of us have observed that in a world that is increasingly driven by data, what’s the advantage that a company or an individual can have by embracing their creativity? And that, so our previous two books were all about inclusion and actually creativity is about inclusion because everyone says, you know, are you creative?
And people go, no, no, I’m not. I was really rubbish at drawing when I was at school. And, you know, Sue’s great thing about, Sue’s great story about, when you’re little and you’re doing drawings, even though it’s a square with like things coming out the top and you go, that’s my mum, people go, yes, of course, it’s your mum. Your mum is square with just three bits of hair coming out. That’s just genius.
And then by the time we get to be, 20 or something. It’s like, no, I can’t draw and I’m not going to do it. And I’m just not creative. Children are instinctively creative. They see it as a way of interpreting things and a way of bonding together.
And yet somehow when we get into the workplace, we treat it as, Oh, no, I’m not creative. No, it’s not me. And, you know, you’re forced to endure endless brainstorms with someone who’s obsessed with sharpies and has got really useless ideas, but they talk over everyone else. And you’re just thinking, God, when can I get out of this overheated room?
And I think creativity is within everyone. And it’s another, I think the idea that creative is for elites is another exclusionary idea. And actually there’s a lot of happiness for people recognizing their creativity. So, one of the statistics that, you know, that there’s a statistic from Adobe and there’s some other research from Lego, which is the majority of people think their life would be better if they were more creative but they don’t know how to, they think it’s only in one way and that only certain people can do it and actually a broad spectrum of perspectives, experiences and inputs makes your ideas better.
Alison Jones: That’s quite a poignant statistic, isn’t it? That we wish we could be creative but we’re not, and I wonder if we’ve done, maybe we’ve done ourselves societally a disservice by labeling some of us just as creative and, and others as not, but I love the way that you structure, so I want to talk a bit about how you approach such a busy space and one of the ways that you have set your book apart is by taking the year as your sort of structural motif.
So Sue, maybe you could, what was the thinking behind that? I guess it was partly differentiation, but
Sue Unerman: Well yes, I mean, the truth is is that we wanted the book, so the first couple of chapters of the book are about why creativity is important, and important to you as the reader, almost whatever your job is, and how it’s increasingly more important in a world where algorithms are kind of running our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not.
And then the last four chapters of the book are creativity techniques. And there are 52 of them. And as we wrote them and went through the techniques, they clustered into the seasons of the year, but they did this in a way, and not in a literal way, as in, we’re not saying, okay, it’s September now, it’s autumn. So you need to use this technique.
It’s more like a metaphor for the kind of state that you find yourself or your team or your business in. Is it time for renewal? In which case, here’s the spring techniques. Is it time for harvesting? In which case, you know, there’s fall. Is it transformation in the darkness of winter because you need some really radical techniques to lift your business out of, or your workplace out of the condition that it’s in? Or is it summer? Should you be chilling and being laid back and flowering?
And so, it came actually out of a collaboration with our wonderful agent Clare Grist Taylor, who is sort of our third partner really, because we’ve worked with her since The Glass Wall, where she was our editor and publisher at…
Alison Jones: Profile at the time, wouldn’t it?
Sue Unerman: Yes.
And she’s now our agent and we start with a loose idea, which in this case was a collection of techniques and then developed it with Clare. So yes, it’s about a way of anchoring it into what your particular situation is and what kind of technique that you need, rather than it just being lots and lots of techniques at random.
Alison Jones: And I can imagine you sitting down with Clare and saying, we’ve got this idea for a book on creativity. This is why we feel it’s important. You know, this is what we see emerging. And Clare, as any good agent or publisher would do, would say, well, let’s look at the competing titles. Let’s look at the space.
What was that process like? Because there is so much out there, isn’t there?
Sue Unerman: Yes, there’s nothing like this though.
Alison Jones: Exactly. But talk us through that because what happens, of course, is you think you have this brilliant idea for a book and you know it’s going to be valuable and you’ve got some ideas for it. And then you walk into Waterstones and you go, whew, that’s a busy shelf.
So talk us through that journey.
Sue Unerman: Well, I think, you know, there’s lots of, there are, you’re right, there’s lots of books on creativity and I’ll start on this. There aren’t many books on creativity actually written by two women in business. They tend to be written by either professional people who have been professionally creative in their careers, which we haven’t.
Or they tend to be written as techniques to hone your expertise. And this isn’t a book for creative experts, although I know some creative experts who have read it who’ve said this is really useful. This is a book for everybody. And so we did go and do some looking at books. We did some reading around, but we didn’t find anything that had the kind of pragmatic approach that we do.
