I've got a very personal episode for you today on the podcast. I just wrapped up a year of private coaching with the best coach I have ever worked with and it was the most transformative year I've experienced. 

We worked through all of life's big questions and had totally different results than what I went in seeking, which was exactly what I needed. I now have a lighter heart than I've felt in 15 years and so much calm and clarity. I'm sharing what I went through and wants changed in the hope that it also helps to prompt some of the same questions in you so that we can all live our beautiful lives in the best way possible. 

Tina Tower 0:00
Hi, friend, welcome to episode 248 of her empire builders Show. Today I have a bit more of a personal episode for you. So it's been, it's been a hot minute, since I did this style of episode, I've kept it pretty profesh recently done a lot of interviews and kept it pretty strategic. But I had like a really momentous shift in my life in the past year. And that is because I have been working with the best private coach that I have ever worked with in my life. And we just wrapped up our one year together. And so I wanted to share with you where I was at. And some lessons from that, because I know that it's always really interesting to hear kind of behind the scenes see under the hood a little bit. And it can be really easy to think that somebody in my position always has it all worked out. And that is so far from the truth. And I am often reluctant to go as personal as when I'm going in this episode. Because it always feels a bit vulnerable. And I always go, you know, there's gonna be 1000s of people listening to this do I really want them to know all the most thoughts, but more than anything, I think that we're bombarded with so many messages in business that, you know, it's easy, and that we should always have it worked out. And there's one right way to do it. And this is the only thing you need to be successful. And all of these different messages that can often leave us feeling like there's something wrong with us, because we're finding it hard, or, you know, we're feeling a bit stuck or in a bit of a funk. And is that you know, allowed and okay, and after 20 years in business on this November, it'll be 20 years, since I started my first business. And I know like all of the ebbs and flows and the seasons that we go to go through and the chapters and the changes that happen that are all so natural and such a part of business and and you know, as we grow and as we go into each chapter, what what we want next isn't necessarily what we've been building towards. And this shift has happened to me a couple of times, throughout my my adult life, and it's not easy to navigate, like the whole the whole question of, you know, who are you?

Main Episode

What do you want out of life? What is your purpose? Why do you do what you do? Like, they're not necessarily easy questions to answer, and they're not the same answer every five to 10 years. I mean, for some people I know, they're really averse to change, I love change. I like to constantly look at my life and go like Is it is it optimized is it as am I as happy as I could be right now am I living in a way that that is, you know, life by design that I have decided and and I am driving my life forward with with what is most important to me at this stage of my life. And so in the last in the last year, I've been going through a private coaching relationship. And it's been exceptional. And it's been completely different to what I went into it with the intention of and I thought that that was valuable to share. So if you want to hear me get really personal stir up on him. Hello, and welcome to her empire builders 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. 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 cost creator, a world traveler, best selling author, a mama of two man children and a lucky why 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. Let's get it. As you know, I am a big fan of education. I am not someone who wants to know trial and error. I mean, I love experimenting. And I know there's always an element of trial and error, but I would rather hire someone that can help me do something in you know, a year than to fiddle around for the next 510 years trying to figure it out by myself. So I have had coaches private coaches done courses and programs or masterminds like spent so much money on education through the years You know, one year I spent 160,000, just on education. But that was the first year that I did one and a half million. And so in terms of, like budget wise, I will often spend five to 10% a year on on education conferences learning. And that is a really nice, comfortable amount. When I first started, my revenue wasn't up to the level yet. And so in one of my first years, when I started licensing my company, like my previous company, like two companies ago, so this was back in like 20, yet 2008. You know, that year I only the revenue of the business was like 36,000, and I spent 14,000 on education. But then I franchised a couple of years later and started making millions. And so I wouldn't have been able to do that without that. And so, for a lot of it, I am more. I am not risk averse, I will bet on myself, every time. It's something that I do, I do a lot and have always done. And so I know that, you know, when people look at private coaching, they'll often balk at the investment of it. But it is something that even I've had a couple of programs that I've been part of like it's only happened like probably twice that I've thought were not very good programs. And even that I never view it as a waste of money, because I learned so much like of what not to do and how to make better decisions in the future. And why did I seek that person out in the first place? And how did I not see that? And what does that say about me and my lens and different things that I was going through. So it's always worth it.

