Tina Tower [00:00:02]:
Welcome to her Empire Builder Show. I'm your host, Tina Tower, business strategist, course creator, best selling author, and unapologetic champion for women chasing big, audacious dreams. Since starting my first business at 20, I've built and sold multiple companies, traveled the globe and discovered the magic of online courses. A business model that has changed my life forever. Building a business is no easy feat. It's a long road filled with sometimes challenges. But with the right strategy and consistency, your success is not only possible, but it's inevitable. Here on the show, I'm bringing you candid conversations with extraordinary humans, practical strategies and a whole lot of inspiration to help you scale your online business, create wealth, freedom and impact that you deserve.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:00:51]:
This is where bold dreams meet proven action, where we ditch the limits and go all in on business building. And we get to live lives full of fun and freedom that light us up. If you're ready to play big, bigger, earn more and step into your power as a fearless empire builder, you're in the right place. Let's make it happen. Hi friend and welcome back to the first episode of her Empire builder show. In 2025, I did end up having a larger break from the podcast than what I had initially planned. At the end of 2024, we were moving house. So we moved from our acreage which I talked about on the podcast.

Tina Tower [00:01:35]:
We from our acreage to a house in November. The week after I went to America for three weeks and I was due to batch all of my podcasts but then I had a cold and then we had end of year conference for her Empire Builder and then I went on vacation. So it was one of those things that I was like, you know, I could do it really rushed, but I do, I don't like to half ass things. I like to do it properly when it's all set up. And so it's taken me a little while. We went away for a month and so I got back a couple of weeks ago and it's taken me a couple of weeks to get everything back into order because the last couple of months of the year obviously were very, very full, which I know is probably the same for a lot of you. Doesn't it seem like a distant memory, like Christmas now at this stage? Coming into February seems like such a distant memory already. I always feel that way in January.

Tina Tower [00:02:38]:
It's like it goes on for such long time, which I'm really thankful for because it gives us the chance to kind of catch up and get everything organized. But I am now recording in My new office. It's a gorgeous office that is very similar to my old office with all the same decor and set up. But I wanted to get all my equipment right and all of that sort of thing. So. Welcome, welcome. I hope you enjoyed the new, the new podcast cover that's come out, the new intro at the start. But what I wanted to do with this episode was really just kind of recap 2024 and the changes that I'm making inside our business in 2025.

Tina Tower [00:03:17]:
The reason that I wanted to do that, it's a little bit more personal and casual of an episode rather than me teaching you strategically. But for me, I get to hear the insides of people's business all day, every day. I get to, you know, I'm very privileged to be able to hear exactly what people are doing and how they're doing it and why they're making changes, all of those different ins and outs. And I am always intrigued. I love it. I love hearing people's different perceptions and kind of lifting under the hood. So that's what I wanted to share with you today. So 2024 for me was, I mean it definitely wasn't a coasting year.

Tina Tower [00:03:58]:
I wouldn't say I coasted, but I purposefully at the beginning of the year decided that we weren't going for rapid growth, which is new for me. In November, it was my 20 year business anniversary, which is just insane. Like it. Yeah, it just, I mean, I know no other life other than business ownership but like when I was, when I was really, really looking at that and, and how long I've actually been in business, I had never had a year where I didn't try and go all in and play full out every year. I was like, pedal to the metal, accelerate as fast as you can. Like let's go. And so I really just wanted a year. It hit me hard in 2023, our kids coming of age.

Tina Tower [00:04:49]:
I don't know why it hit me hard then more than anything else but we had like a Christmas and it was the first year in Christmas 2023 that we, we'd booked accommodation where we had like separate rooms and, and all of that sort of thing. And it just, our kids just seemed so grown up and I wanted, I just want to with them and it's ending really, really quickly and so I didn't want to just sacrifice too much of that time to build the business. I knew that one of the best things about building a business is that you can accelerate and break whenever you like. But for me, in the past, I haven't done that because I'm kind of like, you know that saying, you're either green and growing or you're ripe and rotting. And I never want to go backwards. I never want to think, oh my gosh, my business is ripe and rotting. So I've interpreted that as go, go bigger, bigger, more, more. And I've got to admit, like, I loved the year.

