CEO Secrets: Gold discs and Barbie

First update: In August CEO Secrets is getting a major, global radio outing - a real honour for the series.

We're doing a whole week of programmes in the Business Daily slot on BBC World Service - I'll present each one with a single guest, each episode lasting nearly 18 minutes. This means you can also catch it afterwards as a podcast on BBC Sounds. It's quite an evolution for a series that started 8 years ago in a short-form digital video format. It's a selection of interviews that I've done in the past 6 months.

The radio series is due to air the week beginning Monday 7 August and it is scheduled to include episodes with Kelly Hoppen CBE , Sir Robin Millar CBE , Ynon Kreiz of Mattel, Inc. , entrepreneurs Iain Griffin and Dirk Stewart of Seatfrog , and husband and wife entrepreneurs Jacine Rutasikwa and Paul Rutasikwa of Matugga Distillers - they may not run in that order though. Because it was prepared in advance we managed to send some copies out for review, so it may get some write ups in the press - fingers crossed - have a lookout and let me know if you see any! I've had Radio Times review stuff this way before.

In the picture above you can see me with Kelly Hoppen at her design studio where the magic happens. Read my article about her here.

Second update: I've been helping colleagues out with a related entrepeneurship advice series called Path to Success, which occasionally runs on the World Business Report TV programme. Videos with Amit Walia of 咨科和信 and Athan Didaskalou of July are recorded and also due to run in August, probably towards the end of the month.

I won't be recording any new episodes in August, but come September I'll be looking to do fresh ones. At the moment we are publishing about one episode every fortnight, a lower frequency than before (but doing them in more formats). There are no particular themes we are on the lookout for right now. But as usual we like to speak to the founders and CEOs of household-name companies, as well as start-up entrepreneurs with an interesting personal story to tell (and advice to share).

Talking of big companies, I met up with Ynon Kreiz of US toy giant Mattel for our most recent episode. I set up a kind of mini media junket room in a hotel, and using just my trusty iPhone 12 on a tripod, we recorded: a 1+1 TV interview for World Business Report about the Barbie film, a CEO Secrets video and we did a longer audio recording for our radio interview. I also wrote up a feature for BBC News website, which you can read here. It got nearly half a million readers over the weekend.

My guest the week before that was Sir Robin Millar. I recorded for two hours with him at his home studio in south London, my longest ever I think! He's had a fascinating career and it was very hard to decide what to focus on in the edit for the final interview. In the end I went with his recording methods - working with stars like Sade, Boy George and Emeli Sande - and his views on artificial intelligence in music. You can read the feature here. The radio interview is one of my most memorable, on a personal level. You can hear it when it goes out the week of 7 August in the special World Service CEO Secrets week.

Finally, my usual reminder that if you like the series you can check out the book! You can get it in these places. If you buy it from Bloomsbury Business , you can use the code 'CEO25' to get a 25% discount. I'm going to speak about the book at a Chiswick Book Festival event in September and I'm also hopefully going to speak about it at The Photography & Video Show early next year.

And if you are interested to see me talk about the book, I had a chat on camera with my BBC colleague Lalita Taylor FRSA , which you can check out on her post here. We discussed how you write a book when you are working full time and how you try and promote it too.

I can't think how to finish this newsletter. But I recently saw the Barbie film at a press screening and I can tell you that it has one of the funniest and most memorable endings for a film I've seen in ages! See it and see what I mean, even as a Barbie-cynic I enjoyed it.

Dougal