Podcast Transcript

[00:02:04] Sean Steele: Welcome back to our regular listeners and to anybody joining us, of course, for the first time, we are thrilled to have you. My guest this week is Tina Tower, multi-business Founder. Sold multiple times, author, speaker, podcast host, mum of two men-children, very similar to my age children, as we've just discovered. It was quite scary. Won lots of awards, been on lots of media; Huffington Post, Fin Review, Telstra Business Awards like this logo central, the list goes on. And currently, Managing Director, head honcho, boss woman of like Tina Tower, training other people on how to commercialise and transform their knowledge into something more scalable, teaching them how to build online courses and communities, books and events and like the whole ecosystem. How are you? I'm so excited to have this conversation today.

[00:02:49] Tina Tower: Thank you. Hello, what a beautiful intro.

[00:02:53] Sean Steele: You could steal it if you like. It's totally yours.

[00:02:56] Tina Tower: It's always something that's really surreal when you get introduced on a podcast and you're like, that sounds so cool when it's wrapped up with a neat little bow with none of the in between parts in it.

[00:03:07] Sean Steele: Especially one that you didn't have to write for yourself, which is even better. Right? Now I believe Tanya who leads our marketing, reached out to you and told you that I am a fanboy. It is what she said to me and I was like; wow, that is so embarrassing and slightly true. Did she tell you that?

[00:03:22] Tina Tower: I saw it, and I've got to say she did well doing that because we get pitched for podcasts all the time, for both people being on ours, for me being on other people's. And they get deleted, like 99.9% of them. And if it wasn't for that line, it would've been deleted. So, it was then that I went, oh, has he done our course? And then I looked up your history and our backend and was like; oh, amazing. And then I looked up your website, I'm like, yay Sean. This is awesome. So yeah, she got you.

[00:03:51] Sean Steele: That's awesome. Well, I will have to explain for our audience. In the past year, so actually about 12 months ago and well before I actually changed the brand of ScaleHQ, I realised, I've got lots of stuff to offer, but I really want to turn into something more scalable. I can clearly only work with a number of Founders and so I have to transform the business model. Had lots of ideas on how to do that in the first one, and I have spent my whole executive career building education businesses, i.e., courses. And so, I know a lot about how to manage large sales and marketing teams and product delivery to build courses for other people, but never having to do it myself for my own brand. Very different experience. So, found you…

[00:04:27] Tina Tower: And you did a great job. It looks fantastic.

[00:04:30] Sean Steele: Thank you. It's just about to launch. I did your idea to launch course, and I'm now putting together a foundation cohort for our course that kicks off in a couple of months. So that is very exciting. And actually the people I usually interview on this podcast are usually Founders who have already scaled, like 50 to 100 mil, or experts on key areas of business that I think Founders really need to master if they're going to scale up, especially seven-figure Founders in that 1 to 10 mil range, you're trying to get to eight plus. And then of course, you know, smaller groups, but of Founders who are still scaling have got interesting stories who are in that 1 to 10 mil. They're still growing, they're evolving, and so you fit two of those categories. You're an expert in an area that I think people…

[00:05:13] Tina Tower: Current life

[00:05:16] Sean Steele: That's right. You've been a successful Founder, you're an expert in the area that I think really matters and you're back in the seven-figure Founder at range in building your own. So really exciting. So, I'd love to chat to you now.

[00:05:25] Tina Tower: I have no desire to ever be back where I was, which I'm sure we'll talk about.

[00:05:31] Sean Steele: You've had some learnings. So, keen unpack some of those learnings and also, you know, to Founders who are out there who go; well, I've never thought about building a course in my business. Like, a lot of the people who are listening today might have very successful seven and low eight figure businesses doing pest control or technology services or a million other things, and never really considered actually how their IP and all this expertise that they're currently selling, usually on a sort of time and cost materials or some other basis, could be transferred and become more scalable where they can reach their impact goals faster. So, lots to chat about. Can I start with your business? I’m super interested in like how you are thinking about that. So, you focus very much on working with women across the world to package their expertise, which I love. I'm interested in though, because I've listened to your podcast many times, so I've also heard, your students who've then crossed like the million-dollar threshold. And so, they're in seven figures. Hooray. And so, they're now thinking about how they continue to level up. What's the most common obstacle that you see them face once they get like past 1 million and they're maybe not quite… what do you think is going to prevent them, I guess, from getting to 3 or 5 or 10 if they're truly trying to continue scaling?

