Tina Tower [00:00:00]:
Hello. Welcome to her Empire Builder Show. I am your host, Tina Tower, and welcome back. As we are cruising in to the end of 2025, it is December. If you're listening to this live, it is the most wonderful time of the year. There is Christmas lights up. It is warm. It is so good.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:00:21]:
And so today, I want to share with you my top business lessons from 2025 so that I can share them with you. And hopefully in sharing them with you, they can help you in some way. But I also encourage you to make a list like this yourself, because so much of what we do as business owners, we forget to stop and acknowledge how far we've come, acknowledge the mistakes we've made. Actually, we're usually pretty good at that, but acknowledge that good parts. Acknowledge the journey, acknowledge that you know, 12 months ago where you were and where you are now, and hopefully you have moved that in the right direction. And if you haven't, then you're able to make conscious, pragmatic decisions with how you want to change and how you want to adapt going into 2026. So 2025 for me was honestly one of the most personally expansive years in both my life and business that I have ever had. It was also a very unexpected year.

Tina Tower [00:01:21]:
It's. It'. It's not a year that I would have expected three or four years ago to be living. And I'll explain what that means. So in this episode, I'm going to pull back the curtain a little bit. I'm going to share with you some of the big decisions that I made this year, some of the pivots, the values that I established, insights that have helped shaped her empire builder as a whole, and also me as a person. So this is a companion for your reflection as well. So I want to.

Tina Tower [00:01:52]:
I want to give you permission to design your business around what matters most to you. And that is what I think I have done this year better than any year that I have before by an absolute mile. And some years are about building, some are about blooming, like harvesting what you've already built. And 2025 for me, was a little bit of both, but in a really different way. So. So our profit is way up on 2024, but our revenue is slightly down. And this has all got to do with everything that I decided on a business front in terms of growth, in terms of team, in terms of how I was operating. So I'll explain a little bit about that.

Tina Tower [00:02:38]:
But this year was a lot more clarity. It was a lot more calm. I mean, 2024. Last year I lost a lot of weight. For people that were watching, I lost 26K. And so last year was a very big like just even physical transformation year, which does have transformation in a lot of other areas as well. And this year I have maintained that. So it's been like a very level, calm, like probably the easiest year.

Tina Tower [00:03:11]:
I have had like the most flowy and enjoyable and that like calm, quiet confidence that comes with that. I've been able to do so much this year because my energy has been so different to previous years. But let me get into the whole thing. So I've got some key lessons from 2025. So number one, information courses are dead. I did a newsletter on this a couple months ago in going the 2K course is dead. I do think that now if you're running this and definitely leading into 2026, it's transformation or bust. If you're selling pure information, it's going to be gone because information is cheap.

Tina Tower [00:03:54]:
Information can be gotten straight off AI if people know the right questions and the right prompts to ask. And so what we need to be packaging is transformation, is guiding, is shortcutting. So the market has definitely shifted in 2025. What I found was to get the same result, we needed to be working a lot harder, we needed to be doing more to get the same result because the market is so much more saturated, because people can develop information so much easier and quicker. People can develop their marketing like it used to be a couple years ago. You know, if you weren't, if you weren't afraid to show your face online, you could win because a lot of people weren't willing to do that. But now you can market so well with AI that even if you're wildly introverted, even if you don't want to get yourself out there, you can still be successful. And so it's leveled the playing field quite a lot.

Tina Tower [00:04:51]:
What I have found is now that AI is there, people don't just want content, they definitely don't want content, they definitely don't want more information. What they want is change and they're trusting humans to be able to help them implement that change. Your courses have to be so much more outcome driven. I mean, I do think people were always outcome driven. A great course has always been outcome driven, but, but now what I'm seeing successful and I work with hundreds of course creators and business builders and what I'm seeing most successful is things that are higher touch. So things that actually involve the human to human, some live elements that connection happening and built around accountability, built around taking action, actually implementing, not just teaching and people learning for learning sake, because people are inundated with information all day, every day. More information than what we know to do with. And so what we're looking for is actually less information, more implementation and results.