And most of the time, it's, it's been absolutely incredible. And so, like the coach that I just worked with for the year, it was 40,000 for the year Australian dollars, so a significant investment. And one of probably the best investment I've ever made. He's the best coach I've ever worked with. And so I will always hire coaches for different reasons. And, you know, for a lot of courses, sometimes I'm more general, but for, for private coaches in particular, it's always something specific, I am always going okay, I've identified this gap for me, and I want to bridge the gap who is the best person that I can find that can help me bridge that gap. And so what I was looking for was was how do I get the right people in the right seats in my company like I wanted to, to work out like Why was finding it so hard to build a team. I knew I had a lot of fear with my last company that I sold big and bright back in 2016 that had a lot of people in it. And I was 27 when I started franchising and building that business, and I ended up selling it because it got to, like just too heavy, it was so full of responsibility. And it was very litigious in the franchising industry and just is really dark and really heavy. And I know that like when I started my online business, one of the main reasons I fell in love with it was because it was so light, you can run it so lean. And after doing a bricks and mortar business, like it's so much easier than that, and I really loved that but a part of me was going like am I fearful of getting back to what I had with my last businesses that was stopping me from growing any further because I had taken my foot way off the accelerator in terms of going you know, do I don't I do I want to grow? Do I not want to grow? If I do want to grow? Why if I don't why? What does that say about me when I've always defined myself by constant growth and achievement. And I was really examining all of this and I came to the conclusion that I did want to grow and what was stopping me was my ability to hire and maintain team because I love everything about business except managing people. It's the only thing like the game of business itself. Oh my gosh, like I could not think of a better way to spend a day like it is so much fun. Managing people on a daily basis though like sticks skewers in my eyeballs like it is it is the hardest thing for me to do in business always has been and and that is what I was like this is my this is my limitation I can't grow a business past a couple million dollars a year if I don't get better at this and adapt this whole skill set. So I wanted to work out why I found it so hard to work with others and and to build that team and so I was talking to Do my best friend about this. And he was like, You know what, I've got the exact person that helped me build my team and came inside. And I think we'll hook you two together and you'll be great. And so I started working with my coach purely from the team point of view, like, how can we work out what it is in me that's really like butting up against this? And is it something that we want to unlock? And what are the motivations behind it and all of that sort of thing. Anyway, as what often happens, what we ended up working on was completely different and so much deeper than that. You know, it was, it was definitely this last year has been the most transformative year I feel like I have ever had. And I think that had a lot to do with the stage of business that I'm at. And the age that I'm at I turned 46 months ago, and there was there was a lot like leading to that. And the the lead up, like the past couple of years, I've really shifted when I say I took my foot off the accelerator. A lot of what I did through my 20s and 30s was was out of desperation.  For those who don't know, my backstory, I left home at a at a young age, I got engaged when I was 19, I was open to my business at 20, Married at 21 had kids wanted 24, one at 25. I did everything really early, and we had no money we had we did it really tough financially. And you know, there's a lot of people that do it do it worse, we had a roof over our heads. But yeah, even grocery shopping, I would have to go with a calculator and put things back and decide which bills to pay first. And what we could do without like we it was just, you know, I see young people buying coffees and cocktails and going out to restaurants and things now like, oh my god like that was it's just not an option to do any of that stuff. So we lived in a very lean manner. And to me, like financial security meant freedom. And so I operated all of my like 20s and 30s purely just for my kids and the finances. That was that was a big part of it, I would sacrifice all that areas of my life in the pursuit of getting that freedom across. And so when like I've only really been making good good money, or what I would class is good, good money for about the last six, seven years. Around about like 2000, actually, it's about 10 years now, about 2014 