Hi friends.
Speaker 2Welcome to another episode of the Jasmine star show where we talk about life business and everything on the in between, which is probably where we're going to start now. I'm coming back at you from the floor of my closet because yesterday I decided to go out for a jog. Now don't worry, there's nobody out on the streets. I don't think I even saw another person and when actually I did see another person and when that person saw me, he crossed the street and I'm like, you know what? I'm not offended. I'm here for this. I respect you bro. Thank you so much for that. But in the process of my job , this is mostly when I listened to podcasts and if you can believe it, I listened to not one, not two, but five different podcasts, all ranging from health and wellness to business, to lifestyle, to social commentary and they were all focused on the coronavirus and I have an appreciation for it. It's part of the social conversation at this point in time. And people are creating, some people are creating for education and other people are creating for catharsis. And well, I get it and I appreciate it. It was such a heavy day for me. I ended up doing about five miles on this job and I came back more in a funk than when I left, which is quite the opposite of what I think podcasts should be specifically during these times. And as I scrolled my podcast list, the thing that I was looking for again and again, it was just something that could lift my spirit and not necessarily like I'm living in delusion, but like everything is so heavy. So on today's conversation, because that's exactly what this is, it's a conversation. I don't have a script, I don't have an agenda, but I do have a plan. Your girl comes in with a plan and the plan is to talk about business, but I want to wrap business with hope strategy and a future. So I would love to have a conversation with you about how to grow your business during social distancing. This is not a warm fuzzy, you know, let's wrap ourselves in a flour tortilla and you know, put some salsa on it. Warm burrito. No, this is a conversation about what real business owners are doing during this rather crazy time. So I have good news and that good news is that there has never been a better time to grow your business then . Now I know people were like, are you crazy? Like do you not see what's going on in the world? Yes friend. But the majority of people see it as a title wave of overwhelm and a few people could see the title wave approaching and say, you know what? I'm going to build a raft. So fellow raft builders, let's have a conversation because I've said it before, but early studies have shown that people are now spending twice as much time on social media and twice as many people are on it than more before. Now this is a pretty crazy to statistics because what does this actually say is that there's more eyes to see what it is you're producing over a longer period of time. And in that, my friends is the first part of us building this raft. Understanding that people are actually looking for the thing that you are empowered to sell. So how about we start there? The thing I see a lot is people are like, I don't think I could talk about my business. I don't want to talk about selling right now. Does it make me feel insensitive? And to that I reply there are people who want to buy the thing that you are selling. Personal example, I went on Instagram stories and I said, I have waited my whole life to make an Easter basket for my daughter. And up until, I don't know, four and a half weeks ago, I never thought that was my reality. And so it is a little bit bittersweet with social distinct distancing. I can't go out and shop, but I did have Instagram so I went to Instagram stories and I said, Hey guys, you know, I'd like to make an Easter basket. Do you have any recommendations for small business owners? I knew I wanted to support small business owners and I used the engagement tool on Instagram to people can actually leave a comment like within the story. So it was super easy for me to actually go through and on a Saturday evening while JD was putting lunate asleep, I scrolled through hundreds of Instagram accounts from small business owners, all providing things that would will look really great in Linda's basket. Now, do I understand it is a very sensitive time to buy? Yes. Do I think that I'm making smart and strategic decisions with my finances? Yes, but do I also know I've waited decades to buy my daughter an Easter basket? Yeah. So what did I do? I bought, I bought from fellow business owners that were recommended to me from fellow business owners. Sure. Those business owners could have said, nobody's going to buy right now. So I'm not going to join the social conversation. Or like what many of the strong Instagrammers did is they created content around Easter and provided their products as a service to their customer. So if you happen to find yourself right now listening to this podcast and you're like, but Jasmine, what in the world is happening? I'm going to remind you that in uncertain times we can choose fortitude or we can choose fear. I've said it before, but every day as an entrepreneur is an uncertain come Corona, come, coven come, whatever may be, nothing is certain in business. In fact, I believe that we, the crazy entrepreneurs, the Looney tunes who are out here trying to be like, you know what? I don't want to be in a cubicle and you want to know what a guaranteed paycheck every two weeks. Ah , you know, I think I'm going to go out and do it on my own. And you want to know what I think I'm going to , uh, start my business and I'm going to do the packaging and I'm going to do the branding and you know, I'm going to do a website and I'm also gonna do my social media. Oh, I got to do customer support and you know, I gotta file my taxes and just in case I have a storefront, I got to clean the windows. It's like we would prefer to work 16 hours in our own business than to work eight hours for somebody else. Right. To me, friends, nothing is more uncertain than starting a business regardless of the economic or social climate. My question to you is, do you see the opportunities in the air? Like we go back to this analogy of you see a tidal wave coming, will you drown? Will you run? Or will you try your best to build a raft or at minimum or have on anything close by? Because whatever you decide you're capable of, you're right. If you decide that you will find excuses and walk away from pursuing the hard work of building your business right now, or you can find reasons to keep moving and this conversation is for the people who want to move because chances are you do have extra time and you can spend that extra time catching up on Joe exotic and his, you know, wild romping through Vegas and Florida and Oklahoma and you know what? Let's not go there. I knew too many details about the tiger King, but I've always come to know that when you get over that funk and you're like, you know what? Netflix ain't pushing me forward. Whenever I doubt, I immediately dream. Now in times of stress and overwhelm, I believe you must dream, think, breathe, and work for your vision. But the question becomes, do you know what your vision is? Do you know what you want your life and business to be? When we come back and we returned to normal, I had this amazing opportunity to listen to a Brenae Brown podcast, and she talked about the importance of us actually feeling all of our feelings and giving ourselves the permission to mourn the loss of normalcy. Because I think I fall into the group of, Hey, let's push through. Got to go. Let's go. Like I won't allow myself to feel anything because if I feel feel anything, it's gonna slow me down. So Nope, Nope, Nope. I'm going to go. But she says that what happens is when you stuff your emotions down, they will come back twice as big, twice as hard and twice as toxic. And when I heard her say this, I was like, Oh, girl is preaching because I've lived the majority of my life that way. Like I stuff it down, I compartmentalize. And then I'm like, Nope, got to do the task at hand. But all of a sudden life would get really complicated when I would just pour myself a bowl of gluten free Cheerios and then start bawling out of nowhere. I actually remember this point, there's one point in time where I'm having a conversation with JD and I'm sitting at my laptop and um , I started to cry. This is like two years ago over wait for it. I start sobbing uncontrollably because I didn't know how to organize photos and Dropbox. Yeah. He like looked across the room at me and he said,
Speaker 3Oh , are you crying because of Dropbox? And I was like, you don't get it. It's what the Dropbox symbolizes. What you see is that, hold on, hold on. What you see is that the Dropbox is the symbol of my life. My life is a mess. I don't know how to fix this . Okay. You guys, my poor sweet . Has it
Speaker 2been , it's kind of like, Oh, all right. So like do I run, do I hand her tissue? Do I pretend I'm deaf in my right ear all of a sudden, okay, so let's just get to the chase. I now really take the time to feel my feelings and not discount them because when I feel my feelings and I just say, you know what, I am mourning the loss of normalcy that my life before ed will never look the way that it does after I am no longer living in the home that I had lived for five years and that's very bittersweet for me. I don't see neighbors, I don't have a backyard. I am living in an apartment that is one third of the size of where I used to live. I don't go outside. I feel bad for my dog Apolo because he doesn't have a yard and I really miss simple things like going to whole foods. I know that's, I know I live a wild life friends. I live a wild life, but there was a point in my life where a whole foods was like Mecca, like only a certain type of person shopped at whole foods and the , the shyness hasn't lost his power. I walk into whole foods and I see organic, you know , farm to store fruit and I can get like a protein smoothie and I can get gluten free bread and artists and cheese or think of their , it's called artisinal is , it's artisinal cheese. I mean that kind of stuff. I miss it. I miss Friday night nights with my husband and as silly as it sounds, a really, really miss working out. That was like my social interaction for the day. And so when I give myself the permission to mourn that and to just be thankful for the things I do have, it opens up space for me to then dream. So how do you make dreams a reality? Like how do you create a vision