E2A 043: Build a Million-Dollar Micro Business with Tina Tower – Turn Your Book into a Digital Online Course 

There are many paths to entrepreneurship. While that path looks different for everyone, the ‘right path’ is typically at the intersection between what the market needs, what we are passionate about, and what we’re good at – our expertise. Writing a book is one way to share our expertise with the world, but it’s not the only way.

In this episode of The Entrepreneur to Author Podcast, your host Scott MacMillan speaks with Tina Tower, entrepreneur, best-selling author and founder of Her Empire Builder about building authority and growing a million-dollar micro business by packaging your expertise into a digital, online course.

EPISODE LINKS

Tina’s Book: Million Dollar Micro Business: How to Turn Your Expertise into a Digital Online Course (https://amazon.com/dp/0730392074)

Tina’s Website: https://www.tinatower.com

CONNECT WITH TINA

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tina-tower-b28a5136/

Facebook (@tinatowerau): https://facebook.com/TinaTowerAu

Instagram (@tina_tower): https://instagram.com/tina_tower

TikTok (@herempirebuilder): https://tiktok.com/@herempirebuilder

CONNECT WITH SCOTT

Episode Transcript

Please note: The transcript is produced by a third-party company from an audio recording and may include transcription errors.

Announcer:

This is SSN.

(Story Studio Network)

Scott MacMillan:

You're listening to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast, the podcast that brings you practical strategies for building authority and growing your business. And now, here's your host, Scott McMillan.

Scott MacMillan:

There are many paths to entrepreneurship, but not every path is right for every entrepreneur. For a great many of us, that right path is at the intersection of what the market needs, what we're personally passionate about, and frankly, what we're good at and knowledgeable about. That is our expertise. Now, what's exciting is that when we find this sweet spot, that intersection point, that entrepreneurial path, the ways we can deliver that expertise are numerous. Of course, on this podcast, we naturally focus on delivering expertise through a published book. But there are other media, other channels that you can deploy to build your authority and grow your business. And what's more, each one can enhance and amplify the others, which is a big part of what we'll cover in this edition of Entrepreneur to Author.

Tina Tower has helped hundreds of people package their expertise into an online course and launch it into the world. Her first book, One Life, How to Have The Life of Your Dreams, was released in 2018. Her second book, Million Dollar Micro Business, was released in 2021 and became a global success hitting the best seller list in its first week. Tina was named Telstra National Young Business Woman of the Year and Australian Business Champion, and has been featured on The Today Show, in the Financial Review, on Sky Business, and as a businesswoman to watch by Huffington Post. She's the host of the Her Empire Builder Podcast and works with women across the globe to package their expertise and grow a business with freedom that includes online courses, speaking, podcasting, publishing, and content marketing. Tina, thank you so much for joining us today.

Tina Tower:

Thank you, Scott. It's so great to be here. And what a beautiful intro. It's always strange when you hear it. You're like, that chick sounds awesome. Oh my gosh, it's me.

Scott MacMillan:

That's so true, right? When you hear it third party.

Tina Tower:

Yeah. It's just the highlight parts.

Scott MacMillan:

That's right. Yeah. That's what we're going to focus on, right?

Tina Tower:

Yeah.

Scott MacMillan:

Something that I learned about you in reading your book, which of course we're going to come back to, is that you took a rather winding road to where you are today as an entrepreneur. Could you share a little bit about that journey for our listeners?

Tina Tower:

Yeah, sure. So I've always been an entrepreneur. I started when I was 20. So basically my whole adult life I've been, I would say self-employed. It took me a while to become an entrepreneur because I was super young and my idea of risk was very different to what it ended up becoming. And the vision that I ended up having as you kind of move up each of those levels and go, well, hang on, I've done this. I could do this as well and I could do this, and your confidence grows as you move along. But I was studying primary school teaching in university and I just really wanted a way to pay my way through uni. So I started a tutoring center in an educational toy store and fell head over heels in love with business. And so there was never going to be any chance of me going into the classroom.

