Matt Watkinson: Recent Episodes
matt watkinson
Thoughts on customer experience and business strategy from the author of The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences and The Grid.
If you aspire to write a business book (or perhaps non-fiction more broadly) this is the best advice I can give, having been around the track twice. The episode covers the challenges you'll face and some pragmatic advice for how to overcome them to produce a high quality publication. Here's the bird's-eye low-down:
2:00 - The pitfalls of self-publishing
3:40 - The brush doesn’t make the artist
5:10 - Why my own books nearly failed
7:30 - The six key challenges to writing a good business book
08:57 - Having a genuinely good idea is difficult
12:50 - Your supportive friends are unhelpful
14:00 - Defining the structure and scope can't be done as you go
15:20 - The act of writing itself is hard
16:40 - Exhaustion and burnout is common
17:45 - Things will inevitably go wrong (most writing is re-writing)
19:30 - How to overcome these challenges
19:49 - Be clear on your motivation
21:29 - Practice writing and reading critically
25:45 - Why you should design a book rather than writing it
27:55 - Structural tips including the SCQA format and pyramid principle
33:30 - Why professional publishing beats self-publishing
35:30 - Proposal writing
40:30 - Learning to love the process, not the outcome
42:15 - Forming a brain trust
An un unscripted monologue on adaptability. It's a bit on the long side — one take, no editing! — so if you'd like to jump to a specific section you can:
1:00 - The current adaptability crisis
3:45 - Why adaptability matters
6:38 - Cash is reality
8:30 - How much cash do you need?
10:25 - Cash and employee experience
11:50 - The virtue of frugality 14:00 - Price optimization and sacrificing volume
15:20 - Cutting costs to build cash reserves
17:45 - Free cash flow - what it is and why it matters
21:10 - Working capital and freeing up cash
24:30 - Cost structures and their link to adaptability
29:00 - Do you have the right cost structure?
30:50 - Don’t trust people with high fixed costs!
33:40 - Capacity management and slack in the system
37:00 - The relationship between growth and complexity
42:00 - Never let the past look more appealing than the future
44:00 - Reframe challenges as opportunities
45:00 - Get started on the next thing earlier than you think