How I Built a 7-Figure Brand: A Conversation About Growth, Pivoting and Scaling

What if success isn’t about having all the answers—but about starting before you feel ready?

If you’ve ever hesitated to take the next step because you’re waiting to be “qualified,” this episode is for you.

In this special repurposed episode, I sat down with Alexis Teichmiller on the Circle “Making Of” podcast to talk about how I built my brand from the ground up—starting with a $19 PDF and zero business experience.

You’ll hear:

✨ How I went from law school dropout to six figures in my first year as a photographer

✨ The moment I realized my audience was asking for a product I hadn’t even created yet

✨ Why generosity has been my #1 business strategy (and how it shaped my success)

✨ The hard decision to pivot from photography to educator, strategist, and tech founder

✨ The real reason I burned the boats on past businesses to step into something bigger

And if you’ve ever felt like ambition is a luxury you can’t afford, I share how I went from survival mode to fully embracing a growth mindset.

🎧 Listen now and DM me on Instagram @JasmineStar with your biggest takeaway!

Click >>PLAY<< to hear all of this and:

00:00 - Starting before you're ready: why action beats perfection

02:06 - How I made six figures in my first year as a photographer (without a degree)

04:51 - Turning my audience’s questions into a $100,000 product (by accident!)

07:16 - How my childhood shaped my mindset around generosity and business

10:53 - The truth about ambition and why it felt like a “luxury” I couldn’t afford

16:01 - Pivoting from photography to digital products: the leap that changed everything

18:46 - Burning the boats: letting go of past dreams to step into something new

25:20 - Building a tech company from scratch—the hardest thing I’ve ever done

30:25 - The future of Social Curator & my vision for building a true entrepreneur community

📧 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/episode544

Transcript

Jade Hall 00:00:00  Welcome to this special episode of The Jasmine Star Show. My name is Jade and I'm the CEO of Jasmine Star and Social Curator. Today we're diving deep into the mindset of starting before you're ready, embracing the unknown and building a business that thrives even when the odds are stacked against you. This was a conversation that originally aired on the Making of Podcast, where Jasmine shares a candid, behind the scenes look at how she turned uncertainty into opportunity, made six figures in her first year as a photographer and built a thriving brand by listening to her audience. If you've ever doubted whether you're qualified to start something new, this episode is for you. So grab a notebook because you're about to hear insights that might just change the way you think about your own business journey. Let's dive in.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:00:42  Hello! Welcome to the making of Jasmine Star. Welcome to the show.

Jasmine Star 00:00:48  Thank you. I'm very happy to be here.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:00:49  I am so excited for today's discussion. So I want to start here. So you recently shared on social media a good sign someone will make it is they start and then they ask how? They don't ask how to start.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:01:02  Can you share a specific story from your early days as an entrepreneur when you just started, and then you figured out the how?

Jasmine Star 00:01:11  You know, I started my career as a photographer and I was the last person to be having a business. I had no business starting a business, and yet I did. And so while I'm not going to actually start for all the reasons I was unqualified to be a photographer because the list is way too long when we want to start without asking how. One thing I realized was, even if I was learning how to be a better photographer, at the same time, I was learning how to run a business, and I was actually becoming a better entrepreneur faster than I was becoming a better photographer. Now there's not a right or wrong, it was just a natural inclination towards business. And so I had a blog at the time and I was sharing about how I was building my business, and people were really surprised with how quickly I had built my business, because traditionally, in creative artist worlds, pursuing art is like a passion.

Jasmine Star 00:02:06  And you always heard that adage, A starving artist, well, you hear it a lot because it's true. It's very hard to make money off of something you create and love, specifically large amounts of money. And within my first year of business, I had earned $100,000. And to a lot of photographers, that was like mind blowing, because that's a lot of growth in 12 months, specifically because I didn't have a photography degree. I wasn't all that great. I didn't even have all the photography tools I was renting camera lenses and even camera memory cards just to keep my business going. So for all intents and purposes, people are like, number one, how is she? Photographer number two, how is she still in business? And a very far number three is how the holy heck is she making multiple six figures? And so I started sharing openly on my blog and my journey. I was literally sharing everything I was doing. So there was a half of a group of people who were loving it and saying, thank you so much for teaching us how to run a business, how you are.

Jasmine Star 00:03:02  And the other half was wildly skeptical. So if I had stopped when people left in negative comments, if I had stopped when people had opinions, if I had stopped when I started feeling really uncertain about being a photographer, when people had such strong opinions about my work, I would have robbed myself and literally thousands of other people of a tool that I had created. So I was creating blog post, and I was talking about how I was able to close clients online, via email. And as a photographer, people are like, well, you don't think that that person wants to meet with you or see your portfolio or see your studio? And I simply responded, no, because I don't have a studio. I actually don't have a very wide portfolio. And meeting online is a lot easier for a lot of people. So when people were asking, what is the flow of you writing emails, I just said I would do this, and then I would send this email and then once an e-mail and then in the blog comments, people were asking very specific questions about my emails.

Jasmine Star 00:04:01  So I did another blog post talking about these emails. And then more questions came. And what I started realizing was that people started asking, no, Jasmine, but what are you saying in those emails? And I took a big step back and I'm like, wait a minute, are people actually asking to use my my words? This is a crazy idea to me. And I said, are they actually asking for a template of this series of emails that I'm doing? And so I asked a few people, hey, if I shared with you my emails, would you find that valuable? And everyone's just like 12 out of ten? Yes, please. Like I'm ready. And so I set aside an entire day. I went through every email that I ever have, like the cycle that I would go with my clients. Now, at the time, I didn't know that that's called onboarding. I had no idea that there is something called an email funnel. I had none of that idea. I was just like, this is just what I'm doing on email.