was the first year that my business did really, really well. And then you know, we make good money there. I sold my company in 2016. With the money from selling the company, we bought some property and then we traveled around the world for a year as well. I spent a lot of money traveling around the world for a year and I regret nothing. But it meant that we then we then came back, we bought the home that we're living in now. And we kind of like we'd spent everything I didn't sell for enough to kind of, you know, invest and set myself up for life. So there's still a lot of money that I need to create in order to have like full financial freedom and a work optional life, which is definitely what I'm going for. And so what happened was about two, three years ago, I started like feeling this feeling of going, I'm actually okay. Like, I don't have to say yes, to absolutely everything anymore. I don't have to, you know, I've got enough money in the bank that I have a buffer there, like I don't have to be doing and pushing as hard as what I've been pushing. And that was a really uncomfortable feeling. And if you've never been in that situation before, I think it would be hard to understand how it's an uncomfortable feeling. Because it doesn't sound it sounds like it should be wonderful. And it is wonderful. It is so wonderful.

But it's like everything that had ever driven me before was gone. And I didn't quite know or trust my decisions anymore, because I never really taken a breath and looked up and gone. Alright, well, if you don't have to do it for survival. What is it that you want to say yes to and what is it that you want to say no to if you can actually do it and and I know people say that all the time. Like that's the decision you should be making all the time. But anyone who has come out of like a poverty situation knows that. You know, you do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do. Like there's a lot of things that you say yes to because you've got to pay the bills, and you've got to get scrappy with it and you can get into a real habit. doing that. And so what I started doing a few years ago was going I have sacrificed my health quite a lot. Because I instead of, you know, taking an hour a day to go for a walk, I would do that do more work in that hour, you know, if I can make an extra $2,000 In that hour, am I gonna go for a walk? Or am I going to do my work? And I would choose work, which is not sustainable Ryan. But it's really hard when you have struggled financially, to say no, to that money, because there's always this like, deep seated fear of is it going to run out or, you know, is everything going to disappear. And so there's a lot to overcome. And I think whether this is your story, or whether, you know, you'll have a wildly different story, but everyone's got something that like, is like driving them underneath the hood. And a lot of it is figuring out, at what point can we drop the stories and beliefs that we have had to hold maybe for for our survival, and then choose better beliefs like choose who we want to be now. And so a couple years ago, I really started focusing on my health. I like December 2020, I'm trying to think of what year was December 22, I stopped drinking alcohol. Because I had gotten in the habit of drinking too much. I was drinking probably three or four nights a week, I would have like three or four gins, gin and tonic, my fav. And I would get to like four o'clock in the afternoon, make myself a gin and come to the computer, come back again. And, and keep working for another couple of hours and write, copy and do all the things of which a lot of a lot of people were like, Oh my gosh, like if you do that you come back the next day and go, Oh my God, what slop was I writing, but it was actually like I write really well half tipsy. So it was a hard habit to stop because it kind of like dropped my inhibitions. And I get creative, and I get a bit more funny. And so but anyway, I knew it's not good for my health, right? And it's not sustainable. And then you got to work out well. Why do you write better when you're half drunk than when you're sober? Like, maybe we should start looking at the reason why that is happening in the first place. I told you, I was getting personal with you here today. Oh my gosh, I can't believe sometimes I say this shit out loud. Anyway, I started focusing on my health, I stopped drinking at the end of 2022. And I started working with my coach in April 2023. And so I had already kind of started doing that I tried to stop making a lot better choices. As as I was going into this next stage and going like, can I grow my business without actually getting to the stage of burnout that I've got in the past? Can I do it without having the burden of Team weigh me down too heavily. So that's what we started working together for. Anyway, so I wanted to you know, with the year of I, like I said, I turned 40. So with that coming up, when when we first started working