First of all, I think your superpower is just making things really easy. You already know the blueprint, the strategy, you've got everything there and you just fed that to me in a way that I was easily able to make my book a success.
Doone Roisin is the creator and host of Female Startup Club, a Top Ten Entrepreneurship Podcast and the bestselling author of Your Hype Girl: 51 Female Founders Share Their Most Impactful Learnings, Tactics & Strategies In Business.
I advised Doone in the lead-up to her book launch in March of this year and she has since connected me with several clients. As a result of these experiences I have started a book consulting business: Ben Guest Book Consulting. On my website are the services I offer, my rates, and testimonials, including this from Doone:
I worked with Ben ahead of self-publishing my debut book. He helped me with publishing, marketing and promotion. My book, Your Hype Girl, hit #1 in multiple categories on Amazon including "Women & Business", "Ecommerce and Small Business", as well as hitting the top 100 of all paperback books in my home country of Australia (#55). I did everything Ben taught me and the results were so much more than I had anticipated. We smashed every goal that was set and more. I can't recommend Ben enough!
Everyone has a story to tell. When you’re ready to tell your story please reach out.
In 2022, Doone was named Australian Young Achiever of the Year in the UK and, as a result, met Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. In this conversation, Doone and I talk:
The ancillary benefits of publishing a book
Holding a physical copy of your book for the first time
Trends Group on Facebook
Using TikTok to promote your book
The power of organic word-of-mouth
Why having a checklist is key
Identifying your “comparable” author and book
Ben Guest Book Consultant. Rates here.
Meeting Prince Charles
VIDEO
TRANSCRIPT
Ben Guest (00:02):
Hi, everyone. This is Ben Guest, and today's conversation is with Doone Roisin. Doone is the creator and host of the podcast Female Startup Club, which is a top 10 podcast in the entrepreneurship category. And I helped Doone with the final stages of publishing and then marketing and promoting her book, Your Hype Girl, which she released in March, and hit number one in a bunch of categories, was the number 55 overall bestselling paperback book in Australia. Doone is Australian, but currently lives in England, and ended up with her being invited to Buckingham Palace to meet Prince Charles.
Ben Guest (00:46):
So in this interview, we talk about all the steps we took to promote her book and the actionable items to make it a number one best seller in multiple categories. And also, kind of as an outgrowth of that project, a few other people have contacted me about helping them with their book launch or even other aspects of writing and editing their book. And so, I'm now launching a book consulting business, and you can find that at benguest.net, where I have all the services I offer, testimonials, my rates, et cetera. And essentially, Doone was my first client. So enjoy our conversation.
Ben Guest (01:29):
Doone, great to see you.
Doone Roisin (01:31):
It's good to see you too, Ben.
Ben Guest (01:33):
So, Your Hype Girl has been out in the world. How successful was your launch?
Doone Roisin (01:39):
Oh my gosh. It has been out in the world since, when did we launch it? March? It's been a while. March, April, May, June, July, August, five months. Wow, that's crazy. So how did it go? I would say it was pretty damn successful. For me personally, I wanted that offline experience to give to my audience, give to my community, and have that kind of thing that's out there physical that I could ship to people and hold. And so, for me success was literally just number one, getting that out in the world and having that there, so obviously, tick.
Doone Roisin (02:15):
I also was thinking about what success was to me, in terms of I wanted to hit the best seller list on Amazon for the categories that I really cared about. And the categories that I really cared about were women in business, eCommerce, maybe small business or something like that. They were the ones that I cared about, but I was also like, "We'll see," because I obviously had no benchmark against what I had done before because it was totally new to me.
Doone Roisin (02:48):
Yeah. It went better than expected. I hit all the bestseller categories that I wanted to and so many others. I hit them, I think, day of for some of them. I hit women in business day of, and I had estimated based on our talking, that could take three months maybe, chipping away, so I was really stoked with that.
Doone Roisin (03:08):
And I think the things that I didn't expect to come from it were the success in terms of speaking opportunities and the opportunities that came out of having the book out in the world. So last week I spoke to the women at JP Morgan about my journey and the book and entrepreneurship in general. I landed a gig sitting on an investment committee to be part of this new fund that's launching in Australia, which is going to be funding women-founded tech companies that are in impact and purpose-driven sectors. And so, that has just been so wild.
