THE PODCAST FOR ONLINE COURSE CREATORS GOING BIG!

Join business strategist Tina Tower as she explores how to build your empire by packaging your expertise into online courses, speaking, content, podcasting and credibility.

Tina has over 17 years of experience in starting, building and selling companies, she's a speaker, teacher, mama and world traveller.

She's unapologetic about living an intentionally big life and if you want too, this show is designed to show you many different options to help you gain clarity over YOUR version of awesome.

Episode Takeaways 

• Discover what a marketing rainmaker is, and how can they support you as the CEO in scaling your business

• How to create and train your very own A-Team

• Where to find the best people for your team at every stage of business

• The #1 role that Veronica considers to be the most important team member and leader you'll ever have 
• The importance of you, as a visionary CEO, sharing the gold with your team and showing them the direct impact you are making
• Conversations you should be having with your team that will make them want to shine even brighter
• Allowing your team to be their 'fullest self' and the positive impact this will have on your business

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Want more?

We have some incredible things happening at Her Empire Builder this year! If you are a course creator, you have to be a part of this incredible community. Jump on to herempirebuilder.com and check it out!

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Her Empire Builder is a combination of live sessions and pre-recorded content to help you get what you need, when you need it.

I know that you're the expert and you've got all of your subject knowledge nailed - now it's time to build the business behind your online course and stop being the worlds best kept secret. 

Show transcription 

Intro 

[00:00:00]
Hi friend and welcome to episode 191 of her Her Her Empire Builder podcast. Thank you for joining me today. So if you have been following along on social media, you have seen that at the moment I am double doubling down on focusing on team. So I do think that we are in the beautiful space of online business that we could do, we can do so much with so little. When I was in traditional business, really, you got to like a $2000 if that turnover and you needed to start hiring support and to be able to grow.

[00:00:44]
It was very proportionate so that as revenue went up, so did the cost of running the business and so the profit margin would increase as revenue went up, but very very minutely. Whereas obviously what I love about online business is it is so scalable and it is so leveraged. And I have managed to build the business that I have on very little staff because I put so much effort into systems, into automation and I do a lot myself a lot for some reason, maybe because of the size of the business that I have, people always assume that I don't do as much that I do. And when I tell them all of the bits they're like oh, wow, you need to get yourself support. And I have fought it because in my previous business I ran a franchise company, we had a lot of staff and I didn't like the weight of the responsibility, I didn't like having to support people emotionally.

[00:01:52]
I mean, most of the time I'm like I'm just trying to keep myself and my family all okay. To have responsibility over looking after other people is an added layer and so I've got as big as I can on part-time staff. And then this year I have really been kicking about a little bit in trying to decide how big do I want to go? Because I am very well aware after 18 years in business that bigger isn't always better. And I have really consciously wanted to decide do I want to level all this up or do I want to stay where I am?

[00:02:30]
And I definitely do not feel like I have anything to prove to anybody. Those days are gone for me. But when it came down to it, I decided, yes, I do want to go bigger because the mission that I set when I started Her Empire Builder in 2020 was by 2025 to have 100 women making a million dollars a year. And that is a big bold goal and I can't do it alone. And so I've got to the level where I've got now and I'm like okay, so to materialize everything that's in my head.

[00:03:07]
And as entrepreneurs, you know, we always have more ideas than time and energy available. So it's really being conscious on what do we want to dial up and what do we want to dial down and so this year I have put a lot of effort into what does the future of Tina Tower look like, what do I want to what products do I want to offer? What services do I want to offer? How can we grow and maintain the customer service that we are known for? Because our retention is so good in our membership.

[00:03:40]
And the reason that that is is because we serve the pants off people. And it's so important to me that when someone invests their time and money in us that we can give them, no matter how many clients, we have that same level of love and care. And so as we can't duplicate oneself, it's going, well, who do we need in place for that? And so I started exploring a whole lot of people. I started asking all of my friends that were an online business.

[00:04:08]
I asked my mastermind, my business groups, and going, hey, I want to expand next year. Tell me about your team. And what I have learned is one size does not fit all. Some people that I talked to that had a $3 million turnover, and they've got 10 - 15 staff. Some people hire all subcontractors.

