Escape from Cubicle Nation Podcast
Advice, support and encouragement to stop being a corporate prisoner and start your own business
Did you ever just want to walk away?

"Didn't you ever want to get up from your desk one day and just walk away, not to go get a latte, but I mean walk away and not come back?"

So asks Margaret Roach in her powerful book trailer, and powerful new book, And I Shall Have Some Peace There: Trading the Fast Lane for My Own Dirt Road.

Margaret left her mega-powerful job as editorial director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and had been a New York Times editor.

She set out on a long journey to get to know herself -- in her farmhouse in rural New York.

Her book trailer tells the story better than I ever could with words. (YouTube link here)

Margaret's purpose in writing the book was to tell her own story, but to also encourage others to stop and make time for things they love.

"Just remember, we are finite creatures," she says.

If you never make time for things you love, time may run out. 

Her book is out this week, and is a delightful read. Buy it here

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Direct download: margaretroach.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 10:53am MST

If you had been a fellow passenger on the Green Line train in Washington DC, looking at handsome young lawyer Warren Brown staring out the window, you may have thought he was composing his next great novel, or thinking about scaling Mt. Everest. Instead, he was formulating a new recipe for chocolate cake:

"Dry chocolate cake is a no-no not to be tolerated. So I thought of coming at it from a unconventional angle. I decided to not use butter and boiled water in the batter, but use cream instead to deliver hydration and fat to the cake simultaneously. I scribbled the hypothesis on a notepad, raced off the train, mixed and panned the batter within twenty minutes, and use the same recipe to this day. It’s the New German Chocolate cake, where cream and cocoa combine to make a dense chocolaty cake that is paired with a coconut & vanilla infused buttercream."

Warren's cake dreams turned into a baking "side hustle," which occupied all of his precious time outside of his busy law career. He slowly built his baking business to the point where he was able to quit his day job and open a bakery, Cake Love, in Washington D.C. Fast forward nine years and Cake Love has seven locations, and Warren has written two books, Cake Love: How to bake cakes from scratch, and United Cakes of America, with a third in the works.

Listen in on our 40-minute podcast where Warren discusses the hard work required to turn a passion into a business, and a start-up into a solid brand, and why entrepreneurs have to be a bit crazy if they want to succeed.

You can see more of Warren in action in the short ad that my friend Erik Proulx (of Lemonade fame) recently did for Dell Computer: (YouTube link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPN2br5YY4g)

 

Direct download: cakelove.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:58am MST