Wondering what a 7 figure course creator set up looks like?

Still spinning.

We're still there. All right. Hello everybody. Welcome to day two of the her empire builder launch. Something a little bit different for you today, so I wanted to tour you through my office and how we set everything up because it's questions that we get asked quite often is what does it look like behind the scenes? What do I need? What equipment? So to give you a little bit of behind the scenes of behind the scenes, right now I have Instagram who is being held by my wonderful Jarrah. Say hi. Jarrah will be calling out questions to me. So if you have any questions, just feel free to put them in the comments. And then I have my gorgeous husband Matt who is here streaming live to Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. So if you've got any questions, pop them on there and I'll answer them as we go throughout the office to us. So I am very lucky. One thing I will say straight up is I did not start like this. It's like that. I didn't wake up like this. There was many times where I was kind of working in the desk at the side of the house. But now I am obviously super lucky to have our very own self standing office. So when we bought this house just on 12 months ago, it had a separate three bedroom cottage which was amazing because obviously that was going to creep create our office so that we could have that bit of separation. And I loved my painter's face when I said I wanted to paint it pink and it is we call it Casa Rosada. So come on in and check out Casa Rosada. I've got a lot of questions about these letters. I anyone that follows me for a while knows how obsessed I am with Palm Springs. They come from Palm Springs so they look very Palm Springs ish. So at the moment this is so funny watching them try to follow me. I don't know how people are like bloggers. So at the moment it's a bit of a mess because we're in launch time and so usually this is our beautiful board table that we have our meetings on at the moment. It's our packing station. You can see all of our member boxes already here. I'll give you a little sneak peek. Oh, hang on. Oh, can we see or you can't see underneath but they are all ready to go for members if you are wanting. Oh, I should say that we are doing a draw at the end of the week as well. Tina Tower.com win if you want to be in that, you can go and look at that. So we've got like Our whole lounge room set up our kitchen here so that we're pretty self sufficient, which is the way. The way that I like it, so that I can go to work and go home. So then through here, grab bathroom, which I won't show you. Oh, here's our grand prize. So if you go in that tinatower.com win, you can win this one person at the end of the week, which would be fun. And today on every day's Live, we're giving away a copy of the book. In here we have our guest bedroom. So this is for clients. It's for. Who else is it for? Clients? Family, friends. If I work late. Yeah, and I love it. It's just so pretty. And the bed is so bougie. It's something I would never have in my own house. And so I like to get a bit creative with that. And then this is my office. So again, it's a little Larry, but I love it that way. I like to work alone. I used to have Jarrah in the office with me, but because I'm on calls all the time, it got quite a lot. So it's much easier for me to have my own office. I do turn it around every now and then. So sometimes I used to have the colored bookshelf as the background. I have this as the background. And now at the moment I've got the desk facing out the window for natural light. So whenever you're filming, it's a really good idea to try and utilize natural light. But I'll show you what I've got on my desk so that you can see kind of what I use to run run our business. So let me give you a tour. This is essential. I bought probably seven or eight different phone tripods before I found this one. It is the brand newer, I think you say it N E E W E R. The reason I went through seven before I found this one was because all of them. So whenever I had normal phone tripods, you put the phone in there and it falls down. This one, it's got a really good weighted bottom which means it doesn't fall down. So then when I'm on live calls, if I'm doing Facebook and Instagram at the same time, normally I've got my webcam here, which is a Logitech Brio 4K. I never thought that you needed a webcam until I got that. And I'm like, oh my gosh, the difference it makes is huge. So