Two years later, by the time I graduated, I was like, that's crazy. I love this. To me, just going in a normal job, you could work twice as hard and get twice the results of someone next to you, but often your pay is not all that different. It's not judged by output. And I just love the whole entrepreneurial landscaping going, however smart we are, however risky, like the risks that work out, the actions we take, all of the conglomeration of everything, we're totally rewarded to the amount of problems we can solve to the amount we put. Cause and effect. I love the cause and effect of it. So I did that. I did everything quite early. I got married at 21, I had babies at 24 and 25. I was very, very ambitious and ready to go on everything. And so that kind of disrupted the business course four years in when I had babies.

But so I went to that. I went to licensing, I wrote curriculum, then I went to franchising and I started 40 locations of the company that I ran across the country. Then we started going into global domination and I realized, which I know a lot of people that are listening probably resonate with, that you create something that you think was your goal and you get it and you're like, oh, this is hell, actually. This is really bad. And I hated it. I was 28 when I started franchising. And I just had so much weight and responsibility. All I've ever wanted to do was have a business and make an impact and have a really joyful, lovely life. And I created this behemoth where I had 120 staff and multiple locations and it was so heavy. So I sold that in 2016 and then ran away and traveled around the world for a year with my husband and two kids and then tripped and fell into the wonderful world of online courses. And this is where we are.

Scott MacMillan:

Amazing. That really is a winding, winding road. And I think for a lot of us who are entrepreneurs, the business that we first started isn't the one that we ended up with. And I think that's helpful for a lot of people maybe just starting out because that first decision, I think, feels so important that you can't get it wrong because you're going to be stuck with it forever. But that of course isn't the case.

Tina Tower:

Oh, 100%. Even in since I've been in online courses, because I coach people to do online courses and so many people are like, I don't want to launch yet because I just want to get it perfect. And I don't know if this idea is the one. I only started in online courses in 2017, so five years now. And the program that I hit my million dollars on and really stuck a winner, that's only three years old. It took me about five or six goes to get it right the first time. So I do think we need to be open to going. It's all just this constant curious experiment and we have the ability to steer our ship in a different direction at any time.

Scott MacMillan:

Yeah. Now, how do you think about, I've thought about this myself, particularly in previous businesses where things weren't quite working the way I wanted them to. So you can either plow on and persist or pivot that idea, tweak it a little bit, or you can pack it in entirely and try something different. How do you think about, and how did you navigate those different decisions when you were finding your way to where you are now?

Tina Tower:

Isn't it hard? That's hard. I think that's one of the hardest things because I have had to do a lot of rewiring of my brain because I was from the original school of thought of business where it's like, we hustle, we grind, I will outwork anyone in the room, all of that sort of thing, and never say quit. The way that we've got here is just by keep showing up and keep going. And that was my detriment when I had my franchising because by the time I finished, I had adrenal fatigue. I didn't remember what it felt like to not feel nauseous. I was popping Advil and ibuprofen like it was candy. There was just no possibility in my mind of changing because I was like, that's what quitters do, and I'm going to hold it and I'm going to stick it. So unfortunately it took me that to realize that actually you can change your mind, you loser.

So I had to learn that the hard way. And now I do think it's hard because you have to stick in an idea long enough. You can't, for online courses, for example, you can't launch something and if the launch doesn't fly, it's a failure. Usually it's clarity of messaging or it might be the marketing or it might be so many different things. And I do think one of the most difficult things is ascertaining, all right, was it something that I did that I could do better? And do I need to rinse and repeat and improve that? Or is the idea a dud and I need to go somewhere else? And I have a really unstrategic way of looking at that now. And it usually comes back to, do I want to? That's really the biggest thing in going, I do think that there is a market for pretty much everything in the world.

