Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, a show where we talk about life, business, and everything on the in between. I am doing something I absolutely love, which is talking to you. I'm gonna be doing a q and a session. Now, for those of you who don't know, the team will source questions that we get commonly asked, and with people's permission, they will send me these questions. I do not know these questions in advance, and so when I answer, it's coming up from the truest realist, most honest part of who I am. So if you are ready to go, let's dive right in. We're gonna do a flash fire q and a session. More than anything, I hope you have clear takeaways to take actions, learn less, and do more. On that note, let's dive right in. Question number one, after pivoting to a brand new business, how do I establish myself as an authority when I am so new to the industry? Well, the first thing that comes up is one of my favorite quotes is that every professional was at one time an amateur. So you're not alone. Somebody has gone before you and has done the same thing you really want to do. So the good news is that you're not alone in that regard. And then the second thing is to admit what you don't know. It is a level of humility that will allow you to learn what it is you need to do and then take action against this. I would caution against anybody entering a new industry acting or pretending like they knew everything already. The goal to build credibility with your audience is to be a hundred percent yourself. Will there be some people who won't buy from you because you don't have street credibility or you're not seasoned, perhaps, but will there be people who buy from you because you don't have street credibility because you're learning, because you offer a different perspective skill set, or a set of experiences that differentiate you from your audience? Just because you're new doesn't mean that your insights are not as valuable. So what do I recommend you do? Be honest with where you are about the journey. Be open about what the journey looks like for you. Share what it is you know, and always remember and stay rooted to the fact that it is quite possible. Your greatest business advantage is to create content or create an offer for the version of you of who you used to be. You don't need to speak to people to the right or to the left of you, and you don't even need to speak to the people who are ahead of you. Your greatest asset could be to cleanly and clearly speak to the version of who you once were. What would you go back and tell yourself two weeks ago, two months ago, two years ago, that my friend is your content that will help differentiate you when you are new in an industry? All right, let's dive right into another question. Okay, so, oh, another question. Overcoming imposter syndrome as I shift from the only employee of my business to hiring my first employee question was, how did you conquer the belief that you're not good enough to take your first hire and make your first employee? Well, I'm gonna be honest with you. I actually wish that I overcame this like mountain of belief. But the fact of the matter was I got to a place in my business where things were so overwhelming that there were so many things for me to do, that I actually didn't have time to think about imposter syndrome. I was just like, Hey, I got a billion things on fire. Can you grab a bucket and help me put it out? So the very first person I hired. Now, mind you, the first business I hired didn't come until a decade of me owning and running a business. My husband and business partner is jd. We had run the business together at this time. I had started the business, the business, what, 10 years old. But JD had come in about two years after I'd started it. So it was the two of us. Now, what we did in the business was clearly distinctive. Like he was gonna be doing finances, legal work, he'd be doing shipping, fulfillment, things of that nature. Now, I was gonna be doing branding, marketing, content creation, photography, client meetings. But then all of a sudden we got to a point to where it was actual fulfillment that became our biggest bottleneck. I needed somebody to help edit my photos, design albums, ship things out, prep items for editors of magazines, prep items to be featured in press. I needed somebody to come in. And the biggest pressure point was, how do you make our marketing run faster? So what we did was clearly to note what the role was, we hired our very first person on the team. Her name was Tammy, love her to bits and pieces, absolute phenomenal person. But she had said, Hey, I am my own business owner. I don't have experience being an employee. And I was like, great. I don't have an experience hiring an employee. The best thing that I did was actually let her know I didn't know what I was doing. I knew what I needed her to do. I didn't know how I needed her to do it. So then what I did was I asked questions. I said, if I gave you this project, do you feel like you can fulfill on the steps in creating steps of what you should do next? And she's like, I think about 80% there. I said, great. List out what you need to do. And then I'll come in and say, Hey, have you thought about it from this perspective? Or this would be really helpful. So we both admitted what we didn't know. Then I asked her to take the lead and create the framework, and then I stepped in as a leader to say, have you considered this? And then once we went through the process, the first time we went back and say, what worked? What didn't worked? What could be optimized? It took us about three to four big projects, big editing ventures. When I was commissioned by an editor to go through where were the deliverables? How do we save time? What are the systems that we need to put in place? Now, once we did it three or four times, then what we created