Gosh I loved this episode - thank you to the wonderful humans who asked so many great questions! It's always nice to reflect on some of the massive things that have happened. And I am sharing some stories that I haven't shared before because they helped shape me and there's so many lessons from them.

Questions answered:

🌟 What life event, and what business event had the most significant impact on who you are today?

🌟 How to transition, without burn out from a sole trader service base business to online whilst having a young family and limited financial resources.

🌟 What was it for you that was the decider to sell your business and do this?

🌟 Did you contemplate trying to own them all? Did you feel you let people down because you sold?

Part 2 will be out next week!

Join the waitlist here

Want some free resources? We’ve got you covered here

Tina Tower [00:00:00]:
Hi friend, and welcome to this ask me anything podcast episode. This is actually out of 250 something episodes. The second time that I have done this and looking at the questions that have come in, I will make it a regular thing. I think I might do it like twice a year because the questions are good. So on the ask me anything podcast today, in case you're wondering like, should I listen to this or not? These are the questions I will be answering. What life event and what business event had the most significant impact on who you are today? How to transition without burnout from sole trader service based business to online while having a young family and limited financial resources? What was it for you that was the decider to sell your business and do this? Did you contemplate trying to own them all? Such good questions. How do you navigate through making a strategic business decision? Is there a particular framework or process that you find useful? Yes, I'll be sharing it. If you had to start your journey in the world of online business again, what would you do differently? When are you coming on my podcast? How do you find or choose your coaches, mentors and masterminds? Do you have a particular business mentor partner? Did you do it all alone? What is the formula for a successful business? When did you know it was time to grow your business? How do you juggle and balance being self employed and a parent? So they're the questions I'm going to be answering for you today.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:01:29]:
Great questions. Thank you to everybody who sent them in. I sent an email out to my database and had a form that they could ask any questions on all great questions. So let's get straight onto it. Hi, friends. Okay, quick little note is after I finished recording and editing the podcast, it came in at an hour and 15 minutes, which I thought was just a little bit too long. And so I've cut it in half. So we have part one for you now and part two coming for you next week.

Tina Tower [00:02:02]:
And I also want to say thank you to everybody who sent in the questions because, I mean, it's what allows me to answer things like this. But they were really, really good questions. So thanks for taking the time to send them through. Okay, here we go. Hello and welcome to 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. Since starting my first business at 20, I have built and sold four times.

Tina Tower [00:02:42]:
And in 2018, while traveling around the world with my family for a year, I tripped and fell into the this wonderful world of online courses, and I instantly fell in love. I'm a million dollar course creator, a world traveler, best selling author, a mama 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. Let's get it. So, kicking off with a question from the lovely Janine Votha, who has asked what life event and what business event had the most significant impact on who you are today? And when I read this one, I was like, maybe I should bump it to later in the episode, because, I mean, that's a big question, right? If you were to ask that question to yourself, anyone would go, like, things that give seismic shifts within us are really important moments. And so there's probably two that have shifted me the most in business. In business and in life.

Tina Tower [00:04:00]:
I mean, life, probably the most significant life event is becoming a mum. That changed everything for me. But I feel like that is such a standard answer for so many that it's not the most helpful. But really, I was very ambitious after I became a mum as well, but in a very different way. I would work seven days a week, 12 hours a day before I had kids, and I loved it. People would say, what about? I loved it. It was my hobby. It was everything I wanted to do.

Tina Tower [00:04:32]:
I'd take time off when I wanted to and go and play with friends and my husband and different things. We traveled a lot, but when I wasn't doing those things, I just wanted to work. I just wanted to make stuff and do stuff. And then I became a mum, and I wanted nothing more than to just sit with those kids and play lego on the floor and just stare at them all dreamily. So that changed everything for me, and I think in such a good way because it gave me such a full, beautiful life. But in terms of the ones that are probably, like, a little bit more unique, there was two major ones. So the first one was in 2012. So at that time, I started my business in 2004.

Tina Tower [00:05:15]:
And so I'd been going for quite a while by then, but I was still. I still hadn't quite, like, we were doing well by that stage, but I hadn't really. I was at like this. You know, when you get to a kind of like a. Not a plateau, but like, a ceiling when you're there and you're like, I keep getting to this level, and I don't seem to break out of that level. And so I'd done well. I was no longer like, we went through a lot of struggle financially, and I was no longer struggling. And so that pressure had come off, and I was kind of like, what next? Like always, I had built initially to have financial security, and then we had financial security, not like, wealth and financial independence, like, that work, optional life, which is what I build towards now.

