In this episode, ALLi’s Nonfiction Adviser Anna Featherstone chats with author and learning strategist Maria Doyle about the production and distribution decisions behind her book Everyone’s a Teacher. They explore questions including: Might your nonfiction book serve readers better if it asked more questions? How can QR codes enhance the reading experience? How do you turn a book with visual elements into an audiobook? And what if you gave readers a quiz to see whether your book is really for them? This episode will give you fresh ideas for producing and distributing a book in a way that really engages readers.
Listen to the Podcast: Producing a More Interactive Nonfiction Book
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About the Host
Anna Featherstone is ALLi’s nonfiction adviser and an author advocate and mentor. A judge of The Australian Business Book Awards and Australian Society of Travel Writers awards, she’s also the founder of Bold Authors and presents author marketing and self-publishing workshops for organizations, including Byron Writers Festival. Anna has authored books including how-to and memoirs and her book Look-It’s Your Book! about writing, publishing, marketing, and leveraging nonfiction is on the Australian Society of Authors recommended reading list. When she’s not being bookish, Anna’s into bees, beings, and the big issues of our time.
About the Guest
Maria Doyle, author of Everyone’s a Teacher, has more than thirty years’ experience in teaching, learning, teacher training, developing curriculum, and managing education projects in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific, North America, and Scandinavia. Her areas of expertise include instructional design, curriculum and learning resource development, teacher training, project management, assessment and evaluation, and professional development.
Read the Transcript
Anna Featherstone: Welcome, and thanks for joining us from wherever you are on this mind-blowingly precious planet. I'm Anna Featherstone, having a chat with you today from the lands of the Palawa people, the original storytellers of Lutruwita, now known as Tasmania. Today, we're looking at the production and distribution decisions behind a book that caught my eye for its extensive use of QR codes, activities, diagnostic tools, and lots of questions in a book, which I thought was really interesting because most books, we kind of share our knowledge in a certain way.
But this book kind of made me think, “Oh, maybe in some of these nonfiction books we should add some more questions.” Anyway, our guest today is Maria Doyle. She is a learning strategist, facilitator, and author of the book called Everyone's a Teacher: A Universal Methodology for Transferring Knowledge with Extraordinary Outcomes.
Maria has spent more than 30 years teaching, training teachers, and designing curriculum across 18 overseas postings in 12 countries, and her book's a really practical, kind of do-it-yourself guide for anyone who transfers knowledge. And that takes in a lot of us authors 'cause in nonfiction that's a lot of what we're doing.
So behind the scenes of this book too, she's built quite a clever ecosystem which we want to get into. So welcome, Maria.
Maria Doyle: Hi. Thanks, Anna, for having me.
Anna Featherstone: And where are you today?
Maria Doyle: I am in Perth, so on the lands of the Whadjuk Noongar people, in Western Australia.
Anna Featherstone: And what are some of the other countries you've worked in?
Maria Doyle: Oh, everywhere. I won't get them in order and I probably won't remember all of them off the top of my head. But I started in Indonesia. And then I've also worked in Hong Kong and Dubai, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Fiji. Well, living and working. I've done a lot of projects in different countries as well, so my brain is just going, “Was that a one-off or was that an actual project I was-” Ah, I've been to a lot of countries.
From the Classroom to the Page
Anna Featherstone: Yeah, there's a lot in that list. So after three decades of teaching in classrooms around the world, what made you decide it was time to actually put your knowledge into book form?
Maria Doyle: Well, it's a bit of an interesting story. The last sort of permanent role that I held was out in Kiribati, which is a country in the middle of the Pacific.
I was out there for two and a half years, and about three-quarters of the way through that I ended up quite ill and then needing to be medically evacuated out of the country. So I ended up with multiple organ failure, so I was having seizures and things. It wasn't fun, no. And I think when you go through an experience like that in a really remote place where life really is touch and go, like you don't really know what's going to happen, it changes your perception on what you're going to do with the rest of your life. And so I did some soul-searching, and then I realized that maybe I wanted to be in business for myself. And so I started studying business, and then realizing that so much of it was like drinking from a fire hose.
