How to build a 7-figure online business with Tina Tower #29

Season #2 September 17, 2024

How to Build a 7-Figure Online Business with Tina Tower

Show Notes: In this episode of Content Catalyst, host and Marketing Strategist Deb Szabo interviews business strategist and online course expert Tina Tower about how she built her 7-figure empire and her strategies for course creators to scale their businesses.

Chapters and Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction and Tina's background

03:45 - Tina's journey from teacher to 7-figure entrepreneur

08:22 - The biggest mistakes new course creators make

13:56 - Tina's framework for creating a profitable online course

19:30 - How to price and launch your course for maximum impact

25:14 - Scaling strategies to reach 6 and 7 figures

32:08 - The power of community in online courses

38:42 - Tina's predictions for the future of online education

44:15 - Rapid fire questions

48:30 - Where to learn more from Tina

This episode is for you if you're interested in: Online courses, digital products, scaling a business, course creation, online education, entrepreneurship

Resources Mentioned:

Tina's book "Million Dollar Micro Business":

Join HER EMPIRE BUILDER https://www.herempirebuilder.com/a/2147508215/gyPWrruE

Connect with Tina:

Instagram: @tina_tower

Website: www.tinatower.com

Connect with Deb Szabo:

Instagram: @debszabo_video

Website: www.debszabo.com

Episode Transcript

W elcome to Content Catalyst
and in today's episode
I have the incredible honour of interviewing Tina Tower
a powerhouse in the world of business and digital entrepreneurship
Tina is not only a business strategist
she's a visionary leader
who has dedicated her career to empowering women
to build their own online empires
she's also one of the she's also one of my uh
business coaches as well
I wanna talk to you about AI today and I have literally uh
done your bio like our intro in uh perplexity
so I wanted to see what it would actually give me today
I'm talking about going that's not my usual bio
I like this definitely right
I know so it's like at the helm of Her Empire Builder
Tina's mission is to help
100 women achieve one million dollars in annual revenue by 2025
her journey began at the remarkable age of 20
when she launched her first business
since then she has built and sold multiple businesses
including the successful Begin Bright franchise
Tina's expertise extends beyond business strategy
she is the best selling author with her books of one life
how to have the life of your dreams and Million Dollar Micro Business
she has been named Telstra's Australian
Young Businesswoman of the year
and has been featured as
businesswoman to watch in the Huffington Post
so on today's episode of Content Catalyst
I wanna explore the digital landscape in 2024 with her
and her fascination like mine with AI
welcome to the show Tina
thanks dear hello
I am welcome so as I just mentioned
I I did this intro then and I
you just said this is not my normal intro
I actually wanted to use perplexity to see what questions um
it would give me to interview you
and also I asked it to write an introductory uh
for you so how did it do
I think it's better than mine
I'm like oh
that sounded way more exciting
I think I need to grab that
you did it
so for anyone that doesn't know you uh
Tina Tower is I am part of Her Empire Builder
can you let anyone that has never heard of
you know what Her Empire Builder is
yeah so Her Empire Builder has been my
my project for the last four years
so it's just turned four um
I've been in business this is my 20th year this year
which is um makes me sound older than I am
I think I'm 40 you did say I started when I was 20
so I got started young um
but Her Empire Builder was was started as a way um
to really have a lifestyle business on the side
I sold my last company in 2016
begin bright um
which was a big business and I didn't wanna have a big
huge business again after that
but like so often happens with us entrepreneurs
we get carried away and one thing
leads to another and her
empire builder actually grew much faster than what I ever anticipated
and I think the reason for that is I fell into it by accident
by giving people exactly what they wanted
so after I sold my business
I was coaching people one on one um
and then I kept repeating the same thing over and over and over again
I'm like people are paying me thousands of dollars an hour to repeat
what I just repeated to the woman before
this is crazy why I put it all in and online format
and then a lot of my clients were going
how did you do that
because it was still like it's changed a lot in the last six years
I started that first one it's a lot more common now
but then not many people had online learning platforms
and so
then I started teaching people how they could get their knowledge
and put it into courses and then they were like
we want this in a group and so I started that and it just went off
so now I'm very focused on we do a little bit of mindset
but mainly I'm I'm a pragmatist um
and I like the strategy behind things
and so I really try and focus on going
this is exactly how
everyone that you see that's doing really well in courses
what they're actually doing day to day
week to week and this is how you can do it in your business too
so we cover all of the different areas of business for
for online course creators
I love it I've been part of it
I think for about a year and a half now
and it's been definitely life changing for me for my business as well
so interesting on the weekend
I was going back through some of your old podcast episodes
and I scrolled back to 2021 May 2021
I went into unplayed episodes and I wanted to
there was one about launching
and in that episode you had said about uh
this is what I'm doing this year for my business
and you were talking about launching
and at that stage you had your goal was I wanted to get to 100 members
and you had just gotten to 100 members
can I take you back to those moments when
when you were in the early days of creating your own membership
which is Her Empire Builder
tell me about that journey from when you got to like 10
when you had 10 members to get from 10 to 100
yeah what's that look like
um well
I mean it happened really quickly for me
um so when I had scale up was the membership I had first
and we only had six members in that
yeah so
it was like a group of some of my private coaching
clients that also wanted to connect with each other
I never launched it I never um
like I didn't run it publicly kind of thing um
