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Speaker 2[inaudible]
Speaker 1hi there. Welcome back to the Jasmine star show. I'm so happy you're here. Are you a product based business owner? Whether you design jewelry are a part of a network marketing company or you own a brick and mortar shop marketing for product based businesses are a whole other animal. So that's why I'm excited to share with you an interview I had on the product boss podcast today. Now I'm going to detour for like 30 seconds and let you know I actually have a hard time saying the word brick and mortar. I say mortar Mo , more martyr mortar. My husband JD and he's my business partner. He tries coaching me on how to say M O R T a R like mortar. It in my mouth doesn't work like that. Usually I just say, Oh do you have a physical location instead of brick and mortar? I can't say that word. So there you go. For people who don't know how to say words, you could still have a podcast. Uh , okay . So even if you are not a product based business owner, don't go anywhere. Because in this episode we talk about how to get more eyes on your business using Instagram stories. I even teach you how to take branding photos for your business for just $12. Yeah, totally doable and amazing. I think you're going to love this episode. So without further ado, here's my interview on the product boss podcast.
Speaker 3Hey everybody. So we are excited to have a very special guest on today and we have Jasmine star on. She is a photographer and business strategist and the host of the Jasmine star show. Welcome Jasmine.
Speaker 1Thank you ladies. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 3We're glad to have you. So we're big fans. We follow you on Instagram. Um , you're amazing at doing lives and doing IgE TV . Um, you also have the social curator, which you could speak a little bit more to you , but if you could give our audience a background, if they are not big fans like us , um, on who you are and what you help people with.
Speaker 1Well, how about I answer your question and we'll reverse engineer it. I believe that my purpose and my trajectory in life is to empower business owners to believe that impossibilities are actually possible for them when they have a clear path to success. So everyday I wake up and I say, how can I help make the path clear for people? I am a photographer and by way of my camera at at does the acted as a passport to validate me as a creative and first time entrepreneur. And over the years they've been able to share what I know and help others do the same in their business to build a brand and market it on social media. Awesome. We are such huge fans of how you tell a story. That is a perfect example of how you answered a question and just a fantastic way. And that's something that is so special when you are building a brand and connecting with your customers as we say, our own product based businesses. Right. So I love that so much. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3It's a little backstory . I'm Mina and I are both first generation Americans. We are also daughters of immigrants. Um, I know that that is also a story for you. I'm also an LA native. Um , my dad, I've done a little research, obviously my dad didn't learn to read until he was, I actually don't know if he's still can read but little bits here and there and I'm both mean and I have went the very traditional route. So I went to UC Santa Barbara Mina also, she has her masters in business. Um, and I know you have a very similar route but we're all entrepreneurs now. So we all sort of came up with an idea and started our business and a lot of our listeners , um, some of them are still working full time and then this is sort of like a side hustle or hobby and other people are fully supporting their families with their product base business. So , um, I knew that you made a big change in your life early on and took that risk of becoming an entrepreneur. And if you could share a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1Absolutely. I mean it is, it does say something about who we are and the considerations we take when our families have sacrificed so much for us to live the life. And in this particular country. My father is from Mexico and my mom is from Puerto Rico and they met on the streets of East Los Angeles and it was really tough for us growing up. Like we are the recipients of government aid. I do believe, and my father, if you were to scratch them rather seriously, he would bleed like red, white and blue. Like there is like an American Eagle on the inside of his soul. And um, you know, it's like what this, what this country gave to us and still continues to give to us, like has always left an indelible impression. And they believed that um , being the daughter of an immigrant like education and it was never thrusted on me, I took the responsibility, but I felt like education was the way that you got out of the hood education was the way that you were able to move your family from different socio economic backgrounds. And I went head first into academics. I got a full scholarship to undergrad, I got a full scholarship to law school and I just felt like this is the thing I have to do. And I never took the time to ask myself what is it that you want to do? And my mom had , um, my first year of college, my mom had a relapse of brain cancer and she had been battling eight years at the time and I was 25 and she was 50 and [inaudible] . When you get to that point in your life where you're like literally moving into what could be the next chapter, she was never asking, Oh, I wonder why I did what I did. She was always asking, I wonder why I didn't do the things I wanted to do. And I felt like it was like a wake up call for me being 25 years old. And I just realized in that moment that I was tired, stressed, overwhelmed, and I was wildly depressed and I saw what my future could look like. And I never want to look back at my life and say, why didn't I at least try to do the things I wanted to do? And thank God I can look back and like my mom and I still talk every day now. It was like a miracle that she like recovered the way that she did. But I truly believe that she became my North star and now I'm able to talk to other people and say, you don't have to look at somebody you love death for you to ask yourself, what is it do I want to do and does this make me happy? So thankful to my parents for the sacrifices they made, thankful that they brought me to like that recollection or that cognizance at 25 years old. And now I'm like, I am 100 living the American dream. Not necessarily in how much money is in my bank account, but how fulfilled I am and am I in the process of building my white picket fence? And I say yes Lord and a man to all of that. I love it. I mean even in the past year, right? We've seen such a