Tina Tower [00:06:08]:
But the pressure was kind of off, and I hadn't figured out I still was working with a lot of money blocks, mindsets, I guess, around how much is enough. And I still had a lot of things from my childhood. People that drive bmws or wankers, people that have a lot of money are greedy, all of that sort of thing. And so in 2012, I went to Uganda with the Hunger project. It was. The trip was led by Kathy Burke, who's the CEO of the hunger project. She was on the podcast, like, earlier this year. Amazing, amazing woman.

Tina Tower [00:06:48]:
But she led the trip, and there was about ten of us on the trip that went there. And they were really clever with the way that they positioned it all. So I had been into charity for a while and doing what I could, but just, you know, doing things like, I sponsored a world vision child and gave to water aid and, you know, probably $100 a month at that point. And so I went there, and they showed us around all of the epicenters. And the way that the hunger project works is it's very much a hand up, not a handout. And so they build these epicenters, and when they build them, they have, you know, food banks in there so that people can start to expand their crops and not be subsistent farmers. They have medical, they have education, they build schools, like, everything there. And the goal is to pull out within three to five years after they're sustainable.

Tina Tower [00:07:40]:
And so it's an incredible model. That was so awesome to be able to see and witness the change that that made. But then, very cleverly, about three days into the trip, they took us to a place that was about a few hours from an epicenter, so had none of that support. And it was the most devastating thing I had ever seen. There was a lot of sickness. One child died. It was. Yeah, it was the most harrowing thing I've ever seen.

Tina Tower [00:08:10]:
The most difficult, like, confronting thing that I have ever, you know, been, been part of. And when we were there, there was two women, Angela and Claire that were talking, and they were going like, this is just, you know, most of us were in tears. We. We couldn't really deal with the reality of what was there and how unfair it is that in our world that is happening, like, still now all across the world to so many people. It's just. It's just so incredibly unfair. And Angela and Clare were there and going, like, how much is it to do an epicenter? Like, to get this started? And Kathy said, it's about a million dollars to get it started off the ground, like, going with that. And they went off and they were talking with each other on the side, and then they came back and said, we'll do it.

Tina Tower [00:09:02]:
Like, we'll fund the epicenter. And I was so incredibly blown away, one, by their generosity and two, by their ability to see a problem. And, yes, we can't solve all the problems in the world. My gosh, there are so many of them, but we can do our part. And to watch them go, there is a problem, and I have the ability to solve it and solve it was such a, like, in terms of significant impact, far out to me, that showed me what money could do. And I had a totally different, like, in that instant, a totally different perception of money and wealth. And I knew that, you know, there was nothing like, yes, some people could be super greedy with money. Some people can be super greedy without money.

Tina Tower [00:09:50]:
Some people are nice. Some people are assholes. Like, it's different. It affects all different classes of people. And so to see people do this and go, money can be such a vehicle for incredible change and freedom and the ability to see a problem and change it and generosity was incredible for me. I came back from that trip, you know, we supported the hunger project for a really long time. And then in 2019, when we were traveling around the world, I met a girl called Annette. And then she gave us the idea to start a scholarship program.

Tina Tower [00:10:28]:
And so now we have the Kukua Foundation foundation, which is a charity that I started that supports girls who are at risk of childhood, marriage, with really good grades, that want to continue on their schooling and go to university and make positive change in the world. And so that is something, you know, we have 45 girls that we're currently putting through school, and I don't think any of that would have happened had I not been in that situation and saw that and was driven to make more money, not only for myself and only for my family and community, but also the change that I could do in the world and what I was able to do with that. So that was a really significant impact. The second one, I'm, like, going heavy real quick. These other questions aren't as heavy. The second one was probably one of the worst moments of my adult life. Yeah. And it was back in 2012.

Tina Tower [00:11:30]:
Oh, I should have looked this up before we started. It was in 2011, and so we had purchased our family home when I was pregnant with Kai, my first. So in 2008. But we couldn't afford to live in the house straight away, so our plan was we would keep renting in our, like, little granny flat that we lived in out the back of somebody's house, and we would rent out our family home until we got ourselves to the financial position to be able to move into it and raise our family there. And so that took us a while. We didn't move in until 20, the start of 2011, so it took us a few years to get there, so we moved in. The kids were like two and three when we, when we moved. And I had started franchising, and so I put all of the money, my previous business, if you don't know my background, I had primary tutoring centers, so centers that taught kids how to read, and I started franchising those, and I put everything that I had into that.

