Jasmine Star 00:00:00  I was having a conversation with another CEO and he says, hey, I think I have a really great recommendation for you. But he said, I have to let you know that she's expensive. And he said, but here's one thing I know about paying people who are really good at what they do. They get things done more efficiently. They take less time to train, and they work faster. He's like, so you'll be paying her more than you would her counterpart, but it will be well worth that investment. Welcome to an episode of The Jasmine Star Show, y'all. I don't know who's more excited for this podcast episode. Me or one of my 16 other personalities, because the thing that I've learned over creating this podcast is when I'm able to connect both my personal stories, a bit of my personal life and business principles, people find connection to that journey. They are connected, but then they also find connection. And I'm talking about when I say they. I really mean you. First and foremost, thank you for being here.

Jasmine Star 00:00:53  Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show. This episode is special because we started a series at the top of the year at the beginning of 2024, I literally just put out a podcast and I decided to call it laying bricks. I'm laying the bricks to a future foundation, a foundation that will hopefully one day build a skyscraper. And so what I did was at the end of quarter one. So January, February, March, quarter one of 2024. I simply wrote down what I did in those three months to set me up for future success. Now, the things that I was doing then, I didn't know if they were setting me up for success, but I was doing them with the intention that they were. And then in quarter two. So then we went from, let's see, January, February, March, quarter one, April, May, June. That was quarter two. I created another laying bricks episode and we called it quarter two 2024. We don't get it too mixed up.

Jasmine Star 00:01:42  We don't get fancy with our names. I'm going to link to both of these episodes in the show notes. If you want to go back and see where we started at the beginning of the year. And that brings us to quarter three. Now, at the time, I didn't know my focus, right? So I knew my focus for the year. I have that, but what happens in those quarters is I'm doing the work, and it only isn't until later that I can look back and say, oh, that was the intention. That was what manifested during that quarter. So quarter one, I was pouring into myself, and you could hear that episode on the things that I was doing to set myself up for wins this year. In quarter two, I focused on pouring into others. This was a lot. And you can hear that again, documenting what I was doing for others to create personal and professional connections. And quarter three, what I realized was I was pouring into connections, like being very active in the connections that I was creating with people.

Jasmine Star 00:02:37  I know that I am a natural connector. I could see people and I'm like, they need to talk or they need to connect. And when I am making connections with people, I could feel that same vibration. I could feel that same energy is like, I don't know how we're going to be connected, but we are. So let's go deep, let's get real and let's get started. And on that note, that's exactly what we're going to begin. Because quarter three was July, August and September. So we're going to go back and we're going to break down what I did. And you know, sometimes we don't ever take the time to set down and look back at what we've done. Sometimes I'm just in the mix of things that I'm just doing and doing it and I'm like, oh, I'm just getting it done. I'm doing whatever it takes to get it done. And it isn't until after you give yourself a little bit of time to simply look at your calendar and say, what did I do? Where did it go? Who did it become? What decisions did I make that you actually begin to reflect around the big sacrifices and dedication that you have to your dream? So if you haven't done that, I highly encourage you.

Jasmine Star 00:03:33  Literally take 5 or 7 minutes, go to your calendar and simply say, what calls did I have? What did I do? Who did I connect with? And I promise you, you're going to have a deep sense of gratification, satisfaction, and gratification. Okay, so let's begin on July 8th. July 8th. I began with a deep, wholehearted intent to do research calls. I set out to set up meetings with seven and eight figure entrepreneurs. I'm a firm believer that the more I talk to people that I serve, the more inclined and the more empowered I will be to come up with ways to serve them. And so, without actually getting into somebody else's pressure points, I wouldn't know an idea to create. But the beauty of research calls is that I'm having a lot of them, and I begin to find patterns. I begin to start seeing gaps in between what people are saying. And I then can ask myself, can the team and I fill those gaps. So these research calls I started with three questions.

Jasmine Star 00:04:30  So if you are looking for a new product or service, if you want to start your business or if you want to expand your product suite, here are three questions that I asked. They're not fancy, and I'm sure somebody smarter will come up with much smarter questions, but I'm telling you, they get the job done. So each of these calls were about 20 minutes and I have now done, I think, maybe over 50 of them. And I asked the same three questions. Question number one, what has been the best thing that you have done to scale your business? This gives somebody the opportunity to reflect and say, oh, it was when I hired that coach, or it was when I joined that program, or when I joined a mastermind, or when I simply got out of my bubble when I moved, whatever the case may be, or whatever the case it was, I'm actually in notion, and I am writing notes on these conversations. The second question was, what was something in your business that had the least ROI? Basically, I'm asking what was something that you did in your business that just didn't move the needle.

Jasmine Star 00:05:23  What's something that you wish that you could look back on and say, I wish I just didn't do that. That gives me a lot of insight into what people thought was valuable, but then didn't end up giving them the value that they wanted. And then I began to ask questions like, why? What happened there? What do you wish was different? Again, I'm just looking for gaps. The third question is, and you can make this your own. But I say, let's pretend I am your Latina fairy godmother and I have a magic wand, and I can wave a wand over your business and give you any solution that you desire. I can make anything that you want happen and come to life. And I said, there's no such thing as a dumb answer. I have a magic wand, and you can make anything come to life. And you would be so surprised the things that people say. Because when we talk about magic wand moments and again, you can make it your own. But when I call a magic wand moment is that you give somebody the permission to say, okay, it doesn't have to be in reality.