If you love it, someone else is going to love it. And so now I go, I'm at the ripe old age of 38. I'm too old for that shit to do things that I don't love. And so I look at it and go, if I'm really enjoying it, then I'll stick at it and keep going. But if there's parts that I get to that I'm like, oh, this feels icky, this feels hard, this feels grindy, and it reminds me of that feeling that I had before when I totally burnt out, then I'll make those changes. And the pendulum swings in business all the time, I think. It's not to say that every bit's rosy.

There's always going to be bits that you're hunkering down and doing parts that you don't love. But on a whole, I think that a good life is made up of actually enjoying day to day what you're doing and feeling like it's worth it in the world. And so if I'm doing something and it's not a few months of a push or not a year of a push, then I will totally just burn it down and go a different direction.

Scott MacMillan:

Yeah, that's a great litmus test. Now, I'd love to talk about the book. So you've written and published Million Dollar Micro Business as your most recent book. Who did you write it for and what do you hope that they'll get out of it?

Tina Tower:

Yeah, yeah. I love Million Dollar Micro Business. It's a very different book to my first book. So it was in a lot of ways harder to write. But I wrote it because I was getting asked the same question again and again and again and again. And the people that I work with in my programs are generally, they've had business before, so they've got kind of that business knowledge and they're taking that expertise and changing it into really just the delivery mode into online into being completely scalable. But I had all of these people that were coming from corporate or stay at home moms or different people with no business experience that were like, could I do an online business? Is this possible for me? How do I do that? And I'd started writing and then the pandemic hit and I was like, oh no. And the publisher's like, quick, go, get it out now.

So we had to write it really fast and get it out because there were so many people that were like, I have friends who are keynote speakers and they were really, really well paid, getting 10, 20,000 a week and then all of a sudden it just stopped and they're like, I need to package my expertise or literally we're going to lose the house, can't pay the mortgage. And so that's really why I wrote it was to go to lower that barrier of entry. I couldn't believe there was not, actually, I can believe there was nothing on the market. So the reason I think so is there is a lot of courses sold on how to start online courses for like $500, $1,000, $2,000. And most course creators that know about online courses said to me, "You are crazy. Why would you give this away in a book for $20? You could sell it in a course for 1,000," which is totally true.

But I love books. I love books. Most of the learning I've done in my life has been books. I read a business book every week or two weeks. I just love it. And I wanted to have something cool to contribute to that.

Scott MacMillan:

I think that came through in your writing that you love the format of books. Yeah. And you talked a little bit about how you found the writing process hard or harder than the first book. I guess, are you the type of person who likes to just get away and get it written all in one go? Or are you more of a commit to a regular daily habit and work through it? What's your style?

Tina Tower:

Yeah, I could never. I hear of people all the time writing, and I know you talk to authors all the time, so you'd hear all the different styles, but I hear of people that do the, we're going to write it over the year or two and we're just going to take 30 minutes a day to write a couple hundred words. Oh my gosh, Scott, I'd stick skewers in my eyeballs. I couldn't, I couldn't, I just don't know how. So with my first book, I knew I wanted to go all in. I like to focus and I like to just totally immerse in it if I'm going to do something. I really run my whole business in batching. So say I'm doing a podcast, I've got like podcast week and that week I'll design all my podcasts and invite all my guests, get everything ready and then it will roll out over the following few months.

Social media, all done for the month in a day. It's all batched. And so when I wrote my first book, I went to Fiji and I went to this little island and I sat there for eight days and I did nothing but eat, sleep, and write. And I loved it. It was so good. And then with the second one, the pandemic was on, so we were in lockdown. So I was like, well, there's no Fijian island for me on this one. What am I going to do? And I found it really hard to be in the same environment and get creative and write that. But also my first book was very story based and the second one is quite technical. And I found writing like that much harder because I had to stay focused on, I kept being tempted to want to go off on tangents and tell this story and tell this story, but I'm like, hang on. No, for the reader, what's helpful is keeping it really succinct and this is next and then you do this and then you do this. But it was hard for me to stay focused.