Tina Tower [00:12:34]:
It was very much a feast or famine kind of thing. Like, you would sell a franchise for a really good amount, but then you might not sell one for a few months. And so we put everything into there, and the more we grew, the more we had to. It's kind of like that self fulfilling prophecy, you know? You had to put a lot of money into marketing so that it looked like a brand that people wanted to invest in. You had to put a ton of money into legals. You had to put a ton of money into, like, all of the infrastructure, the team locations, company run locations. Like, it was very capital heavy. And so it took a lot of money with the idea that it would pay off in the long run.

Tina Tower [00:13:10]:
And so I was very much playing the long game with that. And we got to a stage where we were doing really well. We had a really good start to it, and the franchisees were doing really well. So the business model was going to work, but the simple case was I just didn't have enough capital, and so I started to try and get investment for that. And I was the youngest woman ever in Australian history to start a franchise system from scratch. So I was young, I was 27 when I started franchising, and I did not look like most people in the franchise industry. Most of franchises were ran by, you know, men in their late fifties, early sixties, and that's where most of the investment went. And so I couldn't get a lot of the traditional forms of investment.

Tina Tower [00:13:57]:
People kind of, you know, treated me like they wanted to pat me on the head and go, oh, honey, so cute you're wanting to do this. Even though I'd been in business for ten years already, I knew exactly what I was doing, but I just didn't look like it. And I giggled a lot, and I laughed a lot. And, you know, yeah, anyway, I kept getting laughed out of a lot of rooms or not laughed out, but, you know, I had really condescending questions, and, yeah, no one wanted to invest in the company. The best offer that I got was 250,000 for 30% of the company, of which at that time was just not going to. Was just not going to cut it. Like, the 250,000 would have been really helpful. That's what we needed.

Tina Tower [00:14:43]:
And we were trying to pitch that for, like, 10% increments, but for 30%, I wouldn't give it away. So I decided that my plan was to sell the company for millions and millions of dollars, you know, 510 years down the track and go for international expansion. I had very big dreams and plans, and so I said no to that level of investment because I didn't want to give away 30%. And so what that meant was we had no money. So what I had to do was go home and tell my husband that we couldn't afford to pay our mortgage anymore, and we're going to have to move out. And I said no to $250,000 because I wanted to back myself. And luckily, he has always been incredibly supportive of me our whole life and supported me through that as well. But in terms of significant impact, the reason I share this story is when we moved out of our house, we moved out.

Tina Tower [00:15:42]:
We were not in a good living situation. We had nowhere really to go. We moved out really quick and rented the house out so that we could try and retain it with the plan of hopefully moving back there again another day, give up on the dream. And so we moved out, and I went back, like, one last time to just check that we got everything, that everything was clean, like that. It was all there. And I walked into that house and still, like, you know, that's 13 years ago, and I still feel emotional when I think about it now. I walked through the house that was just all empty, and it just. It looked like I felt was very empty.

Tina Tower [00:16:23]:
And I sat down on the back steps of that house, and I cried like somebody had died. I felt so, like such a failure. Like everything that I had worked towards and everything we had, like, moving into the house was such a significant moment of achievement, and moving out was such a glaringly obvious indication to me that I sucked. And that was such a polarizing moment. And I sat on the step and I cried for a long time and then felt that thing that I know we all feel as entrepreneurs every now and then. And when it strikes, it's so precious. Is that fire in the pit of your stomach? Is that that feeling that you can do this? That it's worth it, that you can go again? And even though in that moment, like, I was not, I was not the wife I wanted to be, I was not the mother I was wanting to be because I was so stressed out and trying so hard and feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere. And I felt like I had let everybody down and had failed.

Tina Tower [00:17:41]:
And I knew what was ahead of me. I knew without the funding that I would have to outwork everybody by ten times because a lot of people building franchises had bucket tons of money, and I had none. And I had to figure out how I was going to do that. And so I knew what I had ahead of me. But I had, like, this steely determination in the, like, optimism in the vision that I had in knowing that I was going to do it, in knowing that I wouldn't give up, in knowing that I could back myself and also committing to myself that I would never, ever put myself or my family in this position again. And that changed the game for me because previously I was very. I mean, my husband would probably tell you I'm still quite risky now, but I'm nothing compared to what I was then. I would go, like, balls to the wall, risk it all.

