Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Before we start this episode, I want to give you a quick heads up that my guest, Aaron, shares a personal and emotional story about a tragic passing of a friend. We understand that this content might be distressing for some listeners and viewers. If you feel like this might be a little difficult for you to hear, we encourage you to take care of yourself. Skip this episode if you need to. Your well-being is our priority. Thank you so much for understanding. Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, where we have the opportunity to talk about business, and we get to talk about purpose, and we get to do it with brilliant people. I could not be more excited because the person who I have here with me is not just somebody who I have respected and not somebody who I did a ton of due diligence about, but somebody who I invested to spend two days with in Boulder, Colorado. And I say it without exaggerating in any way, shape or form. It absolutely changed my professional life and my personal life.

Jasmine Star 00:00:51  So before I get into there, I have to explain that Aaron helps you specific you leaders entrepreneurs uncover their purpose so they can authentically express themselves. I invested in something that she calls the dig, and I invited her back to come here and share with you her process so you can start it on your own. And more than anything, learn how we apply this to our business. So we authentically step into the bigger reason why we have run a business, and why we want to make it more expansive and successful. Welcome to the show, Erin Weed. I'm so happy you're here.

Erin Weed 00:01:23  I am so happy to be here. this is amazing. The absolute best. No, I just love watching you in your element. Oh.

Jasmine Star 00:01:29  Thank you. Okay, so speaking of my element, you and I reconnected after a couple of years when you came out to Newport Beach a few weeks ago, and you sent me a DM, and you said, I'm going to be in Newport, can you meet? To which I thought, of course, any time that I can speak with a brilliant person who just sees the totality of me and challenges me to do bigger things, the answer is always yes.

Jasmine Star 00:01:52  And so in the back of my mind I thought, okay, well, I wonder what this is going to be about. And what it really was about was just, Jasmine, how are you doing? And that was so amazing. We sat in this beautiful studio in Newport, and you were there working with a client, and you took some time out from the client day and obviously okayed by the client. And you have a very long, good, healthy working relationship with them and their massive team. And we spoke about what has unfolded for me since the last time we worked together. And you had said something during our conversation that you cannot afford to be unclear. And I thought, oh, that is exactly why our paths first intersected, was because we met how many years ago?

Erin Weed 00:02:36  Jeez, I don't know, 20, 15, maybe 15 years? No, no. 2015 oh 2015 yes. I don't do math like 8.

Jasmine Star 00:02:44  Or 9 years ago. Right?

Erin Weed 00:02:45  I do words.

Jasmine Star 00:02:46  Yes, it was.

Jasmine Star 00:02:47  So it was at this time where I was kind of at a juncture where I was still trying to build out a new arm of my business and me developing who I was going to become. I actually wasn't quite sure, and a very good friend of mine had recommended me to work with you and that friend I was in Lewis Houses mastermind. That's right. And he had said, Jasmine, I think you should connect with a woman by the name of Aaron Weed. And that recommendation I started doing due diligence, and then both myself and Jade flew to Boulder and met with you. So can we talk first and foremost about why that is so important for you? Like why we can't afford to be unclear because there's business owners right now. They're like, I know what I do, and they need a lot of clarity to explain what it is I do or why I do it. And so the minute I got so much more clear around my why, the better I was from a marketing and branding perspective, able to put that on the outside of my business.

Erin Weed 00:03:44  Yeah, well, I think the clarity piece kind of came up for me as I started working with TEDx speakers. That's kind of the how this whole thing starts right there.

Jasmine Star 00:03:52  Let's start there. Yes. I mean, that's I mean, you're you're a big deal. You work with Ted talk speakers? Yes.

Erin Weed 00:03:57  You work with amazing human beings. That's. That's for definite. Sure. But before becoming a Ted speaker coach, I was a speaker myself for many years, and I had a whole business. We can get into that later if you want, but I had a business teaching women's safety and self-defense seminars at high schools and colleges across the world. And so I was on stage all the time. And so I started coaching for Ted after I sold that company, because I was like, this is the thing that I feel most natural about, and I start working with these brilliant human beings that have so much experience. They have so many stories, they have so much data, and we're trying to distill this thing down to 18 minutes or less.

Erin Weed 00:04:35  In these days. It's even shorter, right? Most Ted talks are they're just getting shorter and shorter and shorter. So these brilliant, capable, accomplished human beings were completely struggling because they were like, I know, like everything about the topic. And yet I am stuck. And I started realizing, okay, if you if you just take these people just straight into the speech, then they get even more stuck. So I was like, let's just stop it. Let's just let's just stop it. Let's forget the message. Let's forget the speech, and let's just talk about them. Let's get them so ridiculously clear about who they are, what they stand for, and how to express it, that we can actually communicate it in a very short amount of time and connect with pretty much anybody in the world. And so I developed this method, now called the Dig. At the time, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just making it all up as I do, and it just kept working.

Erin Weed 00:05:28  And it's tricky, though, because sometimes people are like, oh, I want the tactical thing, right? I want the viral Ted talk. I want the big business, I want the huge email list. And what I sell is something that's below that. It's a little bit underneath. And yet it's also the most important thing. the clarity.

Jasmine Star 00:05:48  So reminds me of a quote I think it's by Theodore Roosevelt. And he had said, if I have to give a speech for a day, I practice an hour, and if I have to give a speech for an hour, I practice for half a day. And if I have to give a speech, that is one minute, I practice a year. You know, it's like, exactly right. We have to get so clear on what it is that we are saying. And so in the process of coaching these future TedTalk speakers, you create the dig. And when somebody is coming to you trying to like, why are people coming to you now? And before we started the conversation, I should probably come out and say Erin casually had said, oh, I have about 100% close rate.

