Twins, rum and advertising gurus...

It's been a while since my last newsletter so there's some catching up to whizz through. ????♂?

We've run interviews with Joyce De Haas and Raissa de Haas of Double Dutch Drinks | B Corp on the power of twins in business (see their picture above). This ran online and on BBC World News TV. Their mixers are popular with people who like non-alcoholic drinks (as well as alcoholic ones), defintely a trend we are covering on the series.

That said, the next business we covered was very much alcoholic. I took a trip up to Scotland to visit the rum distillery set up by the couple behind Matugga Distillers , which is just outside Edinburgh. I got there just in time to see their latest bit of distilling kit arrive, allowing them to ramp up production. See it here. Still can't forget the sweet smell of that place, from the sugars. (Paul told me he is just used to the fumes now).

And I've also been busy recording new episodes, which haven't aired yet.

I took a trip to trendy East London to visit the studios where YouTube stars The Sidemen film their game shows. For most teenagers these guys are modern superstars - musician, boxer and Prime drink entrepreneur KSI is one of their number. I caught up with Jordan Schwarzenberger who manages them, as part of his Arcade business. He shared some advice about he changed his personal habits in order to go up a gear in business, as he left his teens behind.

From the world of YouTube skits, to skincare. We like to cover as many different business angles as possible on CEO Secrets. I caught up with Jane Wurwand, who built up global brand Dermalogica from scratch. She was born in Edinburgh but lives in LA these days - in fact, it was in America, as an immigrant, that she built up her business. We spoke about what she learned along the way, as well as her thoughts on platforms like Instagram. She famously doesn't like to use the word 'beauty' when describing cosmetics.

Radio

I always want the CEO Secrets interviews to travel as far as possible. Working at the BBC obviously gives a lot of possibilities to do this - the potential reach of any story on our outlets is huge. But you have to build good relationships with those outlets to take advantage of this.

When I do my CEO Secrets interviews, I usually first record a 15-20 minute chat with the guest first, as we decide how to focus our 90-second video (which runs online and on TV). I record the audio on my iPhone with a broadcast mic (using the Rode reporter adapter and app), so this can run on radio.

The interview with Sarah Willingham has been the second to get a full-programme length run on the Business Daily Meets strand, on BBC World Service. You can check it out here. You can hear that her final story in this interview is what became her video contribution. Some future episodes will also run on World Service, reaching a whole new global audience. These audio versions actually take me quite a long time to edit, so we do them on a case-by-case basis.

On Tuesday we published the interview with Sir John Hegarty on our website as a text feature. The team at The World Tonight on Radio 4 contacted me that evening to say they were running a discussion item about the piece. So I was able to email them a soundbite from Sir John, which they played out (about 34 minutes in).

Awards

I've recently turned CEO Secrets into a book, with the BBC, and it came out just before Christmas. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc kindly put it forward for the Business Book Awards . It has been shortlisted for the Leadership Book of the Year category. There's a big dinner in May when we will find out the section winners, as well as the overall winner.

If you want to get hold of the book, you can do so here. Here's a secret, if you use the code 'CEO25' you get 25% off the cover price.

And if you want to go behind the scenes on the series I regularly post about it on my Twitter.

Thanks for reading!

Dougal