Tina Tower [00:18:46]:
Like, let's see how we go. We could end up with nothing. We could end up with everything. I'll just build it again. So I did not have the fear of failure and do not have the fear of failure like I know a lot of people have. It's just never been, you know, I think when you start with nothing or when you have nothing a few times, like, you know you're going to be okay. I'd prefer not to, obviously. But I know I could go back to zero and I could build again.

Tina Tower [00:19:12]:
And so what I decided in that moment was I would look after us first. I would not risk everything, but I would start building a buffer and I would start taking care of us. So that in a way, when I did fail, which I knew I would make mistakes again, of course, like, there's no way to get through business and win every game. You're going to make a lot of mistakes and go up and down. But I knew that when I would go down again that our base was solid, that I had the foundation and I had looked after us personally, and I looked after our home. And so that was probably such a significant impact, and I think that. But it definitely influenced a lot of the business decisions I have made since. It's given me a lot of empathy for people that are in difficult financial situations.

Tina Tower [00:20:05]:
It also has made me so incredibly smart with money. I am very careful with a dollar. I respect a dollar a lot because I know how it feels to have it. I know how it feels to not have it. So, yeah, started with a big question there, Janine. Okay, next one is from Heidi Wolf. So Heidi has asked how to transition from burnout, from a sole trader, service based business to online while having a young family and limited financial resources. Okay, so whether you have a family or not, I think this is super useful because transitioning from service based to online and having limited finances, like a lot of people when they're building businesses, have limited finances.

Tina Tower [00:20:50]:
Obviously, I've just told you, I have a lot of experience with that. And I do think that sometimes we can get caught in this trap of thinking, like, everyone has it easier than us, everyone has it more figured out, or everyone has more money. And it's really hard for us. We have less time, we have less money. What I know to be true from working with hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs over the last ten years is that many people are doing it tough. Many people are starting with limited time, limited resources, limited energy. People, you know, have stories to tell. And so what I think is that you've got to want it badly enough, because going from nothing to something like going from an idea to a fully realized, successful business takes work.

Tina Tower [00:21:34]:
And I wish that I could sell hopium and bullshit and just tell everyone that it's going to be super easy and that it's only this one thing to success, but it's not super involved, and it's so multifaceted and there's so many moving parts, both from a strategic point of view and from a personal development point of view, that all have to come into play and harmonize in order to be successful in business. And so what I would do is focus only on the next important thing. Like to give you something practical when you're going from service based to online, which is such a common pathway for people to come in, is to really go. You've got that limited time. So say you've got 5 hours a week to spend on the online. The hard part is all the money is currently coming in from the traditional business and not yet the online. And so people will often like fob off the online or push it to the side because it's not yet bringing in the big revenue. But you've got to bank on the future.

Tina Tower [00:22:31]:
And so you've got to give it something. If you want, like if you want it to be the one that overtakes, you've got to give it that love and care and time and attention. And so even if it's like 5 hours a week, you can do a lot in that time. But what I find is a lot of people will dick around a bit or fluff about or procrastinate. There is no space for procrastination when you are building a business from scratch. You've got to figure out what is it that's holding you back, what are you procrastinating about? And get rid of that because you don't have the time. Right. We don't have time to do that.

Tina Tower [00:23:02]:
We've got to spend the time that we do have really super strategically on the next thing that's going to get you ahead. And I mean, I would say, you know, in her empire builder, we have momentum paths. So we give people, like, what's that next thing that's going to be most important for you? So it saves people a lot of time and a lot of money. But if you're flying blind on that, like make your plan, make your own strategic plan and go, okay, what is that next thing that I can do that's going to inch myself forward and usually at the beginning, that is making money. So a lot of people will spend, you know, a ton of time on things that are nice to have but don't necessarily matter as much. So, you know, you might, you might get massive branding and all of this different stuff that looks really beautiful, but really you need to make money. You need to make sales. And so I would like one of the first things that I did.

Tina Tower [00:23:49]:
Make a sales page, get your offer designed and go and find some clients. That is the first thing. Because once you're starting to make money, you will give it more time and attention and then you can add on the other things which are going to lay that foundation, make it stronger and allow it to grow and scale in there as well. Well, in terms of burnout and especially with young family, I am the first to say I was not as hard on myself when I had young kids as what I see a lot of mums are now. When I had small children, I wound my business back significantly for that first five years. So I was the stay at home parent for that first five years. So I worked when my kids slept and it wasn't until my kids were four and five that then Matt, my husband, stopped working and he became the primary parent. And I worked when they were at school and that worked great for me because I didn't want to miss them and so I wanted to be with them all the time.

