THE PODCAST FOR ONLINE COURSE CREATORS GOING BIG!

Join business strategist Tina Tower as she explores how to build your empire by packaging your expertise into online courses, speaking, content, podcasting and credibility.

Tina has over 17 years of experience in starting, building and selling companies, she's a speaker, teacher, mama and world traveller.

She's unapologetic about living an intentionally big life and if you want too, this show is designed to show you many different options to help you gain clarity over YOUR version of awesome.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• Recharge and refocus with the importance of taking breaks.

• Gain insight through reflection on personal journey.

• Embrace aging and find balance in your life.

• Master time and space management for increased productivity.

• Prioritise self-care for a healthier and happier lifestyle.

The first episode for 2024 is HERE! I had the longest podcast break I've had in 5 years with 3 months off. While I missed you, I had so much space to think and to redesign my life and the way I work. Today, I am sharing with you what lead to the 2023 exhaustion, how I identify it so that I don't reach burnout and what I did to give myself the best chance of this not happening again.

I'm sharing the 'Three Filters' that all of my business related decisions go through so that I can use my limited time and energy in the best possible way, plus what I quit that I thought I would hold dear for the rest of my life.

It's great to be back!

Want more?

We have some incredible things happening at Her Empire Builder this year! If you are a course creator, you have to be a part of this incredible community. Jump on to herempirebuilder.com and check it out!

If you loved the episode, I would be so grateful if you shared it on insta or left a review! 

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Her Empire Builder is a combination of live sessions and pre-recorded content to help you get what you need, when you need it.

I know that you're the expert and you've got all of your subject knowledge nailed - now it's time to build the business behind your online course and stop being the worlds best kept secret. 

Show transcription 

Intro 

00:00:00
Hello and welcome to episode 235 of her Her Empire Builder podcast and the first episode of 2024. I am back. I have missed you. So for our regular listeners, we have had a three month podcast break. I have not done that since 2017.

00:00:29
Sorry. 2018 was when we first started on the regular weekly. We did a few sporadic ones before then, but regular weekly since 2018 and haven't had a break and just took a three month break. So today I am talking to you all about taking a break before burning out because I think it's something that we all experience as business women and why I took that break, what I did on the break to recover, and some tips that you can take from that as well because it's been quite a few months in going through all of the different things and the major life events that has led to a lot of revelations. So welcome back.

00:01:14
It's good to be back. Let's get to it. Hello and welcome to her Her Empire Builder show. I'm your business strategist and host, Tina Tower, and I am so happy you are here. My goal with this show is to bring you the inspirational and informative conversations with interesting humans, as well as the tools, tips and resources to help you build your online business.

00:01:39
Since starting my first business at 20, I have built and sold four times. And in 2018, while traveling around the world with my family for a year, I tripped and fell into this wonderful world of online courses, and I instantly fell in love. I'm a million dollar course creator, a world traveler, bestselling author, a mummer of two man children, and a lucky wife. There's no playing small here. It's your time to grow to run a highly profitable business that makes you wildly wealthy while you positively impact your clients and the world around you and have the life you've always dreamed of.

Main episode 

 00:02:16

Let's get it. Hi, friends. Okay, so welcome back to the her Her Empire Builder podcast. The first thing that I will talk about is we've gone back to her Her Empire Builder podcast. So again, for longtime listeners, I have changed my mind a few times on podcast names.

00:02:35
And I like to share this because I think all of us, sometimes when we start things, we feel like that is so absolute and we need to stick with whatever we have started. But one of my favorite things about being an entrepreneur is that we have all of the ability to change our mind at any point in time. We can go, you know what, what's worked up to here now longer doesn't work for me going forward, and I can pivot and I can change direction. So when I first started podcasting, we had the female advantage. I had no business to really funnel the podcast into.

00:03:14
It was purely through my interests of wanting to talk to really interesting people. And so I did that after I sold my last company, we started with the female advantage. And then when I traveled around the world for a year, I was very like, eat, pray, love. And I would only work from my laptop, and I was going to be Super Zen and not have a conventional business ever again. And so I had the intentional life was the name of the podcast.