Jasmine Star 00:06:30  And it wasn't like she was bragging. It was just like, oh yeah. And I was like, wait, wait, how? I mean, we're going to talk about the business of her business, but how are you getting like such a high close rate? And she said, well, most of my leads are coming from referrals. That was exactly how I had found you. And then another thing that she said was fascinating, which will absolutely go into why her system works, is because she is like a believer. She has distilled it. And then she had said that most of the people I'm having calls with, they're already pre-qualified. These are people I want to work with. And so if you are a business owner who wants 100% close rate, and if you are a business owner who wants people who come in and you're like, how are you so perfect to work with, this is going to be part of your conversation. But I intersected your path because of a recommendation and because I needed clarity.

Jasmine Star 00:07:16  And so when people are lost, what are the things that are getting in our way when we can't find our messaging? And what are the things that we're going to start doing to unpack that?

Erin Weed 00:07:24  So first I just want to say I have these three C's that I love to talk about. Great. Okay. And I.

Jasmine Star 00:07:30  Take notes. So you just didn't worry about it okay.

Erin Weed 00:07:32  How about it. So the first C is this clarity. So if you get people clarity then it is naturally going to turn into confidence. When you feel confident you're naturally going to make the connection with people. So clarity turns the confidence. Confidence turns into connection. So when people at the time were coming to me when I first started doing this and they just wanted to make the connection with the audience, but they didn't have the clarity, that's why it was impossible. And so I noticed that if you get the clarity, everything is just going to naturally stack on top of it. You're going to get to the connection that you want, whether this is somebody buying your course or signing it for your service or whatever.

Erin Weed 00:08:12  If you're clear, you're going to naturally feel more confident, like you think about what's your hobby?

Jasmine Star 00:08:16  My hobby is reading. Reading. Okay.

Erin Weed 00:08:19  Interesting example.

Jasmine Star 00:08:21  Okay, how are you then? How about yoga? How about you in yoga?

Erin Weed 00:08:23  Okay, so could you talk about yoga like if you had to give it impromptu workshop or you just had to teach somebody about the basic principles. Not I think.

Jasmine Star 00:08:32  I might like yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't say I'm a teacher, but I would be able to talk to them. But as a.

Erin Weed 00:08:37  Practitioner, as someone who does yoga. Yes. Well, first I roll out my mat and then I do this because, yes, you're clear because you do it a lot. Yes. And so you naturally would feel confident, let's say, bringing somebody to a yoga class. Yes, you'd naturally feel confident in facilitating that experience. And so then you're going to make the connection with them. So I noticed that these things stacked.

Erin Weed 00:08:58  That's why clarity is so incredibly important. So when people do come to me, I think they're wanting the connection. But I give them the clarity. And then that happens as a happy accident. I love this.

Jasmine Star 00:09:07  So as a law school dropout, there are some practical things that like my brain will just like reverse it because I need to know that it's true forward and back. It's just how my brain works. So if somebody is wanting more confidence, would you go as far as, say, as? The reason you might not be confident is because you don't have clarity?

Erin Weed 00:09:24  I think in a lot of cases that's true. like, really I would love for your listeners, your viewers to think about it like the areas of your life that you're not feeling confident right now. Are you clear?

Jasmine Star 00:09:37  Oh, dang. That hit, that hit. Yeah. Okay. So what is happening? Why are people coming to you? And when they come to you, you say you have a pressure point because it's no longer you working with Ted speakers.

Jasmine Star 00:09:51  I'm not a Ted talk speaker yet. That's not to say.

Jasmine Star 00:09:53  You should be.

Jasmine Star 00:09:55  But I came to you because I wanted clarity around who I was and what I was about, and what offers I wanted to make and who I wanted to speak to. And so walk us through your Dig process.

Erin Weed 00:10:06  Okay, so I think what you were looking for when you came to me was alignment, right? Like a lot of the people I work with, they're successful. Like they're already doing it. They don't, like, need me in the sense of I need to know how to do a thing, but they need the clarity so they can feel aligned. So the process basically begins at the beginning, where I essentially interview people about their entire life story chronologically. And what I do is I pull out the repeating one word themes. So let's say somebody's talking a lot about their past and they travel a ton. So maybe themes around freedom or liberation or adventure would pop up. So they're saying the story content, but I'm both intuitively sometimes pulling out a word.

Erin Weed 00:10:52  And also sometimes I'm hearing them say words. People actually say certain words without realizing it. And I love to just, like, pull them out and then like, turn it around and show them to people. So we pull out all these one word themes, and these themes ultimately become something I call an operating system. This is ten words or less. It's essentially the how to manual for yourself. It is just like why you do what you do, how you do it, what's important. And then within that operating system, we distill it down to just one word, which is kind of the team captain of of that team. And that one word is kind of the the funnel through which we see everything. It's it's where we succeed. It's where we struggle, it's where we shine. It's it's our superpower, but it's also our darkness. And so that one word I believe and this is, this is a bit spiritual, but I believe that our purpose is to come here and learn about this one word.

Erin Weed 00:11:48  Not just learn about it but also teach about it. And I think that's why I work with a lot of speakers and authors and leaders, because you're going to teach the thing that you've learned. So I see it as a cycle. We should constantly be learning and teaching.

Jasmine Star 00:12:03  Can I talk about my experience? Yes. Like to the best of my recollection, we never had a phone call. We did everything via email. Right. Is that possible? Like when I, when I first you were.

Erin Weed 00:12:14  Very driven, I.

Jasmine Star 00:12:14  Remember. Surprise, surprise. You know. Okay, tell me.

Jasmine Star 00:12:19  More, tell me more. What do you remember?

Erin Weed 00:12:20  I remember you were just on fire. You were ready. I mean, granted, when Lewis Howes makes a recommendation, though, to. I think people take him very seriously as they should, because he's amazing. I dug him and he's fantastic. But you were just ready to go. I also think that you knew that there was something in your way and you were over it.

Erin Weed 00:12:40  Like you were just.