Doone Roisin (03:47):
It also led to, I won Young Australian Achiever of the Year from the High Commissioner of Australia, which led to me going to Buckingham Palace and meeting the future king of England. All these things rattled off the back end of the book which I hadn't put in my goals to begin with, but it really was like, "Whoa." When I take a step back now and I look at that, I'm like, "Damn that's cool."
Ben Guest (04:13):
It's amazing.
Doone Roisin (04:14):
Yeah. Yeah. It's been really cool. And I think the other thing that I probably expected to happen but didn't realize how amazing it is, which I should know because I already get a thrill from getting DMs from my community in general, but still seeing the power of the book out in the world. So people sending me a message of how it's impacted them, why they're loving it, sharing about it on social media, that feeling is just priceless. It's so cool. So yeah, those are the kind of goals that I had. I wasn't looking at it as a revenue driver for me, which I think is a really hard goal to have if you are going to be an author, especially first time. But yeah, that wasn't a goal for me.
Ben Guest (04:59):
So much of what we do is in the digital world, podcasts and Zoom meetings and social media and so forth. But one of the first things you mentioned was having the physical book in your hand. Can you talk about the first time you held it, leafing through it, what the difference between something you're working on digitally and having a physical copy in your hands?
Doone Roisin (05:20):
Oh my gosh. I recorded the moment that I opened the final copy. And I have my dog on my lap, and it's this video where I'm just so happy and bubbling over with emotion because I was like, "Wow, I actually did this. I made this book. And this book is now out in the world, impacting thousands of other women, thousands of other business owners, future business owners. How cool is that?"
Ben Guest (05:46):
So we connected through the Trends group on Facebook. And I think you had pretty much had the manuscript finished. I had just published my book, and I had written up sort of a list of, "Okay, here's what worked well for me in terms of publishing and marketing." And then we connected, and so I helped guide you through that, the marketing and promotion phase, publishing, marketing, promotion. And then, of course, that led to a whole bunch of more opportunities. And now I'm launching my book consulting business, but it all started from you and I connecting on Trends group. And you mentioned-
Doone Roisin (06:24):
Shout out to Trends.
Ben Guest (06:25):
Shout out the Trends.
Doone Roisin (06:25):
I love Trends.
Ben Guest (06:27):
So many great opportunities and people on that group. And you mentioned that your book hit multiple best seller categories on Amazon, but let's not undersell it. You hit number one. And the number one category that we talked about, I think the first time we talked, was women in business. That was the category. That was the goal. Okay, this is a big category. It's tied directly to what your book is about and what your life is about. And not only did you hit the bestseller list, you hit number one.
Doone Roisin (06:57):
Yeah, it was pretty cool. We also hit, maybe a week later or maybe a few days later, we hit top 55 of all paperback books in Australia. And I was like, "What? This is wild." But yeah, it's crazy. And I think for me, we started the marketing plan two months out or maybe three months out, and would say that was a fine amount of time. Maybe three months is the optimal and two months is the absolute minimum. Somewhere in there is the sweet spot in terms of putting a lot of your energy and effort into drumming up the interest, drumming up Your Hype Girls who are going to support you and cheerlead and shout for you. Yeah. Amazing. I can't believe that I hit number one in all those categories, so wild.
Ben Guest (07:49):
So let's break it down. In terms of marketing, what were the best strategies that you implemented?
Doone Roisin (07:55):
I would say there's three things that I did really well. One is harder for the everyday person to achieve, and that's obviously because I have an inbuilt community, so I have a podcast, I have social channels, things like that. And I was pumping that message there. My audience was aware of the book coming out for so long. And then, in the lead up, it was every single episode, dropping it in wherever I could. And so, I already knew that people were really excited from my audience.
Doone Roisin (08:25):
But besides that kind of piece of the puzzle, the two other main things that really made a difference and shifted the needle was TikTok and hand-to-hand combat, and I'll break down both of those. When it came to TikTok, my approach was for the three months leading up, I doubled down on content creation organically. So I was posting three times a day. I was talking about the book. I was talking about Female Startup Club. I was just pushing out that content. And it's a lot, even three videos is a lot per day, and we grew a lot in that time as well. So when the book came out, there was again, more of an audience who were ready to buy and ready to be excited and ready to get involved.
