Katie Haahr (00:00:01) - I have a question for you. What steps are you taking to design your life? Well, just wait a minute. Don't quite answer that until you listen to this episode. Hi, my name is Katie. I'm the president of social Curator, and in this episode, Jasmine is interviewed by Jennifer Kamara, a life design partner who works with high achieving CEOs, founders and artists to help them get unstuck, align their actions with their values and design meaningful lives. I think you're going to love their conversation. Jasmine shares insights into her daily routines and decision making techniques and spills the tea on how she's able to fulfill her role as both the CEO of her company and be present for her family. Enjoy this episode.

Jennifer Kamara (00:00:53) - I'd love to start with inviting you in your own words to tell us a little bit about who is Jasmine today. Well, at the time of this recording, I'm a huge believer and subscriber in choosing a word for the year. And I believe without getting too woowoo is like the word finds you like you don't find the word.

Jasmine Star (00:01:09) - And so, so many of the past years it has been like trust or flourish or different things. That was like my intention for the year was that very thing. And when I started 2023, the word of the year was rebirth. And so when you ask like, who are you today? I would be very honest and let you know I'm still working on fully defining that. And if you were to ask me this 12 months ago, I think I don't have an entirely different answer. It was very pointed. I knew exactly what was and what I was doing. And I feel like the business has gotten to a place with a powerful team and that they have really said for the next opportunity for you to be doing what you're doing now here inside of Social Curator, Let us run the operations. You cast the vision and then also give yourself space to think what is next and how do we then iterate and how do we grow in both inside of social curator and then outside of like the bigger message who you want to impact, who are you targeting? And I think that that has just been like the best gift that I could receive this year.

Jasmine Star (00:02:04) - So why am I right now? I'm in the process of discovery and I really want to own that process. And then I want to normalize the conversation, because I think that as business owners, when you build really successful businesses or if you build audiences, there's this tendency to say like, No, we always have it together, we always know the direction. And I think I'm like, Let's just have a conversation of can we give ourselves the freedom, the luxury and the privilege of going through the discovery process and then bringing people with us.

Jennifer Kamara (00:02:24) - Oh my gosh. And thank you for opening the door to that. I love that. I feel like we're all works in progress and it's so great to see someone highlighting that today. It also does feel like such a gift from your team, right, To say, Hey, Jasmine, we've got these operations. You take a step back, figure out the vision. How are you making space for that today?

Jasmine Star (00:02:43) - I wish it was something fancier, but it's really just saying if I am not carving time, carving time.

Jasmine Star (00:02:49) - And I think that when I look at a calendar or when I look at a series of things I need to do or tasks, I immediately think, well, I must do this. But then when you actually distill it down, I've just been asking myself, Is it necessary? Like it has to be a ten out of ten necessary that I'm doing this. And the minute that I started releasing things that I really felt like, Oh, no, no, I'm the only person who could do this, I started realizing how powerful the team was and how ready and willing they were to, like, take the ball and run it down the field. And I had a mentor come in and say, If you believe your team can do what you're doing at 80% of your capacity, then you must let it go. It is in your best interest, like the way that you grow the team and the way that you grow the business is by empowering other people to do it. And you know, like outcomes outside of like metrics and analytics outcomes are really subjective, especially with what we do with social media.

Jasmine Star (00:03:36) - It's like a little bit more art than it is science. And as far as education, it's a little bit more art than it is science. And so here you have a team and I'm like, Barbie, For me to have a subjective opinion on what is good or what is best or things that I can do when I've seen this team really take it and elevate it. And so I'm like, Oh, you should have got out of the way a little earlier. Like, they're doing great with it.

Jennifer Kamara (00:03:54) - Yeah, I've seen really the highest performing teams where it's about the CEO realizing that, Oh man, I can actually allow the team to run with it and then use my time and energy to drive our bigger vision or focus or drive this new priority that we wanted to do forward anyway. And again, on this point, that is really tough to think. The toughest part is staying focused, right? It's not adding more to our plate.

Jennifer Kamara (00:04:19) - It's subtracting.

Jasmine Star (00:04:20) - Really keeping the plate. It's keeping the plate clean, figuring out what are the three most important drivers that we're focused on this quarter and what really ruthlessly prioritizing our activities to make sure that we're focused on them.

Jennifer Kamara (00:04:31) - And then for you, I imagine like you've been in the trenches with everyone and carving your own time to say, you know what, maybe I'm going to take time to think this morning or I'm going to go take time to explore this new venture or industry or whatnot. I'm sure that that feels not as natural for you to not be in the trenches with your team. And that also takes some adjusting for yourself.

Jasmine Star (00:04:52) - Absolutely. And then the minute you get out of the trenches and I mean, to be very clear, I'm still very aware of like the day to day of the business and having conversations on the regular about those things. But I think that what happens is like when you're able to step out of the trend, you're not even in the sky, you're just on the ground level and you've just realized, wow, I can see things from a different vantage point. And when you see things at a different vantage point, you're then making very different decisions about what you thought the process or you thought the roadmap or you thought like iteration or growth or pivot.

Jennifer Kamara (00:05:21) - We're going to look. And I think that giving yourself this space allows you to really drill down on what it is you want to do. And so at the time of this recording, I haven't actually had by the time this recording drops, I'm sure we will have announced it. But, you know, at a point in my life we're in the middle of focusing on launching a second cohort, a mastermind, and I started a mastermind at the top of the year. I had such a nominal group of entrepreneurs. It blew my mind. I was definitely nervous. This was a big iteration. It was a. Ticket offer for a small group of people. And what we accomplished in sigmas or what they accomplished in six months blew my mind. I was just like, I can't believe what a powerhouse group of women were focused on doing and having their transformation. So it seems like it makes the most sense for us to pick up the second six months of the year. Like obviously that's what one might do, especially if there's a demand and a wait list and promotional material.