Jasmine Star 00:12:42  Oh my God, that's 100% true.

Erin Weed 00:12:43  Remove the obstacle already. Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:12:46  I was ready. You were ready? I think that sometimes in my life. And maybe other business owners will feel this way when you feel desperate enough to do anything to get out of your own way. And by 2018, we already had proof of concept. Like, it's not like, am I worthy of being a business owner or can I do it? It wasn't that it was. I know I can do more and I am getting in my way because I can't see the forest for the trees. So most of what we did was via email. So JD and I, we fly to Denver, drive into Boulder, we stay at a hotel and that morning, oh, it was during the World Cup, during the World.

Jasmine Star 00:13:23  Cups of JD.

Jasmine Star 00:13:24  And I woke up really early. We ended up at some random pub that was like open at 6 a.m. so we can watch a game and get some coffee.

Jasmine Star 00:13:30  And then we walk to your office, which I you come out and you were so warm and you gave us hugs. And we sat in this office that was below ground. And so your windows were they appeared that they were kind of like above us and brightly colored chairs. And you had brightly colored post-its and you had this white circular table. And then you said, if you don't mind, can we start with the meditation? And I was like, okay, I'm here for business and we're going to meditate. Cool. And this is very early on in my meditation journey. And I was like, okay. And you had said, place your feet on the ground and you're going to feel almost like you want to imagine is like a cord or a rope from the bottom of your posterior all the way up to your head. And you talked about being grounded. And I am telling you, you walked us through this meditation and I felt like I had the most peaceful chill. I was fully aware and I was not aware, and it put down any pretense of me having to say, I need to prove something to you.

Jasmine Star 00:14:31  And little did I know that at the end of our two days together, that was the very thing I needed to learn. And so I'm not going to give my big word yet because I really want to go through the process, but I really want to set the stage for what the work for me has required to step into leadership and entrepreneurship has been learning through the process, learning new things, actively pursuing education, and then trusting people who've done this before. And at the time, were you working with Google? Had you just started working? Yeah, I probably.

Erin Weed 00:15:00  Just started around then. Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:15:01  Can you explain a little bit how Google found you, what you did for them? How does this work for organizations?

Erin Weed 00:15:06  Yeah, so some organizations I just dig people as they get new hires. Some organizations like at Google, I've done projects where we actually got a one word there dig word for the organization. By doing just a ton of digs. And actually at Google, I actually did a ton of digs both in groups and individuals, and we kind of treated it almost like data collection and pattern recognition.

Erin Weed 00:15:34  So I actually got these words, and then we put them into spreadsheets and we figured out the big word based on data, which was pretty amazing because normally I do it with my magical powers.

Jasmine Star 00:15:45  And so then when you presented it to the group, what was the sentiment?

Erin Weed 00:15:50  Everybody was like, of course, and that's how it should be.

Jasmine Star 00:15:54  That's how it was for me.

Erin Weed 00:15:54  I'm not trying to dazzle anybody here with people's big words, and it's not even my choice. Like it's your choice, but it's got to have resonance. In fact, I have this tool I use called the resonance meter. So it's just this imaginary tool of thinking about if something resonates or not. Like if you, let's say you're looking for a new house, like I remember when you were looking for this house, right? You were looking at a bunch of houses, right? And you walk into a house and you just get this feeling, right? The feeling is like, oh, yeah, this is it.

Erin Weed 00:16:26  Or oh, absolutely not. Or just a very strong meh, right? Yes. So what I'm looking for is just the hell yes. Like that is so ridiculously True that there could be no other truth.

Jasmine Star 00:16:39  Okay, so somebody is listening right now and they're like, okay, well, I don't know, Aaron and I'm not doing a dig. How do we start honing in the resonance meter? I will say that after the work we have done and then the dig word, I've always said, if it's not a hell yes, it's a hell no. And pushing me more to that. And I've been listening to my body, my awareness, my education of saying, oh, this is resonating with me. For somebody who's like, okay, how do I hone my resonance meter? Is it something that I just inherently know? Can I build this muscle as an entrepreneur?

Erin Weed 00:17:05  Yeah, I mean, this is intuition. What we're talking about here. This is like first and foremost, getting quiet enough to allow yourself to have an opinion.

Erin Weed 00:17:14  And when I say quiet enough, I mean not with your voice. And that's why we do things like meditations or take walks or whatever. It's like we need to quiet so that we can hear ourselves talk, and then our body will talk. Like, if you've ever been physically around someone who makes you really nervous, your body crunches up, right? And so that's information. You don't know totally what to do with it, always in the moment, but you just have to take the information. You walk into the house. That just feels like the hell yes, even though it doesn't even meet the specs that you had. You have to get curious about that. This is information, right? So I think intuition is a skill everybody has. Everyone can hone and business owners must. They must because I really think human beings are evolving. Like I know sometimes in the world it's hard. You know, you look at the news, you look at whatever, and you don't think that. But I really believe that we are becoming more and more energetic and more and more tied in to other things that are unseen.

Erin Weed 00:18:17  And so we have to drop into that energy and be more receptive to it and make decisions, business decisions based on it.

Jasmine Star 00:18:24  Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:18:24  So somebody is listening and there's like, whoa, this just got way woo yeah way woo.

Erin Weed 00:18:27  I do live in Boulder.

Jasmine Star 00:18:28  So my bag this is how we talk about chakras and things.

Jasmine Star 00:18:32  But the energetic force that I'm feeling no no, no. But let's make a case. Let's make a case for intuition in business. Because I'm very much like Google, I am hardwired for data. And this was such a unique experience for me. So for somebody who's saying, okay, how do I hone my intuition and I understand the why, like, yeah, I should intuitively. But when you have data and intuition, how do you when somebody is making a decision between I see data and then I feel intuition like this just doesn't feel right. How do we hone and trust that intuition as business owners and how do we make a case for it? Yeah.

