In 2019 I was invited to deliver a 5-minute talk, like this one about walking tour guiding at a Frome Tourism Day. This talk became my book.
Having had experience as a tour guide, and being trained as a London City Guide, I was approached by the Town Council to do a training course for some walking tour guides here in Frome.
So I created the content, the PowerPoint slides, and created a programme. One session per month was in the classroom and one visiting some of our Frome landmarks like St. John’s, the Memorial Theatre, and the Frome museum – places that would be of interest to someone visiting town and to expand the knowledge of the new tour guides in Frome.
But as happens, people can’t attend every session. And so, there were people who are missing a lot of the content.
Creating Content
I decided that I would create using the same content but record my voice over the PowerPoint slides and make some videos. And then those were accessible on my website. I don’t advise putting heavy content such as video directly on your website because it slows your website down and Google doesn’t like it. But it was only temporary so people could access it with password protection. They could access the videos and they could continue with the course. Even if they weren’t there. So the guides were trained and I remember looking at my computer and thinking there’s content on here that could be making me money people pay for this content.
I looked around. So I looked around and I found platforms where I could put my content. One of them was Udemy. And I will now tell you don’t put your content on Udemy because my course is currently $59.99 on Udemy. But if somebody buys it, I sometimes only get about $2 per course saLE because they always put it on special. So it’s not advisable to go for Udemy.
Training Guides in Zimbabwe
But, I did put it on Udemy and actually, it has led to greater things simply because one of my students was a lady in Zimbabwe. Lynette got in touch. She runs a walk tour company in Zimbabwe (Free Walking Tours Harare), and she wanted to train more walking tour guides. The problem is that in Zimbabwe, internet and data is really very expensive, so streaming videos or downloading them could be quite a challenge. So I suggested that she collect the email addresses of those who she thinks would be interested in learning how to be a tour guide, I would send them snippets of information, which is in short emails. I transcribed the videos using Otter and I edited them down to short emails.
When you talk, it’s not always in a great structure for the written word, so the emails were perfect. And of course, the content would then not be overwhelming.
Over about a year, these ‘students’ got 52 emails (one per week).
One of the students, Rogers, is a guide in a safari park in Kenya and he mentioned in an email that he was saving all the emails to share with his colleagues. I said I would send him a pdf of all the content when the email series was complete.
Now the content was taking on a different format
So, when the email series was complete, I pulled all that content together, put it into a Word document, and did some formatting.
I created my own cover in Canva, used a photograph of me guiding which I put through a filter on my phone because I have a Samsung, and it’s not great but it has a filter that makes it look like a drawing.
Uploaded it to Amazon as a Kindle and paperback.
And to do the final edit I am reading chapters on a podcast, which is being streamed to Spotify, Appel, Google podcast, Amazon music and more.
So, the same content is:
- An online course on Udemy and a collaborative platform such as Content College
- And email series
- A book: Kindle and Paperback
- Workshops and training
- Podcast
What does this book do for me?
- Shows me as an expert in my field
- Expands my network
- Can reach more people – Aren’t we in business to make a difference to more people’s lives?
When are you stepping forward to do a 5-minute talk, as the first step to writing your book?
International Women’s Day 2022
On Tuesday 8th March 2022, as part of a series of events in Frome, Somerset, (by the town council) I brought together 6 other women to share their ideas, inspirations, and insights.
I did this talk as part of the event:
