Eugenia Woo (00:00:01) - Has there been a time in your business where you felt completely defeated and thought, How am I going to get past this? Hi, I'm Eugenia Wu, podcast manager for the Jasmine Star Show. In this episode, which originally aired on the Multiversity podcast, Jasmine shares the vulnerable details of her personal story, the challenges she's faced in her business, and how she's overcome the hardest days while building her software company. Social Curator. Listening.
Joel Huculak (00:00:43) - Welcome to the Motiversity Show, Jasmine. We're your hosts. I'm Joel, the founder and CEO of Multiversity. And I'm joined by Kritika are head of production. Why don't you start with telling us about yourself?
Jasmine Star (00:00:54) - I am the daughter of an immigrant. My father is from Mexico. My mother is from Puerto Rico. So first generation Latina, first generation college student, first generation postgraduate student. So I ended up going to law school on a full ride scholarship. I always say not because I was smart, but because I learned how to apply myself. And then I later applied that same dedication to actually asking what I wanted to do with my life.
Jasmine Star (00:01:16) - I was in law school and my mom had a relapse with brain cancer, and it really caused me to make some distinct decisions about where I saw my future. My mom was 50 years old and I was 25, and I thought to myself, I don't want to die a lawyer. I was going through the motions of being the child of like the first generation in America to take advantage of education, to take advantage of socioeconomic opportunities. And so I did what I thought I should do, never questioning how happy or fulfilled I was in the process. And so I took a medical leave from law school to be with my mom. The prognosis wasn't good, and it was around that time where I started asking myself, What do I actually want to do? One of the things I wanted to marry my high school sweetheart. I wanted my mom to see us get married. And so by this time we'd been dating like nine and a half years. And I kept on saying, I'm like, Let me just finish school and then we'll get married.
Jasmine Star (00:02:05) - And then, like, literally on the flip of time, I was like, Let's get married. Let's get married now. I want my mom to be there. So my mom and dad walked me down the aisle. It was such an amazing moment. But then it also forced me to think to myself, What do I want to do? And it was there at our wedding that I saw this photographer. We got married in Hawaii and our photographer had flown from Santa Barbara, California, to Hawaii. And I thought to myself, that man is living the best life I've ever seen. And I'm like, How could I do something like that? And that was the start of my entire career. I was just like, How do I do that? I didn't have a camera. And then I told my husband when I got back from our honeymoon, we're like, I think I want to be a photographer. And he's like, Great, Yeah, you probably need a camera. And I'm like, I know.
Jasmine Star (00:02:44) - Okay, well, so we'll figure this out. So that Christmas he gets me a camera from Best Buy, and then I go to Google and I figure out like I teach myself photography. But it's at this point in time that I'm 26 years old and never in my entire life had I had never, ever met a person to have ever started a business, their own business. And so here I am thinking like, Oh, the audacity. What flagrant ambition to start something when you don't even know a single person in your life who've ever started a business? I couldn't ask anybody any questions, but thankfully there was Google and it was there at that time that I decided to start my career and I said, I'll go back to law school and get my scholarships. I just need to give this like a year. Let me just try it for a year. And that first year I had created a six figure revenue stream made over $100,000 my first year in business. And I'm like, Hey, not too shabby for a girl from the hood.
Jasmine Star (00:03:29) - So it's around this time, like 2006, I start the business and then it's like 2009, 2010. I start realizing that on the back of creating content, I was creating legitimacy for my brand. So people would look at that and say, Wow, she's a content creator, but what does this actually mean? So in 2010, what did it mean? People are like, it just seems like a waste of time. But then by 2012, there were businesses who started asking me to consult on their businesses to teach them how to create frameworks for their content, to teach them how to use this and leverage this for their business. So content Creator. Then all of a sudden, 2012, 2013, I'm turned into a consultant of sorts. So I have multiple revenue streams coming from my photography business, coming from creating content and then coming from consulting with content. And then I get to a point in my career around 2014, 2015 where I realized this is great, but I think that I'm called to more.
Jasmine Star (00:04:15) - I'm called to serve the small business owners. So I decided to create online digital courses. And so that created another seven figure revenue stream in the business. And then I realized that with courses, people weren't really completing the courses. And so what I wanted to do is create real time content to have a supportive community. So I took a step and then extended courses into creating memberships. So creating memberships for small business owners. And then what I realized was that creating the membership wasn't quite enough because it lacked the technology to take what we were teaching as a community and get people to get marketing action. So in 2021, I officially became a CEO of a tech company called Social Curator, where we provide the resources, the education, and we're fully integrated with Facebook, Instagram, all those social marketing avenues. And so that's what brought us here today. So that was a little long story, but it really helps contextualize that. I do have a lot of experience in multiple things, and so when people ask about business, I'm like, Let's go there.
Jasmine Star (00:05:08) - I'm so ready. So then, okay, so that's amazing. So you're obviously like a very successful woman. So then with your social curator, that is a seven figure company at this point in 2021. Yes. Multiple seven years. Yeah.
Crithicca Samuel (00:05:25) - So what made you start the Jasmine Star show? That started in 2019. And to be totally honest, okay, we're going to get super real is that when you run businesses and then you get extraordinarily strategic on the avenues of marketing and building a brand and. Building a community and extending that. Online. It's beautiful, but it also very much feels like a machine. I'm proud of the machine, but I just felt like I lacked as a creative and as a creator. I lacked an outlet for me just to show up unfiltered and not like in such a strategic visual way, which is ironic considering that I'm a photographer and like so much worth of visuals that I felt like there was a world that was strictly audio, that provided a space for me to do it messy, to do it dirty, to do it without oh, I need to monetize.
Jasmine Star (00:06:13) - There was no pressure around starting the podcast so late 2018, we decided to debut the Jasmine Star Show and then we hit a million downloads, I think five months later. And so it's just been growing exponentially from there.
Joel Huculak (00:06:26) - And that's amazing. And what a journey. I want to definitely unpack some of the journey. Even going back to when you said you dropped out of law school. What was it that your mom said or was it a conversation or what exactly led you to dropping out of law school?
Jasmine Star (00:06:40) - So it was an inflection point distinctly. It was New Year's Eve and my mom had her second brain surgery and visiting hours had ended at the hospital, I think at 8 or 9. And so my parents I come from a family of five children. And so we visited my mom and then we went for a late dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant with my dad. And it was a somber experience. You know, there's people that were drinking and there was margaritas flowing and we were really, really, really sad because our beloved mom was not doing well.
Jasmine Star (00:07:09) - And so we decided to do after dinner was to go back to the hospital to see if we could sneak in, because her ushering in the new year alone just felt like it's just sad, sad thing. And the nurses were so kind. They looked the other way. We brought party hats and streamers and there my mom was completely bald and she had a shunt placed in her head so that they would be able to administer chemotherapy. And it's at that time that we're talking about my mom and her life, and it sometimes puts a little lump in my throat still, when I think about it, even though my mom is still here with us, that's the beautiful part of this story, was that every doctor had predicted that her time had come. They had done everything they possibly could do, and they said after nine years, there was nothing more. And it was at that point, at our most worst at the bottom barrel, it's like, what do you do in that most darkest point? And my mom was talking about not about the things that she had done.
Jasmine Star (00:07:56) - She was talking about the things that she wished she had done, all those moments that she had stopped herself from doing it for thinking of lack of money, lack of knowledge, lack of education, what somebody else might say. And there I was, 25 years old, and I thought to myself, I don't want to lie in a hospital bed at the end of my life talking about all the things I wish I would have done. And still to that day, probably why it brings a little bit of emotion to my voices, because that's the thing. I wake up every single day and I think to myself, I am the most unqualified technical non development tech founder in the face of this Internet. And yet I'm still going to do it because I don't want to lie at the end of my life and think I wish I would have tried something. So when we talk about those moments, that kind of really shaped me as a human, shaped me as an entrepreneur.
Jasmine Star (00:08:42) - It's amazing.
Crithicca Samuel (00:08:43) - And so throughout the whole career of starting Social Curator, what was the lowest point or biggest challenge in your whole career? Oh, I mean, like we should have a whole separate podcast for all those.
Jasmine Star (00:09:02) - So just generally speaking, when you run a business, it is a series of, Oh my God, moments like the Oh my God to oh my God. So for somebody who's not a tech founder, I had this idea. And so we literally Frankenstein this idea just to see if it would work. It was our MVP, our minimum viable product. It's like, will this actually work? Well, what we did not expect, we thought our minds would be blown, our minds would be blown if we started a membership called Social Critter and a thousand people joined. We were just like, that is the biggest, hugest goal. Well, we close that launch at 2444 new users with zero promotion and we were like, Oh my God, this works. But the infrastructure was not ready at all for 2444 people. Like it just wasn't like we were so behind the curve when we started that it was like an uphill battle. So that to many people was actually a thing that really like disempowered us, like we were Frankenstein with like WordPress plugins, this email service provider called Infusionsoft, which why did we build a tech company on the back of the email service provider? Please don't ask.
Jasmine Star (00:10:07) - It was just like what we thought we could do. I mean there was. And so as a result of it not being foundationally and structurally correct to manage as we continued to grow, it's like there were so many times where like the site just went down or it's like people had their accounts and then they lost access. Or we distribute different tools every month and then all of a sudden like nobody got their tools. And so we get like 800 emails of people being like, What happened? And so there's just been so many moments where you're like, This is going to end us. Like, this is the official last day of our business. And then yet here we are. So I think that that just goes to show, you know, somebody once told me. If I don't quit, I can't lose. And that became a mantra for us. It's like if we choose not to quit, we will not lose. And so here we are still to this day, alive and kicking and very thankful.
Crithicca Samuel (00:10:51) - I love.
Joel Huculak (00:10:51) - That. I love that. It's so great. What do you think is the number one reason you got 2444 people to sign up? Is it like your the brand you were building for yourself? Is it The offering was just so good. What what is the reason, do you think it was?
Jasmine Star (00:11:08) - I don't ever think anything is 100%. I never think something is 100% good or 100% bad. And in like way, I don't think that it was 100% the offer or 100% of the personal brand. I will say, you know, there have been a lot of copycats and spinoffs of social curators since we had launched it, and maybe at some point or somewhere else in the world, something like social capital existed. It was I had not seen it up to that point. So while I won't say we were like the originators of this idea, I would definitely say we were in the first 1% of it. And so why I think it worked was that it was really new. And the promise of helping people post on social media with a strategy and showing up, feeling confident and prepared, that promise was pretty good.
Jasmine Star (00:11:48) - And then people trusted the promise based on the credibility of my personal brand, because for years all I did was share my exact process of how I was growing my business. And so people leverage both of those things, like the value of the promise and then the value of the personal brand.
Crithicca Samuel (00:12:01) - So I want to know.
Crithicca Samuel (00:12:03) - When you created social curator or like you're on your way to create it. Was there ever a time where you're just like, the struggle is too hard and like, maybe we should quit? Was there ever a moment that you were just like, No, let's throw in the towel? It's not the ROI is not there.
Jasmine Star (00:12:12) Oh, I mean, I don't want to sound too like bleak, but, like, that was happening on the weekly basis. Oh, yeah. There was never. There's never a moment. Oh, no, no, no. I mean, at the time of this recording, I think to myself, I'm like, Girl, what are you doing? Like, what in the world? Like, we're making out like our roadmap for 2023 and the cost associated in, you know, if you've never build tech and every time I told somebody that, I was like, I think I'm really going to build our own tech stack.