Jasmine Star 00:06:17  Like, I can literally just talk about the thing that if I woke up tomorrow and it was solved, I would pay $1 million for it, right? And so when you talk about magic wands, people have the ability to not think of what's possible, but what they want the most. And I am telling you, those are so insightful. So I focused on patterns, I focused on gaps, and I focused on the needs of people. And then I started realizing I'm spotting missing puzzle pieces, and I can hypothesize what those missing missing puzzle pieces are. And once I've identified, here's a few missing puzzle pieces. Then I get to go to the team. I get to ask myself, do we want to test building out this particular puzzle piece? And then we just set out to test it. We don't say, oh, we're going to start a new business vertical. We don't say we need to hire an operator for this. We simply say, what can we do to start testing this theory that this puzzle piece is actually viable, that people want it and people would pay for it.

Jasmine Star 00:07:13  And sometimes I joke with the team that I take these calls, and sometimes people say, Jasmine, they just take so much time. I agree, they take a lot of time. They take a lot of energy. But what I've come to know is that the time that I'm spending now is saving so much time in the future, because the pattern that I've seen a lot with, like novice or starting entrepreneurs, is they have an idea, they love the idea, they know the market needs it, and then they put it out. And then they wonder, like, why is it not happening? Why is it not working? In fact, I didn't ask me anything on Instagram a couple of weeks ago and somebody had said, I have been trying for three years to sell my offer. I think the messaging is off. In three years, I made $0. My response to that on Instagram, in front of hundreds of thousands of people was, it's not the messaging, it's the offer. Because if it was the messaging, you would have had at least just one sale, right? There would have been something that you said that would resonate.

Jasmine Star 00:08:12  Even weak messaging with a good offer will still sell the offer. It is the offer itself. People don't want to buy the thing that that person is selling in its current state, and I told her to do the very thing that I have been doing, I told her, set up calls with a hundred people who could potentially buy the thing that it is that you want, that they want, and then see if you can make an offer around it and then see if you could solve their biggest hurdle, their struggle, their greatest desire. And it is then and only then after you sell five units, can you go back to those people and say, how do I make it better? But until you've actually come up with an offer that somebody wants to buy is not a messaging Issue. It's an offer issue. So I have these calls to insulate risk when it comes to testing a new offer. Okay. So that was July 8th. We're going to go to July 12th. This was a very interesting conversation for me.

Jasmine Star 00:09:06  So I'm a part of a mastermind called Viv. It's with Gary Vaynerchuk Viv is an arm where they take five CMOs and five CEOs. This was their first. They called it their maiden voyage. It was the first group of people that they did. They hand-selected this group of people and they said, we really want to facilitate the things that you need. And so as I am pursuing professional speaking as part of my career, I've been speaking for years, and I just started noticing that there are different opportunities that come to different people for different reasons. And I didn't know why, because, I mean, let's just like have that real conversation, like there's this temptation to be like, it's me, right? Is it? I'm the problem. Like I'm the issue. It's me. They're not calling me. They're not hiring me because it's me. Be real. I literally wanted somebody to sit across the internet and say, yeah, Jasmine, it is you. Let me tell you all the ways to fix you.

Jasmine Star 00:09:54  And I would be like, great, let's go. So they were able to facilitate a conversation with the CEO of Vayner speakers. His name is Zach Nadler. Now Zach had a conversation with our group. Now I had emailed Zach, maybe like the last 2 or 3 years, we'd emailed 2 or 3 times. He reached out. I had signed with a speaking agency and he was very sweet. Said congratulations. I was asking him questions about the terms of the contract. So we have known each other very loosely. I would not say we're friends or peers, but we've known each other by way of email. So now that I was part of this program and they know that I'm pursuing professional speaking, they said, Jasmine, we want to get you and two other people from the Viv program who are pursuing speaking, and we want to have a 40 minute conversation with Zach so that he can impart information. And my first thought was, oh, it's happening. I get the person to sit across from the internet and tell me, it's you, baby, you're the problem.

Jasmine Star 00:10:47  And I was like, great. Like, deal it to me. I wanted somebody to be so honest and say, this is how you get better. And so shout out to Rawnsley and Kerry. They joined me on this call from the Viv program. And Zach explained that there's two types of speaker tracks. Track number one is a corporate speaker. This is where somebody is speaking for organizations like Compass or Remax Large like HVAC conferences. And then you have event style conferences. So this is where you think of like marketing conferences or agency conferences. And Vayner represents like of all the events that they send their speakers to, 90% of their clients are corporate. And he had said corporate clients will not book a speaker who is telling people in the audience to go out and market themselves and go out and start their own business. And I heard that and I was like, oh yeah, obviously there is a reason why I'm not being invited to like an HVAC conference. There's a reason why I'm not being invited to these other large scale corporate events, because they don't want my message going to their employees to say, take life by the horns, go out and take some risks and start a business because they're like, we want to keep our employees happy and working here.

Jasmine Star 00:12:10  Your message of doing that is not in alignment. And I was like, oh, of course. So after this, like, duh moment, I realized, okay, at this point in my career, I am definitely on the conference event track as a speaker if I decide to change my objective. And at this point in time, I am not planning on changing my objective. I'm not going to change my message to fit a specific audience, to hire me for speaking, because I'm not pursuing becoming a professional speaker. I am a speaker as a conduit for business growth. I'm not a speaker as my business. Now, if I wanted to change that market, or if I wanted to be considered in that my key takeaway is to have a piece of content that is more for the masses. My content is very specific, it is around business and it is around go to market strategy. That is what I talk about. But if I say like I wrote a book and I wrote a book around habits, I wrote a book around productivity.

