The Extraordinary Business Book Club Alison Jones

'It's an unfair advantage to have a platform, it massively helps, don't get me wrong. But it's totally possible to do it without one.'
When Hasan Kubba and Ash Ali got together to write 'The Unfair Advantage: How you already have what it takes to succeed', they assumed they'd self-publish. They even put up a 'lean' version of the book on KDP. But as it turned out they had publishers fighting over it (sensibly, as it went on to be named Business Book of the Year), and Hasan has gone on to help other authors achieve the same feat. 
While having a big following certainly helps in the battle for publishers' attention, Hasan argues that it's possible to get a book deal with a major traditional publisher without it. It's not unlike securing funding for a start-up, which is the other area in which he is an expert. 
Discover the vital elements you need in place and the process to follow to get yourself and your book concept in front of agents and publishers with the best chance of success, with lessons for ALL kinds of content creation. 

'Embrace AI, but also make sure that you evolve as an individual and you understand the art of the possible while still staying grounded in the art of the practical.'
Implementing AI in your business isn't easy, but NOT implementing it could be disastrous. Sol Rashidi is a former C-suite executive turned AI consultant who knows more than most about the real-world challenges and opportunities in AI deployment. She's been in the field since 2011, developing enterprise-grade applications that integrate AI into business processes effectively, and now she's written a book to help leaders avoid the pitfalls and reap the benefits.
But how do you write a book on such a fast-moving technology? You write it FAST, and you keep it focused on principles, not specific tech tools. Sol reveals how she managed to write her book in two and a half months (or 26 years, depending on which way you look at it...), and how she learned to love the challenge of marketing. 
AI can be an augmenter and accelerator in your business, and this episode can do the same for your writing. 

Henry Mintzberg is quite simply a legend, and my personal business thinking hero. When I was studying his writings for my MBA I could only have dreamed that one day I'd be chatting about writing to him on my podcast - and sometimes when dreams come true, the reality is even better than you dared imagine.
Along with the nuances of management theory and social change, he revealed insights into his own remarkable writing process. And these elements aren't as different as you might think: his insistence on the non-linear nature of writing and the importance of 'cherishing anomalies' reflects his disciplined yet emergent and above all human approach to strategy. 
Despite the fact that he has so many successful books to his name, Henry Mintzberg is suprisingly wide and creative in his use of other forms of content, such as video, in his mission to make complex ideas accessible. I particularly love the 'Irene question': what can YOU do to drive social change - within your personal life, community, business, government, even on a global scale? It’s a profound inquiry that challenges us to consider our own role in shaping a better world.
This conversation felt like an uplifting, enlightening, mind-expanding gift: I hope you feel that way too. 

Journalism is changing, which means journalists have to change too. And a great example of this is the way that BBC reporter Dougal Shaw has reinvented his own role from pure video journalism, transforming what started as corridor conversations with business leaders who happened to be visiting the BBC into a high-profile series that runs on rolling news channels, on social media, in radio and podcast formats, and now as a book.
It's a story of intrapreneurship, which is fitting for a series that draws out lessons in both entrepreneurship and corporate leadership from visionary leaders who are often willing to be more vulnerable away from the finance and figures that are the focus of their more traditional BBC interviews. From the power of storytelling to the psychology of interviewing, there's lots of great stuff here for business book writers, and there's pure gold from Dougal's own experience of breaking down the book into writable parts and discovering the interconnections and patterns in the material. 
Not only CEO secrets, but journalistic and writing secrets too. You're welcome. 

'This is the moment to embrace authentic neurodiversity inclusion as a core organizational value. It isn't the whole solution to anything, but it is part of the solution to nearly everything.'
As we hurtle towards the workplace of the future, where human and machine intelligence will interplay in ways we can't yet fully imagine, one thing is clear: standard modes of thinking are becoming less valuable to organizations as algorithms become ever more efficient at replicating them. Nonlinear thinking, hyper focus, intuitive leaps and the ability to tolerate social discomfort and resist groupthink - attributes that have until now been under-valued and under-employed - will become more valuable as complements to AI. And that means that neurodivergent people will become ever more valuable within organizations.
That's the argument of Dr Maureen Dunne, cognitive scientist, neurodiversity expert and member of the neurodiversity community herself, and it's also the topic of her new book. As well as making this case, she also shares her own neurodivergent approach to writing: an interdisciplinary, visuospatial 'conceptual synaethesia'.
A rich and extraordinary conversation, at every level.

'We can't really understand what failure teaches us until we achieve success after failure. So it's the success actually, that is more instructive.'
If you're navigating business or personal growth challenges, this episode could be a game-changer.
Rob Hatch challenges the widely accepted narrative that failure is our greatest teacher. Instead, he argues, the most useful lessons come from our successes. Instead of studying what to avoid, let's try to better understand what to repeat.
If you're curious about the underlying forces that drive success, or if repeated advice about learning from failures doesn't resonate with you, this fresh perspectives on 'learning from success', together with his simple, practical ideas for how to start, might be just what you need.