HER EMPIRE BUILDER PODCAST

HELPING YOU TO SHARE YOUR GIFTS WITH THE WORLD

Join business coach Tina Tower as she explore's 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, mumma and 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.

Resources:

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 we can chat!

Enjoying the podcast?

tag me @tina_tower on instagram and let me know what you're listening to! 

Join our communities

Her Empire Builder facebook group

Connect with Tina on instagram 

Show Transcription: 

Taking risks in your business that won't give you a heart attack

Hello my gorgeous friend, and welcome to episode 172 of Her Empire Builder podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about risk and taking calculated risk in your business because it has been [pauses] a topic of hot debate across my mind, my conversations with my husband and my conversations with my friends for the last couple of weeks. A lot of thoughts came out of that, that I thought, Gosh, this would be really good to [laughs] share with you, because I do think that the ability to take calculated risks is essential for running a successful business. It’s essential for being able to grow a business and one of the things that I am so incredibly fascinated by is what makes one person do better than another when they've got all of the same technicalities.

So, you know, like, for me, I can look at my program, Her Empire Builder, where we're teaching people the business behind online courses; how to manage and grow your team, how to do your systems and your automation, how to run live launches and build podcasts, and organic marketing, and everything that is involved in the business. We'll see some people that will grab that and do six figure launches with it and be like, “I implemented everything. I nailed it. It went great guns.”, and then we've got other people that will do all of the things on surface level, but don't get those same results. So I spend a lot of time trying to analyse, What is the difference there? What is that missing piece? I don't think it's one thing. I do think that there is a massive ‘It’ factor [laughs] involved, (like likability, relatability is a big thing), that it is not always definable why one person has that and another doesn’t, so I think there's a lot of things that go into it, but one of the biggest things is the growth mindset.

I know you've probably heard SO much about growth mindset and fixed mindset but it's the ability to be able to imagine a life very different to the one that you have right now, putting yourself in that situation and considering it a foregone conclusion, even though none of the evidence that you are getting in your life right now is supporting that to be a reality, right? I think entrepreneurs are a special blend of crazy [laughs] that we can see a different reality for ourselves, for our businesses and for our clients that we believe wholeheartedly; it could be interpreted as crazy because that is not the reality of the situation right now. I do think that you can go into something going, Is this going to work, is this not going to work? Is it going to be okay?, and you've got all that pressure, or you can be like, You know what? I know this is all going to work out how it's supposed to, and it's all going to be great because, you know, life's a journey and let's have some fun [laughs]! I think when you have that attitude, things flow so much easier.

This is where risk comes into it. Recently, (like, last week), I have taken a very big risk, probably one of the biggest risks I have taken in business since I started franchising in terms of financially. So for people that don't know my backstory, the business that I ran for 14 years prior to getting into online courses, was, I ran tutoring centre franchises. So I had tutoring centres for children throughout the country and when we decided to franchise was when I, like, refinanced the mortgage on our home, we sold everything that wasn't nailed down [laughs], and I took all of the money from that and put it into levelling up our business. It was a huge risk because, of course, whenever we go to do something in our business, we could fail. Like, we have to believe it's a foregone conclusion of success, because that's the only kind of psyche to operate from that's going to be helpful to us in that situation. At the same time, the possibility of complete and utter failure is very real, so you also have to acknowledge the existence of that.

When I did that, that was in 2011, so just over 10 years ago that I kind of bet everything. We bet our house, we bet everything that we had built on that and it did work out. It took a lot longer than what I anticipated. It was a lot harder than what I anticipated. Hello, like, business, if you've been in business for longer than a minute, you know it's harder and takes longer [laughs] than you ever imagined and than most people will tell you about. I did that and I remember at the time, a lot of people thought that it was crazy, that it was too much and that we were setting ourselves up for failure. I want to tell you, I have been told so many times in my life that I'm a little nutters. I have been told so many times that this is too far, that I should pull it back, that I should go smaller, that it's doomed to fail, that I am not meant for this; all of those different things. Not only do we battle in our own minds, Are we good enough for this? Can we do this? Is it all gonna work out?, like, it's a mind game in our own heads but often when we dare to level up, when we dare to imagine a life so much bigger for ourselves than the one that we currently have, society and well-meaning people in your life will also try and put the kibosh on that because they're trying to protect you. They don't want to see you in pain so that's what I'm going to talk to you about today; the risk that I have taken, how I decided to actually go for it and how I recommend you weighing up whether a risk in your business is right for you or not. So let's get into it.