so I class that as like my first one
when I launched her Empire Builder
that was uh
in June 2020 so it was planned to launch in March
we had plan to go to Palm Springs and launch it there
on the back of a retreat um
and I had flown over and two days after I arrived
Covid hit so everyone else arrived the day after
and I got back on a plane and went home
and we all know what happens after that
so I then like put it on ice for a couple of months going
do I launch right now do I not launch right now
like what's going on in the world
we ended up launching it in the June
and I got 32 people in that first launch
wow blew my mind
my goal was 10 I thought if we could get 10 people in
this would be amazing be a nice group to start with
um it's one of the only times that I have ever exceeded my own goals
it's usually so high and lofty um
but it did a lot better than I had
and we we reached 100 just over a year later September 2021
um and so how that works
I mean I did do a lot of marketing
I am a marketer I think at heart with a lot of things
I love the way you know
I know we have that in common in trying to work
why do some people get traction and some people don't
what are the things that make the biggest difference
is it just volume is it quality
is it crunchy like what is it that makes the difference
um and I like working those things
so I really enjoyed
like looking at a lot of online marketers in the online space
and what was working and what I could do and what I couldn't do
because there's there's different things that like
super successful course creators do that I would never do
never wanted to would never go into
and so I knew that okay there was a bunch of strategies there that
are just not gonna be for me
so what ones could I do and so I played with that and to me
one of the reasons I love online courses is
I like the cyclical nature of it
I like that we have on
on like when we're on game time and when we have offseason
and then we can market and nurture and value add
and then boom
we've got like a sales period that only goes for three weeks
and we only do it twice a year like yeah
it fits my personality yeah
so yeah yeah
and so to get from 30 to 100 because when I listen to that podcast
it's like I just exceeded 100
I could feel the excitement in your voice
it was like this is real
this is happening so to get from 30 to 100
what was that journey like
um so I think that a lot of the beginning
especially because prior to me starting her Empire Builder
if a woman wanted to run an online business
and wanted to get it past Hobby Stage
a lot of the masterminds and memberships were in the US
so a lot of the really good course
creators in Australia were going to the US
to learn from people there wasn't really anyone that
it kind of taken the market here at doing that
and so I think when I started and people like oh
she actually knows what she's talking about and doing
cause there was a lot of people teaching um
like digital marketing and
and doing different things
but they didn't have the business background that I had
and they didn't have like franchising background
which I thought would never help me in a million years really
I think that is such a big asset because that is all about systems
yes right
and I realized that later going hey
like how can you put all this together
I'm like well
after after franchising it's just a piece of cake really yeah
um and so I think that that set it apart
and then word of mouth spread to every single
like there was a part of me that by the end of that second year
I was like is there a female course creator in Australia
that doesn't know who I am yet
because I felt like so many people were coming to me
because a friend of a friend told them that they should wow
it was very much built on referral um
and yes I did a lot of marketing otherwise
but we always do an onboarding form of where people found out about us
and I think I can't remember exactly off the top of my head
but I know in like that first 100
think
there was only about six or seven people that weren't referred by
somebody right
with a lot interesting yeah
so what was the biggest thing that
do you think move the needle the most
because it takes a while to get a bit attraction in business sometimes
and I look at um
I look at it as a Marathon
not a sprint and I think that like I've got a little bit more tenacity
I think that I'm just like yes
I wanna get to here and I wanna get there really quickly
but I'm also really stick about if I just keep doing the things
here comes a tipping point and it's like when you dig a well right
most people give up when they
they just about to hit water
and I'm like if you just keep pushing that little bit more
then you hit the catalyst to open the floodgates
what do you think that was for you
um I think the tipping point
for us was definitely around that hundred Mark
that was when it went from you're something that was
was so one on one base to this was very scalable and leveraged then um
what caused the tipping point
and what caused I think the growth to get to there was
I am very obsessed about customer results
and so I wanted everyone that came in to get good results
I said no to a lot of people in the early days
so we we don't do it now
but when we were building that first 100 we had applications
and so I would make sure that people were
at a certain level before they came in
because I knew that a lot of people in their very start up
couldn't teach couldn't um
implement what I was teaching if
if they were right at the very beginning
so I would only take people with existing businesses
that already had a business previously
so I didn't have to teach them about you know
starting social media for the first time
and setting up the structure of their business
like we could just focus on
here's how you take what you know and translate that into online
now I've got a little bit broader with it um
but for the first 100 I already had successful business
women that were coming in that already knew their stuff
that already knew what they were doing
and they were just translating it into like a different product really
um and so they hit it all very quickly
they did really really well which in turn made me look good as well um
but also they loved it cause they were coming in
so we were more expensive
then it was a slightly different model for the first 100
and then I changed it after that
so we started out at $1,000 a month and then when we got to
I wanna say like a year in maybe
maybe one launch further than that like a year and three months um
we raised it to 15 a month um