Tina Tower [00:24:49]:
And then when they went to school, I was like, okay, now I've got more space. I can work while they're at school and then be home early and be able to do that. So I feel like I was kinder on myself than I see a lot of people being. Because to me, life is both short and long. Right? Like, there's. It's short in, in the, the years that your children are little people is so short. I mean, oh, my God, what I would give to spend a day with three and four year old versions of my kids again, with their chubby, gorgeous cheeks and their little tiny hands, like, reaching up and holding your hand as you walk down the street and singing songs and reading books and. Just so freaking cute.

Tina Tower [00:25:30]:
Oh, my God, I miss it so much. I miss it so much. But, you know, those days to me were really short and life, hopefully is long. And so to me, it was a very short chapter. I knew that it was going to, like, I was going to have this magical five years where I got to be a mom of small children and I wanted to soak that up as much as possible. So for that time, like, I didn't really. I mean, I cared. Like, I wanted to make money, but.

Tina Tower [00:25:58]:
But in that time, I put my business more in maintenance mode than grow mode. So it was there and, you know, I did my thing, but I worked, you know, ten to 15 hours a week and I did the best I could at that time with that time available, but I was more interested in playing with my kids and I could grow the business later. And then when that later came, I felt like I had been like a horse with a bit in its mouth, like, being held back a little bit. And so when they went to school and I was like, okay, now's my time to tackle that business. Far out did I fly? Because I was like, I've been waiting for this moment. Let's go. And I went full pelt into that. And, you know, the business that I built was incredible.

Tina Tower [00:26:46]:
And the life that I have built for our family is incredible. And we have such a good relationship as a family, like a family unit. And I don't know if that would have been the same had I prioritized work over them. And I know that everyone's in different situations, and I don't want this to come across in any way of anything because everyone makes their own decisions based on their own life that they want to lead and what's happening in life at the time. But with, like, newborns and toddlers, like, sometimes I'll see people with newborns trying to run a launch, and I'm like, what? Why? Like, just do it later. Just do it later. We've got plenty of time later. And I'm so glad that I waited till later because now, you know, I have man children, I have teenagers.

Tina Tower [00:27:35]:
And I'm recording this. It's Sunday. One of my kids is at golf. One of them is on the mountain riding their mountain bikes. So I'm like, well, I'll go to work because they're not here to play with. But later when they come home and they want to play, I'll be right here, ready. And so I have always prioritized them. The thing that I will say is, when your kids are young, it is hard.

Tina Tower [00:27:57]:
Like, it is hard. You've got little people that need your attention all the time. You usually have limited financial resources because your dollars are stretching so much further and your capacity to work is diminished. And you're usually younger, so you haven't built up that nest egg, that foundation, foundation in there as well. So I would say be kind to yourself would be my biggest advice there because you probably will get a little bit burnt out because especially now, I think that, you know, women want to have it all, and we should have it all, but usually we're doing the lion's share of things. So you might be the one who's looking after the home, looking after the kids, looking after your business, trying to look after yourself. Like, there's so much to be done in such a small amount of time that is, you know, a really impossible task sometimes. And so be kind to yourself is my biggest thing there.

Tina Tower [00:28:57]:
Okay, next one is Stacey Muzzleberger. What was it for you that was the decider to sell your business and do this? Did you contemplate trying to own them all? Did you feel you let people down because you sold? Is it not a have this and that. Okay, great question. So I have a bit of a funny story with this one. Okay. So first thing I'll tell you is begin bright, which is my company that I sold last. Yes, I did feel like I let people down massively because I sold. Yes, very much so.

Tina Tower [00:29:31]:
But I was breaking. So towards the end of that business, it was, it was so. I had worked so hard, like, harder than I have ever worked in my life. I put so much on the line, I pushed myself to the limit again and again and again and again and again. And I was really exhausted, like, like viscerally exhausted and to the point where towards the end, I was. I remember when I talked to my accountant and said, I think I want to sell. And she was asking me, like, all the questions going, like, are you sure? Do you just need a holiday? Like, different things. And I couldn't remember a week where I hadn't felt nauseous, where I didn't have a headache.

Tina Tower [00:30:17]:
My hands were shaking quite a lot. Like I was in a bad way. And I either needed to hire a CEO that could take it bigger. So at that stage, we had 40 different locations, we had 120 staff. We were just about to sign a deal to start expansion through Asia. And so it was a lot, and it looked amazing from the outside. Like, I was winning a lot of awards. We were getting so much publicity, like we were on the momentum train, but because I, because of the capital, like, what I was talking about before, I didn't have enough team.