Jasmine Star (00:06:15) - And I think that this has been a practice of if I was in the trenches, I might not hear my intuition or feel it as strongly. And I'm not a person who was like a describer of like my intuition guide me. But there was like a deep knowing. And I talked to my husband and I said, I think this is the craziest thing I'm about to tell you, but I don't know if doing the mastermind cohort number two is my highest interest. And he didn't blink an eye and he was just like, listen to that. Every time in the past that you just didn't take ownership. And like, for all intents and purposes, I'll be very forthcoming. It makes no sense. It is such a powerful just revenue driver. It gives me life. I get to work with other people. I get to see and like really get entrenched and really successful businesses and see how they're doing. I'm learning as a byproduct. I'm leveraging my skill sets of like curating a powerful group of people, holding space and accountability, and then really driving with like tactical, practical operational advice.

Jasmine Star (00:07:08) - And so for so many reasons, it makes zero sense for me to say I'm pretty sure I don't want to move forward with the mastermind anymore. And there's a part of me that's like worried. I'm like, Oh, for the people who applied and said, Wait, am I going to sit in worry or am I going to speak my truth? I would rather have somebody have an opinion about me speaking my truth than sit in a state of like, I wonder what they're going to say. I'd rather I'm going to be planning on sending personal emails to everybody who applied and just simply explained that I am making the somewhat difficult business decision to say, I know this doesn't make sense, but I am really believing that the things that I carve out for the time that I would be investing in the mastermind, I'm going to be using it to create something that is like in me and I keep on tapping on it, but I'm not quite sure what it is, and I just need the tiny space to build, create an idea, and then actually think of a successful launch plan in there after.

Jennifer Kamara (00:07:52) - Yeah. And Jasmine, that also feels like such a natural aspect of growth where you're describing because this mastermind was so impactful for you, for the attendees, you were driving so much value here. But it sounds like you're evolving and your time, your energy, your vision is expanding beyond that and you need to and you're honoring making space for that. So thanks for modeling that for folks. I think it's really important.

Jasmine Star (00:08:17) - Well, I don't know if we ever actually break down the exact definition of model. I don't know. And correct me if I'm wrong. Okay. A model is something that you might look at and then build other things on the back of it. So if I think like a 3D modeling, if I wanted to make like a toy truck, like we look at the model and we tell the 3D machine like, please replicate the model. And yet in the processes, I don't really think that I am the model. I just think that I'm in the process. I feel like I'm being still shaped to it.

Jasmine Star (00:08:40) - And so I really would love to have that conversation. It's like we can talk about being in like the suck of being modeled and maybe not being the model, and then maybe in a future conversation we come back and be like, So let me talk to you about the model. But at a state of completion, we might be able to look back. But right now I'm just in the middle of it and I'd rather really own that conversation.

Jennifer Kamara (00:09:00) - That's such a great callout. So when I think you are modeling something, why use that word here is because to me what you described is your modeling, you honoring the fact that your vision has changed and the fact that to you spending time on this mastermind is into you living to your highest potential. This isn't the greatest leverage slash impact you could be having right now. And that is a really tough business decision. There are people you might be letting down. You're going to need to send all these letters. To your point, we literally said this. It makes zero sense to someone who might be looking at it from the outside.

Jennifer Kamara (00:09:38) - However, the most important person I would argue here is Jasmine, because this is Jasmine's life. Jasmine has been building to fulfill and live up to her vision of what she wants to build. It is also what you inspire other entrepreneurs to do. Jasmine as Speaker, as you've been sharing live up to your fullest potential. And so when I say model here, it's your modeling making that hard choice because it's never an easy choice. It feels risky. I could hear the emotion in your voice as you were describing, and it takes courage and bravery to take that path. It's always easy to do whatever you've been doing before, whatever pleases others. And I love that you are owning up to the conversation because I think we need more examples of folks who make those hard choices and stand up for themselves and what they want to build.

Jasmine Star (00:10:26) - Well, thank you. In that regard. With that clarification, I will step into being a model. Being a model of making a decision. Yeah. And making a decision that might not make sense to other people.

Jasmine Star (00:10:35) - And on the back side of it, you said the person who the most to is yourself. And I think that sometimes I quantitate making a decision on behalf of myself as a selfish decision. And yet my husband's like, No, no is the greatest decision because when you are in a good place, the business is in a good place. And when you are in a good place, the. Family is in a good place. And so we like reframing what it means to make a decision on behalf of myself. Isn't selfish, but actually selfless in a way.

Jennifer Kamara (00:11:01) - And it sounds like you're in the process of that reframing. Absolutely. Where do you feel you got this notion of making a decision that energises me is selfish. It's very common among women in particular, too.

Jasmine Star (00:11:15) - So I did a lot of work with my recent therapist. We've been working together now about a year. I'm obsessed with her. I love her. I want to be her friend in real life. But we know that's totally unprofessional stuff.

Jennifer Kamara (00:11:27) - So like.

Jasmine Star (00:11:27) - Oh.

Jasmine Star (00:11:28) - Like hang out on the weekend. Um.

Jennifer Kamara (00:11:31) - Can I be your best friend? Your best, your best one that you see.