[00:06:43] Tina Tower: 100% of the time team, every single time. It's the biggest barrier I think in growth, even for my business and for my client's. Business is always going, you know, people generally go into an online course business for the lifestyle benefits, having ran service-based business, previously. I've ran retail stores like all different types of business models. Online courses. I hate it when it's sold as like passive income because nothing's passive. It still takes a lot of effort, but it's very, very leveraged on the effort. And so, if you have ran a service-based business before, you find like an online business and absolute piece of cake. But a lot of people go into online business because they want the lifestyle benefit of it, which includes less people to manage. And so often when people have a business experience, they can scale to a million dollars, not easily, but simply, pretty simply. But it's when you get to that stage, you're like, well, I kind of need support staff now. And people then will pause in going, we know bigger isn't always better when it's not our first rodeo. And so, it's going well, how far do we want to scale? What levers do we want to pull and what don't we? And then it's getting those team in place, and that is a hundred percent of the time, what stops people is going; do we want to do a big team again? And how many people do we want and how much revenue and impact can we create on the certain amount of team that we want? And playing that game.

[00:08:15] Sean Steele: One of the things I also like that I've heard you say, or I listened to a podcast a long time ago that you'd done about how you thought about your P&L, which I thought was really instructive for any size business, is like, well, you actually create a percentage of revenue that you allocate to team full stop. And, so as the business scales up, it's like, okay, well if I know that's my budget for next year and I'm confident that's what I'm going to hit, well, I know how much I have to spend on team. So, I don't overspend on team trying to stack the deck and invest ahead of the curve, which is often a very quick way to lose a lot of money, not everything goes the way you want. You've hired a whole bunch of people and now you're in like, ugh, ugly cash flow crunch stage. Can you share what that sort of percentage is, and do you think that changes when you pass into seven figures?

[00:08:56] Tina Tower: It changes slightly as you go through different stages. So, I learned early on in my business, like using this percentage pie because one of the things that I could never figure out was how I kept going up in revenue and kept having no money. And it was like the years went on and I'm like, I've made more money, but where has all the money gone? You know, I was three-four years into business and just hadn't got a grip. I mean, granted, I'm nearly 40 now. I started my first business when I was 20, so I've been going for 20 years. And that first five years, like 20 to 25. Oh my gosh. I had so much to learn in terms of the basics of business and figuring that out. And so, for me, the way my brain worked, I couldn't do like budgets in going, I allocate this amount of money to this, this amount of money to this, but the percentage pie made sense in my mind. So, taking a hundred percent of revenue and going, so this is working after GST, after taxes have come out and going, all right, with what we've got left, what do I want my percentage pay to look like? So, always it was 20% was mine. That's always what I wanted to make sure that I was paid first. Sometimes later you get extra dividends and that sort of thing, but to live on, I could go, 20% was mine, that's my salary. And then 20% is going into team costs. So, whether that's permanent team or contractors or anyone that I'm getting, that is what I would spend on that so that I didn't overspend. 10% on marketing, 10% on course costs, 4% on charity. I spend a large amount on travel. It usually bounces between 5 and 10%. I regret nothing, but this is what I mean with everyone's personal percentage pie is. It's got to be in line with your values, with how you run your own business. And I think that that is different for everybody. I mean, I have some friends that are running courses, course creator businesses, similar sizes to mine that their percentage that they allocate to team is more up around the 30-35% because they're choosing to buy back a lot of times. So, I still work in my business quite a lot. I do about 30 hours a week, sometimes 40 hours a week inside my business. A lot of people have the goal of getting that lifestyle and kind of dipping in and doing like the performance part and the content creation, and then letting everybody else run the operations. Whereas, I'm still very heavily in that by choice and want to keep that money for myself. So, it allows me to never go out of balance with how much I'm spending on certain things, because those hundred points are gone real quick.

[00:11:35] Sean Steele: They disappear fast, don't they? No, I really love that model because it almost gives you a great opportunity to step back and look at your business and reverse engineer your profitability and go, okay, given the EBITDA that I actually really want to hang onto at the end, what is left and how do I allocate that and what is a reasonable percentage given and what does that look like when I scale? And that I think it nicely forces you to also really think about; have I got the right roles? So, to your point, like that team's evolving, you know, the team that's got you to a million dollars, whoever they were is probably not the team that's going to get you to 5 million. And I know that you've gone through a process of really thinking about how do I allocate that bucket and then what are the skills I'm going to need to make that next one.

[00:12:14] Tina Tower: Yes.

[00:12:18] Sean Steele: I'm interested that given your, you know, so you've got courses and books and speaking, you're a big part of what you do as your community model. Is there a, or has there been a single or a couple of like hero brand or, you know, like you've looked at a business, you've gone, I love all of those ingredients, those are the ingredients that I want to create for myself. How have you thought about where your business is heading? Has there been a model that you've looked at?