and then we and then it just kept growing and I got to the
the point where I couldn't sustain the model the way it was
so part of that was we had accountability calls every month
that had small groups of eight people
so I was doing like 14 sessions of those across two days um
I because of the price point I felt like if anyone had any problem
they deserved to be able to ask me that question
when I could personally answer it
like straight away
and so I was just like a slave to this Facebook group and emails
and then I was like I can't grow anymore
I have tapped it out so we changed the model and took out like the
the super personal touch points and made
it more scalable and dropped it to 5 99
so we dropped the price by a third
which then allowed us to go a little bit broader and bigger with that
yeah
and so now fast forward to 2024
yeah so much has changed in the digital landscape
like it is lightning speed when I think about what what we were doing
um you know back in 2020 and 2021
like I was looking back through some old videos and I'm like
even just the editing process of how we were doing things
was just so much more time consuming
and now fast forward to 2024
what do you think are the key things for businesses to be aware of
now that you've known in your own business
yeah um
so like yes and no to it's changed so much
I think I think my whole business journey
like it's business doesn't really change at all
but the way that we do it does um
so I think at its core what makes a successful business
is someone that's super passionate about what they do
and doing it with people that they wanna work with
and getting them really awesome results
I think every business is the same with that um
and if there's one of those elements missing
it doesn't matter what bells and whistles you put on the top of it
it's not gonna work
I see people sometimes try and do a business that they think will
make a lot of money that they don't really love
it never cuts through the same um
and you know you see people doing things and
and they've got like high turn rate
because this happens in our industry a lot
they're like marketers and they can get people in
but then their product shit and then their reputation gonna be soiled
and so it turns a lot
and so I think at its core like it's always the same
but the way that we've done it over the last few years especially
and even the last year
has change dramatically in terms of the marketing that we use
in terms of the team that we require
I mean even with you saying beginning
like you put into publicity and it came up with your questions and
and the intro and doing all of that
like that would have traditionally taken us an hour
to be able to look at that and work that out
so I know like my business now is just shy of like
we're at 1.9 million was the last financial year
so just under two and I have two VAs that's our entire team
which even three years ago
I had like two local full time team
and then I had other contractors coming in
and different things to be able to do it
what I can do now so fast
and I don't work I mean
I work I work enough um I'm definitely not someone that goes
you know make billions of dollars at work 10 hours a week
I work full days on a Monday
Tuesday Wednesday
usually a half a day Thursday and the third week of every month
I have no appointments at all
I take off two weeks every July and a month every Christmas
and so I have a really nice balance of how much I work
so I'm not like overworked
but what I can do in that time
it's just exceptional
that I think utilizes a lot of the tools that you're talking about
where they are and the things that we're doing
and how we can create our campaigns
and how we can put them together and edit them
I mean
like you remember when we used to sit there with videos and like
you know doing tiny little things one by one
and it'll take like an hour to make them
that now is five minutes even I was talking to Chen
my marketing assistant the other day and you podcasting
when we put out a podcast episode
the whole process for the podcast
every week was about six to eight hours
now it's two like everything is just
what we can do is so much more than what we could do before
which is gonna have such interesting implications into
the volume of stuff out there
and who's gonna take advantage of that and who's not
and I'm still going like
he's more better people or we just gonna end up with more crap
I was reading something the other day that said
people are starting to tune off social media a little bit
because feeds are just being filled with things that they don't know
if it's real or if it's AI
or like the trust is going down
it's gonna be really interesting to observe over the next six months
to to see what we as marketers are going to have to adapt to yeah
yeah trust on like you were talking about video for example
five years ago if you saw a UFO land you'd be like
that's a UFO like that's legit right
it's on video now it's like you know
it's not real it's like nothing's real anymore
and that the the advances with technology have definitely you know
this year alone taken massive leaps and bounds
and it's interesting you say about the
the workflow of things like on the weekend
I was like right I'm gonna do my launch plan and I've got again
upload give it the prompts going here's my launch
here's what I want da da da write my launch plan based on the formula
right and it just gives me a whole month's worth of timeline
of activities and everything else
and it's ready to go
and now I can implement it and just check it off the list
like you said that would have taken you know
hours if not days for some people to put that together in the past
yeah so if we're saving time here
where can we focus our energies elsewhere
to build our business and build our brand then wow
good question Dev um
the thing that I think a lot of online people forget is
connect with humans yeah
that is
that is to me what has made the biggest differences is some days
you know I would find myself sitting behind a computer all day
like getting things done
there is now that can be fast tracked that even before we hit record
like I was saying I haven't done a lot of podcast interviews lately
cause I am very strict on my time
I used to overwork a lot and be quite addicted to working because well
it's one of my favourite things to do
and you know when we get that too
cause I am very much like that
it's very easy for me to work late into the night if I'm on a
you know hyper focus or something yeah yeah
like I you know