[00:04:27]
Some people have like, one right hand person and then contractors all underneath. Some people have massive teams of VA's to manage. Some people have fulltime staff. Some people have remote workers, in office workers. Like, one of the best things about business is you can design it however you like.

[00:04:44]
However, that's very unhelpful, right? But what's working? What should I do? And I have my clients ask me that all the time, and I'm like, it depends. Let me show you option ABCDE.

[00:04:57]
And that can sometimes be frustrating. I know how they feel because that's how I felt. And so through Jill Stanton, who you've heard on my podcast before, I am part of her group, Million Dollar Girls Club, and she recommended me to Veronica Romney, who is my incredible guest today. And this is a really long winded way of introducing her, but I want to do this because I want you to know how I got onto her. So Jill recommended me speak to V because she's a dream team architect.

[00:05:34]
And what I wanted to speak to her about was, this is what my business goals are. This is what my org charts looked like in the past. This is where I feel really unsupported. This is where I want support. This is where my leadership challenges have been.

[00:05:47]
This is what I'm good at. This is what I'm not good at. What do you think I should do? And her experience, I'll read her official bio in a second, but she knocked my socks off. So first I got her in as a guest expert for her Empire Builder because we're focusing on team this month.

[00:06:05]
And I got her in to talk to all of my members and was like, oh my gosh, she's just so good, you know, people that you instantly hear and you just like she is amazing, just really knows what she's talking about and because of her experience, sees it from both angles. But what she does in her main program is this Rainmaker's Residency of which is a hybrid program where she gets both the visionary CEO of the company and the marketing rainmaker and puts them through a program for twelve months together side by side. So that the CEO can kind of learn what they need to do to grow the company and mix with the other visionary CEOs, and also their marketing rainmaker can learn from other marketing rainmakers and know how to support the vision behind the company that they're working with. And it's just like nothing I've ever heard of before and for me, especially with remote and it's really important to me to remain remote because I like the freedom and the flexibility.

[00:07:07]
I've got dogs everywhere, I live on my farm and I don't want someone in my space all the time. But then of course with remote it brings in the added challenge of how do you keep that communication really tight, how do you stay on the same page with vision and purpose when you're not living it and breathing it side by side physically. And so I love this idea of partnering with your person to do something together and to grow together rather than it being such a top down thing of, you know, us as CEOs of our company, no matter how big our company is, we're doing so much personal development. You know, I'm sure you are very similar to me in, you've done the courses and you've got coaches and you read the books and you do all of this stuff and then you've got to relay that to your team and try and get that like enthusiasm and added buy in and that motivation from there. And I love the thought of going, well, let's do it together.

[00:08:03]
Like let's partner up and get this done. And so I was super impressed with that. And then, so I asked Veronica Romney obviously to come on the podcast so that she could share her lessons with that as well because for me, what I have ultimately decided and what she explains actually, I don't want to ruin it in the three areas of business and really being siloed in like who is responsible for what area of business. And I loved this idea of marketing Rainmaker in that you've got the key person that is in charge and responsible of all of the marketing strategy. Obviously in conjunction with me.

[00:08:43]
But it's their responsibility to then have those ideas and then to follow them through to execution and so they've got the autonomy to be able to hire all of the contractors. Whether it's. You know. I'd love to do Tina Tower TikTok ads.

[00:08:59]
All of this stuff that I've had ideas for. We have all of these ideas, and we're fabulous, but we are but one woman. And so they can then have the budget to go right. These are all the things that we want to do and we want to experiment with and we want to try. Here's the budget.

[00:09:14]
Keep within that. For mine, it's 20%. So as long as 20% of revenue is for that team, happy days. Have at it. Like, let's do it.

[00:09:25]
Measure results and see how we go. So I'm going for a massive experiment next year. I'm hiring the marketing rainmaker, a full time client success manager and a full time executive assistant. And each of them will have contractors that they can have support them in those roles as well. So it's going to be really, really fun.

