The life and business of your dreams with Tina Tower

# Tina Tower - Book Case Study

Tue, May 07, 2024 12:04PM • 47:01

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

year, travel, business, day, work, people, place, love, tina, money, empire builder, hours, put, sold, month, flights, book, run, talking, palm springs

SPEAKERS

Emma Lovell

Emma Lovell 00:08

Welcome back to the podcast, Tina tower.

00:11

Thank you so much. It's great to be back.

Emma Lovell 00:13

I loved our last chat and really inspired actually why I wanted you to be here today, and why I wanted to include you in my book. And I must say, reading your book, your second book, I'm reading your first book now and your dedication, like I got one, like one page, I'm audible in it, one page in and I was like, Tina, to your boys, and your husband was

00:37

beautiful. So I need to read that back again. It's been it's been a while now. It's like six years old.

Emma Lovell 00:43

Your chapter pretty much establishes like this philosophy. So yeah, if you ever need some advice from path teen. Yeah, yeah. And that book was one life. And then your second book was million dollar micro business. Yeah. And I what I loved in that book, and very inspired, and by it was, you had five case studies? Yeah. Believe. And then on your podcast, you also spoke to those people. And I loved reading the case study, and then kind of getting the backstory for extra juice.

01:18

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. extra little bit right out of their mouth. Yeah.

Emma Lovell 01:22

So I was like, ah, Tina, I'm gonna do that. And then I'm like, oh, wait a minute. Tina, can you be a case study? Because you're actually doing what I am talking about?

01:31

Yes. There's nothing much more I love than combining business and travel.

Emma Lovell 01:36

And you are very good at it. So I have a funny question. And we just laughed about it. But what is your business or job? So what's your job, Tina,

01:45

my job. I mean, I'm an entrepreneur, I have built and sold four businesses, my current business that I have at the moment, which I think is probably going to be my longest lasting, is to her Empire Builder, which is coaching like online education for female course creators to build the business behind their online courses.

Emma Lovell 02:07

I love it, however. And you did you said quite quickly, you're like, oh, so I ran, you know, ran and sold for I've had four businesses. So you didn't always work this way. So what did work look like before her Empire Builder.

02:22

So my first business when I was 20, was primary tutoring centers and an educational toy store, which was by accident, I really became a business owner. Like by accident, I was studying full time at uni, becoming a primary teacher, and was looking for a job to pay my way through uni because I was really struggling financially. And I was walking down the street one day, and I saw on a telegraph pole, someone was advertising tutoring for $40 an hour. And at the time, I had three different jobs. And my highest paid one was like working the 10pm till 4am shift for $23 an hour. So I was like 40 bucks an hour for doing what I'm doing. Anyway, I'll do that. And as what would become a very prevalent pattern in my life, I got carried away. And so I was supposed to just do tutoring. And then I found this space, but it was too big for just tutoring. So I was like, Okay, well, so I don't have to say no to the space because the space is so good. What else could I do in there, and then I thought I could sell educational toys, because no one was doing that at the time. And I love toys. And so I had that business for four years, until I had my first son. And then when I had babies, I had run that business by working seven days a week. I worked a lot by the time I finished uni, there was no way I was going to go and get a job. I loved the world of business. And we would, you know, do the toy store all day. I tutor all afternoon we'd run the educational birthday parties on the weekend. And it was a great life. I felt like it was fabulous. And then I had baby. And it did not work anymore. I had him in the sling all day and we'd like crouch under the counter and feed him. And then when he was eight months old, I fell pregnant again and was like, Okay, this is not going to work. So we closed that down. And I then created a curriculum to license to other teachers. So we sold licenses for teachers to teach kids how to read. I did that for a couple of years and a lot of people were asking me for business advice. And so then I started franchising. So that was the biggest business that I had was we franchised from 2011 and I sold that company in 2016. That was the hottest business I have ever run anything after that seems like a piece of cake. When I sold that business I then went like who am I now without a business like my whole identity was wrapped up in it. And so then I started like five businesses in six months I started a jewelry store which I ended up like starting and then selling a few months later, I started a clothing label shaxi for short, sexy women. started.

Emma Lovell 05:00

That's definitely a shower idea that you will like. It's a great idea. But I just wanted

05:05

to, you know, sometimes you get into parts of life where you have to force yourself to do things over and over again. And then you forget naturally like, what do you love them? What are you good at? And I got that. So I wanted to just like experiment. And so I did that. The wackiest one was I was writing a book series to my kids one night, and they were like, this would be a great movie. I'm like, yeah, it would be. And then I was like googling later. Like, how do you make books into movies, and I bought the film right from the author, and went to Hollywood and had meetings with Netflix and Paramount about trying to make this book series into a movie.