Tina Tower [00:05:54]:
So that has resulted in a big mindset shift in the industry. And this mindset, it's improved results massively for people. So it means that for a whole lot of like, take our course idea to launch. We run this course idea to launch, which is exactly as it says on the can, how to go from idea to a launched course. Now, a lot of people used to do that course and get stuck at the curriculum development, at the marketing, like at the copywriting for their website. There were key points along the way that I would see people drop off and not come back again. With our most recent rounds, so we rerecorded and released it in June. And with these rounds, we're seeing like a 70% success rate with completion and getting their course out there.

Tina Tower [00:06:43]:
And the reason that that is is because it's making implementation way easier. So it's getting people the results because they're able to use it where they were previously getting stuck. They can now use the AI prompts that I made and feed them straight in to like keep that momentum going. So it's very results orientated. And of course, when you're getting people results, that's increasing the overall impact that you can have as a course creator. So just keep in mind, no one wants a course full of information. They want a result that changes their life. That's what people are looking for.

Tina Tower [00:07:18]:
Okay, number two, which kind of feeds off this AI has allowed us to do way more with way less. And it was glorious. I know some people have mixed feelings about AI and I do too. I mean, there's, you know, I've been playing a lot with AI in terms of like making clones of myself with Delphi and with free Pick for being able to create AI photo shoots and all of that sort of thing. So I leaned very heavily into AI. I'm still very big on connection with my clients and that will never go away. In fact, that's become even more important. But where I think that AI has changed the game for me this year is, is it has allowed me to do so much less other things so that I have so much more time for just connecting and coaching with paying clients.

Tina Tower [00:08:12]:
And before I used to have to spend all of this time and energy on all of these other things that we have to do in our businesses that now I don't really have to spend time on doing that. So it's actually allowed me to spend a lot more time on doing the job I love, which is great. And it has paid off massively. It's made it so much easier for members to move through, especially with Delphi. It's made everything so much easier with like, with team all being on the same page and being able to do things quicker. I can create more, I can create better because everything's so much more systemized and consistent. So it means we can create faster, so we can put out higher quality content more often and we can do more highly quality things without needing a bigger team. So it has changed a lot with the amount of team that I need.

Tina Tower [00:09:05]:
So all I have is Chris, who's my operations assistant and Joey who is our video editor, social media like marketing, and Matt who is our project manager and me. And that is it. That is an over seven figure a year business just ran on our core little team which a couple years ago, like at one stage I had six people. So we can do a lot more with a lot less. It's freed up a lot of time, both my time and the team's time. It's reduced a lot of decision fatigue. So I've noticed that like I can move a lot faster. I'm not having to give as much feedback or decide on things as much because the proof is all there.

Tina Tower [00:09:46]:
Like the past is all there recorded. So you can kind of go, okay, is this video up to scratch? If not, like they can put it through AI first and go, what's Tina going to say about this? And it will say, okay, let's change this, let's make this better, let's. This is no good. Like it would say it. So it's getting results quicker and faster. And it's also sparked creativity in a whole new way. So I've heard a lot of people talking about how AI is going to kill creativity. I've actually found the opposite to be true.

Tina Tower [00:10:14]:
So what I'm finding now is so like a creativity companion. I can have the bones of an idea and be like spitballing it back and forth and going, what about this? What about this? What's a different idea here? And you can get those creative ideas really quickly. Where I think it is good and sometimes people go too far with AI is it's still there's some things that I think are better from your soul level. So an example of this was I created a new keynote, a Couple months ago, and I was trying to use AI to flesh out a lot of the slides and a lot of the different. And it just was not flowing. I'm like, I don't know why, it sounds good, but it's got no heart in it. And it had access to all my story and all of that sort of thing, but it just didn't hit it, wasn't it? And so I was trying to improve it a lot. And then Matt, my husband, was like, just throw it out, start again and use nothing but your brain.