then when I do live streams, I can get the tripod right next to it And I can basically put the camera of the phone right next to the camera of the webcam, which means you don't have the eyes going like I do right now, like going, hi Instagram, Hi Facebook. You don't have that sort of problem going on. So that's what I'd recommend in terms of that. I have two screens going because I always have what I'm doing currently, but then I always have different things that I'm working on on the other screen there. I'm a big fan of Max, obviously. I've got Mac everything. The other thing I love, I've got these lights. I never use these lights during the day because, well, I don't need them with the natural light. But if I'm doing something in the US that's kind of early and it's dark, you definitely need the light. So I have a combination of a ring light and this is an Elgato light. Elgato key light. Jarrah's going, yes, Elgato key light. Thanks J. Any questions come up? No, but blissfulart. I'm not sure who that is. Said that we can use the bedroom for lunchtime naps. Oh, yes. I like that idea. If you've got any questions as I'm going, just pop them in the comments and I'll answer them for you. But the Elgato key light is good. It's a really good light, having the panel, not the ring because it just gives off a lot softer light and it's got a lot of control in terms of being able to slide it up to warm light, cold light, how much intensity you want that light. The downside of it is it's all controlled by the computer. Computer, which, you know, it sounds like an upside, but it's amazing how many times like it glitches out a little bit. So I love the light but also I wish it worked better technologically then I have here. This is probably my most used piece of equipment is my rode podcaster mic. That is what is in our competition that we're giving away for launch week. I've got to be careful how I grab that. We'll give away for launch week. So if you haven't if you've me given joined in the live late go to tinatower.com win and you can get into that. So with the rode podcaster mic, it comes like this and this is how I used it for a long time. Yes, Jera, we've got a lady called Jen saying your second monitor, is that a Mac 2 or just a random brand? No. So that is a hp and I got that one the best. It's not the best type, but it's kind of. It's the middle of the range, so it depends on how much you want to spend on a second monitor. The that was the cheapest 4K monitor I could get. So it's about $600, which is a lot cheaper than a second computer, obviously. So yeah, with the podcast and it comes like this, but I have a slight lisp that if you listen closely, you can hear it. And I also pop quite a lot when I speak with my P's and my D's, which is a problem when you're podcasting. And so I got this, which was $5 off eBay, to go on the front, which lessens that pop sound. So I very much recommend doing that. Some people have like the big pop filters that go on the front, but the big pop filters are quite bulky and they cost a couple hundred dollars. So I got this because I also use it for my zoom calls. So it's always sitting there just below where you can see on the camera. So it's my everyday mic, which means that I don't have to project my voice as much when I'm doing live zoom sessions. It means I don't have to, but I still do because it's a habit. And I'm just like, okay, now I'm on, but I really should be quieter. And then I've got my headphones to do that. Unfortunately, I just got Jarrah a new pair of headphones as well. And there are so many beautiful headphones on the market. Bose have beautiful white ones. Beats have beautiful rose gold ones. They don't work anywhere near as efficiently as these black, those ones. So that is why we have the ones that aren't as pretty, because they work the best. We've also got a walking treadmill there that I have not used yet, but I have all the intentions with my stand up desk. So I've got the stand up desk that can be moved, which I do use that part, but I haven't actually put the treadmill underneath. But, you know, it all starts with good intentions. All right, let's get out of my office and we'll come into the rest. Follow me. So we've got our storeroom part. It's amazing how much stuff we have for an online business. So we've got all of the books that I write, all of our gifts for our empire builder members, all of our boxes to wrap up, everything in there. This Is new. Our foyer sign. Can you see over Jarrah's head?