Emma Lovell 05:45

And you came in with Liane Moriarty.

05:47

Do one of the nights so I got into like the Australians in LA kind of group that was was there. And they they got me a ticket to this film premiere, and I ended up accidentally walking on the red carpet instead of going like the back door. And I was on the carpet next to Charlize Theron for the premiere of gringo. And I'm like, Oh, my God, the places we could get ourselves to. And we're just like, What are you doing here? You work? Anyway, that didn't work out. They said I had to be there for two years and like doing the whole process to get a start, and I just didn't I wasn't that that into it. And then that led me this is a long answer. 20 years, you know, but then that would be

Emma Lovell 06:29

your full careers. Right?

06:31

Um, and then I thought what I need actually is not another business, what I need is a break. And so we sold everything and then travelled around the world for a year. And that's how I kind of tripped and fell into online courses by accident. And there we go. We're caught up.

Emma Lovell 06:47

So that's, yeah, that plan. I'm like, I can get on board with that. Let's, that's a great plan. I mean, walking the red carpet. That's been fun and things like that. But yeah, it was funny. Yeah. Good plan. So in that early time, like from up until then, I know, like you said, that was a very hard business to run or a very involved business. Did you get to do much travel? In? Yeah,

07:09

we did. Yeah, I mean, we have always traveled. My husband and I, right, from the moment we met, we've been on at least two overseas trips every year, even when we were broke. We would I mean, we were talking about this, just before we hit go, like flights are not what they used to be, you used to be able to get over to Bali, and a couple 100 bucks, or, you know, you can then like travel very, very cheaply, which is much more difficult to do travel on a shoestring now, but at the time, like it was it was cheaper. So we would get the time we would basically spend all of our money when we were young on travel, we lived very frugally, and would spend it all on a trip and a lot of people told us how wasteful that was. I regret nothing. But kids have been away with us ever since we've had them for a month, every year. And that has been like their whole lives. And they're 15 and 16. Now,

Emma Lovell 08:03

yeah, I was talking to my uncle last night actually, he reminded me a god, my godfather, so he's been a family friend is my uncle. But he reminded me of having conversations where I wasn't privy to them with my dad. And he's, you know, a lot of what I said to you before is, when you come into a lot of money, we start earning more money, and I've just sold half. very mindful of not blowing it. And yeah, travel and enjoyment and fun and living your life, it would be classed as blowing it, even when we have both declared how important and how meaningful it is to us and how many opportunities and wonderful things that have happened, like in the red carpet, yeah. Opportunities, experiences, but we still still got this sort of taboo over it. And so my uncle said, he talked to my dad years ago, he said, Look, I know it's a lot of money. Like we're taking the kids to the UK and the USA when I was nine, which now I think gosh, how much that would have cost and like, Mum and Dad, there's three of us children's so five people, six weeks UK, USA. And but he said, you know, yeah, we could put on the mortgage in general, but I use that I think we've got to do this and we won't get this chance all the time. And you know, so maybe people will look at that and anything my uncle was saying to him then no good good for you. And, you know, you're so clear in why you're doing what you're doing and and they've built wealth over time, and they've paid the mortgage, and they've done things and whatever. And, I mean, they ended up separating, so who knew what life was going to lead to but I love that he's reminded me of a conversation that he had with my father, which is similar conversations that I'm having that we feel one feels that they must justify. Yeah. Whereas if you invested in I don't know something like a car people might go, oh, that's yes, that's this. You bought a house you

09:53

can still value systems. So for me I wanted both like it was never this or that For me, I was going okay, well, if we put our number was 15% into investments for future and 15% into travel every year. That's how much went in. So it was like, You know what, we're gonna blow half and save half. So we look after current US and future us at the same time. Now those ratios are a little bit different. Last year was actually one of my biggest travel years that I have have ever spent. But we also put put a lot more into investing in the last 10 years than we did in the first 10 years. Yeah.

Emma Lovell 10:32

And you and then you have that capacity to and yeah, yeah, it's, I think sometimes people do would look at you and I can see you know, your Instagram and see your past travel. And I think I will now she's really successful in business. Of course, she's doing all the travel. But it was always the thing or the girl. You've caught the travel bug now and you're like, No, it's always been there just looked a bit different. Yeah,

10:55

yeah, it looks very different.

Emma Lovell 10:59

see as much of it because now we do show it all it's like I was always doing it. I just yeah, we've only had Facebook since 2006. We've only had Instagram since 2010. Or like 12 arc, it really took off. Yeah. And one of the hard

11:13

parts. When we did our around the world trip, I did a digital detox. So because I'd been working so much I wanted complete switch off. So I didn't even share any of it publicly. It's like the greatest content of my life and it never got shared. Quarantine

Emma Lovell 11:27

was like the B roll. You just have to go back to those places and get the B roll. I love Tina's for people listening. Tina's dogs have joined the podcast. So they did come in,

11:39

be really quiet about it. But they're like, next to me just like Hello.

