'I always wanted to write a book... but it was never my time. My husband wrote a book, my father passed away, I have three little kids, I mean, I have a business, you know, life gets in the way... And then finally, one day... I thought: I want to grow my business this year but I don't want to fly anymore.'

And almost by accident, internet marketer Morra Aarons-Mele discovered a new way of working that suited her as a 'hermit entrepreneur': instead of getting on a plane to meet potential clients and drum up business, she set up a podcast and wrote a book.

'Hiding in the Bathroom' has become a rallying call for anyone who's ever felt overwhelmed by the non-stop, always-on, fast-paced world of business and wants to do things differently. And Morra discovered (as I have) that 'the coolest thing about having a podcast, or writing a book, or having a blog is that you can really contact interesting people and say, will you talk to me?'

In today's episode we talk about how podcasting and books allow entrepreneurs to develop their business and their network on their own terms. But - spoiler alert - we conclude that no matter how wonderful it is that you can do this stuff in your yoga pants, writing a book also means getting out of the bathroom and hitting the streets to tell people about it.  

Join me to celebrate 100 episodes of The Extraordinary Business Book Club! I puzzled over how to mark this milestone for a while, but in the end I decided to keep it real: three business people just like you, carving out the time to write from the demands of the day job, none of them professional writers, all working out how to do this one step at a time. 

• Julie Dennis is a menopause coach - her book The Hot Flush Freedom Challenge was published by Practical Inspiration Publishing in January 2017
• Michael Brown is a trainer and consultant, who's just about to deliver to me the manuscript for My Job Isn't Working: 10 proven ways to boost your career mojo for publication in July 2018
• Elaine Halligan is a Director of The Parent Practice, whose book My Child is Different, the story of her son Sam - who'd been excluded from three schools by the age of seven, but who went on to become Head Boy at senior school and is today a thriving young entrepreneur - is being published by Crown House in July 2018

Each of them shares what they've discovered on the journey, and their incredibly practical advice for anyone in the same situation. Each one of them inspires me with their passion for their message, and how they can make the world a little better, one reader at a time. 

I can't think of a better way to celebrate 100 episodes of celebrating extraordinary business books.

'We're all continually learning. Learning is a kind of scaffolding. To me, that's the most beautiful metaphor for writing a book and for learning in life, that you're continually building scaffolding. That scaffolding is expanding your capacity.'

Daniel Coyle is a New York Times bestselling author, and in this interview he reveals not only what he discovered about leadership in his latest book The Culture Code (and what happened when he put it into practice in the school writing squad he was coaching at the time), but also HOW he writes, the starting point and the tools and systems that take him from initial idea to finished book. 

There's also some exciting news about my own book, and I announce the winner of the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge. Make a cup of tea and settle down to the last ever two-digit Extraordinary Business Book Club episode! 

'If five years ago somebody had said to me, "So you know, Kate, are you ever going to write a book?" I would have said, "No, no, no, no, no. I don't write books. I draw pictures."'

But when Kate Raworth doodled a doughnut shape to capture her vision of how economics is bounded by human and ecological constraints, she unwittingly started a revolution in macroeconomic thinking. 

In this conversation we explore the extraordinary power of drawing for opening up thinking. And as Kate points out: 'You don't have to be Picasso to create something that has massive impact.'

We also touch on video, animation, the 60-second summary and the one-page overview - high-impact ways of getting your message across quickly and memorably - and the importance of bringing your own humanness to your book. 

Shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year in 2017, Doughnut Economics is an extraordinary book. And here's how it happened. 

David Roche has seen publishing from pretty much every angle: publisher, bookseller, author, reader, mentor, consultant and industry maven. He's been on the boards of HarperCollins, Waterstones and HMV, was CEO of Borders and Books Etc, he's the chair of New Writing North, non-exec chair of the London Book Fair, and executive chair of the publishing industry's online magazine, BookBrunch. And he's just published a crowdfunded book of poems.

So today's conversation is a look at where the industry's going from someone with unrivalled insights, plus a very personal - and very funny - view of what happens when the gamekeeper turns poacher. 

Audio, crowdfunding, subscription models, marketing, book events: bring yourself up to speed with what's happening in the industry in the company of publishing's most entertaining expert. 