so that you actually know what you're working toward? Now, before I actually get into dreaming and creating a vision, it's really important for you to remain on attached to the vision to remain on attached to whatever happens. Because there's been plenty of times in my life where I would be like, this is my dream or this is what I'm working for. This is the vision that they see and like things happen and I realize, Oh, I needed that vision to get me to where I wanted to go even though it doesn't look like how I imagined. And once we have that clarified, a really important thing to remember is the way out of how you're currently feeling is through. You can't sidestep quarantine, you can't jump over isolation. You can't crawl under covert 19 the way out is through is working through the process and oftentimes the question we have to ask is, okay, if I can think of stewing something, anything, what can I actually do now? Like what could I experiment with? And I'm using the word experiment because there was a point in time where I would be like, all right, let's shake it up. What mistakes can I make? You know? And I'm like, no, no, no. I don't make mistakes. I now as an entrepreneur can say, I create movement. How can I create movement in my life, in my business? Because when I would just look at the same situation from a slightly different vantage point, I was able to find a message in the mess. Now I know that probably sounds like you know a very like a very popular meme or it's like probably printed on the front of like a hallmark card. I'm sure I'm not the person to say like the messages in your mess or your message , your message. I'm not the first person to say something like that. I mean it's probably like Laura Ingalls Wilder, maybe you know, or like Oprah Winfrey. I don't know. Somebody very smart and in tune with our emotions, but like truly whenever I either would shake things up voluntarily or like the universe would shake up my life, that's when I found the thing I was supposed to do. So on that note, I'm going to be talking to you about exactly what I am actually doing in this moment. A couple of weeks ago , the social curator team and I, we asked ourselves three questions and these are the questions. Will the foundation for how we move in the future when it comes to quick innovation, because right now friends, the people who quickly innovate are those who will be at the front of the pack. The people who quickly innovate will be first to market and to be able to take the lion's share of noticeability brand awareness and market share, you have to ask yourself three main questions. Number one, what are people asking for? Now people could be asking for something from you specifically or just in general, are they looking for, you know, homeschooling tips? Are they looking for haircare and facials and people aren't doing that? Are they mean since they're not going out and paying the people they previously used to? Are people looking out for fitness routines or health plans? Now the second question we ask ourselves is what can we do that is culturally relevant? Because in during times that are affecting not just like a small group of people or a state or a nation, but when something is affecting the whole world, we have to make sure that what we're putting together is culturally relevant, insensitive to the times. And the third question is, what can I do that's new? Because obviously I've done everything I knew how to do up until this point and what got my business to this point isn't going to get my business to the next point. Can I get an amen? My mentor, James Wedmore says, what got us here won't get us there in order for us to evolve in our businesses specifically during uncertain times, like , uh , social distancing, we have to do things that are wildly different. Now, in the past, I have spoken about five ways to innovate during uncertain times, but what I want to do now is that since most of us, at least in California, we've been quarantined. Now it stays 16, 17, 18. Something along those lines. At the time of this recording is that we spoke about five ways to innovate during uncertain times, but what I'm wanting to do is give you real examples and ideas that will hopefully trigger an idea for yourself. So ways to innovate during Kovac 19 number one, collaborate with peers. Now on the inside of social curator, we have a curator by the name of Sidney Davey and she had the opportunity to collaborate with a brand photographer. Now Sydney is a virtual assistant and she does social media management and there was another photographer in the group who focused on brand photography and pre coven 19 they were doing in-person photo shoots and they were trading services. So Sydney would do admin, virtual assistant things for the photographer who would shoot photos and turn them over so that he can use them for social. But you know, coven 19 change that. So what could it look like after coven ? Well, photographers listen up. You could be creating posing tutorials for people to be posing at home. You know, it's like I saw an Instagram, somebody had put out 10 poses on a couch and I know that it sounds so ridiculous, but that post got so much engagement because people were like, wow, this is very interesting. It's culturally relevant