Jasmine Star (00:12:45) - Everybody was like, Are you sure you want to do this? Because, like, there's no going back. There's no like, we built like you said it and then you leave it like, this is an entire different business model. It's a it's a structural change. And, you know, it's like the beauty of naivete. I was like, of course we're going to do this. And having no idea how big the team would have to get to sustain it. And then like, I had just had zero comprehension of what it meant to build out a full on tech team. I mean, tech is so expensive and so, you know, you're just like ROI and profitability. You're like, Oh, good God. But I think it's it's really sticking true to the mission. And the mission is I am not trying to build the next Facebook. I'm not trying to build $1 billion business. What I am trying to do is to create a strongly profitable business while empowering other people on how to build a wildly profitable business.
Jasmine Star (00:13:41) - And I think that in 2023, we will be able to continue that mission based on those very clear objectives. We were profitable from day one. We continue to be profitable. And I think to myself, that is the badge of honor, is that we get to make money, we get to be good while doing good, you know? Yeah, I love that, love that. And so is there like a thought or asides from the mission? Is there a thought that keeps you going? Like, is there a thought like you're up at like 5 a.m. and you're just like, I don't want it, I don't want to get up? Is there a thought that gets you out of bed? Um, I've kind of always been the person to get up out of bed like my daily morning. My. My daily morning starts at 430. I don't have an alarm. It's just what time I get up. I usually flicker, my eyes open. I like, hug and kiss my husband. I say a prayer over him because he's kind of like in that realm, like, What are you doing, woman? And I'm like, Listen, you married this a long time ago.
Jasmine Star (00:14:33) - You knew what you were getting into. Like, This is how I roll. He's always been very supportive of it, but in the time that are very hard moments, I always think to myself, like, there is no good reason. I had no business starting a business. And yet I started one. And I have found ways to create and make and sustain multiple seven figure revenue streams. And while that may or may not be the case for everybody else, I strongly believe that every single business owner, once armed with what they know how to do and once armed with the marketing and with armed with the discipline and once armed with a consistency that they too can build a six figure revenue stream. I believe that with every fiber in my bones. Can you deliver on the promise that you are making? Can you sustain those customer relationships? Because if then I believe hands down, you can create a six figure revenue stream. And in America, if you are creating a six figure revenue stream, you are in the 1% of the 1%.
Jasmine Star (00:15:28) - And I think to myself, as a person who received government issued food and substances, I went to college on the back of government aid. I was the recipient of people's benevolence and taxpayers money. For me to go back and give back to a community. I think to myself that my business has become a passport for me to move entire legacies, industries, timelines, predisposed ideas of who I should be based on my gender, color of skin or how I was raised. And I'm like, I became the thing that broke the system and the statistic. But I don't think I'm special. I believe everybody can do this. And so on the days it becomes very hard. I think to myself, you have the passport, Are you going to keep it for yourself or are you going to help other people get out to on the days that are the darkest? I always think to myself, can you help one person get a passport today? And that's the thing that continues to keep me pushing forward. I love that.
Crithicca Samuel (00:16:18) - Gotcha, Gotcha. I love that. But yeah, that's.
Joel Huculak (00:16:23) - It's incredible, really. Like, I mean, there's so many people that are in the position that you were in before, right? And it's awesome how you've been able to help people out of that out of where they were. And I think it's just incredible. And that's your focus now is to just help other people go from not even believing themselves. And it's a big part of what we do at Multiversity to is even when I go back to 2016, when we started more diversity on YouTube, it was a time when when I started, everyone's like, Oh, like YouTube, you know, it's too late. It's already too late for YouTube in 2016. There's already big channels you can't catch up. And it's just a crazy mindset that some people have or Oh, sorry, it seems crazy, but it's a lot of mindset that a lot of people have and it's incredible how much you're empowering people to go against that and be a creator themselves because the creator economy is growing like crazy.
Joel Huculak (00:17:08) - And I don't think most people know that or believe in themselves enough to get started. And social curator and your company sounds like it's really helping people to get started.
Jasmine Star (00:17:17) - So and you know, it's like the biggest thing that I see with I speak specifically like where I listen, I don't talk about a lot of things. I don't know about. But when it comes to starting a business specifically, if you've started a business and you're making less than 10 million, like that's where I dwell. Like that's the people who I speak to so strongly. But even if you're listening and that's not your ambition and you are more of like an entrepreneur instead of an entrepreneur, so you are a very entrepreneurial mindset, but you happen to be working for somebody else and you really like that stability and you really like that. You could flex that muscle. All those things are amazing, but we all face a particular narrative regardless if it's professional or personal. Because if you decide that you want to run a marathon, oftentimes the person who stops you from running the marathon is nobody else but you.
Jasmine Star (00:18:01) - If you want to start a business, the person who's stopping you is the else but you. If you decide to run the marathon, somebody's gonna have an opinion of you while they're sitting on their couch, no less. They will have an opinion that you decided to run the marathon or you didn't decide to run the marathon while somebody is sitting on their couch behind their keyboard. They're going to have an opinion of you starting a business or not starting a business. The fact of the matter remains, are you going to let somebody else's opinion dictate what you are going to do in your life? And the reason you were put on this earth, oftentimes the person who stops ourselves from doing other things while we would like to point at other people because they have an opinion, it is actually us we choose to believe, listen, adhere to somebody else's opinions, but somebody else's opinion of us doesn't pay our bills. The person who has an opinion about what it is you're doing was most likely never going to become a customer.