Tina Tower [00:05:48]:
I loved it. I had a really good time. I spent a lot more time at home. I spent a lot of travel time with the family. We did weekends away together, Matt and I. Now that the kids are getting older, we're leaving the kids for weekends, which is just like wild. And I'm always so nervous about it. But they've been fine so far.

Tina Tower [00:06:08]:
But we've been doing a lot of that and it was also a big year. Focusing in the past, I have, you know, you've got the seven different areas of life where you're looking at, you know, your, your finances and your spirituality and your family and your time and your health and your mental well being and all the different things that we have in our lives. And I really think that in different years, you can't, 10 out of 10, every single area of life, it's just, you know, it's too much pressure to put on ourselves. And in the past, if I'm being honest, I have sacrificed a little bit of my health order to keep the things that are most important at that time to the top. And for me, that's always been family as number one and then my business as number two because my husband's been a stay at home dad for 12 years. And so the family relies on me for that. And that weight can, that responsibility can sometimes get heavy and I can get really reluctant to take my foot off the gas because it's not just me that is affected if I want to take it easy for a little while. But last year I decided I turned 40 in the January of 2024 and I was like, some things in your life, you're like, I'll do, I'll sort that out later.

Tina Tower [00:07:29]:
And I'm like, latest coming in hot, you know. And so I really wanted to focus on my health. I've taken a lot of time to do that in terms of, you know, for a lot of the days I'll walk for an hour to two hours a day. I'm exercising every day, sometimes twice a day. Not, don't think I've gone crazy with it. When I say exercise, like if I do a walk or A strength class in the morning. I will do yoga or stretching in the night. So while I say exercising twice, I'm not like, you know, busting out the weights twice a day.

Tina Tower [00:08:08]:
It's a very well balanced program. But it means I've moved my body a lot. I've done a lot of things, like, I could. It's not something. I did a post on Instagram at the end of last year about it because. Because I've been getting so many different questions about it, like probably five to 10 a day. It's something that losing weight is. It's a very private thing.

Tina Tower [00:08:32]:
But at the same time, you're very publicly visible. And in my position, you know, it is publicly visible. And so people were. Every time I posted a photo or a story, people were lovely and saying, like, look great. What have you done? And I have no desire to be a health influencer. And I think everyone's health is such an individual journey that what I've done is not necessarily right for other people. Gosh knows, I've tried every single thing in the past that hasn't been right for me, but I ended up losing 26 kilos across the year. So I addressed that on Instagram, and the questions have stopped since then, which has been really great because I don't want to talk about it all day, every day.

Tina Tower [00:09:16]:
I did think about doing a whole podcast episode about it, but the thing is, I don't want to. I'm a business strategist, not a health coach. And. But, you know, I also think that me getting my health to the. To one of the top three in my priority list has meant that it's made a lot. A lot of things in business a lot easier. But there's still different things, you know, like, take today, for example. I woke up this morning and I wanted to go for my walk, but the cleaners are coming at 11, so I'm going to go get my nails done at the same time.

Tina Tower [00:09:50]:
And tonight I'm going into the city for a friend of mine's book launch. I wanted to get this podcast episode done. There's a few other things on my list that I want to get done before I go there, and there just simply wasn't enough time. And so you look at that sometimes and go, something's got a sacrifice. And too often, previously, I have chosen moving my body is the sacrifice, but now I hold it 9 out of 10 times, and which has made a very big difference. And so that was. Was. That was what I wanted to do for the year.

Tina Tower [00:10:18]:
So where I say, you know, I didn't work too hard, we still, we still did a lot like our membership. Her empire builder is my favorite thing I've ever done in my life and I'm really proud of the work that we, we have done and the work that we do inside. We have brought in a lot more like AI content. And I started two new websites at the end of 2024. So one of those was AI Circle, the AI circle dot com. And that is because I wanted to have more of an AI slant but not morph her empire builder too much into AI because although we need it a lot, I don't want people to think AI is all you need. It's kind of like when people think social media, I can just focus on social media and that's it. Social media is an integral tool, but it's not all.