Jasmine Star 00:04:51  And so I had an email for an inquiry in email for a follow up and email for confirmation, and email for contract and email for prep and email for delivery. I had all of these emails, so I just sat down and I wrote all of these emails in a word doc. I saved it as a PDF, I uploaded it online and I charged $19.99, and I averaged about $1.50 per email template. I was like, would somebody pay $1.50 for this template when I know they're going to use it again and again? And I included blank spaces for them to put their business, and I just put it out. And within 24 hours, I had sold over 100 PDFs. Like the next day I woke up and I was like, I have $2,000 in my bank account from a PDF, and did I know how to export a PDF from doc? No. Did I know how to upload a PDF and sell it? No. Did I know how to create a buy button? No. Didn't know how to create a checkout page? No.

Jasmine Star 00:05:50  And people now, I mean, there's so many easy sites like Shopify or a thousand other places that you can upload a PDF and sell it. But back in 2008 and 2009, that wasn't that. And so I started to sell a PDF without knowing how I was going to sell a PDF. And, you know, in less than 12 months later, that had created another six figure revenue stream on selling PDFs of resources that people really wanted. So that was probably the first time that I started when I was wildly unready and underprepared and still made a win of it.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:06:21  I love this story because it highlights how close you were to an AR to your audience, like you were listening and you were saying, okay, there's something here. And you weren't. You weren't allowing yourself to just stop at photography. Your lens was truly through service.

Jasmine Star 00:06:42  Alexis, I saw what you did there. My lens. Oh, you made a pun. I didn't even.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:06:48  Need to.

Jasmine Star 00:06:48  Do that.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:06:49  I didn't even mean to do that.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:06:51  But the lens or filter was through service and I love that. So I'm curious, taking it back to your childhood and you have this value of being generous and service. Was there an aspect of your childhood or a value from your childhood that really, like, lifted that up and made that such a big part of the way that you do business now?

Jasmine Star 00:07:16  Alexis, I love this question. I've never been asked it specifically in this frame, and it's probably the first time that I've actually thought back. Number one, thank you for seeing generosity in me. To me, that is like the utmost compliment beyond any other accolades. Being considered a generous person means the world to me, and when I think back to my childhood, I. I am a sheer reflection of what people showed me in my family. My dad is an immigrant from Mexico, my mom is from Puerto Rico, and my dad is one of the hardest working men I've ever encountered. He would have 3 or 4 jobs at any given time.

Jasmine Star 00:07:51  And yet even then, with the family of five kids, it was really hard to make ends meet. It was really common where we just didn't have food in our refrigerator. We never bought things that didn't come from a thrift store. And during Christmas, and even just on random days, we would be getting a donation of clothes or food, or during the holidays when people just knew. Not by anything my parents ever said, but they just knew that looking at our family, we would take the bus to church and we would walk two blocks to get there, and then we'd walk two blocks and we'd wait at the bus stop. I think people saw a good family trying to do good in the world, and it was hard. And so there have been plenty of times, just by kind, good hearted people where they would just put a little bit of cash in a white envelope and just stick it in my mom's Bible or in our mailbox. Our neighbors. And we lived in a really, like, kind of like rough and tumble neighborhood.

Jasmine Star 00:08:42  Our neighbors would take anything excess that they had. One of our neighbors worked at Dole, like the canning company, but they also did yogurts. And so he, the dad, brought home a few cases of yogurt, just too much for the family. And so our neighbors brought over two cases of lemon yogurt for us and placed it on the porch. And so our family lived such a good, beautiful, wholesome American dream life. Not because of the things we did, but because the generosity of others. And I just remember feeling that the world was a really great place, and other people cared about taking care of each other. And so if I can do that in my business, in the content I create and the people I serve, and then the people who are not even customers and still be able to give generously, I think I've been really molded by that from the childhood. So thank you for asking.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:09:30  Yeah, that's so such a beautiful story. And I see that, like, lightness, the way that you said, I grew up thinking the world was this really beautiful, kind, good place.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:09:41  And I think that you have created a business and an environment around you where people get to experience that, because that's the light that you give out as well. And I got to see you speak in 2018 or 2019 at an Amy Porterfield event. And it was one that my former company, Kit ConvertKit, was sponsoring. And I was my first time seeing you speak live. And I was like, I was sat in my seat. I'm like, your passion and the light that you carried with you throughout the entire event. I was like, wow. Like it was like sunshine, but also the genuineness. And so I think hearing about the way that you were raised and your relationship with your family, it really connects a lot of a lot of dots for the woman that you are today. So I'm curious from from that. And it also sounds like there was this level of hard work and ambition instilled in you. How did that shape your career? Because I know that you were, you know, on track and going to law school and you pivoted.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:10:45  So I'm curious, like, what is your relationship been with ambition and when to listen to where it's wanting to take you.

Jasmine Star 00:10:53  So, okay, I'm going to be very honest and say that I don't think that I developed ambition until maybe my late 20s or early 30s, and I didn't develop ambition because it felt like ambition is a luxury, like ambition is like this choice that I'm going to be ambitious, how I was raised and in my former mind frame in the way I which I viewed the world, my money mindset was not about ambition, it was about money. Because in my mind, in formative years, what I saw was money was optionality. Money was a passport, money was power. And those who had lived a very different life than those who had not. Now, that's not to say I didn't have a great childhood with loving parents, and they did the best they could, but I also distinctly saw the differences of families going on vacation, a families who had a washer and dryer in their house, and they weren't walking four blocks with their mom in like black trash bags, taking your soiled laundry to the coin op and then walking back with it after we folded, laundered it there like there was differences.