back in the day I would work
you know from 8 o'clock in the morning till 6 o'clock at night
and I'd be perfectly happy
some people would go you can't work that hard
I'm like what would I do otherwise
like this is my favourite thing to be doing when kids are at school
like what else am I supposed to do
um but now I am very focused
you know I try and focus on my health and walking a lot
and playing with the dogs and doing all of that
so I'm very strict because if I don't put the discipline on myself
to stop at a certain time
I would just I would just keep going
um and yes
it does lead to burnout as much as I enjoy it
like you do notice and and I notice my energy wanes a little bit um
so I'm very strict with that
so I've been saying no to a whole lot of things over
the last couple of years
so that I have enough time to do everything that I have to do um
but now I've noticed I've started to get more time back
and I think that is because also my VAs are freaking fabulous
like I've lucked into an amazing team
um so I'm enjoying that right now very
very much that they're also using AI
so they've also got more time than what they had previously
and more capacity so they're like
hey I can do more like how can I help
I'm like this is incredible um
so I'm doing that which now has allowed me to go
you know when you ask to come on the podcast yeah
I got time I can do that
I'm going to a couple of networking
things that usually I wouldn't take a day out to be able to do that
I'm being able to like
if I see a client on there that struggling with something
I can jump on the computer and share my screen with them
and show them that like it just is allowing us
I think to have more time to be human
which is fantastic yeah
and I think for me as well
AI has certainly helped with content marketing
where before you might have only done
you know step 1
2 and 3 but you missed out the other steps because you were too busy
ran out of time didn't get around to it
and I think that if we are like I'm
you know
the question always comes up when it comes to content of going
is it quality or is it quantity
yeah and
and for me
it's about creating one quality piece of content that can be
you know distributed across the different touch points
because we all learn differently
and we all like you said
we're all flooded with information
I know when I wanna go do something
if it's not reminding me all the time
come on buy the ticket
buy the ticket I'm like
you know squirrels off distracted
so I think that's familiar
where it made a difference of being able to amplify the message
as such yeah
and even that has changed
like I know you know
it was probably three years ago that I started using repurpose.io
to try and maximize the capacity of
each of them but a lot of the content was crap that it came out with
and so it was kind of usable in the way of
you didn't have to start from dot
but you definitely couldn't push it out
like I I even had a contractor in 2022
so we're 2024 now
like it wasn't very long ago that I paid her 10 hours a week
literally to go back through all of my master classes and like
work out at what timestamp
should we pull out that 60 second clip
and write some educational carousel posts from what I've um
said and go back through my book manuscript and pull out the quotes
and do all of that
like that cost me a thousand bucks a week for we did that
I think we did it for like four or five months
whereas now you can just put your content straight in
hit a button and literally 10 minutes later
you got like weeks worth videos
I'm still not comfortable at the level where I just push it out
we still make a few little tweaks
but like only a few it is really
really close yeah
so
I think that the quality of the technology has also come a long way to
I I mean
I think in the next few months
like
you won't be able to tell at all whether it's a real person or not
and there's positives and negatives to that because I also fear that
yeah one of the things that has set me apart in my marketing is
I'm really good marketer
what if all the AI is just as good at the marketer
and then
the crappy people down the road can now out market me and do that
so it's going to have you know
for people that are that are not naturally skilled in markets
gonna be absolutely amazing for people that are skilled in marketing
it's like oh
hang on a minute everyone's gonna be on a level playing field there
so gonna have to get even more creative with it
and I do think that a lot more of that connectivity
and that humanness is going to be more important
as well
so if we talk about AI in video
for example I
for me that's where I'm seeing so much um
change and um
technology advances of what we couldn't do to what we can do now
if I look at like video and um AI
how are you using like those two now compared to say a year ago
we use it a lot to chop up what we've already got
um so that works really well
um
we're starting to put it in different languages so that we can reach
people across different demographics
um I have experimented a little bit with like Synthesia and hey
Jen in making copies of myself um
of which I've decided I'm not gonna use
um we got it pretty close um
but I think it's a trust issue
I'm like
I don't really want people seeing videos of me and going is that her
is that not her she seems a bit off
like that's something that I wasn't comfortable with at the end
but I wanted to just play with it just to
whether I wanted to do it or not um
but what we will do is we've got it
we're rerecording
idea to launch one of my short courses at the moment um
and there's couple of elements of that
that we have other characters coming in and saying different things
and most of that is the things that I know will change really
really quickly because my no was
I don't wanna do this like high production value videos
and then literally in two months
that information is out of date
and I've got to jump in and re record again um
cause if I wanna put out a lot of programs
we're gonna have some elements especially when it comes to technology
AI marketing that are gonna change a lot
so we put them in there
so that I can just go in when that information changes and update it
and the video will just update and be able to do that
so
that's gonna be interesting to see whether people receive that well
or not um
and how they like that but that's the sort we're gonna try next
cause I think that that could allow us to do
to keep our information a lot more up to date
cause I would like to be the person that goes
okay that
that has changed now I'll just jump on and just record another video