was an S O P standard Operating procedures. That's what I think an SOP means. And if it's not, I just created a really great acronym, standard Operating Procedures. That's what an SOP is. So we created an SOP because what I wanted to do, and what I still feel firmly to this day, is I want people to work themselves out of a job. Once you master how to create the system, the goal for the SOP is to bring in your replacement. And people are thinking, wait a replacement, why would you need a replacement? Because I want people growing within the organization. Now, if you would like to stay there and do that for the rest of your life and retire on the Jasmine Start team, perfect. But if you would like to do something else within the organization, if you would like to grow horizontally or vertically, what we need to do is to make sure that somebody got into your mind and followed your system. And how do we combine both of these things? Well, this person comes in, they understand what I want, what I need, then they test, then we iterate, we get feedback, and then we create the so P. So where does this go for imposter syndrome? Listen, you're overwhelmed. Find a solution, admit what you don't know, get people on the same page, create a system. That's the best I got. Let's get into another question. And we're really focusing on what the greatest business struggles are. And this question is coming in the definition of refining, excuse me, redefining my business model so I can scale. Ooh, I love this. So what was Teresa's specific question? If you had to start again, what would you do differently to scale your business? Ooh, I love this question. I love this question. Here's why I was never in the mindset of scaling my business. That was a word that I actually didn't come to embrace about 13 years, 14 years into my business. So first things first, I would go back and ask myself, what does scale mean for me? Because everybody has a different definition of scale. Like there are some people who wanna scale their business to become a unicorn business. That's a 1 billion evaluation. Some people wanna scale their business to a hundred million. Some people wanna scale their business to a hundred thousand. Okay? It goes with the vast spectrum of options. So number one would be to define what your version of scale is, because once you actually know what the big vision is, then you can map your actions to your aspirations. You can map your hires to the hierarchy. You can map your work day to your ambitions. Okay, so what do I wish I would change? Actually, nothing, because I learned so much of what I needed. Now, what I did without knowing it was because we were a startup and super scrappy, I needed to hire and attract people who I call Swiss Army knives. These are people who couldn't do a lot of things really well. So like a Jack or Jill of all trades. Now, a Swiss Army knife is great because I mean, it's like a spoon. It's knife, it's a pair of scissors, it's, you know, you could do a lot of things with the Swiss Army knife. However, as the team grew, there was a lot of people who could do a lot of things. Well, that was great. But then I realized the business reach to Plateau, and what we needed was less of a Swiss army knife and more of a surgery scalpel. I needed somebody to come in with a set of experiences, histories, lessons, a very clean specialist in what it is they did. It was only then once the business had reached a plateau that I realized we actually had to hire a different type of manager, a different type of division director. This was somebody who was coming in with pre-existing experience and knowledge. Would I have hired that person in year 10 of my business? No, because that person would only do one thing really, really, really well. But could we justify that person's salary? Could we justify the added expenses of vacation and 401k and insurance? No, we needed a lot of people doing a lot of things. And then as the business grew, and the next version, the next definition of what scale meant for me was I needed to hire a specialist. So what do I wish I had done sooner? I wish I would've introduced specialist earlier. How much earlier? I actually don't know at this point in time. But now taking a big step back, what I am going to do is hire according to what I need in a specific division. So a lot of times, and then it's like when I say this, it feels a little vulnerable. It feels a little bit silly, but we were having copywriters who were for marketing copywriters for our SOPs, like standard operating procedures, copywriters for content on the inside of social care writer, copywriters for a podcast, copywriters for free freebies that we were creating. And that was really great, except for the fact that like we needed a conversion copywriter for a funnel. That was a big ask for a person who could do a lot of things well, but could they specialize in that one thing? And so knowing that if you want to scale your business and you know you need to scale your business specifically in one department, in one specific way, hire a scalpel. If you're really just trying to grow the business to like move the ball down the field, then hiring a Swiss Army knife is just as valuable. It is just a different decision for a different point in your business. Teresa, thank you for asking that question. I hope it was helpful. Okay. Ooh, okay. Let's get into a little bit of time management. This is the context of how to juggle everything. When you are an ambitious entrepreneur and you have built a successful business, but you're finding yourself working more and more hours. Done, done, done. Okay, I love what I do, but I have just adopted my stepdaughter and my priorities have changed. So my question is, how do you set and achieve big goals, especially around mindset? Thank you so much, Rhonda, for asking this question. So first and