The $100 MBA Show – MBA2716 Extended Interview: Tina Tower

Episode Overview

In this special extended interview, Omar Zenhom sits down with his longtime friend Tina Tower—entrepreneur, author, podcast host, and founder of Her Empire Builder. The discussion dives deep into how Tina, as the breadwinner of her family and a mother of two, built a multi-million-dollar online business empire. The conversation covers her journey from humble beginnings to franchising, overcoming personal and professional adversity, the realities of being a female entrepreneur online, and her philosophies for entrepreneurial success, parenting, and partnership. Tina shares not just business tactics, but also personal evolution, vulnerability, and candid insights about the cost of success.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tina’s Origins & Early Entrepreneurial Journey

• Starting Young and Small

  • Tina began her first business at 20—a small tutoring center.
  • Scaled it to Begin Bright, a national franchise with 35 centers.

• Bootstrapping & Personal Branding

  • Lacking funding, she turned herself into the face of the franchise, leveraging media and awards for growth.
  • “The best way to build it would be on personal brand… I could, for lack of a better term, like pimp myself out to bring attention.” – Tina, [13:56]

• Sacrifice & Hard Lessons

  • Grew up in a tumultuous family, learned independence young (left home at 14, worked 3 jobs, paid her way through university).
  • “All of my self-worth was wrapped up in achievement.” – Tina, [28:40]

2. Public Life, Privacy, and Navigating Social Media

• The Dark Side of Sharing

  • Experienced cyberstalking after media exposure (including threats to her children), forcing her to reconsider online privacy.
  • “After [the stalking] I’ve been really careful... But now... the judgment is brutal.” – Tina, [06:02], [07:08]

• Feedback on Personal Changes

  • Public reaction to her weight loss included accusations of “betraying” body positivity and being “unrelatable”.
  • “I hadn’t said smaller was better. I just got smaller.” – Tina, [09:15]

• Advice for Evolving Publicly

  • Don’t let other people’s expectations stop your personal growth or brand evolution.
  • “Anytime someone changes... when we are a personal brand and we are the product, if that changes, it’s no longer the same.” – Tina, [12:01]

3. Building an Online Empire & Transitioning from Franchising

• Pivot After Selling

  • Sold Begin Bright at 33. Took a yearlong sabbatical to travel with her family, concerned about momentum loss.
  • Found that “no one really realized I had left... Everyone’s thinking about themselves. No one’s really thinking about us that much.” – Tina, [35:16]

• Accidental Success Online

  • Started coaching, soon recognized scalability bottlenecks and built her first course, “Idea to Launch,” in 2018.
  • First launch: $11,000 in a week with no list, simply posted on personal Facebook.
    • “I didn’t care what Uncle Toby was gonna say about me. I’m putting it out there.” – Tina, [37:18]

• Creating Her Empire Builder (HEB)

  • As demand grew, HEB became a more connected community/group coaching model to enable deeper relational work and accountability.

4. Real Talk—The Cost of Success & Mindset

• Hard Work Over Hustle Hype

  • Tina debunks the “work smarter not harder” platitude in early entrepreneurship.
  • “I do believe in hard work. I think it has served me really well… if you could avoid burnout… I actually, I don’t believe that.” – Tina, [24:03]

• Years of Sacrifice

  • At the brink of business failure, Tina lived with her family in a small flat on $200/week for two years.
  • “I had to come back and tell Matt... we can’t afford to pay our mortgage... we lived on $200 a week for two years.” – Tina, [67:39]

• On Perseverance and Delusional Optimism

  • Despite setbacks, quitting was never an option—crediting “hopium” (hope + opium) and vivid visualizations of success.
  • “Anything is worth it to bring that [idea] to life… I truly think everything is possible.” – Tina, [73:39]

5. Entrepreneurship, Gender, and Money

• Addressing Gendered Double Standards

  • More scrutiny for women online, especially about appearance and ambition.
  • “I wish more female entrepreneurs were money-hungry… We know wealthy women will change the world.” – Tina, [76:46]

• Talking About Money

  • Advocates for openness about finances in families, teaching her kids money management and investing.