Emma Lovell 11:44

Like me looking at a screen. Like my turn mom. That's part of that's part of the life is having your animals too. But I just want to, if we could share a very abridged version, I have been reading your one life book. And something, you know, the way the book starts. You sort of you're very intentional, like you've said with and you know, you decided at a young age that you're going to have this big life. Yeah. Like it wasn't, this isn't by accident. And perhaps you didn't know how it was going to look. But this isn't this wasn't just a, you know, you said you tripped and fell into courses but not tripped and fell into a big life? Definitely.

12:27

Yeah, um, I would like to say that I'm very intentional about living well, and that has looked different for different chapters of my life, like the chapter that we're going into, you know, in our next 10 years is very different to the one that we've been into in the last 10 years. And so each chapter, it's kind of like, we review often going, Are we living life on our terms? Are we living on our values? Are we doing life the way that we want to do it. And, you know, sometimes my husband's a lot more responsible than me, there was actually like, I took my son away to Adelaide to watch the golf a couple of weeks ago. And when we were there, we had the best time and we were like walking the streets at night and doing different things. And he said to me on the plane going home, he's like, I don't want to go back to normal life. I'm like, tomorrow, you're going back to work and to school, and I miss traveling with you long term. And I'm like, Honey, right? Um, I bet you're too old now. Like, we don't want to take you away from your social systems long term, like a month is how long we go. Like, if I took you a year again, like, you know, you'd lose all that community connection and all that sort of thing. Anyway, he was like, I'd be super keen. I came home, I spoke to the younger one who's only 15. And he was like, I'm on board. I'll go live in Spain for a few months. I'll go live in Mexico, like, let's go. And I was like, what I wasn't expecting this. And then so I go to my husband and I like, I think we can go again. Like how like, like, I was thinking this was over next time we do like a massive trip would be just the two of us. And I could never have that with the kids again. Anyway, the voice of reason Mr. Responsible was like, No, we can't do that again. But we are now going a month in the middle of the year and a month at the end of the year. Because I like to. I mean, to me, it's over. So quit every stage and I love spending time with my kids. I love spending time with my family. I love like all the parts of my life. I am very, very serious about having fun, if that makes sense. So I will say no to a lot of things because I want more joy in my life. And that looks very unconventional to a lot of people. But I love it.

Emma Lovell 14:45

I love what that point you've made there. And I think it's something I think everybody thinks in extremes. And what I'm trying to do with this book and with my message is like travel doesn't have to look one way and I feel like people think if you didn't do Do the gap here, or you don't do it in retirement, there is no way to do extended travel, when there are so many case studies and so many examples. And if it is that you can't do right now, it's not possible or it's not within line with your values, or it doesn't fit with the family to do a whole year. Like you said, one month is quite a substantial amount of time. Yeah. But with the school year and with University, who were how much of you how did you travel so much. I milked the university year, like, It's ridiculous how much you pay, right? So what amount of time that you're actually there. I had a three months because some people didn't. But I had three months, like my exams were early November, I didn't have to be back till Feb, I would leave the day after my exam. And I would come back at the end of as you know, the day before orientation started. And the same in the middle of the year, I was very fortunate to have quite long blocks. So the way my exams fell, I did a business degree. So I'd have four weeks in the mid break. And then you had another two two weeks. I mean, that all lap is like nearly six months, five months at that I couldn't do it like, Oh, but I can't, because the bloody blah, blah. So I would work my new and I similar would work my hiney off, study multiple jobs, make money however I can and then go away for a month. Come back to it the next semester, and then go for three months. And rinse repeat. Yeah, it's the best. And with children that in school because people do. Mr. Have you thought about school? And I'm like, I'm well aware of how the school system works. I was once a child. Also it really affects affects your business when you start working with people who have children. Yeah. And so yeah, again, I'm like, geez, this holiday seem to go forever. And we do we have at least minimum 12 weeks of holiday a year. And yes, it's a more expensive time to travel, but not necessarily as well. And I feel like we can. I'm really excited now to work within those seasons. And I want to play the game of yeah, you love the game of business. I love the game of how much travel? Can I milk out of? Good you? Yes. And now I can now it's cool in a way because I used to love how my year was structured with uni. And then once I got out of uni, and you're running a business, you're deciding when things run, you're deciding on the times. And so in a way, I'm kind of looking forward to having Oh, this is the structure of the year we follow this school program. Yeah. And I can plan ahead for when launches are or when events are or what dates things should be on. And then when we don't have to be here. We're not going to be Yeah, totally. Yeah. And so I love that you've got you've had that. And I think that's something that people also take, don't take into account and they're looking at your bleisure life on socials be like, Oh, look at her in Palm Springs and doing all that. But like you said, there's things that you say no to, like. So sacrifices, what are the sacrifices that you feel that you've made over the years in order to run the business your way into include travel. So

