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Speaker 2[inaudible]
Speaker 1Hey friend, thank you for tuning into the Jasmine star show. I know you have so many choices when it comes to business podcasts and I am honored you chose to listen to mine today, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [inaudible] donkey co . I was going to say Konnichiwa , but I don't think Konnichiwa is. Thank you. It's [inaudible] though . See, there you go. There you go. I'm out here trying to impress you with my non-language savvy self. In October, 2019 I had the pleasure of speaking at Christy Wright's business boutique, an incredible conference of thousands of business women. Chrissy rate is part of the Dave Ramsey organization and I was invited to keynote this event along with Dave Ramsey himself. I feel like I should repeat that because y'all Dave stinking Ramsey. I have done some pretty awesome stuff in my career, but when I told my parents I was speaking right after Dave at the business boutique, my dad fired up some tortillas and we celebrated with burritos because that is how Latinos do. We celebrate when we happy. We eat when we sat, we eat, you know, and it's just like when we celebrate, this is how we do so if you are already craving a burrito, I'm sorry in your welcome, but I try to bring that type of like saucy energy wherever I go as a reflection of my family and my culture. And let me just tell you the energy in the room in Nashville, Tennessee was something special or if I were to say that again, I would say that energy Nashville, Tennessee was something special. This is why I am officially unofficially naming this week, business boutique week. Today I'll be sharing with you my keynote from the event and on Thursday I'm going to share a Q and a panel. I was very excited to be a part of anything. You're totally going to dig. I have to tell you the recording I'm about to share with you is what I think quite possibly the best keynote I gave all year and I don't see that lightly. I say it because I was nervous out of my ding mine , but I kept on thinking if I could show up and serve these women well, lives could change. And when lives change, business changes. When business changes, home change and went home, change in neighborhood changes. And when a neighborhood changes, a city changes. Y'all, I just said if I could serve one person really, really, really well, we can create big changes. So we discuss how to build your personal brand on social media and I believe you're going to really dig it. So grab a pen and paper or open the notes app on your phone and let's dive into my keynote at business boutique 2019
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Speaker 4[inaudible] you . Thank you.
Speaker 5Oh that was really sweet. I should let you know that my daddy is a pastor from East Los Angeles and when he talks to the congregation they talk back to him. So can we try that one more time to make my daddy and California feel real good? Good afternoon. Yes. Thank you so much. Y'all can have a seat. Thank you. Today, we are going to be talking about building your personal brand on social media, but before we get there, I just want to take a second and have a moment of gratitude. We are in no other place than Nashville, Tennessee. Yes. I saw some women taking puddle jumpers to get to their home to get here. I saw women sitting in traffic. I saw women leaving check lists for grandma to not be the kid's 18 pounds of sugar. I saw women thinking their spouses and partners for offering burns offerings to their children for dinner in lieu of the dinner. You're not making them. I get that. Now let's get grounded after lunch because what just happened is we were nourished in our soul this morning and we were nourished in our bellies, but we also might feel a little sluggish. So just think about where you would be if you were not in this room in this moment. Would you be in a cubicle? Would you be in a preschool pickup line? Would you be in your office trying to like lick stamps because your printer is not working? You can get it, ship out products. Would you be sitting in traffic? Would you be doing customer support ? Whatever you would be doing, you're not doing that and you're here . Can I get a collective amen for that? Yes, because I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly where I want to be, but when I look back I think, Oh, I am so happy for how far I'd come. And so with that mind frame of thank you, sweet baby Jesus, I'm not in a cubicle. They you're going to Jesus , I'm not behind the laptop. Fizzy, sweet baby. Jesus said, I'm farther now than I was yesterday and tomorrow I'll be even going farther with that. I say thank you and let's get the wheels on this bus and go. So who am I? My name is Jasmine star. I am a photographer and business strategist from Newport beach, California. Now, the thing that I have been able and so blessed to do is have the ability to start a business with my husband and cofounder called social curator , a monthly social media membership that empowers small and medium sized business owners to build their brand and market it on social media. Now you could see here that and say, okay, well that's good for you, but let's get into the knee. Hold on before we get there, I have to tell you that if you give me two minutes to share where this story starts in 2005 it'll all let you know. It's like, Oh, that's why it makes sense. So the story for starts in 2005 and let me just be really honest with you. I was tired, I was stressed and I was wildly overwhelmed. I was in my first year of law school at UCLA having received a full scholarship for a girl who comes from immigrant parents. This was a big deal for a girl who the eldest of five children, who are my mother homeschool . That's it . I didn't learn how to read until I was 11 I was just a little slow. I was never the girl who was a standout. I was never the center of the room and yet I found myself in law school. The thing that I thought I wanted to do because um ,
Speaker 6that's a different echelon. You're not in the hood.