[00:09:45]
And I have joined Veronica Romney's Rainmaker's residency so I can go through that with my marketing rainmaker as well. And I'm looking forward to learning a whole lot of things and really taking our business to the next level, which we need an A team to be able to do that. I have no interest in having team that I have to work to motivate and I have to constantly beg them to do their job. I only want A players and I have high expectations because I have high expectations of myself. I have high expectations of the delivery of our company and I'm really looking forward to getting people on board that are part of that and like, hell yeah, we want to be proud of the work we're doing.

[00:10:30]
We want to do some great stuff. We want to take this to the next level. Like, let's actually in reality provide the best education for female online business owners in the world. Let's go. And this is where Veronica Romney comes in.

[00:10:44]
So let me give you her official bio. Veronica Romney Romney is a dream team architect. I mean, how cool is that? Who helps online entrepreneurs build their dream teams and train their rain making marketing leaders. She's a former speaker and trainer for Veronica Romney and Dean Graziosi and former chief of staff of mega-brand Boss Babe.

[00:11:06]
So, yeah, good experience. She's no stranger to the stage and has been in the online marketing world for over 15 years, having been featured in places like Forbes, Inc. Huffington Post, ABC News Radio and more. 

[00:11:32]
And like me, she also has a new baby puppy as well. So no matter what stage you are at in your business. Whether you are hiring team or not yet. Or whether you're kind of going from that 1 million to 5 million sort of stage or anything in between. I know you're going to get tips out of this that are going to help you with the growth and reshape some of those beliefs because one commonality that I can say is every single person that I spoke to who has fabulous businesses.

[00:12:04]
Who I respect a ton. And I was like: "tell me about team". The biggest pain point that every single person had in their business is team. And so I think it's something that we really need to after we get all of the systems and all of our offers and all of our messaging and all of that sort of thing in place, we've really got to nail the Team piece.

[00:12:27]
Otherwise growth is going to be hindered constantly and there's nothing wrong with that. Like, if you want to I was talking to a friend this morning going like 300,000 a year. It's a sweet spot of a business. If that is you and you want to get to there and sit there like, how about it? It is so good and there is nothing wrong with that.

[00:12:45]
But if you are wanting to grow well past that, then this chat is really going to help you because team is the key. So please welcome the incredible, the wonderful Veronica Romney. 

Main episode

[00:14:05]
Hello, gorgeous Veronica Romney. Welcome to Her Empire Builder podcast. Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited. I'm obsessed with you in all the ways, so I'll gush on you as you interview me. Okay?

[00:14:16]
It is mutual love and admiration. So, just so everybody knows, we're doing a marathon together today. We presented earlier in the week for Her Empire Builder as a guest expert. The session blew everyone away. There was a couple of things that she said that I was like, oh, my gosh, I need more on this.

[00:14:33]
So I booked a power hour with her, which we just did this morning, then went straight from that into Veronica Romney's podcast. Now into my podcast, we're besties by the end of this. 

[00:14:45]
Confirmed. Validated. Yes. So you've got such an eclectic history and winding road that took you to get here can you talk a little bit about how you came about doing what you're doing now? Okay, so like at a really, really fundamental level, my entire career has been me having an identity crisis with myself.

[00:15:10]
You can literally track it where I have bouts where I'm like a rock star employee, rockstar, director, chief or another. And then I had that calling with them because my parents were entrepreneurs. I have this belief that entrepreneurs birth other entrepreneurs. So like Moana the Ocean called me and then I would like to suppress it. And then the pandemic happened.

[00:15:31]
So like you can see if you look at even my LinkedIn profile, but it's like kind of scattered between me being a rock star, something for someone to me being the CEO of the visionary but being at odds with myself because I love both. Like if you've ever read the book Rocket Fuel, I'm that one out of 20 people person that can be both visionary and integrator. And so finally. Literally in like the last year. I stopped fighting with myself and realized that my own internal conflict and the ability to hold both positions is what has led me to be uniquely qualified for a program that I have called the Rainmaker Residency.

[00:16:10]
Where it's a duo program. It's a two person program for both the CEO and what I would argue is the most important team member and leader they'll ever have. Which is the marketing leader. The marketing rainmaker. I have never seen that before.