18:07

in the early days, that was a lot more obvious. So we didn't do things like we never went out to a restaurant, we never had cocktails, we didn't drink alcohol, we didn't buy a cafe breakfast, like there was just so many incidental things that were just off the table to us that we were just like, that's just not an option for the way we want to live. So I still remember the first time that I bought a cocktail, I was like 32. And I was like, Alright, we're gonna, we're gonna do this, like, we're gonna be able to do that. Now. I mean, I'm lucky enough that my business has been successful for quite a while, so the sacrifices are less. But we can like it's still conscious choices in going, Okay, if we allocate the money to this, then it's going to be decidedly less like we did all the calculations on retirement age, and how much money we want to have invested before, we know that we will never run out of money living on our, like, fixed costs per year that we want to be able to live on. And so it's like, well, you can do it at this age, and keep traveling how you traveling now, or you could do it five years earlier, and not travel. And it's like, well, no, I'll

Emma Lovell 19:12

take the five years. No, thank you. No, please. Absolutely. So it's,

19:17

uh, you know, I think it's, it's making those conscious decisions in that it's always a choice like you can, I do think that you can always have whatever you want, but usually involve saying no to things that we don't want to say no to. Yeah.

Emma Lovell 19:29

What in what about sacrifices in terms of and I know, you made sacrifices in your earlier business for the success success you had and that's a shift you made in terms of, I know, from my perspective, it's like sometimes lack of sleep, or working at funny hours. You know, if you're launching overseas, maybe you do end up running like, I know that you're now doing it but earlier on were You were there sacrifices like that that you made in order to go to or do

19:58

you never would sleep? Yeah. I never would have my sleep does not get messed up. And my kids always laugh at me now because they'll go. Like they're both really, they were really good sleepers when they were young, because they were like mom was just too scary if we woke her up. So sleep is a thing for me, I have ADHD. So I sleep like nine or 10 hours a night like I have a champion cipher. But what I did sacrifice a lot in my first 10 years of business was socializing, like I would have been a terrible friend to have I just, it was either family or work. That was I didn't have space for really anything else. I sacrificed my health way too much. That's something that I've really focused on in the last couple of years is if if I could spend another couple of hours of coaching, I would do that instead of spending those two hours and going to the gym, because it's like, by the time you got ready, you went there, you're showered, you come back, let's two hours. And so for me, I'd go well, I'd rather make money in that time, then spend it on my health, which we know is a short game resolution. But at the time when everything felt so tight, that was a choice that I that I made. So yeah, there were different definitely sacrifices. I never sacrifice time with the family. And I never sacrifice sleep.

Emma Lovell 21:15

That's fine. That's your non negotiables. And some people might look at me when I talk about You're working late hours, and I just

21:22

couldn't do it. Like I had my probably if I could, I would. But I work from about 8am. And I will go like hyperfocus. And so I go, I go pretty crazy on the the amount that I work and what I turn out and so I kind of burned it about six hours in. Yeah. And then it's like, well, we'll stop now.

Emma Lovell 21:42

Yeah. And that's everyone. I think there's such a fixed way and that like, oh, you know, or you're working on a Sunday. I like working on Sunday. Like you can't work on a Sunday. I was like you but I don't work on Wednesday. So

21:54

yeah, yeah, I tend to as I've gotten older, I tend to work when I feel like it. So we know like, every day the motivation is an equal. So some days I wake up and I'm like, super into it. And like, let's do it. Like I feel like recording a podcast and doing different things. And then there's other days that I just don't want to play today, I just want to stay in bed and just do nothing or just play with the dogs or go for a walk. Like I just don't want to play. And so I've gotten better at not worrying about a day of the week, a time of the day, but just you know, what's life doing? And what do I feel like doing? And just going with that? Yeah.

Emma Lovell 22:31

And it's, it's great that you know, those sacrifices, and there will be people who are like, I don't want to give up time with my friends. And I don't want to get I want to have my cocktails and I want to have that and you're like, Well, maybe you don't have as much time to work in the business then maybe that means you can't buy that extra flight. Yeah.

22:47

Which is all I mean, I think it's all well and good for everybody. As long as it's in your value system. Like I don't I don't own anything designer. I have no, like handbags and sunglasses and stuff that that people have. I remember like, I bought a coat once that was $400 and I was like, wow, like this amazing coat. And my friends are going you know, like that's that's not like that's normal. Like what are you even talking about?