Speaker 5I would be able to do the things that I wanted to do because the law degree was going to be a passport, but I was tired, stressed and overwhelmed. I was looking at it at everybody else and everybody else was tired, stressed and overwhelmed. And so I just thought, Oh, well this is how it is. It wasn't until I received a phone call from my father and my second semester of my first year and he said the doctors had given up. Then my mom's time had come. She had battled eight years of brain cancer and the doctor said the surgeries and the chemo and the radiation
Speaker 6tried it all and her time has come.
Speaker 5What I realized in this moment was that I went and tired and stressed, overwhelmed to being utterly and totally depressed. I said, why? Why God? Why don't you see my dad? He's a pastor. Don't you see us? We're trying to do the right thing. Don't you see us trying to take what we have and get out why? And what I realized, man , is that life is short. I didn't want to be a lawyer and yet how he's doing it because I felt like it was a thing that I had to do. So the one thing that I knew beyond all else was that I wanted to see my mother. I wanted my mother to see me marry my high school sweetheart. So we planned a wedding in three months and the doctor said she's not going to walk and she's not going to talk and she won't be able to travel. And she did all of those things as she walked me down the aisle to marry my very best friends. Bet gangs . The story gets better because I texted her last night and she's like, are you going to meet Dave? I was like, mama , you raise like Lazarus, you bet. Sure. I'm going up today and say hello sir. Nice to meet to , you know , watch death and live life not to the fullest. And on that note, I get married, I go back. My husband and I are living in our very first apartment in the Shadys area of Los Angeles, but we were like happy, but I gotta make this work. And he asked me when I received a letter from UCLA that said, you'd have to come back to get your full scholarship. I started crying into a plate of pasta and they said, I don't want to go back. And he asked me the kindest question. Anybody could ask another person. If you could do one thing for the rest of your life and be happy, what would it be? I said, I want to be a photographer. He said, okay, you don't have a camera. I know I, you know, I don't have a camera, but if I got one, I think I could work and thank God I didn't say I want it to be a tuba player because Dave Ramsey would have been like, girl, no, unless I got a full scholarship. Okay, well, lo and behold, in 2006 my husband buys me very, very simple camera, and he said, give it one year and if you can't do it in one year, just go back to law school. I said, okay, one year. So I opened my camera and I like Annie Liebowitz and so Adams , there's a new girl in the home and then I take photos and I'm like, you're bad. You're like really bad. You know you're bad when you offer your free photographic services to members of the congregation and your daddy's the pastor. And they say, no. He's like, that's on godly, you know, my daddy . So you know, you got to be really bad. So 2006 I can't shoot my way out of a dark alley. And then all of a sudden I go to the things that I can afford, AKA Google, take my camera out and I do it again and again and again. In 2007 I convinced somebody to actually pay me to photograph something. And in 2009 it was what is one of the top photographers in the world? 2010 one of the top most simple winches , photographers, 2012 by socially influential photographers. And it's about this time in the conversations like Bri , I think you just scratch that record because how did you go from hot mess to making it work? What happened and how did that happen? Because many of you are sitting here and you hear that story and you're like, okay, well that's fine, but Jasmine, let's be real. You are unqualified. And I was like, no baby, boom . I wasn't just unqualified, I was unfunded, I was uneducated, I was unconnected, I was under all the things and I did it anyway. And that's what I have come to believe again and again that possibilities are simply possibilities in disguise. You tell me, Jasmine, I have this crazy idea of being a left-handed puppeteer. Shout out to Dave Ramsey for that. You tell me you're going to do that and I will say you're going to do it because somebody believed in me so unabashedly that it turned into the best decision of my life on the foundation of a good business. You tell me you want to do something crazy, I will clack it up and say, okay, no . About this time people were like, okay, but really Jasmine, it's fine for this hallmark Christmas special , but can we get to the knee? Yes there is . Yes, we're going to get there right now cause we're talking about how I built my business and the answer is I built a brand. That's it. Now, now that know the back story, you know I didn't have money and I didn't have education and I had no resources. If you could believe I was 25 years old and I didn't know a single person in my life who had ever started