[00:12:43] Tina Tower: Yeah, a little bit. And one of the frustrating things that people find working with me is I don't have like a one size fits all. Like you've done idea to launch, which is like how to go from idea to a launched course, it's like a basic kind of six-to-eight-week course. Here's how you create that. But then inside Her Empire Builder, which is my membership, I teach people how to run the business behind the online courses. And one of the things that people get very frustrated with me with is I don't think there's one pathway that everybody should be doing. So, some people are more suited towards, like high volume, low-cost membership. Some people should never run a membership because they don't want to have something ongoing, but they just want to do a live launch open course for eight weeks, take six months off, go again. Like it's different for everybody. And I played with a lot of them at the start. So, when I first came into like started seeing this wonderful world of online courses, I had come, I'd just sold my franchise company and I'd started business coaching people. So, I was doing one-on-one coaching with service-based businesses that wanted to systemise and grow and sell. And I was repeating a lot of the stuff over and over and over and over again. And then I got pushed this ad by James Wedmore and was like; oh, one to many, like, what is this? And so, I went down the rabbit hole in learning that loved James Wedmore's stuff, loved Amy Porterfield stuff, but didn't want to, like neither of their business models was the one that I wanted to do. So, I started with a course first and what I found was just launching the course, it was kind of, and this is where like my belief system and roadblock probably has got in my way as well in terms of scaling. But you know, we are who we are and we're complex mental beings. But when I launched the course, I came from a service-based business where, someone pays you the rate and then you deliver on that service. And it felt so weird to. Like you purchased my course and I didn't know your name, so like, it just is mind blowing to me. And what I found at the end of the year was I felt not empty, but, like I couldn't see the result that I was getting and, and I felt like I was running a marketing business rather than a coaching business. And I am a primary teacher by trade. I love education. I love teaching. I love creating things for people, and I love being connected in a community as well. And so that's how I then went into the membership model, was I was seeing other people running memberships, and I was like, this looks like a better fit for the way that I want to run. For a lot of my friends that I'm in masterminds with and that sort of thing, when I explain my business model, they're like, “Tina, that sounds like hell.” Because I'm very much like on the hook for talking to people all the time. So, I have a perpetual membership. My membership never runs out. People can join monthly if they want to. They can leave if they're no longer getting value. But we never end. And every month we have a masterclass, expert session. We have a tech work room, we have a Q&A session. We have a mindset session like we just give all of this education, all of the latest resources and things to implement straight into people's businesses, and I love it because I know everybody and I can see them grow and I can see them changing. And it's Her Empire Builder, but we have three brave men in there that just wanted to be part of it as well. And they're like, are boys allowed? I’m like, boys are allowed. It's just the mission is to create more wealthy women in the world. You know, get that equality going. But the reason that I chose my business model was because it aligns with the life that I want to lead, and being able to have that community. And I mean, we've got our retreat next week, where 80 people are all coming together and it'll just be like, I love the magic of that. And so, it's like this hybrid of online, but also like really scalable but also high touch point. And it's priced accordingly for that too.

[00:16:51] Sean Steele: So, given that, then, what does the future look like for the business? Like obviously, you know, you are not an infinitely scalable resource, so how? Do you have a certain size that you want to get to? Have you thought about what does a team look like if you were to double from here where you are, or double again, like where does it go to from here?

[00:17:08] Tina Tower: Yes. So, the honest answer is, I don't know because I will reassess at every level. And if I get like that warning sign of wrong way, go back, I have no shame in rewinding what I've done. So, one of the reasons why I sold my last company was it got to a certain size that I hated it. The weight of the responsibility, everything. Like there's always urgency, there's always things going on. There's always like I felt like every day was like start and go, go, go, go, go until you're like exhausted and paralytic on the ground and then you sleep and then you do it again the next day. And I found myself in the loop of always going, you know, once I get over this quarter, it'll be fine. Or once I hire this next person, it'll be fine. And I know you can relate to that by that sound. And I don't ever want to get myself in that situation again. So, if I do, I will stop the growth and that is perfectly fine. So, I am very well paid for what I do now. I have my retirement plan and pathway on there. I should be there by about 44, and then I am home and hosed. But in terms of how big I want to go, I know from my previous business, I love like a team of four, max six people, after it gets bigger than that. It's like too many complex layers for me to, I just don't want that in my life. I don't want to deal with people's, you know, she said this and they said this, and this person's getting pro…Like just the shit that goes on with humans. I can look after and hold space for that many people and I will do the best business that I can that has as much impact as possible at that point of, which is huge compared to the amount of people that I needed in service-based business, like we can do a lot more with a lot less now, like in online courses and with the technology. I mean, just AI alone this year has leveraged, like one of my marketing people, for example, used to have two other VAs that now we don't even need. Like it's just insane the level that has allowed us to expand reach with the limited capacity that we have. But I think that will be it for me. At the moment, I have two full-time staff and then some contractors, so I've still got a little bit of space to grow there. We have 180 women in our membership. I think we'll get to about 500 and then probably hold, but I'll see.

