Storytelling is one of the most basic human impulses. And in the digital age, it's also one of the most complex and confusing: how do you choose between the multitude of channels and tools to help YOUR story connect with the people who matter the most to your business?  Rob Wozny has been in the storytelling game all his life, as a journalist, content strategist and professional business communicator, and he's put that lifetime of expertise into his new book, Storytelling for Business: The art and science of creating connection in the digital age.  In this conversation we talk about both the art and the science of business storytelling, and also the misery and magic of writing a book about it... 

In 1907, pioneering psychologist William James wrote this: 'The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum.'

That insight reflects the message of my guests on this podcast recently, and inspired the title of this episode: we CAN do hard things.

This isn't just about writing a book – although writing a book is a damn hard thing to do – but more generally about the things that simply feel beyond us, too big, too far out of our comfort zone.

Prepare to be inspired by insights from: Tim Bradshaw, Richard Rumelt, Corinne Sawers and Eric Lonergan, Graham Eisner, Daniel H. Pink, Catherine Sandland, Louise Third, Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, and Peter Elbow.

'If you've got something that's important, meaningful to you, that needs to be heard, why not say it on one of the biggest platforms?'

Have you thoughts about giving a TEDx talk? If so, you've probably got lots of questions. How do you apply, for a start? How do you put together a TEDx-worthy talk? How on earth are you supposed to do it without an autocue? And perhaps most fundamentally of all, given the huge amount of time and energy involved: why do it in the first place? 

In this episode I draw on the wisdom and experience of a wide range of TEDx speakers and particularly Catherine Sandland, the fabulous speaking coach at TEDxNorthwich, to answer all these questions and more. 

The red dot is waiting... this is where you begin your journey. 

'Writing is a form of figuring it out. And in fact for me, sometimes it's essential. It's like, what do you think about this? I don't know, I haven't written about it yet.'

Dan Pink has written quite a few books, and they've done pretty well. So how does he do it? It's about showing up, he says, especially on the days you don't want to, and it's also about curiosity, hunches, thinking onto paper, and structure. (The structure REALLY matters.)

Discover too why regret is such a positive force for good, and why feeling better doing necessarily make us do better. 

(But you certainly won't regret the time you spent on this.)

'We don't compromise rigour and intellectual honesty, but we try to make it as accessible as possible.'

I don't know what you and your life partner achieved in lockdown. Eric Lonergan and Corinne Sawyers wrote a book. 

They brought their complementary skillsets - Eric in economics and monetary policy, Corinne in climate and sustainability - and produced Supercharge Me: Net Zero Faster, a call to action for policy makers and individuals alike to embrace the challenge and indeed the opportunities of reimagining our world more sustainably. 

They also discovered a way of writing together that preserved those individual perspectives while creating a unified argument. And a lot of it happened over the dinner table...