Jasmine Star (00:11:34) - Another session on that topic? No. You know, we kind of went down that birth order. So I do have a twin sister. I'm a fraternal twin. I'm a minute older, but I've definitely embodied the older sister, the oldest child. And so I think that not like my parents never put it on me. I think it was just something that just happened in the family, took a lot of responsibility. Traditional Latino family, five children, and we were homeschooled. So we spent a lot of time in the home. And so we took on a lot of responsibility for like household items. And even when I went to college, my sister and I, we made a collective decision as a family that whatever school offered us the most scholarship money would be the school that we went to. And so we applied for a lot of scholarships and like Pell grants and grants and the school that gave both my sister and I the highest tuition actually ended up being the same school.

Jasmine Star (00:12:23) - So we ended up going to college together, having swore you're never going to call it a college together. But we never going to college together. And on the byproduct of that, when my mom was first diagnosed with cancer, she actually had a relapse when I was in law school. So she was first diagnosed. I was a junior in college. And so it really changed the dynamic of what I was doing in school. And I then really heavily stepped into going back home a lot to do, like meal prep and to do laundry and tell my mom my mom was dead right in. And so I think that what happens is I never thought I was being selfish or unfelt established. I just took a lot of responsibility. But what subconsciously I was digesting it on is like, well, if I choose myself, then I'm not choosing them. And I think that through a lot of therapy and deep work, it has been well, when I choose myself, I am choosing them. And so I think that that realization and distillation has probably been really recent, probably in the last 12 months.

Jennifer Kamara (00:13:13) - Yeah. And thank you for sharing. It's extremely common. I also really a lot to your story. I myself am an immigrant. I grew up in poverty. There is a lot of, especially with families, where I have this huge value of team and family that we stand together and we take care of each other. And so I totally get that. The what I'd bring up is to to this point of you in this case choosing and you've come you've developed enough stability for yourself. Think it's tougher when you need to develop like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We all need food. We need shelter. And I think in these cases, you want to get to a point where you have food, you have shelter, things like that. But once you get to a certain level of stability, it's also about what drives you and what energizes you and how is you showing up in your best self, in effect, caring for the others in your life. So what your husband brought up of if Jasmine is fully fulfilled and energized and excited, what does that do for the team? And then we also had a conversation with you, maybe making time for yourself to work and being a mom and maybe feeling a little guilty.

Jennifer Kamara (00:14:21) - But what is that modeling And again, modeling not necessarily as a supermodel or whatever, but modeling as I'm showing an example of this act, and maybe I am rewriting prior narratives of this being selfish to when I take care of myself, I feel powerful, I feel strong, and I can show up more energized and with even more in my cup to pour into your own. And what impact does that begin to have in exploring these paths?

Jasmine Star (00:14:49) - That was a great thing. That was well, it was just a it was a perfect distillation. It was just a really great summary. And I think that if that clip ended up just being like a piece of content for yourself, I think you just won the game. Like it was just exactly that. It's a complete distillation of somebody stepping into the power of modeling a decision without being the end result and then allowing yourself and then telling yourself that when you are energized, you energize others.

Jasmine Star (00:15:15) - Yeah. And we've all like, think at least my parents generation, my mom made a lot of sacrifices, quote unquote, for our family.

Jennifer Kamara (00:15:22) - And it's like stuff we've seen a lot. And I think it's all about rewriting these paths and taking care of ourselves as taking care of others and all of that. So this is a work in progress. We're all on it. On the notion of being this work in progress and you being this example. Jasmine I have a couple of things. I wanted to talk today about entrepreneurship and then your life design. You had mentioned that at each turn you were uneducated, unfunded, unqualified and unprepared to start this venture in entrepreneurship, be it you. UCLA to do photography without a camera yet, or then becoming an internationally recognized photographer to starting to advise other entrepreneurs to then in 2020 not having any tech experience to then launching a tech company. Think so much of the time we maybe hesitate or stop because we feel we don't know enough or we don't have funding or access. And so I'd love to talk about what in those moments drove you forward, maybe a couple of stories that others can take an example.

Jasmine Star (00:16:21) - I don't know if it's being a visionary or sheer idiocy.

Jasmine Star (00:16:25) - You know, it's like or is.

Jennifer Kamara (00:16:26) - It a fire in your belly?

Jennifer Kamara (00:16:27) - Jasmine Maybe it's a mix. You know, I don't ever believe in absolutes, so it's somewhere like a mix. And I probably add a dash of, you know, divine, brilliant. It's like somebody might look at something and think on the back of nothing. I think I can do that. I think I can do that. Yeah. And every step of the way, it was just what was it like? A desperation as the mother of innovation, I'm kind of like, yeah.

Jennifer Kamara (00:16:52) - Necessity is the mother of invention.

Jasmine Star (00:16:53) - Okay, See, it's like I just make it up almost. Maybe that's my old quote unquote. Love it. Right? I think that with every business iteration, I didn't set out and say, You know what, I need to shake things up. I really need to do things I'm wildly unqualified to do. Not at all. It was simply like, how do I solve the next problem? And then on the back of solving the next problem, I realized that if I shared the journey, if I documented the journey, it actually opened up pathways to create a different offer.

Jasmine Star (00:17:18) - When I found an audience who was struggling or wanted to know how to move past or solve or get through a very similar thing. Every business I have ever created has been on the back of getting through a seemingly impossible thing and then breaking through the other thing. And then, you know, new levels, new devils. It's well, if I continuously iterate and then I share the processing, the journey, then the next offer seems to just come in and of itself. So yes, every step of the way I've been unqualified and unfunded and uneducated. And when I think about like whatever the future version is, like when they think about that, I think that's ridiculous. Like, that's ridiculous. I don't even know if that's going to happen. But then I look at the past as an indication of the future. And if I were to just deal with facts, only facts, if I were to remove all emotion and simply say you have a track record of being unqualified, unfunded, unconnected, and then finding a way to make it work.

