The Jasmine Star Show

The 3 People Who Radically Shaped My Year (And What They Taught Me)

• Jasmine Star

Share episode

Have you ever thought about the perseverance it takes to keep going, even when the journey feels impossibly tough?

Today I’m sharing one of the most reflective episodes yet—a deep dive into the lessons that shaped my 2024 and the people who had the biggest impact on my year.

This isn’t just a highlight reel. It’s about grit, growth, and the gold we’re all searching for amidst the dirt.

This episode is personal, it’s real, and it’s for anyone who needs a little encouragement to keep digging for the gold in their own life.

Click play to hear all of this and:

(00:00:50) Why I decided to reflect on the people who significantly impacted my life and business in 2024

(00:01:39) Insights from my experience with Gary Vaynerchuk, focusing on perseverance and authenticity

(00:06:01) My perspective and commitment to my goals moving forward

(00:06:58) Learnings from my mentor, Susan Sierota, who believes in me even when I doubt myself

(00:07:47) The 3 coaching styles that made a big difference for me this past year

(00:08:30) How Susan's time audits helped optimize my productivity

(00:10:58) Meeting Alex and his help in realizing that God was trying to get my attention

(00:16:31) The power of looking for gold amidst challenges

(00:19:00) The importance of going inward for personal growth

Listen to Related Episodes:

📧 Join my Newsletter for a weekly cocktail of insider business strategy, personal reflections, and the journey of being a thought leader: https://jasminestar.com/newsletter 📧

For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode518

Join me for my free (no pitch!) 3-part live class series Scaling Accelerator for 7-Figure Business Owners - I’ll break down the exact systems, marketing frameworks, and time management processes to grow your business, get in front of your ideal client, and ensure you are operating at the highest level. Sign up for free at JasmineStar.com/scaling — and learn how to scale to 8-figures.

Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Do you have the same perseverance to do what it's going to take you to do for another decade? Do you have the ability to get the dirt underneath your fingernails and get the dirt in your teeth? Do you have the ability to show up and build in front of other builders, and be proud of the thing that you're doing? Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, where we talk about business mindset and today getting reflective. So at the end of last year, I was on his team meeting and we were talking about the lessons that we had learned. It's really important for us to itemize and to note people always say, oh, well, what's something that you learned? Like, I learned a lot when you press that person, what did you actually learn? Well, you know a lot. I am not a person who likes to learn a lot. I actually when somebody asks this, what did you learn? I want to come back with an exact lesson. And so we're having this conversation about some of the things that were the highlights and the lowlights of the year, and what we learned from all of those.

Jasmine Star 00:00:50  And at the end of the year, I found myself getting reflected in our CEO asked me, Jasmine, who had the biggest impact on your year last year? And it took me a little bit of time because there is the usual suspects, right? So it's like, oh, you know, I want to give a shout out to God. God most impacted my year last year. I would absolutely have to say, okay, JD, my husband and business partner, big, big impact. And so these are people who are usual suspects like, you know, my team had a wild impact on me. And I don't want to sound like Snoop Dogg, you know, that Snoop Dogg was like, I want to thank me for being me. I want to thank me for working hard. I want to thank me for waking up in the morning. Like outside of the people that I genuinely know, I couldn't do what I do without. There were three people who, when I look back on, I had conversations or I learned from, and they had this radical impact on my life and career.

Jasmine Star 00:01:39  So I want to share those three people with you now and then. I want to maybe what I hope is open your eyes to see who might impact your life last year and the lessons they taught you so that you're stronger moving into this year. So the first person I'm going to start with, the most obvious, because you heard me talk a lot about him, a lot in 2024, and that was Gary Vaynerchuk. And I was really close to watching how he was running his company. I was very close to watching how he worked with his team. I spoke to a lot of people on his team, and I felt like I was in the bus that he was driving. Now I know that it sounds like a big stretch, but I invested to be a part of an executive leadership training program called Vive. And if you want to hear about that experience, I've had two other deep dive podcasts about that experience. I'm going to link him in the show notes. But one of the things that really stood out to me was having the ability to have a 15 minute conversation, one on one with Gary, and he was very honest and he was very real.