Jasmine Star 00:12:01  And through high school, through college and college was the first time that I actually understood the difference between the rich and the wealthy. There were students I went to college with, and I understood wealth for the first time in my life that like, there are levels to people who have money, and then there's levels of people who have so much money that you can spend it all in your lifetime. And that turns into generational wealth. And after that, I was like, I'm going to law school because that's my path to money, not ambition. It was, how do I get from point A to point B? How do I transcend a lower economic social class into an upper economic. And I thought, number one academics and then number two, choosing a field that was lucrative, that was the only thing. And I will say, looking back, how myopic and shortsighted that was, because I never wanted to be a lawyer. It was just this is the thing I'm going to do to make money.

Jasmine Star 00:12:54  And so it was not a surprise when I dropped out of law school because I was wildly unhappy. My mom had brain cancer. I was in a really bad place in life. And then I was like, what am I doing this for? If I die when I'm 50, like my mom had been, they had told us she was going to. She was going to pass. Now the good news is she's still here with us. But at the time we were planning a funeral and so I was like, what am I doing this for? So I literally had a midlife crisis. I was 25 and she was 50. And I'm like, okay, this is my midlife, what am I doing? And so that was when I made the decision to become a photographer. I didn't own a camera. So I get a camera, I have no skills, I have no knowledge. I find a way to start getting money, and then I slowly start growing my career, making money, building trust with clients, sharing my story.

Jasmine Star 00:13:40  And if I could borrow your words, sharing my sunshine. Because sunshine will outweigh lack of talent and lack of business acumen. And I know that's very tough pill for people to swallow. But it's just the truth. Because people buy out of emotion, they buy less out of logic. So if you can apply and appeal to emotion, you will get a transaction. Now, you might not get a million people to buy from you, but could you get a small group of people to invest in your business? And the answer was yes. And so once I became financially safe, once I had multiple six figure revenue streams, it was like the first time. And this happened in my late 20s, early 30s. Everything in my life shifted from your safe. That what you made, like making $100,000 in one year was more than my dad made in three years for a family of seven. So once it was like my reptilian brain calmed down and said, you're safe. You're going to gonna be fine, kid.

Jasmine Star 00:14:35  That. I lifted up my head and I thought, you know what? Now is the time for me to be ambitious. I get to now choose that. I get to set my sights on something and every. It seems like, honestly, every six years, there was, like, a new version and a new iteration of who I became. And my ambitions became different and bigger. And some people might say bigger is subjective, and it is. But it became bigger to me because there was more risks at every pivot. I was able to take risks early on and people are like, I can't believe you left law school and picked up a camera and you had no money and you just found a way to make it work. Correct? But I didn't have anything to lose. And so when we started building up multiple six figure revenue streams and then multiple seven figure revenue streams, every time you make an iteration in your business, you feel like there's more to lose because there is. And so ambition and risk have become like kissing cousins in my life.

Jasmine Star 00:15:29  And I learned how slowly how to balance that. And every time I've taken a calculated risk based on ambition, it has played out in spades. Wow.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:15:37  I am so glad that you zeroed in on the privileges that come along with ambition, and how you were focused on survival and security in a way that the the option of ambition, or like tapping into that felt foreign to you. You did make a distinct choice moving from photography into kind of online business, online educator. Can we talk about that?

Jasmine Star 00:16:01  Absolutely, absolutely. So as a photographer, I started sharing content and I started sharing content that was very specific to growing a photography business. And then slowly over time, people who are not photographers started following and asking questions. And I loved it. I was like, sure, I'll answer questions, I'll make a content. And when I say make content around this time, it's by and large my blog and Facebook. So this is pre Instagram. This is kind of Twitter. And so people were asking these questions and I was able to answer them.

Jasmine Star 00:16:33  And I felt good that I was able to create synergies between disparate industries but find the commonalities. And so then more people started asking for advice. And then small companies, probably companies that were doing 8 to 10 million, came to me and said, hey, can we hire you as a consultant to teach our team the social strategy and building a brand? And so I did consulting for a while. I took on clients. I was still taking photography clients, I was still creating content in our online store, and I was doing the consulting. And what I realized at that time was it built a muscle of confidence, saying, wait a minute, these companies are paying me a lot of money and they trust me, so why could I not take what I'm teaching these companies and actually teach it to people I'm most passionate about? I am most passionate about independent entrepreneurs building from the ground up. And so it was at that time that I decided to say, listen, I have experience in an industry.

Jasmine Star 00:17:30  I'm being hired to speak into other industries and build strategies. Could I build a strategy that small business owners could take and amplify their business? And that was the first time that I took a risk, and I created my first online course. It was called Insta 180. No, it's not available for sale. I'm not pitching it. It was an Instagram for business course. It was $197. I had never created a course before. I had never built proper funnels. I had never run ads. I never had a lead page. I didn't segment a list. I knew nothing, but I knew that I could learn these things. And we launched that course, and five days later we made $255,000. And that was off that one $197 course. And so it was at that time that I started realizing, okay, when I understood the levels of money in college and how to build wealth, I realized that a microcosm of that exists in the online space that you can have a $19 product, a 197 and 87, 297, a 2997 offer.

Jasmine Star 00:18:35  And realize that there is a way and a mechanism to change your life. And that's when my eyes opened up to a lot more new possibilities. Was it hard to let photography go?

Alexis Teichmiller 00:18:46  Yes.

Jasmine Star 00:18:47  And every time you step into a new dream, it requires you to let go of the other one. And the longer you hold on to your former dream, the slower and more arduous it will be to step into your next calling. I once heard this adage, and this phrase is like to burn the boats, the boats that took you to the new land. If they remain out at water, there is a distraction. There is a tension. There is not a commitment to make it work on the new land. So when you get to the new land, burn the boats and say, I don't have another option, I must make this work. And when you make that declaration, you do. You are scared. It is risky, but you play a different game because you know that you work like your life depends on it, because it does.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:19:36  What was the process in letting that go and burning the boat? Like how long did it take you and what did that grief process look like? Because as you mentioned, I think when you are letting go of a dream that you had accomplished, you're making room for another one. There's also a level of grief that comes along with that. Or like even your past self. What was that process like for you and how long did it take you? Or were things moving so quickly that you didn't maybe even have time to process that?