Erin Weed 00:19:04  So I actually have a formula that's going to speak well to people who need tactical systems.

Erin Weed 00:19:08  Look at you.

Jasmine Star 00:19:09  Ted Talker.

Jasmine Star 00:19:10  Looking at you. Look at you.

Erin Weed 00:19:12  This is actually covered in my own Ted talk and it's called head hardcore. So basically I believe there are three truths operating all the time. You have factual truth, which is your data. That is your spreadsheet. Absolutely. We need that.

Jasmine Star 00:19:29  That's head.

Erin Weed 00:19:30  Yes. Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. We need factual truth. The second part is emotional truth. That is what's true for us in the fields, you know. And then the third truth is the core is the gut. This is the desire based truth. So when you put together what you know to be factually true, what you feel to be true and what you want. All of a sudden you have your answer.

Jasmine Star 00:19:58  Okay, so what happened?

Jasmine Star 00:20:00  And so what I feel oftentimes is if I'm honing in my intuition and I'm doing the head hard core, it's very easy when all three things are aligned for me to be like, hell yes, this is what we run through.

Jasmine Star 00:20:10  Even if it doesn't make sense, or with the data, it would make sense. What happens when 1 or 2 things are out of alignment? Like what if I'm saying like my core truth is, this is what I want, but data and factually is not pointing to that. And the emotional truth is like, well, it's a feeling. And if I feel it, it's just not right. How do we reconcile these two and when do we flex? Must it all be all three things to be pointing to? Yes, because I've made decisions that factually data pointed to not make sense, but in my heart and in my core, it did. And so at what point do we say our intuition is overruling all three and being in alignment?

Erin Weed 00:20:43  So the fun thing that I find is that when you do all three, usually at the end, you have a pretty clear answer that doesn't have to make anyone the winner, head versus heart, right? And play with this in your daily life. I'm actually curious what your listeners feel about this.

Erin Weed 00:21:03  Like I'll use a real example. Just recently, I had a client who just offered me a bigger position within the organization, and they're a client that I adore. I love the work, all the things. And yet I wasn't feeling the hell yes, totally. And so I did head hardcore and I put the facts around the money and the time and the things, you know, like the tangibles. Yes. And then I did the heart and I loved them. And, you know, this so fulfilling all the things. But when it came down to the core, I was like. And even with both those things being true, it is not the right time. It's just not the right time because I have some other really big things happening. And so I let the head be true, and I let the heart be true. And I knew what I wanted and what I wanted was more spaciousness.

Jasmine Star 00:21:49  Oh, this.

Jasmine Star 00:21:49  Is so good. So entrepreneurs, listen to that. All three do not have to be in alignment.

Jasmine Star 00:21:56  Our dream would be for all three of them, but just doing the process. And I do really well with frameworks. And so after the show we're all about taking action. And if one person just learns one thing and this happens to be the one thing, although we're already like three things, like three key takeaways in. But this right here would be how do we listen in owner intuition? Well, we have a framework. And so we can take it from woo to work and find a way for it to like blend in. Love that.

Jasmine Star 00:22:19  Hey hey grab that one that good good good okay.

Jasmine Star 00:22:25  And so one of the things that if we go back to my story. So I'm going to interweave my story in my experience because I want to make it really practical. And so after we did the meditation, I booked the session for me, and you generously invited JD to join me for a portion of it because I didn't know you and you were kind of like, let's just, you know, he's your business partner and he's like, great.

Jasmine Star 00:22:47  And we immediately knew probably an hour into him watching what you did for me. He saw me change. And then when you had said, you know, because you guys are so intricately linked in your business, it might be a good thing for us to also dig JD. And so we spoke about it. We made a business decision and we said, yes, this is the thing that we want to invest in. And what we did is we had a conversation and you had post-it notes and you were writing words that I was saying, writing stories, and you just kept on writing, and you just had a conversation, and you kept on going back to certain instances, and you have been asking, well, how did that make you feel? How did that make you feel? And at this point in my life and in my personal development journey. I really wasn't all that great, really identifying feelings, because what had got me to this point in my business had been facts. I can push through and get what I want.

Jasmine Star 00:23:39  And then I was at a juncture where that no longer worked. I couldn't muscle my way past a certain point, and so I actually had to change who I was and identify feelings that I had never done before. And so we're there. So somebody here is saying, well, I'm still not at that point. And here we are. Erin is sharing beautiful, amazing frameworks. How do I start developing? How do I start knowing? What are some things that I could start doing to do some deep dive work in understanding? How do I get out of my own way, and how do I go deeper into my why?

Erin Weed 00:24:07  Yeah, well, I mean, the head hard core as an exercise I think is a really good start. Okay, good. I teach this to fifth graders, actually at the school, right by my house for my kids. I actually went in and became like a speaker teaching them head hard core because it's so ridiculously simple. So like if as a tactical exercise, if people actually wrote down something that's vexing them, should I move? Should I take the job? Should I? You know, whatever is going on in your.

Jasmine Star 00:24:33  Client.

Erin Weed 00:24:33  Right? If you write down the facts about it, the feelings about it and what you want, and don't overthink the whole thing. Just let it flow. See what happens at the very end. And here's how all the frameworks start to tie together. When you do head hardcore, at the end of it, you have some clarity, even if you don't like what emerged. You have clarity and you know what you need to do. And that turns into confidence. And then the confidence turns into the connection to actually go out there and do it, make the connection. So it all feeds into each other. But head hard core is just another way of saying intuition and gathering the full truth and operating from that place. You know, I used to work with still work with a lot of activists because that's a big part of my background. And a lot of activists operate just in the heart. And it's fire, it's passion, and it's amazing. But if you don't balance it out with the factual truths and like a vision for where we're going here, it gets lost.