00:03:42
And then when I started her Her Empire Builder a couple of years later, I wanted it to be synonymous with that. So we changed it to her Her Empire Builder podcast. I think in 2020 we changed to that. And then at the start of 2023, I changed the name to female course creator show. The reason I changed it to female course creator show was her Her Empire Builder is really great for people who know what her Her Empire Builder is, but for people who don't know what her Her Empire Builder is, it is tricky to be able to find it.

00:04:12
So I was like, well, let's call it female course creator show. Everyone can find it everywhere. It meant that our loyal listeners and people that knew me couldn't find it anywhere. So people were searching her Her Empire Builder. People were searching Tina Tower, and they couldn't find it.

00:04:27
And so we have gone back to her Her Empire Builder show. I toyed with the idea of doing the Tina Tower show, but I don't want it to be the Tina Tower show. I want it to be more about community. I want it to be more about you. I want it to be about building your empire.

00:04:43
But this year, I will be deviating a little bit from purely course creator content. There's a lot of people that I want to have conversations with on the podcast that have nothing to do with the course creation industry. However, it all helps us build businesses. So I want to talk to some high achieving sports stars, some philosophers, some musicians, some psychologists. I've got a list of all of these people that are very interesting people that I want to discover and unfold and kind of peel back that onion a little bit for those interesting conversations that have nothing to do with cost creation, but help us all as business leaders.

00:05:23
And so that will be coming this year. That's what you can expect from me. So I just took three months off the podcast, the end of last year, and I wanted to explain that in the first episode back. I didn't want to just go straight into life as normal. I wanted to explain what happened.

00:05:44
Why did I drop off the face of the earth. Because not only did I take three months off the podcast, I went from posting daily on social media and doing stories a few times a day to posting twice a month for three months. And it was glorious. It was so nice. I loved every second of it.

00:06:07
I did think I would miss it a lot. I didn't miss it as much as I thought I would. I'm really itching to get back into it now, but it was the right decision to take that time off. So last year, well, actually the last few years. So I'm going to get really personal with you on this episode because I think it's helpful.

00:06:28
Because often what we see on the outside of someone's journey is wildly different to what's happening behind the scenes. And I know for me, sometimes when I find people's back end, what happens behind the scenes, it brings me comfort in going, oh, yeah, okay, so no one's really got it all worked out. Everyone's really learning and growing as they go. And to me, I always want to be learning and growing, but I have been sprinting my entire life. I have gone as hard and fast as I can for my whole life.

00:07:02
It started when I was a teenager. I left home when I was 13. I was a competitive swimmer, competitive netball player, and I was into everything, doing everything, always trying to be the best that I could be. Always. My expectations of self are very, very high.

00:07:21
And I think that's intrinsic. I think that, yes, of course, it's exasperated, exacerbated. Exacerbated by nurture and the environment we're in and the people that are around us. But I think a lot of it is innate in there as well. And so I've always been very driven.

00:07:41
I've always been very ambitious, and that has served me very well. I have a beautiful life that I am so grateful for that is filled with so much incredible abundance that I don't think I would have without having gone through everything that I've gone through and working the way that I have. However, I know that after I sold my company in 2016, I was very burnt out and I didn't know how to relax and recover after that. We took a year off and we traveled around the world. However, even doing that, I didn't know how to do it in a way that was restorative.

00:08:25
In that year, we went to 28 countries, which was awesome and so much fun, but we literally sprinted our way around the world. And then I came back and started her Her Empire Builder, and it's grown so beautifully. And I felt this yearning in my soul a couple of years ago when we were hitting, like, end of 2020 that I was like, I can feel this treadmill getting faster and faster and faster, and I am running faster and faster, and I don't want to anymore. The weight of the responsibility that we carry was a much easier load when I was younger and naive than as I get older and I go, I no longer need to do that. I no longer want to do that.

00:09:17
And so I've really been playing. I read a lot, I get a lot of coaching. I listen to a lot of podcasts in really playing with this idea of going, okay, everything that served me till now, is it possible? And can I actually throw a lot of that out so that I can find a new way of living that will serve me for the next stage of my life in a way that feels a lot more aligned? My old way felt aligned at the time, but it no longer does, if that makes sense.

00:09:48
And I know that for a lot of us, we go through that. And for me, last year, I had a couple of really big things going on. So my kids are getting older, which obviously kids get older, but something in me seemed to. I mean, I've always been a life planner. I remember my friends, like, laughing their asses off at me once when we were at a health retreat, and I wrote every year down, so, like, 2023, I'll be this age, my husband will be this age, kids will be this age, 2024.