Tina Tower [00:11:09]:
And. And I did that. And I literally created the whole outline in about an hour and a half and was like, this is perfect. And so sometimes I think it's really helpful to get you over that hump, but then other times, if you just sit and let it pour out of you from a heart, soul level, still going to be better. So I think you need to know when to use it, when not to use it, so that it can help creativity and not hinder it. So AI is definitely not really replaced me, but it's given me so much more time to do the work that only I can do. And that is so much more enjoyable. Number three was we combined a lot of our brands.

Tina Tower [00:11:48]:
So at the beginning of the year, actually not at the beginning of this year, at the end of 2024, we launched. It was Course Quickies, which was our template shop, and AI Circle, which was for all my AI programs. Now, the reason that I created AI Circle separately was because her Empire Builder is obviously very geared towards women, and I wanted men and women to feel comfortable in buying my AI courses. But what I found was I hated promoting two brands. We had two websites going, we had the two different social media channels. It was just like double the amount of work. And because I build on personal brand, most of the sales were coming through my personal brand, either through her Empire Builder or my Tina Tower Instagram. And people were getting very confused because they had a login for some courses on her Empire Builder site and then the login for the AI courses on AI Circle, and they're like, why can't I see my other courses? Not realizing that there's two different business entities.

Tina Tower [00:12:52]:
And so we combined the AI courses in into her Empire Builder, which made it so much easier and so much better. So I did think that we had merit in trying it differently, and I'm glad I tried it. But it was. That was a failure. We had to pivot and pull that back in. And the other thing was Course Quickies, so I wanted Course quickies to kind of stand alone separate from her empire builder. I can't remember why now. I thought that was a good idea, but I thought it was a good idea at the time.

Tina Tower [00:13:22]:
But again, similar to AI Circle, it was like promoting something same, same, but different. Coursequikis was very complimentary to her empire builder and so a lot of the people that were in her empire builder in our ecosystem wanted to buy those templates as well. So what we did was we renamed that instead of running it as a separate Instagram Facebook website, we renamed it Headshop. So now all of our templates that was re released in maybe July, August. And so now that's headshot.comau where all of. Or is it hebshop.com I should know that off the top of my head, shouldn't I? Correct link is in the show notes below, but it's called Headshot. And all of the templates that we sell, the ChatGPT prompts, the Kajabi templates, all of that is on that site. And putting that all under the one umbrella under her empirebuilder.com made everything so much easier and kind of, you know, clarified the customer journey as well.

Tina Tower [00:14:27]:
We didn't have to have separate audiences, which just made life like consolidation is often better. I did have good reason for wanting to try it separately and kind of having those different businesses like springboard off each other but not rely on each other. But it works so much better being all together. So instead of managing the three brands, we pour the love into the one and that has worked out much better. The other thing is I invested very heavily in new technologies, so things like making a lot of custom GPTs to share with our members, creating a lot of teamwork spaces templates. So we keep all of our. It's called Heba internally, which is her empire builder assistant, and that has systems for everything that we do inside our businesses. So if anyone wants to know anything, how do I start the podcast? There's all the things I want to do.

Tina Tower [00:15:17]:
A discovery, sales call. What's my script? I'm trying to think of the most recent things that people have asked. Where do I find this launch? Emails. There's all your emails. Everything that you need is there that you can search easily and it brings it up. That is something that costs us a small fortune. We pay about $1,000 a month for access to that software. So.

Tina Tower [00:15:41]:
But it means that our members get access to like the easiest possible way to access all of the information really, really quickly because our library is so big it's really difficult to navigate just using kajabi alone. So we have everything with that. Because sometimes people don't want to watch an hour video to get like your webinar templates and the scripts and all of the different things. So we have the video if people want to go deep, but then we've got it on Heba. If people are wanting, like, just give me the answer, just give me the quick, quick notes. The other thing is Delphi. So this is new. We've just bought this out.