Tina Tower [00:11:08]:
We still have the business fundamentals that we need to work on. Third party media is still a big thing. Like all of the different aspects of business and finance and team is still like, are always going to be so incredibly important. So I wanted to have like a separate area just for that. And then the other one we started was coursequickies.com and that is a template site which is something that I have been sitting on for years wanting to create, but have never really got the space and time to be able to do it. And October rolled around and I didn't have any big projects and so you know, was feeling really good about the year and feeling rested and really energized and, and so we had the space and time to be able to do that. And it's beautiful. It's got Canva templates.

Tina Tower [00:11:53]:
So it's designed exactly for course creators. It's got Canva templates, Kajabi website templates, Monday boards, chatgpt prompt Playbooks. Like it's just really quick why it's called course quickies but just like quick solutions that you need right there and then for you and your team. So if you haven't checked that out already, go and check that one out. So that was kind of my 2024. Now coming into 2025, I decided that I had a really beautiful year focusing on that. And while I'm still traveling a lot in 2025 and spending a lot of time with the kids and we'll be doing a lot of my health. I miss the excitement of high growth business.

Tina Tower [00:12:34]:
I don't like to come to work and just like do the thing and get out. I love the rush that you get from what's possible. Okay, what are we looking at? How can we do better here? How can we get 2% more here? And what if we do this for launch? What if we do that for launch? And so I decided that this year we're going for it again. Not going for it in the terms of like, work myself to the bone, do or die sort of energy. But I want to see what we're capable of. I have an amazing team at the moment. Team has always been my most difficult thing. So at the moment that we're all like, humming really well means that I have the kind of confidence to be able to go, all right, let's go, we can do this.

Tina Tower [00:13:22]:
And so what that looks like for me is a big step up in visibility again this year. Visibility can be really difficult for us as course creators. I know some people find it not so difficult. It's something I've struggled with in wanting to hide sometimes and not be judged all the time. I was having this conversation here. I'm going to tell you something like, super personal, which I may regret later, but I think it'll be helpful for you. So I was having a conversation, two different conversations that, that kind of bring this point home. My son Kai, he is a golfer and he put up a reel the other day.

Tina Tower [00:14:05]:
He's getting ready to start approaching colleges and start applying for college in America, where he hopes to be able to get a golf scholarship. And so he put a reel together to showcase, like, his golf and that. Anyway, it's gone really well. But he was looking at the amount of sends and there's I think, 20 something sends of like the, you know, the little paper airplane where you can see how many people have either shared it to their story or sent it to somebody else, but you can't say who. And he was talking to me and I was going, like, that's the stuff of dreams. Like, that's better than a save. Like, that's really good for the algorithm. That's a great start, honey, that's so good.

Tina Tower [00:14:42]:
And in his mind, he was really worried that, that, that there would be other people that were sending it to each other and kind of putting. Putting on him and going, who does he think he is? Like, trying to act all cool in this video, like that sort of thing. And I was like, you know, coaching him around it while at the same time going, honey, like, that's my fear too. And so I acknowledged that with him and I acknowledged that with you. And then the other thing happened on the weekend, my. In Laws were over and they have the best of intentions, absolute best of intentions. But my, my mother in law said to me, so it's the first time that we've, we've seen them since the beginning of 2024. So obviously I'm 26 kilos down.

Tina Tower [00:15:28]:
It's a very big difference. And she said, you, you look really, you look really good. I was, I was looking at, at my phone after your birthday pictures and I was scrolling through my phone and I was like, you know, she was calling out to her husband and going, come and look, come and look. I'm getting really worried, really worried about Tina. She looks very, very skinny. And then she looked at me and she said, I'm really glad that, you know, it's, it's worse online than it is in real life. You don't look so bad. You've still got some meat on your bones.

Tina Tower [00:16:00]:
And I was just like, like, you know, when someone, I'm like, is that a compliment? Is that an insult? I don't know. But anyway, the point was for me, the thought of someone sitting there in their chair scrolling through social media and seeing a picture of me and judging me and talking to other people about it and doing that, like, that's, that's all our fear, right? And I know that that stops a lot of people, including myself, sometimes from, from putting our views out there, from putting our videos out there, from putting ourselves out there. And it really brought it home to me in going, gosh, like, that's one of my, that's one of my biggest fears. And there you are just telling me, like, that's what you've done. And so, you know, that took a little bit of processing to be able to be okay with and to get over, but just to know that that happens. And it's something that we all, as people that are in the arena, people that are bold enough and brave enough to put our ideas out there and our opinions out there and try and help the world. It means we're going to get the, and we're going to get the bad and we're going to get probably everything in between. People on the Internet can be super weird, super weird.