Scott MacMillan:

How was it different than writing One Life? Were there any learnings that you got during One Life that you applied to Million Dollar Micro Business?

Tina Tower:

Yeah, so I knew from writing One Life that I liked to go in one hit. I got two sons and everyone knew that I was in writing mode, because you're halfway through something and you're in flow and you're going for it. If someone comes in, even to just, and they're like, oh, sorry mom, didn't know you were in there. It's gone. It takes 10, 15 minutes to get it back and to go back in. So I don't think being an author is an easy thing for the people around you as well because you're so consumed by it. And I know I'd be out with the family or eating dinner and I'd have an idea. So I'd go, hang on a minute and I'd write that down. You get very consumed by it, which is why I know for me, because I'm so obsessed when I do something, that I need to put time limitations on that.

So it's like, I know that it's going to take me about an hour to write a good 1,000 words. I mean you can write 1,000 words in 10 minutes, but by the time I'm actually writing it well, it's going to take me about an hour. So the whole book process is going to be about 70 hours to write it. Then I'm going to go to the editor then. So I actually work out how many that is, I carve out those blocks in my calendar, I allocate them all, then I allocate rewards to it. So I had every 500 words, I'm not sure what you have in Canada, but we have Maltesers. Do you have Maltesers?

Scott MacMillan:

Yes. Yeah, we've got them.

Tina Tower:

Little chocolate balls?

Scott MacMillan:

Yep.

Tina Tower:

So every 500 words I would have a ball and I'd go and I'd pop in a Malteser, and I'd be like, yummy, just another 500 words. And then every 10,000 words I'd have something else. So I'd either go and have a gin and tonic or I'd go and have a bath or I'd go and get a massage, right? I'd have something allocated to that. So I had these little milestones for myself that could cheer myself on. And I don't know, is that pathetic? Maybe?

Scott MacMillan:

No, that's great.

Tina Tower:

I needed that incentive and that milestone, but I needed to do it in a sprint. I know I could never write a book and go, I'm just going to work on this for the next couple of years and see how it goes and how it unfolds. I know it's not possible for me.

Scott MacMillan:

It's so important to know yourself. As I read Million Dollar Micro Business, one thing that struck me was as you were laying out the process for rolling one out, how compatible digital courses and traditional books are in terms of developing that intellectual property. We certainly have authors who've used their books as the foundation for an online course and vice versa. In your experience, how true is that in practice? And what should people watch out for in trying to deploy the same IP for both a book and a digital course?

Tina Tower:

Yeah, great question, Scott. So I think it's madness in this day and age to have a book without a course backing it up. Because I know the first thing I do when I read a book, it's an old book, but I've just read a book now that I actually think is one of the best books I've ever read in my life. And it's been a long time since I've read a book that I was like, wow, this book's changed my life. The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. Have you read that?

Scott MacMillan:

Oh, I haven't read it. No. I know the original Scott Peck.

Tina Tower:

Yeah, so you've got to get that book. It's the best book I think I've ever read. One of the best. And the first thing I did was look him up and be like, okay, does this dude have a course? Does he have a mastermind I can join? Can I get coaching with him? What is my next step? And whenever I read a book that I'm really moved by or I think, gosh, this thought leadership in this is, I need more of that. A book is a beautiful kind of surface level concept, but I want the actual, I want to go deep with this human. And a lot of people are like that when they read a book. So if you're putting out a book and it's super awesome sauce and then people are looking for that next step and it's like, well, next book will be out in two or three years, you're missing out on such an incredible opportunity.

So my book was very purposefully written as part of the commercial ecosystem about company. And so being able to do that, we had free resources all through it that people could go and download at milliondollarmicrobusiness.com if you need them. And people could go and get them. But what that did was it gave super value pack to people that purchased the book, but also they were then added to my email list, which meant I could keep nurturing them. And then when I go to launch an online course, there's a whole database of people ready to go with that.