Erin Weed 00:25:33  Same thing I'm working with in Google. You know, brilliant, brilliant data people mostly head. But if you don't have heart, like what are we doing here? Like this is a human experience,

Jasmine Star 00:25:46  So now let's turn this distinctly on business, because what you just walked us through was beautiful. If we start with the head heart core framework, it leads to clarity. And clarity turns into the confidence, and the confidence turns into connection. And so it's at this point where people falter, at least from my perspective, in that the connection isn't expansive enough. It's not at scale. So when you're talking to somebody and this person is like, I'm doing the work and I'm trying to create connection and I'm falling flat. From your perspective and your experience, if they're not getting the amount of connection that they want clients, business growth, how do they reverse engineer from your perspective, what is something to be done?

Erin Weed 00:26:24  Well, I'll tell you the question I always ask my clients. This happens as I'll just say.

Erin Weed 00:26:28  Did you really want to do that in the first place? Oh, and a lot of times the answer is my heart wasn't in it.

Jasmine Star 00:26:33  But they.

Jasmine Star 00:26:34  Did it because.

Jasmine Star 00:26:35  The money.

Erin Weed 00:26:36  The opportunity, the temptation, whatever that is for that person feeling like they should, feeling like other people do it and it's successful. So I should do it. And if you really get curious, a lot of times the things that don't work is because we didn't want it to work.

Jasmine Star 00:26:51  Oh, that.

Jasmine Star 00:26:53  One hurts again. That one hurts. I feel like you're just calling me out. Like I'm just going through like a Rolodex of instances in the past where it was an unfavorable outcome. And all I think of myself was like, at the origin. I didn't want to do it. And it's so calibrating again, you know, eight years later to be going into this conversation, because I do push with my head. I have a very large head, you know, like I came out and my parents were like, this girl is never going to lift her head.

Jasmine Star 00:27:17  She's going to be eight years old.

Jasmine Star 00:27:18  And I haven't gotten around. Yeah. People are like, she has. She just she has.

Jasmine Star 00:27:22  Such thick hair. I was like, no, I got a big head and thin hair, like people are like, often misled. And so I do think that I can push through. And this is so recalibrating to say, what do you want to do? One of the things is when I walked away and we're going to get to the dig work that we had uncovered for myself and for JD. I talked to JD before the recording and I said, hey, can I share our experience? And he's like, if it helps people, that's exactly what I want to do. And so you had said that there's this unsustainability of inauthenticity. I was deeply struggled with this for a lot of my life. The idea of being something and someone who was going to be wildly accepted, I didn't need to be approved of, but I needed to be accepted. I believed that my value as a human was in proportion to how much I gave and how much value other people had.

Jasmine Star 00:28:09  And then we met, and you had said, there is an unsustainability of inauthenticity. Can we talk about that?

Jasmine Star 00:28:16  Yes.

Jasmine Star 00:28:17  From a business perspective.

Erin Weed 00:28:18  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'm remembering you walking into my office, and I think you could have taken that big head and kept on going and push in and doing what you do, right. You were tired. You were tired. You were so tired. I remember, I remember your face and you were tired of doing the things that other people said you should do, or you're tired of a version of success that didn't feel true to you anymore. You. I'm not saying you were inauthentic. I think you are wildly authentic. You know, it is kind of funny. People ask me questions like, because I do work with very visible people and oh, what's this person really like? What's this person really like? You know? And you are just so authentic.

Jasmine Star 00:29:05  What you just.

Jasmine Star 00:29:05  Said I had to write down. You were tired of a version of success that you had achieved.

Jasmine Star 00:29:10  Yes. And that is 100%. I was I was 100% myself. But I was tired of the version of success that I had.

Erin Weed 00:29:17  And we sometimes build the thing so successfully and we outgrow it. And then we feel like we have to stay doing it because now the world knows us for X, right?

Jasmine Star 00:29:26  Right.

Erin Weed 00:29:27  So we have to stay being X. And I'm like, no, no, no. Like we are here to evolve. And so part of the authenticity journey is about being willing to change, being willing to shed the skin, being willing to let go of the thing.

Jasmine Star 00:29:40  Yeah.

Erin Weed 00:29:40  And I have I have walked that talk and it is not always fun. But the good news is that the more in alignment you are, gradually, when you do have to make these shifts, it doesn't feel so shocking.

Jasmine Star 00:29:52  And so what is the cost of inauthenticity.

Erin Weed 00:29:55  Well I think it's living a life that isn't true. Who to you who you. And does that make you feel pain. For me that's devastating.

Erin Weed 00:30:08  For me that was really the reason that I started my first company when I was 23, in 2001, I had just recently graduated college. I was living in New York City, and I was a TV producer, and that was like my dream telling stories, you know? And about a year into my TV career, I found out that one of my best friends named Shannon McNamara, had been murdered while fighting off an attack on her apartment. And this was back in Illinois, where we went to college. And it was definitely one of those situations where, like, everything shifted for me. I just saw the world in a completely different way, and I flew home for the week in the funeral. And this is looping back to this idea of around authenticity and inauthenticity. The night before the wake, I had a gathering of all of our sorority sisters because obviously this was very shocking. And the person who killed her, I think at that point hadn't even been caught yet. There was just rumors.

Erin Weed 00:31:05  It was it was nuts. So I was like, let's have a bonfire, my parents backyard in suburban Chicago, and let's just talk. And so I really came over and for the first few hours, we were talking about what had happened and processing and crying all the things. But then the conversation started to shift as the evening went on, and we stopped talking about specifically what had happened to Shannon, and we started talking about all the things that we were going to do as these young women who are all in our like 21, 22, 23, what we were going to start doing or stop doing as a result of this new, very murdery reality, this scary world that we had all woken up to because we were all very privileged people. And I started hearing people just say, hey, I was going to backpack Europe all by myself. But now I realize that it's just such a silly idea because that would be so dangerous. And so I'm going to cancel the trip. I started hearing another sorority sisters say I was going to take an internship downtown Chicago, but the parking garage there is super sketch and that just that's going to be too dangerous.