Tina Tower [00:16:16]:
It's something I've been building for months and months and months where I have put in every single piece of information that I've ever had. So everything that's on Heba, every system I've created, every podcast recording I've done, every masterclass I've taught, every live speech I've ever given is all on there. And so it means that anyone can ask it anything. And it's like having a conversation with me. It's got my voice, it's got everything. You've got, like, me as a coach in your pocket and it is working beautifully. So that is something. Like, at the moment, I'm looking at the different options with what we can do with that in 2026, because it is a super powerful tool.

Tina Tower [00:16:57]:
I'll link to that in the show notes as well. If you're looking at creating an AI clone, I tried quite a few different ones and a lot of them weren't up to scratch. Like, one of the most important things for me was to have guardrails on it. Like, I didn't want if someone asked a question and the answer couldn't be found in my teachings, I didn't want it to make it up. Like, if you're using a custom GPT derivative, it will make it up because it's a bit of a psychopath. So it will go. It wants to give you the answer. So it'd be like, yes, I know that and yes, you're amazing.

Tina Tower [00:17:30]:
But I didn't want it to do that. I wanted it to find the answer. And then if it doesn't have the answer in the information that I've put in, I wanted it to be able to say, I don't know, let me check with a human and get back to you. And then it pings us, because otherwise you can get into trouble if you're giving advice. And it's making stuff up along the way. So Delphi is definitely the best for that. So I've invested in a lot of those tools. It's elevated the experience for our members greatly.

Tina Tower [00:17:55]:
But also I think it's necessary because I like to like the. My thing of her Empire Builder is the best online education in the world for female course creators. And if I want to keep. Keep being able to say that, I think it needs to constantly evolve and be better and better and better. And so that's something I'm looking at all the time, is how can we be better, how can we stay ahead of the curve, how can we use AI, but not in a way that's going to dull the experience, but it's going to enhance the experience and finding that line with our offering in there as well. So I think these, these, like platforms, they've added a lot of structure, they've added a lot of clarity, they've made the results easier to achieve, which is really all we want. All I want is for people to be successful, wildly successful, beyond their wildest dreams. That's it.

Tina Tower [00:18:43]:
Just a small request, but that's what I'm going for. So anything that can help with that is going to be better. So I look at it as, like, they weren't just tech upgrades, they're connection upgrades. Because what I want to be able to do is connect with people more. And being able to have this tech in place means that I'm available more to actually connect human to human, which is great. Number five, small but mighty team. And we are staying that way. So I made the decision not to grow team because the one that I have at the moment is gold.

Tina Tower [00:19:20]:
And so sometimes you get into these, these holding patterns as you grow to different levels where, you know, if you want to grow to the next level, you're going to have to add more bums on seats. And then sometimes, like, you'll feel icky with your team, like, gosh, have I overhied? Or I've got the wrong person. Like, if you have the wrong person. And at one stage this year, year I had the wrong person. And it upsets a lot of the, like, the way everything flows, it can trickle down to other team members, it can trickle into your clients. And sometimes, you know, really early and sometimes it's hard to pick up. And so because I, in the past, like, I. When I was trying to find a new EA, for example, I went through three in a year.

Tina Tower [00:20:07]:
In 2024, I was really determined to find a new EA. Sorry, 2023, that happened. And I was really determined to find a new one. And then I felt bad, like there was something wrong with me and my leadership style because I'd gone through three in a year and I was really ashamed of that. And so I was like, I'm gonna hold the staff. Like I not don't care what they do. I'm gonna hold them anyway. But kind of of a little bit of that.

Tina Tower [00:20:33]:
I let people get away with a whole lot more than what I would previously because I didn't want to burn through stuff, but made that decision like mid year and going, it's a team or nothing. And so I'm glad I've gone back to that. I've always had that expectation, but I really wanted to get the right people in the right seats. And so now we've got that. That's it. I've got no desire to add any more people to our team. I know that sometimes if we could, it would mean that we could probably grow more. But I'm so happy with the way that it is now.