Jasmine Star (00:18:14) - So when you look to the future and you think that that is the most ridiculous idea and whether or not you have the skill set now to accomplish what it is you want to do, well, why not step into it and act as if the destination has been reached? What decisions are you making today? How are you showing up? What are you doing? And then holding space for the future vision and then making decisions against the future vision that requires this high level of fate. Like I know that's the thing that JD and I want to build. What decisions do we need to make today to build that? And so I'm not making decisions against the business now. I'm making decisions against the business in the future, which again, is a little bit crazy, a little bit brilliant, a little idiotic, a little visionary. And yet that's the way we've always functioned. And so I'm like, Well, it ain't broke. Don't fix it. And so that's where we're at right now.

Jennifer Kamara (00:19:02) - Yeah, you say a little crazy, a little idiotic, but I will share because you, for instance, the story of you starting social curator and not having a technical background, and you shared that you sat with these engineers who were creating your first MVP, that you were going to test, and you just felt so out of place.

Jennifer Kamara (00:19:23) - You felt like a fish out of water. And but despite that, you pushed yourself to ask questions, ask basic questions, ask quote unquote, stupid questions, questions about your questions. And so I want to highlight that because I think it's not just having a crazy vision, but I think what really propels you forward, Jasmine, is the fact that despite that vision that maybe scares you in your pants, you are still going for it and you are showing up each day. And I think you mentioned this too, it's the little small things you do every day and the consistency with it and the to come up, come and show up and be brave and ask the questions and move forward. And now here you are today, a tech.

Jasmine Star (00:20:03) - Are you familiar? Are you familiar with human design at all? What do you think? It's like a practice of self-discovery and you kind of learned how do you make decisions and what are the things that you're doing? And there's like, I believe like five types of people anyway.

Jasmine Star (00:20:17) - It's neither here nor there. But as I was working through understanding a little bit more about how I make decisions, because if we understand how we make decisions, the body will start giving us cues like perhaps we're highly logical. Well then if we have the ability to highly logically lay something out, the decision then lends itself to this. If we find that we're highly intuitive and we kept them squashing this idea that intuition can actually help us make a decision, that when you learn that that's actually a decision source place, that you might be leaning more on your intuition. Well, it was going through the process of me figuring out how do I best make decision. And one of the things that really came out from that was energetically. I know it is the right decision when I feel energetic toward it. And so if we go back to this idea of it makes no sense to close this mastermind, I felt very energetic towards cohort two of it felt energetic. However, when given the opportunity, the team and I were ideating on something.

Jasmine Star (00:21:08) - We just started tapping around on this idea. All of a sudden I was like, and it wasn't a shiny object syndrome because I sat with it for a while and instead of me coming like, Oh well, this or Oh well that, more ideas came and I said, And then we could do this and then we could do that. And then, Oh, there's this. And all of a sudden I just felt like it was energy that bred energy. So yes, it made a decision of like, well, it doesn't really make sense, but I'm like, if I know my decision making process is by getting energy from something that I just need to trust myself and like lean more into that. And then as I've just really been going down and creating core values for your business is one thing. I had never taken the time to actually create, like what's my value system? And one of the things that you had said is like making courageous decisions and hearing that now that I went through, I have two main values and one of them is one of them is courage.

Jasmine Star (00:21:52) - But I can't say at the end of my life, Oh, I wanted to be courageous without accepting that what it takes for us to be courageous is to be in really difficult situations and make a decision that few people do. And so when you say, oh, you're making those courageous decisions, I was like, oh my God, somebody else is seeing me live according to my values. And so, so often as entrepreneurs, we really want to set values for the business, as we all should. How then are we just making them for ourselves? And when somebody else sees the value from the outside, then, you know, I'm doing the thing. I'm living the way that I should. So thank you. And I wanted to share that just to kind of like expedite anybody, just really doing the work to figure out like how they make decisions and then what is their values in applying it, not just in their business but in their life.

Jennifer Kamara (00:22:39) - That's actually something that is incredibly important. I believe that the best performing and over the long term, best performing leaders are ones who are acting in alignment with their personal values.

Jennifer Kamara (00:22:54) - And so it's been extremely clear, Jasmine, that here in that tough, brave decision you're making, you were living to your value there. And so, yes, it's abundantly clear and it's so refreshing and lovely to see highly. Also recommend everyone. I think you can take 45 minutes it takes to figure out what your own personal values are. I've done a plot on how to figure out your personal values. You can check that out. And I hadn't heard about this, these ways of decision making. So there's energetic, intellectual gut. Like I want to learn more about this. So this is really interesting. On the notion of our minds haven't evolved to the same extent as the rest of our bodies. And so making it gut decision is actually not a statement. It's actually like a biological scientific statement. And a lot of the times we feel something in our bodies before we do. We get it logically. So also want to want to share that. And it's important as leaders who can be so logical to also connect.

Jennifer Kamara (00:23:48) - I mean, I.