and I feel like it's helping me. Which then leads to, can you do iPhone or Android tutorials? How does somebody actually edit their photo when the room is lit with tungsten lighting, perhaps you can create a photo shoot for props only like because the news of VA , she could put together some of the things that are representative of her brand in our business and ship them over to a photographer and the photographer can style them specifically for lay flats. I've also seen these really amazing family photographers, host porch sessions. They'll spread the word on social media that you are assigned a specific time to sit with your family on your porch and people are paying via Venmo or PayPal for a family session so people can sit on their porch for a 20 minute family session while a photographer stands eight to 10 feet away and shoots family photos. I think it's innovative. I think it's bright. I think it's so awesome wasting a date. Number two is to volunteer your talents. I had a member of social care to reach out to me on Instagram and she had said that things in her business were really tough. But what was complicating the matters was that things in our husband's business, he was a manager at a transportation company and it was hitting the business really hard. They'd already done a round of layoffs and they were expecting to do another round because his transportation business dealt specifically with aviation. So airport transportation. So she reached out to me and she said, we just don't know what to do. And I said, if you're asking for my advice, if I had your husband's business or if I was the owner, what we see is demand, not for airport transformation , transportation, but demand from an elderly community or for people who can't go to the cursory store. So what this business has are vans and drivers who don't have work. And there's the demand for people who need transportation and don't have it. So I said, if I were you, I would just do a campaign on social media and set out two days a week and just say we're here for the community and you arrange a time slot to either pick up people from it now retirement home or retirement community and take them to the grocery store, edit, designate in time and then take them back. And I would do my best to reach out to all local press in the neighborhood to talk about how this transportation company is doing something amazing for the community and you're able to get press. Now here's the thing, will that move the needle today? Probably not, but when people start flying, because we will, we will get getting back on planes, we will be planning trips, we will be booking hotels and when that time we are going to think of that particular company, the company that showed up come rain or shine. We also have another member on the inside of social curator. Her name is Christie cross and she is a photographer and she can't work right now, but instead of getting really down what is doing is creating iPhone tutorials on Instagram stories or she's explaining what shutter speed and aperture and ISO and she's talking about how to take, you know , the shadows out of your photos, how to show up differently in your business. And then I saw a post that I thought was very interesting is her caption reads, tomorrow I'm teaching a kid's smartphone photography class on Facebook live at 10:30 AM she saw the social conversation that more kids are at home with parents who really needed something to do and they could learn photography with resources they already have in their home with the teacher who's going to teach them on Facebook. Now does Kristi sell, you know, education to kids? No, but she does sell education to parents. She is a photographer who has an online smartphone photography course and she also does brand photography. And what is she doing? She's creating content to stay culturally relevant and start a new conversation, which leads us to actually point number three. The third way you can innovate is to start a new project. Give yourself the permission to do something unexpected and pivot and create a conversation with people in a new way. I want to give a shout out to a curator by the name of Joanne. She is at shear collective on Instagram and she also happens to be my hairstylist. Yes, y'all. And here's another thing, people think, Oh well did you give Joanne a free membership to social curator cause she does your hair? And I'm like, no. Did Joanne give me a free haircut? No, we ought to a hustlin mama's doing our thing. I pay her for her services and she pays social curator for there . So there you go. But let's have a real chat. What she was doing here was it was bittersweet. It's very hard to see somebody who has a business that requires close proximity to the person you're working on for your services. So hairstylist cannot socially distance. It's impossible. But what she decided to do was to reach out to her clients because there will be probably an eight week gap between appointments, which is much longer than I normally go. And she says like, Hey, if you want to touch up your roots, what I'm doing is a root and what I'm selling is a root touch-up kit. So she went through all of her clients, the people who said yes, I would like that. She set the cost and what she provided was gloves, a spatula, a