Tina Tower [00:17:14]:
And so, you know, it's something that last year I kind of enjoyed doing less of subjecting myself to that. But this year it's like the mission is worth it. So to me, I love helping women become more wealthy. The amount of stories that we've had through her empire builder of women that have, you know, not only done the big things like retire their husband. And we had another few people reach the million dollar mark, which is absolutely exceptional. But. But for me, it's going like the woman that can now go to the grocery store and buy anything that she wants to. She doesn't have to use the calculator anymore, or she can see a beautiful dress that she knows she'll look fabulous in and make her feel fabulous, and she can just buy it.

Tina Tower [00:17:58]:
Like, just the freedom of the little things. That is. That is what I want everyone to be able to have. And. And, you know, I love business. I love the whole strategy behind it. I love. I love the freedom it gives us.

Tina Tower [00:18:10]:
I love the life it gives us. I love everything about it. And so I want to do more of that. And so that means getting a lot more visible, which means that. So, like, in a normal year, if I take out 20, 24, in a normal year, I'd speak on about five to 10 live stages a year, and I go on about 30 to 40 podcasts. Last year, I went on like five podcasts and I spoke on two stages. So it was a really quiet year in terms of visibility. This year, I have decided to take it back to the norm.

Tina Tower [00:18:43]:
So I'll be on 40 podcasts, and the goal is to speak on 10 stages. Weirdly, right? This is what I mean about your intentions and when you actually voice things out loud, but not even voice things out loud, this started happening. So I decided that this was gonna be my year, and I hadn't said anything to anybody yet. And then I got my first couple of speaking engagement inquiries in mid January, and I emailed them. I'm like, I'd absolutely love to. I'd be on it. But interestingly, the end of last year, I didn't get any. I got no speaking engagement inquiries.

Tina Tower [00:19:22]:
And usually we get a couple every month. And so I was like, the juju, like the sparkly bits that we put out into the world, the world picks that up. And so just as I'd started to go, you know, I'm back, baby. Like, we're getting this momentum train going, people were starting to inquire. And I said to one of the ladies, I said, like, yeah, I would absolutely love to. Can I ask why you asked me? She's like, I'm just loving your energy right now. And that was something that I was like, you know what? Like, the available energy. So if you have the intention for something in the year, start embodying that and start putting it out there publicly so that people will start giving you those opportunities as well.

Tina Tower [00:20:04]:
So visibility big one for me this year. Another one is trips with my kids. So one of the things that I wanted to do with my kids this year was so they're 16, they'll be 16 and 17 this year. And I wanted to take them to India for 10 days. India is one of my favorite countries. I think it's a really soulful experience being there and I wanted to do a trip with them. It's the last year I'll have both kids at school and so I wanted to have, have this trip that they could remember forever and going like that was the greatest week with mom and, and just, just like have this time that they would always remember our time together. Anyway, with the trip that we did to Indonesia over the, over the Christmas New Year break, we were staying in accommodation that was, that was lovely, but it was very eco friendly.

Tina Tower [00:20:53]:
And by eco friendly I mean that the bedro enclosed but then all the bathrooms were outside. And so it had a lot of, a lot of bugs, a lot of monkeys around, like there's a lot of spiders. There was a lot of different things. And one of my sons was, was like, you know what? Third world travel is not for me. I don't enjoy this. I don't understand why we live in such a beautiful home with all of our things and this is where you want to take us. And I was trying to explain to him all the benefits of travel and all of it and he was just, wasn't having it. And I'm like, you know what, we've raised our kids to always go, this is me and this is what I like.

Tina Tower [00:21:29]:
And he just doesn't like it. And so I was like, okay, this is probably not going to be the best idea to take them to India because if you've been to India, you know that creature comforts are not there. And so instead I said to them, I would love to take you each one week anywhere in the world doing anything you want, just the tour us. And so I am doing that this year, which I'm really excited about. I also have my honeymoon in September, so. I know, super corny, I know, but I love it. Every 10 years my husband and I get remarried and so this will be our third wedding, our 20 year wedding anniversary and we're going to get married and then we're going to go on honeymoon to Europe. So that's going to be for a while.