• Partnership & Parenting

  • Her husband, Matt, left his job to support the family operations at home, creating a reversed traditional dynamic.
  • “We’ve always made the [kids] feel part of it, which has made it feel more like a team rather than this whole, mum’s going to do this while we’re left here.” – Tina, [59:23]

6. The Realities of Scaling & Continuous Evolution

• The X-Factor & Willingness to Fail

  • Not everyone is built for entrepreneurship—it requires both a unique variable (the "X-factor") and the comfort to fail publicly and bounce back.
  • “The thing that everybody has is some sort of likability, some sort of X-factor.” – Tina, [44:17]

• Changing Tides: Courses, Community, and AI

  • The 'DIY $2k course' model is “dead.” The future is community, connection, and guidance—not pure information.
  • “I do think for a lot of course creators you need to bring in community… because it’s what people are going to be lacking so much is we’re so isolated.” – Tina, [52:11]

• On What’s Next

  • Tina admits she’s seeking ways to keep the work fresh and herself entertained, possibly starting a new venture alongside her mastermind.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Sacrifice:

  • “Walking around the grocery store with the calculator and having to figure out what we could put back… when I realized that we had enough… I can buy blueberries.” – Tina, [68:49]

• On Judgment and Change:

  • “Once you build yourself up, you’ve got so far to fall and the expectations on you… are very unrealistic.” – Tina, [15:09]

• On Entrepreneurship & Identity:

  • “I love business… I love nearly everything about it except building team… and being so forward facing – like being the product.” – Tina, [13:20]

• On Family Partnership:

  • “If you ask the kids, they have two stay at home parents. They think we’re just waiting for them every day.” – Tina, [58:05]

• On Delusional Optimism:

  • “One of my favorite words is hopium. I am the opposite of a pessimist. I am overly optimistic about everything.” – Tina, [73:40]

Tina Tower’s Top 5 Rules for Entrepreneurial Success ([82:17])

1. Take Massive, Imperfect Action

   • Don’t wait for perfection. Launch fast, iterate, and sell to validate.

2. Apply a Strict Filter to Time & Tasks

   • “Does it make me money, enhance the customer experience, or bring me joy? If it’s not two out of three, it’s off the list.”
   • [83:29]

3. Watch Your Dollars

   • Be acutely aware of your financials; review everything regularly (“Wealthy Wednesday”).

4. Be Balanced, but Respect that Sometimes Sacrifice is Inevitable

   • At times, important areas like health or friendships may get deprioritized, but this isn’t sustainable forever.

5. Embrace the Necessary Sacrifices of Success

   • Understand there will be hard times and make peace with the cost if you want to build something meaningful.

Other Memorable Moments

• Omar on Not Wanting to Be the Product:

  • “People need to like and trust you... but I don’t want to be the product.” – Omar, [17:15]

• Tina on Wealth & Female Leadership:

  • “If we can encourage more women to be wealthy, it can make such a big change long term.” – Tina, [77:06]

• On Full Commitment:

  • “There’s no half ass, full ass all the way.” – Tina, [89:18]

Important Timestamps

• 04:33 – Tina on the sacredness of her home, privacy, and sharing.
• 07:08 – Tina discloses the emotional impact of online judgment.
• 24:02 – Discussing the realities of hard work and burnout.
• 35:12 – Tina on fearful career breaks and the reality of “being forgotten.”
• 37:18 – Her first course launch with no list.
• 53:51 – Balancing motherhood, being a wife, and running an empire.
• 65:43 – On the cost of success and living on the poverty line to keep the business alive.
• 76:46 – Tina’s wish for more wealthy female entrepreneurs.
• 82:17 – Tina’s top 5 rules for entrepreneurial success.
• 89:01 – Omar on “doing his best” as the essence of work.

Final Thoughts

This episode stands as a candid, inspiring, and instructive conversation for entrepreneurs navigating growth and reinvention while juggling personal and family commitments. Tina Tower is a living testament that you do not have to choose between being an ambitious entrepreneur, a present parent, or a fulfilled partner—if you’re willing to work for it, withstand the cost, and create your own rules.

Learn more about Tina Tower at Her Empire Builder, on Instagram (@TinaTower), or in the episode show notes.