Tina Tower [00:21:09]:
So I'm really happy to go. Let's make the biggest impact we can with the people that we have. Because what I have prioritised this year is having good relationships with team and clients, obviously, but also prioritized profitability. So I've spent so much in the past on hiring really highly paid team thinking that they were going to be the answer to all of my problems, when really some of them are just a lot more work. Sometimes if you don't get it right, it can take so much momentum away and take so much success away and eat into your profit a lot because it's very expensive to hire the wrong person and have to rehire and retrain. So I really prioritize profit. And we've seen that we've over doubled our profit in 2025-2024 and beyond. So I've prioritized that.

Tina Tower [00:22:03]:
I've prioritized lifestyle. There was a stage in my business, not so much in this business, but definitely in my past business when I ran my franchise company that, you know, I paid a heavy price for success. And when I started this one, I was like, it's not worth the cost. I want to be successful. I want to grow. For sure, I want to run a really good, profitable business. I want to live a big life. Don't get me wrong, I am going for bigger than average things, but not at the expense of my health, my relationships.

Tina Tower [00:22:40]:
I want to plan for the future, but I also want to live in the now. And I feel like I found a good balance of that where I've got really good lifestyle. We took a lot of vacations, which I'll talk about in a moment this year. But also, you know, I really doubled down on not pushing myself. I never work at night, very rarely look at the computer on a weekend. I took off the time that I wanted to in the past. A lot of the time I will schedule in time off, but then when it gets there, I'll look at this blank space that has no appointments and be like, great. I can get ahead on launch planning or I can get ahead on this or that.

Tina Tower [00:23:19]:
And this year I've been a lot more disciplined with myself in knowing that the way I'll get longevity and the way I'll get sustainability and the way I'll bring my best self when I'm coaching people is to have good energy. And I know I need that downtime in order to have that energy enough to give to people. And so I've been really respectful of my lifestyle goals and those boundaries around that. And I really prioritize culture over like scale for scale's sake. And I'm proud of that. So staying lean team wise has created so much more joy and so much less stress. I also bought Matt, my husband. I mean he's been in the business the whole time but on the periphery.

Tina Tower [00:24:06]:
So really been there in terms of like he'll build. He's built Kajabi sites since 2018, I think. Yeah, 2018. So he's always been doing that and he's always my sounding board. But in I want to say like May ish this year I bought him in properly as the project manager. So he takes care of the team, he takes care of all the projects and, and he's done a lot of the stuff that I used to really not like doing, which has made my life a lot more joyful and that is what we're going for. I am here for that. So I figured I don't need a massive team to do a big impact.

Tina Tower [00:24:47]:
The impact that we're making I'm really comfortable with. What you need is the right team and you need the right systems and then from there it can all flow. Number six is Evergreen Energy. I have never put as much effort into Evergreen Funnels as what I have this year. So especially with Idea to Launch, I re recorded idea to Launch, which is my main evergreen program that we run. And I started building more pathways to that. So I re released that in June. And so we have good funnels running to that now in terms of like lead magnet funnel, webinar funnel funnel, VSL funnel, all going in there which has created a lot More consistent revenue.

Tina Tower [00:25:28]:
It's created a lot less pressure in terms of live launches and it's better resource leverage. So it's a lot more leveraged and scalable. The way I've sold it most though is through affiliates. So a lot of people, when they graduate the course will become an affiliate. And that's how we've gotten most of the sales. For example, idea to launch is 997. We give a 50% affiliate rate on that. Anyone who has finished and then their friends are going, hey, you've got your course going.