together, it really left me like I wanted to be well. And I wanted to change my mindset from like, you know, that whole like, like, burn it now, it'll be worth it for later kind of kind of thinking, too, I started realizing like later is here, like I keep going like it'll all pay off later, like, like, we'll just do it now. And then then it'll all pay off. And I don't like like, I mean later, like late as late as coming in hot. And so I don't want to get to you know, 40 5060 and be struggling health wise and go. Like I've left it really late to fix this. And I'm just filled with like, my cortisol levels are too high. I've got adrenal fatigue, and I'm drinking too much. And like all of these, these things happening. So I started, I had already, like stopped drinking, I'd started exercising a lot more, I started refining the business to what I wanted now that it was out of startup stage. So her Empire Builder started in 2020. And so it already had a couple years under its belt, I kind of changed the offer a little bit in the first couple of years and then went to one that I was like, you know, I'm gonna stick this for a good like five years like this is this is where it's at, this feels really aligned. This feels really good. And so then really looking at our office suite and our ascension model and making sure it all fed that goal and that I wasn't adding on to many different things because that is the tendency that I have is I'm like, Oh, this will help my clients like I want to add this one and I want to add this on and then I overwhelm people and so it was really trying to go like how can we refine it? How where do we want to head and do we just want to take what we've got and dial it up? Or do we want to change what we've got and And often I say entrepreneurs break their business because they're a little bit bored. And that is kind of where I was feeling a little bit too is I am at risk of breaking this because I know that the best thing to do is like rinse, repeat, refine, and grow. But the entrepreneur in me is like, what if we throw all of this out and experiment with this, or do this or scrap this and go there, like, I know, you know what I mean, right. And a boring business is often a profitable business. Once you've got all of the things dialed in. And I once had, like, when I was looking at selling my last company, I once had a really great mentor, who I respected a lot, who said, like, Tina, you're a startup person, you're not a manager. And that's stuck with me a lot, probably too much. Because I have seen like, had the thing of going like he was right in that. I love startup phase, I am an ideas gal. I have so many ideas. And I love like conceptualizing them and going Okay, so we've got this idea we want to go from like something that doesn't exist yet to this, and I can see it all and I can see all the moving parts and all the pieces. And I love putting together project plans and getting organized with that and allocating it and Systemising it and getting it there. And then once it's all like built and systemized and humming perfectly. I'm like, where is where is the next thing to design? Right? Where is the next thing to play with? And so that is at the point that I was like, Okay, so maybe my next frontier is working out what I've actually never been able to work out in all of my years of business is how do I lead people? Well, in terms of internal team, I think that I've always, you know, lead people well, in terms of business and the programs that that I run and lead. But internally with team, there's a certain amount of people like I can get to like three or four team members. And then and then it's just all too much for me. And so I really wanted to go, Okay, what do I need to change, about our setup and also about myself to enable me to be able to do that and unlock that next level of growth. And so a big part of that was, like figuring out how big I wanted to go. And this was probably the hardest question of them all. And it's something that I think a lot of people don't fully, consciously choose. In online business there, that's a very different business, like I see people all the time, they'll get to three 400,000 a year, which I think is such a beautiful sweet spot in online business, you can run the most beautiful online course membership and have such a nice level of client interaction, you can know people, you can do just a couple of launches a year, you can have an evergreen product going, you can have a really balanced life of working, you know, 10 to 20 hours a week, and it's very consistent revenue. And so I see a lot of people stop there, there's, there's not many people that go, You know what I want to go to seven figures and beyond. But if you do, if you are like you have that ambitious fire in you, and you've got that thing driving you and you want to make greater impact, that is the only reason that you go beyond that, it's not necessarily the money because the money won't drive, drive it itself.