transformation from you. Obviously we're speaking on being super fans. Um , so we're getting to the end of the year of , uh , you know , 2019. Can we kind of go back to where you were at the beginning of this year even, because we like to say, you know, entrepreneurials are like dog years. Where did you see your journey at the beginning of this year and how are you ending it for 2019? I mean I w my, I have a twin sister and we casually joke that I was born with a brain and she was born with a heart and uh , I like, I am like, I am a black heart. Like I don't know what tears are, you know, I'm like, when was this wetness? And my , I , I say that I cry like gangster tears . Like if it doesn't fall from your eye , did you really cry? But right now you asked me that question and I got a lump in my throat cause I was just like, Whoa, entrepreneur years are dog years. Because at the beginning of 2019 I knew I was going to face a little bit of a radical year and it was a year. I wasn't all that excited to get into because I think that in any entrepreneurial journey, the first a year and a half, it's just will this work, right? You can be scrappy and you could be messy and you could just build your business with like bubblegum and duct tape and be like, we're making it work. You know? And like all of a sudden when your business hits a level of success, you realize we need to build systems in order for us to scale. And I knew that 2018 for me was building, it was a year of systems. And that's just not where I play. Like it's does not my happy place. And what I realized in beginning years, I have to bring on people to bring on people who skills. That was just that. So we have successfully grown our team to 14 people besides my husband and myself. And when I look back at where I was, it was a lot of punch in the gut moments. Like there was a lot of like, what am I doing? How is this working? Was this a mistake? And the defining Mark, my greatest successes only came on the heels of realizing how quickly we could rebound after a really rough spot and not judging yourself. Right? Like the ending 2018 for me is just about wow, it was a year a systems and two to 3020 is going to be a year of explosion. So we're excited. That's amazing. Um, we, we do teach systems ability in sales for product people and I think sometimes they want to do it all at the same time, but it's some , you know, you have to get to a certain point , um , in sales to be able to afford the team or to improve your systems. Um , same thing with visibility.
Speaker 3Sometimes visibility comes before and after systems or I'm scaling and making more revenue. So I love that. So we wanted to have you on because we think you're an Instagram genius and um , you know not to, you know,
Speaker 1is managed expectation. People who don't know , like I think like I'm amazing. They're going to my Instagram account. Like I'm pretty normal guys. Very normal. I'm not amazing. I just show up, I show up till I blow up. Okay.
Speaker 3That's what I do. And that's that . But I want you, I want our listeners if they don't follow you already to follow you because you do all the things. I mean, so let's jump into IGT be a bit , you very produced IGT TV and I know not everyone can do that. People get a little bit afraid of videos sometimes. But could you share maybe some ideas or tell us a little bit about HGTV for people who don't fully understand it and then how a product based business could use it? Absolutely.
Speaker 1So how about we, because oftentimes when I talk to business owners, but specifically product based business owners, I feel like it's a , it's a harder sell. Like I have to sell you on the idea. But as a proud law school dropout, I would like to present a case and you the judge and jury can obviously rule in my favor. So before we get there, let's reverse engineer cause you said, Oh Jasmine, you do all the things and it's, I don't do all the things for kicks and giggles because who has time for that? I do all the things for all the strategy in the systems. How does then this happen for IGT V ? Well I look at Instagram as an app, as a portfolio of sorts to showcase and connect with the introduction of stories. That gave me an opportunity to give an inside look to what only ever people see on an outside business. And we have no emotional attachment because it disappears in 24 hours. So we now have the opportunity to showcase our businesses, our products in the not so beautiful form to get people connected to the journey. Case in point, I was targeted by an ad on Instagram and it was click here to see how we produce our yoga and sweatpants in downtown LA. Um, they knew who they were targeting. I'm an LA girl. I love sweatpants. I love yoga and I'm American. I want to see that it's made here in LA and this iPhone video in a downtown Los Angeles. Not pretty, not Instagram. Ville warehouse was gone through on a time delay, quick lapse , showing them how they're packaging. I bought a pair of sweats. Do I think they're , they're amazing. I don't know yet. But I was so caught up in showing the journey that now advertisements are showing the back behind the scenes. So stories now give us an inside look to an outside business, right? So we can start testing the waters. But just in case you're not quite sure that people want to go deep with an IGT V. well I go live and I get to ask questions to my dream customers in real time by offering them value. So what do I use stories and Instagram live for as a testing ground before I get into an investment for IGT TV , because I GTV I've come to so say a thousand times over IGT TV is your own Netflix series. Like you have a Netflix show about your products. What are you going to do with it? So this is where people, I see often business owners will have like what I call a talking head. They hold their iPhone out and then they talk for like 17 minutes straight. And when is the last time you ever watched a Netflix special? When it was one person, one camera at talk for 17 minutes doesn't happen. We have to look at Netflix as the proven model of how people want to consume and then once we're ready to make an investment and we're not Willy nilly about this investment, we know it's time to invest in a videographer to document our behind the scenes, our stock room, our products, our shipping, our thank you, our ribbons, our labels. We know it's the time after we've asked our audience how they want to consume our content online and stories. Yeah, I love that. I mean that is really how people are consuming. This is kind of the rise of the podcast as well, right? We have that a little bit of attention span, but when we want to binge , we want to binge. So the idea is really to get them to start bingeing on your IgE TVs and kind of making sure that they're hearing the right stories that you're wanting to tell them.
