Sep 27, 2020
In this episode, I interview
Tina Tower, an Australian businesswoman, entrepreneur, author,
world traveler, and high-performance business consultant. In 2014,
Tina was the winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman
of the Year award and was named by Huffington Post as one of the
Top 10 Aussie Women to watch in business. In 2004 and aged 20, Tina
quit her job as a primary school teacher and started a tutoring
business for primary school kids, and ran a shop selling books and
toys. She grew that to three stores in seven years and started
franchising, becoming Australia’s youngest female franchisor at age
27.
She got up to 35 franchisees
before selling out in 2016 with a two-year earn-out and chucked a
big Jerry Maguire tantrum at 19 months which cost her a lot
financially on exit. She then started six other businesses,
traveled with her family for a year visiting 28 countries, starting
with a much needed 90-day digital detox to reconnect with the kids.
She now has a business with four full-time employees selling online
courses, masterminds, and building online course websites which
took 16 months to reach one million dollars in sales and 65% net
profit compared with 5% to 8% when franchising.
Tina funded the first business
with credit cards for a while, got a $50,000 loan at 8% from her
parents as banks wouldn’t lend to her, and after turning down
investment, she funded the growth by moving the family out of their
home to rent a dingy flat with two kids (Under three years old)
living on $200 a week. She felt she had succeeded when she opened
her first store and when she first franchised. The hardest thing to
her about growing a small business is believing in oneself, and she
says the one thing she would tell herself on day one of starting
out in business is, “You’re going to be okay” Listen in, enjoy, and
be inspired by Tina’s interesting business journey.
This Cast Covers:
- From
a tutoring center and retail store to a national franchise company,
and now a successful online business.
- How
her business grew from 0 to 35 franchises within 5
years.
- The
exhaustion of running more than one store and how she scaled
without having to micromanage things herself.
- Using
systems and automation to build a big business with just a few
staff.
- Doing
a 10 pm to 3 am shift at a pub to supplement her income when she
started her small business.
- The
expensiveness of running a franchise system in comparison to online
business.
- Learning to exit the right way and selling the
franchise to an international education company.
- Going
through an identity crisis that led her to chuck a Jerry Maguire
tantrum which cost her financially.
- Considering retirement at 33 but starting six
different businesses instead.
- Selling their house, cars, and leaving
everything behind to travel to 28 countries within a
year.
- Hitting a million dollars within 16 months from
the online course business model.
- Working with female course creators and
packaging their expertise into online courses.
- Sticking to 4 to 6 team members with more of a
family feel to it and building the biggest, most successful
business with that.
- The
valuation of a franchise business and how opening her first
business felt like the ultimate success.
- The
look of success for Tina: Making thousands of dollars a day while
sitting on a beach.
- The
importance and power of “Showing yourself” as a small
business.
- The
lessons she learned from taking different funding options at
different stages of her business.
- Moving out of their house to save the business
and how she worked herself out of it all to achieve
success.
- The
value and effectiveness of continual learning.
- Developing and maintaining discipline around
time and knowing when to call it.
- Why
she moved from hiring for skills to hiring for
personality.
- Facilitating open communication and
transparency to build a kickass culture and help with business
growth.
- Learning to achieve some work-life balance and
giving more attention to her health and wellness.
- Investing in her personal development through a
private business coach, business networks, masterminds, and
courses.
- The
best decision she made in building a board of
directors.
- The
importance of knowing how to set up a business with the goal of
either selling it or owning it for the long haul.
Additional Resources:
Music from https://filmmusic.io
"Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC
BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/