Jasmine Star (00:23:48) - Started and no, thank you. And I think that it's easy to sit and think that it shows up in a very particular way that there was this knowing and then you made this business decision or big life decision, and then you just knew. And what I really realized was that was a muscle I had never flexed. And so then I started doing things like in really small ways, where there had been times in the past and maybe you have experiences where maybe you're like running out the door and you think of something and then, I don't know, it's not that important. And then later on that day, you're like, If I had just grabbed the keys, yeah, I had just done this. And so what I started realizing was anytime I had a flickering thought of maybe you should, I stopped myself and I did it. And then the more that I did it, the more I began trusting. And this is literally examples of grabbing sunglasses, grabbing that strange extra storage sheet.

Jasmine Star (00:24:34) - Why? No idea. And then you realize I needed to get into the storage unit today. It was. You know what? I think I should check my Waze app because this is the way I always get home and nothing ever. But. And all of a sudden, these small, tiny things. And the more that we flex the muscle, we begin to trust the muscle. It grows over time. So yeah, it starts up with sunglasses or keys or your path home, but it ends up showing up in big ways purchasing homes, M&A with business, picking up business partners. And so I really wanted to hone in on that so that somebody is like, Well, lucky for you. And I'm like, No, it really just was a practice that I began to build trust with myself. Yeah.

Jennifer Kamara (00:25:06) - And again, the society is built in Success now comes so much from being logical. We pay less attention to some of these cues from our bodies and totally agree with you. The more you build this muscle, you listen to this voice, the louder it gets because you're building a relationship with it.

Jennifer Kamara (00:25:25) - And it may not be there as present right now because you're just not interacting with it as much. And so it's more quieted. Totally agree. It's funny, my husband makes fun of me all the time because every time we leave the house, you're like 75% of the time I need to go back in to take something. And so he just waits. He's like, okay, this was just round one and you got to go back.

Jennifer Kamara (00:25:46) - Around to prepare. Like when he's like fake departures, you know, 15 minutes or so. Herself.

Jennifer Kamara (00:25:53) - I'm glad you brought that up. Feel great. I'm in good company. Jasmine, another thing I wanted to talk about with you on what you've learned is you also shared something like, you are on a mission to build your own business and build your life authentically, which I love. And sometimes you're going to rub people off the wrong way and building the courage to be like, That's okay, unsubscribe or then I'm not the right version for you. And there is my tribe and there is my audience.

Jennifer Kamara (00:26:19) - And I want to stay true to me for them. I am bringing this up because I think that also can be something that a lot of folks hesitate on that actually takes a ton of time to build. Just becoming confident and being okay with who you are. Another version of this could be like in a playground with friends. Like when you're a kid, you want to be friends with everyone, but then and then you start to change who you are and how you show up, things like this. And I think it's just such a wonderful thing to just be true to yourself. So easier said than done. Curious how you got there. Just advice for other folks on the journey.

Jasmine Star (00:26:53) - So I don't think that I was ever the person who was just as self-assured and confident in and of my own self. So like I had mentioned, my mom had five kids. She homeschooled all of us. My first foray with the public school system was in high school. So here we were, living just with my family and going to school.

Jasmine Star (00:27:11) - It was a whole new world, quite honestly. It was a different universe in which I had to understand the way that people participated. And then I understood clicks and then I understood hierarchy. And how did that feel?

Jennifer Kamara (00:27:20) - Did it feel so strange? Did it feel like crazy strange to you?

Jennifer Kamara  (00:27:24) - I can't.

Jennifer Kamara (00:27:25) - It's as if you, being an adult was dropped in the Sahara Desert and said, Here's everything you need. Don't worry, you'll get through it. And you look around and you're like, okay, like, where's the water? Right? And like, there's like, laughing cheetahs and like, a pack of like, rhinos that run right past you on their way to homeroom. And what are you even doing? I was like, Oh, I was like, the most ridiculous thing. You just sit around and they take attendance. When you switch classes, you can not attend the next class and wait. We need to go to a locker on the other side of the school with a combination that the previous year student actually had that they would be able to.

Jasmine Star (00:27:56) - There's things that I was questioning that everybody else took for granted because that's just the way it had always been done. And so I did have my twin sister, so that was nice because I wasn't entirely I mean, we were walking through the Sahara with somebody else. Yeah. So we were just like the weird twins who looked exactly like each other.

Jennifer Kamara (00:28:10) - This is so crazy, right?

Jennifer Kamara (00:28:12) - And but other people were looking at us being like, look it, there's those weird homeschool girls that look identical. So, yeah, everything, everything, everything was new. And I think unknowingly had developed this deep desire to be liked by everybody. And my sister and I, we just did things like we got very involved in school, in leadership. Then we went to college, got very involved in school, in leadership, and we just had this ability to get people around us, not because they were special, but because we had a really unique way of hearing what people were saying and being like, Oh, we're just connectors.

Jasmine Star (00:28:42) - And then I think when I started a business, it really was magnified. So just think back in the early days, we're talking about like 2009. This isn't the advent of like Twitter and Facebook when it started getting into like more mass popularity. And I don't think that I was psychologically prepared to go from microcosms of high school or college or even the workplace to getting magnified. And so what you quickly realize is that without human interaction, you can't really assess who's about you and who's not. And then all of a sudden you realize that when you put something out, you're giving the right to everybody to have an opinion. I was not at all prepared for people to have such strong opinions around what I was sharing. Now, in the beginning of my business, when I started putting out content, I didn't have money for a website, and yet I was like, I think I could become a photographer. I didn't even own a camera, right? I didn't even know how to work camera. But like, got this idea I think I could be a photographer, which again, visionary, stupid, crazy, idiotic, freaking amazing.