Speaker 3Absolutely. So to clarify , um , you're saying that when we, when they start to see that interaction or engagement on stories or on live, that's , they should note that sort of engagement. So if it was behind the scenes at the factory or them pouring their candles in their basement, that's something that people are interested in and that they would potentially create a Instagram, te like an IgE TV for that specifically?
Speaker 1Yes, and I am a firm believer. I'm a total, I was homeschooled like as the daughter of an immigrant and like dad didn't know how to read until I was 25 my mom barely graduated high school. It's pretty amazing because we couldn't even afford textbooks. My mom at the end of every academic school year would dumpster dive for books that teachers throughout and then she would get like three or four books and that were missing pages and then she would reassemble one book. So I'm all about taking what you have and making it work. And I do this with business, right? So I do this proverbial dumpster dive when it comes to Instagram cause I'm going through my stories and I'm watching. Whereas the fall off point, which ones where I'm like, I look at my analytics, who's been watching? Um, what are the most popular stories? What has gotten the most DMS? When we do polls, like when you're looking at Instagram specifically for product based businesses, you have your discoverability tools, which is like your location , um, geotagging hashtagging. And then you have your engagement tools. These are the sliders, these are the quizzes, these are the pools. And so whenever you have engagement tools, Instagram created these because Instagram is asking business owners, please use these tools so that we can measure how engaged your audience is. And so here you have a free mechanism that Instagram is saying, please use it will help us and it will help you. So let's just say you're pouring candles in your basement and you're like, who wants to see me pour candles in my basement? Y'all? A lot of people, the dirtier the basement, the worse the light. The more people feel like, Oh, this is the Rocky Balboa story. We want to root on Rocky because we're tired of rooting for the proverbial Russian candle maker, right? Like we want to say you like punching that frozen of meet you in your basement, pouring candles in your essential oils. We want you to win. So if you have a pool and you set up your phone and it's on you while you're pouring your wax and you'd say for the holidays, would you prefer pine or would you prefer cinnamon? Like you know you're going to do both of them, but when people vote, what I want you to do is already have a cachet . So the next day around our 18 let's just say 24 people had voted and 18 of them really wanted cinnamon. I want you to send a DM to them and say, Hey Cheryl, guess what? I freshly poured some cinnamon. I haven't announced it yet. If you would like to be the first person to buy, I'll stick in an extra cinnamon sachet before we take it to market. Like this is literally, and people are like, I voted on something I wanted. Now I'm getting a personal message from the person who was pouring the candy candle in her basement and she's going to give me a cinnamon sachet. Of course I'll , of course I'll buy from Rocky the candle maker, like this is how it works. It's so simple. It's so hard because we're afraid of judgment and we often let ego get in the way of, well, I'm trying to build a luxury brand. Guess what? We all are baby blue. Everybody starts somewhere. Gucci didn't start off as Gucci prodded and started this product. Everybody started in their own way. How then will you move from there?
Speaker 3I love that. So, and I just want you guys to know it really fast that Jasmine was talking about like 24 responses. So it's not necessarily, I mean, how many of you would love to get, you know, a handful of those 18 people buying from you? I think people work really hard to get even that, just that one sale. So those sales, I know you have to reach out and get them and we teach that with service bases and send to have funnels and people you know come to the top of the funnel and product is a bit different and we feel like you have to reach out and grab them in. And so I love the idea of the DM pulling and then engaging , getting the sale and then adding something extra cause they are going to go tell their friends, Oh my God I got this and their customer service is amazing and they throw in this extra gift you need to buy it as well.