Doone Roisin (09:13):
And again, it's one of those things. I think people often lean straight towards paid marketing or kind of this magic pill that actually, it's not the money you need to invest, it's the time you need to invest to create valuable content that's exciting and gets people excited authentically about what you're doing. And so, TikTok for me on the organic side was really important. I was creating a lot of content and then I also partnered with a lot of TikTok, or not even a lot, I think it was like 10 influencers ranging from micro-influencers, 1,000, 2,000, 3000 followers, then some medium to large size, a few hundred thousand followers, right up to one TikTok person who had about 3 million followers.
Doone Roisin (09:58):
And so, that all came out on launch day along with everyone that we were rallying on TikTok and all of our content as well. And I think it just created a really happy buzz on TikTok. And looking back, I tried a number of different things. I tried PR that didn't work for me. I wasted a lot of time pedaling. It didn't come to fruition. I got a few good things. I got a feature in Refinery, which was absolutely amazing, but I pedaled a lot to get not a lot of return.
Doone Roisin (10:30):
And TikTok was one of those things where looking back, it's hard to see, obviously with Amazon, you're not able to own your customer data. You're not able to see the traffic, where it's coming from, all that kind of stuff. But anecdotally, I could see people in the comments on the videos of the influencers that were posting, being like, "Just ordered my copy." So I was able to see that real time feedback from people who were supporters.
Doone Roisin (10:56):
And then the second thing that worked really well for me again, which was a time investment versus a money investment, was just hand-to-hand combat. And so, what I did was I went through absolutely every single thing that I could to make a list. I made this huge spreadsheet of everything. I went through my entire emails, and went through and found every single person I knew that had a newsletter who could be a potential newsletter to spread the word. Any kind of email-focused community, I wrote that on a list.
Doone Roisin (11:31):
I went through everyone in my Facebook friends. Who do I know and hear that could either shout about it, could introduce me to someone who has a community of their own on Facebook, put that on the list. I also did this for Facebook groups. What Facebook groups am I a part of? Can I reach out to the admin owner? Can I ask them if I can provide some value, give a talk, provide some resources in return for promotion about the book? I went through every single WhatsApp conversation and I listed out all of my friends who were going to be happy to shout about me on social media, all my friends of friends. I asked them if they would tell their friends. I think on the day I had a group of my core best friends in a WhatsApp group, and I asked them to send it to five people that they thought would love the book. And so, everyone was becoming my hype girl.
Doone Roisin (12:18):
I also made lists of podcasters that I knew. I tried to think about, "Who do I know, even if it's really far disconnected and not my direct community, who has a community that I could call in that favor?" And this is why networking and relationship building is so important, because the day that you have something that you need to have people rallying for you, you're able to knock on that door and be like, "Hey, today's the day. I need some help. Can you help me?" And yeah, I just went through everything, LinkedIn, Instagram. I just made tons of lists, and then I just had a column where it was their name, how I'm going to reach out to them and on what channel, and have I reached out to them, and then the follow up.
Doone Roisin (13:01):
And I just started sending messages, obviously super personalized, literally one-to-one, "Here's what I'm doing. Here's how I'd love to see if you could help me." Whether it was through a paid shout out or whether it was through just organic, whatever it might be, but figuring out, depending on the relationship, what made sense. And that seriously was what I attribute a lot of the success to, because I just did one by one. I was not going for a mass approach with things like paid ads where you're just spraying money at a wall and seeing what sticks and trying to find that audience. I was going to directly audiences that I already knew and just telling them what I was up to and seeing if there was something that we could do together.
Ben Guest (13:48):
One of the things that both you and I didn't do was paid advertising on Amazon ads, Facebook ads, et cetera. You and I, we focused on organic, authentic word of mouth. That's the best kind of marketing promotion you can have. And it's so fun talking to you now. So obviously, I know us working together from my side, and I remember sending you after I think our first conversation, I put together a checklist, a spreadsheet checklist that I shared with you on Google Docs.
Ben Guest (14:20):
And then, just for the listeners, every couple of weeks, I'd check in and see where Doone was on the checklist and what she checked off. And the tabs kept growing, and everything that you're just describing, you had it all laid out on that checklist and you kept adding more tabs. "Okay. These groups I'm going to reach out to. This community, I'm going to reach out to. These people, I'm going to reach out to, these podcasts." And you just had it all laid out on the checklist.