Jasmine Star 00:13:09  If I wrote a book around being your best self or being a top edge performer, if I wrote a book around that, then I would have the opportunity to speak yes at conferences, for marketing, for agency owners, but also have the opportunity to speak at corporate events because corporations want their employees to be more productive, have a competitive edge, things of that nature. So if I decided, let's just say, in 2025, after the conversation, I said that in my press kit, I'm really going to just be focused on speaking at events. That's why my Prescott's going to be focused on. And in 2026, I can now look at that and say, do I want the scope to be bigger. Do I want to have a message that is palatable for both types of speaker tracks? I'll keep you posted on that. That's just a brick wall. That's just a brick. I'm so I'm writing my notes and I'm sharing them with you. Now we're at July 16th. I interviewed a new executive assistant.

Jasmine Star 00:14:05  Now, the reason why I had waited so long is because I had gone through two other E's, and they were wonderful, lovely people. But I don't think that they actually got the level at which I needed them to do and be as an executive assistant. And to be clear, there's not one type of executive assistant the way that there's not one type of CEO. As a CEO, you needed different things. And so I didn't have the best experience. And I said, it takes so much time to train this person and I'm just not there. And I kept on coming with excuses. That's just what it was. It was just an excuse. Now my life and business has gotten so busy that I said, I need somebody to help me. And I was having a conversation with another CEO and he says, hey, I think I have a really great recommendation for you. But he said, but he said, I have to let you know that she's expensive. And he said, but here's one thing I know about paying people who are really good at what they do.

Jasmine Star 00:14:59  They get things done more efficiently, they take less time to train, and they work faster. He's like, so you'll be paying her more than you would her counterpart, but it will be well worth that investment. And so I want to pause here and in the quarter to lame bricks episode, I said in June I went to a Cody Sanchez event. I met this person at the Cody Sanchez event, and he was the one who recommended me to reach out to this E! So we talk about Lane Bricks, right? We're going to events, we're meeting people. We're doing things that make us a little bit uncomfortable for a future return. So good news, I hired her. We are now, gosh, two months, two months of working together. So we do a 30, 60, 90 day check in and trial and feedback. I'd like to give clear feedback, and I want her to give clear feedback for me. And so one of the reasons why I hired her was I said, we are a very systems driven team.

Jasmine Star 00:15:50  We work at an Olympic caliber. Do you think that this would be a workspace for you? And she said, absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. And I said, okay, well, when we do our onboarding process, I want you to flex your systems muscle. We believe we're highly systematized with our onboarding. Can you go through our onboarding? And you can you find number one ways to make it better and two more ways to systematize it? And I have to tell you, the Queen came back with three things. Not one but three. Immediately I knew we were off to the races because she came in and she asked very good questions. She has a ton of experience. She came in seasoned and she said, my only goal is to figure out how you work and have you work faster. Are y'all. How have I waited so long? So shout out I'll be. I'll be sharing more about that journey and what that onboarding looked like as hiring an executive assistant once we pass our 90 days, because it is a trial period for 30, 60, 90 days, it is a trial period to ensure that we are working and growing on the same page, and that she can expand into her role.

Jasmine Star 00:16:48  Let's go to July 16th again. On the same day that I had that interview, I hopped into the class number one. Okay, so we were looking at ways to build our list, and our list is like our newsletter list. This is people who are going to be more interested in the things that we are promoting, the things that we're saying, what we're teaching. And so we are actively building our list. And so we decided to do a three part live series called a Scaling Accelerator for seven figure entrepreneurs. And our CEO came to me and she said, Jasmine, I just don't know how worth it it would be to run ads to get people into this class, she said. I think that we should offer it to our current list just to keep that list warm and keep them activated as a way to say thank you. And I was like, okay, great, no problem. But I really do want to run ads. And for her, she's very numbers driven. And she says, I just want to know the return on investment.

Jasmine Star 00:17:40  What is the ROI? So we set a budget for ads. It was pretty conservative because I said, I really do think that new people need to get on the list, specifically as we target seven figure entrepreneurs. And so what we decided to do in order for her, because we had to make both parties happy, right? Because she says, I don't mind setting aside a budget. We need to know the ROI. And so together we came up with this idea. What we started to doing was to segment the list. So when somebody signed up for our seven figure accelerator, they got to a thank you page. And then there was an optional section where we said, hey, can you answer three questions to help us serve you better? We asked for their revenue. We asked for how big their team was, and we asked for what type of content they wanted to see more of. Now, anybody who listed they were within six figures. We applied a tag and put them in a segment.

Jasmine Star 00:18:25  Anybody who said there were seven figures, we applied a tag and put them into a segment. Anybody who said that they were eight figures, we applied a tag and put them into a segment, because what we wanted to start doing is to start segmenting our list, to speak to them differently because they're at different points in their journey. And so I told her, I said, listen, we can have this list builder, we can have this small ad spend. We can go out and create goodwill. There was no pitch. We just said, hey, we just want to start connecting with people. And I said, listen, if one person signs up for the mastermind because they joined the seven figure accelerator, then boom, we have an immediate ROI. And she agreed. And guess what happened? I mean.

Jasmine Star 00:19:01  Dun dun dun.

Jasmine Star 00:19:03  That's just foreshadowing, y'all. I'll get to that in a second. But your girl was right. Here's the thing. We got amazing feedback from this. We were able to grow our list.