Jasmine Star 00:20:10  Oh, I mean, I wish that was the case, so it's crazy. I have been an entrepreneur long enough to go through iterations. You know how I said it seems like every six years a new version of me emerges and there is like a new business, a new idea, a new iteration. Some people might call it a pivot. I look at it as mere extensions. Is that every business, every industry I've been in, I put a tool in my tool belt and I become a better entrepreneur the more tools I have.

Jasmine Star 00:20:36  And so what I've noticed is the pattern is every six years I make a big shift. But around year four, I start getting inclinations, I start getting auras, I start getting sniffs of some things got to change. And I also heard the quote is, you have to put yourself out of business before anybody else does. And that is always going on in my background is if I'm not growing, then I'm dying. There's no such thing as stasis. And so in order for me to grow, I must find new opportunities, new industries, new way of doing things for expansion. And so for me, the cycle is about two years. And I wish I could say that, you know, sometimes it takes six months or sometimes it took a year. No, it almost seems like almost seems to the freaking month. It's two years, and I wish that I can go back to that former version of myself when I left photography, and I wish I would have said to celebrate it and to step in because you know that it is better to leave number one on your terms and number two, the best in the game.

Jasmine Star 00:21:43  When I look at an NBA players like Kobe Bryant, he left at the top of the game. When I look at actors like Michael Scott from The Office, they have probably another ten seasons in them. But he said, we're at the top. I want to end this here. I want to leave it unsullied. And I think that to have the power to say this is where it ends at the top, and it doesn't make sense for me to pursue the next thing. And yet I will, because that is the game of entrepreneurship that recently, in a rather recent endeavor, I was working with somebody and she had encouraged me based on her selling multiple businesses. As she said, you should write a letter to that endeavor and just thank it. Thank you. And then you list your business name or the project. Thank you. And so in this letter, I immediately got off the call and it took me. It took me ten 12 minutes. Thank you for the house that you bought.

Jasmine Star 00:22:40  Thank you for the redecoration. Thank you for the cars. Thank you for the vacations. Thank you for the memories. Thank you for the investments. Thank you for the giving. Thank you for the charitable donations. Thank you for allowing us to be donors at Children's Hospital of Orange County. All things that are near and dear to my heart. And I just had to say thank you. Whatever comes of this, whatever comes of this. Thank you. And it was as if a whole energetic release happened. And I'm I still have all my businesses. I'm still going. But to be able to say I have done the thing I have been called to do, and we have team members to run with it and grow it and expand it. But me, there is a new land here and we're going to be pursuing it. But taking the time to celebrate it and think it has been a game changer for me. Wow.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:23:23  I'm over here, like profusely nodding. the the graciousness and gratitude of acknowledging what a season or chapter or endeavor gave you.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:23:36  Also speaks again to that, like generosity to yourself. Like you're actually acknowledging the work and all of the energy that's gone into every single one of them. And I think it's a it's an important part of closing or maybe a piece of closure for that chapter. So I know that you have a lot of endeavors now, one of them being social curators. You're the CEO. What has it been like being a tech founder, like from photography to your education businesses and now being a tech founder? Like what? What is that process been like for you?

Jasmine Star 00:24:11  It's been when they talk about the school of entrepreneurship is like the school of hard knocks. I will say, like being a tech founder or founding a tech company is like the grad program of hard knocks. I think that you you just experience things that you're just like, I had no idea. Like I was just so ill prepared for the level of growth and expansion and challenges and new behaviors. And I had to become an entirely different entrepreneur. I am so much stronger and better as a result.

Jasmine Star 00:24:44  But if I today can go back to the founder, who officially launched SAS in 2021 and tell her everything that we had to go through, I think that that version of me would have been like, oh heck no, no, thank you, I want to refund. I'm not down for that. And now and now, having gone through it, having been able to look at a successful company with this vibrant community, having powerhouse team there, I will say it was It has been, hands down, the hardest thing I've ever done as an entrepreneur. And it is hands down the thing that I will be probably the most proud of from a professional capacity ever in my entire life. Wow.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:25:28  The level of maturity that it takes to to recognize that there are big gaps in our knowledge and like what we do to fill those gaps without letting the situation, the endeavor almost crush our confidence. Or maybe we don't feel as competent, and we can use that as a reason to not pursue it, to not like, you know, we almost just like we're like, you know what? That dream was cool.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:25:57  But I don't want to do that anymore. You know, how how has this influenced your confidence as you've grown over the last three years with what you shared?

Jasmine Star 00:26:07  I was actually talking to our CEO yesterday about this, and I had said, I think my exact words were we can do anything. I have seen the depths of hell and we survived. I can do anything. So I think that, you know, knock on wood, knock on wood. of course, you know, my mentor always says that you earn the right to solve bigger problems. May it never be that I have solved the hardest problem of my career. Because that means I'm regressing. I earned the right to bigger problems. And so it is nice to be in a spot where I could look back at adventure and say, we earned the right to solve those problems and still end up on the other side standing now, the next venture, whatever that may be. And as we diversified the business, it doesn't mean that I will have the answers, and there will be times where I feel not confident at all, but your confidence increases.