00:10:22
And I went all the way up who, when I was 104 with the year of my likely death, and they were like, you're a psycho. But. So I've always visualized all of this and gone, all right, we've got this much time left in a perfect, like, in my ideal mind, then how can I maximize that? How can I make sure that life is as good as it can get? I always want it to be as good as it can get.

00:10:48
I know we have one life. I know it's very precious. I want to live it as well as I can. And so I've always been very cognizant of that. But at the same time, I've never really grasped my kids really felt into them being not living with me anymore.

00:11:10
And lately, like the last year, both of my sons have really clear ideas of what they want to do once school finishes. And that may change. For sure. That may change. It's highly likely.

00:11:26
Like, from what we know, it's highly likely it's going to change. But I remember when I was 16, my ideas that I had and my plans that I had for life and everything that I wanted to do was very real to me. And so when I talk to them, I'm like, this is very real for them. And so I want to take that seriously. But it also means that I have friends that are trying to get their kids out of the house in their mid 20s, late 30s.

00:11:52
Both of my kids are ready to fly the nest as soon as they finish school, and so they'll be 18 and gone. And the other day, I was talking to my oldest son, and I was getting upset because he's just gone back to school. The summer holidays are over here in Australia. They had two months off, which I love, and it was so good getting to spend so much time with them, but it finished. And on the last night of the holidays, we went and we got ice creams, which we do most times before school goes back.

00:12:27
And we were there chatting, and I just burst into tears going, we have two more summer holidays left together. That's it. Two more summer holidays of your childhood, and then you're like an adult. You're out in the world. You can go wherever you want to go.

00:12:47
You can do whatever you want to do. Obviously, I'll always be there, and I'll always be their mama. But that whole chapter is done and closed. And it just hit me in going, like, I have lived my life around my kids, as most of us, if we're parents do. And all of my decisions take into account what they're doing, where they're going to be, what will work for them, how it can work for both of us, like, everything.

00:13:17
And that is no longer going to be necessarily a consideration. And so it's wild to me. So I've been really going through all of that, and what does that look like afterwards? And all of our plans, if they don't stay where we are, one of them wants to go overseas, the other one wants to travel for a bit. There's a whole lot of different things.

00:13:40
Even when I'm talking about it now, I'm, like, processing it while I'm talking to you about it, just going. I know it's still crazy when you have kids. I know a lot of people have kids. A lot of people don't have kids. But when you have kids, everyone tells you, like, enjoy it.

00:13:57
It'll go by so fast. And I always have. Even when I had my second son, Cohen, we sat on the lounge when he was born for about five weeks, and I barely moved. I just sat there like, staring at him, playing with his little chubby hands and his little feet, eating his toes and playing with his cheeks and just trying to soak up every second. And I feel like I've been soaking up every second, but it's still gone too fast.

00:14:19
And so, anyway, it's all over too quickly. However, I have just turned 40 a couple of weeks ago, and I'm like, we got married really young. I was 21. I had my oldest when I was 24 and the next one when I was 25. So we did everything very young, which means that we've got, like, our 50s.

00:14:41
We never had the crazy free lot of people had. I went straight into business ownership at 20. I was a mom. I had a mortgage. Like, I took on responsibility straight away.

00:14:52
But now I'm going. We've got, like, this sweet spot of mid forty s to mid 60s where we are cashed up free. We'll have no grandkids, we'll have no responsibilities. Like, we can do anything. And so that has been exciting as well.

00:15:14
And so I'm kind of, like, dealing with the loss and the grief of my children growing up at the same time as, like, I am going to have more fun and more freedom than I've ever had in my entire life. And so we're looking at how do we craft life and business around that. So coming in with that thought as well as turning 40 has been, I don't know, like, it's a momentous thing. I love getting older. I don't do botox or anything like that.

00:15:42
I have tons of friends that do, and to each their own. But the, the wrinkles, it just doesn't bother me. I think how lucky we are to get older. And when I look at my grandma's face, she's 95, and it's just so beautiful with all the wrinkles and all the stories and all the things. So, yeah, that part doesn't bother me, but it does symbolize, like, the turning 40 of going well.