[00:16:25]
I've never seen that before. Yes. How did you come up with that concept? Okay, so really great question. Honestly, in a concise way of putting it, it was inspired by a conversation I had with a frustrated CEO in Disney World where he went to a recruiter looking for a marketing leader and he was getting like the crappiest candidates.

[00:16:49]
And he came to me like venting because I'm a dream team architect. I like team structure and architecting. So he comes to me and he's venting and I'm like, well, yeah, a marketer that's worth their salt, who's not afraid of the camera is going to make millions for themselves versus making millions for someone else. So you try to buy somebody off the shelf, either they're not going to translate because they're used to a corporate environment and corporate pace and this online arena is not the same thing. It's like the Wild West.

[00:17:17]
So either they're not going to translate over and you're going to pay a very high price tag for something that won't fit or you're going to get somebody who's really just a doer. Like they have skill and they're tactical and they're reactive and they're managing themselves, but that's not the same thing as leadership and strategic thinking and ideation and people management. He said, well, where am I going to find that? I'm like, well you can't, you got to develop it. You have to make it's, like, pour into your people, take somebody who you trust and make them into a leader.

[00:17:46]
He's like, I don't have time for that. You do that. I'm like, well, I can't do that because I have been that so many. So that's where it came. I'm an Anagram 8.

[00:17:53]

And I'm Cuban. So anytime, anybody's through the challenge of me, I'm like, all right, I see your challenge, and I'll see you in two months when it's done. And that's what happened. Amazing.

[00:18:03]
That's a little feisty, huh? Yeah. And, I mean, there's three questions that I wrote down that I want to ask you from that, but the first one is because it is such a unique program that you're taking both of those people through. And I know you had that conversation that came out with it, but with your experience that you've had in so many different online businesses and doing so many different things, you really could have chosen so many different areas to silo into. What was it about marketing that made you go, we'll do that, instead of, like, operations or chief of staff?

[00:18:37]
Because you've been doing that so much as well. Okay, it's a fair question. And you and I have a mutual friend, Kathy Olsen, and I remember meeting her at a Mastermind where I was having a really tough time in my identity crisis, and she kind of looked at me and she was like, I know why you're struggling. And these are her words, not mine, because I would not say this about myself. That makes me, like, squirm.

[00:18:59]
But in her words, she's like, I get it. Like, you're such a badass. Like, how do you pick one thing? Yeah. Thank you Kathy.

[00:19:04]
Yeah, because I've done lots of different things, and I can be an ops leader and I can be a marketing leader and chief of staff and all that. But to me, I don't think the industry is lacking operations leader. If you talk to a recruiter right now, they'll tell you it's the easiest position to fill. Like, there's Ops leaders everywhere.

[00:19:28]
There's OBMs. There's DBMS. That's not the lack. And if you talk to a visionary CEO that's just finished a launch, they're going to tell you that, like, the worst experience of their life, regardless of their revenue outcome, because they had to do everything.

[00:19:43]
They had to be the talent on stage. They had to be the band director behind the scenes. They had to be the wardrobe, and the hairdresser. They're the ones that caught the broken sales link an hour after the sales pinch or sales page went live. Like, they feel the enormity of the pressure of being the talent and then also, like, having to, like, build up their own talent to be seen.

[00:20:03]
And so it's the marketing lane that is the most burned out churned out. And quite frankly, our marketers are being sabotaged oftentimes by the CEO themselves that don't know how to support that role because it is them. So I have to show CEOs how to shed that identity because it was their marketing savvy that got them to the position of profitability and success. And then I have to have that part of them kind of like shut off to give to another, so they can just be a full time founder.

[00:20:33]
It's true. It's like, have you ever seen the hero's journey? Where the hero goes and they go from the ordinary world to the extraordinary, and in that process, they have to be reborn. It's a shedding of a former identity. And so it might have been you that was super good on YouTube and social media and your podcast.

[00:20:51]
Like, it was you and your grit and grind that got you to a certain position. And then you start hitting the ceiling. That 1 million, 2 million, $3 million ceiling. And you're like, I can't figure it out. It's because you can't keep being your own CMO.