a business, I had nobody to ask. So I went to Google and I made best friends with somebody by the name of Seth Godin . Seth doesn't know where real rural friends, he's like my friend in real life and he defines a brand as a set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that account for consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another. Why do you go to Starbucks versus coffee bean and tea ? Why do you buy Reeboks instead of Nike? Where do you decide what hotel do you decide to go on vacation? You are making subconscious decision based on an experience what your mom said about using Chris go what your sister says about the best dry shampoo. What your friend says about this really great thing that had just come out. You choose based on experience. I once heard a brand described as a brand is not defined by a business but by the consumer's perception of the business and know layman's terms. A brand is what somebody says about you when you walk out of the room. Now you might be sitting here and be like, okay Jasmine, but like this is really nebulous and I will say, okay, let's make it not nebulous. Let's make sure that you walk out of these doors with not one, not two but at minimum three things that you can start building your brand today. But before we get there, I need to be 100 with you and let you know that the girl on the stage has been broken like the egg make neon had mentioned, I was scrambled up, beat up, re fried, tossed on the plate and I was like, I don't know how to make this work. So much so that she's talking about an egg and I wrote a blog post, this exact blog posts in 2007 why am I such a chicken? I should just lay an egg to complete this metamorphosis. If I sprouted betters tonight, I wouldn't be surprised. I need need to be willing to go out on a limb and ask people if I can take their pictures. I know couples who are engaged. So why can't I bring myself to ask if I could snap their engagement photos, I wouldn't charge them. So what's stopping me? My fear of rejection, of incompetence, of embarrassment. I need to do this. Just need to, I wrote this on a blog that had served as my website for two years. I let people know of my exact journey. I let people see me fry in a frying pan, my eggs all scrambled. Cause I said, if you know me and you see and you hire me, you know exactly what you're getting. It was the only thing I had. And now I stand on stages to say, however, whatever you show that out. Because what has happened in the past decade of being an entrepreneur is that social media has changed the game to where we have the temptation to only put out the perfect egg sitting on a ledge and hide all of the signing pains. So if you're sitting here and you're like, okay Jasmine, I think I'm ready to build a brand and I don't have much. Great. So now we're going to get into our first practical action of this is I like doing, I'm all about action. So I'm going to invite you in your notebooks to list out two columns. One that says assets and one that says liabilities. Now, I did this in around 2006, 2007 and I said, okay, I want to build a business and I know that there are some things that are stacked against me and I know that there's some things that are working for me, so I want it to be 100 with myself. So I listed a list of liabilities. These were things I thought were going to hurt my business or impede my business, broke . I had no money. My husband was with this startup company and they paid him in like hugs. And , uh , I was working two days a week at my daddy's church. We had no money. I had no knowledge. Everything I was learning was from a user manual and Google and I had no network. I had nobody to ask questions to. Ladies in this room have 3000 people to ask your questions. The quality of your life and the strength of your business will be judged on the questions you are unafraid to ask. Ask everybody as everybody in the headshot line, ask everybody in the bathroom line . Ask everybody as you're waiting to do a little boomerang in front of these. I ask away, so I'm being 100 with you saying everything. What my liabilities pertains . You was starting my business. Then I decided to say, okay, can I list my assets? Things I believed could empower me to build the business that I wanted. Well I didn't have much, but I knew I'd like to write. Like I , I don't, I can't explain being a photographer, being a writer, I was like, girl, you have nothing but you like to write. I was like, okay . Um, my name, my name is Jasmine star, I have a twin sister and her niece , Bianca flower . I walked away with a better name but I knew I was like, okay, well maybe my name would work for me cause it's a little bit different and my personality. Now, half of this room is like, Oh, I like this girl and the other half is like she's not my people. I love it when Jesus said nobody will be Luke warm . You will not be lukewarm without me. That's one thing for sure. You will walk out of this room and say, I just don't like her. And some people walk out and be like, I want to know more about her. Good. All of my assets