How do you turn a great talk into a great book? It's not as easy as you might think. 

Miranda West is the founder of Do Books, which originated with the Do Lectures in Wales, focused on smart working and slow living. But as she explains, taking a message from stage to page involves more than mere transcription. 

This is also an inspiring story about what can happen when you have a crazy idea and go ahead and send the email... 

Joe Pulizzi is 'the godfather of content marketing'. Founder of the Content Marketing Institute and author of five books (one every two years), he has a clear vision of how books fit into a content strategy. 

It all starts, he says, with the platform, and his sane advice will be music to the ears of any entrepreneur struggling with the overwhelm of multiple channels and messages. 

'We've been built our advertising around our products and services when we should really build around: "Who's our audience? How do we love them? How do we know better than anyone else?" Deliver value to those audiences, great experiences to those audiences on a daily basis, and if you do that you will be rewarded in multiple ways outside of what you can even fathom today. That's the potential and that's why it's the best time to be in marketing that's ever been right now.'

On a personal note, this episode is dedicated to the memory of Lorraine Keelan, a great friend and former publishing colleague lost way too soon.  

Welcome to 2018 - what are you planning to do with it? If the answer - in part at least - is 'some worthwhile writing', this episode is for you. I've pulled together some of the best thinking and most practical advice from past podcast guests, and sprinkled in more tips from members of the Extraordinary Business Book Club. 

Let's make 2018 the year you stop with the procrastination and overwhelm and false starts. Let's make it the year you put in place your new writing habit, the year of making a difference.

• Grace Marshall, author of How to be Really Productive, on overcoming procrastination and shifting into 'deep dive' mode
• Tony Crabbe, author of Busy, on overcoming fear and finding your garden shed
• Bec Evans of Prolifiko on overcoming inertia and putting in place the right rewards for you
• Plus SO many more practical and inspiring tips from members of The Extraordinary Business Book Club. 

Let's make 2018 count.

Pour a glass of sherry, munch on a mince pie, and put your feet up with a few of my absolute favourite moments EVER from the Extraordinary Business Book Club. 

• On happiness - Andy Cope's epiphany in the queue in Tesco's on Christmas Eve.
• On messiness - Tim Harford explains why we're at our most creative, potentially at least, when things go wrong.
• On deadlines and procrastination - when you hear what Natalie Reynolds did three weeks before her deadline, I guarantee you'll feel better wherever you are with your manuscript.
• On metaphors and why it's ok that we can never really nail it - listening to Michael Neill is like drinking melted chocolate. The fact that this is so useful and inspiring is almost incidental. 

I hope you enjoy this (not-very) seasonal selection box as much as I did. And whatever you're doing and whoever you're doing it with, have a very happy Christmas Day. 

The launch of Trusted was a very special occasion. When one of my authors has a book launch it's ALWAYS a special occasion, of course, but this one was exceptional for a number of reasons:

1. It was two authors, not one, both of whom had written every word of the book over six months of online and offline collaboration without a single cross word.
2. The launch was hosted and catered by University College, Birmingham, with the students taking responsibility for planning, setting up, welcoming, serving, and catering the evening as part of an assessed module. It was their way of repaying the authors for months of support with employability skills, and they produced the best spread of food I have ever seen at a book launch. And I've been to a lot of book launches.
3. It's the only launch I've ever been to with its own cocktail, the T-spot. It tasted even better than it looks.
4. It was the first live recording of The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast interview.

Sadly, the thing that can happen with live things happened, and the audio file was lost. So today's episode is a rerun of that interview. In it Lyn and Donna talk about the inspiration for Trusted, how they wrote together so effectively, and how their book is working for their business.

And as promised, here are some pictures from the launch, beginning (and indeed ending) with that fabulous T-spot cocktail:

Raj Nair hasn't written a business book (yet). As Executive Vice President and President, North America of the Ford Motor Company, leading one of the world's leading company's in one of the world's most disrupted, fast-moving and complex industries, it's hard to find the time. But he DOES make time to read them. 

Why? 

Because good business books make him think: 'There's another way to look at that.' No matter how senior or experienced an executive you may be, when a book brings a new perspective or insight it can transform the way you see your business. 