Yeah.

So we just got that made because I wanted something like an area to bring our bell. So when we get new Empire Builder members, we ring our bell, which I love. If you want to know about empire builders, go toherempirebuilder.com Then we have Mark. Say hi, Mark. Mark is our marketing coordinator. Mark, the marketing, market marketing. Jared's desk. And then Cassidy's desk here that does social media. And then we've got. What have we got over here? So we print a lot of stuff. Even though we're an online business, I do love giving things that are tangible. So we do print quite a lot of things for our members. And then our packing station, which is for all of our gifts that we give out. All of the books, everything that we have there. Sorry, the wall calendar. Oh, yes. Jarrah wants to show the wall calendar. So here is our calendar where we map out our year. This is really important. Again, it's kind of like the walking treadmill desk we planned this year at the start. So in an ideal world, I have one week off a month that has no live sessions in it. That has not happened yet. But again, good intentions that we will be doing better in the future. Yeah. Kylie west has asked where we got our desks from. So these desks are ikea. So the ones that go up and down with the button is IKEA desks. When we had our new team start, we actually couldn't get IKEA because we're in lockdown for 11 million years. And so I got office works desks, which are nowhere near as good. So I would recommend if you can get to ikea, they're really, really good and they work really beautifully. And Karen and Helen from McCrae and Lynch Design have asked, are AirPods an okay alternative when on a podcast? Oh, good question. If you've got nothing else. Yes. But it does sound a little bit tinny. So in the absence of anything else, AirPods work better than, like on your Mac. You've built in microphone, your screen up there. Yeah. So also. Yeah, so it is good in the absence of anything else. But I would definitely, if you're doing a lot of podcasts or if you're doing a lot of zoom sessions, invest in a mic. So I've got the RODE podcaster mic. The model under that is. Do you remember what yours is called? The Rode ntb, nsbs, something like that. We'll put it in the comments of this so that you can see it later. We've Got a list of all of the resources that we use as well. And then the other thing I'll point out while we're here in the rest of the teams room is these are the new computers from Apple which is super duper fast. So they're using the Apple chip. So previously the computer that I've got is the iMac 27 inch iMac. So the big one. But it costs a lot of money to add the extra memory, to add the extra speed, to add all the extra extras on there. So it was about nearly $5,000 for that computer. These ones are $1800 and go even faster. So I would definitely encourage those. Danielle Stevens has asked where we got our war calendar from Amazon, but I can't remember the name of it. We will link to that. Also Matt's trying to see if the name is on there. It's. Yeah, it's just a big giant whiteboard one so that we can scrub it out each month. I love to sit down at the start of the year and map everything out. This year's kind of gone to pepew because all of the travel stopped and all of that sort of thing. But in a normal year we really do need to do it so that we can fit in all of our live sessions, all of our time off. And I find if I don't map that out, it just does not happen. So that is teen room. Come with me and I will show you our filming area. So you're going to take a little bit of a walk on the wild side here. We've got Holly. Hi, Holly. Hi, Holly. So one, one of the things that we wanted to do when we, when we got. I'll let you guys catch up. One of the things that, that we wanted to do, we've got the office which is a massive amount of space, but because we've got people in there all the time and there's always people. Things happening. I wanted a space that was nice and quiet that I could use that I called my leisure lounge. But it's also where I do all of my filming and so I'm going to show you that so you can see what I use in terms of if you've got any questions, feel free to put them in the comments and I can answer them for you. Or if you haven't gone in the giveaway yet, go to tinatower.com win. And we will draw that later. There's my leisure mount up here. It's a beautiful spring day. No questions coming over there?

No.

No. Okay, up we go. So this is a multi purpose room called my leisure lounge. And then in here, this is where I do all of my Tina things in here. If you could see my husband's face right now, he's so cringing, going, oh my gosh, Tina, don't work with your partners. My peloton bike, which is my new obsession. I've got my meditation area with all my crystals where I get a little woo woo there. My piano that I practice on here is where I can do podcasts if I want to get out of my normal office. So even though I have a really, really spectacular area to do all of my work in the office, it's amazing how a difference space creates a different state. So I like to have the podcast area here so that if I want to get a bit creative, I can come and do that. So I've got another set up here, old computer, so it's not as fast, so I don't do much on it. But with the podcast mic and the webcam and then I want to show you my filming setup. So if we turn there and we look at this is where if you've done any of my courses, you see this background. So it's really good to have a good background when you are filming. That's got something set up so that it's nice and easy to use. So the different components that we've got here, this camera is actually really, really old. I bought it. When did I buy it? I think it's about four or five years old now, which for a camera, oh my gosh. The amount of. The amount of use this thing has got is amazing. But it will film all of my course content. Then I have the rode shotgun mic plugged in the top. So the rota shotgun mic works perfectly for here. So if I'm sitting here doing my normal course content, it's perfect because I'm less than 2 meters. If I am further than 2 meters away, we transfer the mic to the arm and then the arm can come up and drop down if I'm further away. So if I was going to be like, you know, that far away, I would use the arm for it and hide it. Then we've got the box lights. So again, this is the same brand that Neewa Neema brand, that one. These are really good in terms of for your complexion, so depending on what your complexion is. So if I turn them on so they're really, really soft, so they're not ones that are gonna wash you out completely. And then depending on what the natural light Situation is, and depending on what light you look best in, depends on the different sort of gauges. So you've got. If you look at the back here, you can either go yellow or white light. So for mine, I usually have the yellow light turned down and the white light turned up because that's what works best for my skin tone in there as well. Are we going? Oh.