Jasmine Star 00:27:06  If I, at my deathbed were to say I wished to die a confident person, then I must have gone through entirely in situations where I lacked confidence and then chose to become the thing I desired. If you want to be a patient person and you want to die saying that person was patient, you will be getting a long life of people who are trying your patience and you build a muscle for it. So when you ask how confident I feel, I am looking forward to the next challenge. But at the time of this recording, it feels really dang good to be where we are right now.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:27:42  Heck yeah, I love that resilience. Like you can feel it in in the way that you speak about it. So what is the vision for social curators like? Tell me. I know that's three years old now, a little over three years old. Where are you headed? How are you feeling about the product development? I mean, people are only creating more and more social content. So I'm curious what you are able to share there.

Jasmine Star 00:28:06  Okay. So we actually are going to be meeting at an offsite with the president of Social Calendar and our CEO. And I took a good, hard look at what do I love about the business and what do I want to have my hands directly in, and what do I think the next level entrepreneur needs? Because we became a SaaS offering. So social curators started off as a membership, and then we launched the SaaS platform in 2021. And the reason we we did this was because people had said, we really want an easy way to schedule and push out our content, and in order for us to do that, we had to integrate with all of the larger social platforms. So we spent a lot of time, money development in making an API, which is basically a brain in our company to talk the brain of meta, to talk to the brain at TikTok, to talk to the brain of LinkedIn. And so now that we have that mechanism for people to take action in the platform, what do I believe? And this is just a guess, and this is the case I'm going to be putting forward to the president is, what do I believe? I believe that small business owners are exhausted from the ever changing content and the algorithms and the desire to stay updated, and how everything always feels like it's iterating too fast so that if you ever feel confident with your marketing, it's going to shift.

Jasmine Star 00:29:23  And then I also feel like people want a place to go and be around people who think just as a little bit weird and crazy as them. So my big push for 2025 and beyond is really going to be how do we build out community, how do we make this a place and a space that is not just a thing to do, but becomes a destination? How do we become the unparalleled dissemination of marketing information where it is a spigot, somebody will come in and say, I want a fire hydrant of information. Great. We have every marketing question answered in great detail with tutorials and how tos. Or if somebody is like, I want it to be just a dribble of water. I just need to make sure that I can show up once a week and get my content out. We can be that too. In order for us to become a destination and not an obligation, that what we have to do is create familiarity and community in such a deep way that people say this, this is my tribe, this is my people, this is the marketing, and this is where I'm going to grow.

Jasmine Star 00:30:25  And that's big. I think that we're going to have to change user interface and experience. I think that onboarding might have to change. And so we just have a lot of big questions to ask, because we essentially have to be predictors of the future in order for us to survive. If we don't put ourselves out of business, somebody else will. So we need to say, where is the hockey puck going? What do people want? What do they need? And then what are they willing to pay for. And so there's a lot of things that are going to be happening there. And every step of the way I look forward that we will have the tech to match with our ambitions.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:30:53  Yeah, that's huge delineation between you want to be a destination and not an obligation, and that's the center of building community. I absolutely love that. And obviously, you know, we're in community at circle. And so just hearing that that's where your head is. But how does that actually feed into the product itself from a user perspective and how they're connecting with each other? I think that's that's brilliant.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:31:16  So I want to shift the topic to obviously social media, because we've talked about the social curators side of things. But when it comes to your brand persona and your unique voice on social media, how did you first go about developing that in terms of how you show up online? I think there's the strategy of how to grow and there's strategies of how much you should be posting. But when it comes to your personality online, how did you figure out what that was, what you shared, what was private like? How much of your passion to bring, how much like professionalism to bring? I'm curious. Like what what that journey has been like for you?

Jasmine Star 00:32:02  Well, I'll start by saying it. It changes. It changes with the different phases that I am in, in life. There are times where I want to show up differently because of who I am and where I am. I will say that, you know, how I was showing up in 2019 was really different than how I was showing up in 2020 when I became a mom? Not for any of the reason.

Jasmine Star 00:32:24  It wasn't intentional, it was just my time got very limited. I adopted my daughter and it was public about how we did, and I just wasn't. I was still very new. What am I sharing? What's okay to share? We were in a pandemic. I mean, there was a lot of stuff that was happening, so I shifted how I showed up. But the only common thread between making my first blog post in 2007 to making content in 2025 has been the reps. Your consistency will be the only thing to develop your voice. You will only ever know how much passion to exert or not exert. You will ever, ever know how much professionalism to exert or not exert. You will never know how much silliness to exert or not exert until you create the content. You have data and analytics and you have emotion because there have been times, and I will definitely say that at the end of 2023, I had a very good cold, hard conversation with the team and said I knew what it was going to take to grow on Instagram, and that was a lot of dancing, pointing, funky videos.

Jasmine Star 00:33:34  In fact, if you want to grow on Instagram, continue to dance, continue to point, continue to have multiple characters and skits. That is the quick path to growth and people cringe when they hear that. But it's true because it works. I had wake up running and I thought, I don't want to do that. and it. I only earned the right to have that opinion because I had tried it, I had grown, I had got lots of success. There was clear business metrics. And then I said, even though data and analytics tell me to keep on doing this, then the emotion, which is the only unquantifiable thing I had said, I tried it, I deployed, I beat the thing I wanted to be, I don't want to do it anymore. But there are people who say, I don't want to do it, having not tried it, and that's okay. That's okay. But I do believe that you feel stronger in your conviction, and you earn the right to have a very clear opinion after having done something.

Jasmine Star 00:34:36  So how do I find my voice? It changes, but the commonality is showing up consistently using data and analytics and then measuring it against. How do I feel about that content being out there?

Alexis Teichmiller 00:34:47  Yeah. Where does authenticity come in? Because is there an aspect of showing up online especially for business that's strategic. And so that you might even be like putting on a different persona where it's not as authentic. Or is authenticity and bringing your full self to creating content? Is that a requirement or a criteria for you? Because I know that different entrepreneurs have different feelings about this, right?