And this is kind of what we do as well. This is partly what’s fun about our writing partnership or the way we collaborate in general. You know, when we wrote The Glass Wall, we said, this is pragmatic feminism. I think it’s probably true to say that this book is , not theoretical, not highbrow not, you know, you’ve got to go and, you know, chant up a mountain for three weeks and then you can come back and be called a creative director.
It’s about how to solve problems in a different, fun way.
Kathryn Jacob: And Belonging was pragmatic as well, wasn’t it? Because it was that struggling with everyone talks about building an inclusive culture about, you know, fully embracing diversity. And it isn’t happening.
And there’s lots of chat about it. And how much is, what was it, five billion or something. So some ridiculous, some huge amount of money that people have spent on inclusion and making this, and we were still talking to people who said, Yes, I turn up to meetings and no one talks, you know, I’m not expected to speak, but I’m just there.
And the thing of someone I met who said that she was part of a global pitch process and she was the only person of Southeast Asian origin and she was in the picture of the team. She never went to any of the meetings, never met the client. She was just, yes, exactly.
Alison Jones: Window dressing.
Kathryn Jacob: Exactly, window dressing, but the company prides itself on being deeply inclusive and has got, you know, so and so and so and so.
And it is the, our pragmatism is the differentiation, which is that we could write a book that says, this is what creativity is and this is how to appreciate it. But actually most people, if you’re in a business thinking, I’m stuck. What do I do? How do I change things? Reading a book about, how to think creatively and using examples of, I don’t know, great artwork or television, bless them, you know, television commercial. Most people in their lives are not going to make a television commercial. Most people are going to sit in a brainstorm where someone says, how are we going to make this work better? And how do we keep ahead for our customers. And that’s what this book is. And that pragmatism element, because we’ve both been in business for a long time, we know it’s needed.
Alison Jones: There is a creative element to writing a book, of course, you know, it’s a creative endeavour as much as it’s a business endeavour. So did you find yourself reaching out for the principles of creativity, the techniques, the tools that you were using, in the process of writing the book? It’s a very leading question.
I’ll take Kathryn, if you carry on with that.
Kathryn Jacob: Yes, yes and no, I think there was an element of this is a, that the pragmatism element is very, is prevalent, but we’ve never written a book like this before. So yes, there was a bit of a kind of, you know, scorched earth. We’ll start all over again, because what we’ve done before, we can’t use now.
So it was kind of uproot and destroy, because everything that we did before, and to turn it into the book it is now, we do have people that we’ve spoken to, but there was so much human, you know, there was a lot of testimony and voices that we used in our two previous books.
The thing is the only people who are going to talk to you about creativity are people who are already creative. So it’s a kind of a bit like trying to get, I don’t know, David Hockney to teach you how to paint your wall, if you get someone creative to go, but I can’t understand why you’re struggling to find ideas.
Kathryn Jacob: So I think, yes, we did, probably not deeply consciously, but there’s definitely elements of what is in the book. And we did have a period of time where we did do the summer thing where for about three and a bit weeks, we didn’t really write anything. We just sat, didn’t we? And let things percolate through.
So that it could all make sense because, you know, we have busy day jobs and sometimes, you know, I mean, I know I wrote one thing once and I wrote to Sue and I said, I’ve written it, but I hate it. So I’m not going to send it to you. And I’ve just read it back and it’s like someone else has written it. So I’m just going to have to sit with it and let it, you know, do nothing with it until it feels right in my head and I can write it.
So yes, there were bits of it, but I don’t think we sat down and went, we’re going to do this technique. It is just what we’ve learned…
Alison Jones: it’s what you reach for
Kathryn Jacob: …to work.
Alison Jones: Yes. What about you, Sue?
Sue Unerman: I completely agree with everything you’ve said, but the very act of writing about a particular technique, sort of meant you were doing it. So in a way, the answer is completely and absolutely as in, you know, if I’m thinking about when we wrote about, one of the techniques, which is be bored, actually during that process, there was for me an exploration of what that meant and how you create out of that condition of boredom.
So, yes, overall, we were dipping in and out of the techniques and Kathryn’s completely right, this wasn’t like the previous books that we’d written, which were largely anonymous case studies, people’s voices, real experiences that people had had, that the entire book in a way is more creative than that, right?
That was, storytelling and then pulling threads together. Every single one of these words came from a different place than that.