foremost, congratulations on growing your family. Congratulations on adopting your stepdaughter. Let's focus on the things that actually are the big pivotal things that waken us in new ways. So congratulations on doing that. Once you move past that point and you realize you're working more and more hours, I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna parse out your question because on the inside of Social Curator, we coach and we understand that people ask a question, but oftentimes there's an underlying question. There's the question that should be asked, but we're not sure if we should ask it or even how to ask it, because how you started Ramonda, you had said, I'm an ambitious entrepreneur, I've built a successful business, and now I'm working more and more hours. But then the question became, how do you set and achieve big goals, especially around mindset? It's like you're asking two different things that are diametrically opposed. One is, how do I stop working more? And the other is, how do I hit big goals, especially around mindset? First and foremost, when you say that you have built a successful business, my first piece of advice is to define what success means for you. Now, if you are maintaining the same version of success as you did last year or the year before, you haven't accounted for things that have changed within your business and your personal life. Success for you might no longer be getting 1.5 million in revenue. It might, it might not, because if getting 1.5 million in revenue comes at the cost of you spending time with your brand new daughter who you just adopted, you wouldn't feel successful. You would feel like you hit a money goal. Both are good, but if you don't know what you're hitting, you're always gonna feel dissatisfied. So my first piece of advice to Youand is to, number one, define what success looks like for you and not define success according to what other people have and what other people are doing, what other people are wearing, or what other people are going. What do you need right now in your life, in business, for you to take a big step back and say, I did what I set out to do. When you define your version of success, even if it means I am going to my son's every single soccer game, I'm going to every single dancer title, I'm gonna volunteer for the PTA and I'm gonna take my family on a four week vacation. If you get to do all of that while making $75,000, and you are so happy and you've defined that as your success, congratulations, you are a success. If in the process you decide that those are your goals and you make a hundred thousand, but you're really feeling down about yourself, you beat your goals, and yet you're beating yourself up because what you saw with somebody else who got into the game later than you is having a more successful year, and then you say, I'm not successful on what? On what somebody else has done in a similar situation, are you using what you once defined as your success now, defining it as your failure because you've decided to compare yourself. Friends, we get caught up in the game of comparison and then use it as our own definition when my biggest piece of advice is, what do you want to do? Whom would you like to do it with? Whom would you like to do it for? And how much would you like to make? You answer those four questions and you have a very clear idea of what your success is. And once you have defined your success, you have to ask yourself, can I reach the success given the amount of time I have? So Ramonda, you already have a successful business, but to hit bigger goals, you're saying you must do more. The question is, can you not do more? Can you add more value to your current customers and charge extra for the added value, working the same, making more? There is a ton of different ways to slice this pie. I don't know how you wanna slice it until you, number one, define what success means for you. Pledge that you are going to promise to work towards that version of success, and then get really creative and curious around how you are going to achieve those goals. So this is my attempt at answering your two part question. How do I work less? How do I set big goals when my values and priorities have changed? I hope my answer has done a little bit of justice, but the simplicity is if you don't know where you're going, you will never know how to celebrate once you arrive. So all I'm asking us to do is put a little X on that map and say, I have arrived regardless of what other people around me are doing. Friends, families, frenemies, haters, anybody who's listening, you're welcome here. I don't expect us to agree on all things, but what I hope we do is have a safe space for conversations around ways we can all get better in our own way. Thank you for listening to the Jasmine Star Show. I love these conversations because there's a real part of me connecting with a real part of you and having real conversations about life, business, and everything on the in between. If this show has ever connected with you and you think that somebody else would be, find it valuable, hey, share it on stories, leave a comment spread a little bit of cyber love, or My most favorite thing is to like and subscribe to this show from whatever podcasting platform you're listening to or you happen to be watching this video, hit the little ding mark right there on YouTube. Friends, it is always an honor and a privilege. I hope you have a beautiful day and let's get slay in. Now it's time a four of you shout out to Kim Milo. I don't know how to say your name, but you're right. Jasmine doesn't know it, but she's my business bestie. I just love her straightforward, no nonsense approach to building a business that you love. Hey, I love that so much. Thank you so much. And she signed her name. Ashley, shout out. Ashley, thank you for listening to the Jasmine Star Show.