Tina Tower [00:26:00]:
How good is that? So good. It's very incentivizing for people to go, oh, if you want it, here's the link. And they get $500 when someone buys it. We've done a lot of sales through that, which has been really worthwhile. As well as affiliates through people with other business programs that don't have beginner course programs. So people that are running businesses like mine, but for service based business owners or things that have people that are like, I want to start a course, where do I start? And they'll go, oh, see Tina Towers course and send the link for that. So most of it has come through affiliates because we don't do ads to our Evergreen funnels yet. I may play with that in 2026, but I feel like I say that every year.

Tina Tower [00:26:42]:
I may play with that this year, but then I never do. So we'll see. Excuse me. So, yes, I will continue to refine that in 2026 so that I can support course creators all year round. Because the freedom of Evergreen, it's not just for my business. It's something that I want everyone to be able to implement really well because it's for your nervous system as well. It makes it so much better. Just pause there, please, Joey.

Tina Tower [00:27:11]:
Matt, could I have some water? My throat's starting to wane. You don't want it to cup? It's not? No. Very scratchy. Ready? Action. Okay. Number seven is I am healthier and happier than ever. And that I think has changed everything. I was saying this to Matt earlier today actually in going.

Tina Tower [00:27:56]:
I know it sounds really vain and I know that, you know, I wasn't someone that I thought I was fine when I was bigger. I had no body image issues with that. But what it has done is it has given me so much more energy, like I feel so much more bouncy and vitality and so much stronger. And that has had a trickle effect into everything. And so it was last year, like I lost a lot of weight and that like even in terms of the amount of walks that I do and like I will go on the same walk that I do all the time. And I remember a couple years ago when I started walking a lot, I would. At the really steep part where you're going up, up the hill, I would like almost have to lift my legs up, like the, the little muscle that's on the front of your hips because like I was pulling up so much weight that would get really, really sore and it was really hard to keep going. Whereas now I bound up the stairs.

Tina Tower [00:29:04]:
And just the difference with that both from a physical point of view, but then the, the flow and effect that that has for me mentally is I feel so much more capable of different things. Like I know that that can sound, you know, I don't know how it sounds but. But it's true. That's true for me in that it has had like physically, mentally, emotionally, a really big flow on effect in just feeling strong and capable. And that has, that has also meant that I, you know, have put more boundaries in place and that a lot of things that I was available for, I'm now not available for. It's had a very big flow on effect. So it's meant like in terms of well being, I have. And this has nothing to do with weight, but in terms of wellbeing, I feel like this year I have pulled back from things that I used to say yes to.

Tina Tower [00:29:58]:
I used to. I mean, I think the last few years that's gradually been getting more. Is, you know, when you say yes to something and then it comes around and you're like, who did I think I was at the time that I committed to this? Like, I don't want to do this. I used to do that all the time. Like all the time. Now it's rare. I still do it very occasionally, but not often. Now I am much better at knowing will my future self still want to do this or my future self resent me for saying yes to this that I don't want to do.

Tina Tower [00:30:30]:
And so while, you know, we could frame it as I've become a lot more selfish. But I do think, I do think that's true in a way. I know that you can judge me all you like for that. Maybe I deserve it. But what I do think is that I'm so much more happy because I'm showing up to things that I want to show up to and then I am looking after my energy in the rest. So it's been, I mean, it was Hard. It was a hard transition because I'm a people pleaser, but I just love it. I love now being able to say yes to the things I really want to do, no to the other things and being totally, totally okay with that.

Tina Tower [00:31:11]:
Having boundaries. I have much better energy management, like much better energy management. I used to feel really guilty if I was ever resting. If I rested, I would feel like I would run through the massive list of things that I had to do and I'd be like, what are you doing sitting here like a lazy thing on the couch when you could be doing everything? And I would berate myself. Like the self talk with that was not kind. And that is because I always felt like my self worth came from my productivity, it came from my output. And so to get over that has been massive. And now I rest totally guilt free.