Hi friend, I'm Tina Tower, Business Strategist and digital online empire builder. I've been in business since I was 20 years old and have since built and sold four businesses. I started in the world of online courses in 2017 and grew to a seven figure annual turnover in just under two years. To say I love the game of business is an understatement. I'm a world traveller, a mamma, a wife, a best selling author and I love the freedom that we have to create the business and life that we want to live. It takes courage to break the rules and shake things up and do it your way. Through Her Empire Builder, I share my experience and bring you lessons from some of the world's best to help you dream big, plan well and take massive action. It is absolutely possible to run a thriving growing business that positively impacts the world and have a beautiful personal life without hustling and working yourself into exhaustion. I want that for you. Let's enjoy the journey my friend.

There's a saying that I love, ‘A boring business is a profitable business’. I love that because I think to be a successful entrepreneur, we need to be able to create something from nothing. We need to be able to have those strikes of inspiration and ideas and get them and [laughs] just, like, create something from the thoughts that we've had that is going to contribute positively to society. Once we start doing that, it's really addictive. Like, I know, one of the things that I have focussed on a lot in the last six months is having more whitespace. Having more time to be creative. Having more time to let my nervous system settle down but the downside of that is every time my mind is left without, like, 10 million things that I'm trying to do at once, I am then flooded and filled with all of these incredible ideas. I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, the more I relax, the more ideas I have, and the more ideas I have, the more work there is to do, so it's kind of counterproductive [laughs] but that's a whole side-note and I'm not going to segway into that whole thing and why I'm trying to do that. That could be a whole episode that I might do later down the line, my experiment of this year and trying to do less and how that's going, but for right now what I want to talk about is risk.

Why I started with, ‘A boring business is a profitable business’ is, I know when you get onto your winner, in the first couple of years of any business there's going to be a HUGE amount of experimentation. There's a huge amount of risk. There is a huge amount of trying all the different things and seeing what sticks. I mean, not going crazy and throwing spaghetti at the wall, but still being super calculated and really being willing to go, You know what? I don't know what I don't know so I'm just going to try a lot of different things and see what is going to feel right for me, see what's going to really, like, stick for my customers, see what's going to work. So once you get that all figured out though, you’ve got to stick to it. You’ve got to go, Okay, I'm onto a winner right now and I'm not going to break it. I'm not going to fix what isn't broken, you know? So this is where I am in my business.

Like, I created Her Empire Builder a couple of years ago, so we launched that in 2020, and it is my winner. It is my thing that I love. The offer is perfect, the results are fantastic, it’s all there, so now the excitement of this great risk is kind of gone. My job is just to continue to show up and serve and reinvent, and of course, I have to still try new things so that I can put the most relevant and latest information in front of my clients, but it's not, like, you know, this brand new thing that we're going to put in and I'm going to throw out everything and bring it all in again. Like, that part is gone.

So for me, this year has all been about, How do I get more joy into my life? How do I get more fun into my life?, because at the end of last year, I didn't talk about this too much on the podcast, but after my son's accident, Cohen, and I did talk about that in an episode on the podcast, I was really thrown. I mean, understandably, I did beat myself up for it at the end of last year about how thrown I was but, you know, we nearly lost our child. That screws with your brain [sniggers] quite a lot and so I was having a lot of panic attacks at the end of last year. I was really struggling to just do my normal work and then because I'm such a high achiever, and because I hold myself to such high and often unrealistic standards and expectations, I was so mad at myself for not being able to get a handle on it. The more impatient I was with myself, the worse it was becoming so I really wanted this year to be about not necessarily earning any more money, but finding that ease in life again. Like, I have no interest whatsoever in living a life that is filled with stress and pressure, and coming into work and having panic attacks and not being able to show up and dreading what I'm doing. So this year was about going, Okay, what are those elements that are contributing to that and how can I remove them completely? Yes, this is probably not going to be the best financial decision but the worst financial decision is burning out and burning the whole thing down.