And often, like, you know, depending on what level you get to sometimes if you go too big, too quick, you can actually make less profit than what you did when you're smaller. So you've got to do it really strategically and really carefully. And I my business went over a million dollars a year it took me I think like 16 months to get to a million dollars in a year. And then we've just grown every year, year on year since that point, and we're sitting just under 2 million now. And this is exceptional that I have been able to build a business to that level with very minimal team support. Most people that I know with the business my sides have have a lot of team. I have two vas. So it is you know, it's a very different picture that we have. But this is because I'm in my sweet spot what I what I am best at is systems and automation. And so and now that AI is in Holy guacamole like what we can do with that you don't actually need that many people. But I was like, Well, if I could get the right people in the right seats behind this, what would it look like if we did run a $10 million business? And so a lot of successful businesses like mine, once they get to that tipping point can be dialed up with a very simple formula like Really, if we wanted to take my business and five times it and get it to 10 million, a lot of it is just more and more content, like it's a content machine, it is doing great content, and then watching every single key metric and getting higher conversion on every single touch point. So like 1% More coming in top of funnel 1% More people downloading 1% More converting to the next step 1% More showing up to webinars, like if you go 1% more on every single touch point, then it is incredible how quickly that that goes and how much it increases across the board. And it's an increase of volume, which with my model, the way that I currently run my business requires an increase of staff. And like I said, that's the one thing I have never found easy is managing team. So it's what caused me to sell my last company, it's what constantly causes me to build, like I've had four businesses in the past that I've built and sold all at the same point, usually around one and a half million, then I stopped, because I know the cost of going further than that. And I have never in the past wanted to pay that cost. I have always gone. Like the responsibility feeling that I feel for people is it's not something that my heart can necessarily hold. But I felt the calling to try. I really wanted to go like it's now or never this is the time this is the business like it, I let's do it. Like I want to I want to give it a red hot go. And so I played with the whole notion of a $10 million business, we made the strategic plan for that what it would look like, and I know my business could create it. But do I want that business EFI created was the question. And so a couple of years ago, like I said, I felt really comfortable. And that scared me because who am I without the push? So I was like, Okay, what if what if we what if we push? What if we go past that. And then when we started working together, it went it went into so much deeper than that. We went into my motivations of why I do what I do, why I enjoy the things I enjoy, why I don't why I have told myself that I enjoy certain things, which actually I don't. It's like, you're my friend Derek Severs, who was on the podcast. This year, he has his new book coming out, like useful, not true about useful beliefs that we hold that, like no belief is necessarily true. It's just useful to us at the time. And there was many beliefs that I was holding on to that had been really useful for me up until that point that were no longer useful that I wanted to get, like, let go. And so it was a massive unraveling of a year. And you're after a year of working with my coach, I can't even understand how I felt the way I felt I felt when we started working together like so much pressure to build and succeed because I'm like, you know, people are looking at me in the industry and going she's she's here like, is she going to grow? You know, she going to be one of the Can we have an Australian that gets to like Amy Porterfield, James Wedmore, Jenna Kutcher sort of level. And at the crux of it.

Speaker 1 28:31
I'm like, that sounds like hell to me.

