Episode 353 – When the Dust Settles with Lucy Easthope

Episode 353 - When the Dust Settles with Lucy Easthope

‘Seeing somebody need you, seeing somebody in pain, is not necessarily traumatizing: not being able to help them is a moral injury that is traumatizing. So I also wanted to challenge ideas of what hurts.’ Most of us run away from disaster. Similarly, we try to avoid painful emotions.  For…

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Episode 347 – Slow journalism with Rob Orchard

Episode 347 - Slow journalism with Rob Orchard

‘Slow journalism for us was just a way of encapsulating that feeling that when you take your time, you can do something more quality.’ In a media landscape dominated by the white-hot, reactive world of social media and rolling news, it can be hard to keep a sense of perspective.…

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Episode 311 – Accountability with Brian Moran and Michael Lennington

Episode 311 - Accountability with Brian Moran and Michael Lennington

‘Accountability is… probably the most empowering concept you have to live the life you want to live, when you understand it.’ When we speak about accountability in business, very often the context is negative. It’s about consequences and blame. But if we see accountability as ownership, it’s a radically different,…

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Episode 309 – Fearless writing with Robert Kelsey

Episode 309 - Fearless writing with Robert Kelsey

‘[Writing] is a craft. It’s no different to knitting or painting by numbers or whatever, you just have to learn the craft. It might take practice and it might take learning a few rules, but, you know, they’re not that scary.’ For Robert Kelsey, writing is an essential business skill…

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Episode 304 – Things that editors love

Episode 304 - Things that editors love

Back in episode 286, I set out a list of things that editors hate and how to avoid them. Apparently that was very helpful, but lots of people have suggested that I needed to do a more positively focused companion episode, so here it is: what makes editors’ hearts sing?…

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Episode 295 – Book production secrets with Jo Bottrill

Episode 295 - Book production secrets with Jo Bottrill

What’s the magic by which the Word document you’ve been working on for so many weeks and months is transformed into a book? Jo Bottrill, head of Newgen UK, is a book production expert who’s worked with thousands of authors to perform exactly that magic, and in this conversation he…

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Episode 292 – Lunchtime Learning with Lucy Ryan

Episode 292 - Lunchtime Learning with Lucy Ryan

‘I came to writing really late. I was told I couldn’t write… I had no first degree. I came to learning at 40 plus with an idea that I couldn’t write, but I still loved learning. So it’s been a total joy. It’s like, wow, you can do that too,…

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Episode 286 – Things that editors hate (and how to avoid them)

Episode 286 - Things that editors hate (and how to avoid them)

When you’re writing a business book – or indeed any business writing – WHAT you’re saying is the most important thing, of course.  But HOW you say it can make all the difference as to how people read it. I asked a group of editors what really pushed their buttons,…

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Episode 257 – Happy Ever After with the $7 Millionaire

Episode 257 - Happy Ever After with the $7 Millionaire

For most of the guests on this show, writing a business book is part of building a personal and professional brand. This week I talk to someone who has no interest in having his name on the book he’s written: he just wants to get the concept out there. When…

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Episode 256 – Make Your Own Map with Kathryn Bishop

Episode 256 - Make Your Own Map with Kathryn Bishop

‘By the way, do you have a strategy for you? Because if you don’t, you should.’ That throwaway line in a top-level strategic meeting was a game-changer for Kathryn Bishop. As a high-flying professional and academic, she had an astonishing array of strategic models at her disposal for evaluating options…

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