So, that was kind of how I've come into this year. Now we're partway through the year which, can you believe that? My gosh, that happened quickly, but what I've done this year is follow the joy. So if something happens or an opportunity comes up and I'm like, You know what? This looks interesting to me, I have pulled on that thread. So how I have operated up until this year is, I am, like, aww, disciplined. Like, ninja level discipline, and if you've been following the podcast for a long time you know that [laughs]. It’s got me to where I am today, I have no doubt about that whatsoever. You know, I've always mapped out my, like, next five years, my next one year, broken my one year into 90 day plans, broken those 90 day plans into weekly tasks, broken those weekly tasks into daily, and I stick at it. Like, nothing gets in the way of that. I get done what I say I'm going to get done, and then some and, you know, going above and beyond and going that extra mile and what you do when no one's watching, I think is so incredibly important. That is how I live my life.

Towards the end of last year, that was my 17th year in business, I was obviously too tightly wound and I came undone. So this year, I've tried to go more with the flow. I've tried to go, You know what? When an opportunity comes up, whether it fits into our plan or not, I'm just going to follow that and see where it goes, and so the only thing that I'm sticking to this year is Her Empire Builder. Everything else I'm like, I will see what I say yes to, what I say no to. If I'm not lit up by it, it's a no whether it is a financial burden or not [laughs]. 

So, one of the things that I did at the start of the year was I went to Costa Rica with Million Dollar Girls Club, run by Jill Stanton, which was one of the best weeks of my life. I mean, I needed that trip so badly. I am such a traveller and I love travel so hard, and not doing it for two years was so incredibly difficult. I have no doubt that contributed to my angst at the end of last year as well; Mamma needs to fly. I was able to go on that and Jill just put together the most fabulous group of women, that even after spending only four days together, like, we still talk all the time. Like, I’ve made such great friends, I felt so alive and I came from that energy straight into launch. I ran our launch for Her Empire Builder membership in April from Cabo and it was our best launch ever. This is what I mean by letting go of the flow and I promise I'm circling back to risk really quickly [laughs], I’m just going off on some tangents today my friends, but when I launched in Cabo it was the first time that I actually [pauses to reflect], that’s the wrong words, I was going to say, I didn't care. I do care, I always care deeply, but I did not hold my self worth to the number that we got in our launch.

So normally, the way that we do it when I launch is, I have all of the data from previous launches and I know what we hit on day one; I know what we hit in the first hours of day one, I know what our conversion is from webinars, from Instagram lives. I've got the data for every single thing and I watch it like a hawk and when I launch, I then follow that so closely and go, like, How am I tracking? Am I above? Am I below?, and that can obviously push your energy. If I'm exceeding, I'm like, Okay, we're going, like, this is great momentum, but the opposite is, if something's happening and I'm falling behind, I'm like, Fuck! Okay, we're not doing well. Alright, let's catch this up. What am I missing here? You know? I put a lot of pressure on myself and this year has been, like, lifting those bricks off my shoulders. Like, Who cares? Who actually cares [laughs]? Does it matter if I hit this number or hit that number? Like, sometimes we put such a load on ourselves [sighs] and it just feels good to take it off. So I took it off when I launched in Cabo and I had fun. I went horseback riding on the beach, I got a massage in the morning, I went out on a boat, like, I did all of this beautiful stuff while launching, and it was just so easy and flowed and it was the best launch we've ever done.

So I was like, Okay, I hear you universe. What you're telling me is destination launches work really well for my energy [laughs]. Okay, I'll take that [laughs]. I’ll take that feedback, and I'll run with it. So I was like, Okay, well, we only do it twice a year so how about for twice a year, I go away for a week and I launch away from home? So I don't have, you know, any pulls in any other directions, I don't need to walk the dogs, I won't have to hang with the kids and the family. Not that, I shouldn't say it like that, have to hang with the kids and the family, but you guys launch, you know how full on it is, and when you do that and then you've got all family stuff and they're like, “Hey, why are you still on your phone? Why are you on your computer? Talk to me.”, it's very intense for that week. So, not having any other liabilities, like, someone cooking for me, cleaning my room and making my bed every day, like, doing all that, I was just like, Oh wow, this is nice this right here.