Jasmine Star (00:18:47) - So all of a sudden somebody who was never going to buy or support the thing that we were going to do, be it passing out Gatorade on the marathon or by becoming a paying customer, they were never going to be that person. Yet those are the people who we let stop us doing from the very thing that we do. We stop ourselves when what we need to say is not everyone will be for us or about us. Do you accept the terms of that? And if you say yes, then do the dang thing and do it to the best of your ability.
Joel Huculak (00:19:19) - It's so good. I love it.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:21) - I just want to know. Sorry.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:23) - I just want to know. Okay. So your mom was in the hospital having her. I think she just finished her second surgery of.
Jasmine Star (00:19:32) - Second brain surgery.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:33) - And so because.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:35) - I find it.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:36) - Hard to make that jump with. Okay, I understand that my mom has said all these things about like, you know, not doing things because either, you know, financial restrictions, people saying things.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:47) - I find it hard to just jump from that to be like empowered. So was there another step.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:53) - That happened in between that?
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:54) - Because I think.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:56) - If it happened to me and my mom was like.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:58) - Oh, you know.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:58) - I wasn't.
Crithicca Samuel (00:19:59) - Able to do this because of this, Like, I don't know how I could just like shift gears into.
Crithicca Samuel (00:20:04) - Empowerment. I feel like there's a couple more steps before getting there.
Jasmine Star (00:20:08) - I love this question, but I want to preface this question that the response will push people away. So there's just that. So please prepare your hearts to be pushed away. And it's the people. It is the 2%, because statistically that's what it is. It's the 2% that actually do something in. Despite their fear or doubt, are the people that actually end up being a success because, like, courage isn't like lack of adversity. Courage is doing something in the face of adversity. That is a famous quote that I didn't say, but I think I kind of botched it up.
Jasmine Star (00:20:37) - But the idea is there, and that is the same to go from lack and want. I watched somebody not do something on behalf of something else to all of a sudden I'm doing that thing. There wasn't, you know, a few steps. There was like 100,000, 336 steps in between. And I'm happy that we're bringing that point to clarity because people hear that story and then they immediately say, That's not me or that's not how I think and that's not who I am. And then they discount and they never pursue. So for the person who hears this, and on Christmas morning when I unwrap my camera, I actually don't believe in my ability so much so that I say I can't even open the box to this camera until January first because in the new year I'm going to be a different person. So that should just kind of really betray the lack of belief that I had in myself to begin with. So then it was opening the camera and I told my husband, I'm like, Oh, I think you got me the wrong battery.
Jasmine Star (00:21:32) - No, no. It was just me putting the battery in the wrong way. I had no idea which way was up. I the camera itself came with a body, but it didn't have a lens. So it's like I figured out, I'm like, Oh, we have no money. How am I going to make this work? So I would rent a lens. I would practice it with 24 hours, and then I would return the lens. I didn't have money for a memory card. Now, at the time, this sounds like foreign because people are like, You go on Amazon and get a memory card for $29. I'm like, Yeah, but back in 2006, I'm just aging myself right now. Those cards are like $100. I'm like, I didn't have $100 from memory card. Like I was working part time at my dad's church and I was using like Tuesdays and Thursdays to go out and shoot whatever I could. So I would rent something on Tuesday morning at a local camera shop, and then I'd return it that Tuesday night because they gave fractional discounts if you turned it like rented it out and turned it back on the same day I was cutting every single corner.
Jasmine Star (00:22:17) - I was looking at the work that I was doing and I feel like I had enough wherewithal to look at my work and say, This is terrible. I know what good is and what I am doing is terrible, but do I have the capacity to make it a little bit less terrible? The answer was, I don't know. So I was googling how to manually focus, how to change my aperture. What is ISO, what is shutter speed? Watching anything and everything I could understanding that I had a decision to make. It was either I go back to law school where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, I was sad, I was miserable and yet it was very predictable. Or am I going to do the hard things that I need to do to figure out how I get out? I was going to fight tooth and nail to figure out how I could suck less. My ambition was never how good can I get? My ambition was How do I suck less? Which was such a jacked up mindset to think of.
Jasmine Star (00:23:08) - Now that I look back at it and now my mindset has become, how do I learn more every single day? I just really want to show like who I was. I was a person for 365 days who said, Come hell or high water, I'm going to go all in. I want to look back on my deathbed and said, You gave it everything you had. So I stopped being a lot social. I didn't do extracurricular activities. I woke up earlier, I went to bed later. I don't think that's a permanent lifestyle, but at the time that I gave myself 365 days, there was no more messing around. There was no more excuses. So there's like a thousand times I remember my husband coming home from work. He was working with a startup. We didn't have very much money at all and I had spent all day. I am talking about 8 to 10 hours in a single day going through photography, blogs and photography forums. And I, in a very dramatic state, had just finished dinner and it was like I was timing everything so that he knew the severity of how I was feeling.
Jasmine Star (00:23:56) - He comes in through our apartment door and I'm stirring a pot. I tossed down the wooden spoon, you know, like you have to just come here. He makes me follow in our tiny apartment so that I can fling myself on our bed face first to say it's been the absolute worst day. I am never going to get to where I want to go. If somebody if I just had a mentor, they would see my talent. I was looking for somebody else to save me. But the best stories are when the princess saves herself. And that's what I had to do. So, like, get up. So he just stood in the doorway, He looked at me and he's just like, okay, so what are we going to do tonight? We have dinner and then we can make a plan. Or you could stay here and cry. And I love that about my husband. He's not my business. He's been my business partner since. Oh, goodness. Like 2009, he went full time with us, like full time with me in the business and has always been the case.
Jasmine Star (00:24:37) - And that is why I think I'm so madly in love with him. It's like he just he loves me, but he doesn't give any space for wasting time. And it's always been like a good thing.