Tina Tower 28:36
Like, this is what I uncovered. But I felt like that's what I had to do. I felt like if I am going to be a well respected, you know, business strategist in the online course industry, then is it not what I have to do is go as big as what is possible. And so that, like took a lot of mindset work on what is enough? How much is enough? And am I settling for enough? Because I'm scared of pushing further? Or is it enough because it's actually legit enough and I'm really happy, and I don't need or want any more and just examining all of the thoughts and beliefs around all of that. I mean, after like a couple of months of working together, I'm like, Oh my gosh, like I'm so much I'm doing so much thinking about thinking and it's driving me freakin crazy. Um, but it was incredible. One of the best books that I was recommended was, Richard Schwartz wrote a book called No Bad parts, about owning all of the different parts of yourself and being able to have conversations with the different parts of yourself to figure out like who was who was driving your decisions, which part of you is driving your decisions and, and is that the part that that you in your like your true self in your soul in your heart? Is that the part that you want to be following and listening to or Do you need to get that part of yourself to kind of just take a backseat for a moment. And that was very difficult for me. Even just reading the book, no bad parts, it's a little book like it would normally if a business book was the size of that book, it might take me two to three hours to read. It took me like a month to get through it. And I would cry and cry, and then come back to it again and cry and cry and then go get it like, this was torture. But there was a lot of things that that needed to be examined that I hadn't examined, because I'd been so busy going so fast. And I hadn't really stopped to go. What does this look like? If if my true self that wasn't damaged by the past that wasn't running from certain things that wasn't afraid of certain things? Like, what would that look like? What would I choose for myself now. And one of the goals that I made, like back in 2021, that I was leaving really well, for the first couple of years of this current business was really like boundaried working time, because as you know, self employed people, we don't have someone telling us like, you start work, now you finish work, now you're on vacation, put your computer away, like there's no one, there's no one watching over our shoulder, which is great. But it also means that a lot of the time, we can carry responsibility that we always have to be on and that we can never let people down and we have to be back to them straight away. And you know, I take my a level customer service very, very seriously. But there is a point of that where it then becomes super unhealthy for me. And one of the goals that I made was to take the third week of every month off. So not like off like a vacation, but off as a no appointments. And if I wanted to take it as a vacation, I could, if I felt like doing some writing, I could if I wanted to create something new, I could like just having this time that I could do whatever I wanted to with that time and having that siloed out. And then also having appointment free Mondays, and no work on Fridays. So a three day weekend, every every week. And so I had done that for about the first two years, and then we got bigger. And it just slowly started morphing away to in 2022, I only had that week off, like twice, I always take a month off from mid December to mid January. So it's not like I'm you know, I wasn't working crazy. And I always finished working. I never worked past about six. On a big day, I'll go eight till six, which is still a 10 hour day. But so it's a sizable day. But I'm not like someone who's ever worked into the night or anything like that. But I do work or did work a lot. And so I really wanted to get that back. And I kept telling myself that I couldn't do that because there was too much going on. And I had too many ideas and too many things on my to do list that I needed to get done. And if it didn't get done that I would catastrophize a lot in my mind. Like, if it didn't get done, then all my members are going to leave, then I'm going to be destitute again. Then I'm going to lose my house and then my husband is going to leave me and he's going to take the kids with me. And I'm going to be all alone sitting in a ditch. You know, like that sort of catastrophizing. And so that's where my brain went a lot. And that is not helpful to making decisions from the place that I wanted to be able to make decisions on. And so now having finished our year, I want to kind of share with you what I learned and what we what we went through. So it was really a lot of the small things rather than the big things. And as a result of doing the small things, the big things shifted massively. So one of the things that my coach had me do a lot was, you know, breathe, which how many times are we told to breathe, like, just take a deep breath in.