This is a report from within the arena on how business books are used by leaders, and what they're looking for when they make the decision to invest their most valuable resource - their attention - to read one.

Another satisfying helping of the choicest morsels of practical inspiration served up by recent guests. Listen to: 

• Dr Lynda Shaw (business neuroscientist) on what stories do to our brains and why that's good for business
• Matt Locke (Storythings and The Story conference) on the craft of storytelling
• Nigel Wilcockson (Random House Business Books) on what makes a business book great
• Donya Dickerson (McGraw Hill) on what publishers are looking for in business book proposals
• David Newman (Do It! Marketing) with a Jedi mind trick for getting your own way with your publisher
• Dorie Clark (Entrepreneurial You) on making money because of your book rather than from it 
• Carole Wyer (blogger and author) on the importance of trying new stuff
• Dan Underwood (Art of Enterprise) on taking risks
• Rebecca Jones (Enterprise Within) on Just Getting On With It.

Warning: this show is unsuitable for anyone wishing to remain within their zone of comfort. 

'Neuroscience is the future of business,' claims Dr Lynda Shaw, and once you've listen to her talk about how emotion drives our decisions and how being generous helps us be more effective, it's hard to argue.

She also reveals how when we tell stories, we create neurochemical connections between ourselves and our listeners, which build trust and connection. But how can you use that powerful effect when your listener isn't in the room with you, when you're writing a business book, for example? 

In the best traditions of The Extraordinary Business Book Club, this is a fascinating mix of rich information together with tips and ideas for making it work for you in practice and with a dash of the unexpected - this is the first mention of Coronation Street as a model for writing on this podcast or indeed any other, as far as I'm aware... 

Matt Watkinson described Nigel Wilcockson, publishing director at Random House Business Books and his own editor, as the brains behind many of the best business books he'd ever read. Nigel is more modest about his role: 'a good editor is more like a mentor... there in the background to offer advice'.

But that advice can make all the difference. Business book authors are busy people, and while they may be used to writing blog posts or sales copy, a full-length book is a very different animal. Nigel helps his authors tackle issues such as structure and what he describes as 'short-breathedness', getting all your ideas across as quickly as possible. 

This is a fascinating insight into the hard work that goes into making the world's best business books so deceptively easy to read. There are also invaluable tips for anyone thinking about pitching themselves and their book to the top business book publishers.  

Something a bit different on this week's show. Meet Carol Wyer, blogger, author, and stand-up comedian.

'She know her audience so well,' Ben Cameron told me. 'She really taps into who her audience is and she has this ability to go out and do whatever it takes to promote her books.'

I trust Ben, so despite the fact I wasn't sure how useful this would be to my business-book-writing listeners, I interviewed Carol. And it turns out Ben was right: there is SO much good stuff here for Extraordinary Business Book Club listeners - on using humour effectively, on connecting with your readers, and on why it's ok if you hate your book right now. 

Matt Locke tells a good story. He does, after all, run The Story conference, and his content studio Storythings helps businesses including Google and the BBC tell better stories. Right now he's fascinated by attention: how we measure it, and how it's changing. 

In this episode we bring all that together. We discuss why stories are so important, how they work and how not to mess them up, and we talk about how attention is changing in the digital age and what that means for anyone creating content, particularly authors of books. 

Intelligent listening, with a side order of practical inspiration.  

Donya Dickerson is Editorial Director with responsibility for business books for McGraw Hill in New York. So what does she look for when a proposal crosses her desk? And what kind of authors is she keen to get onto the list? 

A fascinating insight into the publisher's perspective of the partnership that is publishing a business book, and how you can position yourself for the best chance of success when you pitch. 

David Newman describes the process of writing a book as capturing ‘lightning in a bottle’. In today’s episode he describes how Do It! Marketing has transformed his business, and reveals the brilliant book bonus tactics he used to make it a success (plus, refreshingly, some of the stuff that didn’t go so well). There’s also a Jedi mind trick for getting your own way with your publisher if you go down the traditional route.

This is The Extraordinary Business Book Club at its best – inspiring, thoughtful, practical, hilarious.

