Today I’m talking to Mark Pearson, publisher and president of Pear Press. I came across Mark because I was interested in a book he published by John Medina, a N Y Times bestseller, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work.
The business model of traditional publishers is to publish 100 or so books per year, knowing they’ll have a few great books, a lot of good ones, and some bad ones.
Pear Press is doing things differently, and it’s a fascinating, admirable approach. They only publish one book per year, and they pursue it with full-hearted gusto. It’s gotta be a quality “great” book that can knock it out of the park and hit some bestseller lists.
In this interview, Mark and I discuss:
- Standing out in a sea of 800,000 new books published each year
- “Cut out the crap”: the advice Steve Jobs of Apple gave to the CEO of Nike, and what publishers can learn from this lesson
- Why exercise is important for the brain and taking a break from your desk is not slacking off
Visit Pear Press at www.pearpress.com.
Listen to my interview with Mark Pearson
Posted on August 26, 2010
Todd Kashdan, a clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology at George Mason University is also the author of a new book, a fantastic book called Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life. And when you check it out, you’ll see that it has got one of the best cover designs ever. It’s just a yellow cover with a single word on it, “curious” in big black bold typed with a question mark. I love it when the medium is the message, because you can’t help but look at that book and go, “Okay, I am curious. What is this book about?” And then when you flip it over to the back, it says simply again, “embrace uncertainty, attract love and abundance, master your life.” What a wonderful call to do more Great Work.
In our conversation we chat about:
- Why the quest for happiness is overrated
- how Todd ended up where he is today, having been a Wall Street trader and a clerk in a law firm
- How the shift in focus from scary to curious changed everything
- The link between anxiety and curiosity
- The importance of sadness, worry and anger in a well-lived life.
You can follow Todd at Twitter at @toddkashdan and learn more about his work at www.ToddKashdan.com
Posted on March 17, 2010
Brian is the Chief Philosopher of Philosophers Notes, a website and business I discovered about a year ago and think is absolutely terrific. Brian’s role as Chief Philosopher is to study and share the the world’s greatest wisdom. He has picked the hundred best, wisest, smartest books, he has articulated the thousand best ideas in those books and from those he has extracted the ten core principles behind the real works of wisdom that guide us and shape is in our 21st century.
What makes this sweeter still is that Brian is also a brilliant entrepreneur. He founded an organization called E-Teams that grew, was massively successful and sold it in 2000 to The Active Network then came back and founded another brilliant online company called Zaadz which is now known as Gaia.com and which is also terrific – it’s like a Facebook or LinkedIn for people who want to save the world and change the world.
This is a really juicy call, full of ideas and in it we talk about:
- How you know if you’re ‘following your bliss” (and what Carlos Castaneda has to say on the point)
- One of the deepest choices of life: do you step forward into growth or back into safety
- A brilliant mapping system to help you keep track of your path
- And what Brian learned from Jim Loehr about projecting his shadow
- The importance of ritual
And of course, a whole lot more.
You can find Brian at www.PhilosophersNotes.com and follow him on Twitter at @_Brian_Johnson. (And if you do so, you’ll see he’s just announced he’s getting married. Woo hoo!)
Posted on February 24, 2010
Krishna De’s tagline is “Bring your brand to life” and she takes this message to individuals and organizations around the world and both on and off line. She comes with dirt under her fingernails from working in organizations. Krishna was the youngest person on the Guinness Board and the first woman, and she has worked in three continents and 30 countries. She really brings a wealth of international expertise, gusto and experience to this conversation about branding and also about great work.
In this interview we talk about:
- Why stability is as important as risk as the foundation for Great Work
- What dealing with the threats from the mafia taught her about Great Work
- How to become CEO of your own career – and what support structures you might up in place to allow that to happen
- How to rail against the threat of a mediocre life
You can follow Krishna on Twitter at @KrishnaDe and on her blog.
Posted on February 4, 2010