So this is how I got onto the topic of risk. This year we're launching again in September and I was like, Where do I want to launch from?, and I love palm trees. Like, I love the warmth, I love tropical water, I love the palm trees. I went to Fiji, now I will preface this because you could be rolling your eyes at me right now, and I've had so many messages since I started talking about travel at the start of the year, with some people saying, “Oh my God. I've had to unfollow you because your life is making me, like, hate mine.”, or making me feel bad or I just think you're a bitch because you're travelling all the time, and I know that, obviously, for some people, watching someone live their best life is very triggering. So I want to say I'm very purposeful about creating the life that I lead and I have been for 18 years of business, so if you're ever triggered by anything that I say or anything that you see anywhere else, like, follow that. Go, Okay, is this jealousy?, and if it's jealousy, How can I get that into my own life? Like, if you want something, then go get it. If you want to go on a trip, book a ticket. Like, it's really that simple. Anyway, I digress.

So my first thought was Fiji but this is why I just prefaced it with that; this year, in 2022, I'll be in Fiji three times [laughs]. So the first one was in January, which was a two week family trip, then I was lucky enough to speak there. So I got invited to speak at the Business Blueprint conference and I got flown there for that. Then I've got a lover's holiday with my husband in August and we're going there and that was booked on, like, if you're in Australia, luxuryescapes.com.au, I booked that in, like, when we were in the first lockdown in 2020. It came up because they needed, like, the funds and so I got us a week in a beachfront place with its own little private plunge pool for $1,500. Like, you guys, it doesn't have to cost a fortune. Anyway, I'm a bargain hunter, but besides that point [laughs], oh goodness, I'm going on so many digressions today. I hope you're enjoying it and not going, “Wow, Tina's really going around the loopy with this one.”

Anyway, so Fiji was out of it and so I was like, Okay, where else do I want to go? I don't want to go all the way over to America again (even though Hawaii is part of America) but I don't want to go all the way over there. I was looking at Tahiti but Tahiti is very expensive and the internet connection is not great. Anyway, I settled on Hawaii. So there's a place that I love there. The last time I was in Hawaii was about 2018, so a long time ago. When we were there, we rented a little Airbnb house and we stayed in that because my husband had always wanted to see the Pipe Masters surfing competition on the North Shore of Oahu, so we went and watched that every day. We went out to lunch at one of the resorts over there called Turtle Bay Resort, and I loved it. I was like, Oh, my gosh, one day, I'm gonna stay here. This is beautiful, and so that's on my wish list. I've got a massive list of everywhere in the world, coupled by, like, continents and countries that I see on Instagram, or I see other people go to, or I see in my travels, and I save them because I know one day I'm going to want to go there. Anyway, I looked that up and the rooms are $3,000USD a night and I was like, Oh no, that is a lot. If I want to stay there for a 10 day launch that's $30,000USD. So that is too much. That is out of the question.

So I'm like, Okay, maybe I'll get an Airbnb there. Maybe I'll look at that, so I went down this rabbit hole of looking at vacation rentals. Then I was like, What's the best you can get?, because a lot of these are looking real crummy for the price you pay. Like, the price of accommodation anywhere in the world right now is redonkulous. Anyway, I started looking and did one of those searches from, like, top to bottom. You know when you look at real estate, and you go, instead of looking at, like, prices from the lowest to the highest, you look at the highest and you're like, Whoa, that’s, wow! Anyway, I did that and this house came up, right? It's classed as Hawaii's top vacation rental. I was going, This…is…the most insanely beautiful home you can imagine. Eight bedrooms on the ocean with a private beach, a pool there, and ocean views as far as the eye can see. Like, it's just tropical paradise. I was going, Okay, well, how much is that? [cringes] $200,000? Okay, that's out of the question, but then I thought of this year, and I thought of following the joy, and I couldn't get it out of my head. I was looking at it and going, Alright, I’m trying to follow like the universal messages, and I go, Okay, well, what if this idea has been given to me for a reason? What if? I love running retreats, I love putting really awesome people together and watching the connection and the magic happen. Even, like, more than that, like, the elevation of what is possible.