but man I can put that shit off for months
yeah so yeah
I don't wanna do that absolutely
and so with um
what would you say now is if you were to recommend
say somebody record any video
what would you recommend they record
as being the one thing that would help their business
and I say that because we're talking about um
using AI and there's a lot of faceless content at the moment
and you know
there are a lot of people that I follow that they're bragging about
I've set up this YouTube channel
it's you know
I've got you know
5,000 subscribers in you know three
you know weeks or whatever
and it's all faceless you know
AI generated content so is that something like
and for me I teach people
you know to
to show up and tell their story and do talking head video
and I'm not saying there's not a place for that
but where do you feel that the faceless versus
people actually showing their face
style of videos
will evolve so I think it depends on your goal
um and what game you're playing
so I don't play a volume game
um I don't need that many clients to have my beautiful business
so my support now is 200 members and we kind of each launch
we get to that and then we slowly drop off as we have turn each month
and then we bring it back up again
and that's and I have no aspiration to go higher than that
so for me I don't have to play so much of a viral video game
but the people that are like low cost high volume
they're gonna have a totally different strategy to what I have
so if I was trying to get likes and follows on Instagram for example
at the moment
viral memes outdo everything every time with a couple of them
and they just shoot right up
and I'm like it's shitty content in terms of that painting
but my question is always
will it lead to people buying your program
and if you've got something that people are buying on a whim
that's like you know low cost $27
$49 kind of program even probably up to $197
you can play that game and you'll probably be very very successful
but if you're selling something that's more based on your expertise
in your thought leadership
and it's $1,000 plus then I don't know
I haven't actually seen many people do faceless marketing
and be successful with then converting to selling a high price course
so I think there's still you know so much place for video um
I don't do video as effectively as what I know we could
so the way that we do it is
we get all of our masterclass recordings and podcast recordings
we put them into Opus
we cut them up and then we put those 60 second clips on there
which is good and it does get traction and it does get conversion
but it's not as good as if I got like my talking head video
and I did it specifically for Instagram for that 60 seconds
and did it bet that would be the better way to do it
um and it would be highly converting but time wise I
I take the second rate even though it's not the best I can do
I take that because it's done
and I know that I can keep it consistent with that
so if I was going to go how can I be the best that I can be at video
I would use AI to cut up like all of my different
what does my audience need
what do they want
what are the 60 seconds scripts that I can go by to do that
and I would one at a time
purposefully look into the camera and talk about those
that is the best way to do it
and I wanna talk about search
what what do you think with that
um yeah
look one of the things for me and I think when you're like time poor
uh that is the
the key thing is being able to repurpose content
because if you've still got an important message
and you can still share that again
that's the quality side of things but at the moment
my strategy is about to evolve again
because I want to focus in and do long form YouTube content
and the reason why I want to do this is because what's happening
and this is something that I'm noticing
so if I go to perplexity AI and I type in XYZ
give me a I tend to read to Barcelona for 3 days
versus I wanna buy electric scooter
versus I wanna write a launch plan for my business next week
what's happening is um it's uh
and again we're talking about I use perplexity
it scrapes the internet and what it does it brings up videos
blogs and your podcast for example
when I was you know putting stuff in
so that long form content is what was coming up
now what's really
so for me discoverability is really changing with AI
so where I was googling everything
I don't I don't bother with Google as much now
I put it straight into perplexity when I wanna know about something
interestingly then I saw um
so this is what I'm observing
so therefore if that's what these programs are scraping
I need to be in the places to be found
so that's why having um
a long form piece of content that's optimized that's evergreen
so a well research topic and that people that solve people's problems
and I'm being more deliberate now about creating that
piece of hero content
then I can distribute it and chop it all up and make the blogs
and make the podcast and do all the things but um
what I'm noticing is that
that discoverability is what's coming from that one piece of content
that how people are searching
then I was also watching um
Gary Vee you know
came up in my feed and he was at a conference
and he was talking about that exact same thing of going
how many people use a chatbot to search things now
and like half the room stood up and then he goes
look around the room these people are not 20 year olds
these are our aged people yeah
and he's like so this is what's happening is uh
it's changing how people discover things
so Google's got a lot of work to do at the moment
because they're chasing the tales of like search chat
check chat search chat
GPT is just being launched
it's in um
they're taking a beta at the moment
but that'll be the next thing that'll be on everyone's app
like I've got I don't know about you
do you have like Chat or perplexity on your phone
when you look up things now
yeah yeah
I will then talk to it so I don't even type
I will just voice talk to it and it'll talk back to me yeah
yeah and so this is
this is how I'm observing things are changing online as well
so how we get discovered is so
so different and if we're not staying ahead of all of these things
what does that mean for the like you said
you know businesses that are doing the things
they will get left behind because other people are doing like yeah
completely or just doing it hard way
yeah yeah
for sure and so for you now
what does the next year look like for your business growth
where are you doubling down on how to grow your business now