to start my business had nothing to do with my photography and all of my liabilities had everything to do with photography. Do you think that wasn't a little bit of a pickle? Anybody here else sitting in the brine? No, of course not. Now we're all perfect. Jasmine , Dave asked y'all , how many of you were in your first year of business and half the room raise their hand and I asked if anybody's sitting in the brine of life and everyone's like, no, my , my eighth month business is profitable. Oh, well if you can't be really here, this is a practice run. You can't be real outside of those doors. How many of you are sitting in the brain of life? Okay, this is what I know. Let me save you time. Clients we're choosing for Todd prefers not photographs and people are choosing bakers , not cakes and people are choosing coaches, not the curriculum. Do you believe this? I'm going to ask for a raise of hands and none of the T Rex, right? Who believes that people are choosing the creator and less the creative? Great. Half the room. We're going to make Delores and damage right now on how to create a brand on social media. Let's talk about that first things first. If you're like, okay, Jasmine, I'm going to test the waters on the seat. You know what you're talking about. Boom. Number one. What I want you to do is list three words, three words, and I want to make sure that these three words focus on you, not your business. I don't want you to have these defining words is I am a Baker. I'm wanting you to say I'm soulful. Great. When I buy your cookies, I want to taste that soulfulness here . Coach and you say, my business who I am is transformative. Awesome list that. Now I want to encourage you to resist the temptation to choose words that focus on who you are, not who you aspire to be. True story. I'm sitting my first year doing, trying to build my brand, doing all this other stuff and I was like talking to my husband. I was like, baby, I'm funny. And he's like, there's a lot of things. You are a bit funny. He's not really one of them. I am aspirationally funny and so we had a really cool hard conversation and we decided that I was fun. I was like, okay, I'm huh . It was less aspirational and a lot more realistic. If you are sitting with your words, ask the five people words that they would use to describe you. That would be super insightful to how people perceive you and the value that you bring. Now these words will soon become the barometers of your success because if you're a coach and people online are talking about the transformation that you've got them, you're doing it. If you're putting out your cookies and people walk in and they say, I just had some soul food eating this cookie you're doing. It's my first year as a photographer. I decided that I wanted my words to be fun, fresh and editorial that I knew I was building a brand. When people described working with me as fun, I knew I was building a brand. If people felt like it wasn't like stoic, Olan mills, photography together, family fun, right? Like I was like, let's just liven it up a little bit. I also knew that I was accessed when people told me and or publicized that they felt like they were walking through a magazine shoot, making the average girl feel like a model for the day. I knew that I would be successful if this was how people described working with me when I wasn't in the room and what I realize now that I didn't realize in that word of mouth would become the barometer. Word of mouth will become the catalyst. Word of mouth would become the, the thing that changed the game because what wasn't happening in 2008 and 2009 was that social media wasn't there. And so I decided to put out one of my very first websites and I put so much of me out. So this is pre-Facebook pre Instagram . I put so much out of me because I didn't have anything else that real photographers had. My first year I rented, I got a camera, but did that camera didn't come with a lens. That's what they don't tell you about. Fancy stuff. Get a buy, everything independent . So there I go, realizing I got paid for my first gig and I use it most of that money to rent everything I needed to build my portfolio. I rented everything before I bought it. I took zero debt to build this business. Thank you. And you want to know what that I did something. I don't really talk about a lot, but my first 12 months I had built a six figure business on renting, on not having a websites on word of mouth. It is possible. The question is how bad do you want people talking about youth ? Because my big advice and encouragement is that if you are not putting stuff on the internet for people to talk about, they will not talk about you. You must teach people how would you talk about you? And so when I launched a website that had so much to do on random things that I liked, like Pete Berry , like lit floss, people were like, that's really ridiculous. And I was like, it is, but it's what I have. And lo and behold, the barometers of success started happening when social media hit. So social media, I started using it 2012 2013 2014 building it to tens