When you actually start thinking about, you know, what is possible and how you can expand the idea of what's possible for you, you can go on to create the most cool things. So I'm like, What a space to create from. Like, if you were there, you'd feel so expansive. Like, I'm just imagining. I'm looking at the sun lounger going, Oh my gosh, like, there's a Tina shaped hole on that sun lounger. Just soaking that up, having a cocktail with my ladies all around. Oh my gosh. Anyways, so I was sitting at my son's basketball game and I had my reMarkable, like, my digital notebook that's always in my bag, and I started sketching out, What would I have to do to cover the cost of the house? Could I run one retreat? Could I run two retreats? Do I need to run three retreats? What else could I do? Can I run VIP days there? Like, what are all the different things that I could do to make that happen? I started sketching it out and I was like, You know what? I think I could do this. I think it's worth it. I've run lots of retreats but usually around the $5,000 a person mark so this would have to be a big leap up. What I would have to charge to cover it was $15,000, so I'm like, Okay, well, there's no getting around it. It's a fuck tonne of money. Like there's just, there's just no getting around it but I'm also going, Well, if I want to stay there, I reckon other people would want to stay there too, because I want the expansive thinking and I want the connection with other people. There are other people like me that also want that; they also want to level up, like, the collective is always so much greater than one. If you're sitting somewhere and going, “I think this is possible. I think that's possible.”, if you're around like eight other people that are all going, “Yes, it is. I want to go here.", the rise of that energy is, whoa, it's beautiful. It’s why I go on so many retreats and join masterminds and do that, because I know that psychologically, and energetically, it's so good for me and it’s so good for so many people that really embrace it.

Anyway, so I came back and I started talking to my husband, and this is where the conversation of risk came in. I have a really healthy risk appetite [laughs]? Some would say unhealthy? Anyway, I don't mind risking. Mat, my husband, on the other hand, oh my gosh, the poor guy. I mean, he will find a surfboard that he wants and literally sit on it for a month or two before he, like, has the courage to spend the money and buy his $500 surfboard. Like, he is so conservative and so risk averse that often I go, Goodness, it must be painful for him to be married to me [laughs] sometimes, because I'm just like, You know what, it'll be fun. Let's do it, and we had really serious conversations over that. You know, he sat me down and he was like, “Tina, I think you've officially lost touch with reality. Like, this is, what if no one books? What if you get this house and you've paid all this money, and nobody wants to come? What are you going to do then?”, and I was like, You know what? This is a really good lesson, because, yeah, what would I do then?

So one of the things that I like to do is, Tim Ferriss did a TED talk on it called Fear Setting, and it's always really good to go, What is the worst case scenario? Could I recover from that?, and I was stoked to go, What a massive risk this would be but, yes, I can recover if the worst case scenario happens. It wasn't that long ago that there is no WAY I would have taken a risk like that. There is no WAY I would have done it because it just wasn't a clever calculated risk, whereas now, you know, I'm going to do two retreats, I need seven people at each one. Do I know 14 people that are willing, able and desire to pay $15,000 to go to, like, a transformative, life changing, best retreat you've ever had in your life? Yeah [laughs]. Yeah I do. So I felt like it was a calculated risk.

I started thinking about all the other risks that I take in my life as well, and how I haven't just gone from nothing to risking that amount of money. I mean, even when I signed that rental agreement, the contract, there was a part of my heart that was just going, bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop, because of course, I still worry about the worst case scenario but there is a big part of me that wakes up every day, and most mornings I go to my leisure lounge and I meditate and I look out on our property, and I can not believe my luck. Like, I can not believe this life that I get to live. I mean, yes, I have worked my ass off for it. I have sacrificed. I have taken risks. I have gone above and beyond for many, many years so I don't feel undeserving but [pauses] I feel so incredibly lucky. I feel so blessed, so grateful, and I know, like, the #blessed thing can, like, disconnect your retinas from your eyes with rolling your eyeballs, but I do. I can not believe how awesome the life is that I get to live and so I do view everything as kind of a bonus from here, in going, how lucky I am to be in the position to be able to do this. I can give this gift to other people. I can have people come in and absorb that and do that, and that's awesome. Like, that's a real privilege to be able to do that and it's been, like, working up to that in lots of little steps where I take just a little bit more and just a little bit more.