Crithicca Samuel (00:24:46) - I love that.
Joel Huculak (00:24:47) - Yeah, that's a great thing to have in a partner, especially a business partner, but also partner in life as well.
Jasmine Star (00:24:53) - Absolutely.
Joel Huculak (00:24:54) - I really liked what you said earlier. I was going to touch on that, just some other people's opinions of you don't pay your bills. And I found that really powerful. Just what a powerful quote, because so many people are just influenced by other people's beliefs, right? Your parents beliefs, your friend's beliefs, the beliefs you see on social media, even. Right. And following people like you, the advice you get is just so great for where that can really just help people get out of the spots they're in now.
Crithicca Samuel (00:25:22) - Thank you.
Joel Huculak (00:25:24) - All right. So got the second half of questions here. And even.
Crithicca Samuel (00:25:29) - Though the first.
Crithicca Samuel (00:25:29) - Part was like.
Crithicca Samuel (00:25:31) - Incredibly motivating and passionate, I was just like, wow, okay. Captivated, like, from beginning to end.
Jasmine Star (00:25:38) - Oh, thanks.
Crithicca Samuel (00:25:40) - Please continue that throughout these questions here. But again, this is all of. I sorry, I didn't mean to. Yeah, no.
Joel Huculak (00:25:47) - We put a note. Looking for conviction and emotion in your answers. And you're already doing that. So like by by far, I think you're delivering extremely well. And it's all great advice as well. So let's go on. So the first question is, what advice would you give to your 20 year old self?
Jasmine Star (00:26:06) - And to take bigger risks. You know, as the daughter of an immigrant, as a first time business owner who didn't have any sort of resources or wherewithal to to get questions answered, I was always trying to hedge my bets. And so there is I'll never forget I actually wrote about this in a blog post is I was sitting in my friend's car, so there's a gaggle of girls in the back and I was sitting in the passenger seat and her dad in his Astro minivan was driving us and he asked me what I thought was a really odd question.
Jasmine Star (00:26:36) - He turns me while all the girls are in the back, and he says, Jasmine, how would you eat a hamburger? And I thought to myself, Well, that's a really odd question. And I was like, Well, I would eat a hamburger the same way anybody else would. I would eat half of the hamburger and then save the other half for when I knew my next meal was coming and when I knew my next meal was coming, then I'd eat the hamburger. And he kind of slowly nodded. And then later he ends up telling my parents that response. I didn't think anything of it. And now that I am an adult, I clearly understand the way I was hardwired as a kid because we lacked money. I was always looking for ways to keep and maintain what I had if I thought it was going to disappear. So I took that mindset. Going into starting businesses, I was always trying to be like, How do I keep or maintain? But what I wish I can go back to do in my 20s was take all the risks and be unattached to the outcome.
Jasmine Star (00:27:26) - Because when somebody would say, take all the risk, I'd be like, You're crazy. I made half of my hamburger until I know my next meal is coming. What I wish I would have known is be unattached to the outcome. I was so attached to the outcome, I was so fear driven of never getting to where my parents were financially that I stopped myself because like, oh no, that's a little too risky. If I had just said, Hey, keep what you need to feel safe and everything else, take a calculated risk and make them bigger because you always have found a way to win.
Crithicca Samuel (00:27:58) - So what was what is your best business advice that you would give someone else?
Jasmine Star (00:28:07) - I'm going to give the advice that I heard my third year of business. I was sitting with a group of other photographers who were farther in their career, and I had always found a way, even though I couldn't afford to get educated specifically in the photography realm, because there was like very high ticket experiences, I would find a way to leverage what I thought I was good at in exchange.
Jasmine Star (00:28:27) - I'm a firm believer in bartering. Bartering is my favorite thing. And so I realized that while I'm not necessarily a copywriter, I wouldn't classify myself as a writer. I had a blog at the time. I still have a blog, but at the time I was blogging every single day and other photographers started noticing the quality of work that I was doing. And so I found a photographer in my area. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and I said, Hey, would I be able to go to your event and write a few blog post about your event? And in addition to If you Let me Come, could I also write your bio like for your website? Because I gave like a little preview. I was like, his bio was just like, great photographer, love my camera. And I kind of wrote just like the first paragraph of what could be his bio based on things that I had read about him on the Internet. And he was just like, Yes. So I got into this room and what he said, I felt like it just pierced my heart.
Jasmine Star (00:29:12) - And this is the thing that I will tell everybody again and again. He said, Jump in, the net will appear. It was the first time in my entire life that I had ever heard somebody speak so brazenly about taking a risk again. Who I am now as a risk taker is so different than who I was when I began. And the way that you strengthen that risk muscle is by taking risks. And when he said that three years into it, I realized, okay, now is the time for me to start taking those risks. I wish somebody would have told me that sooner. And this is always the advice I always go back to. Jump in the net will appear.
Crithicca Samuel (00:29:46) - Yeah, I totally believe that too. I think, like, I'm a strong believer, like, you know, you jump in, the universe will catch you. So I'm very much all about that. Yeah.
Jasmine Star (00:29:57) - But here's the thing. Like, this is the thing I just like, let's just be real, right? Like people here that jump in the net will appear.
Crithicca Samuel (00:30:01) - Jump like the universe has your back and we love it. We're like high fiving because we've been on the other side.
Jasmine Star (00:30:07) But like, there have been plenty of times where there was no net. And like, the universe was just like, I see you. I'm not putting my arms out because you needed to fall on your face. And like, I've just realized that as many times as I have gotten back up, I were supposed to fall, I was supposed to face plant. And the less time I spend groveling in the gravel, the faster I find my next success. The biggest difficulty is that people fall and then they stay down. The greatest entrepreneurs are the people who understand that falling is part of the process. So if we just said, I'm going to fall now and I'm going to fall probably another 175 times before the end of my career, if I look around and say, this is normal and every entrepreneur faces this, then yeah, it sucks. And yeah, I took the jump and yeah, I didn't end up where I wanted to, but do I have the courage and wherewithal to get up again? And if the answer is yes, you're going to be in business and the answer is no, you're going to go back to your cubicle and live a very predictable life that is not as fulfilling as you once hoped.
