Escape from Cubicle Nation Podcast
Advice, support and encouragement to stop being a corporate prisoner and start your own business
Great advice for aspiring authors: Interview with 100 Business Books of All Time author Todd Sattersten My love of books goes back to when I was about three years old.

As soon as I could form the sentence "I want to go to the library," my Mom or Dad would take me every week to get a new stack of books.  I remember the smell as I entered the San Anselmo library and strolled through the aisles.  My senses tingled as I saw new stories, and I would have to negotiate with my Mom and Dad about how many I could carry home in a given week.

This love stayed with me my entire life.  Picture books turned into Miss Piggle-Wiggle, then the Chronicles of Narnia, then books about world mythology, then school books, then a phase of intellectual books to convince myself that I was smart like The Archeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault.

About fifteen years ago, I fell in love with business books and have never looked back.  I never tire of reading new ideas and insights for how to start and run a business.

But the volume is overwhelming.

Todd Sattersten, President of 800CEORead, co-authored a book with Jack Covert called The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.

I jumped on the chance to talk with him about the book, since I was really fascinated to understand the process by which they selected the very best business books.

As an author, I was excited to learn the criteria they developed to select one hundred books from the hundreds of thousands in the business category. The criteria were:
  1. Accessibility: Is the book understandable, easy to read, engaging?
  2. Applicability: Does it apply to today's business environment?
  3. Quality of Idea: Would we do this in our own business?
Favorite quotes from the podcast:

"I am amazed at how often authors overestimate their ability to be writers."

"The best books offer a promise to readers: This is what you are going to get out of the book."

Listen and learn!

And buy the book here.  This one's a keeper!
Direct download: 100Best_2.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 2:11pm MST

The link between leaving your small cube and thinking big I think it was fate that Michael Port released his new book The Think Big Manifesto within a few days of the release of mine.

Becoming comfortable with thinking big and gathering the courage to leave a "safe" life in a cube behind walk hand in hand.

So I interviewed Michael about his book in this 20-minute conversation, where we talk about:
  1. Why you need to unhook from the "gurus"
  2. How your kids can push you to do your best work
  3. Why it is important to think big about what you do and how you operate in the world
  4. The benefits of collaboration vs. competition
  5. Our shared passion for martial arts, and the connection with thinking big
Direct download: thinkbig.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 3:43pm MST