Jasmine Star 00:19:11  We were able to speak to different people in different ways, and we were able to create a community. I didn't sell anything. I just said, hey, I want to serve. And the beautiful thing here was we exported the chat from the class, and I was able to read the questions that people were asking, what they were saying, what was resonating with the audience, what was not really resonating with the audience. And I said, great, now I know what type of different content to be making for the podcast, for newsletters. So this was my way to learn this audience a little bit more. July 17th, the day after I had a one on one with Gary Vaynerchuk. Now, part of being part of his mastermind is that you get a 15 minute call with Gary. Now, I had a few weeks to prepare for this question, and I have to say, like, I value this experience so much. In fact, I created a vlog around this experience. I'm going to be sure to add it to the show notes so that you can watch it on YouTube and see the behind the scenes.

Jasmine Star 00:19:58  I'm not going to get into all of that right now. It was a lot and it was very transformative. I will say that chatting with him opened my eyes, expanded my horizon, and then just gave me like a lot of, like room and permission just to like, fail, like literally. And y'all know I don't really believe in the word failure. I mean, in lessons, but just give me a lot of permission to eat crap for a while while we build. And I thought, if nothing else, it feels really good. But the key takeaway from that is what you'll see in the vlog was to keep building, just keep building, to continue moving forward, even if the future seems like very foggy or a little obscure, and to continue to do it my own way. And when he said that, it hit real deep because in the quarter one lane bricks episode, I had mentioned that my word of the year was independent, and for a while I struggled with that because I am not a kind of person who likes to do things on my own.

Jasmine Star 00:20:50  I like having a team. I like being married. I like being a mom. I love being a twin. Right? My whole life I've only ever done things with people so independent felt like a word that I was like, why is this word keeps on downloading? And what I realized was independent, wasn't doing it on my own, independent was doing it my own way. And so when Gary said, keep building and doing your own way, I thought to myself, oh, it's just triple confirmation that that's where I'm supposed to be this year. Now we're in the month of July, July 2nd. Okay, so I have to tell you right now, I'm just going to be real. What came up for me right now is I'm like, and now we're in July. And my thought was, oh my God, are you bored to death? Like you might be completely bored to death. And whenever I do these, I really think that people are bored to death. But people send me DMs and they send me emails and they say, thank you, because this podcast is really getting us a peek into what you're doing to make moves, and it's encouraging us to move in the same way.

Jasmine Star 00:21:45  And I'm like, okay, so I'm going to get over it, right? I'm going to get over like this negative self-talk because it y'all, I'm going to this podcast is free 99 I will refund you. You can pass right on over this podcast episode if it's not for you. I just want to remind you that I'm doing it for you, that an inside look of business that's not glamorous. Sometimes it's anything but fun. It's just the work to build the dream. And so if it ain't for you, no problem. I'll see you in the next episode. But if you're here, hold on to your hats, because we're barely in August. Yeah, we did a lot in July. Yeah, we did, and I didn't know that. We did a lot in July. We just did a freaking boatload in July, August 2nd. So I was consulting for a product based business to business and company, and they had a new idea of what they wanted to do to promote. And they said, we want to create an arm of our business selling the same product, but we want to change from B2B to B2C.

Jasmine Star 00:22:40  And I loved these conversations. And, you know, a lot of times the people who are hiring myself in the team in a consulting capacity, these are people with very large businesses. And I'm just going to be real. They wouldn't have hired me based on what they saw on social media. They just wouldn't they wouldn't hire me based on what they saw on my website. They they really wouldn't. Is that going to change in the future? It will and it must. But right now, I find that I am able to attract these types of consulting opportunities. Number one, because I freaking love them. I am a builder, I love ideation, I love working with other very driven, high performing teams that can deploy and the things that we're talking about. But what I will say in regards to this was the reason I was able to land this opportunity was because I was in a room with this person, and he was watching the way that I was talking, watching the questions I was asking, watching how it's synthesizing.

Jasmine Star 00:23:30  And then he, at the end of the event had said, hey, can we hop on a call? We hopped in a call. I explain more about what I did, what we offered, and he's like, great, I want to set up a little bit of of of a strategy, whole ideation process of how we're going to transition to B2C. And so we outlined his brand strategy. We outlined his go to market strategy. And we talked about how much he wanted me to be involved, because at the point of us coming into the process, he was already working with the branding agency. And he was. So here's the thing. He was so excited about the new branding. And I was like, dude, this is amazing. It looks great and it is beautiful. But you haven't identified your ideal client profile. And he's just like, I'm going to leave it very vague. So he said it's for women. And I was like, right. But the way that you market to a 22 year old, a 32 year old and a 42 year old, or a 52 year old, really different styles, aesthetics, preferences, font type, font size.

Jasmine Star 00:24:30  Older women prefer larger font. Younger women prefer smaller font. Why? It's easier to read the way that the website navigates. Are you building it for a 50 something, or are you building it for a 20 something really different considerations? So while I loved the branding, I said I can't actually adequately assess if the brand is going to be effective because I don't actually know who you're marketing to. And he said, Jasmine, this hurts, but it hurts really good because we could have gone farther down this process and then try to reverse engineer like this brand has to fit this person. And what we need to do is we need to pause the whole process. We need to identify this person, and then we need to amend the brand. And I was like, absolutely. I was so happy to be part of that process. And later on that night, JD and I, we have date night once a week, and that was our date night. And so of course we're at date night. And instead of looking at each other lovingly and longing to each other's eyes, we're actually talking about business.