Crithicca Samuel (00:31:08) - 100% failure is progress no matter what. Right? You just got to get up. Yeah.
Joel Huculak (00:31:13) - Yeah. And every successful person that you hear about their success story, you hardly ever hear about all of their failures. Right? Because no one writes about the websites that didn't work. All the brands that you tried, all the things you did that.
Crithicca Samuel (00:31:25) - Don't take off.
Joel Huculak (00:31:26) - The YouTube channels. In our case, it didn't work out, but a long list. But we've got to also now a long list of ones that have succeeded and yeah, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. There was one piece of the story I wanted to go back to, which was, So you were a top ten wedding photographer in the world and then you shifted away from that. So why did you shift away and how did you was it just taking the risk or was it income coming from another your social creative business? Like how did you make that shift and why?
Jasmine Star (00:31:55) - It was one of those moments all over again where it's science.
Jasmine Star (00:32:00) - Like a study I read that our body regenerates, like our cells regenerate every seven years. So every seven years you become an entirely different person. And I have seen that ebb and flow in my business so distinctly that the minute that something was complicated and difficult and impossible and then decided to go after it like I thought it was impossible or difficult to ever position myself as an authority to be a consultant. That was impossible. That was impossible to ever create a course, much less create revenue streams of multiple seven figures in the back of courses. Then I thought it was impossible to create a membership. And then I thought it was impossible to start a tech company. So the earliest part of my career was I want to become a photographer and then I want to become a successful photographer. And then all of a sudden the game got really slow. I could predict my income, I could predict the publicity, I could predict the resources I could predict the connections. I could predict the publications. And when I predicted it, I loved it and I appreciated it.
Jasmine Star (00:33:01) - And then I just didn't want it anymore. And if you don't show up in your business, loving what you turn over for your customers or your clients, your business is in decline. And I thought I must show up 100% for the people who hire me. And if I am not, my time has come. And that's when I started to make shifts in my business.
Joel Huculak (00:33:23) - You have to be passionate about it. So passionate, right?
Crithicca Samuel (00:33:26) - Absolutely. Because why else are you going to get up in the morning and go to work where we're not here for 9 to 5? Absolutely.
Joel Huculak (00:33:34) - One other thing I hear you talk about often, I've been listening to your podcast lately is consistency. So how important is consistency?
Jasmine Star (00:33:43) - Well, I have a hard time coming out and, like, putting like, big daggers in the sand or drawing a line, and it's like you're this or you're not. Like to me, I am only speaking to the people who are unqualified, unfunded, uneducated, unconnected. I'm only speaking to the people who haven't been fed with the silver spoon.
Jasmine Star (00:34:02) - I'm only speaking to the people who don't come from a legacy of business owners. I'm only speaking to people who don't have trust funds. I'm only speaking to the people who have had life kick them in the arse and then they found a way to get back up. I'm only speaking to those people. And of those people, when you are distinctly at a disadvantage based by your gender, how you grew up, the color of your skin, your religious beliefs, whoever and whomever. And however, I am only speaking to that person. I am speaking to the person who is underrepresented in every boardroom and underrepresented when it comes to funding. I am speaking to the people who are traditionally overlooked and marginalized. If you are not of those people, then do not listen to the thing I have to say next. What I am saying is that for those people who are traditionally underrepresented and overlooked, you have to play a different game. I hate saying it, but it has just been my truth. I will only speak my experience in my truth.
Jasmine Star (00:34:53) - My truth in my experience has been I have to jump higher. I have to show up earlier. I have to be the first person to turn off the light and the last person to turn off the light. I have to make sure that every number is correct and every tee is crossed and every Dei is ordered dotted. The way that I show up is by being consistent, so consistent that people cannot doubt your capacity to succeed. You have to work harder than the average person, and if you accept those terms, you cannot complain about those terms. I have only known success on the back of consistency. Do I think you could be a success without being consistent? Perhaps if you have other resources and tools that I was never given. But coming from where I am, my perspective is only been consistency and the discipline has been everything that I have ever gotten on the back of doing it again and again and again. It is what I teach. It is what I preach is what I believe, but it only believe it for a small group of people who perhaps have never been the people to been on the front side of benevolence, legacy, money, things of that nature.
Joel Huculak (00:35:58) - Yeah. And you talk about that to you a lot, right? Your target audience. How important is that for someone who's starting out to have a target audience versus, you know, making content for everyone?
Crithicca Samuel (00:36:08) - Good question. Yeah.
Jasmine Star (00:36:10) - It is always an only ever been who I believe is your ideal client. So whenever I go into a brand new venture, the first thing we always do is define who our ideal client is. Our ideal client or ideal customer. This is for us to identify that even though we are going to attract other customers and clients that are marketing our messaging, our content is drilled down to one specific person. And this kind of like jacks up a lot of people when they think about this because like it feels like you're making too much of a commitment without knowing enough. And I'm saying you will never be able to change your opinion or iterate or expand your business without clearly knowing who you serve to begin with. Think of this as like the target logo in the center is a concentric circle, bright red.
Jasmine Star (00:36:54) - That is exactly who you are aiming to hit every single time. And as the business succeeds, another concentric circle expands thereafter. So a similar yet different audience. And then once you build your street credibility with that audience, you're then able to expand thereafter. Oftentimes people are trying to hit every concentric circle and your messaging falls flat and people don't know what it is you do or how you serve. The idea is to go after one person, clearly speak to their needs, clearly speak to the transformation, solve their problem in such a clear way that they then begin to speak to you, to speak about you and or your business to other people who are not maybe not related in that industry, but based on their endorsement, your business and getting to grow.