of thousands of people talking about me and I told myself and people online are talking about their brand experience with me and who I was, not just as a photographer then I knew I was successful when brides were going out online saying , I really love Jasmine star and not saying I really like my wedding photos. Difference when brides were using their descriptive words, working with Jasmine was so much fun. It started pre-qualifying people who were coming. They wanted a fun photographer. That was the biggest gamble of my career because nobody was doing it. Very few people were doing it. I don't want to say nobody. My husband says you shouldn't say never an always and no one. Okay. Okay. Very few people were doing it and let me say to you a lot of times, let's flash forward to 2019 I still suck the internet with who I am. I want you to suffer the internet with who you are because everything you sell has competitors and everything you think is proprietary knowledge or intellectual property is own Googleable . Oh yeah, let that sit in. Like I said, folks, I'm not funny, but boy, my phone , right? They're going to hire you for you and yet what you want to hide behind is your essential oils and what you want to hide behind is your curriculum and what you want to hide behind his or her jewelry. Guess what? Boom . I can buy a duplicate of that for half the price in Chinatown. Los Angeles. Oh , I know. Somebody brought a bazooka to a knife fight, right? I just speak much room. I have nothing. I have nothing special. I stand before you saying I am nobody doing something by somebody. Great grades. I want you to say the same thing cause if you think that the thing you sell is going to be your defining point, let me just see you some time. Girl, it's not. You are bright here and you were created for something much bigger than yourself. Who's talking about you? Are you using social media the same way that I do present day, everything I created in 2007 is the same day they Facebook turned into Twitter and into YouTube her . Does Snapchat turn into Instagram turned into watch me taped it know , yes , I'm going to do something with it. Why? I'm a girl from the hood with very little money. I take the little that I have and I make it work. Why would I pay for something that I can do if I create it for free friends? Now that we move forward, now that my business has has pivoted in transition, the brand words I am so focused on, or three main theories , consistency, you know, I will show up for you. We created social curator on the backbone of consistency because business owners are saying, Jasmine, I can't show up on social media. I don't have photos. I don't have the right things to say. I don't have a marketing plan. I can tell you how to be consistent. Second word giving, I hope my legacy was that I gave far more than I ever took because people gave to me so generously. We had people from our church donate groceries. We had people from local grocery stores pay for our tabs . We had Christmas gifts. Don't eat it on her porch. When my mom was hospitalized for almost a year with brain cancer, the entire board of st Jude hospital in 14 California adopted our family and gave us gifts far be it from Nita . Ever hold back anything. I know I share everything because I want you to believe that I give contingent on your action. And lastly, I believe my branding word is possibilities. Whatever you think is impossible, the minute you take action, any actions, messy action, dirty action, awkward action, scary action, delpo action, fearful actions, any actions, just do something. Do something. Let yourself be seen because lights don't pay your bills. People's opinions don't pay your bills, your future clients who run your profitability will . What are your words? I know that when people post about me and they talk about the things that I'm doing to stay consistent, when they posted, tell me to say the things that I am giving. When I posted about the things they say, they said I was once impossible for me. It is now possible. I say I'm standing in my purpose and has nothing to do with me and everything with the action that you take built on the foundation of your belief that somebody crazy, Puerto Rican, Mexican girl on the stage looked across and said, it's you. Stop hiding. Your time is here. Your time is now. Are you going to Rob the universe of the gift that God has put you on this earth together ? If the answer is no, y'all better show. Oh , because what does it look like to build a brand? I can't come up here like, okay, so build a brand. There's that. Listen, I'm going to share everything I know and everything I do. For those of you who don't know who I am watching me work, I will never ask you to do something. I am not doing every single day blogging three to four times a week for SEO searchability , offering weekly tutorials on video, written form, blog post , YouTube , Facebook, going live on Facebook every single week. Going live on Instagram. Twice a week. If I'm not getting DM was I will put out a poll and when people vote on the poll, I will DM them back. Thank