Emma Lovell 23:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How

23:17

to me my value system. I was like, well, actually, I don't require a shirt that doesn't come from Kmart like that. That's totally fine. For me. I don't need the one that's 10 times the price that looks exactly the same. I can just take that one because I'd rather put my money into experiences.

Emma Lovell 23:33

Yeah, and likewise, they might look at some of the hotels you stay out all the flights, you take him out. What's the

23:39

point of doing that? That's crazy. I've had people say to me all the time, like you know that your things they lost whereas when you're in a hotel like it's gone the next day like you're going like Yeah, but the memories they lost forever? Not

Emma Lovell 23:52

necessarily because Tina has got a photo behind it. So she takes photos of the hotel and then turns it into artwork that keeps on living forever. That's smart. But you know you'd still how do you now because I know see we talked about Utah could be a year of travel and you did digital detox so that was a that wasn't work and travel that was your work work work and then travel but now you do tend to include work and travel so what are the times that you want to be just holiday and you're like no work he just holiday just family? And then what type of travel is this is work and travel or you know what I like to hold the pleasure on making that work? Yeah,

24:32

so pretty much just a month at the end of the year so mid December to mid January is our like switch off time. That is just fun times in saying that usually we're in really beautiful places. So I'll record some videos and that sort of thing while I'm there and then we can also make it a bit of a tax deduction. So we try and do that. Then but it's mostly like dedicated to the to the family and some recuperation and rejuvenation for the year ahead. Everything else though. I I will combine both together. So we go for three weeks to the US in July with the whole family, but a lot of that like I'll be working every day as well and doing like a couple hours here and a couple hours there and doing different things. We I've destination launched nearly every launch. So I like to go to a new place and launch I've done Hawaii and Mexico and America and places in Australia to go and just give it some like different energy and different space in there. I try and run retreats at places that I want to go to for a while I was running retreats all over the place, I was going here, there and everywhere. And I have like I won't say low level obsession because it's high. With Palm Springs, I love that place. If I could live anywhere in the world, I would live in Palm Springs, I love it, it is something about it. And I've had other people go there and come back to me and go, I don't see like what you're so into, like it's a nice place, but I don't get it. And this is the thing, everyone has their own place. And I'm like, It's my soul place. I like that. And I like Italy, those two places. The so now I run our members retreat for her Empire Builder. The US one is there every year. And I was looking at mixing up the location all the time. But I'm like it makes it so nice when you know the area, you know, the people you know, the services like just makes event planning so much easier. And I'm so happy they're so I've kind of crafted our business and our offerings around what's going to give me the life that I want to be able to lead as well. When

Emma Lovell 26:34

I love that. And that's smart. I've been toying, I have kind of this conflicted and one of your gorgeous members, Emma Walkinshaw is running the same retreat again the year after she's like, cuz then I know and I know the places and I'm like, I get that I'm not there yet, in saying that I had been to my retreat location another time. So I had done that in a different way. But I just found that this weekend, I ran a retreat in Melbourne and you're trying to assess the hotel while you're doing like, while you're there. I was like, Oh, I do see the value now in having your set location. And totally, maybe I can have the fun in in going to the hotels myself and in attending in different ways. Or, or researching but like if I find my place, you know, and not maybe not maybe ones and exploring one and ones. Yeah, this is our place like you've said I do now recognize the value because there are so many variables that could happen. And it adds a lot more work if you're trying to sort of navigate that whilst also deliver. And you know, maybe want to enjoy a little bit too. Yeah, totally total. And if you love it, then you love it. And that's that's fantastic. So I did find you and you play I sent Tina replays in. You've said Italy, I didn't know that you loved Italy, but I found her. Palm Springs is all rainbow. And so this Instagram video pops up of this place in New Venice. I think it's an island. It's basically using rainbow as a Yeah, Tina. Yeah. Yeah. Looks amazing. Place you've got America sorted. I've just helped you with Europe.

28:11

So that yeah, we got we're getting going to Italy next year to get remarried. So that'll be great. There you go.

Emma Lovell 28:18

So what would be your advice to someone who is looking to include more travel into their work and or their business?