Jasmine Star 00:25:21  And I talked to him about the call that I had had and the series of calls and what has been transpiring. And he looked across the table and he said, hey, I'm just really proud of you. And like, that's weird to say out on the podcast, but it also feels really good that your life partner and your business partner is looking across the table and saying like, hey, it's kind of been a gnarly year. It's been a pretty sucky year with all the good stuff that has been going on. There's been so many hard, hard moments. I think when I look back at the course of my life, my professional life. You know, it's funny, 2024 is going to be a doozy. It just is. And so much of what we talk about, it just it's behind closed doors. It's our personal life. It goes on behind the scenes of the business. I'm fortunate enough to create content that shows the outside, but I also just want to bring you in to sitting across the table with chips and whac-a-mole.

Jasmine Star 00:26:10  And yes, we had a skinny margarita and it was just like him acknowledging that, he said, you often underestimate how easy you make it look. And he says, but what you do is really difficult. And you've honed that skill over a decade. And he's like, when people see that skill, they really value it. And he's like, I just want to tell you how proud I am for not stopping or not getting in your head around what your power play is. And so for anybody who's kind of struggling and maybe you do something and you know you're good at it and maybe you just think like, well, everybody's good at it. I want to pause here and just look across the interwebs and just look at you and tell you that I'm like, I'm proud of you. Good job for stepping into your superpower and great job for making it look easy. The people who do it well and make it look easy are truly masters of their craft. August 5th, we begin personal invites into my mastermind.

Jasmine Star 00:27:03  And don't worry, this is not a plug for the mastermind because by the time this drops, the mastermind will have already been closed. So now you get the tea. So there was one thing that I started noticing of all businesses ever created, only 4% of businesses, 4% will ever exceed $1 million. Only 4%. And of that 4%, point 7% are female owned businesses. So point 7% of any business ever created was by a woman. Points of it. We're not even at the whole number, Mark. Right. And so as I was crafting this idea for a mastermind, I knew that my total addressable market, my Tam, was 4% because I was creating a mastermind for seven figures entrepreneurs, it can feel a little daunting. I'm not even going to lie. It felt daunting saying, okay, of the 4% of people who would even be eligible for this program, how many of them are even in my orbit? How many of them would even invest to join a mastermind that I'm hosting? And so instead of saying, I'm going to struggle with imposter syndrome, I'm simply going to say, well, how much work can you do to cultivate an audience of people? Who would that was it.

Jasmine Star 00:28:15  That was it. It was not, this is not going to work, or I'm not going to get the amount of people that I want or that I need to make it worth your while. And we need to have like a good size, like at minimum, I wanted ten people at minimum. And I'm like, can we actually do that? And instead of saying, can we actually do that? I simply said, how might we reverse engineer? How might we work backward. And so I started making a list of seven figure entrepreneurs who I knew that he had. Like, I've been watching them kind of on social. I've been somewhat aware of what it is they do. And I sent an email to everybody personally. So I personalize every single email. And we slowly started dripping these emails out over the course of a week. And I said, I would love to talk to you for 20 minutes about a seven year mastermind that I'm hosting. Some people didn't respond, some people said no, and some people said yes.

Jasmine Star 00:28:59  Typical sales cycle. And so one of the things that I had to ask myself as I went into the sales calls was to be grounded in who I am best suited to serve, and talking about it makes me a little bit uncomfortable because I don't want to ostracize anybody. I know I am most suited and best suited to serve seven and eight figure entrepreneurs. I know that that's my skill set. I know that's where I can put together a strategy that is a crank, that is a lever that really changes the results in some of these business. Now, if you're watching or listening to this podcast and you're not at 7 or 8 figures. You're still welcome here. Please know that I am just making a personal decision to say the next version of me. Remember being independent. Remember, like doing it my own way. This is me doing it my own way. My goal was, at minimum, can I get ten, 7 or 8 figure entrepreneurs in a room, look around each other and say, we were all connected because of Jasmine.

Jasmine Star 00:29:54  We're not here for Jasmine. We're connected because of Jasmine. How might we take our business from 5 million to 9 million? What do we need to do in our business? Where do we go to talk about firing somebody? Where do we go to talk about bonuses? Where do we go to say we had these goals and we completely miss them? Where do we go on saying we had these goals and we're not trending after quarter's one, 2 or 3? Is there anything that we could do in quarter four to rally and make up any sort of differential? Where do you go to have the conversations? Were so few people ever experienced that pressure of building a business that size? I was like, I want to build that room and I started sales calls. Now, I have to say, I've never been like an ABC. Always be closing. Let's go. My sales approach has always been. I'm going to give you information. I'm going to tell you why I'm doing it. And if it's in alignment with you.

Jasmine Star 00:30:46  Now, here's the thing. You don't watch and listen this podcast for sales advice. You just really don't because I'm the antithesis of every hard closure. But what I will say is that if you hone in on a message and a desire so deeply, you don't need to push for the sale. You need to present the offer. And I'm very excited because I learned a couple key takeaways. So if you're going into sales and you're like, how do I have a high ticket offer that I want to close on? Well, what I needed to do was simply say that my mastermind was $25,000 a seat, period, and somebody was going to say, I can get an ROI on 25,000. Not everybody. Not everybody said yes, but enough people did for me to say, you don't need to sell, you need to make a strong offer. And then the biggest lesson I learned is in the first calls, like, listen, anybody who set up a sales call with me in the beginning of the process, God bless you.

Jasmine Star 00:31:40  I'm sorry, I was just trying to find my feet. I did a lot more talking than I did listening. It was after. So on the first day that we opened the opportunity to set up a sales call, we did five that day, and at the end of that I had done five calls. Each of them were about 20 minutes and I'm like, okay, Jasmine, you got to have a come to Jesus moment. You talked way too much. Like you need to listen to what they want, and then you need to determine if this is an alignment for them. And so I spoke only where I knew I could offer value. I didn't need to explain what the mastermind was. People who have a seven figure business, they get it. I didn't have to get into the details. I had to listen. And then I had to speak only where I knew I would be able to give them value. And then I had to guide their decision. And I say this because I didn't care if somebody said it wasn't in alignment for them.