[00:19:40] Sean Steele: That's awesome. You know, I think, what's beautiful about that is the recognition and because you've been through the path before, lots of people who haven't been through the path before, they don't know what success looks like yet, or they think what success looks like is the opposite when they actually get there and they're like, oh my God. To your point, all I'm doing is just managing people and actually all I really love is building product. Or you know, I've seen numerous CEOs go public and then go, this is the worst job in the world. I'm now spending 35% of my time managing shareholders and everybody else's intentions for me and like trying to defend everything. But when you get that experience and you get the opportunity to reset and redesign, what a beautiful…

[00:20:28] Tina Tower: It is. And it's knowing what you want to, like, we are trained, like our messaging that we get fed all the time is like, how big can we go? Like what is our potential, what is our capacity? And I am still very much want to see what my potential is, but in the way right now of going how awesome and big can I make this without flogging myself? Like that is the challenge. And I still remember when I had my franchise, I had a board and one of the men that was on my board, he'd sold Brumby's Bakery for I think it was like 57 million. So, he was very, very good. And he sat me down one day and was like, Tina, you are a great Founder. Like taking a business from ideation, to a few million. Like you have that in you. It's like you are not good at maintaining. Like everyone's got their skillset and he's like, I can tell you're bored, you're frustrated. Like this is, you are good at the startup. Like that's where you are. And so, I was a little bit offended when he first said that to me, but I sat with it and was like, you are right. Like there's some people that love getting a company and just day-to-day making sure those cogs are turning and that their operations are all running, rinse and repeat over and over again, like that makes me want to stick skewers in marbles, like no. So, I think part of our happiness as business owners is choosing the game that we want to play and then no matter what we think surrounds that being okay with that.

[00:23:06] Sean Steele: Do you think, I mean, there'll be an interesting question for you to digest as you get to that next stage or to, you're getting closer to that limitation where you're like, oh, actually the way that I'm spending my time is no longer in line with what I want. Because, you know, it sounds like many Founders, you know, you love the creation, you love the connectivity with the community and being at the events and you get a lot of energy from that side. And you've got a great opportunity because of the way the business model works to hire some, less people, but really great people that really have the ability to help you scale. And then maybe there's a role at some point for the Head of Ops or the COO or whatever the title is, so you continue to offload some of that people management, but you get to still play in the space that you want to be in. You know, I always think about, you know, some of the big, you know, currently coaching brands like people like Jay Shetty, who I saw how early he got on a COO, like a partner to be his, so he is like, I don't even know how to do, nor do I have a desire, nor do I have the skillset to run a team of that size. Let's not have me do that. Let me focus on creativity and product and that's where I am and that's what I do and I connect with people. And I wonder whether that might…

[00:24:22] Tina Tower: For me, it's the certain type of person. So there has been one person that I have come across that I've been like, you, I could work with you. That has like the different side. He'd just sold his past company and I was like, you want half of mine? I reckon we could go and do this together. And he's off now writing novels and doing fabulous things. Didn't want to do it again. But for me, I'm always open to like, if that right person comes along, then yes, I would definitely consider that. But it'd have to be, it's not like something you can put an ad in, seek and go, I doubt I would ever find someone that way.

[00:25:04] Sean Steele: Yeah, to heart and soul, I get it. So, thank you very much for sharing that journey. I am really interested to get your thoughts in a creative way on the kinds of Founders that we might have listening today. So, we have lots of seven and low eight figure Founders. And some of them are in some really boring, like, let's call them boring industries, you know, like, I don't know, recruitment and procurement and tender writing and technology services, and there's some global travel companies and ed tech businesses, project management and all sorts of stuff, right? And

 a significant number of them are B2B businesses providing services and good solid businesses like healthy, growing, good EBITDA, great businesses, but very little that is scalable beyond their capacity to invest in scale team. And so I'm super interested into some of the places that perhaps you've seen or that you've coached people through who've got a sort of B2B model, maybe rather than a B2C kind of consumer-based course, work on courses to find ways to leverage their scalability. Can you talk to me about where are some of those opportunities? Even just what, as I read some of those out, there might be things that bubble up to you, your previous clients. Over to you, your thoughts. 