Jasmine Star 00:02:45  Now, when we were having these conversations, he was talking about the things that he would go back and do differently as he built his company, and I learned so much from that. But let me tell you the thing that I will forever walk away from, and that felt like seeing the humanity of a builder. Now there's this idea that people see Gary online, and he's big and he's loud and he's opinionated and he uses choice words and he makes no apologies. And all of that is Gary. But when Gary is in a room with you, that is an entirely different version. He's so calm and zen and open and real. And so to see the polarities between both of him being 100% himself. And then I saw a different angle of Gary. I was at his event called V con, and we were sitting there as a group, and he gave the keynote session, and in the keynote session I saw a video and it was documenting the last four years of a journey as he had built this new arm of his business called V friends.

Jasmine Star 00:03:46  It's part of web three. And as they were documenting the journey, I saw how hard it was. Now the video was and is a highlight reel, but what I saw was how hard it stinking was. And as a person who invested in v friends back in 2020 and watched the journey and join discord, a community talking about the project, and then four years later, investing $50,000 in a four month executive coaching program and get up close to the conference and get up close to him and get up close to the team. All I saw was a front row seat of how hard that thing has been, and we went to dinner at a restaurant called ocean, and we were there as a group. And Gary, after two full long days of being at the conference, it was around 9 p.m. Gary showed up and he did a Q&A session for us and I didn't have a question. I just said, I want to say thank you. Thank you for being so honest and thank you for sharing the journey with us.

Jasmine Star 00:04:50  And he had said three things that builders can see other builders. And that meant a lot to me because what I saw was the sheer drive and ganas and chutzpah and dirt in your teeth and underneath your fingernails crawl to do something that you want to do. And his situation isn't different than your situation. It's not different from my situation. Yeah, there's different levels. But he feels that grind just like so many other of us. What I also saw was perseverance. What it takes for him to build and grow to that scale is pure, undiluted perseverance. There were things that have happened so far outside of his control, and he still continues to show up, and he's doing this same thing that he has been doing for the last decade. The man is continuing to create content again and again and again, and his message is kind of stayed the same for the last decade. And he takes pride in that. And so when I look at I got to the end of the year and I thought to myself, Jasmine, do you have the same Perseverance to do what it's going to take you to do for another decade.

Jasmine Star 00:06:01  Do you have the ability to get the dirt underneath your fingernails and get the dirt in your teeth? Do you have the ability to show up and build in front of other builders, and be proud of the thing that you're doing? I had to take deep inventory and ask myself, do you have it in you? Because there's no half stepping here. If you're committed, you're going all in. So buck up and get dirty. Person number one, to have the greatest impact on my ear was Gary Vaynerchuk. Person number two my mentor Susan. I interviewed Susan in the podcast this last year. I'm also going to link to her show. We got a lot of great feedback because it showed the low down 30 of what she has done working with me for the past two years, and one thing I will say about her and why she's had the greatest impact, is she is unrelenting in her belief. There have been people who come in at different points in my career where they believe in you so much, even when you don't believe in yourself at times, and those people are so important to have on your journey.

Jasmine Star 00:06:58  And I will say that in 2024, the woman has believed, despite all reasons, to unbelief, she is undaunted and she is pushing and she is a pit bull and her coaching style works for me. It probably would not work for a lot of people, but her coaching style is figure it out, figure it out. She's not the kind of person who will tell you what to do or give advice. She just looks across at you and says, figure it out and she's going to ask you questions to help you figure it out, but she does not give her $0.02. There was this one instance in this past year that I was kind of under contract for a consulting bid, and it was a big job, and she kept on asking me a bunch of questions about this job, and I had to grapple with it. And as I went through, I said, okay, well, this bid makes sense. And I think they're going to say yes, but I also don't like the terms of it.