Erin Weed 00:32:07  I'm going to pass an internship and just went on and on and on, all these things that we were going to stop doing as women that were totally authentic to our individual paths. We're going to stop doing it because something bad happened. And I was horrified because I was imagining Shannon looking down on this conversation, being like, oh hell no. Like, go live your life like, I'm so sorry this happened to me and it scared you. But like, go live your life. And Shannon's family backs me up on this. They believe she would think that. And so I ended up starting a company called Girls Fight Back. And I wanted to teach women how to physically defend themselves if they were ever in a bad situation, how to trust intuition, but also how to physically defend themselves if it escalated to that point. And so I started Girls Fight back in 2001, and basically it was a seminar production company. I went out on the road. This was kind of pre-social media. This is like all the tools that we build businesses with now did not exist.

Erin Weed 00:33:07  And so I had to figure out, like how to start a movement and build a business based on a really tragic, tragic experience. But I didn't know this at the time and it would have really, really helped me. Had I known that that entire 12 year girls Fight back movement was actually about authenticity? That is my big word. Authentic. The violation that led me to creating that company was the fact that my sorority sisters were going to build inauthentic lives. To me, that was a absolutely.

Jasmine Star 00:33:42  Intolerable, inauthentic.

Jasmine Star 00:33:43  Life based on fear. True. Worse.

Jasmine Star 00:33:46  And I.

Erin Weed 00:33:46  Get it. It's understandable. Right? Right. And we can't do it because it's just going to lead to all sorts of domino effect of inauthenticity. That's the problem. You make one super out of alignment decision, and that will lead you to all of these other things.

Jasmine Star 00:34:05  When I look back at my career I see the domino effect. And then the courage and the pain that it took to get back into realignment.

Jasmine Star 00:34:15  Yeah.

Erin Weed 00:34:16  Yeah. And you ultimately, most people do get back there somehow, you know, because something will happen because it's unsustainable to be inauthentic for too long. And the unsustainability could be health. Just the body just starts to reject. It could be relationships. It could be it could be all sorts of things, or it could even be mental health. There's plenty of people out there that are living inauthentic lives, and they're from the outside. Everything looks fine.

Jasmine Star 00:34:45  And it's a result of inauthenticity. I've seen it and I've experienced all of those things. I've experienced the physical manifestation of being inauthentic. But here's the thing. I didn't have the words or the tools then. Yeah. Like my body's not feeling well. And if I had actually just done the work, I probably would have realized I'm like, I'm having a physical manifestation of knowing that I'm out of alignment. I've had mental health issues because I was out of alignment. I have had just deep pivots in my life, in business because I was out of alignment.

Jasmine Star 00:35:11  And now that I'm having these tools, I think that I am better at acutely of being aware of when I'm veering towards that. And so the amount of in alignment has gotten less and less over time. And so when we think about these things, we talk about like the business of alignment. You sold to that business, which congratulations. That's something that very few people even do. And then you started on a journey of speaking at a Ted talk, helping other people develop their Ted talks. You developed it like, hey, the tool that I'm going to use to help you get your Ted talk was actually the tool that started the next business. And so now we're going to talk about the business of your business, because this is what this podcast is. I like showing the variety of businesses and lives that people have been able to build on the back of, in your particular case, being wildly authentic. And you're just saying, I have developed this beautiful life, a strong business doing this. And so if you want to know what it is that you do, so what is the business of your business? We're not going to talk numbers, but what are your revenue streams? How have you figured out your passion and made it a business.

Erin Weed 00:36:10  Yeah. So. Well, it's the dig. It's doing the dig in multiple ways. It's. I still do private intensives with people. That is one of my favorite things to do. I also train other people on how to do the dig. I love creating frameworks and I love teaching people how to do them and applying them almost in an open source kind of way with their own clients. So I certify people, and I'm developing a course as well, and doing a lot of writing and creating just to make this more accessible to people.

Jasmine Star 00:36:41  And then you also go into organizations. So yes.

Erin Weed 00:36:43  Yeah, I'm a keynote speaker and I teach head hardcore mostly in the organizations. The dig and getting people down to their one word is a bit too individualized for that. But Head Hard Core is the basis of my keynote.

Jasmine Star 00:36:54  Interesting. Okay. Well, that's essentially basically where we started the podcast. And for those people who are watching and listening, number one, thank you for being here. And if Aaron has moved in any way, shape or form what it is you're doing, you can find her on Instagram at Aaron.

Jasmine Star 00:37:09  We'd tag her. Tag me. Now, what we're actually looking at as a business would be what we would call a product suite, the product suite. Our private intensive product suite is that she certifies other people. Product suite is creation of a course and or a book. Can I say that? Can I say that?

Jasmine Star 00:37:24  Sir, I just did. We can cut it out. We can edit it. That's the beauty of this recording. No, we're good, we're good. I want to I'm writing a book. I'm writing a.

Jasmine Star 00:37:31  Book. We are writing a book, and I want to speak it into existence. Because when I look at other people doing things that are so powerful, it's like I'm sitting here and I'm talking about this, and I want people to know that the thing that magic and the alchemy that it is that you do, you're finding a way to create a product suite and create a life that is less around one on one, less around one to small group, one to many, and you get to touch people in a much bigger way.

Jasmine Star 00:37:55  And to me, in my mind, that's the beauty of business, is how many spokes to a wheel can we create that are all pointing into the thing that you have been put on this earth to do? And so when we think about all of these things you and I had a conversation about the book and we talked about marketing. How do you market the brand that has become the Digg and Air and Weed? What is your marketing mechanism?