Speaker 1And can we play here for a second? Can I throw out an idea they are going to like poopoo on but I want somebody, I want somebody to do this because oftentimes I get from product based business owners. Oh well the funnels don't work for me cause I'm not a personal brand. I'm not service based . And I'm like, well you can find excuses to why it won't work for you or you can find reasons. And I have just been, even though I'm building a personal brand and I have a service based business, I am still tested, my God, 50 potential lead magnets to build a funnel and like four of them are the ones that like we doubled down on, people often want to give up after like the first three and I'm like, you don't hit your right lead magnet or lead gen. So let's go back to Cheryl in her basement pouring candles and she's like, who is possibly gonna want to opt into a newsletter? Well what if you were to create content that showcases what you do and people, business owners are like, wait a minute. You mean show everything? And I'm like, show 110% of everything. Invest a graphic designer on fiber. Take photos with your iPhone and give a step by step tutorial on how you pour your own candles and this is what's going to happen. People want to know 2% will actually buy the tools to do it. 98% just want the dopamine hit of seeing your optin and seeing how you do it and they'll never do it. And of the 2% that actually do it, 1% will say, this is so hard. I'm never going to do this. Cheryl, send me a dozen of those candles and 1% we'll do it. We'll have a craft day with their kids. Make a mess and never do it again. It's true. It is true. I mean they want to live vicariously. Right. And it's that instant gratification of seeing somebody else do it where you don't have to do it yourself. Um , I love that you're saying just start with Insta stories. I think that that has a much low barrier of entry than just going straight to IgE TV because it's still less intimidating. But even if you don't want to be the face of your brand, like I like to say, nobody knows who cat and Jack are. They, you know, but you have to humanize your own brand, right? Even if you're not the face, maybe you're the voice or you're the hands that are making it . You don't have to be the talking head like what you're saying. Absolutely. And depending on the size of the business, I've followed a companies and businesses that have Instagram takeovers from their customer support. They're shipping, they're even receiving when you have Jose sweeping out like the shipping and receiving department and he's just like this is what we do, this is how we get it. And then it's like a time lapse of Jose unloading the truck into the storage room. And I'm like that was pretty fascinating. Now I like Jose and now I like this company. Like it's really fascinating that you, you, you can find an excuse or you can find a reason.
Speaker 3Yeah, exactly. So what if somebody doesn't want to be the face of their brand? So again, we're, we're podcasters , we're service space. Our faces are irrelevant to our listeners. But how about somebody who has a product and they don't know if they're , they're personally relevant to go on stories, for example, with their faces.
Speaker 1Okay . Well without being emotional, cause I'm a a hundred percent like linear logical thinker. This studies have shown that like when a photo is posted on Instagram and it has a human in it, it's 64% more likely to get engagement. So if I'm just looking at this want , if I'm just looking at this math, I would put people in the photo. I want engagement. Engagement leads to trust. Trust leads to conversations, conversations lead to conversions. So you could sit here and just say you're not the person to be selling it and maybe you're not. But if I were you, I would be really hell bent on getting somebody who is the embodiment of your brand. But the social media manager, if it's your dream customer, if it's Instagram takeovers with a strategic group of like five to seven people, that's fine. But you have to be very, very aware that like engagement is driven by humans because we want the human interaction so it's get comfortable. If you can't afford to pay somebody to represent your brand, you are going to be the best until you really get off the ground. Agreed. I think for service based people, Dan was the time, right? Service based people. The story of the entrepreneur is so hot right now for product based person. The story of the small brand is so hot right now, right? So get on board, get control because this is the time to be testing that out. I couldn't , I'm sorry. I'm sorry. One thing that I want to clarify when it comes to time to test it out is like I know the story. So I had this conversation literally a thousand times over and look , the next conversation is, but yeah, but I don't have a videographer. I don't have a photographer. I'm not sure if it's representative of the brand and I'm just saying what is hot right now is real. Real is more valuable and more engaging than perfect. Now I didn't say ugly, right? I didn't say ugly. I just said real portrait mode on your iPhone is amazing. A ring light and your phone is amazing . You would be so surprised. So defer to the real and don't worry about the beautiful, beautiful, curated awesomeness all the time.
Speaker 3I love it. And we tell people better done than perfect. So we want them, they get so stuck on that perfect with graphics, with all the things, and we just want them to get it done. So it's , it's turning it out, like you said, not ugly, but done . Yep . Yeah. So let's switch gears a little bit and talk about stopping the scroll. So you are a photographer. You take beautiful pictures where you're talking about iPhone use . Some people do take some of their own photos or they hire out and they get photos of their product. But how would you suggest our product people sort of stop the scroll there ? They're inundated there . Um , people's feeds are inundated with lots and lots of stuff. Maybe they're not even paying for sponsored posts or ads. Um, how do they get people to engage in and with their feed ?