Jasmine Star 00:07:47  And she asked me a bunch of questions, and at the end of it, when she just said, figure it out, I came to know and believe that I was going to set the terms of which I was okay taking on a consulting gig, and I knew I was likely not going to get accepted for it, and I figured it out. I didn't figure it out because she said, just do things that light you up and move you forward. She asked me a bunch of questions where I had to look at all the pieces and say, you know what, I don't like these terms and I know they'll accept these terms, but I'm not going to do it for money. I'm going to do it so that it's fully in alignment to the big vision of the thing that I am building. Her second style. So her first style of coaching would be figure out her second style is accountability. She will hold you to your dang word in the middle of the year. I just said, you know what? I can't take anything more on right now.

Jasmine Star 00:08:30  I'm like, all my hours are being used. And she says, all your hours are being used. She's like, great, let's go into a time audit. And I was like, oh, not another time audit. She's like, we're going to a time audit. She said, you are going to watch how much time for two weeks what you're doing. And she's like, you know what, we're gonna do this for the whole team. She's like, I think that you should have this for the whole team. So the whole team, we build out a system for how we're going to do our time audits. And you want to know what? She picked up another 20 30 minutes just by saying, hey, Jasmine, you should time on it. I was having five minutes here and five minutes here and five minutes here, and so we picked up a good 20 or 30 minutes a day. But what I had to do was I had to create a system for my AEA to go through and get every single asana task, and she puts them into a Google calendar, minute by minute by minute of my day.

Jasmine Star 00:09:11  It is absolutely optimized. So if you say you don't have time, she's going to hold you accountable and say, okay, let's go and see how much time you really have. I've been able to shift how I show up and work because I had somebody keep me accountable. But number one, I had to figure it out. Then she said, okay, let's actually figure it out. Then I'm gonna keep you accountable. Her third way that has really had a transformative effect on my business and how she coaches, is that she revels in the restrictions. When I say we can't because of she's like, oh, yeah, she get her two hands, clap them together, start rubbing them like she's trying to start a fire. She's like, good, good. She loves the restrictions because it shows how quickly we can innovate, how scrappy we can get and the magic that we can make from literally nothing. She says that the more restrictions we have, the more she sees me flex as an entrepreneur.

Jasmine Star 00:09:56  And I was like, girl, I like God is restrictions and I've been growing a heck of a lot. I grew a ton in 2024, and when we were talking about how we were in a podcast like the budget for the podcast, I was like, great. So these are the restrictions that we're working in. And she was like, that sounds phenomenal. Based on those restrictions, what are you going to do to win? So then I had to go back to her coaching style. I had to figure it out. How were we going to make the podcast a win? How could we continue doing what we're doing on this podcast in a bigger and better way? What did I have to do to change? Then? She kept me accountable and then she told me to revel in the restrictions. So as I end this year, and I think to myself, who had a transformative effect, it would be my mentor, Susan, but I want to pass on her advice to you. Can you revel in your restrictions when you say, I don't have or I can't do, or all of these other things, can you not just say, this is going to be for me and I am going to figure it out? The third and final person who had a transformative effect is somebody who you have no idea in.

Jasmine Star 00:10:58  Let me tell you, it was a complete surprise to me. Back in October of 2024, I was hired as a keynote speaker for a conference in Dallas, Texas, for the high level conference. And I'm going to be very honest here, and I am going to tell you that I was beyond excited for this commission because I am such a huge fan of the founders of High Level. There are three brilliant guys, and I want to be in their orbit, and I want them to know me by name, and I want to find ways to work with them and their business. Has that transpired yet? No. But being a keynote speaker, I thought, oh, this is it, Jasmine. You're going to go and you're going to make the most of this opportunity. So I went to go high level and I literally I know like some of you guys are not into like God I am. And so I literally prayed for a miracle. I was like, I'm going to Dallas and I'm going to get a miracle.