Jasmine Star (00:29:37) - And so start documenting my process. And so very much like in the Year of Rebirth, I'm just documenting. I really don't know which way is up and I'm just going to own it. Did the exact same thing back in 2007 and 2008, and then what happens on the back end of other people who have identified with similar emotions kind of created a tribe. Oh, look at this. It is duplicative of high school. Yes. Adulthood is really high school all over again. And so all of a sudden there's these things that happened. And when the tribe got too big and when there was a group of people who did things so differently than the artistic canon of the time, I became a walking target. Okay? And I'm not seeing the victim song. It was actually there was a person who got a second rate camera at Best Buy and then in her first year of business, built a six figure business when the vast majority of creatives weren't even breaking 10,000. So the inequity and the people who had said, No, this is an art and we are artist.

Jasmine Star (00:30:31) - And then all of a sudden I come in, I'm like, Well, I can create art and make money, let's go. And I was naive to think that I can get everybody behind this idea. Like, Look what we all can do. I started sharing content and people started just ripping it to shreds. I started getting so fixated on the idea that like, I can win you over. I got into I can win you over. Then I completely lost myself in. And then a tectonic happens where it's like a massive industry backlash. And man, I thought my whole world at crashed and I just didn't take the time to actually realize that I had lost who I was in the process of trying to be so liked by so many people. And it isn't until you're there at the bottom and you have to ask yourself, like, do I have the capacity to come back? Like, do I have the capacity to rebound in this industry? Do you have the capacity to do this again? Like, felt like my soul was shattered.

Jasmine Star (00:31:21) - And, you know, that sounds so dramatic. But no, it took me like three years of therapy to actually figure out if I can come back and build a business, because I was like, Oh, that was just a fluke. And like, look, what what happens is like people build you up to tear you down and viciously tear you down. And I look back at that and I think to myself, that was the best thing to ever happen. Because had that not happened, I would have stayed in the photography industry and done what I have done and had a great life and never realized how much more capacity I had. That was the biggest shift in like my professional career where I realized, Listen, despite your best efforts, you're not going to be 100% like, not 100% of people were going to like you and not 100% are going to agree with you and not 100% are going to judge you or not judge you. I've come to believe that as humans, we are hardwired to judge, not even in a negative way.

Jasmine Star (00:32:02) - We just judge. And so if I started realizing I'm like, if they're going to judge me anyway, they're going to judge me. If I eat a pizza or green smoothie, they're going to judge me. If I take a really great photograph or take a terrible photograph, if they're going to judge me for being business savvy or being done, they're going to judge me on education or not having education. If they're going to judge me for running a marathon or sitting on the couch, they're going to judge me. So why am I caring about somebody else's judgment of me when they were never going to be a customer or a paying client? I was making my life decisions based on Johnny 264 orange finger. I eat Cheetos all day on the couch versus what the hell do I want to do? And when you're making a decision of, Oh, I'm uncomfortable about what people are going to say, you can fight for your limitation, please go right ahead. And then whenever you get sick of fighting for somebody else's opinion who doesn't know you will never pay you and doesn't even like you, when you get tired of that, then let's have a conversation.

Jasmine Star (00:32:54) - Because when you choose to show up for one person whose life, business, family legacy you can change, you are then not making a decision about what your content means about you. You're making a decision about what your content means about them, and all of a sudden you get out of your own damn way and good things start happening. So whenever somebody gets more sick of somebody else's opinion and decides to be less sick about empowering somebody else, Yeah, let's have that conversation.

Jennifer Kamara (00:33:20) - Preach. Jasmine. No, but it's so true. Super inspiring to hear you. We all spend so much time thinking about ourselves and we overestimate how much other people are thinking about us. Also just want to say the folks who are there trolling are likely not doing anything. You're the man in this case woman in the arena actually doing some while. So the people who I feel like have the time to be sitting saying negative things and judging negatively or just doing so because they have nothing better to do.

Jasmine Star (00:33:49) - And I want I've always maintained I can't remember if somebody told me this or if this is just like in the byproduct of actually knowing what is the truth is.

Jasmine Star (00:33:56) - And also my darn experience iterative in all of my businesses. Nobody who's doing better than you is leaving any comment.

Jennifer Kamara (00:34:03) - Exactly like.

Jennifer Kamara (00:34:05) - You. Just look at that. If you just look at that because the people who are doing better than people who are successful, they're actually focused on themselves. If that's not a lesson, if you're looking at the people in your industry who are leading the way, who are on guard, who are thought leaders, they're more interested in doing them than anybody else, may we all learn a lesson from that?

Jennifer Kamara (00:34:22) - Yeah, or they're looking at you and they're like, Yeah, amazing. Great job. She's hustling. That's what I had to do. Go. You love it. And in this choice of choosing yourself, as opposed to all these countless other opinions who are a dime a dozen, nobody asked for them. Let's talk about how you're designing your relationship with yourself today. Jasmine and I started with it. We just mentioned it. How are you taking care of Jasmine?

Jasmine Star (00:34:46) - These you know, it seems like a very hot topic between cold plunges and morning routines, like everybody has an opinion about them.

Jasmine Star (00:34:53) - I actually don't I love I love watching people cold plunge. I'm not one of those people who are sick of it. I just find it inspiring. I will never in a million years do it. I run cold. I have to live in California because if I didn't live in California, I would die anywhere else. Like it's 78 degrees and I'm wearing sweatpants right now and ugg boots. I'm always cold. There's no way I'm getting in a cold one zero just zero zero. Anyway, I do. I swear by a morning routine. Not for anybody else. Yes. But for me, I have found what works for me. In fact, I was doing a little bit of research on the Huberman show and like, he's a professor at Stanford and he swears like his morning routine. And I looked at his morning routine. I was like, Man, that's amazing. And it's probably really amazing for him. I don't think it's for me, but there are pieces of it that I can incorporate because I know what I need.