Speaker 1Oftentimes? Well , what I see a lot of business owners do is they include a call to action, which is thumbs up, great job. But if the call to action is at the bottom of the post, there's a good chance that the people who are seeing the post are not getting to the bottom of the post because they're not actually guiding their audience to click on the read more button. So you can have the most powerful CTA. But if you can't hook them to read more, no one's going to see the CTA. So how do you get somebody to stop their squirrel? Well, I've discovered that trial and error, both service and product based businesses, there's three really effective ways to stop somebody from scrolling and that is to number one, identify a specific audience so that they can pre qualify if they should invest their time and read more. So for example, calling all dog lovers, I would pre-qualify myself like I'm a dog lover. All of a sudden I'm paused and that's all we really need is to create need to pause. And then it says calling all the dog lovers, do you? And then I would have to click on the read more. I'm more inclined just to see what's on the other end. I might read it and then get to the powerful CTA that would be identifying a particular audience. Number two is what I call a juicy share . This is kind of like playing to like the intrigue, right? Can I share something I've never shared before and Instagram, Oh, I want to read more. Like I've never admitted to hear more every single time you're saying these because this is human nature. This is human nature. We've been trained and conditioned to do this and yet for so often, and I actually feel like product is business . Business owners have the luxury of just deferring to the sale because it's there. So it's literally, it's so easy to become QVC and you so easy for you to believe that your candles, everybody needs your candles. No, you have to tell them why they need it. And this then becomes to the third component, which would be to ask an engaging question. Now most of the time and a question will come at the end of a post, like in the form of a CTA. Can you tell me? But then what happens is that people, I didn't say ask a question, I asked , I said, ask an engaging question. And the difference between an a question is that you have to remember your dream customer, like your candle buyer isn't really waiting and standing in line at target to respond back with three paragraphs to your really elongated question. Like what is the one time in your life that you look back to have a pivotal experience? And that was synonymous with the scent . Well , growing up, nobody's going to be responding to that. It's literally like, do you like cinnamon or pine scent a or B? And what you do is when all of a sudden you get a comment that's just like a, or you get an emoji that's like the pine tree, then you as the business owner, ah , it's your opportunity to teach them how to engage with you. And when it comes to, and given it, what we really want to do is coach our followers to leave comments more than four words because four words are weighted differently in the algorithm. So if somebody leaves me a pine tree and I'm like, I too love pine, be sure to check back in a couple of weeks and we launch it when somebody leaves. Like a fun, cute, awesome. You respond back with, I appreciate your support. Check back soon. Thank you so much for this. I hope you're having a great day. It means so much that you're here. I can go all day with forward comments because I'm in my comments every day responding back at teaching people how to engage with me. So those three things. I love that. Um , so it's fine. Even if you're the one who's commenting for more, right? You're absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Like Instagram. And I always try to make sure to the best of my ability to really tap into my comments within like 30 minutes of me posting because it's indicating to the algorithm that I'm there and then I'm active. And also teaching people who are early responders that there's like not a reward, but there is, but there's like an incentive. There's a more, the sooner you respond to a post, there's much more likelihood that I'm actually going to respond to you. You wait a couple of days , I'm just not really going back. Really deepen those feeds to respond. So yeah , I'm incentivizing people to respond as quickly as possible. Yeah. People want to be seen and they want, they want to be seen no matter who you are that you see whether it's absolutely right . I love that. I also love that it's organic. So what you're talking about is organic and unpaid versus paid advertising you so Oh my God, it how we, honest to God want to have this podcast to be a weekend long podcast. Can we just do the 48 hour podcast cause I didn't live here for days, days because I am 98 99% organic and what happens is the reason why people are completely befuddled and amazed at like the cost per lead that I'm getting, it's not because my copy's all that amazing and my photos , my video or my content, my marketing kit is amazing. It's the fact that I'm so driven with organic content that I have a really hot audience. So it costs pennies to retarget them because if already proven that they've engaged in the past, there's a higher likelihood with them engaging with paid content, which all of a sudden within the algorithm doubles down because I can pay for exposure. But what I'm not paying for is when people organically start tagging friends and sharing that then becomes like extra honey on top of the honeycomb and you're like [inaudible] like my ad just caught on fire because people think it's one of my posts and they're already used to engaging. That is the entire game that I play. And if we're product these businesses, that is all day, every day, pennies for the dollar. Yes . Add is bringing the value to even then. So it's like you're , it is confusing, not confusing, but I do get mixed up like, Oh this is an ad. It's a really good ad. It's just, you know . Yes, yes. Um , do you advertise cause you kind of have a product, so social security, there is a, is a product, do you advertise for that or are you advertising more of the whole brand and social curator is a part of that. So what we do, we have like a tiered strategy because I've just, I've never been all that effective at Lake hard sales coming out like directly. Like you'll you , you will be hard pressed to ever find a video or I'm like, hi my name's Jasmine star and I am the founder of social curator join here for coaching and social media resources. It's like that'll be just dead in the water like that. Nobody would respond to that. So we've decided to do is we start layering our most popular videos, IgE , TV , Facebook, and if you have engaged with one video, we'll show you another video. All of these are just value adds to build a list. And if you did not opt into the list after watching three to four of our videos for more than 40% of the video, you will then be followed up with an invitation to a free class, one of three free classes. And again, 90% value add 10% like if you want to go deeper and you want to continue this conversation and have these resources join us on the inside of social curator. So it is a slow burn. What we've noticed, it takes about four months to convert a new follower or somebody on our list into being a member of social curator. And people are like , are you kidding me? Like your membership's not even that expensive. And I'm like, I know and this should just go to show business owners in general. It is a low monthly fee and it's taking us four months and daily content to convert. What does that then look like for you? This is the long game. Yeah it is. And we, you know, a lot of people think if they build it they'll come right. If you build it, they will come. It's not true. I know a lot of times I tell our our clients because we work one on one is that they think they could put up a website and then people are going to find them. But it takes so much more and now we believe that if you build it they will come for the content. So it's all the things that you're talking about. They're coming, they're circling you, they're watching all your stories. They might engage with you and your lives wherever they are. And then, I mean four months is a pretty, I mean I know it feels like a long time but it's also a good amount of time cause I know other people that have said it takes, you know, over a year for followers to convert to actual buyers . As a point of clarification, I know four months is a great time, but like we out here posting twice a day on Facebook, going live twice a week when live twice a week on Instagram, posting IGT videos three to four times a week, going lives, doing stories every day like running ads to warm traffic. I mean we're doing all the things at 110% is taking us four months. I'm like, if you ain't doing all the things like yeah, it's going to take you a little longer. It is. Absolutely. Okay, so any other tips that you might have as a photographer, let's say for our product businesses on potentially how to share their products so they get professional photos done often times and then they kind of do those in spots , like if it's for collection or holiday, but anything you recommend in terms of taking photos of their product? If it's like in their house or you know something that's very seasonal that they want to just like shoot a quick picture or two to put on on social media? Yeah, I'm going to do my best to describe, I'm going to do my best to describe this and then if you want maybe equalize Volvo for my team and then we'll link it in your show notes. It's a free video that I just posted out on Facebook, but it's literally like what I call my lighting kit. And there's huge air quotes around this because it's so ghetto fabulous. But like it works. It works. And the best part of it is, I've shown this a thousand times over product based businesses, service based businesses swear by this. And the good news is it's like less than $12 so what I wanna do is first you're walking through, let's , I'm like a storyteller. Okay? So you grab your red cart at target and you pass, by the way , 50 smells of popcorn and Starbucks, which you think would smell disgusting, but you're actually like, Oh, I'm home, I'm in Mecca. And you pass by the jewelry section and then the children's section, and then you get to the party goods section and the craft section. You're gonna make a left on the aisle and you're going to go to a craft board, like a poster board, a white poster board that's going to cost you a dollar 99 you're going to want to get two of those. Then what you're gonna want to do is walk further down the aisle and you're going to find Elmers foam board. And it comes in a set of two. No, this is not a sponsored post for Elmers , although I wish I had an affiliate league . Um, but I mean like what's the point? What do you want an affiliate link ? It's like $5. When these boards, I'm like, I'm going to get home home whopping 10 cents. Well , there's referral. So , um , you have your white poster board and your two foam boards from Elmers , and then you're going to get clear tape. Then when you get home, you're going to unwrap the Elmers foam board and you're going to create the foam board and you're gonna put it in a V formation in the photography. This is called the V flat. So we're gonna create a V and then you're going to tape just one side, like a hinge of your two whiteboards . And then what you're going to do is you're going to create the exact same replica. So I'm sorry, when you're at target, you needed two sets of the two foam boards. So a total of four foam boards, right? So then you do the exact same set, and so what you do is you open up your V to an L shape and then you create the mere opposite of another L facing the other way, and your white poster board is at the bottom. What you've just created is a three sided box, a light box, so you're going to go in front of a window or you're going to go in front of a door and you're