like you saying you
you wanna get to that next sort of level or to even maintain
you know what you're doing
yeah for me
it's just
I know it seems dirty in the business world to say that you're not um
like you know
I was talking to someone yesterday about 10 x is better than 2 x
which is a great book um
but I'm like I don't want that
yeah
uh there's different stages of my life
when I have been like balls to the wall
I'll put it all on and I'm going like
I'm intense and ambitious and growing as fast as I possibly can um
and and that's not the season
I mean so I very purposefully at the start of the year
my kids have their last two years in our home before they fly free um
and I'll be like mid forties when they
when I have no kids at home
I'm like there's plenty of time for me to set the world on fire then
so I am trying to just really enjoy the stage of life that we're at
and not do that but
but in saying that I am still very serious about my business and yeah
I definitely don't wanna go down ever
um and so I yeah
it still takes work and this is the thing
I think a lot of people assume that you
you you barely have to work
you barely have to do anything when it gets to a certain level
and I will say it's way easier than what it was for the first year
the not to
not to 100,000 I think is the hardest part in any business ever
and then 100,000 to 1 million is like
you know you
you're doing a different stage beside that
and then it gets infinitely easier after that
um but it's still if
if I was to stop doing something and disappear from social media
or stop the podcast or stop my newsletter
we would tank so incredibly quickly
um and so for me it's
it's really working out
what are the things that are the most impactful
and how can I stay ahead of the curve
so that I can help our members stay ahead of the curve um
but spend my time on the things that are going to matter the most
so that it stays that highly impactful without having to yeah
be a Energizer bunny bouncing around here
there and everywhere trying absolutely everything all the time
so we're still I love my launch like twice a year launches
um
we're doing that for this launch that we have coming up in September
I don't know when this episode's coming out
but we we open the doors pretty much every year in
in April September
um and so we have that and I always try and do something else
so last year we did Launch House
and I had members come and we ran Launch House and did that
um why do destination launches
this launches I would have loved to have been there for that
by the way that would have been so much fun
I would have loved to have been behind the scenes
I'd probably do it in that
and one day um yeah
you were doing Launch Club
um in terms of
ask any member who wants to launch at the same time
to all launch at the same time
so we've got think
like
45 people that are all running their launch at exactly the same time
which will be an interesting ground swell of things
and to be launching at the same time as like
people that I'm teaching are doing the thing at the same time
and getting all of those results
it'll be hectic ha ha ha
we get some questions and all the thing
but it will be really good
so always trying to have a bit of a play and be creative with it
and see what works and see what doesn't um
but my my growth goal is really to
you know if
if we grow like a 5 to 10% pace that is perfect for me right now
so I'm doing all the things that I know will be able to sustain that
um and keep my lifestyle the way it is
and keep the intimacy that I can have with clients
the same way as it is cause I think
you know say you're a member of Her Empire Builder
if I had a thousand members in there
it'd be a different feel to what it is now
and yeah it's not the um
you know when we redid the model we played for a moment with going
would you make it 97 and just go for thousands of people
um but it's not
it's not the vibe that's that I wanted really yeah
it's different
and you lose that like mastermindy feel and it just becomes
you just like a number in a big membership
so I didn't want that um
but I'm playing with other businesses where I can kind of
have those things on the side as well yeah
um can I just ask because I
you know talk to a lot of other course creators and things
and a lot of them say that
you know what was working back in 2021
for example
isn't necessarily working now for creating courses or lead magnets and
you know memberships
one
what do you say to that of going what what lead magnets are working
and what if somebody was launching a course
and I was talking to someone the other day and I went oh
how did you launch go and they said I've got two people in and I said
what was your goal and they said 10 and I'm like
so what would you say to those people of going
where do we manage our expectations
like what can we expect out of when we do launch a course
and what do we need to do to get those goals
now that's different to yeah
so I actually don't think it's changed all that much um
like yeah
AI has changed a lot of how we do different things behind the scenes
but there's not that much like that's
that's not working now that was working before and
and vice versa so our lead magnets
our top lead magnets still PDF guides still the same thing um
we still do webinars we lead with those
what I am is finding with the webinars is
you get a whole lot more people register
and the show up rate is less than what it initially
and I think that is because of the volume in the market
so I do think that um even you
just in the last 5 years with how much more crowded it has gotten
you do need more volume like
at the top of funnel to get your same results at the bottom of funnel
so used to be
you know say I could get 100 people to come along to a challenge
I would get 30 to 40 of them sign up um
where is now it's more like 20 to 30 of them sign up
so I do think that
people have more of a plethora of choice in the marketplace
and they're comparing a lot more
so that is naturally gonna happen just as business
like the model matures and does that um
but I also find
a lot of people think that online is a quick way to make money
and they come in and they exit as well
so the stayers get rewarded um
but in terms of like what's changed
so we do challenges now we we tried paid challenges
I've gone back to free challenges
because I find that
even though paid challenges have a higher conversion rate um
and so you have less people
but they're coming in and they're really already like sold on it um
free challenge