Tina Tower [00:31:49]:
I have never rested so much in my life and I love it. I don't feel lazy. I feel like I can and then I can come out of the gate and I could pour everything in. It's made me such a better coach, it's made me a better wife, a better mom. I am so much better for it because I've got that energy management and that constant like conscious prioritization with the new non negotiables that some of them are unconscious, but a lot of it is conscious in going, this is what I'm available for, this is what I'm not. It has been helped a little bit in my day to day. Two of my best friends have sold their businesses and are semi retired. I would say retired.

Tina Tower [00:32:29]:
They're still doing work, but they're doing work that they love. And that has been very encouraging and also frustrating in going. That looks amazing the freedom that they're getting to do to say yes to the things they want to and say no to the rest. And so one of the things I thought like mid year was this kind of conscious thing and going, I don't need to be retired in order to do that. I can take this life and I can start saying yes to the things that I want to a whole lot more and stop doing the things that I don't. Because we have full agency, we have full permission to change our minds at any time, to change direction at any time. And that's been really prevalent. This year, number eight, travel has fueled my soul and my creativity this year.

Tina Tower [00:33:17]:
This has been a wonderful year of travel and adventure. Wonderful. Usually I'll go overseas four to six, seven times a year for work. Usually one of those is with family but most of the time it's for work. I'm either traveling for masterminds or I'm running events or I'm going for conferences. And then usually when I'm traveling for work, I will tack on a couple of days before after, most often in Palm Springs, so I can chill out and enjoy that time. But this year, it's been a lot for leisure. So we started off the year in Indo.

Tina Tower [00:33:57]:
We went to Indonesia. We were supposed to go for a month, but we ended up cutting the trip a little bit short because the weather was terrible. But we started the year there, which was a fantastic break to have with the family at the start. I've been to America twice, once for south by Southwest Conference in March, which was my favorite conference. It's just so expansive. I learned so much about AI, which then helped the business so much this year and helped me be able to teach to her Empire Builder members so much of the latest stuff, which is really obviously beneficial. Then I went again in July for the mastermind that I am part of over there, which again, is so eye opening and helpful. Then I took our son Cohen on a trip solo, which has always been my dream, to take them away solo.

Tina Tower [00:34:46]:
And I took him to Dubai and Abu Dhabi and India and Singapore, and we had the absolute time of our lives. And then in September, Matt and I got married again because we get married every 10 years, because we're corny like that. And then we went to Europe and went to Greece and Mallorca. Magic. And as this episode comes out, I am on my solo trip with our other son Kai, in New Zealand. So if you're following me on social media right now, very different trip to what I did with Cohen. We are on a golf tour of New Zealand. Show me your kids are different without showing me your kids are different.

Tina Tower [00:35:30]:
Right? So it's been a really great year of travel. And that I think is reflected in this whole, like, living for now, but also planning for the future. And how can I give the best that I can to our members and to my clients that I serve, but not have to spend all the time on the back end stuff. And this is where I think AI has changed the game and having good team has changed the game in allowing me to take more of that time to fill up my cup, fill up my soul, and enjoy everything that I've worked so hard for in the last 21 years. I mean, I don't want to wait until I'm retired to enjoy that. I want to enjoy it along the way. As well. So, yes, this one has been fun.

Tina Tower [00:36:15]:
Number nine, which is my final lesson for 2025, has been intimate. Masterminds are my favorite way to serve. That has been very clear to me this year. This year, I built up Empress Circle again. So Empress Circle, we didn't open for three years, and then I decided I was ready to have more people into that at the beginning of the year, so welcomed another 12 people into there. And I have loved it. I've loved being able to serve people on a different level and a deeper level with that and get to know people more and get to make more of an impact with their business and their life and just have those connections a little bit more enriched. I mean, the benefit of membership is, obviously it's so much more accessible to everyone.

Tina Tower [00:37:05]:
So not everyone can afford a mastermind. But for people like more in the beginning of their journey, the membership means you can be so, like, you can access everything when you need it, but then when you're ready for that next step. I love working with masterminds, so we have that. I also started. Sorry, pause again. Joey. Ah, damn. How very inconvenient.

