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My guest in this episode of The Dent Podcast is the unstoppable Tina Tower. From reading Tina’s bio, you’d be forgiven for thinking that she was a lot older than 32. She invested in her first property at the age of 18, started her first business aged 20, and by the time she was 30 had built and sold two businesses, had two kids, and set up a national franchise network. In 2014, Tina was named the Telstra Australian Young Businesswoman of the Year and in 2016 was named one of ten Australian entrepreneurs to watch.
One of Tina’s greatest successes has been launching and overseeing the amazing growth of Begin Bright – a company of school readiness and primary tutoring centres that pride themselves on creating happy, smart and confident children. Tina founded Begin Bright in 2008 and when she began franchising the business in 2011 she became Australia’s youngest female franchisor. There are now 30 franchises across Australia.
Tina’s journey is one of learning curves, overcoming adversity and figuring out how to balance family life with business. She’s amassed plenty of wisdom along the way and in this episode really opens up about some of her greatest highs and lows. It’s a great conversation and is incredibly useful for anyone interested in the inner-mechanics of franchising, how to build a strong personal brand and approaching team culture.
In this episode we talk about:
- How Tina went about building her brand in the early days of her business
- Tina’s method for breaking every day into 15 minute increments to save time and improve efficiency
- How Tina devises her five year plans
- Why building a personal brand is the cheapest way to build a business
- How Tina evolved her business model early on to meet the needs of her clients
- Promoting a business by writing articles
- How Tina targeted certain markets
- Going about curating your company values
- How Tina developed her own unique leadership style
- Tina’s complex and rigorous screening process for hiring and looking for franchisees
- How to scale your business through franchising
- Thoughts on team culture in recruiting and performance
- How Tina balances her family life and business
- Taking her business from zero to $3 million in less than five years
- How to handle having a strong media personality
- The importance of profile when selling a product or service
- The moment Tina realised she wasn’t the best person to take the business forward
- Tina’s work with The Hunger Project and Room to Read
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