It was just information overload. And I was actually having a bit of a whinge about it to the people that I was studying business with, and they said, “Well, if you're such a good teacher, why don't you teach other people how to teach properly? Because there's a lot of us who love what we do, but we don't know how to teach it well. We're not teachers.” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, good point.” So that's what I did. I started helping other small business owners, a lot of the people that were in this business course with me, and then the business just grew from there. So after 15 years of saying the same things and writing the same lessons again and again and again, I had a framework. It had been an online course. It had been sort of white labeled as an instructional design course for a large government department. It had taken on all these different forms already. And so when I went to a business strategist, she said, “I think you need a book to pull all this together.”
And I thought, “Well, funny that. I've already got one.” ‘Cause it had been all of these things already. So it was really just a matter of pulling it into one readable book, which, because a lot of the activities when it was an online course in a group workshop, they're obviously quite experiential, so quite hard to translate into print.
So yeah. That was the process, and here we are.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. And did you create new material for the book as well, or was it mostly drawn from all the things you'd created over the course of the business?
Maria Doyle: I think it was most certainly inspired by everything I'd already created, but when you have to bring something together into one complete product, of course there's new bits and pieces that have to be inserted in.
And especially because when I started doing this 15 years ago, it was very different to what it is now, and the way AI tools are changing what I do is, you know, above and beyond what was even possible to include in this book. But at the end of the day, it comes back to what good structure is, and any AI tool building online courses these days follows that structure.
It's not rocket science. It's fairly universally accepted. Yeah, it's just all my bits and pieces that I've learnt from all over the world, sort of fleshing out that structure a little bit more so it's a bit more practical.
Why a Physical Book?
Anna Featherstone: It is interesting, like you talk about AI use and how things are changing, that you've still brought out a book, which is like one of the most traditional ways of sharing information.
What piece do you think the book in paperback or audiobook, how is that an improvement or a needed addition to all the other things that you already do?
Maria Doyle: Well, I think it's a physical product. It's something you can actually hand to somebody or post to somebody. And you know, you can send an online course or a digital PDF to someone and it'll just get lost in the inbox with all the rest of the bits and pieces. But when it's a physical book, and I think especially when you're talking about it and someone rings you and says, “Oh, I'm not sure about what you do and can you help?” And you're holding a book in front of them and going, “Yeah, look, it's all in here. This is a DIY guide. You can do it yourself. Let me send it to you.” And then they get it in the mail, so it's another touchpoint. They've had a conversation, they heard about you from someone else, they've looked on your website, they've spoken to you. Now they're holding your book. They can skim it. They can read the entire thing back to front.
They can use the QR codes. They can not use the QR codes. You know, I refer to it as a business card on steroids. It's a tangible, physical product. And anyone who's written a book will know the amount of time and energy and effort and investment, financial investment that goes into creating one.
So I think it does also help your potential clients see you as someone who's serious about what you're doing. Like you're not just talking about it, you've actually put the rubber to the road, and here's the product. It's your philosophy, and you stand by it so much that you've put it on paper in a book form.
Yeah. It's a big commitment, I think.
Finding the Audience
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. No, I totally agree. So the title is Everyone's a Teacher, which is a big audience. So how did you narrow down who you were really writing for?
Maria Doyle: So the majority of the people that I help are either in organizations working as HR or L&D people who want to create extraordinary learning experiences or extraordinary learning cultures within their organizations, but they're not specifically teacher trained, or they're not trained in education and training or what makes a learning experience extraordinary.
So those types of people who are keen to create the right environment, but they're just not quite sure how. They don't need to do a Bachelor of Education. They don't need a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment because they're not trying to deliver accredited training in a vocational institute.
So they just need, it's almost like a 101 guide. It's a quick read. It's like, “Oh, these are all the things that I could have been doing, I didn't even realize.” They're not rocket science, you know? So with those people in mind and with vocational trainers in mind, or lecturers, so again, people who are super savvy, they know their subject matter expertise down to the ground, but when they get into a workshop situation and they're trying to train other people or explain to other people or get them doing something differently, their expertise has not been developed in that area.
And they're like, “Oh, why are my workshops, you know, boring or flat or-” I feel like I'm just standing at the front preaching and no one's doing anything. So it's those specific people who care. They're in learning environments. They want to make them better. But they don't have the training, and this is a super, super simple way to get-
Yeah, it's teaching 101, really.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. It was really interesting 'cause I was thinking, yeah, who… Like, the target market for the book is definitely not me, and I was reading it for a different purpose. But then I was like, “Oh, this is good for me to read too,” because I do do presentations. I do stand up in front of the room of authors, or I do all these things, and it's like, how can I do that better?