Jasmine Star (00:35:33) - And I think that a good morning routine and setting me up has been great. So first place of like, how am I designing my life for me, my morning routine and what is it I I'm an early riser. I try my best time. I wake up between 430 and 5. Naturally, it drives me crazy, hasn't crazy? It drives my husband.

Jasmine Star (00:35:52) - I know.

Jasmine Star (00:35:52) - I know. I know my.

Jasmine Star (00:35:54) - Husband. My husband wants to wake up at six. I would rather at seven. And I called a family meeting. I was like, okay, let's do six. That's a good.

Jennifer Kamara (00:36:01) - Compromise. That's right. That's marriage right there. That's marriage. That is exactly married.

Jennifer Kamara (00:36:05) - And you're 430. Jasmine Okay, I'm still listening.

Jasmine Star (00:36:09) - Interesting. I don't advocate. I do zero advocation. I should be this way. I just know that the things I am doing in the amount of time that it requires and where my priorities why I do want to be a present mother for my daughter, which means that I'm going to have to flex my working hours differently than I did before.

Jasmine Star (00:36:27) - And so when I do wake up in the morning and I do have time to pray, meditate, read when I have a lot of time to drink a lot of water, when I can just sit in the darkness and get the gritty work done, like let me just get my day in order. Let me lay it out. Let me get what I can get done. And you will never meet somebody who was more productive than a mother who was trying to work before their child wake up, period. The like. I challenge you, I'll care. I was just like, I'll go. I'll go head to head with the CEOs. I was like, we will get work done. And so that's how has been so carved out for me. And I've also realized that I used to love working out at 9 or 10 in the morning. I loved it, but I realized that when I did that, it was really compromising a lot of the time with my daughter. So I do wake up very early in the morning.

Jasmine Star (00:37:07) - I do get work done. I pray, meditate. I read, I hydrate, I work out, and I'm home by 7 a.m. when she wakes up. And then I do mom, like from 7 to 830. And then I prep and around nine, it's like, now I'm a CEO from 9 to 5. I am a CEO. But because I did other working hours, like if I decide to flex my lunch hour and take it a little longer so that I could read and put her down for a nap, I get to do that. So I'm designing according to. So people are like, Well, that's crazy. Absolutely. So I have no judgment on anybody else, but I am figuring out in order for me to not just drink from a full cup, I don't want to drink from a full cup. I want my cup to be so full. I want to drink from the saucer. And so in order for overflowing. But that requires discipline, consistency and making decisions that other people don't.

Jasmine Star (00:37:52) - But I have no judgment for anybody else who doesn't subscribe to that philosophy, to each their own. I've just found a pattern that works for me. I've also found a partner that's a huge advocate. He wakes up at seven. He has zero desire to wake up a minute before that and I have never separate. I do love it. No.

Jennifer Kamara (00:38:08) - So part of designing your life and life design, the beauty of it is what is my perfect life is not going to be what is this other person's perfect life? It's like it's all very individual. It's same with our values. Our values are all very individual. They're shaped by a combination of our innate preferences as well as our experiences and what we've learned along the way. Same here. And so really, like the conversations around life design are just it's interesting to see how every person, what works for them and the little things we all have in common and the different ways other people find joy designing productivity for them. And so so that's where the conversation lies.

Jasmine Star (00:38:48) - So I love this. I was teasing you. We understand with you. Yeah. Tell me about meditation. So a lot of folks do this. Do you do it for 15 minutes, five minutes? You journal do you like have something you found that works? Is it Huberman approach something else?

Jennifer Kamara (00:39:04) - So it's just like a patchwork. So here the non-negotiables is that I do take around 15 to 20 minutes to read and pray in a journal. But when I would hear people say, Oh, hey, journal, that would be like, nice, like, what a nice life journal. But like when I say I journal, it really it's just spending like it's less than ten minutes every day and I'm listing of small things that I'm grateful for because that's a super big celebration for me according to my value. And then I'm talking about what I'm feeling. Just writing it down from like what has happened from the previous day and is crazy because it's a 365 day journal, but I happen to write really small, so I've been able to keep that same journal over four years.

Jasmine Star (00:39:40) - And so I'm now beginning to see trend times of year. How am I feeling during promotions? What's the downtime, how much downtime when I got more time downtime or less downtime or was my sweet spot? So that's been kind of interesting for me. And then as far as meditation goes, I'm looking forward to carving out a certain amount of time every day. But what I've noticed is that if I sleep more, a meditation period is shorter. If I happen to wake up earlier, my meditation, it's more of like a decadent. And so that's where I'm at with my meditation practice. I will find meditation within the timeframe that I have, and that's been like really nice.

Jennifer Kamara (00:40:11) - And yeah, it's about the consistency two of like and the adaptability to what you need. I'm curious, mental fitness wise is a term I used to refer to, like how we exercise our bodies to stay in shape by whatever form of movement we each prefer. Some people like running, some people hate it and people like dancing, etcetera.

Jennifer Kamara (00:40:30) - How do you take care of your mind? You are juggling a lot. Your CEO, you're a mom. You are thinking about what's next. When or what practices do you find that leave you feeling like your most capable self mentally?