Alison Jones: Yes, and actually I’m sure I’m going to sort of sit down after this and just think that through because there’s ways that you can…
…the journey of writing a book, people think you just sit down and start writing it. It’s so not like that. There’s all these different phases and there’s those times when you’re wildly creative and it seems to be coming sort of from a, it’s like you’re channeling something and there’s times when nothing comes and then there’s times when you’re thinking things through and, you know, you have to wait for them to clarify and there’s other times when you’re actually harvesting stuff you’ve done before and just getting it to the right order.
So, all of these things are sort of part of the process.
Sue Unerman: And then having said that, that it was all kind of new as well. Of course, we also did the thing, which you do when you’re being creative, is that we did take things from here and from there and, you know, there are techniques and strategies for creativity in the book that we’ve acknowledged and we’ve borrowed from people and we’ve built on, and then there’s some others that have just come from you know, perhaps our past lives.
Alison Jones: It’s that pile of stuff that you, that everybody accumulates , rich experience on which you can draw. I love that.
Kathryn Jacob: Or in certain circumstances experience where you go, I never want to sit through anything like that ever again.
Alison Jones: Here’s what we’re not going to do.
Kathryn Jacob: Yes, exactly, I mean, there is a thing which is, you know ideas have no hierarchy and the idea that everyone just sits there and people write things on post it notes and put it up and the person who decides whether an idea works is the most senior person in the room, who is probably the person most removed from the practicality of what you’re actually trying to do.
Sue Unerman: Kathryn has a particular dislike of brainstorms.
Kathryn Jacob: No, I don’t, I don’t mind…
Sue Unerman: …a well- run one.
Kathryn Jacob: I don’t mind a well-run brainstorm.
What I don’t like is, as you know, there’s a thing which I know of, which is taking people away for three days and go let’s reimagine the company in 5, 10 and 15 years time, but with no background reading and then shoving people in a room for a day and going, how does this work from different bits of a business and then trying to get them to make a cohesive thing with people going, so I think it’d be really great if what we did was we made biscuits and you go, well, we can’t make biscuits because actually our factories aren’t. Oh, right. Okay. No one told me you couldn’t make biscuits. That kind of thing.
Sue Unerman: But also, no idea is a bad idea, apart from…
Kathryn Jacob: yes.
Sue Unerman: …the biscuit one.
The other thing, because I’m noticing a bit of a flurry of it at the moment, because it’s 2025 next year, and people are kind of going, let’s think about what’s going to happen in 2030. And this is just as an aside, I just have such a strong memory of this going on in 2015 and 2016 because of the pun of 2020 vision.
Alison Jones: Hmm.
Sue Unerman: People did put a lot of energy and planning into exactly what they would be in 2020, and of course everybody was exactly wrong about 2020.
Alison Jones: File under dystopian fiction. Yes,
Kathryn Jacob: Yes, precisely. Not the book you thought you were writing, but it was the book you ended up writing.
Sue Unerman: It’s just, you know, for me, it’s like, where do you put your energy? Where do you put that creative energy? Because there are dead ends for it. There are sinkholes for it. And then there are places where you can plant those creative seeds and really reap rewards from it.
Alison Jones: Thinking specifically of a listener to this show, who obviously is going to be loving the idea of reading your book, but also perhaps thinking about writing their own, I’d love to ask each of you in turn, maybe I’ll start with you, Sue. Three books probably more in. As a co author, as an expert in creativity, what’s your sort of best tip for somebody who’s just starting out on that journey?
Sue Unerman: Well, honestly, and I’m not just saying this, but find yourself a co author. So I’ve written four books, three with Kathryn now and one with a man called Jonathan Salem Baskin. We wrote a book called Tell the Truth and he actually suggested writing the book to me. And the thing is, is that I found the discipline of planning the book writing….
…first of all, 80,000 words is a lot of words, so if you’ve actually only got to do 40,000 each, that’s a lot simpler.
Alison Jones: I mean, I’d argue 80,000 words is a lot to read as well.
But there we are. That’s a monograph, isn’t it?
Kathryn Jacob: Yes.
Sue Unerman: And that’s another whole other thing. I don’t think we’re quite at 80,000. We did try and write a shorter book this time. But the discipline of deciding, carving it out, chunking it up.
Okay, if it’s 80,000, then maybe that’s, you know, 8 chapters of 10,000 words each, and maybe that means, you know, a thousand words for the intro, and then a thousand words for the end bit, and then each section is a thousand words, and then you do half, and I’ll do half.
Alison Jones: All that top down sort of structuring.
Kathryn Jacob: Yes.
Sue Unerman: But the really important thing is that if I say to myself I’m going to write 1,500 words on Sunday, then I will be lying to myself.