I also know when it comes to me evaluating risks, and whether or not this is a healthy risk or a reckless risk, I look at worst case scenario like I said before. For me, I think, and this is the conversation I was having with some friends too was, I've got some friends that have come from wealthy backgrounds, and some friends that have come from nothing. I do think that sometimes, I mean, I know that a lot of people think it's really advantageous to have money, and it is, definitely, but the risk appetite in my friends that have come from nothing is substantially higher than the risk appetite of my friends that have come from money because they always feel like they've got further to fall.

When you've been at the bottom, the bottom sucks. Like, one of my most loathed sayings is ‘Money doesn't buy you happiness’, because I think, Oh my gosh, when you don't have money, it is one of the most stressful situations to be in in life. Like, your security's gone, your freedom is gone. It sucks. There's no getting around it but even when we were at the very bottom, when we had negative net worths, and you know, we were carrying a calculator around the grocery store trying to feed our kids, we were okay. Like, I don't wish that situation at all but we were okay so I know, even at the worst case scenario, I'm going to be alright. I don't have the fear that a lot of people have in going, failure would be the worst possible thing. Sometimes we're risking our money, sometimes we're risking our reputation, sometimes we're risking our time. Often at times when we take risks in business, we're risking all of that and I don't think anyone should be reckless with it, but I also think that there is a level of safety that if you sit in, you'll never get out of.

I was talking to a couple of friends the other day and going, “Do you think if you're risk averse, you can still succeed?”, like, I asked everyone, “What's the biggest risk you've taken?”, and even people that would say they're conservative, I've got one girlfriend who would say to everyone, “I'm super conservative and risk averse.”, I think she's just been around people so long that are entrepreneurial she forgets what risk averse actually is [laughs], because when I ask her about risk, I'm like, “Oh, my God, that's not risk averse, my goodness.” So you do need to be comfortable with a certain level of risk to succeed at business because there are no guarantees to success, ever.

When you go to level up in your business, you're going to be risking your reputation. I mean, even just, like, we've had several people in Her Empire Builder in the last month that have done their first ever live launch, their first ever webinars, their first ever live videos and that is risky. Like, when you're not used to doing that, the reputational risk that you feel when you do that is substantial. You feel like, Oh, my gosh! Are people going to look at me? Are they going to judge me? Are they going to think I'm silly?, you know? Like, even establishing a business, business now is so much cheaper than it used to be to establish. I mean, 10 years ago, you couldn't get a business started for less than $50,000, now you can get it started for under $5,000 but still, it's a risk. For a lot of people when you start a business, you’re starting from very, very little so a $5,000 investment is huge, so to put all of that on the line going, Is it going to be worth it?, we don't know if it's going to be worth it. You can take a calculated guess, you can back yourself, but there is always risk.

There is never any guarantees in life for anything so what you've got to be able to look at is, can you deal with the failure? When you fail, and you will, if you are in business for long enough and you're trying hard enough, you will fail. There's no getting around it [laughs], it’s a beautiful rite of passage and there's nothing wrong with it. Like, so many people put so much more onus, what is that word, emphasis on failure than it deserves because yes, failure feels horrible. I mean, we would love to avoid it, of course, but some things you're going to win and some things you're going to lose. Like, there's some launches that you'll run that don't work as well because things change all the time, so you have to be okay with that. You have to be able to deal with that and go, Okay, when I do you fail, how am I going to bounce forward? How am I going to go, alright, here are the lessons that I can extrapolate from that failure, here are the things that I can make sure I can mitigate for next time, here is my baseline?