[00:26:24] Tina Tower: I mean, it’s incredible what people have made courses out of. Like I am constantly surprised when I hear from someone and I'm like; Hmm, okay, how can we make that work? And then you start doing it and you go. Wow, that's pretty cool. So, the easiest way to think of it for existing businesses is not as a separate business, but just as another product that you've got in your office suite of everything that you do. So, you know, it's a very different thing when you are, you know, like we've got one of our members, teachers gardening to ship target market stay-at-home moms that want to run small edible gardens to feed their kids. That is a very different setup to someone who is a psychologist who is going to run courses to roll out to all of KPMG's. Team members to be able to do in their corporate life. But the same ethos kind of applies in both of them. And I think a lot of the people that I talk to in really high-level businesses that are doing like those eight figures and they're like, really want to be able to scale more with that, but I don't know if it's possible for us because they think they're so special and you are so special. But it's the same thing in going, all right, well how can you get those repetitive parts and how can you scale that throughout? So, you know, we've got one of our guys that I've worked with is, he is a mindset expert and he was going in and doing corporate training for Westfield. So, all of the corporate team in Westfield. So, thousands and thousands of people working through there. And then he was like; well, I need something to scale. So, we put on like a 30-day mindset program and they bought thousands of life, like seven-figure amount of licenses to roll out across their corporation. So, there's a whole lot of different ways that you can be able to do it and scale and reach. It's really more of a hybrid model, so if you're already working in corporates or you're already doing like large scale B2B is probably more like a hybrid in that you will still have some level of consultation and service delivery, but it can be backed up or complimented by an online component that allows, like a greater sale price and also a greater impact through the work that you're doing as well.

[00:28:44] Sean Steele: I mean, that's such a great example of, right, like how to scale, you know, when people used to just do one day communication skills courses, like, well, how many freaking people am I going to have to get in front of, going to be on a plane 24 hours a day flying around the country? Like, so inefficient.

[00:28:56] Tina Tower: Yeah.

[00:28:57] Sean Steele: And just an online course in itself, in and of itself may also not be enough. But I always think, there's so much value in blended, you know, blended is a big word, but to find, I always think everybody hates being, having to sit in front of somebody and be told the boring stuff that actually they can learn themselves in their own time. Now, they may not want to do it in their own time if they're at work and they're being paid to do…

[00:29:23] Tina Tower: Put it on two times speed.

[00:29:27] Sean Steele: It's like great, like teach me the boring stuff. Allow me to do it at a way that suits me. But then when you bring me together with a group of people or with an instructor, make it really valuable. Make it the kind of conversations that I can't have anywhere else. Make it like a sharing of an experience and think about what is this person going to have to do at the end? And therefore, what are… like if this was just as big set of ingredients, what's the right set of ingredients to put together from how long the course takes to how much is online to how much is in a room? Is it a community? Is it sort of tightly knit? Is it a big group? You know, what conversations am I going to have that, you know, there are all these ingredients to put together, isn't there?

[00:30:00] Tina Tower: See, you've got it. You can take my job.

[00:30:03] Sean Steele: Yeah, well because I was really struggling to think about some, and then as he started talking, I started thinking about more, I met with a sustainability expert the other day. He's like super high level, like, you know, director, multiple boards, like really senior strategy person. And we were talking with like, they're going to be dealing with like chief sustainability officers and these are like, no…

[00:30:23] Tina Tower: Yes. So, what people like that have a great success rate in doing is doing like they meet face-to-face with like the leadership teams in organisation to teach them the sustainability practices, and then they provide them with like a probably a white labelled component that is customised for that company that can then be pushed out to all of the staff with that. So a lot of it, the face-to-face is with executive leadership teams and companies, but then they're giving also online instead of putting people through all of these training things that they have to leave their businesses for, like leave their normal workday, they can just consume it on their phone on an app, which is great.

[00:31:03] Sean Steele: I like that. Yeah. You can imagine if that you were a cybersecurity expert in your ability to work with the leadership team, but here's all the principles and I've got a whole package thing so we can flow this all the way throughout, so there's no dislocation to your point between what all the individuals are learning and what actually the leadership team is on board. Yeah, I really like that. That's an interesting model. I thought sometimes, you know, sometimes you also get, I noticed that as an executive, other executives really valued and found it difficult to build relationships with other people in the same role in different companies. And so, if it's not competitive, you know, like could you pull together a sort of invite only high-ticket price, group of nine Chief Sustainability offers in almost like a mastermind group where they had their kind of offline curriculum. But then you bring, this is like a tight knit, there's not going to be anybody below the C-suite in this room. Like it's super tight Chatham House rules, like could be a really interesting way of leveraging community, and some offline content.