[00:21:03]
Yes. Yes. And so what size do you recommend? Because pretty much everyone that's listening right now is a course creator. A lot of people like, we know by the statistics, most people are in like the half a million to a million sort of stage.

[00:21:18]
Once they start leveling it up, at what point do you think people should start going, "I'm going to just be the performer and start to get someone to do that back end?" Yeah. So two things that I see all the time that usually trip it up. So revenue wise, if you were to literally pull every CEO that's in my program right now, at the least revenue size, it's $50 to $60,000 a month. And that spreads about to 200, 300, $400,000 a month.

[00:21:50]
That's usually a spread of everybody who's meeting a rainmaker in my program where they're like, okay, I'm past the doer stage. It would not be appropriate for you to skip over execution type of roles to get to a leader first. This is where I see a lot of people make the mistake, where they're like, "I'm going to bring in a leader and they're just going to take everything over. Like, they're just going to take everything from me". It's like, Hold on, we're not transferring burnout from CEO to next leader.

[00:22:15]
We need the leader to actually have people to do. Because if you're asking the leader to lead and do, it's really difficult to manage your own self. Right. You already have task people who are reactive to their Asana boards or their Monday.com or their project management. So they're reacting to what's being delegated to them.

[00:22:34]
Leaders are not reactive. They're proactive. They're proactively roadmapping. They're proactively thinking about how we make money this quarter, the next quarter. Like, it's a different function.

[00:22:43]
And when you, the CEO, are done being the only person generating ideas and thinking about making money for your company, then you know you're ready. Yes. Okay. And what I hear so often is that good people are hard to find. Do you have tips? So someone's sick of doing all the doing themselves, they're ready to open up and get that wing woman in there. Where do you even begin? Yeah. So I'm very biased. I have had the greatest blessing and the best people I've ever, ever managed who have been with me for years by developing within.

[00:23:24]
I can even take an intern from the bottom. Right. Like, I can take an intern from the mailroom scenario all the way to the top. Because of time you're investing in them. 

[00:23:33]
But I'm also not having to spend time breaking somebody out of bad habits because that's even worse and more expensive, to be honest with you.

[00:23:44]
Anyway, so the first place to look is usually within the walls of the organization. Do you already have the rock star amongst your team? Do you have a rising star that if you just poured a little bit more into that flower pot, they would just blossom? Right. So I tend to look within first.

[00:23:59]
If there is no prospective rising star or candidate, that would be just somebody who could just explode with my guidance and leadership and mentorship, then the second place I start is I usually ask for the referrals. Right. And I am very selective. A players recommend A players. And so I go to the people that I know rock and like, I mean, just they're the Tina Tower's and Tina Tower is not going to recommend anybody who's not close because it would be didn't immediately reflection of her brand just as much as it would be anything else.

[00:24:30]
Right. So I go to my immediate network, which is how you and I met. Right. So, like, that's how we got put in the same room together. It's because you went to an A player who recommended another A player.

[00:24:40]
Right. Then from there, if, let's say I can't source anybody within the walls of my company and there's no A player recommendations, the third greatest place I go to before I ever go to indeed or monster.com or anything like that, the coldest of cold is I will actually ask my own students, members, clients, or community, and I will help train and convert a walking testimonial into a rock star team member because my onboarding, my HR onboarding is cut in half. They already know the product, the mission, the vision, the brand, and I just had to teach them how to rock their role. Yeah, I love that.

[00:25:18]
Now, the other question that I want to ask you is I know for me, one of the biggest challenges that I had when I was starting out was I always thought no one's going to ever care about my business as much as I do. What's been your experience with that? And what do you tell people that are like CEOs that, you know, are really solopreneurs, that have had some contractors that need it's a very vulnerable stage. I think in going, I'm going to welcome someone into my business family. I'm going to bear all of our numbers and all of our behind the scenes stuff and all of that sort of thing.

[00:25:55]
And there's always the fear that it's not going to work out. Yeah, listen, when you're working with human beings, it's life is life. So like, you know, I've been with people where they either expanding their family and then they're like, okay, I want to be a stay at home mom. Absolutely. Or I have other people who get sick or have I mean, like, life is life.