Jasmine Star 00:35:16  Which is why, I mean, I wanted to start off by saying there's actually not a right or wrong, but I will tell you just from my perspective, this is what I see. I see the benefit and the ability to put on a persona that works on social media. I could see that as a model and it works. However, the percentage of people that it works for is about 0.5 to 1% because it takes an element of cognizant acting to actually become that persona.

Jasmine Star 00:35:48  And some people can act and it works, and it's flawless for the business, so that works. But for 99% of the rest of us when we try to put on a persona. Because social media has been around now a decade, we've become attuned to visually like almost we could smell it through the internet. Something's not right. Like this just feels fake and we can't actually identify it. But we're good enough to know if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. And so when we know that or we feel that somebody's not showing up as themselves, and people have become so honed with this when social media and seeing the insincerity and the fakeness of it again and again, now that we're attuned to it, I would just say if at all humanly possible, stay as far away from persona, unless, you know, it's a skill set as humanly possible. Because our job is entrepreneurs is to curry favor and trust. Social media is less about sales. Social media should be about favor.

Jasmine Star 00:36:44  Hey, I want to follow this person. I want to spend time with them and trust. When you do that on social, then you can close on sales. That will happen via a promotion via DM, but it's very, very.

Jade Hall 00:36:55  Very few.

Jasmine Star 00:36:55  People will have an Instagram post and they're like, this single post drove $100,000. No, no, no. It's the level of consistency again and again of you being your authentic self. You will sell more. You will enjoy the process more. You will have more evangelist when you are yourself. Will there be people who don't like you, who say negative, nasty things and just think that you're the worst thing since you know, they're drunk? And Hilda at Thanksgiving? Yes. And they will tell you that. They will tell you that. But they were never going to be customers to begin with. But the people who do like you and have a fondness for their grandmother, Hilda, who was a drunk at Thanksgiving, they love her. They're about her.

Jasmine Star 00:37:32  They'll defender. You want to only do one of two things on social media attract or repel. It's the people in the middle who don't see results, who play it safe, who put on a persona. And people can say, I just don't feel you because you're not being real. It is better to be disliked for 100% of who you are than to be liked for carbon copy because you have to keep track of who am I? What is my story? What have I said? And that will always come back and bite you in the butt.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:37:59  Taking us to church today. Yeah I, I love this I love this so much for someone that's trying to build their personal brand and they're struggling with this. They're struggling with the authenticity. They're struggling with a thick skin because there's an aspect of like I need to have a unique point of view. I need to be standing on something, but I'm nervous about what people will think of me. What pieces of advice would you give for someone who's like, I want to build a personal brand? I have this vision, but I can't get over that piece.

Jasmine Star 00:38:31  Well, the truth of the matter is, some people love the Lakers and they hate you for not loving the Clippers. And some people love the Clippers and hate you for not loving the Lakers. Some people love you for running marathons or hate you for not eating a slice of pizza on the couch. Some people hate you for drinking a green smoothie, and some people love you for going to the gym. Some people absolutely love a certain political party and then hate another. The issue becomes there will always be a group of people who dislike or disagree with you. Even if you do nothing, you walk into 31 flavors. You're like, I like vanilla. Someone's like, whoever eats vanilla, that's the most boring thing. They're like, how can I go wrong with vanilla? There are people who like vanilla and who despise vanilla. You just being you. Inherently, you have an opinion. So if you have an opinion and 50% of people are going to like you and dislike you, and then you don't have an opinion and percent of people are going to like it or not like it, you might as well have an opinion.

Jasmine Star 00:39:29  People think that by lacking integrity, authenticity, showing up to the art, or stating, people say, oh, I need to have a unique point of view. No you don't. You need to have a point of view. There's no such thing as a unique point of view. Very few people point to .0.00. 5% of people will ever have a unique point of view, and these are, by and large, mathematicians and scientists who are developing something that's never been done before. The fact that you're saying, I need to have a unique point of view, a unique point of view on what business that's been around for eons, that this still the same hooks that work on social media worked in the 1940s in print newspaper, that worked in the 1950s, on radio that worked in the 1980s on cable networks. Those same hooks work every decade. You want to have a unique point of view. How about you just have a point of view and understand that half the people like it and half the people won't.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:40:15  I love, I love this so much. I feel like this is the like level of honesty that I think we can just overthink so much. Like when you're creating anything, you can really overthink. And so this is the level of honesty that I think people really need. And so I appreciate you bringing the heat today is there.

Jasmine Star 00:40:36  And before I before before we go on, I will say, I will say I understand. It's hard, I understand it's difficult, I understand we we you, me. Every day I can still get in my head. I can look at a piece of content and just be like, is, oh, is this a little weird? There was a time where I had posted content and somebody had said that it looks like I just tried too hard, and that is not easy to hear. But then when I took a big step back, I realized, I do. I try really hard. It's not easy and I make an active decision. So I think that sometimes I get riled up and I'm like, oh yeah, da da da da da.

Jasmine Star 00:41:20  And so people say, wow, she has something that I don't have. So she can do that. And what I want to be very clear is I am deeply empathetic to the journey, the story, the difficulties. But the main difference between me and people who don't show up is I will press post and I will let my content define and defend who I am for the right group of people. It won't be for everybody, but for the small people who want to go deep with my business. And who am I beholden to? I am beholden to myself, my vision, my destiny, God's calling on my life and my family. If I can put out content that resonates with the small group of people who pays my bills, who gets my daughter and my husband to go on our annual vacations, to have the cars that we drive and the places we go, and to give to charitable organizations and to empower others to do the same thing. Hot dang, I'll get over myself to do that.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:42:14  Because your vision is is so clear. It's so much bigger than honestly a comment. And I think that's where we get we can sometimes fixate on the negativity, and we can sometimes fixate on pushing something out there. And there's crickets, but it's like, okay, if you've got the vision and you know where you're trying to go, that purpose and mission has to be bigger than opposition and resistance and sometimes negativity. So Amen. I hear you through and through. If someone is focusing on this right now, where do you think most people are overlooking? Like you think people should pay a little bit more attention to?