28:27

Yeah, I think we sometimes forget that we can work from anywhere. You know, we get so stuck in our own routine that we think we can possibly do this from somewhere else. And one of the beautiful parts like I always go, there's nothing nothing like the productivity before you go away, right? Like that week or two. Before you go, you're so good. And to me that is my productivity when I am away. So when I'm away and I'm working, there's no fluff. There's no like procrastinating on anything, there's no like you're just in you do it in what needs to be done if it if it doesn't need to be done, it's off your list. So to me I go working really does like working from abroad. And while you're traveling teaches you a lot about your productivity, because you can go and you go Alright, so say you're in Italy and you want to walk the cobblestone streets all day and you want to be able to do that and you've got some work to do, you will get that work done really, really fast. You're gonna open that computer, you're gonna do it and you're gonna get back to eating your gelato like it is amazing. And I think that we can do both and not put everything on hold all year just for this one vacation where usually people get their vacation and they're so burnt out and so tired and so exhausted, that you don't really get the rejuvenation from it or the adventure from it because you're too tired to be able to enjoy it. So my advice would be pick a place any place that you love, and go. Like I know that sounds Stop, it's simple. But everywhere is so accessible. I mean, we've been into the middle of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, and the back of Eastern Europe into Czech ger and Slovakia and all these random places that you can go to, and the world is filled with wonderment that just expands our mind so much and gets our creativity flowing, that will do nothing but help your business. So I always think, like, I wouldn't have the revenue that I have if I didn't travel, because my creativity would like cease to exist. And so I think Traveling makes me money.

Emma Lovell 30:42

I absolutely agree. I'm trying to write this that like to write this bit in the book. And it's kind of finding that line because I did this last year, you know, well, and I said, maybe it's not maybe just being hard on myself, but it's like, was it the wisest thing at that time to spend $20,000 That, you know, sort of we could have had, but we maybe didn't have, but then I was very close to burnout and very, like, sitting at home trying to earn money. I just don't think I would have and it became a like, I need it's an extreme, but I was like, I need time with my family. And if that means we have to go over the other side of the world, like my husband or my son, I mean, to go over the other side of the world. That's what it takes. And I came back. Yes. So energize so lit up. So people literally said, like, I landed in India, and Mecca is like your glowing light. Yeah, you just you can see

31:34

it and a place like India is so good for the soul to Yeah,

Emma Lovell 31:38

well, it strips away. I think what I like about travel is it strips away all that daily grind stuff, like it's so especially places that you know, Mongolia or India where they're so foreign, that you have an anchor point that you pushed into what's going on in the back of my mind. What's the bigger, deeper theme. And also sometimes, and I love that you said Mongolia because Mongolia, there was life was so simple, when you do go out to that nomadic part, so simple, that you can sort of really go and it actually was in Mongolia, we were like, Oh, look at all the animals. Isn't that lovely? Having animals and my husband was like, I want to have animals one day. And I was like, I want to have animals one day, and it made us realize that we want to have a bit of land, a house with a bit of land. So we actually realized a shared future vision by being away. And I know for both of us, I said he doesn't like the act of traveling husband, but he likes being he doesn't like thinking about it. And like the logistics of the actual getting there. But we do have a lot of connection and converse deeper conversations. When Yeah, all those daily crap is removed. Yeah, totally. Yeah,

32:48

I agree. And

Emma Lovell 32:49

yeah, I love I love that you've shared that. And I mean, just would have taken words out of my mouth, but and then just do it. Because sometimes you can overthink it, you can justify you can find so many reasons as to why it's not the best decision. And it does seem oxymoronic. But it's not to say, Yeah, I make money from travel, because that's the thing that energizes me, that's the thing is me ideas. And wasn't it on that year away that your course business kind of like how did that happen?

33:17

Yeah. So I was one on one coaching while we were traveling. And so just for about, I still had maybe like 12 clients that I was talking to fortnightly, so only six hours a week, so not very much. But I was finding that I was repeating myself again and again, and again with the same things with the same problems that people were having. And I was going we should put this into like a group setting because this is not so you're paying me like top dollar for private coaching, when all of it is the same. And so I did a course and went like we'll see how it goes. And I sold it. We were in Thailand. And we were there for two weeks. And so I like filmed the whole course and on the first week and then sold it on the second week. And in that sales week, we made $11,000, which in my mind was huge. Like I had never sold something before that wasn't time dependent. So everything that I had done as a coach was all like our based tutoring, you know, you, the kid pays parents pay $80 an hour, you pay the teacher 40 You keep 40. But out of that you're lucky to keep five once you've paid all your expenses kind of thing. So I had never done something that was so leveraged and scalable before. So I kind of fell in love with it. As soon as I did that. And then was like by that stage, I'd been in business 1516 years, and was like I have all this knowledge from building systems and automations and marketing and everything there. That could be so helpful. And I don't want to speak to any more people than what I'm currently speaking to now. So this was a way that I could get everything out of my head and share it with everyone and grow and I had no idea how it would go. This business has been the First thing in my life that has exceeded expectations. Usually I'm very goal orientated. But what I thought was, you know, if I could make 20k a month from doing this and work a bit on the side, like, how incredible would that be? That was my goal with now a $2 million a year business and doing that. My work life balance is probably a little bit too much work than what I would like presently. But we're toning that that back down, but it just, it just kind of got carried away, it just got bigger than what I planned for it to be able to get, which is a beautiful problem to be able to have. And it's something that I can do very flexibly, I've been able to, you know, there's, you can turn the tap on and you can turn the tap off like you could launch or you can delay launch, I just had seven months without launching or selling anything. Because at the end of the year, I wanted to take a bit of a break. And I wanted to just wander to be down and spend a lot of time with the kids. So I just didn't sell anything new. And was like this is great that you can do that. And then you turn it back on again, like it's just