Doone Roisin (14:46):
When you sent me the checklist, I was like, "Great. This is the beginning of the master checklist and the master kind of plan," because you house everything in one document, and it just becomes your, "Here is what you need to do every single day, chipping away." And I had all of your things to do on that first tab that I was just able to go through and follow and slowly chip away at over the three months or two months or whatever.
Doone Roisin (15:11):
And then, I had all of the launch party plans, communities, pricing, what I'd spent, everything else, just everything related to the book lived in that one document. And I even did my recap in there as well, where I afterwards went through and put in all the press that we'd received, not that it was a lot, but we received the Refinery article, a few smaller pieces of press and all the TikTok videos and things like that recapped. So I'm always able to just go back and immediately be like, "Oh yeah, that's right. That's exactly what happened."
Doone Roisin (15:44):
And it's also good for when you are doing your wrap up, not that I did a report for myself, because I absolutely didn't. But when you look back at all the different initiatives you did, unless you have everything clearly mapped out and in one place, it's pretty easy to forget what you did. And even before this call, I just opened up the document to be like, "Yeah, what did I do? That was five months ago. I forget." So yeah, that checklist was... I love the checklist. It makes life very easy when you have a great checklist that's created from an expert.
Ben Guest (16:12):
And the cool thing about it is, now that you have that checklist, now you have a plan for the next book.
Doone Roisin (16:17):
Oh, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And exactly, you're right. I added notes to it. I would know next time things that I added in along the way. Yeah, it's mandatory, I would say.
Ben Guest (16:29):
TikTok is the new thing for selling books, so let's dive into that a little bit.
Doone Roisin (16:34):
The reality of TikTok is the more time you put into it, the more you get out of it, a hundred percent. So when I was posting three times a day, I was growing really quickly because, of course, I'm on there three times a day, pushing new styles of content, trying new different things, really being there when people open their app all the time, basically, whereas now I only post once a day and I can see that's slowed my growth down.
Doone Roisin (16:57):
But TikTok has been really instrumental actually, in being a discovery channel for my podcast. So I always ask, if someone leaves a kind message in my Instagram DMs or on email or LinkedIn or in TikTok and says, "Oh my God, I love your show" or "I love your podcast," I always reply, and somewhere in that reply, "How did you find the show?" And actually, a lot of the time it's through organic SEO or podcast recommendations in the apps, but the other way that people often say is TikTok.
Ben Guest (17:33):
What are your tips for authors using TikTok to raise awareness for their books?
Doone Roisin (17:40):
What are my tips? So if you're new to TikTok and you haven't got any experience on the platform, and you might be someone who is a little insecure about putting your face on the camera and this new style of creating content and things like that, I totally get it. I definitely felt like that in the beginning. It took me a while to get used to it. So first of all, my tip would be just to consume a lot of content that is around your niche.
Doone Roisin (18:07):
So if you are writing chick lit, and you have a lot of authors that you look up to, go and see if those authors are on TikTok. Or even if it's not linked to your niche, but go and find people who are authors just in general and look up what they're doing. And you can do that by searching the hashtags. There's lots of book talk, book recs, book recommendation. Often there are lots of trends around different books that are going around at the moment or the way that people display their books on TikTok. So I would do a lot of research.
Doone Roisin (18:43):
I would then spend some time just creating 30 to 50 drafts and not even putting pressure on yourself to post them, but just to get comfortable, get familiar, and get into the groove of how you feel and look and sound on video. And then, there are so many small little tips that you can do with TikTok. For example, one that I heard recently, and I'm sure this stuff changes all the time, but one that I heard recently is if you're going to start a TikTok account, you should immediately start posting explosively the day that you start your account, not tomorrow, not 10 weeks from now.
Doone Roisin (19:27):
So for example, when I tell you to do 50 drafts, do that on the dummy account, don't use that as your main account. And then, the day that you're ready to start your account, that's the day that you start posting minimum three times a day and you give yourself a 30-day challenge, and you just go all out. And you've already got your list of content that you have found online.
Doone Roisin (19:47):
What you can also do is look for viral videos that have already got a proven kind of method to how they look, and try and recreate that video. Take inspiration from it, make it your own, but you can see why things have gone viral and take those kind of learnings from that video when you are consuming and researching.
Doone Roisin (20:06):
And then I would also say, what you can do on TikTok is you go to the search bar, and if you were to search something really specific, not even something specific, let's say book talk, all the top performing videos will come up at the top. And you can even filter it so that you filter it by most liked in the last three months, and then you'll get the most viral videos related to that.