Jasmine Star 00:42:54  Well, the good news is that it always changes. So between us recording this and it debuting, it might change. And people have a very difficult time with hey, what's working or what are people overlooking? But when you say something is overlooked and people notice, it's overlooked, all good marketers and content go and go to the thing that's overlooked. That is the natural thing. It's like marketers kill everything good.

Jasmine Star 00:43:19  It's just the truth, right? And so at the end of the day, instead of talking about what's being overlooked, I would say if you're getting started or you really want to foster a level of consistency, choose what is the lightest for you. I am not saying choose what's easy for the rest of your life. I'm just saying choose what is lightest for you. This is like when you go to the gym and you feel very intimidated and you don't know where to go. And you see all of these, like, buff people doing all of this other stuff. Just pick up the £5 weight, just pick up the £5 weight and see, I can do this today. For right now, if I want to build abs or build glutes, I probably shouldn't pick up the £5 weight and work in my arms, right? However, I am building the level of consistency, doing something that I feel comfortable doing right now. So the reason why social platforms change what's working is it keeps people guessing.

Jasmine Star 00:44:14  And when people guess and when they can't predict, it keeps them interested. It is this sick and distorted, disgusting way. But guess what? All of the addiction psychologists and strategists and social designers work for the largest social platforms, and they say, we know what makes you tick. And if you could predict what is going to be good or always work, you would quickly get bored. so they're always changing it. So I firmly believe there was a time when going live on Instagram was the greatest mechanism to growth, because not a lot of people were doing it. It was a new feature. People were like, oh my gosh, bringing somebody to come on live with you was this such new novel thing. And then after people started doing it, it started losing its interest. But what happens is everything comes back in cycles. So I continue doing Instagram lives even when they're like slowly dwindling. But what I noticed recently at the time of this recording is that Instagram, when you're going live, it will now insert it into stories.

Jasmine Star 00:45:15  So if you're navigating in stories, you'll now see a card pop up that says this person's going live. That's actually a new feature iteration. So I think, listen, for all the people, all the gangsters who are continuing to go live, there is now a push or an uptick for you to do that. Again. I believe that Instagram is doing this so that it starts prepping its engines to compete with TikTok and their social sellers right now. TikTok if you have a product to sell. TikTok is unparalleled. They are creating QVC, like the shopping networks on your phone with easy ways to shop, Amazon is doing the same thing they are having and cultivating social sellers on Amazon that they're going to be soon. This is what I strongly think is going to happen. You're watching a prime movie or show. There comes up a commercial, and on that commercial is a QR code. Or if you're watching on your phone, you could press that, add it to an Amazon cart. I believe that people are going to be doing this and using this so much more.

Jasmine Star 00:46:13  So I believe now going back to what is unlevel edged attention or where should we best spend our time? Number one, go to what's easiest. Stay there, master it. It will kind of always come back in cycles in circles. But the key here is to be consistent. Lastly, I'll say since we're geeking out on social, is there was a time where the Instagram dropped the carousel function where you can upload multiple photos and it kind of dwindled. But what has been happening is that Instagram has been able to measure engagement by a carousel. So let's just say you upload 20 photos in a carousel. If you have somebody go through and see all ten photos of the carousel they're ranking, that is huge engagement because somebody is continuing to swipe on your account versus somebody swipes just to the first one and then kind of scrolls over. So what we see has been a resurgence of carousels as a way to measure engagement. So all of that to say all of that to say is choose one and stick with it.

Jasmine Star 00:47:09  It will always come back around.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:47:10  I love this. Your your point on the QVC really hit. It's almost like passive e-commerce versus active. Yeah. And like you're just you're building a you're building a consumer that's focused on passive consumption 100% versus like, I have to go online shop, I have to go to that URL, I have to go to Amazon versus This TikTok shop and Amazon sponsored videos. I'm like, oh, I want that add to cart app Apple Pay boom! It's so passive and dangerous for the consumer. But yeah, that's really, really interesting. I'm glad you brought that up. Do you see any other things in the social media landscape, or even the creator online business industry that you see shifting in the next 12 months? And oh, I think it's shipping right now.

Jasmine Star 00:47:56  So, okay, so what we've seen in the creator ecosystem that's worked so well on Facebook and then scaled on Instagram, was companies were finding creators and the creators were promoting the company and they would get a cut, they would get paid for their posts, and then they would get a cut as a, as affiliates.

Jasmine Star 00:48:18  And then what we started seeing happening was creators starting their own businesses. And what we saw in that in the last 4 or 5 years is that some creators have business acumen and some don't. And so creators, because they had this large audience. They're like, I can make money. And then they had to realize, wait, I have to run a business. So you see a lot of tenuous balance with this. And then some people made a go of it. But what we see now, distinct shifts in trends, is what we see on TikTok, which I'm pretty sure will be leaking on over into Instagram, is you can as long as you have over a thousand followers on TikTok, you can apply to become a TikTok influencer. But when you think about it, a thousand, that's not 100,000, that's not a hundred million. So what happens is it's pure meritocracy. If I ask to become an influencer on TikTok and I want to talk about ramen noodles, I can reach out to the company and I can say, I want to be an influencer.