So when we talk about having a target audience for our books, there can be that key target market that you've written for, but then there's all these other people out there like me who actually can benefit too. But you've still got to write for your main target audience to do that job well first.
One QR Code, One Resources Page
But yeah. So it's interesting. Okay. So one of the things, we talk about production and distribution on this podcast. So the QR codes. There are a lot of QR codes in the book, and we use them across the board as authors, like, you know, on our business cards or to take people to our website.
But you use them for different things. So what made you decide to include so many, and what do readers find when they scan them?
Maria Doyle: So my book is split into four sections, and one of my core teaching philosophies is that if people already know what you're teaching them, why are you bothering? So the QR code takes you to a resources page, which allows you to select the stage of the book that you're in, and then to do a diagnostic tool to realize and decide whether you even need to read that stage of the book.
And if you do, then that's also the page where all the extra resources are held. So the templates, and the quizzes, and the examples, sort of all the bits and pieces that I've given as extra resources along with the book. So you asked a lot of questions, and now I'm well answered.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah, so you've kind of explained it. So when readers scan them, they get taken to this page where there's all these other things that they can do. So what was the behind-the-scenes setup like? How did you create the codes, and how did you organize the resources page on your website? And were you constantly double-checking to make sure they worked?
Maria Doyle: No, so it's one QR code, the entire book, and that's why I lost my train of thought. So it's one QR code that runs right through the book. It takes you to the resources page on my website. The resources page is then broken into the stages of the book. So it's super easy to find where you need to go.
And the reason for doing that was because I wanted to give diagnostics, and I wanted to give tools, and I wanted to give examples and templates and all these different things. But as you would rightly think, if you're trying to create a different QR code for each of those things, and then they're all hosted on different pages, that's a nightmare. So I've just given one QR code that takes you to one page, and then I can do whatever I like on that page, and the QR code still takes you there. So that was the reasoning behind that. I wanted to have an online resource library, so to speak, for the book, and the QR code just takes you there.
Anna Featherstone: Okay. And have you noticed readers actually… Have you got a tracking way to see if people are using that code and landing on that page?
Maria Doyle: Yeah. So the website's recording where people are landing and what pages they're on, because obviously within that page there's a bunch of drop-downs and then links out to other things.
So I can see what people are clicking on and what people are using. Yeah.
Translating an Interactive Book into Audio
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. Okay, we'll talk more about some of your diagnostic tools later because I think some of them are fascinating for authors to think about. But you've also produced an audiobook. So how did you handle that practical, interactive stuff in audio?
Maria Doyle: So that was really funny. Because so much of the original course is actually designed to be visual, then translating it into the written form, then trying to translate that into a purely audio form was a bit of a work of art. Work of science. I don't know if it failed experimentations.
So when I was practicing the book for the printed book, I was doing the final draft for that, I had some very good advice that said, “Read the book as if you're reading it for the audiobook because it'll trip you up and you'll find the errors.” Which was very good advice.
So I did that, and as I did that, when I was reading it out, I was highlighting, circling, and dog tagging the pages of sections that were simply not going to work as an audiobook. And then I reverse engineered those sections so that they did, basically. So I either explained what the image was doing, or I just did something else that would work for audio instead of print.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. Smart. Very smart, because it's too late once the book's out and you're trying to get the audio file to match.
Maria Doyle: Exactly. And actually, at some points I did actually say, “Look, I've got an audio resource page on the resources page. So if you've got the audiobook, you can go to the same QR code.” And then I've actually provided some of the tables and images and templates that I've referenced to say, “I can't fully describe this, but if you'd like to have a look, go to the website, click on the QR code,” yada, yada, yada. So they can actually see the visual that I'm talking about if they're intrigued.
So yeah, it's kind of described, but then also provided as a visual source if that's good for them.
Recording in the Studio
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. And did you go into a studio to record the audiobook, or did you do it from home?
Maria Doyle: Yeah, no, I did it all with Lockie at, I think it's Sound Bite in Leederville in Western Australia. They were such wonderful people to work with.