Tina Tower [00:30:51]:
So I was doing, I was doing the job probably of about five or six full time people, and it was taking its toll. And so I either had to hire a CEO and like an experienced franchise CEO or sell the company. And I was open to both. So we explored both of those avenues. But the thing for me was, even if I hired a CEO, I couldn't envisage myself ever really letting go. I am very involved and invested in things, and I couldn't see how I was going to transition from being the CEO to being the founder and watching people do things with my company and not having control over that. And so we did both. We looked for both and we got the offer to sell.

Tina Tower [00:31:38]:
And it was an offer that I wanted. We got three different offers within the first month. And so I took the one that I thought would look after my franchisees and my team the best. And so we did that. But I did very much feel like I still remember we bought everyone together for the sale announcement for that. And so everyone had flown in from interstate all to the one place. And then we did the announcement. And when I said, like, I'd like to introduce, you know, I've sold the company, I'd like to introduce you to the new owners.

Tina Tower [00:32:11]:
And I could see people's faces just go like, excuse my language, but f, and just everyone was just shell shocked. Like, nobody expected me to do it. And, yeah, it was a difficult decision and a difficult stage, but after I sold that company, I vowed never to work that hard again. Like, I was never going to do that to myself. You can probably pick up through my story, through these stages of my pattern that I have had. A lot of my things have come from trial and error. I am someone that needs to try something to know not to do it. I have read all of this in books, in different things, but it's, until I am in it, I'm like, no, it can't be that hard.

Tina Tower [00:32:55]:
Surely I can do it. Maybe they're just, you know, not as hard working as me. I can do it. Like, I'll be fine. They were right anyway. And then in terms of having multiple businesses as well. So when I started in the world of online, I didn't know what I wanted to start with. Now, this is not advice I would give to anybody, so do not take this as advice except just draw the lessons out of the story.

Tina Tower [00:33:22]:
And so when I started, I was really into personal development and happiness. I really think that a lot of the success that I have had in my life has been down to personal development and good mindset. And so I wanted to run a company called the Happy Life, which was all about helping people create a happier life and have more joy. And, you know, exactly as I have been talking about in prioritizing family and life and being able to do that instead of just being on this hamster wheel constantly. And so I wanted to do that. I also had such a skill set in tutoring and curriculum writing that I wanted to do the tutoring institute to help teachers that wanted to start tutoring businesses on the side, run those, and then also scale up, which was because I built a franchise system. I'm really, really good at systemizing and automation and doing a lot with little resources. And so I had those three businesses, and I couldn't decide which one I wanted to do.

Tina Tower [00:34:26]:
So I did all of them. I started, I built three different Kajabi sites, and I had one called the happy Life, one called the Tutoring Institute, and one called scale up. And I started all of them. And I promoted all of them to different audiences. And my deal was I didn't know what I was going to enjoy the most. And so my thing was I would just try them all out and I would say which one was most enjoyable and also which one made the most money. I wanted both of those things, and I did that. And funnily enough, the tutoring institute, I canned, like, after we made about the first $10,000 because I found that I was a little bit scarred from the tutoring industry and the exit that I did that I didn't want to talk about it anymore.

Tina Tower [00:35:11]:
And this is something that, when we go into online business, like, you have to talk about it all the time. And I was like, I don't want to talk about this anymore. I don't want to do it. And so even though I could have made a lot of money with it, we could have scaled it really easily because that's where I was known. That's what I was known for. That was the first one that I killed because I didn't want to talk about it anymore. And then I did contemplate keeping the happy life and scale up at the same time. But I am an all in kind of galaxy.

Tina Tower [00:35:42]:
I am not very good at. I'll do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And so while I do have a lot of mates that have investments, like, have multiple companies and keep them and put teams in place and then leave them to ride, I am an operational person. I've tried the hiring team and outsourcing a lot and handing over that control. And I really enjoy operating the company that I am running. I like being over all of the different areas. I like being involved in the day to day. I care deeply about the work that I do.

Tina Tower [00:36:16]:
And for that reason, I'm a one at a time kind of gal. So, yeah, that is why I don't have multiple businesses. Thanks for listening, and thank you for all of the wonderful questions that were sent in. That was part one. So I am continuing on with the other questions that were sent through in part two, which will be here for you next week. 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 [email protected].

Tina Tower [00:36:50]:
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 Meena 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.