Doone Roisin (20:34):
And then you can build a bit of an idea around, "Oh, yeah. I can actually create that kind of content. That would work for me and my style and what I like." Or, "Oh, I can see why that worked. I could take elements of that." And build a bit of a content strategy so that when you are gearing up to launch and you're like, "Yep, I have got the time carved out every single day," or "I'm going to batch record every weekend so that I have my 15 videos or however many it is for the week." And then, just the day that you're ready to start that day, get it all out for 30 days or three months.
Ben Guest (21:08):
And you mentioned something there that it's so key, not for TikTok, but for any type of marketing and promotion you're doing for a book. And this is something that we talked about the very first time that we had a conversation, which is finding your pilot author, finding your comparable author and your comparable book, and seeing what they're doing, what podcasts they're doing interviews on, what they're doing on their social media, what their cover of their book looks like, so on and so forth.
Ben Guest (21:39):
And the first time that we talked and I said, "Okay, what is a comparable book? Who is a comparable author to your book, which is Your Hype Girl?" And you referenced the book, How to Build a Goddamn Empire by Ali Kriegsman. And just getting ready for the podcast this morning, I clicked over to Amazon and checked out Your Hype Girl on Amazon. And sure enough, it says "frequently bought together," Your Hype Girl.
Doone Roisin (22:06):
No way.
Ben Guest (22:07):
And How to Build a Goddamn Empire by Ali Kriegsman. So you nailed the pilot author comparable of, "I want the same audience as this book and this author." And now Amazon has picked that up, and the algorithm has picked that up, and they're matching the two of your books together.
Doone Roisin (22:24):
Oh, my God, that's so cool. And why that's cool is I really loved watching Ali bring out her book. And we had her on the show when she launched the book. And so, it's so funny that you say that now, knowing those books have still been managed to be linked somehow. I love that for me. It's cool.
Ben Guest (22:44):
And it's totally organic.
Doone Roisin (22:45):
Yep. That's so great.
Ben Guest (22:46):
That's the thing that we're talking about. And for people listening to this podcast who are in whatever phase of writing, editing, publishing their book, the number one takeaway that I want or we want you to have is, you do not have to do this alone. You're not on your own. People have gone before you and done this, so all you have to do... The number one takeaway is find that comparable author and that comparable book, see what they've done, and you just fit in behind what they're doing. Now, I want to be clear-
Doone Roisin (23:20):
Yes. Reverse engineer it.
Ben Guest (23:21):
Yes, exactly.
Doone Roisin (23:21):
Reverse engineer what are the levers that they have pulled that get them in front of audiences that are relevant to that book and how can you repeat it.
Ben Guest (23:33):
Exactly. And so, I want to be clear, let's say you're writing a book in the horror genre. You don't say, "Okay, my comparable author is Steven King." Right? You don't pick the number one best selling author in your genre. You pick someone that's more closely comparable.
Ben Guest (23:46):
So the example I always use is right now, I'm finishing up a book project with a retired NBA player, Scott Williams. He played on the Chicago Bulls of the nineties, won three championships, so on and so forth. And he played the position of power forward. So when we're looking at comparable authors, there's another power forward from the nineties, a guy named Charles Oakley, who just published a book last year. So now it's just tracking, "Okay, what are the interviews? What are the media hits? What are the tactics that Charles Oakley used in publishing his book?" We don't go and look at, "Okay. When Michael Jordan published his book or Kobe Bryant published his book." You look at someone that's a very nice comparable in terms of who the person is, in terms of what the book is.
Doone Roisin (24:33):
Absolutely.
Ben Guest (24:34):
Speaking of not having to do this on your own, so when this podcast interview drops, I'm also officially putting my shingle out there, Ben Guest Book Consulting.
Doone Roisin (24:49):
Ready for hire.
Ben Guest (24:51):
Ready for hire. And Doone has been great. You've already connected me with several people. And again, it's just all organic, it's all just word of mouth, and that's led to a couple of great projects that I'm currently working on. I hate doing this, but if we could do a little bit of promotion, what was it like working with me?
Doone Roisin (25:06):
Oh, my gosh. First of all, I think your superpower is just making things really easy. You already know the blueprint, the strategy. You've got everything there. And you just fed that to me in a way that I was easily able to be, "Great. I'm busy. I don't have time for lots of different things." You just gave me the list and I was able to work my way through it.