Jasmine Star 00:32:31  People have a lot of good reasons. There was one person who had just opened her fourth property and she said, Jasmine, I literally just put $100,000 down on this fourth property. I have to build out the team. I have to get my operators. I would love to be part of the mastermind, but now is not the time. And she's like, can I join the next one? I was like, I love this, I love there was another person I spoke to, she's from Australia and she's like, Jasmine, the calls that you host will be at 2 a.m. my time. I will still say yes. Then she said, Jasmine, I will have to be coming from Australia to America twice in eight months. And she's like, still, I agree to that, she says. But here's the thing. I co-parent with my ex-husband and it's just too much travel. He can't take care of the kids for that prolonged period of time. She's like, so for now, my answer is no.

Jasmine Star 00:33:16  But the next time I want to be included in it, my job was not to bring the kids with you, get your mom like it was not that. It was to guide the decision and make sure they were in alignment, but also know that in the future. I've always believe it's never a no. It's just a knot right now. And that's the approach and energy that I have. Okay, so it's like you guys are listening to this and you're like, Jasmine, your sales process is just to make an offer, to listen, to speak where there's adding value and guide the decision even if the decision is not favorable. Absolutely. There you go. I mean, hey, it works for some people. It worked for me. I'm so excited with how things have transpired for the mastermind. We're going to get to that in a second August 9th. Two days later, I go to con Gary Vaynerchuk has a conference called V con and it was in Los Angeles. And I have to tell you, y'all know, like I'm an introvert, I don't really like to be in large places with a lot of people.

Jasmine Star 00:34:09  I am 100% get lost in the crowd kind of girl. I am the kind of girl who holds up the back walls. I'm never in the center. I'm never like the hey, airguns. Networking with our glasses of wine. Never in a million years. But again, part of the mastermind that I'm part of with Gary Vaynerchuk. They had a meta party for all of the sponsors. And so one, I've never been to a meta party, and I was just like, that sounds cool. So in hell going to oh, actually, I should probably say we're in Hollywood sounds a lot cooler. We're in Hollywood, we get up to a rooftop, we're at the Metta Party. And here's the thing. I used to be very embarrassed because I did an Irish exit. I got back to the hotel and my husband says, like, wow, you're back early. And he said, how were you able to say goodbye to everybody? And I said, I didn't. I did an Irish exit and I was like, what are you doing? She's like, you can't just leave these parties where people are graciously hosting you and just leave without being noticed.

Jasmine Star 00:35:02  Until. Until I saw a social professional. Yes, that is his name. A social professionals say that Irish exits are totally acceptable in 2024. Why? Because when people leave a party early, they're actually a disruption. And so in my mind, I totally got away with it. Oh, but I got it back. I got it back up because there's a little part of the story that, listen, I don't know if you all believe in God, I do. I call them God wings. I'm at this party and I'm just not very good at mixing. It just is what it is. I'm not that great. I don't I'm not even a big drinker. So I have like soda water and some lime and I'm just walking in. I'm like, okay, I don't know how to introduce myself to people. I don't know how to jump into conversations. And so then what I did was I was just making content. I was making content at the event. And then I was like, you know, my time has come.

Jasmine Star 00:35:45  I'm going to get my Uber. I'll go back to the hotel. So I'm slinking out this side of the party, and there is a booth and picture like an L-shaped booth, and they're in the L-shaped booth. My eyes turn over to a guy who's sitting there, and then we make eye contact, and the guy who I made eye contact with was none other than Gary freakin Vaynerchuk. We look at each other, and then immediately I turn my eyes. I'm like, okay. I was like, you saw Gary. Gary saw you keep walking. It's totally fine. It's totally fine. Gary stands up, leans over the table, gives me a hug. Listen, listen, I died. I was like Gary Bear. We spoke like two weeks ago on our one on one. He's like, Jasmine, how are you doing? I just kind of died. I spoke to his chief of staff. She's been so accommodating through this whole process. And I thought to myself, see, Jasmine, this is why you Irish exit, baby.

Jasmine Star 00:36:32  This is why you sleep on the side of the parties. Because you're gonna meet people on the way out there. JD and I had planned to do the event together the entire time. Things kind of changed with our daughter. And so we did all of Friday together, and then he head back home on Saturday morning. And so I did the event from Saturday and Sunday solo, which is fine. But again, I'm an introvert and slightly awkward in very large groups of people. And so I was there. And remember how I told you in the quarter two Lane Bricks episode, I was at a Cody Sanders event. I sat across from a girl named Catalina and she and I connected. She invited me on her podcast. She started following me on social media and then on social media. I said, oh, hey, I'm going to v con. Well, she decided to take her entire marketing team to Los Angeles for the con. So she was there and she I was doing like stories when I was there, and she sent me a DM and she was like, hey, I'm here in LA.

Jasmine Star 00:37:21  And so I was totally by myself. And I said, can I crash your lunch? I had nobody to eat with for lunch and I just crashed for lunch. So shout out to Catalina and her marketing crew for inviting me so generously to have lunch with them. And so remember how I said the focus on quarter three was building those connections? It was uncomfortable for me to invite myself to their party. It was, but I did it because I wanted those connections to flourish. On that note, I created a vlog from the Gary Vaynerchuk V con event that you can check out on YouTube as well. Okay, that same weekend there was a dinner at catch. Now I say catch. I had no idea, but this is the famous Kardashian catch. This is where Khloe swears by the fish. I don't watch the Kardashians. I don't know, but that's what everybody was saying. Like, oh, Khloe loves this fish. And this is Kim's favorite. And I was like, listen, just please give me a glass of champagne and please give me some grilled fish.