Emma Lovell 36:03

I love it. Well, and I'd say like from that time, obviously, you had two weeks in Thailand. So it was a good block of time. But also the fact that you were only doing six hours work a week, you had the space, and you may not have had that epiphany because at home, you probably would have had more capacity. So you would have had more clients and you wouldn't have had the space to go and saying the same thing over and over. Why don't I do this? Like, yeah, probably knowing you, Tina would have got to it. Maybe at some point. But you got in at a time when Australia was pretty. Yeah, wasn't a big

36:43

deal was a great time. Yeah. I mean, all the time, like some of my best ideas have been walking the streets and random places. And you see someone in a totally unrelated industry, doing something clever with marketing that then will spark another idea and sparks another idea. And you're like, oh, yeah, like most of most of the ideas never come to you when you're sitting at your

Emma Lovell 37:02

desk. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Unless you're talking to an incredible person. And then well, you said just before, and that was something that I wanted to get to with, you know, do you think with the work life, I don't use the word balance? But do you think the combination, the combination, like do you think that this I call it pleasure, business and leisure life is possible? And is it sustainable? Yeah. Well, I

37:30

mean, I've sustained it for 20 years. So I think so. I'm not even like the most traveled out of some of my business friends. But then I know people that don't like traveling at all. So I think it's To each their own. But sustainability wise, I think it's sustainable if you build it in so for us, it's always been working on that percentage has always worked so that I can match my travel desires with our budget, because otherwise I can go I mean, I could spend a fortune on travel more than I could spend a fortune on anything else. Like if I if money was no object, I could spend it all traveling the world.

Emma Lovell 38:09

Senators applying the percentages blunt, the Barefoot Investor helped us with that. I know Ramit Sethi talks about that. Prophet first talks about that, like, you know, maybe not to a perfect science, but I know you talk about the money pie or your income pie. And it helps so much to be able to because if you go arbitrarily, I'm going to spend 20 grand on travel well, if you only earn 20 grand that year, then whoopsie. But 500,000, you probably could have, you might have been allowed to do a bit more. So having that percentage is smart. And then it's like, it's not somebody can't come at you not that we need to worry about other people. But it's like, no, I'm, I'm taking care of myself. I just it's allocated. It's planned. Yeah. Or even say with my partner, you know, it's it's like having that conversation. It's like, no, no, this is within what we discussed and what we arranged.

38:58

Yeah, yeah, I just hope the cost of flights come back down again, blowing out my calculations, stealing my joy.

Emma Lovell 39:05

My flights back with us. Yeah. And then you also mentioned before that you potentially at the moment leaning towards more than worksite What does making time for self care or finding the I put in inverted commas or quotations balance look like for

39:21

you. So I like to have more days than not where I get to decide what I want to do today. I like unscheduled days. So my my days, like my month primarily works with, I have the third week of every month off like unscheduled and then I don't schedule Thursdays and Fridays. So when I say that it's probably more than what I would like it's probably still a lot less than what a lot of people do. But I like to have on the days that I am not scheduled. Most often. I am doing something work related, but it's just what I feel like so whether that is I'm writing or I'm creating new training programs or I'm filming something, but it's more than me being able to go, I don't have to do anything today, what do I want to do, and that makes me very happy when I get to live like that. And I love to have that third week of the month off, because that's normally when we will squeeze in a little bit of travel. My husband and I now that the kids are older often go for long weekend. So we'll go on a Thursday through Sunday, and the kids stay at home, which is like, unlocked a whole new level of fun, very locally, like we never go more than two hours away. But it's just like, we don't need started doing that in the last year, which is like so much freedom, we're going Oh, my God, like this is gonna be amazing soon. So I like to have time and space and being able to do that. Because otherwise, I know that if every day I have back to back calls locked in, I don't have time to do the things that I want to do. And it kind of plays in the back of my mind going, I've still got to do this, I've got to do that. And I can't focus properly and then I get stressed out and then it kind of all snowballs from there. So I have learned I need space is really it. I need that I'm focusing a lot on my health at the moment. So I'm walking a lot and taking a lot more time and space with that. But yeah, it changes in the different chapters that I go through in in what I what I need. Yeah,