If I promise Kathryn I’m going to send her 1,500 words that I’ve written, that’s like a thing. And so I will do that. And so that’s the other real thing is in terms of motivation, that sense of, because the way we work is we divide it up and then we rewrite each other’s sections. So that’s why it all seems like one thing.
But the owing my friend Kathryn 1,500 words for Monday morning is a completely different thing to saying to myself, must write 1,500 words. And so it sort…
Alison Jones: It’s Gretchen Rubin’s thing, isn’t it? Upholders and obligers. Yes, I find it very, very hard to uphold but I will oblige, like crazy. I know, if I’ve said, I’ll give you something, I’ll get it to you. Yes, hilarious. What about you, Kathryn?
Kathryn Jacob: Well, I would say, you know, find, I mean, what Sue doesn’t explain is that she came to me to write The Glass Wall and the only thing she’d ever read that I’d ever written to her was some emails.
Sue Unerman: I think you said thanks for lunch. Well, probably not, because probably you’d bought me lunch.
Kathryn Jacob: I probably bought you lunch, but it’s like, it was really good to see you at lunch. You know, we have that idea about doing this for this client.
Do you want me to do anything on it now? Or shall we regroup in two weeks when the timing’s best? That was it. So, you know, have blind faith, maybe. You know, she had no idea I could write anything.
Alison Jones: Wanted to hang out with you and there we are, yes.
Kathryn Jacob: I mean, obviously this is all just a thinly veiled excuse for me to spend as much time with Sue as possible, according to my husband.
Sue Unerman: But I just, there was nobody else on my list. So I wanted a co author for what ended up being The Glass Wall, you know, book about women at work. And there was, I had a list of one people that I wanted to write it with.
Thankfully Kathryn immediately said yes, so, but it was only after that, and we sort of had a bit of a hug and like, this is going to be so exciting.
And it was really only after that that it occurred to me that I’d only ever seen a like, three sentence email from her. It’s just, because you know, to be honest, some people can write and some people don’t find it so easy, so.
Kathryn Jacob: I think the structure piece is important. The idea that, you know, we talk about a bit in the book that you’re going to be touched by the muses and the words will flow through you as if through some kind of, you know, life force coming through you. Unless you’re writing a pastiche of Ulysses and it’s a stream of consciousness, which, let’s face it, not many people are going to read the contemporary version of Ulysses, which is the algorithm told me to do this and then, you know, that kind of thing.
I think the structure thing is a great idea. And I think that the, let deadlines guide you, but not kill you because that’s the thing, which is…
Sue Unerman: yes, comes when it comes.
Kathryn Jacob: it comes when it comes and the joy of having Clare, is that Clare kind of sits, you know, watching what we’re doing and says, how are we doing on this? Where have we got to? So and so.
But she doesn’t turn around and say, you need to do this by this stage. So if you’ve got a gentle hand behind you, a little hand on the bottom of your back pushing you forward that you know, sometimes you can lean back and go, I’m so sorry, but we’re both working like beasts at the moment and we haven’t done this, but we will have done it by then.
And she goes, no, that would just be completely fine. That’s just great. You know, having another person who’s going No, you’re doing fine. Don’t worry about that. That can wait. Why don’t you do this, is helpful. You know, never underestimate the power of a great agent, Clare Grist Taylor.
Alison Jones: Yes, Clare’s fabulous.
I think that the big thing coming out here is do not try and do this on your own at home.
Yes, brilliant.
Kathryn Jacob: No, because the thing as well about that is… yes, because the thing about doing at home on your own is you’re just listening to the voice in your head and it will either lead you down the path of delusion, you know, this is the greatest work ever known to man and I’m going to win a Booker and possibly the Nobel Prize for Literature just with my first book, or it leads you to disillusion, which is I can’t literally write anything, even the note to say I’m just popping to the shops and I’ll be back in 15 minutes.
You need that balance
Sue Unerman: Well, I mean, we need that balance. I mean, look, clearly there’s a lot of brilliant authors out there, and, you know, there’s some books behind me, and some of them are by us, and some of them are by, you know, my husband Mark Edwards, who wrote Belonging with us and who is a brilliant writer and who, since we published Belonging, has had two books out The Tao of Bowie and Best Story Wins with Clare as his agent, actually.
And those are solo efforts. So I’ve also watched the pain of that. You know, if you can do that, if that’s your vibe, you know, that’s brilliant. I suspect it’s less fun than the fun that we have. And, you know, we both work quite hard. So if we’re going to do this as our major side hustle, it has to be both something that we really fundamentally believe in, as we do in this case, which is that creativity is for everyone and will make everyone’s lives and work better.
But also that we can enjoy ourselves during the process of it, which we totally, absolutely do.