So we were really purposeful about it. To answer your question on the IP difference, to me a book was, well, if I talk about Million Dollar Micro Business in that context, it's very much the what. Here's everything that you need to do to package your expertise into an online course. So it goes through all of the different steps, everything to be aware of, everything that needs to be done, but it doesn't show you the how. So you've got the what but not the how. To get the how, that's where we have online courses that's like, all right, so you want to set up your website? Click here. Play it at the same time and let's get creating. So to me, a book is conceptual and all of the what, and then the courses take you deeper and actually get you all of those results stepped through that process.

Scott MacMillan:

Super. That's a really good distinction. I think that'll be really helpful for people. And I'm really happy that you talked about your business ecosystem as it relates to Million Dollar Micro Business and Her Empire Builder and all of the components that work together. Because that I think is such a key part of leveraging the value of a book and of a digital course.

Tina Tower:

Yeah, well, being an author as well, there's nothing quite like it in terms of, you wouldn't know who I am. There's no way you'd invite me on your podcast without it. There's tons of podcasts, articles, media opportunities that I wouldn't have had if I wasn't an author. You can have online courses, for example, and call The Today Show and pitch to them and be like, "I've got this online course." They're like, "Yes, stop selling me stuff." But then you go and go, "I've written this book," and they're like, "Great, we'd love to have authors on," like it's a ticket into all of these different things. And so for me, I live in a small country town north of Sydney and I'm quite well known in Australian business women's circles, but not at all outside any of that. And so for me going, well, I want to have clients all over the globe and be able to do that, how can we do that?

A book is the quickest way to be able to get that in people's hot little hands and have it all out there. And we paid for placement throughout all of the airports in the US too, which was one of the best marketing dollars that I have spent. And I know that wasn't the question, but in terms of commercial ecosystem, I still think there's not that many authors that make a ton of money out of their books. So for me, it was how can I maximize this as a marketing opportunity and a positioning piece to then get more people into my world and increase that awareness so that it then flows onto my higher profitable products?

Scott MacMillan:

Yeah, excellent. And you talked, you mentioned something that I want to dive in a little bit on, that you talked about how you're well known within a certain segment. And I'd love to chat a bit about the idea of nicheing down or nicheing down, as our American listeners would say.

Tina Tower:

Yes.

Scott MacMillan:

In my view, that is so important in business, in authorship, really any pursuit where you're hoping to stand out and attract an engaged audience. Now, I'm probably not at the center of your core target audience for Her Empire Builder, but I love the podcast and I'm a longtime listener. Could you share your perspective on nicheing down and kind of about that fear that many people have of focusing on too narrow a niche?

Tina Tower:

Yeah, it is. It's something that everyone goes, but I don't want to cut off half of my market. But I very much think, no matter what we're selling, no matter what our expertise is, both fortunately and unfortunately in the world of online right now, I reckon 70% of it is marketing. You could be the smartest person with the most knowledge and the most expertise, if you don't nail your marketing, you're going to be like the best kept secret in the world. And so one of the keys of really effective marketing is super clear messaging and being able to reach that person so easily. And so Million Dollar Micro Business was very broad. I didn't niche that at all. I was like, you know what? I want this to kind of be as big as possible. But all of my programs are aimed very niche.

They're women that are operating their online courses on Kajabi and are building through organic personal brand. So if people just want to be behind the scenes, throw bucket tons of money at Facebook ads and never show their face, not their gal. So with that, the reason that is is I love, I have five brothers and a lot of my business mates are men as well. But when I started, the first program I did was Scale Up. And it was all women, no men. So I was like, well, the women are going to naturally be attracted to my vibe. So rather than trying to keep it a broad scope, why not just go for that and then we can keep it really siloed and we've always got people on the periphery? So my main component of my business is Her Empire Builder, which is for women to build the business behind the online course.