Emma Lovell 41:21

I love that unscheduled, it's something I'm applying more I call mine go with the flow. Like I don't talk about days off. Because I think when you're an entrepreneur and you're a creative person, you know, you can actually be hard on yourself, it's time to switch off. And like there's times where you need to disconnect or whatever. But I don't I like to go with the flow. And so then it's like if I feel like doing something, which is fun to create a new thing, or it's fun to write something or it's fun to make a bunch of rules like I'm allowed to wear Yeah, it's my day off and I'm not allowed, then I don't know, it's booming, another sense of rigidity. So

41:57

I mean, I have days, I have not allowed days because I need to have that discipline for myself to make sure I don't overload. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday is no, I have a light phone. So a phone that you put your SIM card into, and it only has podcasts, calls and texts, it has nothing else on the phone. And I need that level of discipline, because otherwise I will go you know what I feel like right now I feel like doing a bit of work, because I love it. I love my work. And that will then mean I don't recover sufficiently. So I have to actually put in the discipline to go, no step away from the devices and go and put your head in the clouds again, which is why I love travel is because I do that all the time. But when I'm not traveling, it's harder to go and put your head in the clouds and just go wander the street and go and do that. We don't do that as much at home as what we do when we're traveling

Emma Lovell 42:51

in a gorgeous location. Yeah, like the light phone. That's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah, people to say turn all the apps off, but that's inconvenient. Oh, it's

42:58

so inconvenient. Yeah,

Emma Lovell 42:59

that's great. Now this is, I don't know, probably a trick question or a hard question for someone like you. What's your dream destination to work in? Ooh.

43:11

I have been just having this conversation actually with someone yesterday, I have been to nearly all of my dream destinations. Tenerife, in Spain is somewhere I have not been that is still on my list. I would like to go and spend a few months there and work from there. And then the other place it is on my list, but I don't know about working from there is Antarctica is I would love to go and do that. But my husband and I were talking the other day on this note of our kids getting older. So when he put the kibosh on me being able to go and take the kids away for a year again, he was like, we've got two, three more years, tops of the kids being here. It's like, I promise you and I can do whatever we want for five years after that. I like okay, all right, John. And I actually want to get back to like, I don't want just luxury travel kind of thing. I don't I definitely don't want to go and take a frickin river cruise or some shit. Like I want to get out there. And so we're looking at he is a foil surfer. So he'll go and teach at like a surf camp somewhere. And I'll go in right at the same time. And then we want to work on a super yacht. And I'm like, you know, I could be a great concierge on a super yacht, like, I would love that I would love organizing people's day trips and the different things. I could go and be a marketing manager for somewhere like I just want to disappear into the world and go and explore a little bit again. And so we figure we've got like five to 10 years before we have grandkids if we shall be so lucky. Where we get to just because we did everything so young, we're still in our 40s we've got this time where we can just explore the world and get out amongst and get lost in it before we have to like have the next stage. And so that is really my My dream is to be able to just go like where to next and just go and explore and have some fun and not know what is next and where we're going. See where we end up.

Emma Lovell 45:09

I love it. I love how you have fun. And you lead by example. Are you really role modeling? That was something I was gonna say early on when you said said, you know, I think when we started business, I'm 15 years in. I don't think people were role modeling. How to do this. I don't think people were showing us the leisure life. I think that it was work or travel or buy a house or get to travel or, you know, run the business or buy wine

45:35

or like Suzy daftness who has her business. She doesn't really well. Dale Beaumont. business blueprint doesn't really well. Kirsty gmefi does so much travel and business together. Like there's a few people I know that are like, I watch and go, Yeah, this is good.

Emma Lovell 45:49

Yeah. And that's what we need. We need more role models. And you know, and doing it openly and honestly and transparently. But just to see that, and then it's what you decide. And I love seeing that what you find fun and the way you want to do it is different to how there's two but I could talk to you forever on this topic. And I'm sure we will end up having conversations, but thoroughly enjoying your book, your first book into a second book, and thank you for being a case study and sharing your your wisdom, because it's inspiring,

46:20

of course, always happy to be part of something that helps people just go and chase, chase their dreams and chase the unknown.

Emma Lovell 46:27

Thank you so much, Tina, we'll have all your links in all your things and how to connect with you in the shownotes. But quickly if people want to see this life in action, what's your Instagram Hina underscore tower. And if you want to join in her Empire Builder, it's her Empire builder.com. That's it. And you can see all of the fabulous ways that maybe lots of beautiful

46:49

free stuff on there that people can use if they're looking at dabbling in online courses or getting started. There's a bunch of free stuff.

Emma Lovell 46:57

Fabulous. Thank you so much. Thanks