Tina Tower [00:22:14]:
So we've got some good, good trips kind of happening. So there's going to be, there's going to be lot of like, when I look at my calendar, there's not much white space in between, whereas last year there was heaps of white space. But in saying that, it's very architected, it's very. It's very fun, and it's what I want. So we're going for more trips. I'm going for getting more results for her Empire Builder members. So we're up to seven people now who have reached a million dollars in their online business, and my goal is to get to a hundred. And so we've still got quite the Gap app for that.

Tina Tower [00:22:48]:
So I'm really trying to work with people as much as possible in going, all right, how do we get, like, from zero to a hundred thousand is the hardest part. How do we get you there as quickly as possible and then how do we get you past that point? Because what I find is a lot of people stall at, like, 250,000 a year. So really digging into why that is and what needs to change, like, what got me here won't get me there kind of thing, and what needs to change to help people to get to that next level. So working a lot on that. I've got my masterminds. So I have two masterminds. One is Empress Circle Mastermind, which has been going for four years, but I haven't opened it up for the last two years. So this year, I got back from my trip and was like, I want some fresh energy for my members in there.

Tina Tower [00:23:34]:
Most of. Most of the people in there have been with me for four years, and we wanted some. Some, like, fresh energy to give it that revitalization. And so I opened it up to existing her Empire Builder members to apply. And we had 12 spots that got filled within 24 hours, which is just, you know, blew my mind. It's pretty. It was incredible, but also really lovely to go. There's that many people that straight away are like, you know what? I want more accountability.

Tina Tower [00:24:01]:
I want to go for it. Like, this is my year, and I'm so here for that. So I'll be spending a lot of time and effort with. We have 40 in the Empress Mastermind, so I'll be spending a lot of time and effort trying, like, getting there the results that they. That they need and that they deserve. And then I started a new Mastermind this year, also called Impact Mastermind, and that is basically a bunch of my friends that. That. So one of the things I've always done is go to America for my masterminds, of which I'm still part of my American Mastermind, but I've usually gone over to America because that is where a lot of the seven figure course creators are.

Tina Tower [00:24:41]:
So it's a bigger pool over there. But there's so many seven figure course creators and incredible business own owners right here in Australia and they just weren't all connected together. And connecting people is one of my favorite things to do. I love connecting people together. And so I did at the end of 2024, I sent an email to everyone that I thought would be a really good fit for it and all but four people said yes. And so we got that in and have started that as well. And I mean that's a very simple model compared to Empress Circle. Empress Circle has a lot of education, a lot of strategy, a lot of content, a lot of templates, like all of the resources and tools.

Tina Tower [00:25:25]:
Impact Mastermind is more of that traditional mastermind where it's like the meeting of the minds together. So it's one call a month and then two retreats in the year. So I'm really excited about that. We just had our first call and a lot of people didn't know each other yet, but when they come together, everything just, you can tell everyone's, everyone's just awesome. So it's going to be a fun year running, running my membership and the two masterminds together. And the other thing is team. So for me in the past, the most difficult part I have always found in business is getting the balance of team right and managing team. Managing team is not my greatest skill set.

Tina Tower [00:26:08]:
I find that for a lot of entrepreneurs, managing team is not a natural skill because as entrepreneurs we're ideas people. We come up with all the ideas, ideas like we're big picture thinkers, we're up in the clouds. And then a lot of us can also go into the weeds and do like all of the strategy and all of the attention to detail parts that we need. But we very rarely look out to see what other people are doing and think, oh yeah, hang on, I've got to make sure I'm bringing this person along with me and I've got to make sure that they know that we're all on board. I know that I can get very consumed in what I'm doing and forget to tell the team about it sometimes. And so managing people has not been my favorite thing to do do. I've gotten a lot better at it as time has gone on and at the moment our team is like, I'm touching wood right now. Beautiful.