Tina Tower [00:37:43]:
My voice is dying. It's all right. I'm nearly there. This is gonna be it. Yeah. Okay. Okay, ready? Action. I forget what I was gonna say.

Tina Tower [00:37:56]:
Not action. What was I up to? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember. Action. And then I also started at the beginning of the year a new mastermind called Impact, which I never advertised. I went out to people to personally invite them into that. And that was designed for people making over a million dollars, both men and women. Because I travel to America a lot to be part of Masterminds.

Tina Tower [00:38:28]:
I'm like, we have such awesome people here in Australia that are running really great businesses, and most of them are traveling to America for it. And I didn't want to travel to America too much this year. So I was looking at the different options for that, and I couldn't find anything that I was wanting, and so I made it myself. So I started that this year, and again, I've loved it. And so that is what I will be expanding on in 2026 is some more opportunities to work a little bit deeper with people and be able to go a lot more personal. Because now the AI technology like Delphi has people, like, on a bigger scale covered. And so it means that I've got a lot more time freed up to be able to get my head into the game with people's individual businesses and go a lot deeper. And that's the thing That I love doing that as well.

Tina Tower [00:39:22]:
So we're doing a whole lot more of that. It did really remind me like that Deep Connection beats the big crowds. I love it. I also love the live events for all of them. We do live events a couple times a year and I like the in person. I like it a lot. And so we're doing more of that in 2026 as well. And the magic happens, like when you get the small groups and you've got like groups of 10, 20 in a room, like it's just magic happens.

Tina Tower [00:39:50]:
There's so much connection there and it can go deep. It's not that surface level stuff. So this year I have, you know, you're in the very privileged position when you've got private clients and you're coaching or when you're running intimate masterminds, you've got like, you're this holder of people's secrets. People bare their souls. You see so much of people and that's such a privilege and such an honour and to get to see such massive shifts, so many breakthroughs that people have so much growth, that people have so many solid friendships form. Like sometimes I see people become best friends and I feel like a matchmaker and go like I did that. There was a couple of ladies that were sharing rooms at one of our events and I'm very careful when people are like, they choose twin share but they don't necessarily nominate the person that they want to share with. And so I'm very careful about who I put with who to make sure like I can matchmake well.

Tina Tower [00:40:51]:
And a couple of them have like become best friends since. So like I did that, which has nothing to do with business at all, but, you know, just positively impacting people's lives. I feel like we can do a lot of that through, through small groups. So we're going to do a whole lot more in 2026 of that. So what I'm taking with me from these lessons into 2026 is, is a whole lot more simplicity. I used to be tempted to add more on and I know I'm not alone in that. In more is better. Whereas I know, I know what I'm good at, I know what I really enjoy.

Tina Tower [00:41:23]:
I want to keep that simplicity, I want to keep those boundaries in place because I'm really enjoying in some ways having a lot more contact with people, but having it in a boundaried way as well. That leaves me a lot of space in my calendar to be able to nurture myself, to be able to do my own things to be able to travel with family and travel with friends. I want to do transformation driven everything. So I am not interested in just sprouting a whole lot of information. I want transformation. I want people to be able to come into my world because they have big dreams and they have big goals and I can help them get there. I don't want the surface level. I want that real transformation.

Tina Tower [00:42:04]:
I want lean team with high trust. I like being able to trust my team and fingers crossed, let's keep it more white space, more travel, more joy. That is what we are going for. So 2025 for me reminded me that success doesn't need to feel heavy. It can feel aligned, it can feel free. Above all else it can feel fun and that is what I want to hold onto in 2026. I would love to to hear what are your biggest lessons from 2025? Let me know. Jump onto social media, let me know what are your biggest lessons to 2025 so I can share them with everybody as well and have a Merry Christmas.