[00:31:55] Tina Tower: I mean, that's my favourite thing, like community building is my favourite thing. Having really cool conversations with really cool people is, I mean, who doesn't love that? Well, a lot of people don't love that, but I love that. And for a lot of people, what I hear from a lot is when people are starting these mastermind groups and starting these higher-level groups, is for a lot of people in those roles, they're quite isolated because they've got no one that they can really share with honestly and openly. So, it's a really valuable space to be in.

[00:32:29] Sean Steele: How do you manage community as it gets large? Like how, you know, especially if you are, you know, everyone's kind of coming for you and they want access to you, and then how do you sort of build up the community management capability to ensure that people still get a great experience, but you're obviously not in the community every 25 seconds responding to things.

[00:32:46] Tina Tower: Yes, a lot. There is a lot of moving parts to managing community effectively. So, a couple of different things is. It is sadly different for men and women. So, I have a lot of clients that are running female-based companies, serving females, and a lot of friends of mine that are men that are running communities. And what I find is the men that are running communities, it's far easier to manage a community than the women. And what I mean by that is men can say put their personal mobile number on everything, and if you need anything, just reach out. No one's calling because when I ask people like, why don't you give them a call? Oh, they're busy. I don't want to bother them. However, because of social conditioning, all sorts of things. If a woman says, just give me a call if you need anything, she needs something, she's going to call all the time. And so, you need to be aware of that and have firmer boundaries if you are a female because boundaries are used to being pushed over as a female. So, I have really strong parameters of where my line ends for each of the different levels of membership. Otherwise, like for example, when I started, we have a Facebook group and I nearly had death by Facebook group like I was getting tagged in that Facebook group every half an hour with questions that can be Googled. And so, I had to be really like upfront with going, all right, step one, Google it. Step two, look in the library. Then if you're stuck, ask in the group, but do not tag me every five seconds. And so, then I had to have all of those different parameters of when I'm available to be contacted when I am not. I will never put my phone number on anything. But you always need a place to get questions answered. So, for example, I'll run live and do Q&A and I will openly say I will not get off until every question is answered. So, I will sit there as long as it takes and answer everybody's question until they have run out. And that way people are never feeling like they're missing out. And I'll probably continue doing that right up until we've got 500 clients because a lot of the questions, what I find is when people start a asking them, people are like, oh. It's all right. Just answered my question. It's the same sort of one. So, that works really well. I also love, like with community, it's fostering those connections. So, one of our most popular sessions that we have is virtual networking. So, we alternate every month between coffee and connections and business and bubbles, and we send people into breakout rooms so that they can chat, share ideas, collaborate together, get on each other's podcasts, each other's business shows, like help build each other's businesses. And a lot of people, I think join my program because of me. And they've heard me somewhere and they're like, you know, we want that. But they stay for community. Like they realise it is so much bigger than me, what we do. And people have their friendship groups in there. We have live events. We go on adventures together overseas, like there's so many different things that happen. It's its own little ecosystem and I've heard people that have other communities that try and prevent that from happening. Like no selling, no cross promoting. We have a whole ecosystem. Like there's graphic designers that get most of their work from our group. There are people that sell business courses that get most of their work from our group. Like it's great. I love it. Bring it. Yeah.

[00:36:19] Sean Steele: There's so much to that, isn't it? And so, how did you think about the pricing then in a community model for, if you want to add live events and all the rest, so are all of those face-to-face style events, they're all over and above, I assume none of that's included in the membership that's like; Hey, you want to come, we set the price… how do you facilitate that?

[00:36:39] Tina Tower: Yeah, so I have two different levels. I have Her Empire Builder, which is our like, totally scalable group, so there's no one-on-one or small group with me. So that's all of our scalable stuff. And we do that for 5.99 a month. And then when we do our retreats, people can buy tickets to that. And each one is different depending on our Australian retreat is a little bit less than our international retreat, and people can choose whether they want to come to that or not, which is why we usually have about 80 people at those events. But then I have Empress Circle, which is our higher-level Mastermind. Um, so that's people doing over a 100k on each of their online course launches, and they come together in team squads every month. So, we have groups of eight that come together and they go through the whole program together. So, they're really tight knit. They're very honest. They've got people to bounce off. They're really engaged. But they have included live events as well, because I know that the greatest community builder that we can actually do is you put someone inside a room together and actually sit human to human, and you're like; hi, friend. And then online magic happens after that because they've had that connection. So, when I first started, I included events for everyone going through and then realised I was making zero money. So, then we did the offer, separating that out from there as well.