bowl toner, I think it's called [inaudible] , it's called developer color a brush. Um, and then she created a customized video. She's like, this is how you apply it. And then the video tutorial was like eight minutes and then she said gave you a car just like your hair has to sit on for this long, depending on what type of hair you have and who you were . Yo, she was finding a new revenue stream when for all intents and purposes there wasn't one. Perhaps you can invest in like a new skill or thinking about the same thing that you do in a new way. There is a manicurist who I follow on Instagram called gloss house and she does these really great nail designs. Listen, if you follow me on Instagram, you know that manicures are my thing. They just are. I love the designs. I am all kinds of extra Burleson . You can take the girl out of the hood. You can't take the hood out of the girl. It's like, you know, the only person who has fancier nails than me is probably Cardi B. Let's be real. Okay. But what she was doing, what she thought was very smart is she can't social distance as a manicurist. But what she did was that she created gel removal kits. Y'all . So what you see are these like really funny means floating around in the internet about girls who nails are gonna fall off or what are you going to do? Or you know, people were posting like how tos , she just didn't post to how to, she created a financially viable solution. And so what she did was created eight kit and in the kit it provided a clamps for the nails, the right acetone files, two types of files, a buffer. I mean she thought of everything and also like, I don't even know what the tool is called but it's a metal tool to like scrape off the actual gel from your nail. And the guys that are listening right now and they're probably puking in their mouth, listen lesson . Okay. You know it takes a , it takes extra for our girl to feel good about herself. Okay. Any way here. She saw a certain revenue stream for a short amount of time dry up. And what did she do? She pivoted and saw there was going to be a lot of people who want to have their gel removed. I'm going to give them a solution. I thought it was brilliant. And the last and final fifth way to create a revenue stream to innovate during those crazy times is yo e-learning. I was watching CNN a couple of nights ago and they brought on a specialist from like Harvard university and they're like, what industries do you think are going to do extraordinarily well during this time? And he led the way by e-learning. He sided sites like Linda and masterclass and creative live and he's just like now people have more time and they have the permission to actually pursue something that they have found interesting for a while . So if you have been teetering and tottering between creating something for your business, my friends now is the dang time to show up. Legit. So now the question is, what is the dream you're going to work on today? I would absolutely love to hear from you. I am in my DMS because listen, I'm a home. Okay, I'm in my DMS. I definitely want to hear from you. Now if you're sitting here and you're like Jasmine, but you didn't give me an example from my industry, well I'm just going to throw out a few extra just in case the inspiration isn't going. If you have a restaurant, I've seen mazing restaurants innovate with pickup or walk up orders where they have the people distributing food, wearing masks, glasses and gloves. I've also seen family sized menus for like a set price. So if you have a family between four or six, the meal is this and it's like completely done for you. Turnkey and restaurants are able to streamline their production process in their costs. I also saw this really cool at home pizza kit. There was like a pizza parlor in Florida. They couldn't or actually weren't able to make pizzas for their sit down restaurants . So they created kits that people could pick up and make at home. I thought was very smart. I saw a wine cellar create a Corona survival kit, which was like, you know, cured cheeses and meats and wine. Super cute. Um, one thing I noticed this past week was a lot of live streaming from your phone and there've been all the always musicians doing this for a very long time, but it was very cool to see it done with iHeartRadio. They hosted a celebrity driven stay at home campaign and people were making music from goodness like their closet or their living room. And then there's Mariah Carey who in New York city has her own recording studio, complete with a fan. Homegirl was singing and she had a fan like her hair looked so good. I was like, girl, you probably have your own inhouse stylist doing that coloring. So clap that up baby Jesus smiling down on you. But I happened to be listening to a podcast called this American life with IRA glass and in between each of their stories segments, they call them acts in between each of their acts they would have music and in this particular episode there was an artist by the name of, I'm going to get it wrong, I think it's called NEC. It's spelled M N E,K , and he is just an Instagrammer who makes music on his own. So he'll loop his vocals and his songs have gone viral and now he's calling it his Corona P. all of the songs have to do with staying at home, washing