Even at the start of every one of our sessions, like he would just breathe with me for a little bit. And instantly I'd be like, ah, like my whole voice changes. My whole physiology changes. I'm like, gosh, I forgot, like I forget to breathe. So putting that in another habit that that changed so many things was at the beginning of the year, I got a treadmill. And so because I found it really hard to take like a two hour block to do to do the 10,000 steps in a day. I got a treadmill so that every 90 minutes I could jump on there and just walk for 10 minutes. And that is what got it up. So all of these little things that just helped me be able to breathe, but it got hard before it got better. Like in November last year 2023 It really came to a big like Chris Sandow, in terms of I had tried so hard, so many different things I had high I'd really, really highly paid team in the US, I'd really doubled down on that and trying to do so. And it just wasn't working out how I wanted it to work out. And I needed to adjust my expectations, I needed to let go of a lot of things, which in the end, I was like you weren't, I like to drive my business I like to play in my day to day, I am one of the if you've read rocket fuel, like, you know, the integrator and the visionary, I am one of the 3% of people that can be both integrator and visionary. Because I love big picture. I love setting like the big ideas and looking to the future, and always thinking of how everything's going to impact everything else. But then I'm also like, I love the weeds, I love the daily, like making everything work and the To Do lists and the project management and organization and automation and creating systems like love it. So I love both the operations, and the big picture, which is very, very rare. And so it makes me a hard person to work for. Because I can do a lot really, really fast. And so, you know, with some of the team, I was I was allowing, you know, for what I do in four hours a week was someone's full time job, which is just insulting, you know, to someone to like, I would never say that to somebody because they'd be like, fuck you. But that was what was my my allowance. Because I have years of experience of doing things behind me that's made me extremely efficient. What I do. And because I'm very particular, I'm not a perfectionist, I send things out all the time that are not perfect. I move very, very fast. But I'm very particular and I have a certain level of expectation of standard that I want to hold. And I find like looking after people on an emotional level, really difficult. I am an empath. And so I can be very moved by other people. And so when I work closely with people, I want to take care of them, if they're going through something, I want to be able to fix it, I get into deep with people. And that is that is really difficult from a manager point of view. And so what I decided to do in November last year was I was like, Okay, this is this is not working like highly paid remote team, it's just, it's just really hard if you run the numbers on it, so I try and do 20% of my revenue going to team. But if you've got each person now with with the way salaries setting, like if you're paying someone 100 120 $130,000 a year, then like, you've got to make a bucket ton of money to be able to support that and still keep your business profitable and sustainable. And so every time I would hire someone, I'd be like, okay, like now we need to five times the business just to be able to support that role. And so it was just this constant drive of of doing that. But since I have decided that I love my virtual assistants team, I have some great ones that are like magical unicorn humans, that are the engine that keeps my business running. And I do a lot more things in my business that a lot of people like if you listen to the general rhetoric in our industry, people were saying, like you need to delegate, you need to outsource all of that, like no one should be, you know, no business owner that's running a $2 million business should be paying their own bills should be doing their own Canva designs should be deciding on their like, email, copy, whatever it is, that's going out. I do a lot of that inside of our business now. And I think that that has a lot to do with the success of it is because it's based on my voice. It's my personal brand that built it. And it's based on my voice with that. And so as a result of doing all of that, and after that, like November crash, I really worked out like what I'm willing to sacrifice and what I am not. And I feel an immense amount of freedom in not having team like messaging me all day, every day, wanting to talk about like, their life and what they're doing and what they're working on and getting my feedback and I am an introverted person and I love working alone. And I judged myself a lot for that even as I say it now and you're listening you may think like what an asshole but that's, that's that's who I am. I'm accepting it rather than constantly trying to fight and try and make myself someone that I am not. I am I have really like this past year embraced what I am, who I am my strengths where they lie, and where they don't. And part of that is I feel so much liberation and freedom. When I am alone working on my computer, creating stuff for people that I know is going to be really impactful, that's going to take something complex and make it simple, that I know people will love to use. What I find really hard is to be pulled out of that creation all the time to be like, oh, yeah, have you done all those tasks? Like, how did that go? Or you haven't, how come? Oh, sorry to hear that, okay, let's work on that. Let's like scaffold it, like, I just don't have the patience for that. So rather than working through that anymore, I'm embracing it. That is me. Whether that I mean, there was a part of me that had to accept, you know, maybe I don't build a business bigger