going to face your Lightbox towards that and you're going to place your product on it below. And then from above you're going to take an aerial shot with your iPhone or a DSLR because good light on a white background, you get impeccable photos that need hardly any editing. That right there, that $12 you're welcome. The next time you see me somewhere, buy me a drink because I just gave you the gift of a lifetime and I , I never brag, but I love this white box like people tell me and they like best investment for your bid, product based. This is $12 you're welcome. Target next time you see me get me a drink. Thank you. Thank you for being on the podcast and sharing that $12 tip. I mean we're going to have , we're going to get all the comments. Um, so you guys go on, tell Jasmine, go on her Instagram and tell her that you use it. Um, so Jasmine, thank you so much. Will you tell our listeners how they can connect with you and how to find you? Yes, absolutely. We tried to make it as easy as possible. Jasmine, star.com and Jasmine star on all social platforms and even podcast now. So they should just click [inaudible] . You guys need to really teach me how to talk about my podcast . I'm out here like struggle bus. Yes, and it's the Jasmine star show so we're keeping it consistent, but we really do like just to have fun conversations. You guys have been just truly like unicorns and you guys have paved the way for other female entrepreneurs to follow in your footsteps and you guys are so refined. I am happily like hot mess.com trying to figure out like my podcast testing ideas, doing different things. I absolutely love it and this has been like a remarkable, you guys are phenomenal at what you guys do, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much honor to have you here and um, yeah, and everyone . So go ahead and subscribe. That's what I want you to do. We want you to stop, listen to this podcast now and go on over and subscribe to the Jasmine star show. Okay. But am I going to ruin your flow? Am I going to read it ? I probably am because this is, I'm not a professional podcast or go have like a few minutes. Do you want to do like a flash fire Q and a? Am I putting you on the spot? No. Okay. No , we usually end with one. But are you saying you want to do one for you ? Because I'm watching my time and I'm like I'm having the best time and I know I have to get off in like seven minutes, but I'm like seven minutes. This is like, yes , let's go . Let's go . Rocky. Our candle maker needs to hear from us. So let me go . All right, well that's a, that's something else. So me. No . What about you? Cause you have a product. What would you want to ask Jasmine? What would I want to ask Jasmine? Um, I would say, how do you know what your is should be? How does , should you tell? What should your story always have? Like what's the story goal that you should always have when you're figuring out how to position your story to tell the people? Well, when I hear this question, I absolutely love it, but I also know it's so high level. So I want to make sure that everybody who's listening can actually take this and could put this in granular work. In 2020 we're really focusing on the inside of social curator on choosing three pillars of content. These are the things, these are the themes and things we really want you to hone in so that when people think about your candles or think about your dog leashes or think about the jewelry you make , they think in terms of the thing you want to talk about. So in 2020 the thing that we're really trying to position myself, my three pillars of content are going to be how to build a brand social media marketing and the idea that impossibilities are actually possibilities. So we're going to have, you know, a branding experience, social media, what we're going to be saying and doing online and then like the inner work that it takes for us to tell ourselves a different story. So when people now talk about me, the big push in 2020 when people talk about me, I really want them to be describing me in three ways. She really helped me build my brand or she teaches me how to show up on social media or she just refuses to take no for an answer and she has empowered me to feel the same. That's what we want to do. Again and again. And that's for any business owner. Choose your three pillars of content no matter what you sell. And always find a way to interweave that back into what it is that you're talking about on social. I love that. So Jacqueline , should we actually go into our [inaudible] quick fire if you don't mind. You want some fun questions? Oh yeah. Okay. These are fun questions. We, we knew we had limited time with you. We wanted to get like all the goodness, but we are gonna ask you some fun ones. So , um , we know you're a coffee person, so what is your coffee? Oh gosh, I'm so boring. It's an Americano with three shots. Okay. That's not too boring. Oh yeah, that is so heavy coffee. I mean, I have to see, see dots when I drink my coffee. Um , but another thing that we just, that we just discovered was, Oh, hazelnut creamer. So it's not almond milk, it's hazelnut milk and just a splash event . You guys, it's life changing life. So hazelnut, the nut milk. Amazing. Because we're a big milk latte drinkers over here. We've converted a whole bunch of listeners to that. So I, that is my next purchase. I do. I know I love me some oat milk, but me and carbs, we're not friends. So I it , I try to go the nut route , the protein route. Um, okay. So what is your favorite thing on your desk? Oh, it's this a Polaroid photo of my husband and my dog sitting on the porch of the house that we had just bought. So cute. Finish the sentence and I pick up my phone. I go to Instagram. [inaudible] so many people that, sorry , I'm sorry. 95% of the people. Yes. It's Instagram. Not even like check to see if my spouse or my kids are okay. All right . So you wish you knew how to sing. That's cool. I really, I mean I would just, I would do this podcast and I would say I love it. So.