you get so many more people top of funnel that long term
like if you're playing a long game over the year or two
usually those people
are going to end up converting over the course of a couple of years
so it is better long term
I find by our numbers to do the free challenge still
um social media has changed massively
um you know used to be able to do a couple stories
I know like
my stories are about 1/3 of views that they used to be a year ago
with how many people are seeing them everyday um
and I know I'm not alone in that there was a while that I was like
oh my gosh like what's happening
does nobody like me anymore
like what am I doing wrong here
and then I spoke to a couple of mates and they're like yeah yeah
it's all the same um
so I think expectation wise
it's good for people to know that
so that they know they're not necessarily doing something wrong
you just need more people now
because there's so many more people to compete with on the internet um
and so yeah even even with that like I know when we put out um
when many chat first came out
which we started using it massively last year um
and everyone was excited by it
and so you'd say like comment the word and we'd have like 25
30 comments underneath of of all these people
now there's like one or two people that are commenting
they're like I don't wanna comment anymore yeah
I know where this is going
I know where this is going
I know that someone is most likely to get in with you
um and so
I do think that there's a big part that you've got to just
jump on the next thing stay ahead of the curve
and look at marketing as this constant curious experiment
but know at its core what I would say to people
especially at the beginning
but at any stage of business
what hasn't changed is humans do business with humans
as people are looking at you and going I
I wanna learn this one thing
I want this one result
what I'm looking for is the person that can deliver me this one result
and so you have to provide a way to connect with people
like one of the things that I do
that everyone in my mastermind that I'm a part of thinks
I'm not doing this um
but it's one of the best strategies that's always worked for me
and I don't think I'll ever stop is discovery calls
when we do a launch
open up my calendar and I jump on 15 minute calls with people
and sometimes they piss me off because I will go
you know this is a call
to talk about whether Her Empire Builder is right for you
where you're at and I will be honest with people and either say yes
it's a good idea or no you're probably not there yet
here's some other free resources you can do in the meantime
yeah but some people will use it and go
cause I'm my private coaching
coaching call ha ha ha yeah
like $2,000 an hour for my private coaching
so yeah they can get me for 15 minutes and they're like yum
but I shut that down very quickly yeah
that expectation to start with
isn't it yeah
yeah yeah
people will get on they go
well I'm not interested in Her Empire Builder
but while I've got you and I'm like bye
I heard somebody word it beautifully
I just saw a reel on Instagram
I think it was and she was just
you know doing a behind the scenes
this is how I stage you know
how I prepare the call and it was very much going
this is what the call was about
this is what I'm you know
gonna be doing it was
and I went oh
that is a really clever way yeah
you know she explained that yeah
and I will always have one or two people try and get around that
like people can be cheeky yeah
but I do think that for people at the beginning
like my point is to not forget about connecting with people
so yeah for example
the person that wanted 10 people got two people
I'm like everyone
if they're really good at what they do
everyone knows 10 people in their human network
that would be good for their program
so why aren't you talking to those people
like literally not using a CRM
but getting your email out or Facebook Messenger
or go old school with it
and pick up the phone and give them a call and say hey
I'm doing this new thing I think you'd be perfect for it
you wanna have a chat like just human about it instead of expecting
sometimes I see people or spending um
spending um
like massive Facebook ads or whatever they're doing
and thinking that that replaces
or negates the need to connect with people at a human level
but it doesn't like really
it's always gonna be required
it's interesting because uh
I think last time we spoke
I said that I was going out to do a lot more in person events
and workshops
and I just ran a workshop and then because of that workshop
um you know
I got a new member out of that
you know that had come on board and
and I also had uh
one of my existing members upgrade to the accelerator
um option
so just that connection really matters
um you mentioned before about a challenge
I am running a challenge myself and um
in the next couple of weeks
helping people to create a sales video for their website
or their social media and I was sitting there over the weekend going
okay what is the timeline that I should be doing this
cause I was like yeah
you know if I was doing this in person you
you do it as a day workshop
right but online
I was like really
this needs to be over three or four days
because people need that time to just do they work yeah
and and let it sink in
I and that's how I came across you
cause I did the
I think it was the 4 day lead magnet challenge through Kajabi
for example so I found that if it's just squished all in
people don't it's too much information for them to absorb yeah
yeah I mean
I love challenges cause they
I mean allows you to build a relationship with people too
and they're showing up day after day
you getting a little bit more casual
which means that people can get a sense of actually who you are
and what it's like to work with you
which is what I AI won't ever replace because you at
at the end of the day like it's
if you wanna learn from someone
unless you're learning something like Super ABC systemised technical
um that I think AI will replace completely
but if there's nuance to what you're doing
which for a lot of thought leadership
there is nuance that yeah
people wanna learn from you and want to
want to get to know you as well as a person
and do you have any tips for me doing my uh
challenge my video challenge
yeah um okay
how long have you got Deb
um sorry
in terms of what makes a good challenge
um to increase the show up rate
you want to remind people more than what you think you need to um
so we've increased our amount of volume of emails that are coming in