Doone Roisin (25:33):
And I would say the number one thing was, it was just so easy working with you, which was such joy, such joy in my life. And then I would also say you are a great accountability buddy. You were a cheerleader for me the whole way through. You made me feel really supported. You made me feel really good about myself, and made me feel like I could totally achieve the things that I wanted to achieve, so accountability was second.
Doone Roisin (25:58):
And then I think also, what was really important was if I just had a quick question, I would just come to you and you would have the answer. It was just so easy having that person that you can... Instead of having to spend time researching and then you don't know if that's really the answer and then you'd ask five people their opinions, I could just be like, "Ben, hey, what do I need to do here?" Yeah. I think working with you was just absolutely amazing and I can't recommend you highly enough. I really loved the process and you made my life easy. You were my accountability buddy, and you were just there when I needed support. You were my support line. But yeah, I had the best time working with you. It was super fun.
Ben Guest (26:41):
Thank you so much. And it was the same. It was just a joy working with you. And I can't tell people how enjoyable it is to work with someone, and you have your plan and you follow your plan, you execute your plan, and then it succeeds, and it's more successful than you even hoped and envisioned for. But it's all about just going back to those actionable items. I really think that's the key. It's not, "Okay. Here's the plan, and it's just reach out to some podcasts." Right? It's, "Okay. Have your comparable author. Find five podcast interviews they did. What were the podcasts? What's the contact information? Contact these five people." Actionable item that takes all the mystery out of it. You know exactly what you need to do.
Doone Roisin (27:31):
A hundred percent. Absolutely. And I think the other thing is that you can often feel like, "Oh my God. How am I going to get up to the top of that mountain? That mountain is so high." That just feels not attainable. But then when you've broken it down into all those tiny little steps, it's just the 1% every day that you need to aim for. You just need to tick off one tiny thing or two tiny things, or if you're in a power mode, tick off 10 things. Great, amazing. But that's why you give yourself that three month window where you're just going to chip away every single day. And then when you look back in hindsight, you're going to be like, "Wow. That really compounded because I did all the steps from three months out, and then I'm at the top of the mountain and I don't even know how I got here." It's really that 1%, 1% every day.
Ben Guest (28:20):
You mentioned being invited to Buckingham Palace and meeting the future king of England. And it was so cool seeing that on your social media. Do you tie that directly to the success of your book?
Doone Roisin (28:34):
Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. It's just such a wild story.
Ben Guest (28:39):
Because that was not on our list.
Doone Roisin (28:41):
Definitely not on the list of goals, going to Buckingham Palace. Yeah, that was so wild. Basically, the book came out, I had a feature go up on Sohohouse.com, which was talking about the book, talking about entrepreneurship. And someone saw that and nominated me for the Young Australian Achiever of the Year Award in the UK. And when I received the email, I didn't know I was nominated or anything like that. But I received an email to say, I'd won this thing. And I was like, "Oh, that's not true. This is a lie. This is spam or whatever." And then I LinkedIn stalked a few people and I was like, "Oh, maybe this is legit." And my family was out here being like, "I don't think this is legit. You need to be careful. If it's Australia House, they'll be contacting you by mail." And I was like, "I don't know." Anyway, it was all a bit weird.
Doone Roisin (29:36):
And even when we were going, they hosted this huge gala event and I had to get up and give a speech. And there was hundreds of people there. And the person who won Australian of the Year was this amazing woman who was the Lead Statistician who worked on Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. And even on our way there, I was like, "Maybe this is part of some big scam" or "Oy, is this really real?" And then when we got there, I was like, "Oh, it actually is really real."
Doone Roisin (30:06):
And then the next thing that happened was after that, not too long after that, I got another email from the Embassy, because Australia House is the Embassy of Australia in London. I got another email from the assistant to the High Commissioner asking if I would be happy for my name to be put forward. But they were very vague and it was something to do with the royals. And I was, again, just shrugged it off, was like, "Oh, whatever."
Doone Roisin (30:35):
And then, it was so weird. It was such a weird coincidence, because on the Saturday morning at 6:00 AM, my husband and I were going to fly to New York for some work stuff. And on the Friday afternoon, when we walked back into the apartment, we never check our mail, because we have concierge where we receive packages and stuff. We never check our actual letter box. And I was like, "Oh, we haven't checked the letter box in a while. We should just check it." When I opened it up and it's packed to the brim, and on the very top sitting there is a letter from Buckingham Palace. And I was like, "Oh, shit," because it had been Jubilee Weekend. And I was like, "Oh I bet I've missed the event. I reckon I was invited to just party at the palace or something and it's already gone."