than where I currently am. If I'm not willing to embrace the team, or more team, you know, I set it about five people is where I'll get to, and then then no more than that. But now with all the advances in AI that I've been learning about the last few months, like you can do so much more now that what we started doing and growing inside of our business is incredible. I think like one person utilizing AI can do the work of what five people could a year ago. And so there's massive changes happening in that. So who knows what is possible in terms of revenue, and how much you can actually harness while still keeping a beautiful work life balance, and still at the same time, being able to like run a really freedom filled business. And so my stress levels are way down. Like, I have never felt such calm clarity as what I do in my life. Right now. I spend so much time with my family. I mean, we are getting, we're in a very

different chapter where my kids are going to be finishing high school in the next couple of years. And they're very, you know, unfortunately, I raised very independent young men. And so they're looking at what they want to do next, and moving away and doing that. And so I know like in three years time, it's unlikely that I'll have my children at home, which means that I'm trying to soak up every last bit. So I'm playing golf with my son once or twice a week. And, you know, we spent all of the afternoon sealer, I don't work past four o'clock. Now I take time off whenever they want me to, if they asked me to do anything, I'm there. And I will drop anything else like a hot potato to be able to do that. So I'm getting to spend a lot of time with them. I'm walking a lot, I do yoga, most days, I sleep from like 9:30pm till 7am Every night, I'm eating really well. I exercise I say no to most things. And this is something that I was really that's been a very big breakthrough for me is I have a yes person I was see I even caught myself that I was a yes person. And I would say yes to everything because I didn't want to let people down. But also because I wanted to take every opportunity that I was blessed enough to be presented with. And it felt almost like sacrilege to say no to incredible opportunities that, you know, 10 years ago, I would have killed for. But now it's like at what cost. And I am saying no to a lot because the life that I currently am living is something that I want to protect so fiercely. And so I say no to a lot of things. And I only have a few years left like this with my kids. And then you know, I might go traveling with with my husband or, you know, maybe I'll double down on work then like I don't know, but for now, I want to make the most of this chapter that we're in. So I know I love business. I know I love a small team. I know I love a calendar with as much white space as possible. I know I love being alone behind my computer screen creating stuff. And I'm still inspired to grow, I still want to see just how far I can take business and what I can do with this beautiful vehicle that we have and how many people I'm able to serve and help. I just want to do it in in a in a different way, like less of the Tina show and more strategy and education. And still ambitious but not willing to pay the price that I have paid in the past. And so I'm playing I'm playing the long game with it really. I just I have very simple goals in that I want to do good work with good people and I want to help women grow. Like that is really it. We have two new business ventures that we've got coming up in the next couple of months which is so ironic, right? Like you create this space and then you get these amazing ideas that have got me really excited that I haven't had like the new like something new coming in for a good few years. So this is great. I'm, and I have a lighter heart than I have had probably in the last 15 years. And that feels like I've let a lot of things go, which has, you know, enabled me to slow down so beautifully. But we're coming into in Australia at the end of financial year. And so we've been starting to get all of our accounts ready. And the thing that I saw last week, which kind of blew my mind was I have slowed down so massively in the last year in terms of working probably about half of what I used to work, and at a pace that is so luxurious, but our revenue has grown, and I fully expected it to drop this year. And I think that is because like, it's a real focus on what matters, and what works and for getting the rest rather than feeling like I need to be all things to all people all the time and do absolutely everything. And that has been a really, really valuable, really, really valuable lesson. And so I hope that me sharing that experience has helped you. And my whole goal with it was really just to let you know that no one has it figured out all of the time. And we're constantly changing our mind and making mistakes and realigning our path and that we are so lucky to have businesses and to be able to change our course whenever we want. Like you can wake up any day and go, am I living my best life right now? And if not, what can I change for that. And I would highly encourage you to get a really great coach to help you along the way because there is no way I would have got to this place without my coach. And so I am eternally grateful to him and owe him a lot as all the coaches that I've worked with in my past. And so I hope that's helpful for you. I hope that you are making good choices and choosing beliefs that are in service to your true self that are going to make you happy, because that's what it's all about. This episode was brought to you by my signature group coaching program, her Empire Builder, the best online education for female course creators in the world. Check it out at Tina tower.com 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. Have the most beautiful day. I'm Tina tower, and I'm cheering you on all the way.