I had an absolute ball. I hardly had a voice by the end of it, but it was a really fun four days. Yeah.
Anna Featherstone: Oh, so four days? Okay. Yeah, that's quite a commitment. I don't think people realize how big a commitment it is to record in studio.
Maria Doyle: Yeah, it wasn't four full days. I think it was two or three hours at a time.
I'm not sure. I can't remember the figure. But still, that's a long time to be talking and retaking and retaking, 'cause they're sitting there listening. So any word that you've tripped up on or said incorrectly or blurred into the next word, they're like, “Nope, start again. Go back to the front.” So it is a lot slower than you think it will be. But yeah, it's good to work with professionals because you can't hear. Sometimes he was like, “Do you realize what you just said?” And I was like, “What? No.” So it's wonderful having that extra pair of ears that was listening, not just from a technical component, but from a content component as well.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. And it's interesting, like with AI, how things are going too, that you can also clone your voice and do it that way. Everyone's doing it in such different ways, and you've got to really look into which way you feel comfortable doing. And what's going to give your listener the best experience, because there's vast amounts of difference in what you can achieve doing it in different ways.
Maria Doyle: And I think, what's the purpose of you producing an audiobook? For me, because I'm a storyteller and there's so many stories in this book, for me it was really important that I was the narrator of the book.
And the people who have listened to the audiobook, the feedback has consistently been, “Oh, like I know you. I've heard your voice. It really was like having you in the room.” And I'd often go to answer your questions, 'cause I ask so many questions in the book. It was almost like I was having a conversation with you, but you weren't there to, you know, you just kept talking. I was like, “What's going on?”
Yeah. But I think if you're trying to get closer to your audience and part of the reason that you've got a book is to warm them up to your philosophy or way of working or whatever, then a book is a wonderful way to do that in a very low-risk environment.
So asking someone else to narrate it, there's nothing wrong with that, and of course a lot of people do it, but if you're a storyteller and you love telling stories and you're not doing it yourself, yeah, have a think about that. It's just such an easy way into the hearts of your clients if they are the right people to work with you.
Selling and Distributing the Book
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. Well, I'm loving listening to your voice though. I think, yeah, the perfect person to narrate an audiobook. Okay. So where and how do you sell the book?
Maria Doyle: So I worked with a publishing house, so they distributed it to all the bookstores and all the distributors.
It's on Amazon and all of the online, Booktopia, and all of those places. It's on audiobook, on all the audio channels as well, so I used a streaming service, not streaming service, I don't even know what it's called. But it's like a central place that you go that puts it up onto all of the audiobook sites and sends you royalties that way. And then through my website as well, so that's obviously a higher-cost book. It's not as cheap as you can get it through Amazon, of course, but it comes from me, and it's hand signed, and then you get bookmarks and a pen and, you know, all sorts of bits and pieces, like little paraphernalia.
So yeah, it's a little package that comes specifically from me. So yeah, that's how the book gets out there.
Anna Featherstone: And you also invite bulk orders, so if people want to buy a number of copies for their HR department or something. And do you include information about your book when you're talking with companies about your services?
Or are they coming to your website and then seeing you have the book? How's that working?
Maria Doyle: Yeah, so it's working in all different ways. So for one school, I was going to go up and do some work with them last year. It got postponed. The trip got postponed, but the books didn't. So the books were up there, and everyone had the books, and they've been reading the books in various speeds or quantities over the last six months.
And then I came up just last month and actually did the workshop with them. So they're like, “Oh, we've had the book for so long,” you know? So they've been talking about it. They've been discussing it in the staff room. They're like, “Oh, do you agree with this bit? Should we do this? I don't know.” So, you know, it's a talking point in the office if a workshop is upcoming, or even if a workshop isn't upcoming, here, read the book, have a think. Do you want to work with this woman? You know, is this something that we could all learn with if we had a workshop that showed us how to do this in a face-to-face environment? Again, business card on steroids.
And then with other clients, yeah, it's been a bulk order for the team, whether or not we've worked with a piece of the team or a bigger part of the team, and then who knows where that work goes when the books start getting out into the hands of. And then with RTOs, when I'm working with groups of lecturers, then they get the book.
Anna Featherstone: For people who might not be in Australia, what's an RTO?