Might have gotten hot.

How was that? Let me see. Oh, that's very disappointing. The Instagram has just ran out. Jump back on there. Has it got you? Not yet. It's still on WI fi, though, so it's going to be a little bit hard. The downside of live, you're still on Facebook. Yeah. Hello, everybody. We'll just sort this one out so that we can keep going live here, so that we can get it across on Insta. Get out of that one. All right.

The phone is pretty hot.

We'll jump back on. Yeah, that's so weird. The Insta live feed just stopped because the phone got too hot. We just got too much going on. Okay, so we've got the lights there, we've got the mic, we've got the camera, we've got the tripod. The other things that I want to show you is over here for filming stuff. So I've got here. I. I'm hyper organized with different things. So once you start getting lots of equipment, it can be really hard knowing what cord goes with what and you just end up with this big mess. So I like to keep everything all nice and organized. So we use rode mic packs. So if I was going to be walking through. So say we're doing a video like this, but doing it professionally, I would use this. So these ones go slip on top of the camera, the same as that other mic does. And then that one goes in your back pocket and just has the lapel mic that clips onto your top. So that way you can just kind of roam around with it and it doesn't matter. I could be 20 meters away and it'll still work. So we use those ones quite, quite a lot. And then the other thing I wanted to show you here was the teleprompter. So some people do like teleprompters. I'm not a big fan of, like reading out as you go. I would never film a course and read word for word with a teleprompter. It just sounds very stale and rehearsed. But what I do like to use is dot points. So if I've got different dot points that I need to go Over. I'll use it. So it's very simple. We use this one, which is called the Parrot. There it is. There, the Parrot Teleprompter. So all it does is it screws onto the front of the camera so that one screws onto the front of the camera lens. It fits all different types of camera lenses. And then I slip my phone underneath so you can see this kind of down. I slip my phone under there and use the app, and it just rolls the writing. So really cool. Really easy to use. Nice and simple. So that is the filming area. Any questions on the filming area? No questions. Come up. Facebook's very quiet.

I don't know what to tell.

Yeah, no questions. I'm just going to have a look at the screen real quick. Yeah, okay. No question. Oh, yeah. Hi, Natalie.

That's what I said.

Yeah, Perfect. Yes. So I've got one from Nicole. Would you always recommend video podcast over just audio podcasts? Good question. So the good part about videoing it, if you can, is that you've got more content to use. So you can put it on as a video, then you can get the audio and put that on, and then you can chop it up in a million different ways. There's from one podcast episode, you can get about 20 pieces of content out of that, which is good. The downside is, so for me, with podcasting, I'll often sit there and podcast, and I'm in my pajamas. The good part about podcasting is you can do it anytime and you can show up exactly as you are, which is really, really nice because, you know, sometimes you're just not video ready. So I find audio much easier than video. But if you can, like, if you're ready and you can do that video, then that's great because it gives you heaps more content that you can use and put on. All right, I'm going to take you back down to the office so Jarrah can draw our draw.

Yes, Mart from Melissa Bush. So impressive. How long did it take you for your setup to look like this? And what did version one look like?