[00:26:13]
And so that doesn't upset me if I lose a great player because I didn't do a great job of taking care of them and providing for their needs and investing in their future and their human capital, that's on me. Right. But I think you'd be surprised. I don't think anybody like, I'm going to frame this a little bit differently because I look at this little bit differently. It's not that I want somebody to care about my company the way that I care about my company.

[00:26:37]
I'll be really honest with you, I don't really care about the company. It's not the LLC entity that matters to me and never will. I'm in business to provide a life for myself, for my family, and for the people that I feel like I'm meant to serve. It's a means to an end, and what I care about is the end. And I genuinely believe that people fundamentally inside of themselves want to do something that means something in the world.

[00:27:05]
Right? And so for me, having people come to my party, come to my table, what they have to feel inspired by is the same mission that I'm doing it for. So like, if I'm serving you CEOs, if that doesn't excite somebody, then they probably aren't a good fit, even if they have the best qualifications and skill. But I will tell you, the one thing that I'm very adamant about doing as a visionary CEO is sharing the gold with the team. So for example, this just happened last week.

[00:27:35]
This week I got like a ten minute vox, I kid you not, a ten minute vox from a rainmaker in the program because we just came back from the Biltmore mansion where we did our retreat. She sent me a ten minute vox where she was crying on the vox. She's expressing her love, her appreciation for not just me, for the different members of the team that were there. But more importantly, she just was talking about the transformation that she was undergoing and how she's like, I can feel myself becoming a better person. I can feel myself changing and she's crying.

[00:28:06]
She said, I've gone through really hard things you don't understand. She's trying to articulate what is happening to her as a means to what we were doing in the room together for three days. And I shared that with my team. This is extremely confidential, but you need to hear, in her words, the impact that we're making.

[00:28:24]
Because when you think that you're just dealing with event logistics and the text messaging service, it's garbage. And you're staying up till two in the morning to get the workbooks done or all that stuff, you get lost in the what is it called? Getting lost? Missing the forest through the trees. Right.

[00:28:40]
Like, you get lost in the minutiae of the role and you forget it's the minutiae that actually gets the result that changes somebody's life. And I personally want to employ people that want to change other people's lives as much as I do. Yes. And were you just a mess when you got that voxer? I went on Instagram and was crying on Instagram, like, yeah, maybe I'll regret this, but I just was extremely overcome.

[00:29:04]
Because when somebody is telling you that you're changing your life beautiful day. No one prepares you for that, though. Who prepares you to receive that? Kind of and I felt like, I don't already feel the weight as a mantle to do something what I'm doing, because it's a big thing, but to accept that I was a part of a life changing thing, oh, I'm going to get emotional talking about it's hard. No one prepares you for that.

[00:29:34]
Do you have a special because I agree that having people that care about what they're doing and that are really lit up by mission is there, like, a special interview question that you have that you ask to get to the bottom of? Are they just like, some people interview really, really well, but then really they're just very practiced at what they're saying. Is there a question that you ask that gets to the root of who you really are as a person? Maybe. Yes.

[00:30:01]
No, you're right. And it's funny because I love being interviewed cold. I'm like, come at me like, oh, I love it so much. So I pride myself even on my own interview skills. But you're right.

[00:30:11]
People put on the best, great show, and it's even harder to discern when it's done remotely, because in person, I can tell if you're fidgeting. I can tell you those cues where you're, like, wearing almost like a poker face. Right. Or a bad poker face, I should say, but remote, it's harder. So I'll give you my secret, are you ready for my secret?

[00:30:31]
Yeah. Okay. So it doesn't actually really matter what question you start out with, so any question. Like, why do you love marketing? Like, literally any question, why do you love marketing?

[00:30:41]
Or why you want to work here or whatever. But what you do is you kind of do the seven levels, deep exercise and I know that they use this more in personal development, but I've kind of crafted it for the interview process. So what you do is you ask the question that you start with that you'll get the generic answer. But whatever the generic answer is, you frame it in the second question. So if you go, well, why do you love marketing?