Speaker 3All right . What was the last show you binge-watched
Speaker 1Netflix. You know, I think you guys, this is how uncool I am. I think it was making a murderer. I mean it's been, it's been a while since I've actually binge watched on Netflix. I probably need a weekend of it.
Speaker 3All right , well you're busy so we'll give you , um , and what should the title in your email signature actually say? A hot mess and making it work. I love it. Um, and then do you want to do the alter ego? Oh shoot, I forgot about alter ego. No, you do. So you know how Beyonce has Sasha fierce? Do you have an alter ego or a stage persona? Yeah, Jasmine star. Jasmine star when she's not on stage.
Speaker 1Jasmine. Okay. Like jazzy, like the T to my friends or family. I think that's the , probably the biggest misnomer would kind of like take a little detour here. I do believe that what we see and who we love and who are enamored with is Sasha fears. And I believe that Sasha and Beyonce are two equal parts. So Jasmine star and Jasmine are one in the same, but people would think that immediately I walk in the room and I'm setting up the tension or that I'm really outgoing or I bet I'm an extrovert or that I always, and it's completely quite the opposite where people think like, Oh, she must be a talker. It's, I'm a listener, 98% of the time because I grew up obese as a child and I didn't know how to read. And my parents were immigrants and we were really poor. So as a result of being an outsider, it really honed my observation skills. Now I was an adult and entrepreneur. I can go in, I still fall into the wallflower capacity, but I could read a room, no room, see where I can go far before anybody else can actually get there. And being an introvert has actually been one of my greatest assets. It's great. Yeah, same. It just takes a bit of practice. Um, I think also you, you , you're conscious of it more where you know that you have to work on it. So that's the thing, right? Some people are naturally gifted at it so they just don't work on it. Whereas I think a little bit of a edge is working on it and practicing it and honing it is, and then you just become really great at it. So true. And can I just take like one minute, I don't know why I feel like people are like, Jasmine, are you intuitive? And I'm like, I don't really think so. But I feel strongly that I need to say something for somebody who needs to hear it because for a years, whatever persona I was going to put on at that moment, Jasmine, Jasmine, star jazzy to my family, I would always have my head down. I would get out of cars and I would just look down and get an airplanes and look down and I don't know if it was how I was raised. I don't know if it was a story I was telling myself, but my sweet, amazing husband, and this is partner two years ago, said, lift your head up, lift your head up. You walk down an airport with your head held high, you walk into a room and you belong. You walk into a boardroom or a washroom or a warehouse head up because people will know that they can trust you. When you look in the eye, if you are looking down, you don't trust yourself. When you are looking up in people in your eye, they're going to trust you. So whoever's listening right now, hold your head up high. Look people in the face and know that you belong. I love that so much. I have a similar story just really quick as we're doing a detour here. Um, so the, I didn't know that I did this, but one of my friends, I went into his bathroom and then when I came out and he's like, you know you can turn the light on. I was like, yeah, I do turn it on. Just turn it off before I come out. He's like, that is something that you should look into because he's like, it's like you're entering the world with your light. Turned off, turn off my house right now. Turn on all my life, put a flashlight in a ring light in every room. I'm like , Oh, I love this. So here's to us, the women's world can earn lights on and hold their head high. It is so true. Okay. So the last couple of questions is what are your two favorite emojis that you use? Um, I always use like the prayer hands cause I'm always thankful to people all the time when somebody doesn't, I think it's always a prayer hand . And then it's always the, the, the kissy one. Like the XO. Yeah. I'm just a love bug. I'm like, sometimes people think I'm like really hard edge. I'm like, no, it's all thankfulness and gratitude over here. Amazing. Yeah. Um, and then we kind of went into this before, but we believe that entrepreneur years are like dog years. What would you say to baby Yasmin that you could say to her now in her beginning of her entrepreneurial journey ? Everything will be okay and is better than you imagine so quickly to end this. I know. So good. Well, thank you ladies. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, tell me friend, are they just not the best interviewers? This is one of my favorite podcast interviews and I hoped you love it too. And we spoke a lot about Instagram in this episode, which is my favorite way to market my business. If you're ready to get started with Instagram stories, but aren't sure where to begin, you can download my Instagram story checklist@jasminestar.com forward slash IgG story checklist, or you can click on the link in the show description, download your free checklist and guide so you know exactly how to share photos, videos, add filters, and upload stories like you've been doing it from day one. I can't wait to see the stories that sell your business like a boss, a product boss, Danny eight did you see what I did there? Y'all? I'm here with the jokes today. Anyway, thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.
Speaker 2[inaudible] .