00:16:09
It's one thing to, I've always thought, I've always worked in a way of, I will work really hard now, and I will sacrifice a lot now for the future. That has always been my thing. We'll do what we have to do until we can do what we want to do, which is an oprah quote that I love. But I've always worked really hard with the pursuit of those future goals. And now, as 40 was approaching, I'm going, okay, so everything that I've been sacrificing for the future that's now right.

00:16:42
The future is here. I am in the future. The back end of life is creeping on in. My goal is to live to 104. So if I get my goal, I'm not quite halfway yet, but as we know, we could all die at any moment.

00:16:56
The only thing guaranteed in life is death. And so I know that I want to live in a way that when my ods are starting to get higher of impending doom and death, that I am not sacrificing too much in pursuit of a future that may not come. And so it's finding that balance in going all right in my was willing to sacrifice a certain amount for the later. Now that amount that I'm willing to sacrifice is getting smaller so that I can enjoy more and realize what I have. And I know that having that and truly having abundance too is really giving me more freedom than what I have had in the past.

00:17:43
And I say truly having abundance because I have always had an abundance mindset, per se. And I have a huge optimism bias. So even when we were. We spent most of our twenty s, half of our 30s completely broke. I was working really hard, I was trying really hard, but nothing was really.

00:18:04
I was, like, trudging my way. It wasn't sticking how I wanted it to stick, and we weren't getting the financial rewards that I wanted to get from the business. But even with that, I always felt so lucky to be doing a job that I love to do, to be having freedom in business, which allowed me to be with my children and with my family and still working with people that I really enjoyed working with, in work that I really loved. And so I've always felt very grateful and very abundant. But I haven't had true abundance in that we have the financial freedom in there as well.

00:18:41
But now that we definitely have that under control, it gives a level of freedom and decision making that I didn't feel I had access to previously because there was a lot that I wanted to do in my life that. I'm going off on many tangents in this episode, but you hear the saying, money doesn't buy happiness. And to a certain extent, if other things in your life are not going well, like if your relationships and your health is not going well, then money doesn't solve that at all. Even though I do think that money helps health things significantly because it just gives you so much more access. But money does buy a lot of happiness because it buys the things that give you happiness in reducing your stress.

00:19:28
Financial stress, I think, is one of the greatest stresses that we can have in our life. I know what it feels like to not be able to pay the bills, to work out which one we can pay first and when we can push that back to and juggle the money around and know that there's just simply not enough and that is really difficult to deal with. And so when people say money doesn't buy happiness, I'm like, have you ever been broke? Because that is hard. And yes, there are a lot of people that live in poverty that are happy and do that, but I have always wanted more, and that's something I'm not apologetic about.

00:20:09
I have always wanted a big, full life. I've wanted to be able to travel. I want to have nice housing. I'm very influenced by my environment. I want everything in a particular way, and now we can do that.

00:20:22
And so having that and coming into that year was very reflective. I also got a new coach at the start of 2023, about like March, April. And he has been. I've worked with a lot of coaches. It's my 20th year in business.

00:20:41
This year, November 2024 will be 20 years. And I have had a lot of coaches. I usually have a coach for a year or two and then switch them up to learn, like the next thing that I'm preparing to learn. And my beautiful friend recommended this coach to me and he has been like, never has anyone entered my life at the perfect time for the perfect thing that I want to work on right then. And it clicked so well.

00:21:05
So it's like I came into this coaching relationship going, this is everything that I've always wanted, and I feel like everything I've always wanted I don't want anymore. And now I don't know who I am without wanting all of that. And I don't know if I'm capable of living life in this way because I've always lived life that way, right? So big questions like existential questions. And he has been incredible in working with me with that, in asking me the most awesome questions for me to be able to distill, actually, what do I truly want, what is completely aligned with my goals, my values, if I don't care at all anyone's perception or take into account anything from public view and really turn up my intuition and turn up the volume of my own voice internally, what does that sound like?

00:21:59
And I know for a lot of us, we can drown out our own voice quite often and we are so busy in life and running from one thing to another thing that we don't take time to actually stop and think and I know I've made some. If I look at the funky decisions I've made in the past, like, the decisions that I'm like, how did I even come to that decision? That was clearly wrong. Way. Go back.