Crithicca Samuel (00:37:32) - Yeah. So asides from consistency and taking more breaths. Is there any advice you would give an entrepreneur starting out?
Jasmine Star (00:37:40) - Ask for help. People don't know how to help you until you ask. And so the first barrier that I see quite often with entrepreneurs is like, I don't want to bother or I don't know if they would ever say no or people have a very hard time with somebody just not responding or saying no because they take the no personally.
Jasmine Star (00:38:01) - Like if somebody were to ask me like, Hey, can I get help here? Can you become my mentor? And I say, no. Then oftentimes what people think is it's about them or it's about their business without ever taking into consideration like, I have a two year old, I have multiple businesses. I might just not have the time or the wherewithal to make it happen. So they make it about themselves and they immediately begin to doubt. So if you can be okay hearing no, and then if you could choose to tell yourself a different story as to why you would ask for help and it wasn't given to you the way that you would imagined, if you're okay with those terms, then the second thing comes around. And the second thing about asking for help is that people don't ask for help because they don't know what question to ask. They want to be told what to do. I had a mentor years ago who told me that the quality of your life and the quality of your business is dependent on the quality of questions you ask.
Jasmine Star (00:38:49) - And oftentimes people don't know what questions to ask. They want to be told what to do. But when you are told exactly what to do, your business looks like everybody else's, which means you have a hard time competing, if at all. The reason you want to ask better questions is to find a way how you can uniquely solve a problem and give a solution in your own unique way. But that takes so much more time and so much more effort and so much deep dive self about what your quality offer then becomes that people are like, No, no, no. Just tell me, how do I make $1 million? And it's like, maybe the only way you make $1 million is by knowing exactly who you serve, how you do it, what your promise then becomes. And do you have an offer surrounding that, and is that clearly communicated? If you're not willing to do that work, you have a very hard time getting to where you want to go.
Joel Huculak (00:39:33) - Yeah, asking questions is something that I've been delving into more lately because I keep looking for the answers just or hoping someone can tell me the answers.
Joel Huculak (00:39:42) - But they've been asking me questions back. And then I asked them a question and I almost know the answer. When I ask that question. I start to think about when I ask someone the question, I actually start to think about the answer myself. There's a good chance that they don't even know, like the business that we run or, you know, the exact challenge I'm having my life. But they can maybe give it some advice. But in a lot of cases, asking the question is helping guide me to myself, to the answer. And that's a really powerful part of actually even just like the last two weeks for me. So yeah, yeah, I find that that's really helpful. You got into that a little bit. You talked about your morning.
Crithicca Samuel (00:40:15) - I would love to hear about this because my morning rituals and routine is intense, but I feel like yours is a thousand times more intense than mine. So we want to hear what are your daily habits and morning rituals?
Jasmine Star (00:40:28) - Well, I feel like it's going to be a total letdown after that.
Jasmine Star (00:40:30) - I mean.
Joel Huculak (00:40:32) - Not one, not intense. Mine are not intense.
Jasmine Star (00:40:36) - I am I'm very predictable. Now, when I say this, I always have to have like a pre qualifier that I don't think that this is like a benchmark for success or I don't think that people should be doing this in general. I think that we're all created differently and separately, and there are some people who just thrive at different times of the day. My circadian rhythm is I get the most done. I am at my peak creativity. I am at my peak focus in the morning. I am built for the mornings. And so I wake up every day at 430. It's like my eyes just flutter awake. That's what time I wake up. Kind of like I had already mentioned. Like I hug my husband, I kiss him, I say a pray over him, and then I go. When I start my day, I start my day with prayer and meditation and a little bit of reading. I set aside around 30 minutes for all of that to happen, and then from 5 to 645, I am working, I'm writing, I'm thinking I'm ideating, I'm outlining.
Jasmine Star (00:41:26) - I wake my daughter up at 7 a.m. We sit together, we do our morning routine. 745 I am changing, getting ready to go to the gym at eight. I set aside 75 minutes a day to work out. I come home, I shower, I sit my booty down and I work all day. That is 100% how it does. No, my workdays all look very different. I do segment my days according to when I am podcasting, when I'm creating content, when I'm planning out my content, when I'm writing scripts, when I'm writing newsletters. But it's very, very, very cyclical. In order for us to produce the amount of content that we do, it has to be streamlined. I had a conversation with my husband, business partner yesterday and I'm like, I feel like I'm more now a creator than I am a creative where earlier in my industry, I mean, excuse me, early in my career, I was able to just do a lot more creative endeavors. But in order for us to do the volume with the size of the team, we have a really small team.
Jasmine Star (00:42:13) - But the size of the team I'm getting more into create the content as a creator and not just like dilly dally and like what creative next venture could I do? I think that's going to come in a later point in my career. Again, things kind of go through cycles, but right now, strong creator and disciplined throughout the day.
Crithicca Samuel (00:42:29) - Well.
Joel Huculak (00:42:30) - Yeah. What's next for you?
Jasmine Star (00:42:34) - In 2023. The goal would be to give back to the community. I just want to overindex. I want to spend a full year of just creating content that I wish I had not when I started my career, but when things really ramped up in my career. I spent a really long time really serving like that newish beginning entrepreneur, like the mindset to get out and to start and to continue showing up and like who I think I really can have big results would be for a six figure entrepreneur like really gunning for their seven figure business or multiple seven figure business. And for me, all I want to do is just experiment in that zone.