[00:31:05]
They're like, oh, I just love how creative it is, and I love how exciting it is, and it's always changing. Why do you like being in an environment that's always changing and that it's important for you to be in a creative space? Well, it's really important for me to be in a creative space because I'm a creative person and I know I just really get really bored. Okay. I basically take the answer from the first question, frame it in a second question, and I keep going until I really get to the real answer of why you actually like marketing or actually why you want to be here.

[00:31:37]
And it oftentimes has nothing to do with the original question. Yeah, okay. I'm like learning as we're going. I can see your face processing, like, wait, what? Yes.

[00:31:52]
You've so deep. Yeah, I like that.

[00:31:57]
So, for you, in looking at where you've come from, you've worked with some really incredible companies, and you were even do you call it like outsourcing as a chief of staff for multiple organizations? What do you call that? Well, when I was chief of staff at Boss Bob, I was very much an employee. And then when I left Boss Babe for a while, I was a fractional chief of staff staff. So when you were doing all of that, obviously Kathy was right.

[00:32:27]
You're in hot demand for all of the skills that you have. What attributes do you think that make you a really great leader?

[00:32:38]
I know you're going to ask me this question. I put you on the spot on my podcast, and I get to come, and I can feel it. So, two things, because, again, I see myself in two ways at all times. I see myself as a rainmaker at all times.

[00:32:54]
Right. And I also see myself as a leader at all times. So it's just really interesting to me. I think what makes me such a great rainmaker is also the same reason that it makes me a great leader. So it's interesting.

[00:33:08]
I've analyzed all the roles I've ever had, and even though the Rainmaker Marketing Leader's number one job is to grow and convert a prospect like you own the prospect journey experience everything to do with converting zero dollars to one dollar. But in almost all of my jobs, I never had the opportunity to do any kind of prospect, journaling, or journeying with my CEOs, ever. Ever. But what made me so successful as a marketer is because I was the prospect. I was the renter at a multi-family and commercial real estate business.

[00:33:40]
I was the unapologetically ambitious woman when I worked at Boss Babe. I was an aspiring speaker when working for Boss Babe or not Boss Babe, Pete Vargas right. So I think for me, being a great marketer is being empathetic to the prospect and seeing yourself in a version of that. Now as a leader, where I show up is I'm empathetic with my people.

[00:34:02]
And one of my personal love languages is Words of Affirmation, which is what you see me do with you. Like, I can't help myself. So I pride myself in the ability to see someone in ways that they're not able to see themselves. And I have no problem articulating it in a positive way, but also in a constructive way. This is a conversation I have with my staff all the time.

[00:34:28]
Do you understand how special you are? Do you understand how valuable the skill is that you probably don't even realize is this is valuable. And they'll look at me like I've never had anybody tell me that. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to describe to you what it is that I see because I know that you don't see yourself this way. And like, when I do that with my team, they want to shine even brighter because now someone is allowing them to be their fullest self.

[00:34:57]
Do you know? Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that. Okay, I've got one final question. So that's a natural skill and you have a lot of the natural skills.

[00:35:09]
And what I find often is that the skill set that's required to take something from nothing. To take an idea and to become an entrepreneur and build your business to a certain level is a very. Very different skill set to what it takes to manage people and look after team and come to that frequency and slow down and scaffold information and all of that sort of thing. Do you think leadership can be taught 100% and then how do you start learning?

[00:35:43]
It can be. And it's interesting because we're going to do a visionary only retreat in April. And I already know what the theme is. I already know what it is because I hear it every day from CEOs where they say I'm not a good leader and I stuck at people management. I'm like, yeah, we'll come into this event saying that, and I promise you right here, right now, that you're going to leave the event not saying that.

[00:36:04]
It's just something that we tell ourselves. And it's just really unfortunate because I feel like what got me to have the guts to do a hard thing and starting something from nothing is because I had a vision for my life or for someone else that I couldn't ignore. Being a people manager is literally communicating that vision to your people and having them have the same level of conviction behind the vision that you did when it woke you up at three in the morning. And this is what leaders don't do.