00:22:26
It's usually when I'm going too fast, when I haven't actually sat with it and thought and gone, okay, is this really, truly in alignment with what I want to do and where I'm going in the future? And so he's been really good at getting me to listen to that and to understand the different parts of myself and to not get frustrated with myself or to love all the parts of myself and feel really proud of what I've created. And I've spoken about this on the podcast before, but up until a couple of years ago, I'd never actually felt proud of what I'd have achieved, which it feels funny to talk about to total strangers on the Internet. So, hi, welcome to the deep darts x of my soul, but hopefully it will be helpful for reflections of your own as well. But I've always had really high expectations on myself and been really ambitious to the point where I felt, like, perpetually inadequate in going, well, yeah, I've done that, but this is everything I still wanted to do that I haven't yet achieved and feeling far behind.

00:23:37
And as I have gotten older, like, not having the energy that I had in my work to the pace where I worked, and then still have enough energy in my bucket, in my fuel tank to go around to everything in every area that I wanted to do in life. And now physically having to decide what is so, like, an example, really practical example, was, I don't like the feeling of not having enough time. I think that it's like this losing battle that can really get us down on a day to day basis. So I want, like, overall life happiness, but I think overall life happiness, yes, comes from those big things, but it also comes from enjoying the day to day. And a lot of that is feeling like we can achieve what we want to achieve in the time and energy that we have available.

00:24:18
And last year, I was getting to the end of every day and going, I just don't have enough to give. Like, I still want to talk to this person and do this and create this and be here and give myself, like, I need, like, five of me. I don't have enough time. And that, to me, is warning signs. And that is really what came in as the break.

00:24:38
So when I came back this year, I made a big list of everything that I wanted to do in terms of if I was, like, living my ideal life and being my ideal self, then how much time do I spend on the business? How much time do I need to spend on marketing, with the team, on finances, on content creation, like, on everything that I need to do? That's my responsibility inside her Her Empire Builder. But then how much time do I want to spend with myself, just alone, with my thoughts, thinking, reading, writing? How much time do I want to spend exercising?

00:25:11
How much time do I want to spend with my husband, with my kids? Everything that we want to do there. How much time do I want to spend training the dogs and playing with them and in the garden and all of the responsibilities that we have. So the first thing I did was I wrote down all of those things and how much time I wanted to spend across either the week or the month. Then I had my time plan broken into 30 minutes increments throughout every day, and I put them all on there.

00:25:35
Now, I think we can all guess what happens when we do that, right? I put half the things on there. The time plan is full. I still have half of the things left over. So I'm then looking at them going, okay, so I can either eliminate some of these things, or I can go back into what I was doing last year, which is trying to fit everything in which I know objectively is just not possible.

00:25:58
I am not superhuman. None of us are. So it's like, well, something's got to give. And so I really had to look at it and go, okay, what is of highest value? What am I willing to say no to?

00:26:11
So I can say yes to the things that are most important to me, because time and energy is so finite. And so that was one of the, I know it sounds so simple, but if you've done it, it's really hard, because some of the things I tell, I'm like, but I want to do that. I want to do it all. I want to do everything. And so I basically took my goals that were for the year, and I spaced them out over two years.

00:26:37
So instead of doing everything in one year, I then doubled the time frame, which allowed me to take more time for personal putting more time into health and more time into just not putting every day so much pressure on and going go, like, quicker, quicker, quicker. I don't want to do that anymore. And so that was an incredible exercise in there, because at the end of the year, I was starting to feel a lot of time pressure. I had been going so fast that I had made quite a few mistakes. So just little decisions that didn't turn out how I wanted to turn out.

00:27:15
And then when I'd reflect upon them, I'm like, I didn't put enough thought into it. I didn't take a beat, I didn't sit. And usually I would meditate for ten minutes and go, is this truly what I want to do? Does this work? I was just like, yes.

00:27:28
No. And I do think fast decision making is, like, a hallmark of a really successful entrepreneur. However, there's fast decision making and then there's reckless decision making. And I was into the reckless, and so I really had to get a handle on that, because in the end, what happens if you make a few mistakes and they don't work out? You start to stop trusting yourself.

00:27:51
And as soon as I stop trusting myself, that is when I start feeling hopeless, and that is when nothing works for anyone around me. And so that was the most important thing to get back. I had massive decision fatigue, which happens, too. So last year, I had a really tough team year. I didn't have the right people in the right seats, which meant I was making every decision inside the business, which was a lot inside a business of our size.