Erin Weed 00:38:17  Well, I mean, for me, I funnel everything through my Digg word, which is authentic authenticity. And so the funnel for me is always not funnel in a marketing sort of way. But like just how I make those choices is through the lens of what feels most real for me. And so for me, I love Instagram. I just like the visual medium and I tend to do a few things. The first one is I'm trying to start kind of a side movement of the word of the week. So every week I pick one word, and this is usually a word that I just want to infuse into my business, into my life.

Erin Weed 00:39:00  It's maybe a superpower that I need that I don't have, that I really want to sample.

Jasmine Star 00:39:04  Like give me a good story here.

Erin Weed 00:39:06  Well, this week my word is optimism. And it's all about making the choice to see and to believe that a favorable outcome is coming. Like making a choice though. So like, the word choice and optimism I think are very closely tied. And so yesterday I wrote a post and I was, you know, sitting here at the beach and had my optimism hat on.

Jasmine Star 00:39:29  And you sent me.

Jasmine Star 00:39:30  A selfie. FYI.

Jasmine Star 00:39:32  I love that.

Jasmine Star 00:39:33  Selfie. I was like.

Jasmine Star 00:39:33  You look good. It looks good on you. I love the.

Erin Weed 00:39:36  Beach, man. I just love it so much. So now what I'm looking at. I'm almost looking at these one words as they're more than words to me. It's a frequency. A frequency it is a word is a label for a frequency. So stick with me. People who I've just lost on the woo. But it's actually energy.

Erin Weed 00:39:56  So, like, if I approach a situation like this, I could have been nervous last night, right? Like, I'm going to be with Jasmine Star. Like, this is really, you know, this is exciting, but I infused it with optimism. There's only a favorable outcome that's happening here. So there's a frequency that when I showed up here today, I felt so calm. I felt so ready. I just trusted and believed that every single thing that is unfolding here is exactly as it's supposed to. That's optimism. So that's a frequency of optimism that I brought to this. I'm sure you had something running in the background for you. Did you have an intention?

Jasmine Star 00:40:30  My intention today was to serve.

Jasmine Star 00:40:33  Oh I love that.

Jasmine Star 00:40:34  And so one of the things that I have been noticing on the podcast is the way I hold myself on the podcast, and I've spoken about a little bit on the podcast is like, I think I come across as a lot of sharp edges and sharp edges can come across as also confident and not know it all, but kind of, sort of.

Jasmine Star 00:40:53  Well, of course I know what to do and like I am impervious to doubt and fear and questioning and I know that that's not me. I also know this is how I was born. This is me as a kid, as an eight year old, I get to tell a Sunday school teacher or a bus driver I was this. And so my focus is if I focus on serving people, they will see me as I am, sharp edges and all, but they know the intentionality is to give to them something that has been given so much to me. And so that was my intention. That was the long story about it.

Jasmine Star 00:41:24  But I love that, okay.

Erin Weed 00:41:26  And I felt that.

Jasmine Star 00:41:27  Like.

Erin Weed 00:41:27  Like one of the questions that you asked me as we were noting, like planning this was just like, how can I make this awesome for you, right? Like you're you're not only serving your listeners by doing all of this, but you're wanting me to have a great experience as well. And it's just like people don't usually ask that, you know, it's just like, so I felt the frequency of you wanting this to be good for me, you know what I mean?

Jasmine Star 00:41:53  Okay, so go back.

Jasmine Star 00:41:53  To this idea frequency. Now, the first time I met with you, I had never really understood that scientifically. This is. I mean, sure, we can say it's woo, but scientifically we vibrate. Yes. And so it's one of the things and I'm going to get to that in a second. But can you explain that for somebody who is like, this is just so far out of my comfort zone, and I don't get how this deals with business. Can you explain how you explain it to me? This idea that we as humans scientifically vibrate and it has a manifestation in our business or even in our personal life?

Erin Weed 00:42:18  Totally. It could be a simplified as saying, people feel your business just as much as they see your website, and they see what you wrote. Whatever. Here's a great example. Have you ever gone to a conference? Let's just say it's a conference with a theme, let's say an online business conference, which you speak at most of them at this point. Now at these conferences, you can choose all these different sessions that are breakout sessions, right? They're all pretty much going to be about online business though, right? But one person, you emerge from their session and you learned about online business, but you felt something.

Erin Weed 00:42:55  You felt a frequency of freedom. Oh, I can have an online business and I can live anywhere in the world. I could fulfill my dream of being a digital nomad or, you know, whatever. You feel free. And then you go to your next session. And this time you walk out feeling integrity of like, how do you do online business, right. In a way that serves people right. And it is a completely different feeling. In both of these sessions, you were learning about online business, but there were different frequencies that you walked out with. When I'm working with speakers or people that are just trying to communicate, all we're doing is we're naming those frequencies so that people don't just feel them, but they hear them too. You know, if we fully claim it. So like I would love for your listeners, for all of you at home who are listening to this like think about it like, okay, why do you do what you do. Why do you do what you do? What do you do? Okay, I know what you do, right? Let's say you're a coach, but what is the frequency behind it? You know what I mean? Is it about wholeness? Is it about love? Is it about.

Jasmine Star 00:43:59  Being.

Jasmine Star 00:44:00  So as we were going through this process, as you're ticketed early on in the episode, you had said you come down with like ten words, and I want to go back into this visual. The white circular table, the bright orange chairs, Aaron sitting across from me, the windows with illuminating just above the head coming down. And we had, I would probably say well over 100 post-it notes. I mean hundreds at this point in time. And so what you start doing is you start talking and you start distilling down the ten words. And when I see the ten words, I see myself and I see what matters to me. And then we distilled it down to one word, and I had that head heart alignment all three across the board. When I looked at the word and they said, oh, that's exactly why I'm put on this earth. And my word was enough. And it kind of just goes back and puts a little bit of a lump in my throat is for so long I had to learn that I was enough, just me being me to build the business And everything that I do, every offer I make, every stage I stand on.