Jasmine Star 00:38:12  And then the world is fine if I have those two things. And so it was Saturday night and the dinner didn't start, I think until like 8:00. And Gary was supposed to come to the dinner, but I legitimately had to. Heaven was like, there's just no way this guy is coming to dinner because this event was so long, he must be so exhausted. And then it was like nine 3945 and he rolls in and everybody's shocked and we're all sitting at tables and he's generously starts talking about the event, what he wanted for event. He thanked everybody there at five for showing up. And then our host Andrea had said, hey, does anybody have questions for Gary? And no lie, it was probably silent for 2 or 3 seconds and everyone's looking around at me like, Gary's exhausted. Like, we're not going to ask this guy questions right now. And then I raised my hand and I said, I don't have a question. I just want to say thank you. Thank you for showing up.

Jasmine Star 00:39:04  He gave a keynote opening session on Friday, and what he did is he debuted the next version of friends. Now, if you're not familiar with the friends, it was like an NFT project that he dropped back in 2020. I had invested in that project. I'm a part of the project. I just wanted to see how this guy was rolling in the Web3 world. What he did was they changed so much of how Web3 was adopted. Now, whether or not like the NFT bros are still in existence, I do believe that Web3 is 100% the future, and I just wanted to watch on. So part of that project was him debuting cartoons as part of the NFTs. And over the years they've iterated many times. And as he gave his keynote, they were flashing 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. And what I saw in that video was pure perseverance. What I saw was a builder who, despite negative feedback or toxic toxicity on discord, he continues to build. And so I raise my hand and I said, hey, I just want to thank you for showing up as a builder and encouraging us to persevere because business is hard and you are a walking embodiment of how we should show up.

Jasmine Star 00:40:14  And he said, hey, I want to say thank you for saying that because after he gave his keynote speech, he went into discord. Discord is just a community. Just think about this as like a message chat area. All these people who had bought NFTs, and Gary had said that when he went into discord, people really negative about it. They were saying, look, he doesn't even believe in the project. He's given up on the project. And he says there's two types of people builders and non builders and builders. See another builder build despite how hard it is and they appreciate it. And the non builders stood on the edges and they judge. He's like I build for the builders. Hot dang I build for the builders. Yes you do son. Yes you do. All right. So you can check out that vlog on my YouTube channel now we're on August 18th. I went to a mastermind in Laguna Beach. I was there with Amy Porterfield, Doctor Gabrielle Lyon, Jamie Kern Lima, Lori Harter, Lindsey Schwartz, and Jen Gottlieb.

Jasmine Star 00:41:08  We've made a commitment to each other to show up. We meet every six months and we started this event. Now, normally what we do and here's the thing I often talk about masterminds. And it's not like this mystic thing. It's like, you know, like skulls and bones and we chant and drink each other's like like Kool-Aid blood? Not at all. We actually just have hot seats, and we talk about business and we get down into the dirty reel of it. But this time around, now we've gotten together now a few times, like we're friends personally and professionally. And so we started there. We're all sitting there, were hanging out, and then I said, is there any chance that we could just get, like, really real right now? Because I'm not my best self. I'm actually struggling. And I openly talked about my struggle with depression and I was like, it's just hard right now. It's just hard right now. And so I shared that. And then other people just started talking about real life stuff, like, we got real, real.

Jasmine Star 00:42:03  And halfway through I stopped the conversation because it was just heavy. It was a lot. We all deal with so much stuff that nobody sees online. And so then I had said, oh, in high school, my friends and I, we got together. It was during Christmas. We're sitting around, we're all having a hard time. It's our senior year. We're going in different directions. Some of the schools that we just didn't get into or scholarship or family issues. And there was we'd made brownies that night, and there was one brownie left in the tin, and we're all sitting around, we're having these conversations, and we made a game stick and distorted game. But it was a game nevertheless. We said, the person with the saddest story, the hardest moment right now that they're going through, they win the brownie. And so then I explained like the brownie story to all of the women there. And then we started competing for brownie. Like, who's going to have the heart? Who is having the hardest year? Boom, you get the brownie.

Jasmine Star 00:42:46  But what we ended up doing after that is like, we just got real. It started us on a real thing. It's like, how do we balance our life? How do we balance our aspirations? How do we show up as 100% ourselves? And how do we play a much bigger game in flow? Enjoy in peace? How do we love the build? So we had hot seats and these are just times like we just set a timer. You come in with a situation, you come in with a perspective, you come in with a hurdle and you say, this is how I see it. And then everybody sits there and we just ask questions. We ask for numbers. We ask for feedback data. We propose different ways of looking at it. Those things are fully transformative. And I love them because I learn from hearing other people talk about somebody else's business. So that's why we have hot seats in my mastermind as well. Now we're at August 26th, y'all. Don't worry, we're rounding this mother out.

Jasmine Star 00:43:29  Austin, we did podcasting at the end of the month, and I think that when I look back at the year, I feel really proud that I took two initiatives in the podcast. I had guest co-hosting days where I brought in a co-host, and they curated the guests that we interviewed on that one day. And I also started podcasting in different cities. I said that 2024 was the year of the podcast. I said I was doubling down on the podcast. We don't monetize the podcast. It was a very considerable investment this year to do it, but this was the year I became obsessed with it. So we ended the last Out of state podcast recording. In August of 26, I went to Austin. I had incredible guests I cannot wait to share. And in addition to that, I had podcast recording on August 21st in Hollywood to really attract an LA based audience. And then we went to Austin. And what was unexpected and this is just me being real, is in August. I went from being in a highly successful mastermind.