00:28:20
And so I had really significant decision fatigue where I was like, I just can't decide another thing. Like, I don't care. And then that goes into personal life as well, where I start to make poorer food choices and I watch tv instead of going exercising. And we do all of those things because we've ran out of. I don't want to swear, but, you know, the bucket of f's that we have to give and we've ran out, it's scientifically proven.

00:28:45
We have so much decision making capability in our days, and if we spend them on things that aren't all of our top line priorities, they're going to be wasted on all of the little things. And so I had way too many things on my mind, way too many things on my plate that I needed to get out. And so I was feeling the stress, and I knew I had to address that. And this was why I wanted to share today's episode with you, was to, because I know that we will all get there multiple times. This won't be the last time I get there, but it's not the first either.

00:29:16
And so I know now when I get these warning signs, when I start to feel these things, that I have to address it and I have to change it really quickly because it's not going to change on its own. And I know a lot of people that live their life in this state. And I have no interest in that whatsoever. None. And so I know that the only thing that can fix it is time and space.

00:29:38
And you know what's the hardest thing to take when you're running out of time and space is time and space, because then that list, it doesn't get done. It just gets bigger and bigger. So one of the things that I do is I clear my plate. I clear the decks of anything that has crept in that is not necessary. So I have a filter system, the three filters that everything runs through, especially when I'm under time or financial crunch.

00:30:05
And those three things are, does it increase profit? Does it enhance the customer experience? Does it bring me joy? Ideally, everything I do would do all of those three things work related. It would increase profit, it would increase the customer experience.

00:30:24
It would bring me joy. However, sometimes it's just one or two of those things, but sometimes, like, I know at the end of the year, I was looking at some things and going, okay, this does one of the things, or maybe it does none of these things. Why am I even doing it? Why am I spending my time? Because I think I should.

00:30:46
Because I read somewhere that it was a good idea. And so I think that's what people in my position would do. And so I run it through these three filters and it means that for me it's very aligned. So I do that. First I try and automate as much as I can.

00:31:00
First I'll eliminate. So it's Tim Ferriss's four hour work week thing where you eliminate, automate, delegate. And so that has served me my whole business life. I read that book, what was it? Did it come out like 2007 still gem.

00:31:14
Such a gem. But so that came out. And first we want to eliminate anything. And for me, if it doesn't fit into those three filters, it's eliminated out of my work life. And so I do that.

00:31:25
Then I look at what can I automate so that it's easier, so that it's done, especially with all the advancements in AI and all the software we have now, there's a lot of things that are taking longer than what they need to be. And so I'll automate as much as I can and then anything that's left. What can I delegate? And so I then made a new team plan. I've got new team in place.

00:31:42
They are wonderful. I'm going to breathe soon. Training is always very full on, but it's worth it when you get the right people in the right seats. Oh, my Gosh. There's no better thing as a business owner.

00:31:56
And so I will do all of those, and that will then give me the space. So for my three months off what I did, I decided to take a three month podcast break because I believe in quality over quantity. And I went to record the episode at the end of 2023 in November, and I was just, like, not feeling it. And I don't want to bring something to you if I'm not feeling it. I don't want to bring you crap.

00:32:22
I want to do the best that I can do of things that I think can be helpful. And if I don't have anything that I think is helpful to say, I'm better not to say anything at all. And so I pulled off that. I pulled off social media because I needed to turn inward for a little bit, and it was the best thing ever. So one of the best things that I did was I had a secret trip to Fiji in the start of December that I didn't even share on social media.

00:32:47
And I'm like, oh, my gosh, if it doesn't go, like, did it even happen? But what had happened? I had a conference booked for early December, which, carving out five days in early December took a lot of commitment because there's so many things that are happening in early December. And so I had carved out those five days, two and a half weeks before it was on. They canceled it.

00:33:10
And so with that, I was like, when you get news like that and you're like, no, I nearly cried. That's when you know you're under a lot of stress, is when a trip disappears and you're not making proactive steps to change it, but you're just like, but I wanted to go to Fiji. And then. So I went in and talked to my husband, and he's like, just go to Fiji. Just go.