Oh, good question. Version one looks like this. That's what version one looks like. So, I mean, I've got a good setup now, but I don't have. It's not like super super, you know, out of touch. So the setup I have now is probably about $3,000 worth of equipment, not including computers, but like lights, cameras, mics, all of that sort of thing is about $3,000. You can go nuts with this stuff. Like, you can go, oh, you could spend so much money on equipment. And so I'm a big fan of starting with where you're at and starting with what you need, like using the phone to start off with. I mean, this iPhone 12 is amazing at like the phone quality. The video quality is really, really good. So you can start with something like that and use a lapel mic. So like these mics that I didn't show you before, but you can use these. So these lapel mics that just go straight into your phone. So that is how with my podcast, I did the first. So now we're up to about episode 140 something. And I did the first 60 episodes with this. So that is how I started both with course content and with. Actually my first course. I had that camera. So that was the first camera I had, but I had no mic or anything. So I had to sit within a meter of the camera to get the sound going. And so the sound is not fab, but done is better than perfect. And people have learned a lot out of it. And so you start where you're at and then upgrade as you go.

And then just from Denise, can you please put into the chat some of the brands you recommend? And so we've addressed that earlier. Just want to touch on that.

Not the best moderator of comments. So if you go to my homepage, Tina Tower.com you will see under free resources, there's six boxes. One of those boxes is what is your course creator equipment checklist. That is all. Everything that I've shown here is all on there. And there's lots of different options in there as well, of different things that I've used and what they're good for. So you can go to that. But I'll also put in the comments later so that you've got that quick link to be able to do that. So if you haven't gone in our competition, go to tina tower.com forward/win. We're going to draw that in about five minutes, but I'm going to take you back down to the office so that Jarrah can get that competition all set up. So come on out, guys. You have one look back at the. At the beautiful leisure lounge space. It is like my favorite room in the world. Like, I just. I can't tell you how much happiness I get from this room and being able to have things set up. It is, it is one of my. One of my favorite parts. Oh, you're gonna work backwards, guys. It makes life so much easier having good equipment and having it easily Set up. Now. I've got my kids watching me too, laughing at me. So we'll have hi voice. All right, so any questions on equipment or how to get set up equipment or what you need or anything in terms of course creation? So if you're watching her, Empire Builder is open this week. So if you're wanting to really supercharge your course creation and the business behind online courses, go to hermpirebuilder.com and you can apply. So when. When you apply for her Empire Builder, we'll jump on the phone, have a quick call, make sure it's right for you, and then. And then you can sit and jump in and start building your course. I don't know how we're going to avoid all the cars, everything. And like, when we filmed, I said try and avoid the cars and the house, but it's a bit impossible with everything that we're doing. So we'll go back into Casa Rosada, our beautiful pink house, and then I'll answer any questions that you've got while Jarrah is drawing our competition. So again, Tina Tower dot com. Lynn, if you want to go in that one, please stop getting some steps in today. So good. All right, back into my office. Come on down, Nadine Champion. Hi, Nadine. She said, love how easy you're making it for us to replicate what you've done. Right. All right, I'll put you back in here. Let's turn around. Jarrah's ran away already. All right, I'm putting you back in my tripod that I showed you earlier so that you've got that there. All right, let me grab this book in there. Let's turn that around. Thank you, Matt. Thank you. All right, we'll have you sitting there. So, Facebook, you're just going to kind of. You've got a weird view here, let me. I don't normally use it this way, so let me get a box and set you up. You are welcome, Danielle. All right, so any other questions that we've got on the equipment and different things that we used? So one of the biggest things to really, like, take stock of is, like I said before, it didn't start off like this. I think that sometimes it's really easy to get started in course creation and see a setup like this and go, you know what? I am going to get all the things and just go on a shopping spree because it is the fun part. The fun part is definitely being able to go and set everything up, but you don't want to waste money. That you don't need to. So what I always recommend is start off with something simple. Get your first course out there. And then as you're starting to make more profit, start upgrading the equipment and upgrading the setup that you have. But for people that have come on late, like, I will. I will just show you here. Hi, Sammy. Yes, I will, Denise. So if I turn this around here. Hang on, let me turn both of you