Why I wrote a book

14 January 2019, 09:11 am
Speciality Bites by Paul Hargreaves

That's a question I asked myself when after many busy weeks running my company, Cotswold Fayre, I spent most weekends in the garden during summer 2018 furiously typing away on my laptop

I was told many years ago that everyone in Iceland had to write a book during their lifetime, and I remember thinking what a great idea for a nation. I have since found out that it isn’t actually true, but, despite that, Iceland has the highest population of authors of any country in the world at 15% - something to do with their culture of story-telling and fables. It is also often said that everyone ‘has a book within them’ and I certainly would concur with that, although this book isn’t the one I thought was inside me!

I originally planned to write more of an autobiographical type book, but quickly moved away from that as no-one really is interested enough to read about that and there are others around in the UK who have a far more interesting story to tell than me. So whilst I have, of course, drawn from my experience of running a business that is focused on making the world a better place, I have drawn on the stories of many other businesses that are making more of a difference than we are, which has been an inspiring and humbling experience.

This is my passion and this is my motivation: to reverse the injustice in the world through business. Most of the unfairness and environmental damage in the world has been caused by businesses over the last 200 years since the industrial revolution. Yet we are now in a time when many business owners and managers want to do the right thing and do their bit to create a better world. If a few more business leaders are inspired to adapt and change their business model as a result of reading my book, then I will be absolutely delighted.

I am convinced that 2019 will be a tipping point within the business world and this book will be a small part of this. Please buy the book and pass to others once you have read it. Published on March 25th, Forces for Good is available now for pre-orders at Waterstone’s here and Amazon here.

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