Jasmine Star 00:44:33  These people are freaking incredible to interviewing highly successful eight figure business owners in Hollywood, to five days later, flying to Austin and interviewing highly successful entrepreneurs. And I will tell you on social media, it looked freaking cool. And it was. But what I didn't expect to happen was having so much condensed time around. Really freaking successful people. It kind of did a number. I was like, what's going on? I came back from Austin, I worked for a few days, and we went into the holiday weekend and I was like, what is coming up for me? And what was coming up for me so distinctly because I had a therapy session. Shout out to Doctor Leah was it was a condensed amount of time that made me feel I wasn't as moving as fast as I wanted to. I wasn't as big as I thought I could be, that the pressures of building the business became very competitive, and normally I don't really struggle with that. But being around condensed so much freaking growth and success.

Jasmine Star 00:45:39  Fully condensed. A full on, undiluted 100 proof shot of pure, glorious success. I thought to myself, I am nowhere near where I want to be. And so if you're watching and listening and you have that sensation of where you are, not where you want to be, I'm going to pause and I'm going to tell you some of the work that I did around that. I celebrated. I celebrated. I changed the timeline into saying, oh, you and you and you and you. You're an expander to me. You're showing me how big my future can be. You're showing me how small I am currently dreaming. I celebrate your success as if it is my own, because I get to step into that when I am in alignment and when things are ready. I am celebrating you so that I can celebrate me. I also wanted to take a time to tell myself that if I was prepared for the thing I wanted, I would have it. If I was prepared for the thing that I wanted, I would have it.

Jasmine Star 00:46:47  If I do not have it, I am not prepared. So my whole focus after that has been what do I need to do to prepare for the level of success that I want? That is my advice. I'll share my reels with you. At the end of August, we started publicly promoting the mastermind publicly, and we started putting it on social. I was doing a bunch of interviews, and I have to say, now that we have closed registration, the group of people on the inside of this mastermind are absolutely freaking incredible. Like I look at them and I think, oh wow, these people are going to be the people that you do life with for the next eight months. You are going to carefully and cherish every goal that they put in front of everybody. And collectively we're going to say, this is not about me and it's not about you. This is about us. How are we all going to achieve our independent goal together? How can we pull on our connections, how we pull on our resources? How do we pull on our collective knowledge to get to where we want to go? I cannot wait to share about this experience and upcoming podcast once we have some time to distill.

Jasmine Star 00:47:53  Once I do more interviews, once I dig into their businesses and talk about the journey that they are on. And September 8th, I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico as part of a mastermind and Santa Fe, New Mexico, the space that we went to. His name is Chip Connelly, and he is one of the founders of Airbnb. And he creates these beautiful health and wellness centers around the United States. He even has one in Mexico. And when we go there, we land and just everything is different. I am talking about like the earth feels different now. I know I'm like, I'm like a beach girl. I'm in Newport Beach. I was a city girl, born and raised in L.A. and so it's like people are like, well, what do you mean? Jasmine? I'm like, I'm not really in nature. Ever. So when I get to New Mexico and we drive forever from the airport and everything's like red and orange and deep dusty, and we see, just like, different types of plants.

Jasmine Star 00:48:44  And we go into this beautiful kind of like terracotta, Adobe style venue. And all it was was about changing the person you were. You can it was impossible to leave that site to leave that event the same way I was when I had walked in. I flew back to LA from New Mexico and I felt like I was literally vibrating differently. September 22nd, we decided to celebrate my 19th year anniversary, so I took.

Jasmine Star 00:49:15  A nine.

Jasmine Star 00:49:17  Day break from social media, from work, from slack, from my computer, from a phone. My husband, my daughter and I flew to Cabo, and it's a place where we get to go and create our version of home away from home. And it is a place to regroup, to figure out who we are as a family and to look at the next, hopefully, 19 glorious years of being married. I married up, I married out of my league. Like, please do not convince me otherwise. Like I know I'm a good wife, but that man is just literally.

Jasmine Star 00:49:46  He walks on water, he doesn't go to the beach and he swims. He just levitates the whole time. I know, like lightning is going to strike. At the end of the month, I had a leadership retreat with my team. It was just like a few of us gathered together to really cast a vision for what 2025 looks like, get us aligned with our vision, get us aligned with our values, and get us aligned with our goals. We also sat down and hashed out every financial report to do projections so that we're fully prepared for what 2025 is going to bring us. And yes, we did that in September to better prepare us for quarter one of 2025, y'all. If you are still here at the end of Lane Brick's Quarter three episode, God Bless. In it, I mentioned I'm going to be linking to quarter one and quarter two. I will also be linking to the vlogs that I had created on the events that I had experienced, that I spoke about in quarter three.

Jasmine Star 00:50:36  I want to say thank you. And yeah, like I'm out here just like bear in my soul getting all awkward. And it's okay as long as we're doing it together. If you can send me a direct message, if you could post this on social stories, that'd be great, because then I know, hey, maybe I should continue to create content that people are resonating with and sharing and liking. It is always an honor and a privilege. And as you lay your bricks, be sure to go deep and to go wide with what it is you're doing. Because if you want to build a tall building, your foundation needs to be set and fully intact. And that is what these episodes are all about. Thank you. A thousand times over.