Jasmine Star 00:45:02  Yes, I am teaching about X, but what I really, really have become known for is making people believe that they're enough, and making believe that the thing that they want can be enough and is enough, and that the impossible is possible for them. Yeah. And the minute I identified that the word was enough, that's all I wanted to say. And so I want to say thank you in person for thank you for doing that.

Jasmine Star 00:45:26  Well.

Erin Weed 00:45:27  And so when you say the word enough, what I experience is I drop into the frequency of enoughness. And the dark side of that is experiencing times in life where you don't feel like you're enough, in fact, maybe feeling like you're too much. Right. So there's this whole spectrum with Enoughness, right? And we're always, you know, we're not enough, and now we're too much, and now we're not enough. Not, you know, like, what's the, you know, what's the just right. And only you can could decide, but I think.

Erin Weed 00:45:58  I think you are an incredible teacher of Enoughness, even before we named it and claimed it. You know, I mean, because you carry that frequency just as much as you assure people that they are enough, I also love you challenge people when they're not stepping up to like, the level of who they are. You do that for me. Like when we left the last meeting, I was like, I have got to like, do more marketing. Like, this.

Jasmine Star 00:46:26  Is like.

Erin Weed 00:46:26  I really don't don't enjoy it, right.

Jasmine Star 00:46:29  But but what we did okay. So yes, I call it a loving kick in the pants. I absolutely challenge the people that I desperately with in my bones. You absolutely can do whatever you want to do, because the idea would not be given to you if you were not capable of it. So how do you step into that? And then for the people who know what it is that they want to do and they set their mind to it, I was like, oh no, honey, okay.

Jasmine Star 00:46:49  You know, now now.

Jasmine Star 00:46:51  We must work, now we must work. And here's the thing that we talk about being authentic, and we go back to Erin and I sat across from each other and it's just how we like live life is we immediately drop in and we're immediately honest and immediately like, how do we go and thrive? And you said, Jasmin, my word is authenticity. It is authentic, and the current mode of marketing feels inauthentic to me. And so then we had a conversation of saying, cool, how might we not? This is what I think you should do. How might we make it authentic? Because you have a vision and a goal. That is the brand. That is the dig that is going to change people's lives, that is going to, dare I say it, change the world. For when people understand why they were put on this earth. And part of that would be the book. And part of that could be, of course, none of which are out right now.

Jasmine Star 00:47:34  So I think to my mind, how might I, as a go to market strategist, as a person who wants to ten x your business and ten x your impact, what must we do? And so we got down to it and a lot of it came down to okay, who must we hire. How might Erin be 100% authentic in her marketing and get other people around you to support that vision and take it off? And that was the answer. And that's what we came to. And that was authentic. And so yes to the work. Yes to being authentic. And can I give you something.

Jasmine Star 00:48:01  Yeah. Okay. 0I0 on the back of us.

Jasmine Star 00:48:07  Talking I thought to myself, I walk around and I remind myself to be enough and to remind people to be enough. And so I got a circular necklace with on the inside. Your dig word has been engraved.

Jasmine Star 00:48:24  Oh, my. And so I just.

Jasmine Star 00:48:25  Want to say thank you for reminding me. Thank you for flying, y'all.

Jasmine Star 00:48:32  She flew from Boulder and so circular infinity to always being. Remember that you are authentically you and the world needs you as you are. And thank you for showing up for me. But also Erin. Thank you. you flew out from Boulder. You came here on this day. You arranged for your children to be well loved and taken care of, and you're here in the service of others. And I just want to say thank you. So before we go, I want to go back and highlight a few things that stuck out to me is, as you're listening, your one main takeaway is to think about something that might be in your path or in your journey that you are feeling a certain way about. And we're going to apply the head heart core framework. All three ideally would be in alignment, but if in the case that they're not, the answer will come to you. If you have the courage and the gumption to actually say, what is it that I want and what is it that I want, becomes very clear.

Jasmine Star 00:49:31  And once you have the clarity, you will be empowered to step into the confidence. And once you have the confidence, you will then be able to create connections. Now, if some point you realize that you haven't been able to create the connections at scale that you had wanted, Erin asked if there is a lack of connection, did you even want to do it to begin with? And if you are at that point, the thing I hope in a bid, and I encourage you to do, to stay authentic to yourself, is to go back and ask yourself, what is it that I want to do? Because the more clarity you have, the more confidence and the more connections that you will build. And if you happen to be like me, who have built a business, a brand, and you are tired of the version of success that you have achieved, I dare you and I encourage you to go back and do another head hard core alignment. The time of this recording. All I have been doing for the last year is head, heart, core.

Jasmine Star 00:50:26  It is dark work. It is hard work and it is worth it work. And for those of you who are here and you thought this was a little bit woo, I challenge you. Turn the woo into work. And Erin, as you continue to build out all of the things that point back to the ecosystem that is you, where do people go to connect with you even deeper?

Erin Weed 00:50:48  Erin Whitcomb and I also just wanted to offer a free training. There's a little button on my website that says free training, and it actually walks people through the head. Hard core exercise. So all you have to do is press play and I will take you through the whole thing.

Jasmine Star 00:51:04  Thank you. Yeah. Well thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Jasmine Star 00:51:08  Ladies and gentlemen, you can find Aaron Wade and the free training at Aaron Weed. Com. Also Aaron Weed on Instagram. And if you decide that you would like a word of the week, an intention for the week so that we can focus on vibrations.

Jasmine Star 00:51:22  And if you would like to borrow optimism or serve from either of us, please feel free to do that. Tag us at Jasmine Star at Aaron Weed. Thank you for listening and watching The Jasmine Star Show. I am so blessed because of your constant feedback that we get people like Aaron to fly on her own time and dime, to come in to Newport to do these recordings. It is an honor. It is a privilege. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. And thank you, Erin.

Jasmine Star 00:51:45  Thank you. You're the best and the best. I love you. I love you, too. Thank you.