Doone Roisin (31:22):
And then I opened it, and it was an invitation basically around celebrating people who have contributed to culture and community within the UK and as a result of what I've been building with Female Startup Club and being recognized as the Australian Young Achiever of the Year. And I was like, "Whoa, this is crazy." And it was for that week. And so, I was about to fly the next morning. I would have missed it if I didn't check the letter box, because the event was then on Thursday. So I had to change my flight, went to Buckingham Palace, and I went with Merryn, who is the Lead Statistician who won Australian of the Year.
Doone Roisin (31:59):
And we just had the best time. It was so cool. I had a few moments with Prince Charles and we were talking about what I was doing with Female Startup Club. And he was making some jokes about the Prince's Trust, because he supports young entrepreneurs and ambitious young people through his organization. And it was just one of those moments that was so weird and so bizarre, so amazing. It was just such a thrill, and yeah, had the best day and then flew to New York and we got to celebrate on a high in New York as well.
Ben Guest (32:36):
What's Prince Charles like? What's one of the jokes he made?
Doone Roisin (32:39):
Oh, my God. I can't even remember because I froze. I can't remember the specific things that he said, but he was so charming. Of course, royals, you expect them to be charming and you expect them to be lovely. But when I met him, I was like, "Wow." He deeply looks into your eyes and really gives you the moment to have a little chat and have a little joke. He's so charming and so warm and absolutely lovely. And Camilla was also just wonderful. She was so lovely and kind and very gracious. So yeah, it was really special. I couldn't have ever imagined that Female Startup Club would lead me to Buckingham Palace.
Ben Guest (33:24):
That's so cool. We started at the top of the interview talking about the ancillary benefits of publishing a book, and it leads to things like speaking gigs and it's really an accelerator, an accelerant for everything else that you're doing. And in this case, it led to being invited to Buckingham Palace. Now I can't promise you if you engage me, if you engage Ben Guest Book Consulting, that you're going to get invited to Buckingham Palace, but I can promise you that you will have a successful book launch.
Doone Roisin (33:55):
Yes. Everyone should hit you up immediately so they can get their own version of Buckingham Palace on the way.
Ben Guest (34:02):
I love it. So you can find me at, again, the day this interview drops, my website goes live. It's benguest.net. That has all the services I offer, my rates, testimonials, including a wonderful testimonial from you, Doone. Doone, it's been absolutely a pleasure becoming friends over this past year, getting to know you and working with you on this project. And as I said, it's the reward that I get from seeing how successful this was. It can't be put into words, but it's just been an absolute pleasure working with you.
Doone Roisin (34:35):
Aww, thanks Ben. You are just absolute joy. It's been such a pleasure working with you, too. And I'm so stoked for this new phase for you and all that you're doing as well. It's so exciting. I'm going to be cheering for you. I'll be your hype girl.
Ben Guest (34:52):
Love it. Love it. Love it. Please tell everybody the name of the book and where they can find you.
Doone Roisin (34:58):
Yes. The book is called Your Hype Girl. You can find it on Amazon or buy at my website, femalestartupclub.com. And you can find me at Doone Roisin, which is D-O-O-N-E, R-O-I-S-I-N in all the places. I'm on TikTok. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. I'm all over the shop, so check in with me wherever you want. Always happy to give advice, always happy to answer any follow-up questions, always happy to just chat about what you're up to, would love to.
Ben Guest (35:32):
Fantastic. Doone, much continued success, and thank you so much.
Doone Roisin (35:38):
Thanks, Ben.
Ben Guest (35:39):
So that was my conversation with Doone Roisin. I'm Ben Guest. You can find all of my work at benbo.substack.com. That's benbo.substackcom. Benbo is a family nickname, B-E-N-B-O. And as I mentioned in this interview, I've started a book consulting business. You can find my services and rates at benguest.net. That's benguest.net. I also have some of the books I'm currently working on, testimonials, et cetera. So I think everybody has a book in them, a story to tell, and if you're interested in telling yours, please reach out. You can find me a benguest.net. Have a great day.
72. Publishing a Bestseller with Doone Roisin