Jasmine Star 00:11:50  I stepped into it saying, A miracle is coming and it's going to happen for me at Dallas. I walked it like. Like I had little, like, angel wings on my feet. I was like, I'm going to Dallas and it's going to be happening. And it happened not in the way that I expected. Yes, I did meet the founders of High Level and yes, they were fantastic and yes, they're brilliant. And yes, the conference was amazing. But when I look back at that, I thought to myself, what were you actually expecting? Like, were you expecting like a unicorn or a leprechaun to jump off a rainbow and say, ta da! This is the magic thing that just happened after meeting these founders. Like, was was that it? And so I finished my keynote presentation and I got a notification that my flight was leaving earlier than anticipated. I don't even know how that even such a thing or even possible. I got a notification. I was like, oh my gosh.

Jasmine Star 00:12:39  So I called my driver the company, and I said, is there any way that I could be picked up 45 minutes early from the event? And he says, hold on, let me connect you with your driver. And he got back on the phone and he said, your driver is two minutes away. I said, perfect, So I ran downstairs with my bag and I was waiting for my driver. Now, lo and behold, it was the same driver who picked me up from the airport the day before. Now this guy, I come to find out he's 73 years old. His name is Alex and he is an immigrant from Latvia. And he has like graying hair, kind of balding up top and has like a ponytail in the back. He had a maroon button up shirt and a black kind of short leather vest, and he picked up my bag. He says, good to see you. I got back in the car. Now, I will tell you that on the ride to the airport the day before I was on the phone, I was on the phone with the team.

Jasmine Star 00:13:32  I was making plans, I was having meetings, and it was about a 20 minute car ride from the airport to the hotel. Now, the day before, I said goodbye, thank you so much for my bag. And I walked into the hotel. And so he picked me up the next day and I recognized him. He says, hello, how are you? Was it good? Got in the car and I said, wow, I'm so surprised that you were here. And he said, yes. He said something. Told me to come early and wait for you. I said. Oh, wow. You listen to your intuition. And he said. Oh, some people call it intuition. To which I replied, okay, well, if it's not intuition, like what do you call it? He says, I call it God. It's like, oh, okay, cool. I call it God too. Yeah. Like, you know, we'll listen to things. And he said, are you going to be making phone calls? And I said, I have a couple phone calls to make, you know, after says, okay, so I pick up the phone because he remembered the day before I was on the phone.

Jasmine Star 00:14:25  So making a few phone calls and I got off the phone about, I don't know, ten, 15 minutes left to get to the airport. And he from the driver's seat and I'm sitting in the back. He says, do you know you're favored? And I was like, yeah, I know I'm favored. Side note I firmly believe that how we see the world is our reality, how we see the world, the frame in which we see the world is our reality. I believe I'm favored. And because I believe I'm favored. It's my belief. Like, I don't think that there is anything that anybody can say. I believe that there's favor on my life. And because I believe it, it becomes a tenant in which and how I behave in my life. So this stranger is asking me, do you know your favorite? And using that word, I was like, yes, I know I'm favored. And he says, and I wrote down some of his words on the airplane after he says, I can tell you're favored, but you need to know the thing that you want is going to happen.

Jasmine Star 00:15:28  But God is trying to get your attention. And I was like, oh, oh, okay, it's quiet. And I said, so what do you do? Like where is this coming from? He says, I have a PhD in psychology. I'm from Latvia. I immigrated to United States, and we start talking about his life that I was like, so interesting and how he was seeing the world. And he says, I see you talking and here. Are you talking about business a lot? I said, yeah. He says, I want you to know that we're all looking for gold amongst the non gold. He says, I hear you. He's like, you're looking for gold. I said, I am. I am looking for gold. And he says, sometimes we get so caught up in looking for the gold in the not gold, that we fail to realize that at every point of our lives, we're going to have to look for gold. It's just what? Gold? What type of gold we're looking for.