Tina Tower [00:26:57]:
I have bought back my social media manager My favorite social media manager that I was working with throughout 2023, and because she's in the US and our Australian dollar is just terrible against the US it was getting really, really expensive. So I let her go in 2024 so that I could, I could have something more economical. But I just missed her. I missed her magic, you know, when you work with people that are just really, really good at what they do. So I bought her back again because it's worth it. Sometimes we've got to pay, pay a lot for that great skill. And so I've got her back, which is, which is going to change, change a lot of the vibe that's happening on her Empire Builder socials. So if you follow along, hopefully you will see that.

Tina Tower [00:27:43]:
And then, yeah, the rest of my team is humming along beautifully. So right now it's, it's that like the delicate balance always between. I want to experience growth. I don't want to max out my team's capacity and stress people out, but at the same time they have capacity to grow. So we want to get there, but I don't want to have to add more people to my team in the next year. So I'll be paying really close attention of where that capacity is and where our gaps are. And, you know, we may add a contractor or two, but I don't want to add any more permanent staff because training someone takes a really long time out of the business. So usually if I'm adding someone new to the business, I'll spend like the first month, six weeks.

Tina Tower [00:28:26]:
A lot of my calendar is carved out to get that person really comfortable and knowing everything. And looking at my calendar for 2025, there just isn't that time. And so if I need to get some contractors in, I will do that, but I won't have the space to be able to train new people. So that is a massive consideration going in there as well. And then the final thing that we're doing in 20 that I haven't done before is a bit more of a focus on Evergreen and Evergreen Funnels and Facebook ads. So I have Natalie Alamo, who is actually one of my Empress Circle Mastermind members and is really great at ads. She has taken over our ads for all three of my businesses. So her Empire Builder course Quickies and AI Circle, which has the AI for Course Creators course and interestingly, AI for course creators and.

Tina Tower [00:29:14]:
And course Quickies are not promoted using my face. So I am not there as personal brand. I will just stay in her Empire Builder. But the other businesses, while I run and operate them. They're not promoted with my personal brand, which I have never done before. In all of the different businesses that I run and have ran, I have never done that before. So it's a whole new experience. And so we're going into that with Facebook ads, which makes me super nervous.

Tina Tower [00:29:40]:
I know that for a lot, of course, creators, they rely on Facebook ads to grow their business. That has never been me. And while I don't want to get fully reliant upon it, I do know that to reach the growth goals that I want to be able to reach in especially those two companies, we need to get really good at evergreen funnels and VSLs and tightening up all of those conversions. And so that in itself, I love that experimentation and seeing, seeing what's working and trying new things. I said that was the final thing. But hang on, I've got a final, final thing that I haven't got written down on my piece of paper. But I just remembered because we only decided like three days ago. So one thing that I did many years ago, like five, six, seven years ago maybe, how long ago was 20, 19? Six years ago.

Tina Tower [00:30:34]:
So I ran events called Profit Plan workshops across the country and I loved it. I loved going out and having events and meeting people that weren't already clients. And since then I have just had. I always run events, but they're always for clients. Occasionally we'll open up like our end of day and end of year planning day conference for the public to come in. But we usually only we have a very small event like it's 10% is, is the public and the rest is members. But throughout June, I'm going to run Profit Plan workshops again only in Sydney, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. So just the three big cities in Australia.

Tina Tower [00:31:19]:
But I'm really excited to get out and run events for the public again. So keep an eye out for that. We won't release the tickets until we launch our Empire Builder in March and then we'll release the tickets in April. So it'll be a really short Runway to be able to do that. But if that is something you're keen on, keep an eye out for that one and we can see each other and all of the awesome course creators in those main capital cities. If I'm not coming to your capital city and you've got a big group of people there and you want to bring Profit Plan to your city, send us an email podcastinatower.com and let us know. So that is what I that's my plans for 2025. I hope that it's helpful in a way to look under the hood of what my plans are and what I'm what I'm doing.

Tina Tower [00:32:03]:
And of course, throughout the year, I will keep you posted on what works, what doesn't work, and where I've gone well and where I've gone wrong so that you can learn from my successes and my missteps. But it's great to be back with you for 2025. I'm looking forward to a great year and I'm cheering you on every step of the way. 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] 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 TinaTower and give it a review. It really does help us to be able to bring you bigger and better content as we grow.

Tina Tower [00:32:59]:
Have the most beautiful day. I'm Tina Tower and I'm cheering you on all the way.