So we go through team and systems and everything to actually grow the business, not the course. And we've got 160 members in that and we've got five men. And I'm always really impressed by them because they go, it's so female centric, and I'm always talking about wealthy women are changing the world and how can we create more wealth for women and all of this type of thing. And they're there for it. They're like, sweet, I like what you're putting out. I'm learning a lot. And they're there and I love that. So it doesn't mean that you're necessarily cutting off, but it just means that when you niche, there is no one, if you're a woman who's using Kajabi and want to build an online course, there is literally no one better in the world. And I think that that is the benefit of knowing you're a niche, is you can go for how can I be the best in my industry at this and nail it? And it increases referrals. You're the go-to person. It's just better on all fronts.

Scott MacMillan:

Absolutely. Really, really well put. Now, obviously I interview a lot of entrepreneurs who've become authors on this podcast, and I always ask them for their tips for people who've considered writing a book but haven't done so yet. But in this case, what I'd love is if you could offer some advice to somebody who's considered launching a digital online course but haven't yet taken that plunge.

Tina Tower:

Yeah. So in terms of have they already got their book or they don't have either yet?

Scott MacMillan:

That's a good distinction. That's a good distinction. I hadn't thought about that distinction. Surprise us.

Tina Tower:

So we can do both. So if you don't have a book and you don't have an online course and you've got all that expertise that you want to share with the world, I think, well, one, I think in either case, do it. What have you got to lose? An online course is way easier than a book because to me, an online course you can change. If something changes in the world or my thought leadership changes, as humans, we grow. If we look at something that we've written five years ago, we're going to cringe a little because we're going to be like, oh, I'm a bit wiser and smarter now. And the hard part of writing a book is it's there. It's stuck forever. So it's really permanent, which makes it quite a mental challenge in, I know I've never been meaner to myself mentally than when writing a book. I would write a sentence and go, how are you this stupid?

This is so bad. No one's going to want to really, I mean, I had to really work on that positive self talk. So I think that it's very mentally challenging, but if you focus on the person that you're writing it for, then you can be so helpful. And for me, I go, people going to pay $20 for a book, can I give massive value in that? Absolutely. People are paying $1,000 for a course, in my mind, they have to make $10,000 in the following few months for me to think that was well worth people's time. And so the stakes are a little bit higher. But what I would say is if you haven't written a book and done an online course, do them in conjunction.

Because if you make it as part of your ecosystem and then throughout the book you're kind of creating digital resources to go with the book, then in those digital resources you can then be referencing, if you want to know how to do this, you can get the course here. So it just really flows on beautifully rather than waiting until after you've got the book and then going, okay, people are asking me for the next step. I'll put the course in. It's not going to flow as easily. But if you have written a book and you've got a big audience, but you haven't got a course yet, that doesn't mean don't do one. It means do one. And then when you do the next reprint, stick it all in there so you've got it in there as well.

Scott MacMillan:

Love it, love it. That's great, Tina. Thank you for that. That's so helpful. Now, how can people get in touch with you to learn more about all the wonderful things that you do and how they might work with you?

Tina Tower:

Yeah, well, I mean, if I've done my job right, I should be really easy to find. But if you want to check out Million Dollar Micro Business, just go to milliondollarmicrobusiness.com or you can find me Tina Tower on anything, the interwebs and the socials. And I'd love for you to tag it on Instagram with Scott's podcast. I can see you're listening. That'll be great.

Scott MacMillan:

Lovely. And we'll put all of those links in the show notes too. Tina, it's been a real honor to have you on the podcast. You deliver so much value to your audience in everything that you do, and you've generously over delivered for us today too. So thank you again.

Tina Tower:

Thank you so much.

Scott MacMillan:

As we wrap up this episode of the Entrepreneur to Author podcast, remember, now is the time. Time to write, time to publish, and time to grow. I'm Scott McMillan. Until next time.

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