around. This is the downside of doing a roving one is all that the different things. So the main things that I'd recommend is the podcast mic and a webcam and good lighting. That is really the main parts of it is to be able to go, how can you have good sound and how can you have good image if you've got that? It's not the most expensive setup, but it will make the biggest difference in there as well. All right, is there any other questions that we have? Jarrah, can you bring it in and tell us who the winner is? Because I don't have the screen. Thank you. Jarrah is drawing the prize now for everyone that went in, the daily prize. So what we're doing through launch week is every time we go live, whoever is on the live and enters at that time will go into the draw to win a copy of my book. And then everyone will go in at the end of the week to win their very own rode podcast and mic, as well as some other cool, cool stuff that we've got in there as well. So any questions, everyone's very quiet today. Let me know. Natalie, how long did it take you to get a decent podcast audience? Depends on what you call decent. So I think from day one, I was stoked when it first started. So when I think in Australia, the average is a hundred and something downloads per week. And for a lot of people that I talk to, they go, you know, I don't know if podcasting is worth it because, you know, 100 people a week is not that many people. And I'm like, when you do a podcast, that's a hundred people that have you in their ears that are listening. Because when you're in a live like this, people are logging on, they're logging off. They're not really taking as much notice of it. Whereas when you're listening to a podcast, you're usually committed to the whole thing. Oh, thank you. Do you want to do it? You can do it. They're usually committed to the whole thing. And so I think even if you've got 10 people listening on a podcast, I think it is worth doing. Now we have anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 downloads a week, which I'm just incredibly stoked with and grateful for. And we are at episode 140 something. So we've been going for three years on the podcast every week. So big commitment takes time. Like everything, you know, it takes time to build up. But if you're consistent and consistently show up, then the benefits are going to come for that. All right, Jarrah has the. The winner of the. Of the thing here. She's like, just. Just tap this. This is how we do Wheel of Names is how we draw it. So whenever anyone goes in the competition, the app we use is called Wheel of Names, if you're wanting to do the same sort of thing in your business. So we'll tap this. It's hard, hard to see, but you. You can see up there. Here we go. And the winner is. Who's the winner? Karen McCrae. So, Karen, your copy of the book will be sent to you and everybody else that went in it as well will also go into the competition to win a podcast mic at the end of the week as well. All right, we've got some more questions coming in, so feel free to put any more questions in the comment box below for me if you've got them there. Also, if you're wanting to join her Empire Builder, now is the time. We are only open for eight days. We're on day two, so seven days left. We close next Tuesday. So go to her empire builder.com if you're wanting to apply for that. So question we got here from Nicole in the beginning. Did you edit it yourself or did you outsource? I. I am a diy. A lot of people will say outsource everything. I am a big fan in really knowing how to do everything. And at the beginning, I was cash poor time rich. And so I was like, you know what? I will do it myself. And I. I don't edit a podcast like a professional podcast editor would. So a professional sound engineer will literally make cuts all through it will change all the inflections, will minimize background. I will do so much editing, which, you know, is fabulous and it sounds great, but I don't think it's entirely necessary. So I am more, you know, it, casual. If I stop and do what I just did, then I'm going to keep that in. I'm not going to edit it out because it's just the way that I talk normally. And to me, video podcasting courses, all of it is really going. I don't think it needs to be that polished. I think it's okay to do it as you would normally, to have it a little bit more natural. So if you've got good sound quality in terms of like a good mic, then I think you don't need that much editing. So I kind of put on the front, which got our main bit put on the back. It takes all of 10 minutes. And I use a program called Audition, Adobe Audition. And the only reason I use that is because I already have the Adobe Creative Suite. So it's not necessarily the best one, it's just the one that I have available. So I am a fan of having good things, but also not spending money that we don't need to, because a profitable business is the one that's going to last the most. So we want to do the most that we can to ensure the profitability for the longest time. All right, any other questions that people have, if you've got any questions about her Empire builder, let me know as well. Otherwise, just go to her empire builder.com and you can get all of that information. And I'll put the links for things in the comments once this video is all uploaded in there as well. All right, thank you so much, everybody. Bye.