Jasmine Star 00:49:10  I can get product, a few bags of ramen, which is less than a dollar. And as long as I'm making content and I'm like, oh my gosh, this ramen is so good, you have to try it. My lips are just burning with awesomeness. Click here that that company takes 0.000001% risk. And this person is only paid on the product they push. Now, some people might hear that mega influencers on Instagram would be like, that's terrible. These people are going to their audience and they're not getting monetized for the halo effect. Like just somebody talking about your business is worth something. But those people on TikTok are not getting paid for. It was the creators and influencers on Instagram. They're getting paid to talk about it. They're getting paid for the affiliate. What we see is companies taking little risk, sending product and having people create on meritocracy. That is going to be a huge shift in the creator economy. You're only getting paid for the content you push, and your competition isn't the other creators with the 100,000.

Jasmine Star 00:50:13  Your competition is the person with a thousand. Because if you have 1000 followers and you create a viral TikTok on ramen, all you need is one viral video for you to get $800, $4,000, $10,000 and that is life changing money for somebody who is at their house with a phone and very limited prospects. The game is entirely changing for for brands and e-com.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:50:39  That's huge. I mean, you already see this with Tick Tock Shop. I mean, a lot of my tick Tock shop ads are not necessarily big influencers or big creators. They're just everyday people. And I am seeing another shift. I know I could geek out, I could geek out with you on this. Another big shift I'm seeing is the shift towards the small creator. I don't know if you've seen this trend on TikTok and then literally the last couple of weeks, but it's like really focusing on these small creators and supporting each other. 5000 followers and 700 followers, like. And it's it's this shift of these small creators become mini celebrities and yeah, shifting away from the big, big, big influencers.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:51:22  I don't think it's necessarily fully shifting attention, but it's it's an interesting thing to watch. And you saw it on Instagram with like micro-influencers, but now it's on on TikTok as well. And I think that there's going to be more focus and maybe even more trust built with like these smaller, smaller creators, smaller content creators.

Jasmine Star 00:51:43  That's right, that's right. And the reason why these smaller creators, so traditionally a micro influencer on Instagram, was defined as somebody between 5 and 10,000 followers. But TikTok has redefined that, like, you're a micro influencer, as long as you have a thousand followers. And why it's so powerful is that somebody with a thousand followers can respond to all of their comments and all of their DMs. So you get a small group of people who are so emblazoned and passionate about that person who sees them, who knows them, who engages on their content, versus the influencer who has 100,000 followers. And yes, they live this beautiful, amazing life, but they're not responding to DMs and they're not responding to comments.

Jasmine Star 00:52:21  And that person doesn't really feel like they're known if they see an ad for ramen from the mega influencer who's paid no attention to them, and an ad for ramen from the micro influencer who regularly leaves a comment. Who are they buying from? The person who feels like they know them.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:52:36  And this all gets back to a relationship right in the trust that you're building with, with your audience. This has been incredible. Thank you so, so much for this conversation. Jasmin, I want to leave you with one last question. What is a big dream that you're focusing on in the next 6 to 12 months for yourself? And this could be a personal dream. This could be a business dream. But is there anything that you're, like scheming that's in the next year?

Jasmine Star 00:53:03  Well, I was not expecting this question, and I'm going to speak my truth. Yesterday I had a workday that I absolutely freaking loved, and it didn't look like I was working hard. Like, there's this there is this appreciation.

Jasmine Star 00:53:22  I have it, too, for like the grit, the hustle, the grind. I wake up early and I go to bed late and I work hard. But yesterday my day was writing podcast episodes outdoors with a cup of tea. Yesterday my the meetings and the consulting that I had was amazing. I sit as advisors for companies and so be able to hop in on a 30 minute meeting, consult on the strategy and say, okay, like to the moon. Let's go with this new tech platform, this new option, and then to be able, like I did a consulting session with this brilliant doctor who's building out her business. And I got off the call and I was like, this is amazing. And my husband said, I'm going to take Luna, our daughter, to the beach. And she said, mommy, can you come with me? And I said, I'm sorry, I have to write a podcast episode. And I thought to myself, I can write a podcast episode at the beach.

Jasmine Star 00:54:05  So I got my stuff. We went to the beach and I was working, and then we went to dinner after, and I felt that it just didn't look like I was working hard. It wasn't the grit and grind, and what I had to grapple with internally was my deep dream and desire over the next 6 to 12 months is to build my workdays like that, to be able to work long and hard, but have it be in flow and have it be good and have it be generous and have it be beautiful. So my dream is to resist the temptation that working hard or grit looks a certain way, or has to feel a certain way and simply say, I get to work hard and I get to love the business that I'm building, but it doesn't have to look like anybody else's term of what working hard looks like or means.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:54:55  Yeah. That's beautiful. And also, that's why you're a builder. That's why you're an entrepreneur is because you get to choose. You get to decide. I can't wait to witness what this evolution looks like for you over the next 6 to 12 months, because I think there's a lot of inspiration, in the roots of that for other women and other female entrepreneurs as well.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:55:15  So, thank you so much for this conversation. This was beautiful. Where can people stay connected with you?

Jasmine Star 00:55:23  Well, if we're podcast listeners, listen to my podcast, The Jasmine Star Show. I would love to see you there. I'd love to have conversations. If you are a builder and you want to know how to build in the good, the bad, and the ugly. This podcast is going to deep dive into amazing business stories along with digesting and dissecting my journey. That's the Jasmine Star show and you can find me at Jasmine Starcom.

Alexis Teichmiller 00:55:45  Amazing. Thank you so much, Jasmine. Thank you for being generous with your time and your energy. We love you. You are just the best.

Jasmine Star 00:55:51  Love you back. Thank you. This has been amazing. Thank you Alexis.

Jade Hall 00:55:55  What an incredible conversation. Jasmine's story is proof that success isn't about having all of the answers before you start. It's about taking action and figuring things out along the way. And hey, if you're feeling inspired, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.

Jade Hall 00:56:08  It helps more entrepreneurs like you find the show. Until next time, keep taking bold steps toward your dreams. You never know what's possible until you start.