We want to constantly, and this is the thing when it comes to failure and it comes to risk, I am constantly going, How can my ceiling become my new floor? How can I go up to where my ceiling was and make it my new foundation. What am I willing to risk for that next rise? So I will never again risk our house. I will never again put everything on the line. I will never again be in the situation where my boys can't go to the school that I want them to go to or where we have to carry a calculator around the grocery store. Like, that ceiling is my floor. Like, I will not go below that but I'm not finished risking. I'm not finished growing. I am nowhere near finished with how much I want to expand, like, I am just getting started but in saying that, and this was the conversation I've had with my husband in the last week, I’m pushing 40 and so now for me, I am, like, my money making time is running out and this is what I was saying is so cruel. I spent from like, 20, when I started my first business, to 30, I was really about 28, 29 when I started making money. Until then I worked my ass off and I pretty much just had to spend everything I earned. Like, the profit was very, very small. Then I kind of had it figured out and I sold my company, and took a couple of years, like, pretty chilled while we travelled and moved a few times and did all of that. Now we're making bucket tonnes of money but I'm like, I'm nearly 40 now. Like, we don't get that long, and then when I have grandkids, I want to be there. Really, my whole mission in life is for my grandkids to say I have the best Grandma in the world. Like, that is my mission, I want to be the best Grandma in the world and so I'm like, Okay, I've got maybe, somewhere between 10 and 15 years until I become a grandparent, so I have this short window in which to make money and to be able to invest so that in the future, like, if I retire at 50, 60, somewhere in that sort of realm, or not retire because I mean who wants to fully retire, but you know, can work substantially less and not have any risk. So once I get to that stage I plan on, everything’s invested and you've got a long life after that, so you need to keep having sustainable finances, without having to push it and without having to grow as intensely. 

So for me, I'm going, Well, I still need to risk because I need to make a lot more money than I have in the past. If I want to be set up by say, 50, and I plan to live to 104, that is 55 years of life that I still need to pay for without having money coming in from the work that I'm doing. So I was talking to Mat and going, “You know, I'm starting to flip. I'm starting to flip in terms of, like, trying to raise that floor and go, okay, I want to invest this, I'm not going to risk that amount anymore. We're going to go a boring business is a profitable business. We're going to stick some stuff in some managed funds that just grow nice and slow and steady and not risk that amount, but there's this bit over here that I need to feel alive, that I need to take risks, that I need to be able to go, is that possible? Can I do it? Can I push it? What can I do?”, and that's the part that I am comfortable with. So this is my long winded way of saying this is different for everyone. It's the way of going, you know, even if I just use money as an example, money is very black and white, you know? To create wealth, you need to invest more than you spend, like very black and white, but we know it's so much more than that. It's so emotional and psychologically driven, and business is the same.

I hope that this episode has sparked some things in you to start going, How much risk am I comfortable with?, and if you’re not comfortable with a heap of risk, there's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to put it all on the line like I have [laughs] but you have to match your expectations to that. I mean, like, I'll use Mat as an example with this. So my beautiful darling husband has started about six businesses, and they never get off the ground because he's so risk averse. He's always wanting to play it super safe and even just not knowing how much money he's going to earn every week is too risky for him. It's too uncertain, and he's not comfortable with that uncertainty. I think sometimes entrepreneurialism is made to sound so sexy and so appealing, that there’s sometimes people who end up in business ownership and it’s just so hard emotionally because they're risk averse. If that's you, like, some people are just better to be really, really great employees and I hate that sometimes that is made to sound not as cool because business ownership is not for the faint hearted. You've really got to be able to, like I said at the beginning, take the ideas that you have and have the courage to go, Okay, I see you idea. What if we actually bring this to life? What's involved in that? How can I get behind that and what do I need to do? Yeah, it may turn out to be a total flop, but I don't care. I know I've been given this idea and I'm going to try it anyway because life's for living, and you know what? We're going to win some and we're going to loose some.

The journey is what it's all about. If you find that fun, follow the joy. If you don't find it fun, if you find it terrifying, don't force yourself to do it [laughs]. You know? Don't torture yourself. I think how we live a great life is to find what makes us happy and chase it. Whatever that is for you, I hope that's what you embrace. Also, if you want to come to Hawaii with me, go to, where do you go to, go to tinatower.com/hawaii. See, that wasn't hard to remember was it [laughs]? I put it out a couple of days ago so there's three spots gone and four spots left, so if you want to come with me you can. I hope you back yourself. I hope you take your next level of risk that's like a little push, but still comfortable that you can recover from if it all goes pear shaped, and you chase the joy. Have the best day.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Her Empire Builder. If you loved it, please share it on Instagram for your friends and be sure to tag me @tina_tower so I can say thank you and if you really want to deliver me smiles, you can pop a review on Apple podcasts. I would love to hear from you so if you have any questions at all, email me at [email protected] and if you would like to work with me further, all of the free resources and my courses can be found at tinatower.com. Now I truly hope this podcast gives you so much value and you can use it to dream big, plan well and take massive action in building your very own empire that's just for you. Have the greatest day.