What type of books do
you write? I write books about
entrepreneurs and growing companies. I search for the answers that the best of
them have come up with to the questions they all face: How do you balance the
idealism of your vision with the practical need to develop a sound business
model and healthy financials?What does it mean for a company to be great? How
do you have a meaningful life in business? What role can businesses play in
building a better society? How do you handle the most difficult parts of the
journey?
What is your newest
book,Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top, about?
Finish Big is about one of those difficult parts: the end of
the journey. It addresses the question: How do you end your journey in a way
that leaves you happy, fulfilled, proud of what you've accomplished, and able
to move on enthusiastically to whatever comes next? I found that many business
owners don't have good exits. The difficulties they have say a great deal about
what businesses provide that can be hard to find elsewhere.
What inspired you to
write it? I had worked with my
friend and coauthor Norm Brodsky on a series of columns for Inc. magazine
about selling his business. The overwhelming response to the series made me
realize that there was a great hunger for insights into the experience of
leaving a business you've built from scratch. I discovered that almost nothing
has been written about that aspect of the entrepreneurial journey, in sharp
contrast to starting a business, growing a business, marketing, finance,
managing people, selling, marketing, and on and on. That discovery gave me the
courage to spend five years working on the book.
As the editor at large
at Inc how would you compare writing a book vs. writing articles?
They are very different.
Magazine articles are like short stories. You have to say everything you want
to say in a few thousand words. You have to find a single question that will
entice readers to dig into the article in hopes of finding the answer. In
writing a book, you tackle a variety of different questions in the context of
addressing a larger subject.
What is the writing process
like for you? Parts of it I love, and
parts of it I hate. I love the research and interviewing. I meet fascinating
people with great stories to tell, and that's a blessing. I also like the
feeling I get when I'm all done, and I enjoy the feedback from readers, which I
always learn a lot from. It's what happens in between that I hate. It's very
intimidating to start with a blank screen on your computer and realize you need
to fill it with words that will be of interest and benefit to others. It gets even
harder as you go along because you soon lose perspective on what you've
written. After a while, you may feel lost. You don't know if what you've
written is good or bad. You have all kinds of self-doubt. Hemingway said
"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence
you know." That's the whole challenge, and it's a big one. (By the way,
when I say "you" above, I mean "me." I don't speak for any
writer other than myself.)
What did you do before
you became an author? I was a political
activist. (It was the 1960s.) Then I got married, and my wife was pregnant with
our first child, and I needed to earn a living. I had a choice between going to
work in a ping pong paddle factory for $80 a week or writing for an alternative
weekly in Boston for $125 a week. I chose the latter. I've been writing ever
since.
What advice do you have
for struggling writers? First, I'd advise them to
find a better way to make a living. If they feel compelled to stick with it,
I'd advise them to find opportunities to write as often as possible. The
more you write, the better you get. Exactly what type of writing you do
depends on the kind of writer you want to be. If you want to be an
investigative journalist for a daily newspaper, you will need to develop skills
a bot different from those that a writer of long narratives must have. Early in
my career, I was drawn to story-telling, and I wrote for weekly newspapers,
which forced me to write a lot. That helped me become a better writer. Beyond
that, I'd advise young writers to cast off preconceptions they might have and
learn to listen and watch closely and try to recreate reality for your readers
as accurately as you can--based on what you actually hear, see, smell, and
feel. Don't be afraid to question what you believe. Pursue the truth
relentlessly, even if it's hard to admit. Your first and only duty is to tell
your readers the truth.
Where do you see
business book publishing heading? I wish I knew. I believe there will always be a market for good
writing, good thinking, good content. What form it will take, I have no idea.
We're obviously in the midst of a profound change in how people deliver and
receive information. If I knew where we'll be 20, 30, 50 years from now, I
would probably be a very rich man by now--and not a writer.
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