Jasmine Star (00:43:10) - I want to create the content I wish I had when I was at that point. So that's 100% where our index is for all of 2023 and it makes me really excited.
Crithicca Samuel (00:43:18) - Nice. We're excited for you.
Joel Huculak (00:43:19) - Yeah, that's awesome.
Crithicca Samuel (00:43:21) - All right. So next segment is called Rapid Fire Questions. Okay. So yeah, just answer it as they come. Okay, cool. So first question is, is when you think of the word success, who is the first person that comes to your mind and why?
Jasmine Star (00:43:40) - My husband because success for him is not dollars in commerce. Success for him is a state of flow, and he chooses to be so intentional with his time, with his endeavors. And when he speaks to you, he makes you feel like you're the only person in the room and he can leave any situation and find a reason to be successful in it. It's so inspiring. I wish I was like him. I'm nothing like him. I absolutely love it.
Joel Huculak (00:44:01) - I love that. What is the book you recommend the most?
Jasmine Star (00:44:05) - Oftentimes I really, really, really am recommending do the work by Steven Pressfield.
Jasmine Star (00:44:10) - It's very short. You could read one pages, one chapter, and he's all about the discipline and consistency. So it kind of like speaks my love language.
Crithicca Samuel (00:44:19) - What is something that you believe that other people may think is insane?
Jasmine Star (00:44:25) - I. Okay. So people often think that I am outgoing or that I'm an extrovert, and that couldn't be farther from the case on a scale of 1 to 10. I am a level 12 introvert, and I believe that introverts have a competitive advantage when it comes to networking or being in business situations. Is that oftentimes the quietest in the room? They watch the dynamics and they listen to what's being said in between the lines and they're able to leverage that and personalized conversations and pitches based on watching and not just being the person who's always talking.
Joel Huculak (00:44:54) - I've heard you say that before, and I'm like, no way, No way.
Jasmine Star (00:44:57) - I know, you know, like this. Last week I went to I went to this event and it was like mind body wellness. And somebody went up to the founder of the event and said, you know, I follow Jasmine on social media, but I'm not going up to her because she just seems so much more quiet.
Jasmine Star (00:45:10) - She's nothing like how I expected her to be. And I'm like, Yeah, because you saw me out in the wild. You saw me in my natural state. You didn't see me on the back of social media. So yes, I'm 100% introvert.
Joel Huculak (00:45:19) - Now, this will make crossover with your other questions, but do you have a quote that you live your life by or think about often?
Jasmine Star (00:45:26) - I'm it changes all the time. I'm a big believer in like Post-it notes. But the recent mantra that for me that I've really, really focused on is what is meant for me will find me. And oftentimes, I think as an entrepreneur, it's easy to look around. I mean, I would 100% admit that you look around and you're like, Man, when is my time for that? Or Why have I not gotten that? Or I feel like I'm showing up and applying and it's not working the way that I want. And I think to myself, I'm always reminded that what is meant for me will find me.
Jasmine Star (00:45:51) - And if something else finds somebody else, my entire objective, and I mean this with all sincerity, is to clap that person up with so much happiness, understanding that when my time comes, it was perfectly suited for what I needed at that time. And I'm going to want other people to support me in the same way that I am supporting other people about that.
Crithicca Samuel (00:46:07) - What's the worst advice you've ever seen or heard being dispensed in the world?
Jasmine Star (00:46:13) - I mean, I feel like I'm going to get a lot of heat for it, but I just. I see a lot of people talking about. Like manifesting, like dreaming it into reality. And I believe that. I believe that you can't create what you have not thought or dreamt of. But the biggest gap and the misnomer is that it should, in my opinion, always be supplemented and counterbalanced by. That's just the first step. Manifestation alone doesn't bring out results. It's the manifestation and then the actions combined that will help you meet your aspirations because your actions must map your aspirations.
Jasmine Star (00:46:49) - I believe that manifestation is a key component. It is the impetus. It's the thing that get us started. But then people are just like, Well, I'm dreaming and it's just not happening for me. I'm like, No, no, no, it does not happen for you. You must happen to it. And so the misnomer is that like you dream it up and it will happen. I'm like, No, no, you dream it up and then you work like hell to make it happen and it will happen.
Crithicca Samuel (00:47:07) - I completely agree. Yeah, completely agree. Yeah.
Joel Huculak (00:47:10) - Great. That's the rapid fire questions that we have. We're just going to take a quick pause if there's any other questions that you have that comes to mind or is there anything else that you would like us to ask? Jasmine?
Jasmine Star (00:47:21) - No, you guys have done a great job. Like, I feel like all of this is segmented. I'm like, Oh, I see where this is going. Great.
Crithicca Samuel (00:47:26) - I love it.
Crithicca Samuel (00:47:28) - So I think the last thing we got to finish on is where can people find you?
Jasmine Star (00:47:33) - For those of you who are interested on getting more information, I'd love to go deep and spend a little bit more time on the Jasmine Star Show. You can find the podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. And it's such a great opportunity for people not just to get business advice, but really to get the mindset shifts that's needed and also find a way to balance the thing that you love along with the people who you love and finding time to do and balance it all. You can find me on every social platform at Jasmine Star and for more information and free goodies and resources at Jasmine star.com.
Joel Huculak (00:48:01) - Yeah the last thing is just a thing so thanks for joining us on the show. I think there's lots of tons of valuable advice lessons things that you've said in this interview on this episode for for people. And I think it's going to be a hit. So thank you.
Jasmine Star (00:48:19) - Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Eugenia Woo (00:48:21) - Wasn't that inspiring.
Eugenia Woo (00:48:23) - I hope you realize that you have everything you need to build a successful business that you deserve. If you'd like to learn more about Multiversity, you can find them on Instagram at multiversity. Thank you so much for listening.