Jasmine Star 00:16:31  And in that moment, I realized that all of us you meet anybody in the world is looking for their version of gold. It could be a romantic partner. It could be financial success. It could be a business that they want to build. But we're all looking for gold. And as we're all on this path of looking for something, we have to look amongst the dirt. And so in my mind, what this man, this complete stranger who looked at me in his rearview mirror and said, your favorite? And he says, you're going to find the gold, but God is trying to get your attention. And he says, you are looking through the dirt right now. Do you have the strength to look for the gold? And I know this sounds totally freaking crazy to anybody who's listening. It sounded crazy to me in the car as I was going through it. Okay, I know that. But then he says, I hear you talking about business and I hear you looking for the gold.

Jasmine Star 00:17:17  Please, no, you're just sifting through the nut gold. But it doesn't mean you won't find it in the process. You're becoming who you're supposed to be. When I speak to you, I hear your desire. And you know what's next. You know what to do next. But I don't think that God is calling you to do. I think God is calling you to be him. Now, I know this podcast took a turn, right? Because we're talking about Gary Vaynerchuk. We're talking about my mentor Susan, and then we're talking about Alex, this Latvian driver who's taking me to the Dallas airport, telling me, a complete stranger, that God doesn't want you doing more. God wants you being. And I know that sounds so crazy, but let me tell you that in this car, all I knew was I went to Dallas to talk to that guy because I don't know where you are on your business journey, but I can tell you that all the way through 2024, I started the year.

Jasmine Star 00:18:07  I began the year with a podcast that said my word of the year is independence, and independence meant I'm doing something my own way, and in that I believe maybe falsely believed that I needed to do more. But in the process of us building our businesses, can we not just be more? Can we feel it? Can we sit in it? Can we understand that all of us are on a journey, looking for our own versions of gold and what we want? We will find as long as we continue to focus on the thing that we are looking for. He had said, you know, a lot of people think that it's like the self of power, like you do things on your own, right? Like if things come from you, he says, oftentimes what you hear is people say, oh, you need to go inward to find the next best thing. He says. As you talk about business, I want you to go inward, but I don't want you going inward to focus on you.

Jasmine Star 00:19:00  He says, you go inward because I believe God divine lives in you. So if God is in you and you go inward, then you're not doing it out of your own selfish gain. You're doing it so that you build for others. And I am sitting there, you guys, in this car, and I'm like, how am I in this car ride right now? And how is this guy? The miracle I came to Dallas for that car ride. It was 12 minutes. Maybe as part of a driver is like they include 20% gratuity in drive, so I knew it. I already tipped him, but I went into my wallet and I literally tipped him the same amount that I tip my therapist because I had a 12 minute therapy session where I walked out and I was like, it's done, Jasmine. It's done. You, o crazy child, are favored and you are looking for the gold amongst the not gold. And it will happen. But God is not calling you to do more.

Jasmine Star 00:20:01  You were called to be more, to sit in it and to know that the time is coming as long as you don't quit. And so this podcast episode is pure documentation. I know people might think like, oh, whoa, this girl went off the deep end, or it's super. Whew. I'm just documenting my story so that as I got towards the end of 2024, I had this whole push of a belief that if I am not where I want to be, I am going to where I am destined to come, grow, be, do, and dwell. And wherever you are, I hope that you take the lessons from Gary, perseverance and doing the same thing, and make a dedication for at least a decade to do it again and again. I hope that you take the lessons from Susan of saying that we're going to revel in our restrictions and we are going to keep ourselves Accountable, and we're going to figure it out. And I hope that you take the lessons from Alex, that all of us are on our journey to find gold amongst the non gold.

Jasmine Star 00:20:59  And maybe, just maybe, if we are to go on the inside, we can find that in the process of doing, we can find space to also be and believe that we will find the gold as long as we do not stop looking. Y'all. I create the show as a Libra of love for you. I create the show as a documentation for me, and I'm doing this to document the journey for all of us. If you found this episode good, please let me know. It went a little bit of a departure from the stuff that we normally talk about, but I am just showing up in 100% of my self. I would love to hear from you. Shoot me a DM on LinkedIn or Instagram at Jasmine Star. I look forward to hearing you. I want to say thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show. Even when and if we talk about things, they're a little bit different than normal, I appreciate you.