Maria Doyle: A registered training organization, like a vocational institute. Somewhere between not academic university studies, but the technical adult studies.
Anna Featherstone: Adult learning. Yeah. Okay.
Maria Doyle: Yeah. So then a TAFE might do that for a group of lecturers, and a book becomes part of the package for them.
Giving the Book Away
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. And how do you decide when to give a copy away instead of selling it?
Maria Doyle: I think it depends on the purpose. So I do give books away. That's all part of the business strategy. When a client is on the fence about working with me and we've had a bit of a discussion about it, it can be like, “All right. Well, if you are thinking about working with me, how about I send you a copy of the book and you have a look? You know, if it's to your liking, if it makes sense, if it's in the direction that you want.” There's a lot of DIY stuff you can do yourself there, and I guess that's part of my giving back kind of feeling as well, so that the resources page online, I realized a little while ago that IP is just IP, you know?
So giving it all away, putting it all online for free is just a demonstration of how I like to help. Do you know what I mean? So I think these days you can put it into AI, help me create a lesson plan outline, you know. I've got my versions up there. They may or may not be better than what you find on AI for your purposes in your context.
So giving away what I've got and showing people what the IP is is not… I don't think I ever published this book to be making money out of the book itself. You're making money out of the work that comes from the book when people hold it in their hands and go, “We need this in our organization.”
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. And it's part of a marketing strategy when you look at it like that. Instead of buying ads, you actually create the book, and that becomes your ad.
Maria Doyle: And then it's very targeted 'cause it's going directly to the people that are interested in working with you.
The “Do You Need the Book?” Quiz
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. Okay. So this, funny and controversial, you have a quiz on your website which you call… It's a diagnostic tool, and it's called Do You Need the Book? Which I think is hilarious because it's like, what if they say no? So tell me about, where did the idea come from to have this quiz?
Like, do they even need your book? How did you build it, and how does it all work?
Maria Doyle: So another one of my philosophies in teaching and learning is, I think I said this before, if people already know what you're teaching them, don't waste their time. Give them an option to opt in or opt out. Like, think about it.
If you went to a lecture and someone said to you, “Okay. Here's a list of the 10 things that we're going to talk about in this class. What's your confidence level with these 10 items?” And you're like, “Oh, eight out of 10 on all of them,” or, you know, “Oh, very confident in eight out of 10 of them,” and the lecturer said to you, “Okay. Here's the thing. This is what we're talking about. If you already feel confident in all of this, then just switch off, hang at the back, leave. I don't really care,” human psychology will be like, “Oh, thanks for letting me off that one, but I might just hang around to see about that 20%.” Right? And then at the end it's like, well, I knew that I already knew most of this, but I still learnt a little bit.
On the flip side, you go right through a lesson and you get to the end and you're like, “Oh, I knew 80% of that. Why am I even here? What a waste of my time.” And, you know, every 10 minutes you're getting more and more frustrated because they're just telling you stuff you already know. Ew. So which would you prefer? To be part of the first scenario, right?
Where if you're there it's because you're opting in. Even if you know that you're only going to learn a little bit, you're still opting in. So that's the concept with the book as well. Like, if you don't need to read this book, don't waste your time, don't waste the trees by ordering yourself a copy.
Do the quiz first. If you score really highly on the quiz, no harm, no foul, you don't need the book. On your way. You've wasted 30 seconds of your time, not three hours and a tree. So another one of the philosophies I talk about is when you systemize your information. So let's just say you've got 10 topics, and in each of those topics you've got some theory, you've got some, you know, why it's important, you've got the pain, the gain, the before and after of knowing it or doing it right or doing it wrong, and then you're going to do some kind of practical activity at the end that'll really bring it together.
So all 10 topics are like that. So if you line up those 10 topic questions and say, “Are you confident doing this? Are you confident doing this? Number two, number three, number four, number five,” you've got a quiz that then will qualify people in or out of your course. And so essentially that's what the quiz is.
I break it down a lot further, so for each of the four stages. I think there's about 10 or 15 questions for each of the stages. And then from there you opt in. So it's like, “Oh, okay, so I think I'm all right with stage one and two in the book, but it looks like I could get a lot out of stages three and four.”
Great. You buy the book, you focus on three and four. You skim the first half of the book, and you're like, “Thanks Maria, I didn't have to read it all 'cause I kind of know that stuff anyway.” You feel better.