[00:38:07] Sean Steele: That's awesome. I mean, I'm planning building a Founder mastermind type model, you know, and a peer advisory board.

[00:38:13] Tina Tower: Ooh, we can chat price point later.

[00:38:16] Sean Steele: Yeah. Love to chat about that. And you know, I'm sure there'll be other conversations about your learnings there. I have, you mentioned before how AI has already started to impact your operations, and how you probably do, I assume mostly in marketing. Is that where you're sort of finding generative AI quite helpful?

[00:38:34] Tina Tower: Yeah, a lot of marketing, a lot of admin too, is probably where we're using it the most. Marketing more than anything. Yeah.

[00:38:42] Sean Steele: Yeah. Okay. How do you think, I mean, this is a big crystal ball question, right? Because obviously it's changing rapidly. Like it's probably changed since we started this conversation. Materially, there's an entirely new model we don't even know about. But you've got the sort of advent of deep fake and I think the sort of future of who do I trust for content and how authentic is it and do they really say that and blah, blah, blah? How do you feel that's going to play out in the kind of world of course creators and people trying to create their IP and leverage it, sort of less so than operations, but more about kind of content and how that…?

[00:39:16] Tina Tower: I think as it goes on, I mean, I went to South by Southwest in March, which was all focused, so it's a tech conference in Austin. For those who haven't heard of South by Southwest, my favourite week of the year. If you haven't been and you like to geek out on stuff, it's like Disneyland for nerds. But the whole focus was pretty much on AI and it was really interesting in listening all to all about that and what the futurists think are going to happen as it kind of unfolds. But from what I see is people that are consuming online are a lot more sophisticated than they were five years ago even. So, you know, when I started in online courses, a really big trend was like fake live webinars with deadline funnels. So, you know, like running them and being like, you have to buy in the next 30-minutes or your time will run out. But they're not real. Like, they're not really there. The funnel will still be there tomorrow. But now, like people's bullshit meter is higher and I think that as AI takes over a lot of the functionality, it will get even higher because people are like, is this true? Is this not? And will trust, like trust will be harder to buy, I think so. I think that's where it is even more important for thought leaders to be able to share their thoughts and interpretations on things. And I mean, don't get me wrong, I use Chat GPT every single day right now. Like it has saved me. Oh my gosh, amazing. But as like a roadblock destroyer. So, if I'm like, how should I do this? Or you know, I have this framework or this model, what steps do you think I can take to teach that in a way that's going to be interpreted by these people? And it will like scaffold it out and then I can use those talking points to then like improve my ideas and my thinking and different things. So, I still think it works really well when you ask it the right questions. And I don't think you can fake that so much. I mean, there was just a court case in New York that I saw where there was a really well-respected lawyer who cited a case law of something that Chat GPT had told him that he had made it up. And he's now been disbarred and all of that sort of thing. So, it does, like some of it is not true and so we still need to discern that and look, I do think it will get better at that and much smarter and develop more reasoning and start to sound like I've learned how to put our brand voice guide into there and it can sound pretty close to me for things like social captions and things like that. But it's only as good as what you are feeding into it. So you still need to have the ideas and, and know how to deliver that. And so, yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see what will happen, but so far I love it and I think it's only a positive thing. And I don't think AI, I read this quote the other day that said, “AI won't take over the world, but people who know how to utilise AI will.” I was like, yes, agreed.

[00:42:21] Sean Steele: I like that. Well, it feels like, you know, if you are not on the front of this, like if you are not playing with it constantly, and you're not involved in it, you're not going to see stuff coming. You're not going to see the opportunities, and you're also not going to see the risks. And so, you know, there's stuff that we don't know that's going to evolve, which could really negatively impact you, but also could massively enable you. And you're not going to see either of them. So, if you're not spending like half an hour a day playing with Chat GPT, and any other AI tool, you can get your hand on.

[00:42:50] Tina Tower: Yeah, and it changes all the time. I mean, even just last week, like I was playing with, like we used to spend about an hour a week was allocated to like the video for our podcast and the videos that we chop up from our masterclass and getting the transcription for them and getting the quotes like put over the top and all of those different things, found this one called Opus, which is still in its very training stages. So, please no one go; I must use this because it still has faults. But I think it will take over like veed.io and all of these different things. So, you literally drag in like your hour long podcast. So, you could drag this recording in of our podcast and it pulls out like ranks from a 100% to low of its best 60 seconds with your font colours, with your font type, with all of your branding on top in like two minutes, and most of them that I've used before, I've looked at the clips that they've pulled out and I've gone, it actually wasn't my favourite 60 seconds, so I'm not happy. But this one is like spot it’s beautiful. And so that's just like given a whole hour back. And that will only get better and better on all of our fronts, I think.