Rebecca Jones was told at school that she’d better hope she made ‘pretty babies’, because she’d never amount to anything. She left aged 16 with a handful of non-academic O-levels to her name. By her mid-twenties she was running her second company, and now she’s a world-famous expert in training and business growth.

She believes the dyslexia that had her labelled ‘hopeless’ at school has been the driver behind her entrepreneurial success, but when it came to writing a book, it meant a whole new set of challenges.

In this week’s conversation Rebecca tells me how she overcame those challenges, why red shoes matter, how she fixes businesses, and how her new book, Enterprise Within, could make possible a whole new phase for her own business.

Dan Underwood is part of the ArtOf team, whose mission is to use diagrams and drawings to help people and organisations see their challenges and opportunities in a fresh and powerful way.

He talked to me about how the ArtOf team have used the process of developing a book to explore and extend their own thinking and to engage with their clients - it's a great example of how books can be used playfully and dynamically in a business, as a live project rather than a static output.

'You have to open yourself up... away from making money from something and understand that nowadays you make money because of something, and that's a very different phenomenon.'

As a journalist, Dorie Clark used to make her living by writing content. But now she writes for free, and makes a much better living off the back of it. In this interview we explore the opportunities out there for anyone entrepreneurial enough to seize them, and the central role that writing and books play in this new world of attention and engagement.

I'm utterly in awe of this woman.

My personal favourite moments from the last 9 episodes of The Extraordinary Business Book Club. It's an incredible selection:

• Daniel Priestley (Key Person of Influence) on making the book work with the business
• Warren Knight (Think #Digital First) on what it means to be in control of publishing your book
• Orna Ross (Head of ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors) on making the most of your publishing options
• Sara Kelly (journalist and academic) on why we're all entrepreneurs now
• Antony Mayfield (Brilliant Noise) on why small is beautiful when it comes to marketing
• Bridget Shine (CEO of the Independent Publishers Group) on what it means to publish with a small independent press
• Matt Watkinson (The Grid) on the big press experience and why it's OK if you're finding it hard to write your book
• Pam Didner (Global Content Marketing) on why writing is her extreme sport of choice
• Amanda Setili (Fearless Growth) on how not taking yourself too seriously can seriously improve your writing.

Make a cup of tea and settle down. Heck, grab a biscuit too.

Antony Mayfield runs marketing and communications agency Brilliant Noise, helping some of the biggest brands in the world transform their approach to getting their message out. He's got some fascinating stuff to say about how advertising and marketing are changing, and what it means to be digitally literate, with tips that work for microbusinesses as well as multinationals (in fact he says the reason he works with the big companies is that they need more help getting this right!). 

But he also talks about Brilliant Noise's own approach to marketing, and particularly the way they create and use books within the company. 

'Those books are like little avatars, little bits of you that you sent out into the world and they've got a life of their own and they're going round telling people what you think.'

A fascinating, inspiring conversation with one of the world's leading thinkers in digital marketing. 

'I'm actually shocked at what writing now means to me relative to what it would have meant before I wrote two books. I used to dread writing... now it's a way to structure my learning, it's a place to put my creativity. It's a place to create a sense of intellectual flow in my life.'

Amanda Setili runs a consulting business, and she very deliberately uses her books to explore what fascinates her and what she loves to work on in order to attract the clients she's most interested in working with. In this interview she reveals how she goes about creating the models and tools that accompany her books, and how she learned to shift from dry, technical writing to a more creative, story-led approach. 

This is an episode full of practical, usable insights for anyone wanting to make their book not only more useful to read, but more enjoyable to write. 

Bridget Shine, CEO of the Independent Publishers Guild in the UK, is at the forefront of the revolution taking place in publishing today. In this week's episode we discuss what it means to be an independent publisher, and from the author's perspective, what it's like to be published by an independent publisher. The old rules and divisions are breaking down, and there are fantastic opportunities for those with the will and the energy to explore them.

She also has some great tips for approaching independent publishers, and advice for those considering setting up as publishers themselves. And if you get lost in the definitions - indie authors, independent publishers, partner publishing - she takes a reassuringly pragmatic and positive approach:

'The point about the IPG... is we're all about helping one another and supporting each other and if you start getting a bit too ground down by those definitions you would get stuck very easily. For us, it's about people sharing, it's about the spirit of independence.'