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. And if the quiz tells them that they don't need to buy the book, do you have like a funny message that says-
Maria Doyle: It probably should be funnier than it is. But I think it's just an honest response, right? Like, if you got a score higher than this, go. You're on your way. Don't waste your time. It's something of that nature, 'cause that's how I would speak in the real world, right?
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. Also, so you even have the diagnostic test within the book where you ask people, do you need to read this chapter?
Maria Doyle: So that's the one that deep dives into that chapter.
So there's a whole book diagnostic that takes you maybe three or four minutes to complete, absolute maximum, and then you get a printout of kind of the areas where you could improve.
And if there's a lot of areas where it says, “I'm not really doing this very well,” then you know the book can help you, give you all of those pointers. Whereas the one that goes in the chapters, it's far more detailed, and because each stage has three chapters in it, so then you know even within the section of the book which of the chapters-
Anna Featherstone: Which they can get into or which they can skip.
I can see that working on a level for a lot of authors who are writing nonfiction. And also for fiction writers who might say, you know, it's like that whole thing, do you love a romance where the hero is this? So it's an interesting information and marketing tool, and very cool.
What's Working for Lead Generation
Okay. So you also do a lead magnet. So you offer a sample chapter as well for people. Out of the different things you do, what's working best for you, like building your email list and your contacts? Is it the diagnostic test? Is it offering the free chapter? Or you don't actually know?
Maria Doyle: Well, I mean, I don't have sophisticated metrics on all of these things.
And thanks for pointing that out. I probably should. But yeah, anyone who's just launched a book and relaunched a business will tell you there's so many ducks that you need to have in a row. And this is one of them, the analytics behind it. But what I do know is that handing people a physical copy of something works.
When I went to Cannes for the Global Speakers Conference last year, I went and knocked on the doors of all the vocational colleges there because I knew that they were my primary market. And yeah, I'm now delivering two days' worth of keynotes and workshops for them earlier next year.
And that was literally from dropping off a single activity book with the book and saying, “Hey, this is what I do. If you can use it, great. Enjoy it. Merry Christmas,” kind of thing. “If you want some help, let me know.” And I got a phone call the next day, like, “Who are you? Where are you? When can we talk about what we can do? This is brilliant. This is exactly what our lecturers need.” So I think that's the, in terms of bang for buck… I mean, I know that online, using all the tools, you can get all the metrics and the analytics and whatever. But in terms of, I went to a school, I handed off a book, and now I've got a package that I'm delivering for them in two cities. You know, it works. Having the book as a physical, tangible copy, I feel like that's my strongest lead gen. All the other stuff I feel brings all of the other leads in, but then you've got them on your list, and then you can tell them about what you're doing.
The other thing is the word of mouth around the services that are on the back of the book. So I just did a workshop in Sydney. I got 18 people in the room. I didn't really advertise it. It was just literally the other people who'd been in the room telling their friends, “Go to that workshop. It's awesome.”
So, you know, I think word of mouth and people telling people is still a valid marketing method. Yeah.
What She'd Do Differently
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. And maybe even more so now, where people are actually seeking out real people with knowledge built in the field, and stories. Okay. So what are one or two things you'd do differently in production, distribution, or marketing if you were starting again?
Maria Doyle: I think when I launched, for a myriad of different reasons, and don't ask me to detail them, my new brand, website, and book launched within a week of one another. And that was absolute madness. So I think if I had my time over, I probably would have pushed out the launch of the book a lot later and established the new brand, telling people about who I am and what I'm doing and where I've been, and had a bit more of a lead-up to the book's-coming kind of place.
Because my new brand was trying to be established at the same time as the book getting out there, and it was so hard to push out all those messages, and I still haven't said, “Hey, I'm Maria. This is what I do,” because it's just been keeping up with all the products and things that happen then because you've launched a book.
So I would have given the runway to launching the book a lot longer beforehand. And time as well to work on the key messages that are behind the… I mean, the key messages I know, but then the marketing material and the themes when you're appearing in podcasts and stuff. You know, like having the business strategy behind the book thought out a bit better before you actually launch it.