00:33:31
So you don't go on the conference. You've got this time that you've carved out. Protect the time, take yourself off, disappear, and go for five days. I was like, that feels very naughty because I go away for work, I go away with the family. I take a couple of weekends here and there to health retreats, but I don't go away just by myself for no reason other than just chilling out.

00:34:00
That felt like, whoa, could I actually do that? And I don't know. If you're someone that takes regular time for yourself, you'd be like, welcome to the club, Tina. If you're someone that doesn't, it's wild, right? The thought of going, well, I'm just going to take five days just purely for me, and just go do whatever I want.

00:34:18
But I did. I went there. And it was funny because when. So I got up. So I'd done this whole thing and going, I'm deciding to stay off social media.

00:34:27
I'm going to have complete switch off. I'm going to just read and do nothing. Like, no expectations whatsoever. Usually I plan all these excursions and tours and spa treatments and schedule myself. I was like, nothing.

00:34:39
So I got up like, the flight was at 10:00 or something like that. So to leave my house, I had to leave by 530. And so I got up at five and there's a text message saying my flight was canceled again. Millie cried. I'm like.

00:34:54
I'm like limping to get to Fiji. I have nothing left in my. So, which feels weird now because now I've had three months off. I'm like, how did I even let myself get to that stage? But we get there, right?

00:35:08
We don't realize. Frog in the boiling pot of water. It was me. And so they go to cancel the. I'm like, uh uh, no, I'm getting to Fiji today.

00:35:16
They bumped the flight to the following day. But I'm like, this afternoon I will be in Fiji with a mocktail in my.

00:35:26
So I jumped straight onto my phone and booked a flight on another airline. Like half an hour later, I got to the airport. I go to the kiosk to check in, and it's like, you need to see the staff. There's a problem with the ticket. I'm like, shit, what's happening here?

00:35:43
Anyway, I go to the staff, she's like, the flight is super overbooked. So because the other airline canceled their flight, everyone had the same idea I did and tried to get on the flight, and they had 27 seats overbooked. And anyway, I did my big sob story to her and she let me get the last seat on the plane. So I'm on the plane going over there. So incredibly happy arrive.

00:36:05
I walk in and a song is playing. Now, when I sold my company in 2016, we went down to a place we lived in Byron Bay for anyone who knows Australia, and we went to the farm, which was a beautiful place where we were going to have our celebratory lunch. And we sat down and a song was playing. I can't remember who you sings it, but it goes. I just can't see.

00:36:33
You might know. It goes, you can't always get what you want. You get what you need. And then all the instruments come in in the back and that song was playing. And I remember at the time that I sold my business, I was in like a really raw emotional state and I was crying when that song was playing.

00:36:50
And I was like, listen to the lyrics of this song. What didn't turn out exactly how we wanted it, but we got exactly what we needed. And I do often believe that the universe is rigged in our favor, and that song reminded me of that. And then I arrive in Fiji, which always has know, really old music playing or reggae type music playing. And I arrive, I get out of the little golf buggy into the foyer and what song is playing?

00:37:22
You can't always get what you want. And I just cried in the middle of the foyer and just went. It was like a tip of the hat from the universe to me. And I went in to my room, which was beautiful, and I spent five days reading, swimming every day. And I decided on the second day I was a bit of a comatose state because I decided to stop drinking coffee.

00:37:50
So I wear an aura ring side note, which is actually, I've worn one since it went in beta. So like four years now. So I have a lot of data, and the data has helped me make great decisions. It's the reason I stopped drinking alcohol and then the reason I stopped drinking coffee. I move more, I take more steps, I try and keep it out of the stress zone as much as possible.

00:38:12
So it gives me a lot of data, which really helps me to understand myself and make better decisions. But I decided to quit coffee. Now I drink a lot of coffee, and coffee doesn't actually give you energy. It stops the receptors in your brain from registering that you're tired. And so I use coffee a lot to push through different things.

00:38:34
Like, if I had to do, I like, doing four or 5 hours of Zoom calls in a day is like, a good thing for me. If I go to seven or 8 hours, I start to get really tired, and so I would just pump myself of caffeine. So my normal was to have a coffee at 06:00 in the morning, then another one at 09:00 then another one after lunch. Doesn't sound like much, but most of them were double shot flat whites. So, like six espresso shots a day, which is a lot.