[00:44:00] Sean Steele: And I think, you know, one of the things that will be quite interesting for content creators is if you, you know, I guess some of the current dialogue around AI is that, of course, those with the best proprietary data sets, are going to be the ones who stand to gain the most from AI. Because of course, if you think about what's happening in, if you are going to write all your content from what is essentially the, I don’t know, let's call it the best or the average of what everybody else has already thought. Then there's nothing new about that, and all of that's ubiquitous available for free. So, why would people want to come to you for that? I'd actually be unafraid of adding your style to it. You think about, I don't know, are you thinking about recording now all of your communities? You think about the data sets, like the questions that get asked, how people respond to it, what do you have to say about it? Like, all of that becomes just such a massive data set for you to train AI on in the future. Amazing opportunity. Are you already recording your community sessions?

[00:44:53] Tina Tower: I saw that someone's got in in beta at the moment, that you can take everything that you've ever created as a content creator. Every podcast interview you've done, been a guest on or done yourself every masterclass, every, every single thing. And you can load it all into this file vault, and then it'll bring out, and then it will literally like mine through all of it and just create whatever you want. And I'm like, that's cool.

[00:45:18] Sean Steele: It's amazing. I mean, the reality is Scale HQ, we're part of what we do is we provide advice to Founders who are scaling up. And so, I'm already going, does that mean I need to record every advisory board session from now on? And like, what happens to that data in the backend? And can I make sure that's protect? Like, it's such a big change. You think about…

[00:45:35] Tina Tower: Privacy I think will be one of the biggest issues that we come up against as it grows.

[00:45:40] Sean Steele: For sure. And it feels like that's the most important place for regulators to be playing a real role to go; Hey guys, like this big problem. If we start sort of releasing it everywhere. But you think about right now, you imagine if you're Tony Robbins, like how many decades worth of content does that guy have, you could probably get a pretty much absolute word perfect Tony Robbins, agent of Chat GPT.

[00:46:02] Tina Tower: Nothing new.

[00:46:05] Sean Steele: Like he's saying the same stuff. But I think what will be interesting is what, what won't go away is, to your earlier point around the community, why does community matter? Because people need connectivity with other people and they actually get energy from that and they get relationship from that. And it's not always, it's a long way past being about just content, because content, to be frank, is pretty ubiquitous. Not that hard to come by. I don’t know, the original thoughts are all kind of out there, right? Like the stuff is there. But creating the right ingredients to create the right experience that connects people, that's always going to be not the role of AI, and so, good opportunity for those who do that. So good. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation today. It's weird for me as I'm sure it is, for anyone who gets to interview, who's been listening to your stuff for ages, got to listen to your podcast very regularly. ‘Oh, it's Tina Tower. She's like in my ears now she's here.’

[00:46:58] Tina Tower: It's really me.

[00:47:00] Sean Steele: Yeah, it's really you. But of course I'm exceptionally disappointed that you did not know my name or I enrolled. And so, we're going to have to fix that with your AI, your bots going forward. Tina, if people want to get in touch with you, I don't mean with your mobile number, but learn more about how to build online courses, follow along with a journey about how many billions or no billions you decide to create in the future. Like, where would you direct people?

[00:47:23] Tina Tower: Yes. www.tinatower.com and I mean, if I've done my work right as a content creator, you should be able to find me on pretty much anything and everywhere.

[00:47:33] Sean Steele: She's ubiquitous. I love it. That's good. Well, folks, before you go, I mean huge thank you to Tina for your time today. Folks, if you would like to learn how to build a business that’s as kick arse as Tina's, that has clearly got a great growth strategy behind it, where she's really thought about the business model and building the skills to execute it. First, you need to get your plan in place and get your business model optimised for scale in some of the ways we've just talked about, and that's where ScaleUps Roadmap comes in. So, as I mentioned to Tina earlier, I'm only making eight spots available for the foundation course. It's kicking off in August, so there's already five of those spots gone. If you're interested in being one of the other three, it's not for everyone. It's got to be for the right people. Head over to www.scalehq.com.au. Click on the education link. You'll find everything you need to know about the course. Stick your registration of interest, and I will chat to you directly and we'll see if it's a good fit for us both. Thank you very much, Tina. It's been a real honour for me and I look forward to speaking to you again.

[00:48:26] Tina Tower: Thanks, Sean.

[00:48:28] Sean Steele: Thank you.