Jasmine Star (00:40:46) - And much to the chagrin of my husband, I'm sure he's such a life force. Like sometimes I joke that I'm like a. Flytrap. I'm like, I just got you in my teeth and I'm just going to suck you dry for all your energy. I think it's probably I don't like I mean, Oh, it's either that or it's like I'm Charlotte, you know, and I'm out there, like, weaving my webs for him. No, but genuinely, genuinely, he is such a life force. Like, just. He's just so grounded. And he has a child that would say, Oh, his head's in the clouds. And I couldn't think of a of a more apropos description. My husband is a visionary. He thinks anything is possible. He thinks everything is figured out.

Jennifer Kamara (00:41:25) - He is like my biggest champion. And so whenever I'm, like, feeling very drained, it's like one conversation with him and I'm just like, you know, I'm Manny Pacquiao. And he's like, you know, like, come on, I'll get back in the ring. Like, let's go. So, yeah, so there's that. I do have like a very strong affinity closest to God. My father is a pastor. I was raised in the church. And so just spending some time alone and like talking to God, I once read of like a rabbi hosting like a rabbinical school. And like at the end of the school, it wasn't about just reading the Torah. It was about going out into nature and spending 60 Minutes talking to God and oftentimes before a bat mitzvah or moment. But like you're 13, like you're kind of like, this is weird, but oftentimes speaking like a very transformative thing that if you just gave yourself time in space and maybe people don't believe in God, but what would it look like to look within what is like this, this driving force like I do believe that there was like a greater power.

Jasmine Star (00:42:19) - And when we have the time to sit in the humility of it, like to me, for me, it's very charging, very charging. I practice yoga, meditation like that, mind fitness and the journaling. The morning routine is actually a mindfulness routine as well. It doubles as both. And so I'm thankful for that.

Jasmine Star (00:42:35) - Know care of for me, it's going for a run, having enough alone time, enough sleep, eating well. I love that you brought up that your husband's story. I literally just shared a story where my husband is very similar and even like a cuddle, like a five minute cuddle session and I feel immediately charged and I'm like, okay, I got this. Let's go. What's next? But yeah, like prayer and prioritizing those things. And then to your point of you can then start to see the patterns of when you don't do X, Y, or Z, you may feel lower energy or exhausted for me, as if I don't get enough sleep two nights in a row or three nights in a row.

Jennifer Kamara (00:43:11) - It's completely different. And I'm ruthless about my sleep these days. Thing to here. I want to talk about your relationship with your daughter and with your husband, how you design those. Why bring these up and maybe your friends or family? Things like that is because humans are super social creatures. Our relationships are extremely important. Like we talk about health span, lifespan. It's relationships, what you're eating, how are you moving your sleep, things like that that contribute. So I'm always really curious to learn more about how busy folks design and prioritize time with their loved ones.

Jasmine Star (00:43:41) - You know, I'm very sad for the day that it will change, but right now I express the utmost decadence, luxury and gratitude that it is the three of us. Like we are a pod. JD Luna Sol and myself are Pod. We do everything. We do everything together. Like I'm already telling her now. I'm like, if you decide to go to college and it's totally up to you as you do, but wherever you make that declaration, please know that your puppy and I buying a house out there.

Jasmine Star (00:44:05) - Okay, So we're going be there all the time, but we're just going to be there for the week. Do we want to pop right in? So think if we just tell her enough times, we'll just think it's normal that every parent gets like a condo or a home in her college town. We're already sitting that out there. But right now, right now, it's proximity. And here's the thing. I know my view is very skewed for how I was raised in the best way. It's very tribal. My family was very tribal, like all of the kids hung out together. My parents were always around. And right now, with my daughter being three and a half, that is 100% what it is. We are very connected. We do breakfast, lunch and dinner. I mean, 99% of the time, breakfast, lunch and dinner together, we made the commitment very much, very much on the back of my husband, sacrifices that we were going to do every travel event together. So if I'm speak in New York, we're all going.

Jasmine Star (00:44:48) - And what does that require of my husband? More from him when we travel. It is 80, 20, 80% parents to her and more at home. It's like we do. We aim for that 5030 balance. So he's doing a lot of sacrifices. And so I don't ever want to take it for granted or just assume that every year we'll look the same. So we assess it every 12 months, but for the year of 2023, he said, we're doing it all together. And so how do we balance it? Well, you know, it is just the dream gen like, by the way, speaking events. I'm focused on my own and I'm ready to go on stage. There was a time where JD would be in the room with me. Do I longer pine for those moments? Sure. But are they offset by at the beginning or somewhere in the middle? In the back of the room, I get to hear a tiny little voice with her watching me do what I do. And on the back of that, we are able to go to lunch or dinner together and then find a local park or library for her.

Jasmine Star (00:45:37) - To me to maybe not anybody else that for me that feels like the dream.

Jennifer Kamara (00:45:42) - Rap women were about on time. I could talk to you for forever. And coming back to the beginning of making choices for yourself that align with your values, that are you living your life on your own terms. The story just put a big smile on my face because that's what I'm hoping to do as well with Martin. And we that's what you will do.

Jasmine Star (00:46:00) - That's what you will do.

Jennifer Kamara (00:46:01) - And it's great. Yes. And it's so great to see folks making it work to where you know that it's totally doable. I love this. I love this conversation. Thank you so much for coming on.

Jennifer Kamara (00:46:13) - Thank you for having me. Thank you for the invitation. Thank you for the connection.

Katie Haahr (00:46:18) - Okay, now you can answer. What steps are you taking to design your life? I hope this episode provided some much needed inspiration for you. Snap a picture of what you're doing as you listen right now. Take Jasmine at at Jasmine Star and share it on stories we'd love to cheer you on.

Katie Haahr (00:46:32) - We'll see you next time.