Alison Jones: And that really comes across.
I’d love to carry on talking to you both all day. I’m so conscious of the time though, so I’m going to just turn to you for your recommendations. What book would you like to recommend? You’re not allowed to do your own, I’m sorry but what book would you recommend to anybody listening that’s really struck you over the last weeks/months.
Sue Unerman: Am I allowed to say Best Story Wins? Which is my husband’s book.
Alison Jones: I don’t I think there’s any rule against that. Yes.
Sue Unerman: Yes, yes, okay. Well, I will say that, so Best Story Wins by Mark Edwards, it’s out now. If you are, you know, storytelling is so crucial. It’s part of the Economist business series that, again, Profile are publishing.
But he really explains it in the most charming and convincing way. And I’ll give you one thing that I read in it that really struck me, which was you know, people like to kind of compose their arguments in business just according to logic. And Mark points out, and this really hadn’t occurred to me, but you know, we have an innate distrust of this when someone’s sort of trying to convince us because when you’re little, if your parents or caregivers or whatever say to you, we’re going to see Auntie Mary this afternoon, it’s all right, she’s going to make a lovely cake for you. She has got a lovely big garden. So your parents giving you reasons, you know you’re not going to have a good time because when they go, this afternoon, we’re going to see Auntie Jane, you immediately go, yay, I love going to see Auntie Jane
Alison Jones: They don’t need to give any reasons why.
Sue Unerman: Just thought, gosh, it was just really interesting.
Alison Jones: Hilarious.
Sue Unerman: Innately we distrust logic. So in Mark explains the importance of other techniques.
Alison Jones: Thank you. Great recommendation. And I’m sure you’ll have a much more congenial evening this evening knowing that you recommended his book. That’s brilliant.
Kathryn?
Kathryn Jacob: Well, I’ve read that book as well and it’s very, very good, but I’m not going to double recommend it because, as we all know, Sue and I are, you know, different sides of the same coin. The book that I’m reading at the moment that I’m really enjoying is a fiction book called The Ministry of Time. And I’m really loving it.
Yes,. So, Kaliane, oh my God, I knew you were going to ask me that.
Alison Jones: We will look that up.
Kathryn Jacob: But it’s the story of they’ve discovered a way of making people…
They’ve brought people back from time into the modern day and they’re experiencing it for the first time. And it’s such a good book that I stopped reading it on Monday so I can read it on a plane journey on Friday for an hour and a half.
Alison Jones: like the marshmallow test, isn’t it? Wow.
Kathryn Jacob: It’s that thing which is, I’m loving it and Yes, so that’s the,
Alison Jones: Great. I love it when we get a fiction recommendation. That’s brilliant. Thank you both so much. Kathryn, back to you very quickly, if people want to find out more about you, more about what you do, more about the books, where should they go?
Kathryn Jacob: Oh, I don’t know, probably pearlanddean.com because that’s my day job, but you know, that’s, that’s exactly.
Alison Jones: Sorry, I just couldn’t stop myself.
Kathryn Jacob: No, no, can I just tell you, Sue doesn’t even work at Pearl and Dean and Sue gets that sung to her when she says, Oh, I wrote it with Kathryn Jacob at Pearl and Dean, people then sing it to her the whole time.
Alison Jones: The power of the jingle.
Kathryn Jacob: Exactly. Yes, only 17 seconds long. Yet, yes, synonymous with cinema.
Probably pearlanddean.com, but I’m everywhere. You know, chair of an arts institution in Manchester, HOME. Go there, great theatre. Yes.
Alison Jones: I know HOME, I’m near Manchester. It’s terrific.
Kathryn Jacob: Are you now? Isn’t it good? Oh, next time I’m there, I’ll email you.
Alison Jones: Yes, marvellous. They’ve got a lovely coffee space.
Sue, what about you? Where should people go to find out more?
Sue Unerman: So Brain Labs website BrainLabsDigital.com or I’m always on LinkedIn saying something, or as you said, I’ve got hundreds, I think I haven’t even counted them, of blog posts that I’ve done over the years at sueunerman.com.
Alison Jones: Fantastic. I led with that, didn’t I? Brilliant.
It was such a joy to talk to you. I just wish we could have been in a wine bar somewhere. That would have been much more pleasant.
Kathryn Jacob: Well, we’ll all go to HOME.
Alison Jones: We’ll all go to HOME and hang out there.
Fantastic. And thank you so much for your time today. It’s been an absolute joy talking to you.
Kathryn Jacob: You too. See you soon.

‘The majority of people think their life would be better if they were more creative, but they don’t know how.’