you so much. It's crazy. Yesterday on the plane on the way here looking at me . Did you see how I got? I'll put her get, let me tell you something. Yesterday on the plane. I'm just getting all like caught up on the plane. I was like, you know what? I think algorithms had change. I've got to drama things. I took a picture of myself and my husband, our feet on the plane, and I put a pole who has better shoe taste? Unfortunately, I lost y'all. Or shady. Oh shady. Anybody who voted for him. Y'all are shady. And for people who decided to respond to him, I would respond back. You shady on follow, get better taste wheat base , right? I'm giving the engagement I want to get, I'm coming from across me, sitting and being like, I expect all of this to come to me. No way won't. You must go after it. Send a weekly newsletter, create a bio video, tell your story. Half this room resonates with my story and the other half doesn't. Guess what's your loss? Because the people who come in here and say, you're a hot mess, and I don't know if I believe you, but I'm going to deploy into strategies you suggest I double dog dare you to do the work. Prove me wrong. And if you do, I will send you something that you so desire. And if you don't, you're going to be winning. I love those odds. I am not cute. Not smart. I'm not funny. I'm not rich. Not popular . I'm not cool. I am definitely not an influencer. I am not charming. I'm not lucky. I'm not adorable. Not talkative. One thing, what? People are laughing. I'm not talkative. Okay? Let me tell you something. God has put me on this earth to do something. I am an introvert. 100% introvert. I am sweating. I literally have sweat marks and unmentionable spots on my body right now I'm talking to because I have something to say I'm talking to because I love you. I'm talking to things. Stop playing small. I'm talking to , because I saw my mom almost died from cancer. Are you gonna wait for that? I will talk. As long as you need me to talk. The minute I get off the stage, I just need, I need [inaudible] . I need my sale . Right? That got me off track. All you doubters you to Brutai. Oh , need a party with Judas. Here's the thing that I know. I make you feel something. I make you feel something and you and you and you a you and you and you have the ability to make somebody feel something. So show up, do the work. A branding takeaway interview is take what you have and make it work. Build a brand by showing who you are, not what you do and use your branding words to measure your success. And speaking of success in my very last minute of this presentation, I want us to take a second. Will you just do me the grandest favor and will you define success? Now, success is not a private jet in success is not your six federal mansion in Franklin and success is not a Butler. What does success look like for you? Is it stopping your work day at 3:00 PM to pick up your children everyday ? Is success for you saving just enough money to take your entire family on a Disney cruise? Is success for you being able to volunteer at a nonprofit organization that has stirred the strings of your heart? What is for you? Because if we look at the outward versions of success and say , because I don't have a jet because I don't have a mansion because I don't have a Butler, I'm not as successful. Having a jet and a house and a Butler doesn't make you successful. It makes you rich. But if you lost everything you held dear to get the jet and you forced suck the time with your family and watching your children grow up, you weren't successful. So many of us look around and say, I cannot do that. Good. What can you do? Who can you serve? The minute you define your version of success, you will look around, say, I am successful ladies and gentlemen, can you give yourself the grandest favor of identifying and defining what success is for you? And the minute that happens, you will look around and say, nobody defines success except for me. And I will continue to show up and I will continue to share my journey and my story. Thank you guys. So, so
Speaker 4[inaudible]
Speaker 1and there you have it. Thank you so much to Christie , right and Ramsey solutions for opening the doors to me. At this inspiring educational event. There is nothing I love more than connecting with likeminded powerhouses in business. If you would like more tips on how to build your personal brand, head to Jasmine, star.com forward slash branding and download my free branding bundle, which includes your dream customer profile, the fastest way to find dream customers as a guide and a copywriting workbook that will help you attract your dream customers. It's every thing you need to do to quickly jumpstart your brand building with ease. So again, you can grab that at Jasmine, star.com forward slash branding, or let's make it simple. You can click on the link in the episode description from wherever you are tuning in to day. On that note, thank you again for tuning into the Jasmine star show today. I'll see you in the next episode for the business boutique Q and a panel. Bye
Speaker 2[inaudible] .