Tina Tower, Australia's youngest female franchisor, talks about failure, entrepreneurship, and resilience. She shares how she balanced building a business with family life and why boldness and perseverance matter when scaling.
The one, the only, Tina. Tina, Tina, Tina. Tina. Tina tower, everybody. A11. The thing that I'm really, really good at, the thing that I'm an absolute expert in, is failure. It's something that I've done time and time again. So I thought I would just stand here for an hour and run through systems and how we did that. That was supposed to be funny. I'm not going to talk about systems at all. I'm Tina Tower, the founder of Be Bright School Readiness and Primary Tutoring Centres. And I googled franchising and then I bought the book Franchising for Dummies and I read that I became Australia's youngest ever female franchisor, which sounds very exciting, but it meant that nobody took me seriously. And the guy goes to me, you're a CEO? Yes. He goes, you can't be a CEO. Why not? He goes, well, CEOs are like old men. Oh my God. When you first, you've got no idea what you're doing, you just kind of do what you think you can do and then you get there and you go, wow, this isn't working out. What did I do wrong? I think it's only you and probably your partner that understand just how hard you work. When no one's looking, you're either going to lose the house, the business or both. What do you want to do? Has anyone ever had to close the doors of a business to put anything into? Really overachiever. There we go, there we go. Don't be shy. Failure's a great thing. I go to soccer on a Saturday and they go, how do you. I'm like, oh my God, I did this deal and there would be this. And they look at me and just go, you get that guilt of, well, I'm not a good business person, I'm not a good mother, I'm not a good wife. Winning the road is not an easy one. In business. We get a lot of criticism, we have a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility there. But, you know, we thrive on the achievement and we thrive on the growth. So I had six days until we had to get out of our house. And I was at a three day conference and I didn't want to tell my husband over the phone. So a lot of it was around young women in business, all of that sort of thing. One journalist did say to me a few years ago, what are you going to do now that you're old? I haven't quite figured out that you're angel yet. Like I'd buy them a coffee and go, well, that's the budget for the day. And maybe they're going, hello, kings. Feel the fear and do it anyway. My husband to this stage had been really supportive, but that was starting to wear thin. I have no idea why it was such a pleasure to be around. Around with small toddlers and a business falling apart around me. So then the good wife I am, I took all of his money and now they tell him he's the luckiest bloke in the world. It's not so much fail and being down in the pit that kills people. It's the inability to get back up again. The big floppy things and the bouncy clowns that are made out of the inflatable stuff. And they get knocked down, they just bounce back up, going, doing with a big smile on their face. That's kind of how I. Your mind will take you far. The rest is just pure heart. And in the end, you'll find your fate is all your own creation. It's the moment that you think you can't, that you'll discover that you can. It's that ability to say, you know what I can and get up and do it again. If it's absolutely perfect. And you had every dream that your heart desired, what does your life look like? Trust your heart. It always seems to know what you should do. Know what your limitations are and then go about and defy them. Be bold, be brilliant, and always let your light shine. We can't affect everyone all at one time, but we do have the massive privilege in business of being able to impact people's lives. Okay, you got lots of work to do, Sam.