we do 72 hours before 48 hours before
24 hours before three hours before
one hour before 15 minutes before um
that increased our show up rate a lot in our last launch
the other thing we did was um
we did worksheets so everyone loves when we do a challenge
our canvas templates and our worksheets
people could only get them if they showed up live
so even people that caught the recording couldn't get them
and we had people that were like
you know
running their day job or at work that would log in to the live
just to be able to get that and
and jump off
which increased our engagement massively and increase our show up
so the the launch we did before we did that
we had a show up rate 32%
we got it to 48% by doing that
so we did that and we put in um
daily prizes as well for show up prizes
so we did like and good ones like we did um
AirPods and a podcast mic and things that people actually wanted um
so I would entertain doing that um
because it's to me marketing dollars is the cost
of that that is worth it to get people to show up um
and that's half the battle really is once people show up
they're gonna love you they're gonna gonna think it's great so yeah
getting people there that's going to be the challenge
and then I would say a daily action step
so a lot of the time when people are going through challenges yeah
I have heard so many people go through other people's challenges
and go I didn't join the program cause I I was I was like sorted
I had so much to do from that few days
that I'll catch you on the next one
kind of thing yeah right
you want to lead it so that it's valuable
I hear people sometimes saying like don't teach
teach the teach the what know how
but I think you you could show people like
it's their time and time is the most valuable commodity
that you wanna reward people giving you their time
give them something of substance
but then keep it light enough that they can do an action step
that's achievable everyday
so that at the end of your training
your sales page is done like you've got that video
it's live on the website
you've got to drill it down so much so that they're like
oh my gosh like I just did this
I got a full result like this was absolutely what I wanted what's next
because if it's not finished if they're like okay
it's gonna take me another couple weeks to do this
they're not ready to buy the program and take that next step
so make sure it's simple enough that people can do it
love it love it love it love it
thank you so much and it's interesting
cause I actually ran a poll on my stories to go
would you like to do this in half a day or would you like to do this
no one chose over 4 days and I'm like
of course you don't because we all want a quick win and again
I'm like but that tells me that if it was a in person event
you definitely do it in you know the the day event as such
but definitely for what I wanna do
cause I want people to actually walk away
with a video that they can upload on their website
that they can use on their social media
for when they're launching their products
or launching their course or membership
so that was my transformation thing of start finish and you need
you need to do the prep work
it's like painting that the you know
bedroom you've got a mask up and wipe down the walls
and a lot of people miss that work
they just press record and that's why they don't get results
thank you so much for your time to wrap up Tina
I just wanna ask you if you had
to just pick five tech tools that are a must have for your business
as in as an online course creator
you know membership like Al tools or just any tech tools
tech tools just tech tools kajabi yeah
number one yeah
Monday dot com yeah
love it um
I think they're the two things I couldn't live without
I've tried alternatives to them
and they're the two that I know
my business would suffer greatly if I did not have them
um and if we're talking software only
then we can't have this
but my third would be my phone because I'm amazed that is 100% given
right you can do everything like
I mean how incredible is that
um but probably my other most used tech tools um
I mean Instagram is the
the common ones
the probably less common ones that I'm using a lot at the moment
um cast magic
which I think you use too
don't you is our new thing that we use for our podcast
no I
I just use perplexity for my show notes and timestamps chapters again
it's this is done a lot in terms of for our podcast
so I'm loving the way that it does it right now
thinking all about masterclasses through cast magic
for all of that stuff which is working really well
so that's probably a lesser known one
um but yeah
the
the wide ones that are the things everyone's using that I can't live
without is zoom and you know all the general chat GPT
yeah right
yeah it's like before it is exactly
thank you so much for your time today Tina
I've really enjoyed your chat and
and is there one passion project that really lights your fire
at the moment that isn't work
that is something that just like that you just love
it isn't work I mean
I spend a lot of time with my kids
my my son is training to become a professional golfer
and so I spend a lot of my week sitting in a golf cart at the moment
um and while I don't love golf at all um
I'm loving that he's 16 and I feel like there was a
there was a time through like 13
14 where I could feel that he was getting his own life
and getting time away and
which is great for teenage boys yet
but I feel like I've got like a second wind of the beautiful
precious time with him that I wouldn't have got otherwise
and we'll just banter and chat and he'll tell me things that I'm like
if we didn't have this as a space
I I think I would have lost a bit of that relationship there
through natural aging and so
there's a part of me that's just like
hanging on tight to that and really enjoying it and soaking it up
and and yes so a lot of my time is spent doing that
and I have three dogs and I am walking a lot nice
oh yeah it's me
love it love it
thank you so much and so people can find you on Her Empire Builder
you are launching in Her Empire Builder
com um
and on that page you'll see like
if you wanna join the waitlist to join Her Empire Builder
or whatever training we have coming up
is always there at the top of the homepage as well
yeah thank you so much Tina
thank you well yeah
Her Empire Builder uh Tina Tower
you can check it out and I'll put all the details in the show notes
thanks again bye

How to build a 7-figure online business with Tina Tower #29

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