your hands or social distancing. This goes back to creating something that is powerful, culturally relevant and actually brings a smile to somebody's face. If you're in the fitness space, you listen. What we see a lot of people doing, which I love is streaming classes, going on Instagram live or going on Facebook live. And I think it's such a great way to show up for your people. One thing that we saw that both JD and I workout a lot here in orange County and he happens to go and work out at this place called box house, but it's really fancy. It's not house, it's Haws H a U S box holes. It's way too fancy for me. Um, but they are actually having a monthly subscription for their classes and you can rent a bag. So for a certain amount of month you get a bag and you get unlimited streamed classes. I cycle, yes, I cycle multiple places like soul cycle, but one of my favorite is called grit cycle out here in orange County. And you can actually rent a bike, one of their bikes and you could bring it home and you can use their stream classes. That it was very, very, very smart. All of this to say is that focused action gets results focused. Action. Focusing on the one thing that you are like, I am ready to do this thing and guess what friend? It doesn't have to be the right thing. It just has to be a thing. Five ways for you to show up and pivot in your business in big ways. Now I know the thing that is getting in a lot of people's way isn't whether they think they're capable of surviving isn't because if they think that they're capable of succeeding, it's the fear of somebody watching them try and not do the thing they said they were going to do. We're not afraid of failure. We're afraid of people seeing us fail. We're afraid of what they're going to say, but I am here to tell you and remind you friend that fear and other people's opinion of you doesn't pay your bills. Is that the only person who is stopping you from doing the thing that you know you want to do is you. I am looking around the internet and I just want to like shout from a mountaintop my friend. This is the time. If you've been waiting for a moment now is it? If you're waiting for a sign, here it is. If you're waiting for permission, slip, hit me up on Instagram and I'll send you one. I'll take a picture of a homemade permission slip and say if something goes wrong, if it does not work, if they talk about you, if they laugh, if they doubt , send them my way. How about you just say, you know what? You're hurting my feelings. DM Jasmine , have them DME . Please have them. Then I'll give them a peace of mind. Puerto Rican mine . I'm gonna cover them with love. Give him a dose of truth to that. Somebody else who stopped pursuing their dreams should not stop you from pursuing your dreams. There has never been a time or a global permission slip for you to make a ton of mistakes, a K a movement. Then now, then now do something. Try something. Take action. Any action. Scary action. Delpo action. Scrappy action. Messy action. Fearful action. Delpo action. Take any action at all. Just do something. And if for some reason it doesn't work out the way that you had expected, you could say, Kovac made me do it and everyone would be like, Ooh yeah, code coven made me do crazy stuff too. Some people will say, COBIT made me gain 19 pounds cause all I wanted to do was like eat. And some people will say, Oh Kovac made me lose 19 pounds. Cause all I wanted to do was work out. And some people say, Oh, coven made me, you know, 10 months later there's a baby. You know what I'm saying? Colvin will make people do a lot of crazy things. How bout you give yourself the permission to do one dang crazy thing in the name of love, life, creativity, financial freedom in entrepreneurship. Friend, I am here for you. And just in case you're like, no, no, no. Jasmine, you see, I just listen. You're going to come at me with excuses. I'm gonna come back at you with reasons. If you are ready to get started and you don't know where to begin. Um, social curator is closed for enrollment. So no , this is not a pitch for it. So don't worry to turn off your podcasts . Be like , Oh look at it. She's trying to sell me. No, I'm non booboo. What I want to give you is a free sneak peek and get access to social curator for free. So no nonsense, no pitch trip wire sell you, put you on an email funnel for 17 emails and then pitch you like, no, no, no , no. It's just download the free captions, the photos, the Instagram story templates, download the action plan. We are here to encourage you to take one daily action. That's it. We're not expecting a lot during these crazy, gnarly times. We want you doing one thing on social media every single day and this free sneak peak access. It gives you the plan to do it and no excuses because all we want to do is support you. You can find that@socialcurator.com forward slash sneak peak , and you can also find it linked in the show notes from wherever you are listening today. Social curator.com forward slash sneak peak and when you download it, hit me up, Jasmine star on Instagram. I want to hear from you. I want to root for you and I want to know what your one wild and crazy coven 19 dream is. Baby, I'll see you again on a future episode and the Jasmine star show
Speaker 1[inaudible] .