So just because it's ready to physically launch doesn't mean, I think, that in business you're actually ready to launch it. You as a business owner, where your business is at, where your website's at, where your brand is at, I think you really need to look at all of those things to decide when the right launch date is, not just when it's hot off the press.
‘Cause no one cares. No one knows the difference.
Anna Featherstone: Exactly. And I think, like you hit it on the head, I'm always speaking with authors like, “Why do you want to get it out before Christmas?” Or, “Why do you want to get it out before June?” Or, “Why do you want to get it out?” Like, what's the point? Just because you have it, it doesn't mean you're ready.
And as you said, you need that runway to give it the best shot and to be able to capitalize on the opportunities.
Maria Doyle: You really do. And I think when I look back, I mean, what I've done in the year since the book has been launched is really establish myself in the groups and online and networking in places where people need what I've got in that book.
And so that takes time, especially because I've been living and traveling and working abroad for so many years. I don't have a local group of people who know me. It's more like an international mix of ex-clients, clients, friends of clients who have referred me.
So when you want to then pitch to a group of people who might need this book and the joy it can bring to your organization, like, who's Maria Doyle? It's like, well, I've been going in business 15 years. I've got all these clients, and my little ecosystem knows who I am, but no one else does outside of that. So yeah, I think that is very underrated, the amount of preparation it takes for a business and a brand to be ready to launch a book. And I don't think you should conflate all three like I did. Absolute nightmare.
Anna Featherstone: Well, everyone's a teacher, and you're just teaching a lot of authors out there a different way to do it, so I love that.
Maria Doyle: There we go. Everyone's got something to do.
Paying It Forward
Anna Featherstone: Yeah. Okay. So all profits from the book go to your Paying It Forward projects, providing volunteer teacher training where access to quality teacher education is limited. Why did you make that decision?
Maria Doyle: It's something I've been doing for many, many years.
I've been volunteering on projects. I was part of the Apex Club for years in Perth. After that, we did a Habitat for Humanity project when I was working for a teacher training company. We went to India and helped rebuild a village that had been destroyed by fire around the time of the tsunamis.
And I think the joy that you get out of doing those giving back projects is so intense. You think, “Wow,” like I'll never forget those trips. They are blazoned in my memory, like what I learnt from the people, what I learnt from the culture, what I learnt from being a minority in a really difficult, like not difficult but, you know, remote or challenging space to live.
So when I started a business, I just wanted to keep giving back. And I think this is the thing that a lot of solo business owners… It's taken me 15 years to figure it out myself but, well, that's not true, but anyway. You've got to be the provider of your own professional development. You've got to be the provider of these opportunities to give back. You know, I was looking at my partner going, “It's not fair. Your boss sends you on these work trips, and you get business class, and you get these conferences, and you get all the fun. You get Christmas bonuses and you get sent on these workshops where you learn new skills.”
And he was just looking at me going, “Well, should you speak to your boss about that?”
Yeah, maybe I should. And so this year I've really started doing that, really started treating myself like the employee of my own business and going, you know, like if I don't do these things for myself, then who's going to do them? So I think giving back's been ingrained into my business model and, well, into my psyche.
I mean, I started at school. I volunteered for all the different organizations. So it wouldn't make sense for me to run a business without a giving back component. And it just gives me joy. Spread some joy. Hand out some free books, you know? It's a good thing.
Where to Find Maria
Anna Featherstone: I love it. Yeah. Oh, it's fantastic speaking with you.
And I really enjoyed the book, and it taught me to ask a lot more questions in a learning situation, which is exciting. So where can people find you and your book?
Maria Doyle: Well, my name, mariadoyle.com. It's all on there. There are obviously cheaper ways to buy the book if you're not fussed about having a signed copy.
It's available on Amazon, Booktopia, all of the major lines. But yeah, if you want a signed copy from me and a pen and a bookmark and a few little bits and pieces, then yeah, you can purchase through my website.
Anna Featherstone: Oh, well, thank you so much for sharing all the thinking behind Everyone's a Teacher.
And your website links will be in the show notes. And to everyone out there who's just had a listen in, whatever you're writing, whatever you're creating, whatever you're questioning right now, thank you for being part of our very special ALLi podcast family. Here's to you and your publishing projects, and thank you, Maria.
Maria Doyle: Thanks, Anna.
Anna Featherstone: Awesome. Catch you all next time.