[00:36:37]
They don't slow down. It's not impatient with the staff. Quite frankly. Tina Tower. It's the patience with themselves to be patient enough with yourself to say.

[00:36:48]
Hey. You guys. The people that are responsible to execute this grandiose vision in my head. I actually should probably explain to you in like detail my new show. What it is.

[00:36:58]
So that you have as much conviction behind Walt Disney world that I do in my head. When it wakes me up in the middle of the night. Like. It's not anything different. I just think that leaders don't translate it to their team.

[00:37:11]
It's just here, it's in between their ears. And you have to communicate out with the same level of passion, because people want purpose, do you know what I mean? And you gotta give them the purpose. You gotta give them the vision so much. Okay, so talk to me about rainmaker residency.

[00:37:28]
What is the format? How does it all work? Because I'm sure there's tons of people that are going, I need you in my life and what it is for my situation, and we'll be joining you in it as well, which I'm super excited about, but for my situation, it's one of the ones that the question that I just asked in. I always feel like my weakest part is team management because I am like, off with the fairies, want to do all the things and get all up here, and I have to remember to slow down and to communicate all of that in there as well. But I think it's so important and it's something that until I found you, I didn't realize that there was like, you could get a training ground for that.

[00:38:13]
So I think it's really groundbreaking and awesome, and I think you're going to be run off your feet really, really quickly. Wow. Well, that's sweet of me to say. So the rainmaker residency, honestly, for the last 15 years of my life, I feel like I have been refined and molded for this moment. I can't even tell you the level of alignment that I feel.

[00:38:33]
If you've ever read The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, I am in the zone. The zone is mine. That's how aligned I feel with what I'm doing and solving this critical problem in the industry that people are desperately needing rainmakers to help them succeed and get to that next level of growth. But oftentimes it's the CEO that doesn't know how to support this really critical position, which is why it's a two person program for the price of one person. Right?

[00:39:01]
So I want you to think of the rainmaker residency. It's a leadership development program, but it's like an MBA made love to a mastermind and popped out to life changing retreats. Like, it's the complete family. And there's components of the curriculum that are just for the CEO and that are private for the CEO because there's some mind stuff that we have to excavate. And then there's a whole section of it.

[00:39:25]
It's just for the rainmaker amongst their peers. Can I tell you the life changing power of rainmakers in proximity to another rainmaker, they're often completely isolated in their work and they don't know each other. And so the fact they're all together, like, borrowing each other's ideas, helping each other out, bouncing things off one another, the support that they have for that enormously heavy role is I can't even underplay it, right? So they have pieces for just them. And then I very strategically curate the inbetween where I bring the CEO to the rainmaker and the rainmaker the CEO in a way that helps their relationship stick.

[00:40:05]
And that's literally the dance that I do. Like a dream program. It's so good. Now, you've got some super special coming out for Black Friday soon. Where can people find out about all of that?

[00:40:20]
So you just literally type in, rainmakerresidency.com that's everything and then some. But if you want to follow me on social media, I will definitely be talking about some bonuses that are worth like 10 - 15 grand that I'm doing for free, which is probably really stupid, but my CFO is not happy with me, and I just don't care. I'm just like, let's do this. I feel so passionate about especially coming off my event. I'm like, I need to get louder because I know what it can do.

[00:40:47]
And there's a lot of people that are hurting. They want to be seen in their workplace. They don't know how to be seen. I have leaders who desperately want to be the best version of themselves, and they don't know how I can't hide in plain sight. Right?

[00:41:01]
So, yes, we have some block blockbuster, doorbuster, Black Friday, Cyber Monday bonuses that you'll be seeing me talk about in November. I love how lit up by the mission and the purpose that you are. You do so clearly alive. If I were interviewing you for a job, I'd be like, this is real. Yes.

[00:41:23]
If you ask me the seven levels of why I do what I do. You can go all day. She's got it. All day. Thank you so much.

[00:41:32]
I can't wait to see you in real life next year. I wrote notes from that as well. Isn't that one of the best things about podcasting is you get to ask really smart people really big questions and you get all the answers. You go, and we can share it with everybody. So generous with your wisdom.