00:39:05
And so I stopped, and I was not well. I was feeling those withdrawals. However, two weeks later and now. So that was the first week of December. It's now February.

00:39:16
So two months later, I have more energy than I have had in years. So it was a great decision. But I went through that while I was there because all I wanted to do was use the holidays that I had done. I'd already planned to have most of December and January off, like completely off, no working in between, which I don't normally do. I don't normally take that break over the summer holidays.

00:39:40
I usually take like a couple of weeks between Christmas new year kind of thing. And so I'd taken a lot of extra time. So I was like, you know what? I'm not going to waste this time. I'm going to really use it to move my body more, to nourish my body.

00:39:53
How can I not drink alcohol, not drink coffee, feed it really good vitamins and supplements and the different things to feel well so that next year I can make better decisions that will be more sustainable. And it was fantastic. It worked really, really well. And of course, once we're quiet, we get all of that space to really decide well what is working, what is not. And I could make better decisions in.

00:40:20
I've never wanted to play the game the way other people play the game of life. There's a conventional life. I am so far removed from living a conventional life. Like, it's ridiculous and I always have been. And I have different expectations and high standards that a lot of people don't have for their own life.

00:40:41
And I'm like, I've never wanted to play the game. I want to design my own game. That's what I want to do. I want to go what is going to be the right life for me and the people around me that we can have a lot of fun, we can do good work with good people, we can make good money and just live well. And so I was able to make a lot of decisions that did that.

00:41:06
I was able to create my schedule. That slowed my role a bit. So this year, I won't be sprinting. I won't be having the goal. How can I build the biggest, most profitable business possible?

00:41:20
Yes, I definitely am trying to build a profitable business, but I want a sustainable business. And the sustainability of my business depends on nothing more than my energy at the moment. So if I am to disappear or drop or my team, no one has anything, my team, my clients rely on me for what I am delivering. And so I need to look after that. I need to look after that in a sustainable way.

00:41:50
And so that is my whole goal is going well over the next ten years. If I want to build this business that's going to allow me to travel when I want to travel and work in the way that I want to work with the people that I want to work with, then how can we do that in a sustainable way so that we don't have to sprint to some finish line. But I can keep going as long as I want, as long as it's having fun. And so that's what we're doing. So I'm going for sustainability.

00:42:18
I'm going for the long game. I'm so grateful for the time and the abundance and everything that I have discovered. I am still in a very much discovery mode of trying to unlearn a lot of the habits that have been with me my entire life that I'm trying to let go of that are no longer the best choice for me to make. And so I wanted to share that with you. And I hope it's helpful and I hope it's reflective and I hope it if you're interested, I had a lot of people messaging me and emailing me saying, where are you?

00:42:58
Are you all right? And the truth was, like, late November. No, I was not all right. And I had no one to blame but myself. And so as business owners, we have no one really looking after our well being in terms of if my team ever did what I did, I would be like, no way.

00:43:18
You need to stop. Take a day off. I don't want to hear from you. Go to the beach, relax, read a book. Like, come on, don't be ridiculous.

00:43:25
But often, as business owners, we will treat ourselves not with that same love and care that we do with the people around us. And I don't want to do that anymore. I really want to treat myself with the same love and care that I do about with the people around me. And I want you to treat yourself with the same love and care that you do to the people around you every day, because you deserve it. And the only way that we're going to run sustainable businesses and keep our health and our finances and our teams and everything around us humming along in the way that we want it to do is to regularly stop and say, is this the best thing for me?

00:44:10
Is this the best I can do? Can I do better in this? And better doesn't always mean bigger, obviously, but is the life you're living the game that you have designed for yourself? Because to me, that's what true happiness is. Anyway, welcome back to the new season.

00:44:28
I'm really excited to bring you some different types of guests, some different types of stories, some different updates of what I am learning along the way. In there as well. Thanks for being with me. This episode was brought to you by my signature group coaching program, her Her Empire Builder. The best online education for female course creators in the world.

00:44:50
Check it [email protected]. Along with so many free resources to help you get building your empire and seeing those results that you deserve. If you loved this episode, please don't keep it a secret. Share it with a friend on social media and tag me at Tina Underscore Tower and give it a review. It really does help us to be able to bring you bigger and better content as we grow.

00:45:15
Have the most beautiful day. I'm Tina Tower, and I'm cheering you on all the way.